Parodies of the Romantic Age 9781138755895, 9780429348280

Table of contents :
Volume Cover
Volume 1
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
General Introduction
Introduction
Table of Attributions
Abbreviations
Introductory note
Prospectus
Introductory note to Issue I
Issue I Introduction
Inscription for the Apartment in Chepstow Castle, where Henry Marten, the Regicide, was imprisoned thirty years
Inscription for the Door of the Cell in Newgate, where Mrs. Browning, the Prentice-cide, was confined previous to her execution
Introductory note to Issue II
Issue II The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder
Introductory note to Issue III
Issue III The Invasion; or the British War Song
Introductory note to Issue IV
Issue IV La Sainte Guillotine: a New Song, attempted from the French
Meeting of the Friends of Freedom
Introductory note to Issue V
Issue V The Soldier's Friend
Sonnet to Liberty
Introductory note to Issue VI
Issue VI Quintessence of all the Dactylics that ever were, or ever will be published
Latin Verses, written immediately after the Revolution of the Fourth of September
Letter from a Lady
Introductory note to Issue VII
Issue VII Translation of the Latin Verses in Issue VI
Introductory note to Issue VIII
Issue VIII The Choice; imitated from "the Battle of Sabla", in Carlyle's Specimens of Arabian Poetry
Issue VIII The Duke and the Taxing Man
Issue VIII Epigram on the Paris Loan, called the Loan upon England
Introductory note to Issue IX
Issue IX Ode to Anarchy
Song, recommended to be sung at all convivial Meetings, convened for the purpose of opposing the Assessed Tax Bill
Introductory note to Issue X
Issue X Lines written at the close of the year 1797
Translation of the New Song of the "Army of England"
Introductory note to Issue XI
Issue XI To the Author of the "Epistle to the Editors of The Anti-Jacobin"
Ode to Lord Moira
Introductory note to Issue XII
Issue XII A Bit of an Ode to Mr. Fox
Mr. Fox's Birth-Day
Introductory note to Issue XIII
Issue XIII Acme and Septimius; or the Happy Union
Introductory note to Issue XIV
Issue 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
Introductory note to Issue XV
Issue XV The Progress of Man. A Didactic Poem
Introductory note to Issue XVI
Issue XVI The Progress of Man, continued
Introductory note to Issue XVII
Issue XVII Imitation of Bion. Written at St. Ann's Hill
The New Coalition
Introductory note to Issue XVIII
Issue XVIII Imitation of Horace, Lib. 3. Carm. 25
Introductory note to Issue XIX
Issue XIX Chevy Chase
Introductory note to Issue XX
Issue XX Ode to Jacobinism
Introductory note to Issue XXI
Issue XXI The Progress of Man, continued
Introductory note to Issue XXII
Issue XXII The Jacobin
To the Editor of The Anti-Jacobin
Introductory note to Issue XXIII
Issue XXIII The Loves of the Triangles. A Mathematical and Philosophical Poem
Introductory note to Issue XXIV
Issue XXIV The Loves of the Triangles. A Mathematical
and Philosophical Poem
Introductory note to Issue XXV
Issue XXV Brissot's Ghost
Introductory note to Issue XXVI
Issue XXVI The Loves of the Triangles
Introductory note to Issue XXVII
Issue XXVII A Consolatory Address to his Gun-Boats. By Citizen Muskein
Elegy on the Death of Jean Bon St. André
Introductory note to Issue XXVIII
Issue XXVIII Ode to my Country MDCCXCVIII
Introductory note to Issue XXIX
Issue XXIX Ode to the Director Merlin
Introductory note to Issue XXX
Issue XXX The Rovers; or the Double Arrangement
Introductory note to Issue XXXI
Issue XXXI The Rovers; or the Double Arrangement
Introductory note to Issue XXXII
Issue XXXII An affectionate Effusion of Citizen Muskein, to Havre-de-Grace
Introductory note to Issue XXXIII
Issue XXXIII Translation of a Letter from Bawba-dara-adul-phoola, to Neek-awl-aretchid-kooez
Introductory note to Issue XXXIV
Issue XXXIV Ode to a Jacobin
To the Editor of The Anti-Jacobin
[Translation]
Introductory note to Issue XXXV
Issue XXXV Ballynahinch; a New Song
De Navali Laude Britanniae
[Translation]
Introductory note to Issue XXXVI
Issue XXXVI New Morality
Notes
Volume 2
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Introductory note
From Probationary Odes for the Laureateship (1785)
Introductory note
Bozzy and Piozzi, or, the British Biographers, A Town Eclogue (1786)
Introductory note
From The Baviad (1791)
Introductory note
'Sonnets Attempted in the Manner of Contemporary Writers' (1797)
Introductory note
From 'The Amatory Poems of Abel Shufflebottom' (1799)
Introductory note
From The Port Folio (1804)
Introductory note
From Rejected Addresses, or the New Theatrum Poetarum (1812)
Introductory note
From 'The Lady of the Wreck' (1812)
Introductory note
'Verses supposed to be written by the Editor of the Examiner, whilst in Prison' (n. d.)
Introductory note
From The Poetic Mirror; or The Living Bards qf Britain (1816)
Introductory note
From Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended National Work of Stow-Market, in Suffolk, Harness and Collar-Makers. Intended to comprise the most Interesting Particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table (1817)
Introductory note
From Beppo (1818)
Introductory note
'There is a fever of the spirit' (1818)
Peter Bell. A Lyrical Ballad (1819)
Introductory note
From Peter Bell the Third (1819)
Introductory note
Benjamin the Waggoner, a Ryghte merrie and conceitede Tale in Verse. A Fragment (1819)
Introductory note
The Political House that Jack Built (1819)
Introductory note
'Don Juan Unread' (1819)
Introductory note
'Evening' (1820)
Introductory note
'The Nose-Drop: A Physiological Ballad' (1821)
Introductory note
'Elegy on my Tom Cat' (1821)
Introductory note
From Paper Money Lyrics (1825)
Introductory note
From Odes and Addresses to Great People (1825)
Introductory note
'The London University or, Stinkomalee Triumphans' (1828)
Introductory note
'Cabbages' (n. d.)
Introductory note
'Fragment in imitation of Wordsworth' (n. d.)
Introductory note
From The Fudges in England (1835)
Introductory note
'On Reading Wordsworth's "Excursion'" (n.d.)
Introductory note
'Fish have their Times to Bite' (1861)
Introductory note
'The Ancient Philosopher. By a Literary Medium' (1868)
Introductory note
'The Power of Science' (1880)
Silent Corrections
Notes
Volume 3
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
CONTENTS
Introduction
Introductory note
From Gulliver Revived, Anon, 1799 and 1801
Introductory note to The Miller Correspondence
From The Miller Correspondence, Anon, 1833
Introductory note to Love and Freindship
From Love and Freindship, Jane Austen, 1922
Introductory note to Azemia
From Azemia, William Beckford, 1797
Introductory note to Blackwood's Magazine
'Translation of an ancient Chaldee Manuscript' from Blackwood's Magazine, James Hogg, 1817
Introductory note to The Microcosm
From The Microcosm, George Canning and John Hookham Frere, 1786
Introductory note to Alice Through the Looking Glass
From Alice Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), 1855
Introductory note to Biographia Literaria
From Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817
Introductory note to Sensation Novels Condensed
'Miss Mix', from Sensation Novels Condensed, F. Bret Harte, 1875
Introductory note to The Spy
From The Spy, James Hogg, 1810
Introductory note to The Three Trials of William Hone
From 'The First Trial', from The Three Trials of William Hone, William Tegg, 1876
Introductory note to Letter to Coleridge
Letter to Coleridge, Charles Lamb, 1798
Introductory note to The Castle Spectre
From The Castle Spectre, Matthew Gregory Lewis, 1798
Introductory note to Melincourt
From Melincourt, Thomas Love Peacock, 1817
Introductory note to The Betrothed
From 'Introduction' to The Betrothed, Walter Scott, 1825
Introductory note to Rejected Addresses
'The Hampshire Farmer', from Rejected Addresses, Horace and James Smith, 1812
Introductory note to The Inquirer
'Critical Remarks on Epicoelegiac Poetry', from The Inquirer, William Squibb, 1814
Introductory note to Edwin the Fair
From Edwin the Fair, Henry Taylor, 1845
Notes
Volume 4
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
CONTENTS
Introduction
Note on the text
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and Short titles
Warreniana
Original contents list
Silent Corrections
Volume 5
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
CONTENTS
Introduction
Note on the text
Preface
Contents
Introductory note to An Unsentimental Journey
An Unsentimental Journey
Introductory note to Rich and Poor
Rich and Poor
Introductory note to To-morrow; a Gaiety and Gravity
To-morrow; a Gaiery and Graviry
Introductory note to Review of Tremaine
Review of Tremaine
Introductory note to Letters on Shakespeare
Letters on Shakespeare
Introductory note to Grimm's Ghost
Grimm's Ghost
Introductory note to The Spirit of the Age
The Spirit of the Age
Introductory note to London Letters to Country Cousins
London Letters to Country Cousins
Introductory note to Brother Jonathan
Brother Jonathan
Introductory note to Boccaccio and Fiametta
Boccaccio and Fiametta
Appendix to Rejected Articles
Introductory note to Appendix
Demoniacals
Dining Out
Silent Corrections
Index

Citation preview

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE VOLUME 1. The Anti-Jacobin

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE VOLUME 1 Edited by Graeme Stones THE ANTI-JACOBIN

First published 1999 by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Ltd Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© Taylor & Francis 1999 © General Introduction and notes Graeme Stones All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infiinge. BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Parodies of the romantic age: the poetry of the Antijacobin and other parodic writings I. Parodies 2. Romanticism 3. English poetry- 18'h century I. Stones, Graeme II. Strachan, john. III. Anti-Jacobin 827.7'08 ISBN 1851964 754 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Parodies of the romantic age : the poetry of the Anti-Jacobin and other parodic writings I edited by Graeme Stones andjohn Strachan. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Contents: v. I. The Anti-Jacobin- v. 2. Collected verse parody- v. 3. Collected prose parody- v. 4. Warreniana- v. 5. Rejected articles. ISBN 1-85196-4 75-4 (set: acid-free paper) I. English literature- 19'h century. 2. Humorous poetry, English. 3. English wit and humor. 4. Verse satire, English. 5. Satire, English. 6. Romanticism. 7. Parodies. I. Stones, Gracme. II. Strachan,John. RRIIII .P38P37 1998 821'.70917-dc21 98-8844 CIP ISBN 978-1-13875-589-5 (hbk)

Tjpeset by Anto~ry Gray, London

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348280

CONTENTS OF THE EDITION

VOLUME 1

General Introduction The Anti-Jacobin VOLUME 2

Collected Verse Parody VOLUME 3

Collected Prose parody VOLUME 4

Warreniana VOLUME 5

Rejected Articles Index

v

CONTENTS Volume 1 Acknowledgements General Introduction

page xii xiii

Introduction to The Anti-Jacobin Table of Attributions Abbreviations

xlv lxi lxix

Introductory note to Prospectus to The Anti-Jacobin Prospectus to The Anti-Jacobin

1 3

Introductory note to Issue I Issue I Introduction Inscription for the Apartment in Chepstow Castle, where Henry Marten, the Regicide, was imprisoned thirty years Inscription for the Door of the Cell in Newgate, where Mrs. Browning, the Prentice-cide, was confined previous to her execution

11 12

Introductory note to Issue II Issue II The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder

17 19

Introductory note to Issue III Issue III The Invasion; or the British War Song

23 25

Introductory note to Issue IV Issue IV La Sainte Guillotine: a New Song, attempted from the French Meeting of the Friends of Freedom

28

vu

15 15

30 32

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Introductory note to Issue V Issue V The Soldier's Friend Sonnet to Liberty

47 48 49

Introductory note to Issue VI Issue VI Quintessence of all the Dactylics that ever were, or ever will be published Latin Verses, written immediately after the Revolution of the Fourth of September Letter from a Lady

51

Introductory note to Issue VII Issue VII Translation of the Latin Verses in Issue VI

59 60

Introductory note to Issue VIII Issue VIII The Choice; imitated from "the Battle of Sabla", in Carlyle's Specimens of Arabian Poetry The Duke and the Taxing Man Epigram on the Paris Loan, called the Loan upon England

63

52 53 55

66 68 70

Introductory note to Issue IX Issue IX Ode to Anarchy Song, recommended to be sung at all convivial Meetings, convened for the purpose of opposing the Assessed Tax Bill

71 72

Introductory note to Issue X Issue X Lines written at the close of the year 1797 Translation of the New Song of the "Army of England"

76 78

Introductory note to Issue XI Issue XI To the Author of the "Epistle to the Editors of The Anti-Jacobin" Ode to Lord Moira

vin

74

80 83 85 92

CONTENTS

Introductory note to Issue XII Issue XII A Bit of an Ode to Mr. Fox Mr. Fox's Birth-Day

94 97 100

Introductory note to Issue XIII Issue XIII Acme and Septimius; or the Happy Union

109 110

Introductory note to Issue XIV Issue 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

112 114

Introductory note to Issue XV Issue XV The Progress of Man. A Didactic Poem

11 9 121

Introductory note to Issue XVI Issue XVI The Progress of Man, continued

125 127

Introductory note to Issue XVII Issue XVII Imitation of Bion. Written at St. Ann's Hill The New Coalition

130 131 133

Introductory note to Issue XVIII Issue XVIII Imitation of Horace, Lib. 3. Carm. 25

135 136

Introductory note to Issue XIX Issue XIX Chevy Chase

138 140

Introductory note to Issue XX Issue XX Ode to Jacobinism

143 144

Introductory note to Issue XXI Issue XXI The Progress of Man, continued

146 150

Introductory note to Issue XXII Issue XXII The Jacobin To the Editor of The Anti-Jacobin

155 156 158

IX

117 118

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Introductory note to Issue XXIII Issue XXIII The Loves of the Triangles. A Mathematical and Philosophical Poem

161

Introductory note to Issue XXIV Issue XXIV The Loves of the Triangles, continued

174 175

Introductory note to Issue XXV Issue XXV Brissot's Ghost

181 184

Introductory note to Issue XXVI Issue XXVI The Loves of the Triangles, continued

187 188

Introductory note to Issue XXVII Issue XXVII A Consolatory Address to his Gun-Boats. By Citizen Muskein Elegy on the Death of Jean Bon St. André

194 196 198

Introductory note to Issue XXVIII Issue XXVIII Ode to my Country MDCCXCVIII

202 204

Introductory note to Issue XXIX Issue XXIX Ode to the Director Merlin

211 212

Introductory note to Issue XXX Issue XXX The Rovers; or the Double Arrangement

214 216

Introductory note to Issue XXXI Issue XXXI The Rovers; or the Double Arrangement, continued

229

Introductory note to Issue XXXII Issue XXXII An affectionate Effusion of Citizen Muskein, to Havre-de-Grace Introductory note to Issue XXXIII Issue XXXIII Translation of a Letter from Bawba-daraadul-phoola, to Neek-awl-aretchid-kooez

x

164

230 243 244 246 247

CONTENTS

Introductory note to Issue XXXIV Issue XXXIV Ode to a Jacobin To the Editor of The Anti-Jacobin [Translation]

252 253 255 257

Introductory note to Issue XXXV Issue XXXV Ballynahinch; a New Song De Navali Laude Britanniae [Translation]

259 261 262 265

Introductory note to Issue XXXVI Issue XXXVI New Morality

268 269

Notes

287

xi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Parody the subject of this five-volume edition, is so carelessly appropriative that editors are bound to be infected. There will be many people whom we have failed to thank. But for all kinds of general assistance, inspiration, and support we are grateful to Paula Baxter, David Chandler, Ben Colbert, Nora Crook, Bridget Frost, Hilary and Colin Henwood, Douglas Mack, Priscilla Martin, Lucy Newlyn, Steven Partington, Mark Pollard, Rebecca Soreno, Joanne Strachan, David and Peggy Taylor, Elizabeth Woodgate, Susan Woolfson, and Jonathan Wordsworth. We wish to thank the staff of the Bodleian Library (particularly David, Helen and Vera), the British Library, Cornell University Library, Corpus Christi College Library, the Library of the University of Edinburgh, the English Faculty Library of Oxford University, Palace Green Library of the University of Durham, Sunderland City Library, and the Library of the University of Sunderland. We owe specific debts for specialist advice and contributions to Sally Bushell, Mark Edwards, James Francis, Peter Griffin, Robin Harrison, Carol Jackson, Joel Pace, Richard Terry, Peter and Patricia Stones, Duncan Wu. This edition is dedicated to Peter and Patricia Stones, and Joanne Strachan.

xii

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Parody is enticing. There is no knowing what may be around the corner, over the page. There is no easy way to summarize it, to package a form which delights in unwrapping and unravelling. The joys of parody can be formal or riotously slapdash. It may be intemperate or languid, cynical, idealistic, urbane, rough, sharp or recherché. Politically it traverses the spectrum from blood-red anarchy to black-booted oppression. It can be visual, verbal, musical, plastic or literary. It is a voice of the people and an instrument of elites. It mimics and parrots and wheedles and needles and postures and poses and postulates. It is gone in a moment or never forgotten. It is camp, scathing, blunt, flirtatious, scholarly, insouciant, allusive, cathartic, prurient, conniving, priggish, outspoken, demotic, costive and timid. One ambition of this five-volume edition is to give a hearing to as many of these improbable voices as possible. The edition opens with a dramatic surge in the voltage of parody in 1797, in the form of The Anti-Jacobin. This political periodical was an arm of government at a time of national crisis, and its parodies are urgent, clear-sighted and unscrupulous, though little else is predictable about them. Volume Two gathers together a wide variety of verse parodies written by the famous, the infamous and the unknown. Volume Three is a motley collection of parody in prose. Two new editions follow: Deacon's Warreniana, a collection so full of life it is hard to fathom how it ever disappeared from sight; and Patmore's long-neglected Rejected Articles. In any age parody is an exasperating, provocative art, but never more so than in the Romantic period, when Divine creativity was finally supplanted by the human Imagination. An autonomous artistic ideal demands that all forms of imitation be scorned. One Xlll

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

result was peculiar but long-lasting - an artificial division between 'artist' and 'parodist', blindly adhered to by artists themselves selfevidently highly accomplished and indulgent parodists. Add Victorian moral sobriety to this and Matthew Arnold's opinion of parody as a Vile art' spreads quickly. Appreciation of the parodie gifts of major Romantic writers has been slow. Byron was eventually rescued from disrepute, but Wordsworth - at least as influenced by the parodie tradition as ever Byron was - has never really recovered from Victorian approval. Scholars of every other period of literature have learnt to value and take an interest in parody. But critics working on Romanticism have been much slower to take to the form. Parody is not of necessity antiromantic, and another ambition of this edition is to collapse that assumption, and along with it the idea that parodie creativity and Romantic creativity are foreign to each other. Romanticism grew up inseparable from the emulative arts, looking askance with irritation and pride at duplicate, duplicitous forms which undermine its own creed. Macpherson's ersatz folk-poetry, Chatterton's spoof medievalism, Blake's inversions, Coleridge's bulk-importations, the chameleon Keats, Byron's self-deflating postures, Wordsworth's oxymoronic gambols: these are only the more vivid reminders that parody and Romanticism are not simply antithetical. Each volume in this edition possesses its own introduction and is intended to stand on its own feet. Readers well-versed in parody are recommended to skip the following three sections of the general introduction, which discuss the status, definition and slipperiness of parody without coming to firm conclusions.

1. The Status of Parody 'It is a common mistake,' wrote Hazlitt, ' . . . to suppose that parodies degrade, or imply a stigma on the subject.'1 This is no longer generally true. The use of parody by modernist and postmodernist writers as a primary form, and the reinvestments made by twentieth-century critics in older parodie texts such as Don Quixote have rescued parody xiv

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

from disrepute so successfully that it is now almost synonymous with postmodernism: T h e affinity of parody and postmodernism lies on their common strategy of revision, a rereading of the authorized texts which turns all texts into pretexts. 2

This revisionism, with its self-conscious mirrorings, declarative strategies, and meditations on the workings of art, has come to be seen by some as the clearest available demonstration of creativity itself analysis and example in one: a parody forces us to be aware of form as an artifice or as an artificial discipline which is brought into relation with a radically different phenomenon, that of natural experience itself.3

Art on the Aristotelian path of imitating life must cover its tracks. Parody, creatively imitating creativity, uncovers them. As a text itself, while busy prying open conclusions and disallowing the finalities of previous texts it must also be implicitly provisional in its own discoveries - embodying the fragilities of language itself. Despite these recent valuations, Hazlitt's warning remains current for romantic parodies, where the distaste once felt by F. R. Leavis lingers on: There is only one thing that could be learnt by attempting to parody a writer whose distinction makes him worth close study; that is, how inaccessible to any but the most superficial, and falsifying, imitation the truly characteristic effects of such writers are. 4

Leavis turned immediately to parody of Wordsworth for illustration. Parody, the product of 'obtuse and smug complacency' and 'the worst enemy of creative genius and vital originality' was at its most offensive to him in the new dawn of originality of the late eighteenth century. This distaste persists partly through the vehement expression of it by romantic writers themselves. Coleridge was particularly dismissive: Parodies on new poems are read as satires; on old ones . . . as compliments. A man of genius may securely laugh at a mode of attack, by which his reviler . . . becomes his encomiast. 5

xv

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

In fact Coleridge's laughter sounds rather insecure. He preferred to be his own encomiast, determined to manipulate the critical response to his writing - full as it was of unacknowledged borrowings. The parodist's disregard for literary property was dangerous, since Coleridge's standing as a man of genius depended, to him, on concealing thefts of his own. His dilemma embraces much that is essential and has been inherited by critics. Insisting on originality as the prerequisite of genius, he created works of genius that were often 'unoriginal'. Despising parody, he was himself among the most accomplished of parodists - although the form, an addiction stronger than opium, repelled him throughout the peaks and troughs of his dependence. 'Originality' is not the sovereign concept that Coleridge pretends. If parody is 'anti-romantic' in its disregard for originality, this is counter-balanced by its disrespect for authority, including that of authors themselves, whose controlling urges are equally antiromantic. Parody's most essential quality is momentum - whatever it does, it also undoes, because any parody implies the deconstruction of its own standpoint by further parody. This has drawbacks. To be so constantly in passage is fatiguing. But it guarantees that parody cannot be subdued, and more, that it is liveliest responding to force. Nor can it be controlled from the inside. Parody is anarchic in the true sense of the word: leaderless, not destructive. As a form of literary criticism it has the abiding advantage that it never becomes a school. Like helium, parody is finally uncontainable. For example, Leavis's attempt to bottle it only led to parody of his dogmatism. In 'Another Book to Cross Off Your Your List', Simon Lacerous ('perhaps the most feared and respected critic in England") declares D. H. Lawrence 'the only English novelist worth reading' and defends his singular canon: . . . we are now in greater need than ever before of critics - or shall I say, of a critic - who will stand up as a moral and aesthetic guide, leading the culture-hungry masses to the finest and purest literature and keeping the rest in outer darkness . . . if I were addressing the loyal old Thumbscrew group, I would end my critique here. Unfortunately, there are enemies as well as friends among my readers, and they need to be reminded what the xvi

GENERAL INTRODUCTION absolute canons of taste consist of. Literature must reflect, conform to, and serve the interests of Life; that is the point in a nutshell. 6

Crammed into this nutshell are the characteristics, qualities, and covert ideology with which critics disputing Leavis's tradition also engage. Terry Eagleton's attention, for example, is uncannily close: . . . 'Life', a word which Scrutiny made a virtue out of not being able to define. If you asked for some reasoned theoretical statement oTtneir case you had thereby demonstrated that you were in outer darkness: either you felt Life or you did not. 7

Lively as always, Eagleton is still out-performed by Simon Lacerous, who: Though he is a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, . . . despises the entire English University System. Of his fellow Fellows he has said: "They can all go to hell. Of course, some should go before others. One has a responsibility to make discriminations."*'

Frederick Crews's parody sets Lacerous to work on Winnie the Pooh. Although Leavis is the victim, his academic opponents do not escape unscathed: Not one character is from the Midlands; not one is of working-class origin; and there is not even a coal-mine on the ideal landscape where they j u m p and play. Do not mistake me for one of those vipers, the Marxists, who turn literature upside down to shake the social doctrine out of it. My interest is in the art of the novel; simply, there is no art without Life, and no Life without Midland coal mines. 9

For a critic visibly wistful for social doctrine, Eagleton again: since both Lawrence and Leavis refused a political analysis of the system they opposed, they were left with nothing but talk about spontaneouscreative life which grew more stridently abstract the more it insisted on the concrete. 10

Crews's collection of parodie essays in The Pooh Perplex happily upsets one school of the academy after another, depriving lazy intellects of any critical ideology safe enough to hide behind. The traditional view of parody as parasitic could not long survive the Russian Formalists and subsequent interest, particularly by xvn

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC

AGE:

VOLUME 1

Mikhail Bakhtin, in parody's role in transitions between forms, in escaping genres, and in the convergence of the nature of literature with the nature of parody. Bakhtin's interest in dialogism - valuing textual pluralism, conversations between radical and established forms, and m o m e n t u m in literature - upends the notion of parody as dependent. His concept of the novel embraces the impulse behind its finished form, an impulse indistinguishable from that of parody: "novel" is the name Bakhtin gives to whatever force is at work within a given literary system to reveal the limits, the artificial constraints of that system.11 For Bakhtin, before the ascendancy of the novel itself, this impulse manifests itself through 'dialogic' discourse characterized by parodie duality: exchanges between texts. Bakhtin's novel in its evolved state, suffused with border violations not just between literary genres but between extra-literary arts as well, transcends its own form. At this level it becomes the later theorists' 'meta-fiction', literature reflecting on literature, language on language, and so in symbiotic relationship with parody. Bakhtin's celebration of the carnival impulse also helps to place the comic effects of parody, founding t h e m in Socratic irony, a n d a new kind parodie hero who claims 'I a m wiser than everyone, because I know nothing'. Parodie comedy becomes courageous rather than disreputable: Laughter is a vital factor in laying down that prerequisite for fearlessness without which it would be impossible to approach the world realistically.12 Bakhtin rephrases Nietzsche's 'nothing succeeds in which high spirits play no part', for similar ends. In his hands irony, and the ironies achieved through parody evolve into an existential necessity. Whatever the frustrations of Bakhtin's looseness and voracious generalizing he is energetic enough to overturn mistaken assumptions about parody, although more rigorous critics - Shlovsky, Jacobson, Foucault - have taken much of the credit. Bakhtin's emphases are revitalizing: on jouissance, intertextuality, the work of demotic art in qualifying its elders and betters, the creativity of renegade impulses,

xvm

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

the wealth and extent of the parodie tradition, and on levelling the author with the reader 'making them contemporaries, possible acquaintances, friends, familiarizing their relations'. These can be misused, as Donald Davie notes: the sportiveness eagerly embraced by admirers of Bakhtin recognizes no responsibility towards the educational or other structure of any actually existent society. 13

A jester finds his place within a court's oppressions, and Bakhtin's carnival subversion needs to be seen in the context of his reacting to censorship. But much of his work overrides that context, particularly the strong belief in the historical pervasiveness of parody: It is our conviction that there never was a single straightforward genre, no single type of literary discourse - artistic, rhetorical, philosophical, religious, ordinary everyday - that did not have its own parodying and travestying double, its own comic-ironic contre-partie. What is more, these parodie doubles and laughing reflections of the direct word were, in some cases, just as sanctioned by tradition and just as canonized as their elevated models. 1 4

This conviction of omnipresence has become postmodernism's, though critics tend to drop Bakhtin's emphasis on 'never was\ in favour of a 'never is' for their own period. There has been so much interest in the 'self-reflexive' reflex, on immediate parodie doubling and laughing reflection, that parody's profoundly historical instincts are often forgotten. For Bakhtin parody, despite its appetites, performs in the end a mediating function in literary continuity. Other critics have explored the pivotal part played by spécifie parodie texts in initiating literary ^continuity, and change. For Shlovsky Tristram Shandy, Don Quixote and Don Juan were more interruptive and interrogative than for Bakhtin, prized because their parodie form coincided with his own theory of the essential conventionality of literary form and the role of parody in its denuding or laying bare. 1 5

For Foucault Don Quixote was the watershed between Renaissance and modern 'episteme', between unselfconscious and self-regarding art, xix

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the first modern work of literature, because in it we see the cruel reason of identities and differences make endless sport of signs and similitudes; because in it language breaks off its old kinship with things and enters into that lonely sovereignty from which it will reapppear in its separated state, only as literature . . . 16 A n u m b e r of other trends in criticism have helped overturn the distaste for parody expressed so pungently by Leavis in 1962. Harold Bloom's work on influence is one, his 'anxiety-principle' prompting imaginative misrepresentations by poets of previous poets in a m a n n e r shared by parodists. Bloom's six 'revisionary ratios' through which poets achieve successful misprision of their predecessors almost translate into stages by which parody evolves from attempted correction to its finest achievement: a sympathy-in-difference in which two texts co-exist. Parodists act on Bloom's argument that: We need to stop thinking of any poet as an autonomous ego, however solipsistic the strongest of poets may be. Every poet is a being caught up in a dialectical relationship (transference, repetition, error, communication) with another poet or poets.17 Elsewhere, the increase of interest in irony and Romantic irony has lifted parody from its former status as a poor relation to that of fitting vehicle. Not all irony is parodie, obviously, but all parody serves the purposes of irony. ' T h e business of irony is to see clearly and ask questions', wrote D. C. Muecke, before pinning down the opposition: ' . . . its enemies are those who do not wish to be pressed for answers.' 1 8 Sophisticated interest in irony has had a corresponding effect on parody. Wayne Booth, always sensitive to the delicacy of ironic manouevres, also pays tribute to parody: The contrasts between an original and a really skillful parody can be so slight that efforts to explain them can seem even less adequate to the true subtleties than explanations of other ironies.19 Both Muecke's concept of General Irony and Booth's of unstable 'infinite' ironies support renewals of interest in Romantic irony. This ought at the same time to have generated more interest in Romantic parody. Friedrich Schlegel's formula of ' p e r m a n e n t parabasis' - of

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oscillation seen as 'simultaneous commitment to exalted visions and to a renegade impulse which mockingly dissolves them' 20 - derives from the same prefix of 'par-ody'. Schlegel's respect for Socratic irony parallels Bakhtin's, and plays a similar part in making parody an essential partner rather than a minor relative of irony. And like Bakhtin, he sees irony as the precondition of an authentic existence: Socrates's constant self-parody, his perennial awareness of his own weaknesses and failures as well as his strengths . . . enabled him to be simultaneously playful and serious, exultant and anxious, free and yet bound to what is necessary. Only such self-parody can enable one to transcend all unnecessary human limitations and to approach as near as human beings can to a valid perception of the infinite chaos that is reality. 21

The upsurge of attention to Romantic irony has done much for the period's major poets, particularly Byron and Coleridge. It seems odd then that it has done but little for the parodists of the actual period. There has not even been much work on self-parody in the major writers, still less on the parodie critique of them. Given the prominence given to irony and the acknowledgement parody deserves for an intimate partnership with it, there is certainly an imbalance. In the late twentieth century, interest has continued to grow Whether decadent or caustic, parody provides a stylish way to stay ahead in a period Malcolm Bradbury identifies as a time when the theatrical display of multiple styles is an essential term or condition of our modern and increasingly self-doubting existence. 22

Although the contemporary status of parody is widely accepted, divisions remain over its ethics, just as they do with irony. Parody is a focus for tussles between traditon and what Bradbury called a 'positive post-humanism which constitutes what Foucault would call the new "episteme"': In the French new novel, in American post-modern writing, in the critical preoccupation with radical fictionality, art is not simply recording a situation but breaking the mould of an entire falsifying structure of discourse, challenging, in Foucault's words, the western tradition's capacity to offer its own form as the obscure content of reality, and hence creating a new order of things. 23 xxi

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It was mistrust of this critical preoccupation which was visible in Donald Davie's comments on Bakhtinian irresponsibility, which ended: However often philosophers and linguisticians may have declared it an impossibility, poetry's business is with telling the truth; and the truth in question is not restricted to the truth about its own workings and its own production. It seems incredible that this should need to be said; and that professors of literature should earn their salaries by denying it. 24

Critical relativism is a danger in which parody is implicated, participating as it does in the ethical impotence of self-reflexive art what Bradbury called the 'dance of styles' of postmodernism - and reflecting a loss of the central self, a breakdown in moral reference, and a circling uncertainty about its own substance. 25

So another antithesis in valuations of parody emerges, though a more sophisticated one than in Leavis's day. Again it lies between those who distrust parody's deconstructive activity, and those who admire it. But it is misrepresented by both. Parody's deconstructive faculties are only half the story, a prelude to change, part of its forward momentum. Parody's business is also with telling the truth, and that it begins by countering previous truths is no more than the process in which all literature is engaged, compressed into a more visible spectrum. As Bradbury writes, 'literature is our name for a monument that is both solid and evanescent': Parody, by accepting the truth of the monument, but also by probing and questioning the artifice used in its construction, both perpetuates and destroys, becomes a form of mysterious translation, often but not always in the same language as the original, which explores the mystery of institutionalization and the paradox of the classic art-object or text. It exaggerates a process basic to literature and art, which oscillate between extremes of mimesis and artifice, insisting on both the force and the emptiness of a prior object. 26

For Bradbury, out of the the modern parodists -Joyce, Beckett, Picasso, Duchamp, Magritte - with their 'deep, dark indication that there is no xxn

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assertable style, no ultimate authenticity', arrives stylistic permissiveness and so 'the renewed possibility of story itself'.27 G. D. Kiremidjian reaches the same conclusion: In a culture where the usurpation of function and confusion of polarities are the rule, the very instability of parody becomes the means of stabilising subject matter which is itself unstable and fluid, and parody becomes a major mode of expression for a civilisation in a state of transition and flux. 28

Parody is not a cause of narrative fatigue, only a symptom, and at the same time a cure. Even the most radically parodie of texts respect the cardinal virtues of the genres they mimic - or if they do not, they perish. Bakhtinian irresponsibility is dangerous in critics, but not in fictions. Rabelais pokes fun at dull writing, and reading, but loses only those readers who fail to see the joke is on them. Sterne tells a story which fails to tell a story and parodies attempts to tell stories while it tells one. No-one reaches the end of Ulysses without deep interest in Leopold's homecoming. Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, for all its chaos, still moves in a narrative direction. Even Calvino never quite removes the mystique so surgically exposed. For an example of parody's capacity to create stories out of apparently terminal writing, I turn to Beckett's Endgame. As Wayne Booth wrote drily, 'Beckett, the prophet of the Meaningless, is seen as a good writer because he knows what real values and real virtues are. There's irony for you'. 29 Not a closed one either. Beckett's work, pared so close to the bone, ought to defeat parodists. A writer of few words but not the last, for parody always has the latest of those: The den of Slamm, the critic. Very lateyesterday. Large desk with throne behind it. Two waste-paper baskets, one black, one white, filled with crumpledpieces of paper, on either side of the stage. Shambling between them - i.e., from one to the other and back again an old man SLAMM. Bent gait. Thin, barking voice. Motionless, watching SLAMM, is SECK. Bright greyface, holding pad and pencil. One crutch. SLAMM goes to black basket, takes out piece of white paper, uncrumples it, reads. Short laugh.

Kenneth Tynan's play on Beckett is perfect, not a word or a crutch too many. From one basket, in Slamm's Last Knock, comes one verdict on S l a m m : ' . . . the validity of an authentic tragic vision, at once personal and by implication cosmic'. From the other its opposite: 'Just another XXlll

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dose of nightmare gibberish from the so-called author of Waiting for Godot.' Caught between black and white, Slamm would be in anguished pursuit of a mediating grey, if he could stir himself: SLAMM: (Glazed stare) Nothing is always starting to happen. SECK: It's better than something. You're well out of that. SLAMM: I'm badly into this. (He tries toyawn butfails.) It would be better if I could yawn. O r if you could yawn. SECK: I don't feel excited enough. (Pause.) Anything coming? SLAMM: Nothing, in spades. (Pause.) Perhaps I haven't been kissed enough. O r perhaps they put the wrong ash in my gruel. One or the other.

Seek, who is Slamm's conduit to words he cannot find himself, eventually breaks down and like Lucky of Waiting for Godot or Endgame's Hamm, collapses into language with a parodie review of Slamm's work as Beckett might have written it: SECK: (Raconteur's voice) Tuesday night, eight-twenty by the Fahrenheit anonymeter. Endgame, translated from the French with loss by excision of the vernacular word for urination and of certain doubts blasphemously cast on the legitimacy of the Deity. Themes, Madam? Nay, it is, I know not themes. Foreground figure a blind and lordly cripple with superficial mannerisms of Churchill, W , Connolly, C , and Devine, G., director and in this case impersonator. Sawn-off parents in bins, stage right, and shuffling servant, all over the stage, played by Jack MacGowran, binster of this parish. Purpose: to analyse or rather to dissect or rather to define the nature or rather the quality or rather the intensity of the boredom inherent or rather embedded in the twentieth or rather every other century. I am bored, therefore I am. Comment, as above, except that it would have the same effect if a quarter of the words were other words and another quarter omitted. Critique ended. Thesaurus and out. 30

Like Hamm, Seck escapes from silent futility but only into voluble futility, with the added twist that Beckett's parodies of the rhetoric of meaning become a parody of the rhetoric of criticism. To plays which gracefully suggest there is nothing to say except there is nothing to say, parody adds that criticism has nothing to add. Slamm's Last Knock is as provoking as its originals, poring over aporia and enjoying beginnings in Beckett's endgames. 'And if I speak of principles, when there are none,' said Beckett's own Molloy, using the language of creative parody, T can't help it, there must be some somewhere'. 31 xxiv

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Two comparatively recent studies have contributed much to the current status of parody. Margaret Rose's Parody//Meta-fiction (1979), now updated in her Parody: ancient, modern, and postmodern (1993), and Linda Hutcheon's^! Theory of Parody; The Teachings of Twentieth-century Art Forms ( 1985). Rose's 1979 reading is close to Foucault, taking parody as the character of the modern episteme with its contemplations and challenge of assumptive orthodoxies. In effect, parody reclaims the sources of power. It appropriates by quotation, infiltrating closed fictional worlds and providing a common, self-regarding, 'metafictionaP language. Rose's purpose was to outline the possible forms and functions taken by meta-fictional parody, and to point to its role both in transforming literary history, and in attacking the epistemological presuppositions and expectations of the readers of certain ages for specific texts, for specific theories of the text, and for a specific relationship between author, reader, and the institutions controlling both. 32

Rose is thorough about the historical status of parody, and in stressing its bivalent nature, though her 1979 study is weighted towards discontinuity and the theoretical implications of parody's 'self-critical meta-criticism'. In 1993, reacting to Hutcheon's work amongst others, Rose is at pains to distance herself from 'the reduction of [parody] to but yet another metaflctional or intertextual form',33 and extends her emphasis on the 'comic' nature of parody to separate it from such forms. Hutcheon's reading is wider, concerned with parody's ubiquity in all modern arts, and is more attentive to parody's mediating function: Parody in much twentieth-century art is a major mode of thematic and formal structuring, involving... intergrated modeling processes. As such, it is one of the most frequent forms taken by textual self-reflexivity in our century. It marks the intersection of creation and re-creation, of invention and critique. 34

Like Rose she emphasizes parody's dual nature, although her history more readily accepts its role in continuity: Parody certainly can be disruptive and destabilizing; it is as such that the Russian formalists gave it its major role in the evolution of literary forms . . . Yet parody, while often subversive, can also be conservative; in fact, parody is by nature, paradoxically, an authorized transgression. It cannot be xxv

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1 accounted for only in terms of differance^ deferral, even if it is true today that for many artists and theorists, a stress on undecidability has replaced previous concerns for aesthetic unity, even in diversity . . . .Parody is both tectual doubling (which unifies and reconciles) and differentiation (which foregrounds irreconcilable opposition between texts and between text and "world"). 35

With these two comprehensive theories of parody available, the status of parody seems secured. An understanding of parody's radical and imaginative qualities has been rescued, and the variety of its roles explored. It has become possible to argue that at its best parody is a uniquely creative form of literary criticism, capable of probing weaknesses in a way which can complement its original and return the reader to the source, enlightened and enlivened. It may query overstatement, dispose of sentimentality, restore historical process, re-introduce social influences, banish outworn forms, revive discarded forms thought to have long since been exhausted, and rescue art from narcissism. It can discriminate between the shock and the schlock of the new. It can qualify idealism by returning to the real, and modify realism by uncovering its fictions - highlighting the fictionality of all discourse but never discouraged by it. It is a consummate vehicle, carrying irony into areas from which it has been excluded. Finally, it invites participation: its multiple voices and exaggerations-for-effect encourage active intelligent reading. Its greatest failing is not, as Leavis would have it, simple philistinism. But parody does share the weakness of irony in acting from a 'womb with a view'.36 Parodists criticize from relative safety. Or, can enclose with safety: I think there is a sense in which Calvino would like to contain all sorts of novelists within himself, without in the end deigning to be any of them. 3 7

But the momentum of parody undoes this - any such pose can itself be parodied. Parody has come a long way since Matthew Arnold's opinion of it as a 'vile art'. But Romantic parody has yet to be properly revalued as a result. In 1979 Judith Priestman's PhD thesis, virtually complete when Margaret Rose's first study was published, was still inclined to read xxvi

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nineteenth-century parody as a form of light verse.38 Some ground has been gained in the meantime. Linda Hutcheon's foreword to David Kent and D. R. Ewen's recent collection (1992) at last pays tribute to parody's teeth: T h e desire to "de-fang" parody may well testify to the fear of its power, a power it shares with humor in general: what is at stake here - in addition to the specific individual issues raised by each parody - is the equation of seriousness with significance that is at the core of much of the ideology of nineteenth century art. 39

The power of Romantic parodies has had too little attention. Also needed is a stronger sense of parody's historical variety and pervasiveness. One disadvantage of postmodern enthusiasm has been to over-privilege its current status in comparison with other periods. Definitions and functions of parody change, over the centuries, but its ubiquity varies much less than one might think. Every age turns out to be, on closer examination, 'the Age of Parody', as Bakhtin knew better than most. The current emphasis on immediate 'self-reflectivity' has also obscured parody's historical sensibility. Even in its most radical forms parody is canonical: paradoxically tradition if only in a countertradition. This can be comically literal. On trial in 1817 for seditious parody, William Hone successfully invoked centuries of religious and political burlesque in his own defence. Parodie texts refer to and play with previous texts, often reaching far back into the counter-canon. Parodie forms, strategies, habits, mannerisms, tropes and games recur over and again. The current ubiquity of parody is a matter of artistic and cultural inerpenetration at all levels - not one of status. Parody mirrors the art of the age, and is as important to that age as its art is. An awareness of the intimacy, variety and historical allpervasiveness of parody helps break down the division between 'parody and art', a partition which does not exist for irony. The notion of a division obscures the creativeness of fine parody, and blinds critics to parodie undercurrents in artists not attempting overt parody. Since this partition appears to derive from the Romantic aesthetic, parodies of that period need more thought. Kent and Ewen, for example, perpetuate the myth of po-faced Wordsworth: 'apparently the only xxvn

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[Romantic poet] who never wrote parodies himself'.40 They also perpetuate the idea that Wordsworth disapproved of parody and called it a "mode of false criticism" in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads. He did nothing of the kind.41 A glance at Wordsworth's reading habits shows his relish of the parodie tradition, and considered readings of his poetry uncover his dexterity in its techniques. Even in the first generation of Romaniticism, and in its most high prophet, there is no black and white division between artist and parodist.

2. Defining Parody Traditional parodies are easily identifiable: Lucasta Replies to Lovelace Tell me not, friend, you are unkind, If ink and books laid by, You turn up in a uniform Looking all smart and spry.

This poem by G. K. Chesterton holds close to the form of the original, playing with the content to uncover its affectation. Chesterton neatly gives Lucasta, mute subject of condescension in Lovelace's poem, a voice to retort with: I thought your ink one horrid smudge, Your books one pile of trash, And with less fear of smear embrace A sword, a belt, a sash.

She briskly overturns Lovelace's 'apology' for turning soldier. This is straightforward work, though with happy flourishes: Yet this inconstancy forgive, Though gold lace I adore, I could not love the lace so much Loved I not Lovelace more. 4 2

Lucasta's closing burble nicely undermines Lovelace's nonsense: 'I could not love thee, Dear, so much, / Lov'd I not Honour more'. XXVlll

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The first difficulty of defining parody however, is that the relationship of form and content is highly variable. Effects can succeed with the briefest of alterations to form: 'Here shall the spring her earliest coughs bestow, / Here the first noses of the year shall blow'.43 Or by attending largely to content, as in the Crews parody of Leavis quoted above. Parody does not even need to have a specific author in sight: On Epigrams. This neat, egregious house-style Parades its insights pat, on time: It smiles a very knowing smile . . . Here comes another fucking rhyme.

Dick Davis parodies smugness from within the form: things are never as simple as epigrams would have them. Though not as simple as readers take them for either: (Its double entendres are subtle, supple 'To fuck' here means, of course, 'to couple'). 44

What these parodies have in common is imitative repetition, with enough distortion to carry irony. Though crucial, these are loose qualities - like irony, parody suffers from conceptual vagueness. Unlike irony, this had led to misrepresentation, and confusion with other terms. Until formal literary criticism began, the looseness of parody was unimportant. For Dr Johnson it was simply A kind of writing in which the words of an author or his thoughts are taken, and by a slight change adapted to some new purpose. 4 5

This cannot separate parody from imitation, plagiarism, pastiche, burlesque, travesty and others - and gives no clue to intent or method. Confusion followed, including a widespread misapprehension which is still visible two centuries later in the OED's definition of parody: A composition in prose or verse in which the characteristic turns of thought and phrase in an author or class of authors are imitated in such a way as to make them appear ridiculous, especially by applying them to ludicrously inappropriate subjects; an imitation of a work more or less closely modelled on the original, but so turned to produce a ridiculous effect. Also applied to a burlesque of a musical work. XX1X

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This defines the purpose and effect of parody as ridicule, and is almost indistinguishable from their definition of burlesque. The OED prolongs a misuse detrimental to parody. The term 'burlesque' derives, via France, from the Italian burlesco, its root burla meaning mockery. First used by Francesco Bruni early in the sixteenth century, the term is much more recent than 'parody'. English burlesque arrived via Paul Scarron and the court of Louis XIV, to be widely imitated by the likes of John Philips, Charles Cotton and Samuel Butler. Misconceptions begin here; the idea of parody as a clever, polished piece of philistinism derives from Scarron. His travesties of Virgil were copied by poets lacking his expertise, and these too were brought to England. George Kitchin calls one example of these a coarse and brawling work, degrading the epic characters into town bullies and slatterns, and utterly unworthy of its lively, but still witty and elegant French original. 46

The coarseness was timely, mingling well with stage traditions of low farce and theatrical satire, and burlesque flourished. But the conflation of burlesque with parody is unfortunate (made worse by the American associations of 'burlesque' with vulgar variety perform-ances). Ridicule is an essential element in burlesque, etymologically built in. This is not the case with parody, whose root is older, subtler and more ambivalent. Burlesque is conventionally defined as 'the use or imitation of serious manner or matter, made amusing by the creation of an incongruity between style and subject'. It is traditionally divided onto two techniques: an important subject brought Low, or a trifling subject raised High (a division popularized by Addison in the Spectator in 1711). And parody was typically read as some kind of subset within these subdivisons: Parody, the high burlesque of a particular work (or author) achieved by applying the style of that work (or author) to a less worthy subject: e.g., Fielding's Shamela.47

But parody is not a minor form of burlesque. Not only is it older by far in etymology and practice, but it cannot be a subdivision of a term xxx

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which demands ridicule. On the contrary, burlesque is a loose form of parody, easily satisfied with generalizations and laughter. 'One of the most ancient and widespread forms for representing the direct word of another is parody, wrote Bakhtin, for whom source and parody co-existed to give classical discourse its 'binary tone'. 'Ancient parody was free of any nihilistic denial', he added emphatically, introducing an ambitious survey 48 The prefix 'para' has a double meaning in Greek: 'against', and/or 'beside'. Until recently, the first of these has been stressed at the expense of the second: the 'doubleness of the root suggests the need for more neutral terms of discussion', writes Linda Hutcheon. 49 Disputes over the origin of the term 'parody' have been less than neutral, resolving nothing but demonstrating by default the ambiguity of parody from the outset. Evidence is fragmentary and inconclusive. The term is generally derived from the noun napopòxa (parodia). Etymologically, F. W. Householder posits the sense to have been 'singing in imitation, singing with a slight change' 50 . F.J. Lelievre expands: napà may be said to develop two trends of meaning, being used to express such ideas as nearness, consonance, and derivation as well as transgression, opposition, or difference.51

Parodia was first used by Aristotle (Poetics 2.3, 1448a, 12-13), with reference to Hegemon 52 . The Batrachomyomachia is the only surviving example of the type of work described. A rival claim on slender grounds can be made from Athenaeus, who cites Polemo writing that the first parodist was the earlier Hipponax. 53 Parodia in turn is thought to have evolved from the older parode, a choric echo. Parodes are commonly located as a response to Homeric rhapsody in the 5th century BC, but to what extent these were complementary, or just light relief, is unclear and probably beyond recovery. Priestman reports further uses of parody as a 'beside' form (instead of 'against'): from Aristotle's use of it in Greek theatre as 'the first entry of the chorus . . . the whole of the first utterance of the chorus', to Quintillian's 'singing a new song to a familiar tune'. 54 Householder also lists paradoi, meaning 'singing in imitation', or its singular parados, an 'imitating singer', as precedents. 55 xxxi

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Later Greek use oí parodia emphasized the countering valency of the term, linking it with the silloi, which undermine didactic and philosophical verse, and the cento, a pastiche technique of setting quotations in satirical contexts. The related term paratragoedia referring to dramatic inversions of tragedy - is also more oppositional than choric: Other critics have looked to the Athenian satyr plays and to the 'paratragoedia' rather than the mock Homeric epics to describe the meaning of 'parodia' for the Greeks. They have described 'parodia' as a song sung next to that sung by the chorus of the drama, and the word 'paratragoedia' has been applied by some critics to Aristophanes' comedies, in which examples of parodie choruses can be found.56

It is impossible to be precise, but the history appears to show a drift towards the 'countering' valency of the term 'parody'. In this drift, parody loses ambiguity and subtlety - the closer it comes to antagonism, the nearer its relationship to satire, and the weaker its partnership with irony. Margaret Rose sought to redress this by founding her definition on Quintillian and the scholiasts' position of parody as quotation, arriving in 1979 at parody as the 'critical quotation of pre-formed literary language with comic effect'51 [my italics]. She accepted S. L. Gilman's warning that 'parody can not be defined by the ends which it is thought to achieve, be these ends comical or critical'58 but held that effect 'need not be excluded from a description of the work as a whole'. 59 In order to separate parody from other forms of literary criticism, Rose nevertheless stapled effect onto her formal definition. And while it may be true that 'the comic element is clearly described as an effect in classical criticism', and need not be mistaken for a structural element,60 the result is too close to burlesque for comfort. The difference between comic effects and mocking effects is too slight, as is that between comic effect and comic intent. Rose's updating of her definition in 1993, where she is now pre-occupied with separating parody out from 'metafiction', is more insistent: 'the comic refunctioning of preformed linguistic or artistic material*.61 The 'comic' now is a structural element, rather than an effect: xxxii

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it is the structural use of comic incongruity which distinguishes the parody from other forms of quotation and literary imitation, and shows its function to be more than imitation alone.62 Rose's campaign for comic function relies on an adjective which does not do justice to the subtlety and range of parodie effects. T h e traditonal belle-lettrist definitons relied all-too-fondly on comedy: In the sphere of Letters parody is the quizzical art, the art of the man with the eye-glass, quick to seize the mannerisms of his betters and to raise a laugh by a piece of outrageous fooling, or by a whiff of gentle malice.63 T h e idea that Robert Burton, Rabelais, or William H o n e should sport a monocle and ape their 'betters' is irritating and trivializing. Margaret Rose's 1993 study works h a r d to restore the value of 'comedy' in all literature, but the t e r m continues to seem inappropriate and this effort on parody's behalf misplaced. T h e Marquis de Sade's parody is not 'comic', nor is that of O t t o Dix, or T h o m a s M a n n . Beckett's Waiting for Godot is repeatedly and tiresomely reduced to the level of slapstick by directors convinced that otherwise the audience will miss its 'comedy'. To make h u m o u r prescriptive is to kill its spirit; it should never be built into a definition of parody, but left to float in and out unbidden, at the whim of audience and context as well as author. No-one sensibly defines irony in terms of comic intent or effect, although its relationship with h u m o u r is equally intimate, and parody is closer to irony than any other literary form. T h e r e are as Linda H u t c h e o n comments, 'probably no transhistorical definitions of parody possible', but hers at least restores this closeness: Parody, then . . . is repetition with difference. A critical distance is implied between the backgrounded text being parodied and the new incorporating work, a distance signaled by irony.64 Avoiding all-embracing formulas, then, in the context of the Romantic period perhaps it is sufficient to think of parody as ironic imitation: the necessary suspiration of disbelief. With burlesque outlined as unfocused and mocking parody, other terms separate out as follows. If parody focuses minutely it becomes travesty: parody grown microscopic and scathing, taking small failings xxxin

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and magnifying them out of proportion. Arthur Hugh Clough's parody of modern Anglicanism, 'The Latest Decalogue', for example: T h o u shalt have one God only; who Would be at the expense of two? No graven images may be Worshipped, except the currency: Swear not at all; for, for thy curse Thine enemy is none the worse: At church on Sunday to attend Will serve to keep the world thy friend: Honour thy parents; that is, all From whom advancement may befall; T h o u shalt not kill; but need'st not strive Officiously to keep alive: Do not adultery commit; Advantage rarely comes of it: T h o u shalt not steal; an empty feat, When it's so lucrative to cheat: Bear not false witness; let the lie Have time on its own wings to fly: T h o u shalt not covet, but tradition Approves all forms of competition. 65

Travesty has its uses, but levelled against real art is self-defeating - gross exaggerations only push a reader's sympathies back towards the original. Lampoon is travesty less bitter and particular, not so tied to form, and more immediate. The more goodnatured, the closer it is to persiflage; the less, the closer to caricature. Either way it is a fine political tool, as Dryden on the second Duke of Buckingham: A man so various, that he seem'd to be Not one, but all Mankinds Epitome. Stiff in Opinions, always in the wrong; Was every thing by starts, and nothing long. 66

Pastiche is a magpie habit; when parodie, it is parody grown too lazy to exert itself, expecting easy laughs. William Beckford's parody of the incoherence of sentimental novels, for example, by simply collecting together likely phrases:

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The sudden appearance of the Bear produced great anxiety in the minds of the three women in the cart, but the Curate was by no means to blame, for he had not been a fishing before for six months, and was totally ignorant of the matter. Lord Giblet had indeed promised him a pointer if the parliament should be dissolved before the frost set in, but the light dragoons who were quartered in the next village, had absolutely sold their library by public auction.67

The difficulty all definitions of parody wrestle with is its inherent instability, its slippages and intimacies with closely related terms. These are an inevitable outcome of its duality. Containing two immiscible impulses, of countering and repetition, parody slithers between them and only when one impulse drops away completely is the result undoubtedly not parodie. Parody which forgets its own song altogether falls away into imitation and genuflection; parody which listens too much to itself changes into satire. Parody must both reflect and reflect upon the source.

3. Grey Areas Like ironists, parodists are usually delighted to be taken at their word: 'certain jokes are pointless if they are not taken seriously' said Felix Krull. 68 Gulliver's Travels perplexed some readers: 'I lent the book to an old gentleman, who went immediately to his map to search for Lilly putt'. 69 Leigh Hunt boasted his parody of Wordsworth was taken for the real thing.70 Virginia Woolf disguised herself with gold-braided hauteur in a hoax inspection of His Majesty's battleships.71 But jokes may well work the other way around, for readers may see parody where authors meant none. As a textual con parody is deeply involved in context, delicately reliant on the observer and the conditions in which it is observed. Intertwined with context is the matter of intent. An example of parody's contingency is discussed in an article by David Bennett, who quotes from a 'dismissive description of Imagist poetry' which interleaved its prose with a parody 'which mocks the implicit claim to significance which Imagism makes for the selfconsciously spare or "insignificant" images it so fastidiously "evokes" ': xxxv

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1 So much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

The parody is an exact repetition of a poem by a canonical American poet once described as the one member of the Imagist school who, having mastered the precepts of Imagism, never really progressed beyond them.

A poem has become a parody through quotation, independent of the author. For Bennett this upsets formal definitions: Quotation as parody puts into question traditional, so-called 'intrinsic' definitions of parody as a function of rhetorical inflation or of manifest fault-lines, incongruities, within a text.

He develops this hypothesis until 'the parodie can be seen as contextually, not intrinsically, defined'.72 The idea carries some weight. William Gifford, for example, demolishing the Delia Cruscans, quoted sections and even whole poems of that school in the Baviad and Maeviad. Set in a satirical context, the poems are so visibly foolish that they parody themselves. Rudolph Friedman published a serious 'analytical-literary' article on Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter. He is a castrated child, grown fat as a result of glandular disturbance caused by the castration. His hair is a luminous halo of uncombed black and yellow out of which a frightened feminine face tries to gaze with schizoid severity and direction to compensate for the lost and holy genital eye which alone can see in the vagina of life and the coffin of death . . . To make up for the genital loss his outstretched hands possess five fingernails uncut and grown into five long sadistic claws sharp like erect tails. And yet the claws are no longer really cruel, there is only a facade of cruelty. T h e whole growing pyknic obesity of the figure gives the nails a self-crucifying xxxvi

GENERAL

and drooping look outstretched hands, whole figure, dating unveil it, is a tragic nation.

INTRODUCTION

. . . There are no life-lines or only the stigmata forming little from 1845, as one is moved by commentary on the impending

heart-lines in these folds of death. T h e its mute message to fate of the G e r m a n

Bemused and bewitched by this, Dwight Macdonald requested and received permission from Friedman to include it in his anthology of parodies; among bedfellows it becomes parody willy-nilly.73 Pastiche relies entirely on this effect, parodying by quotation (though pastiche need not be parodie at all). The issue elaborates a point made in the previous section, that there can be no transhistorical definiton of parody. The context of any one moment shapes evaluations. For many eighteenth-century readers Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther held real pathos. In the late twentieth century Werther seems melodramatic to the point of parody. For Goethe himself the intent apparently lay somewhere in between, Werther partly a tragic hero, partly a cathartic self-parody of his own youthful romanticism. This contingency does not justify abandoning intrinsic definitions. Unless some common ground is assumed, whole galaxies of context will have to be called up before any line of text becomes available. But the issue does, as Bennett wished, foreground the 'constitutive role' of the audience. It enlivens ideas about intent, and alerts readers to parodie possibilities. D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee's anthology takes its title from a little-known sonnet of Wordsworth's: The Stuffed Owl [This is taken from the account given by Miss Jewsbury of the pleasure she derived, when long confined to her bed by sickness, from the inanimate object on which this Sonnet turns. - WW] While Anna's peers and early playmates tread, In freedom, mountain-turf and river's marge; O r float with music in the festal barge; Rein the proud steed, or through the dance are led; Her doom it is to press a weary bed Till oft her guardian Angel, to some charge More urgent called, will stretch his wings at large, And friends too rarely prop the languid head. xxxvn

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Yet, helped by Genius - untired Comforter, The presence even of a stuffed Owl for her Can cheat the time; sending her fancy out To ivied castles and to moonlight skies, Though he can neither stir a plume, nor shout; Nor veil, with restless film, his staring eyes.74

This is anthologized as verse so bad that it parodies itself. Dwight Macdonald also listed this as unconscious self-parody, along with other lines beloved by scoffers at Wordsworth - Harry Gill's teeth inevitably among them. However this is not a clear-cut category Though he is rarely credited with it, Wordsworth often admits to being a kind of stuffed owl. Or fowl, to give the obvious example: Out - out - and, like a brooding hen, Beside your sooty hearth-stone cower; Go,creep along the dirt, and pick Your way with your good walking-stick, Just three good miles an hour!75

The context of this stanza from Peter Bell (its place in the prologue of the poem) makes Wordsworth's self-parodic intent absolutely clear. Nevertheless, the context of Wordsworth's highly irritable relationship with his critics in 1819 allowed them to ignore that intent and attack the poem for the kind of maladroitness seen in 'The Stuffed Owl'. Poems like 'Goody Blake and Harry Gill', 'The Thorn', and 'The Idiot Boy' have suffered similarly, and continued to do so even after Mary Jacobus's account of Wordsworth's allegiances to Cervantes, Fielding, and Sterne. 76 Context is important then. So too is intent: if it matters that a text is a parody, it may also matter whether the author so intended it, since this affects the irony achieved. As Anthony Nuttall patiently explained in 'The intentional fallacy fallacy', intent is as epistemologically reliable as most other textual suppositions (provided intent is scrupulously defined): 'To say "Keats clearly intended x" is as simple as to say "The train-robbers clearly intendedjy" \ 7 7 Authorship is another tangled area. Given parody's pilfering inclinations, its partnership-in-crime with plagiarism, this soon becomes a 'mine' field. xxxvm

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INTRODUCTION

In its intimacy with meta-fiction, parody constantly undermines ownership: 'the barbed-wire fences dissolve like cobwebs' wrote the narrator in Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller. In this novel (which parodies novels, ownership, originality, writers and reading, readers and writing) he later adds: literature's worth lies in its power of mystification, in mystification it has its truth; therefore a fake, as the mystification of a mystification, is tantamount to a truth squared.78 Parody's mystifications - conjuring up texts which both are and are not authentic - encourage all m a n n e r of fakery Poets mocked by reviewers may declare parodie intent, as Coleridge did of his poem 'To a Young Ass'. Authors may accuse competitors of parodie intent to discredit them, as all three Lake Poets did to Peter Bayley, or as Coleridge did (and Coleridgeans still do) to Charles Lloyd. Plagiarists caught in the act may declare they intended parody. Inadequate imitators may fall back on parody. Feeble parodists may slide into imitation. A recent example from the contemporary press illustrates the complications: David Lodge, in ' T h e Art of Fiction' (his collection of literary terms), n u m b e r thirty-six, 'Plagiarism': There are many ways in which one text can refer to another: parody, pastiche, echo, allusion, direct quotation, and structural parallelism. But where does one draw the line between intertextuality and plagiarism? The question has been brought home to me lately by reading a Mills and Boon romance called The Iron Master, by Rachel Ford, published last year. It was sent to me by a reader of Nice Work, who wondered if it had been "inspired" by my novel. The resemblances are indeed striking.79 After discussing in detail the convergences between the two novels, and his own allusions in Nice Work to M r s GaskelPs North and South, Lodge proposed two criteria to distinguish between intertextuality and plagiarism. First, that intertextuality 'must involve significant difference as well as similarity' and second that the 'allusions to the precursor text, when recognized, must enhance the meaning of the later text'. These are useful distinctions. Applied, say, to Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children they exonerate that novel's debts to Tristram Shandy. However, as applied in the article - to Rachel Ford xxxix

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they proved inadequate. Lodge's conclusion that Ford plagiarized from Nice Work resulted in legal action and 'A Correction' published nine months later in which he reached the conclusion that she was completely innocent of plagiarism, and that the resemblances between the two books are indeed coincidental.80

Coincidentally, presumably, this apology appears on the same page as a review of Benjamin Cheever's first novel The Plagiarist (whose hero, a thieving writer, is the son of a famous alcoholic novelist. . .). Avant garde disinterest in authorship is largely simulated. Even the most chic are unwilling to give up their own identity, however many mirrors they set up between themselves and their public. Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller carries his name on the cover, though within it authorship is shown to be outmoded. That authors have returned, like Lazarus, since they were discovered deceased by Barthes in 1968 is witnessed by, for example, the ferocity of debate in the pages of the Times Literary Supplement in 1982 after a letter pointing out how close the dependence of D. M. Thomas's The White Hotel on Anatoli Kuznetsov's account of atrocity, Babi Tar. It can be argued that Mr Thomas has made moving use of the Babi Tar material. But should an author of a fiction choose as his proper subject events which are not only outside his experience but also, evidently beyond his own resources of imaginative re-creation?81

The sting is in the final clause. No-one seriously denies an author's right to stray beyond the bounds of his experience. Whatever the complexities of plagiarism, imaginative re-creation is at the heart of the issue, and at the heart of parody too, which is plagiarism come clean and seems to challenge the claims of authorship. The idea that artefacts are sacrosanct is largely a product of the Romantic period, a result both of creative individualism and artistic capitalism. The second calls on the first in support, misrepresents originality, and calls plagiarism theft: it was during the Romantic period that a genuine sense of authorial rights and literary property took hold, though it would be some time yet before anything resembling binding copyright was to be legislated.82

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GENERAL INTRODUCTION

But plagiarism is not theft, as Harold Bloom points out in a symposium provoked by the D. M. Thomas controversy. Bloom quotes Emerson: "The originals are not original", and says 'I myself tend to ask for originality as what I call a writer's "strong misreading" of precursors'. 83 Creative individualism is really re-creative individualism. J. O. Urmson summarizes: If one needs an analogy with plagiarism it is surely not theft, but a different type of misdemeanour, some form of misrepresentation, that is appropriate . . . T h e wrong of plagiarism seems to be very like this; one represents oneself as the creator of something which is not one's own; one is an impostor . . . Plagiarism is closer to pride, a sin of the spirit, than to the criminal activities of the burglar. 84

The 'crime' is perpetrated not on the plagiarized author (though this is where the old call "hang the plagiary!" will come from) but on the deceived reader. Parodists were treated as even lower than plagiarists, by the major romantics, since they literally added insult to injury, stealing in order, supposedly, to mock. This attitude needs to be seen for what it usually is, defence of 'property', income and reputation, not a high-minded regard for Romantic Imagination. What in truth lifts parody above plagiarism is what lifts any text above its precursors: a 'strong misreading', an imaginative repetition which comments on and also escapes its ancestry. Edward Young, writing in 1759, said that 'illustrious Examples engross, prejudice, and intimidate'?0 Parody undermines this textual intimidation, and resists its reinforcement by authors capitalizing on their own success. Parody subverts the monolithic, the dictatorial, and the overblown. Above all parody illustrates the irrepressibility of human imagination. It is, in the end, a companion of Romantic idealism and not an enemy to it.

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NOTES 1 Lectures on the English Comic Writers, The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. P. P. Howe (London: Dent, 1930-34), 21 vols., v. 6, p. 24. 2 David Roberts, Introduction to 'Parody's Pretexts', Comic Relations, ed. Pavel Petr, David Roberts, Philip Thomson (Frankfurt: Verlag Peter Lang, 1985), p. 183. 3 G. D. Kiremidjian, ' T h e Aesthetics of Parody', Journal of Aesthetics v. 28 (1969), pp. 231-42, p. 233. 4 Quoted by Kinglsey Amis, New Oxford Book of Light Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. xiv-xv. 5 Omniana; or Horae Otiosores, by Robert Southey and S. T. Coleridge (1812, repr. Centaur Press, Fontwell 1969), no. 105, p. 119. 6 Frederick C. Crews, The Pooh Perplex. A Student Casebook (London: Robin Clark, 1979), pp. 100-12. 7 Literary Theory. An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p. 42. 8 Crews, Pooh Perplex, p. 100. 9 Ibid. 10 Literary Theory, pp. 4 2 - 3 . 11 Michael Holquist, in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin (Austen: University of Texas, 1981), p. xxxi. 12 Bakhtin, ibid., p. 23. 13 'Truth v. wishful thinking', TLS, 17 September 1993, p. 13. 14 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, p. 53. 15 Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 4. 16 Quoted by Margaret Rose, in Parody//Meta-fiction. An analysis of parody as a critical mirror to the writing and reception of Fiction (London: Croom Helm, 1979), p. 9 1 . 17 The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 9 1 . 18 The Compass of Irony (London: Methuen, 1969), p. 246. 19 A Rhetoric of Irony (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 72. 20 Morton Gurewitch, quoted by Muecke, Compass of Irony, p. 186. 21 Anne K. Mellor, English Romantic Irony (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 13. 22 'An Age of Parody. Style in the Modern Arts', Encounter, 5 5 / 1 , pp. 36-53, p. 38. 23 Ibid., p. 42. 24 715, p. 13. 25 Encounter, 5 5 / 1 p. 42. 26 Ibid., pp. 4 5 - 6 . 27 Ibid., pp. 50, 52.

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NOTES

28 JA, p. 242. 29 Rhetoric of Irony, p. 2 61. 30 From Slamm's Last Knock, available in The Faber Book of Parodies, ed. Simon Brett (London: Faber, 1984), pp. 4 5 - 8 . 31 Molloy (with Malone Dies and The Unnameable, London: J o h n Calder, 1959), p. 46. 32 Parody//Meta-fction, p. 185. 33 Parody: ancient, modern and post-modern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 101. 34 Theory of Parody, p. 101. 35 Ibid., pp. 101-2. 36 Cyril Connolly, borrowed by Muecke, Compass of Irony, p. 242. 37 Russell Davies, ' T h e writer versus the reader', TLS, 10 July 1981, p. 773. 38 The Age of Parody: Literary Parody and some Nineteenth Century Perspectives (University of Kent at Canterbury, 1980). 39 Romantic Parodies, 1797-1831, ed. David A. Kent and D. R. Ewen (Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1992), p. 7. 40 Romantic Parodies, p. 17'. 41 As Priestman and other careful readers have pointed out, it is thoughtlessness to which Wordsworth refers, not parody. 42 Much anthologized. 43 Catherine Maria Fanshawe in parody of Pope's 'Here shall the spring her earliest sweets bestow, / Here the first roses of the year shall grow'. 44 Davis, The Covenant (London: Anvil Press, 1984), p. 32. 45 A Dictionary of the English Language. In Two Volumes (London, 1755), v.2. 46 A Survey of Burlesque and Parody in English (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1931), p. 9 1 . 47 J o h n Jump, Burlesque (London: Methuen, 1972), pp. 1-2. 48 Dialogic Imagination, pp. 5 1 , 55. 49 Theory of Parody, p. 3 2. 50 T1APQAIA', Classical Philology, (January 1944), v. 34, no . 1 , pp. 1-9, p. 2. 51 'The Basis of Ancient Parody', Greece and Rome, Series 2, 1/2, pp. 66-81, p. 65. 52 Householder, Classical Philology pp. 2 - 3 . 53 Gilbert Highet, The Anatomy of Satire (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 80. 54 Age of Parody, p. 9. 55 Classical Philology, p. 2. 56 Rose, Parody/ /Meta-fction, pp. 18-19. 57 Ibid., p. 59. 58 The Parodie Sermon in European Perspective. Aspects of Liturgical Parody from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century (Wiesbaden, 1974), p. 2.

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59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80 81 82 83 84 85

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Rose, Parody/1Meta-fiction, p. 20. Ibid., p. 21. Parody: ancient, modern, postmodern p. 52. Ibid., p. 31. Christopher Stone, Parody (London: Seeker, 1914), p. 4. Theory of Parody, p. 3 2. Much anthologized. Absolom and Achitophel', 11.545-8. Modern Novel Writing, or the Elegant Enthusiast (London, 1796), 2 vols, v. 1, p. 23. Thomas Mann, The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man (1955, repr. Penguin, Middlesex, 1958), p. 221. Arbuthnot, 5 November 1726, quoted by Irvin Ehrensis in Swift. The Man, his Works, and the Age (London: Methuen, 1962-83), 3 vols, v. 3, p. 506. The Feast of the Poets (London, 1811), note 19, p. 87. The'Dreadnought Hoax', 1910. 'Parody, Postmodernism, and the Politics of Reading', in Comic Relations, pp. 193-4. See Parodies. An Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm - and After (London: Faber, 1960). The Stuffed Owl. An Anthology of Bad Verse (London: Dent, 1930), pp. 150-1. Peter Bell, first published edition (1819), in Peter Bell, ed. John E. Jordan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 51. Tradition and Experiment in Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads (1798) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), especially Ch. 10, and pp. 250-61. 'Did Meursalt Mean to Kill the Arab? The intentional fallacyfallacy in The Stoic in Love. Selected Essays on literature and ideas (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), p. 201. If on a winter's night, p. 180. First published in The Independent on Sunday, 9 February 1992, p. 28; the series was later republished as The Art of Fiction. Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1992), but this entry was then altered, and plagiarism nowhere discussed. The Independent on Sunday, 15 November 1992, p. 36. D. A. Kenrick, TLS, 26 March 1982, p. 355. Norman Fruman, 'Originality, Plagiarism, Forgery and Romanticism', Centrum vA (1916), p. 47. 'Plagiarism - a symposium', TLS, 9 April 1982, p. 413. Ibid., p. 415. Conjectures on Original Composition. In a Letter to the Author of Sir Charles Grandison (London, 1759), p. 17.

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INTRODUCTION To THE ANTI-JACOBIN

Seldom in English history has the political stage been so polarized, colourful and assorted as it was in the years leading up to publication of The Anti-Jacobin. The genes of the two principal antagonists, Charles Fox and William Pitt, might have chosen by some unholy heavenly prankster determined to give Gillray, Wigstead and Rowlandson perfect contrasts for cartoons. At every level from the physical to the spiritual these two men epitomized opposite corners of the English psyche, evoking the contests of the 1790s. Fox was short, dark, rotund, hirsute, dissolute, gregarious and slovenly. Pitt was skinny, controlled, pallid, private and (seemingly) ascetic. Both were superb public speakers. In an age of brilliant debating they were head and shoulders above all competitors, save Burke, but their styles could not have been more different: I doubt whether at any period or in any language two such orators as Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt ever appeared at the same time in the same assembly. At any rate, those who witnessed their debates in the House of Commons have heard the art of public and unpremeditated speaking in as great perfection as human faculties exercised in our language can attain . . . [I cannot] believe that any man could without premeditation rival the luminous arrangement, the propriety and splendour of diction of [Mr. Pitt] ; or the rapidity, the force of argument, the pleasantry of illustration, the originality and simplicity of thought, the animation and vehemence of [Mr. Fox].l

Tory versus Whig, propriety instead of poetry, realism over idealism, repression against liberty; the reality was nothing like so clear cut, but this was a period when fictions were stranger than truth, more appealing and vastly more persuasive. Exaggeration was the Order of the Day inside the House of Commons and without. Early in his career George Canning would pause at the window of Miss Humphrey's print shop, where the latest Gillray sketch was always displayed, and xlv

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scrutinize it anxiously, hoping to find himself therein: At that time one could hardly be said to have arrived in the political world until one had been clearly recognizable, even in a horribly distorted form, in one of Mr. Gillray's savagely satirical cartoons.2

Caricature was not a marginal commentary on the times, it was a cultural condition of them. For England the aftermath of French Revolution was a decade in which authority scattered on winds of change, to be claimed by whoever could lay temporary hands upon it. Radicals preached that the old order was gone forever: Tremble all ye oppressors of the world!... You cannot now hold the world in darkness. Struggle no longer against increasing light and liberality. Restore to mankind their rights; and consent to the correction of abuses, before they and you are destroyed together.3

The establishment's reassertion of old certainties, equally vehement, was equally histrionic. De Quincey once neatly characterized the Tories as a centripetal force, the Whigs a centrifugal one, 'both right, and both equally right', balancing the excesses of each other: 'taken jointly they compose that synthesis which realizes and embodies the total constitutional truth'. 4 But the French Revolution set all parties spinning at dangerous velocity. The political atmosphere, in the years between the Fall of the Bastille in 1789 and the first issue of The AntiJacobin in 1797, was clamorous, paranoid and chaotic. So too was much of the period's literature. De Quincey's comment elsewhere that Dr Parr and authors like him spent their vigour on 'certamina ludicra, mock fights, mimic rehearsal, and shadowy combats', 5 could be applied more widely. The culture had scarcely any middle-ground between conspiratorial whisper and accusing bellow. When the antijacobins added their parodie voices to this cacophony they were doing nothing new - in times like these parody becomes the lingua franca but they did it incomparably better than anyone else. Their genius was acknowledged at the time, even by their bitterest opponents. Given its reputation, to open original numbers of The Anti-Jacobin for the first time can be disconcerting: are these terse brown sheets all xlvi

INTRODUCTION

there is to see? There were 36 short issues in all, one for every week of the parliamentary year from 20 November 1797 to 9 July 1798, a total of only 288 pages. Yet for both politics and literature this was among the most effective and influential periodicals ever published. The sheets are closely printed, it is true, and dense with facts, figures, and excerpts from other publications, but this may only add to initial confusion. There are two humps to climb on the way to fully appreciating the periodical. The first is simply mechanical: absorbing the mass of factual material. Given time the wealth of detail in each issue falls into place and lights up with significance, for nothing is ever mentioned in The Anti-Jacobin without good cause. The second is more a matter of pace and emotion. The periodical is brief because it is to the point, and pointed because the anti-jacobins claimed their cause was urgent and over-riding: the defence of the state from enemies within and without, at a time when England stood alone against French military expansion. The war with France was deeply unpopular, and as it dragged on it placed enormous economic and social strains on the country. At no time between commencement of hostilities in 1793 and publication of The Anti-Jacobin was the nation united in adversity. The example of egalitarian revolution in France undermined state imperatives all over Europe: rallying calls to 'King, Church and Country' lost credence, appeal, and authority. It was an acutely volatile decade. If a week is always a long time in politics, in 1797 every hour counted. Readers need to stride out in sympathy if they are to recover a sense of why the anti-jacobins were in such a hurry and where they were heading for. The effect is rather like trying to keep up with that sixteenthcentury guardian of the status quo, the Bellman, employed to patrol the City of London at night with dog and lantern, probing every mews and alleyway, musing on 'shadowy combats' while he walked. As with The Anti-Jacobin, his special concern is the enemy within. His politics are of the same colour, so are his suspicions and prejudices; his tongue is as sharp and suasive, his vocabulary similar, he asks identical questions, pursues the same demons, and offers the same remedy: xlvii

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Who would imagine that in a kingdom so fertile in all sorts of wholesome discipline, there should grow up such rank and such pestilent beds of hemlock? that in the very hart of a state so rarely governed and dieted by good lawes, there should breede such loathsome and such ulcerous impostumes? that in a City so politick, so civill, and so severe, such ugly, base and bold impieties dare shew their faces? What an Army of unsufferable Abuses, detestable Vices, most damnable Villanies, abominable Pollutions, inexplicable Mischiefs, sordid Inquinations, horrible and Hel-hound-like-perpetrated flagitious enormities have been here mustered together? under what divellish commanders are they conducted? what colors of damnation doe they fight under? what dismal Ensignes doe they spred? what forces doe they bring into the field? how full of courage are they? how full of cunning? how politick are the Ringleaders of these Faries? how resolute are all the troopes, what strange Armor have they (of subtiltie, & desperate boldness) to encounter and set upon their opposites? what Artillery have they to batter downe, Order, Law, Custome, plaine dealing, and all the good guards and defences of Government? What remaineth therefore (in an assault so dangerous to a C o m m o n wealth, and so hotly and daily prosecuted,) but that Justice her selfe must come into the field, leading with all her forces? T h a t the Triple Body of the state may knit all their Nerves together and sit in Counsell, setting downe Stratagems and lawes how to raze for ever (out of so noble a kingdome) such rebels to the peace and honour of it? 6

Like the Bellman, the anti-jacobins have neither time nor temper for the c see-saw strain'7 of tolerance. The principal objectives of the periodical were to seek out and expose supposed enemies of the nation, probe their resources, abuse their ideals, test their strengths, deride their motives, and patrol the highways and byways of national information: It is the constant violation, the disguise, the perversion of the Truth, whether in narrative or argument, that will form the principal subject of our WEEKLY E X A M I N A T I O N . . . by detecting falsehood, - and rectifying error, - by correcting misrepresentation, and exposing and chastising malignity . . . We hope to deserve the reception that 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. 8

The Truth was unusually flighty and promiscuous in 1797, but the Prospectus to The Anti-Jacobin had some excuse to be aggressive. The main target for their corrective propaganda was the daily press: the xlviii

INTRODUCTION

seven most influential newspapers of the day opposed the government in all its doings and were often slapdash (indignant at governmental stifling of dissent, they felt righteous enough to be careless). As William Cobbett saw things in 1797, siding with the establishment for once, It is a truth that no one will deny, that the Newspapers of this country have become its scourge . . . It is said that they enlighten the people; but their light is like the torch of an incendiary . . . The whole study of the editors seems to be to deceive and confound. One would almost think they were hired by some malicious demon, to turn the brains and corrupt the hearts of their readers. 9

The Anti-Jacobin was a natural and timely part of the government's campaign to win back the hearts and minds of the people after years in which the nation threatened to fall apart. 'Oh England!... ' announces the epigraph of issue no. 1, 'What might'st thou do, . . . / Were all thy children kind and natural!'. The word 'natural' is to be central, a key term for both sides in the ideological tussle: all revolutions are both radical and conservative at the same time. That is, they seek both to abolish an existing order, but always in the name of some supposedly pre-existing "natural" order of things.10

Paine's case for change began from the 'natural' rights of men, and consequently supposed that 'As revolutions have begun,... it is natural to expect that other revolutions will follow'.11 The anti-jacobins, determined this was reversion to the brute rather than evolution to a more perfect society, immediately took on the peppery tones of Arthur Young's 1793 pamphlet The Example of France'. Instead of sixpence a head paid for tranquillity; the French now pay five shillings a head for keeping a gang of cut throats, and an assembly of mad dogs.12

It has often been said that government itself was entirely to blame for England's internal strife, for reacting too forcefully to sympathies with French ideals. Even staunch Tories nearly said as much, with hindsight: xlix

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1 In 1794 war had begun to rage; the revolutionary frenzy had produced its bloodiest excesses; the gloom had terrifically deepened; and the French reign of terror, by a very natural reaction on all the rest of Europe, produced a corresponding system of vigilance and coercion in all regular governments, which must now be admitted to have been too harsh and despotic, if viewed apart from the extremities of the occasion . . . 13

Critics point to the Treason Trials of 1794, the 'Gagging Acts' of 1795, which throttled public expression of dissent, the severity with which the naval mutiny of 1797 was crushed, or indeed the invective of The Anti-Jacobin itself. Hysterical and repressive though the state certainly was at times, these measures are not to be separated from the 'extremities of the occasion'. William Pitt, caricatured as a tyrant, began as a reformer and advocate of freedoms. But Pitt had seen at first hand the results of moving too quickly. It was slackening of state discrimination against Catholics which had led to devastating anarchy seventeen years earlier, and a striking lesson in the perils of reform: London was the scene of many violent disturbances in the eighteenth century but none compared in destruction, savagery, terror, and loss of life with the Gordon riots of June 1780 . . . T h e damage . . . is said to have been more than ten times that caused in Paris during the entire period of the Revolution. 14

There is no doubt that the government's reaction to radical movements (the London Corresponding Society, the Society for Promoting Constitutional Information, the Society for Commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain and the like) was vigilant and coercive; nor is there any doubt that these movements, for a short time, were genuinely dangerous. In 1792, when he was still in his bones a Whig and French sympathizer, George Canning wrote of the London Corresponding Society that 'there is, in my opinion, nothing mischievous and desperate that may not be apprehended from them'. 15 Three years later, at the height of its influence, an open-air mass meeting of the LCS in Islington swelled to an estimated 150,000 - a phenomenal and uncontrollable gathering for the time - and 'approved an address which virtually recommended a resort to civil war if necessary'.16 Two days later as the King made his way to 1

INTRODUCTION

Westminster for the opening of Parliament his carriage was mobbed by enraged crowds, and outside the Commons the coach window shattered by what he believed to be a bullet. If, as radicals maintained, in a few short years the world had changed forever, nevertheless Pitt and his government were not reactionary despots clinging to the past. In the days when Pitt had leisure for long-term planning, his measures had been liberal and humane. In the 1790s it was often all he and his ministers could do to keep the nation afloat from one week to the next. What is usually presented as an impassioned clash of ideologies, was, underneath, often rather more mundane - though if anything all the more dangerous for being so. The riots of 1795 are a good example. It was not the demagogues who finally roused the people, but their own purses and stomachs. To pay for war with Europe Pitt was forced into measures of taxation quite without precedent. Poor harvests did not help matters. When the price of bread, simplest and most symbolic of commodities, rose too high for ordinary people to bear, resentments boiled over. The dangerous temper of the streets in London was reflected in towns and cities all over England. The situation was contained, but the state went on being beset on all sides. Leaving aside the war, which Pitt sought desperately to bring to a negotiated peace, by the summer of 1797 the ministry was also faced with armed insurrection in Ireland and a prolonged naval mutiny. Then on 4 September there was a coup d'état in the French Directory (the revolution's executive council) which ousted the moderates forever, and secured the power of the Jacobins. Any hope of reconciliation with France was over. Pitt and his cohorts must 'knit all their Nerves together'. If there was little room to manoeuvre abroad, there was much that might be done at home against English agitators, in the way of 'setting downe Strategems' to 'raze for ever (out of so noble a kingdome) such rebels to the peace and honour of it'. The Anti-Jacobin was a collaborative effort by three close friends, George Canning, George Ellis, and John Hookham Frere. The idea appears to have originated with Canning. Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, long-term protege of Pitt (and himself a future Prime Minister), Canning had been closely involved in negotiations for li

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

peace with France in the summer of 1797, which were brought to an abrupt end by the coup d'état of 4th September. Baulked, Canning turned his attention to the home front. He wrote to Ellis on 19 October with plans for a weekly paper, approved by Pitt, 'which is to be full of sound reasoning, good principles, and good jokes and to set the mind of the people right upon every subject'. Conveniently, friends of the ministry already had a morning resort in the front shop of Wright, the publisher, in Piccadilly, where they gathered to gossip, relax, and exchange news in much the same way that the Whigs collected in Debrett's. Wright was commissioned to produce the paper, and the anti-jacobins secretly took a vacant house next-door, knocking a hole through the adjoining wall on the first floor so they could come and go without notice. Here the paper was collected, in a joyously miscellaneous manner: 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.17

The paper was edited by William Gifford, self-made man of letters and scourge of sentimental poets. Gifford's scathing assaults on the Delia Cruscans and their like in his long poems, the Baviad (1794) and Maeviad (1795), established his satirical credentials. He was an ideal choice, with an autodidact's scorn for sloppiness and a sycophantic relationship with the establishment. Most of the painstaking work of sifting through the daily papers for mistakes, misrepresentations, and mendacity fell on his shoulders and he relished it, lashing the Morning Chronicle, Morning Post, the Star and Courier with their own follies and reducing them to spluttering, incoherent, impotent protest. Canning was the paper's leading light and most frequent contributor, though Ellis and Frere were hard on his heels. Pitt himself contributed a number of articles, and the anti-jacobins had no inhibitions about publishing suitable contributions from any other quarter, if they fell in with the aims and tone of the paper. The original periodical, packed with wonderfully energetic lii

INTRODUCTION

excoriations, has its own pleasures for historians. But the true joys of The Anti-Jacobin are to be found in its literary campaign. This was venturing into enemy territory. Literary genius on the political right is uncommon, as is the successful use of literature for government propaganda. The Whigs of old thought literature their own preserve, and 'in their very intemperance, maintained the tone, breeding, and cultivation of gentlemen. They cherished and esteemed all parts of elegant letters . . . ' 18 Young Whigs, if less well-mannered, continued to dominate the field, the obvious example being the Rolliad and its accompanying miscellany of satirical squibs, with which they taunted the Tories in 1784-5: We have here an incomparable set, not exactly known by their names, but who, till the dead of summer, kept the town in a roar, and I suppose, will revive by the meeting of Parliament. They have poured forth a torrent of odes, epigrams, and part of an imaginary epic poem called the 'Rolliad,' with a commentary and notes, that is as good as the 'Dispensary' and 'Dunciad,' with more ease. These poems are all anti-ministerial, and the authors very young men, and little known or heard of before.19

But the poetry of The Anti-Jacobin (and its occasional essays in parodie prose) trumped the Whigs for genius and trounced them for effectiveness. The poetry section was not announced in the Prospectus and may have been a happy afterthought. It was certainly a perfect home for the gifts of the three principals. Canning and Frere were close friends from schooldays at Eton, both talented classicists. Canning passed out top of the school, and went on to win the Chancellor's Prize for a Latin poem as an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, although it was argument, debate and public-speaking which always caught his imagination and pointed to his political vocation. He grew up among Whigs, at ease in their company and ideals. His uncle Stratford Canning was a friend of Fox and Sheridan, who both took a close interest in this gifted youngster, and George became something of a republican and enthusiast for France. But it was Burke who first made a real impression on Canning's politics, whose values seem always closest to his own heart, and whose deep distrust of the Revolution Canning soon learnt to share. When Fox and Burke parted company in 1791, dividing the

liii

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VOLUME 1

allegiances of the Whigs, Canning's sympathies (though unexpressed at the time) would naturally have followed Burke. However, his career began, in fact, as a disciple of William Pitt. There are two paraphrased accounts of Canning's transfer of loyalties. One, that he was driven into the arms of the Tories by a visit from William Godwin, who so dinned his ears that Canning's patience with the radical cause was killed stonedead.20 The other, Canning's own version, was that agitation by Whig extremists in 1792, in the shape of a new group called the Association of the Friends of the People, was untimely, imprudent and unwise, and taught him that the Whigs were too divided in their aims to contain any truly effective caucus. After the execution of Louis XVI in Paris in January 1793 Canning's transition was certain, and when he became an MP in June of that year, it was as a disciple of Pitt. Pragmatic, highly intelligent, witty, acute, independently-minded and ambitious, he was a natural leader, and ringleader for The Anti-Jacobin. While at Eton, Canning joined Frere and several other friends in a periodical which prefigures the games of 1797-8. The Microcosm was a lighthearted satirical weekly look at life within the walls of Eton, and remarkably successful for a schoolboy effort (an excerpt is included in volume three of this edition). Subsequently a junior colleague of Canning's at the Foreign Office, and later a diplomat, Frere was much the better poet of the two. His Whistlecraft verse, remembered largely as a strong influence on Byron, is well-worth reading for its own sake, often disgraceful as Byron at his best: I've finished now three hundred lines and more, And therefore I begin Canto the Second, Just like those wandering ancient bards of yore; They never laid a plan, nor ever reckoned What turning they should take the day before; They followed where the lovely Muses beckoned: The Muses led them up to Mount Parnassus, And that's the reason that they all surpass us.21

The finest and liveliest of the work in The Anti-Jacobin almost always has Frere's imprint upon it. He shared Canning's appetite for the classics, wrote wonderful translations of Aristophanes, and was a particularly clever mimic. liv

INTRODUCTION

George Ellis, some seventeen years older, worked under Canning at the Foreign Office and served as an aide in the abortive peace negotiations of the summer of 1797. He soon became a friend, with similar satirical tastes and talents. These were already proven - to his subsequent embarrassment - in the pages of the Rolliad, and its associated verse, where he was author of a memorably tart assault on Pitt: 'Pert without fire, without experience sage'. Ellis was an established if minor poet, light of touch and heart, and perhaps the most literary of the group. The three made a fine team. Ellis's Whig-waggery in the Rolliad soon begins to look pale alongside the antics of parodie prose and poetry in The Anti-Jacobin. Introducing the literary section in the first issue Canning claimed with spurious humility that since the Muses would never smile on conservative poets the anti-jacobins were forced back on imitation: 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.22 By imitation he meant parody. The techniques of the anti-jacobins were those of traditional, neo-classical satire, but their palette was incomparably richer than anything the Whigs had managed before them, and the end result something altogether new. Necessarily adversarial, they cannot reach the highest forms of parody, which require sympathy rather than satire, but the anti-jacobins revitalized the form, demonstrating how imaginative parody could be even in opposition. If the literary section was an afterthought, it was a clear and singleminded one: to capture the essence of radicalism in a series of parodie portraits. Although Canning claimed 'it would be endless to chase the coy Muse of Jacobinism through all her characters' within a year he and his friends had captured an astonishing variety of her poses. The range of form and style and tone employed is breathtaking: attentive travesties, Horatian odes, jingoism, epigrams, doggerel, songs, mockmedieval ballads, political diatribes in verse, spoof drama, bogus reportage, bitter sarcasm, sham correspondence, new sciences lv

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

harried into absurdity, old ones hauled from obscurity, mandarin classicism, captivatingly silly didactic epics, slander, libel, blasphemy, and grace. Their victims were equally various. The anti-jacobins had no inhibitions about who they pilloried. Angry young men like Robert Southey rub shoulders with dilettante liberals such as William Roscoe. Scientists, preachers, politicians, pedagogues, demagogues, explorers and philosophers trip over one another. The harmless and innocent are handcuffed to the vicious. Frequently, victims are a front for others more difficult to argue with. So Southey's Godwinism is far easier to attack than Godwin's carefully reasoned, reasonable appeal for anarchy; Paine's plain-speaking is better undermined through a simple-minded knife-grinder or the dimwitted Sam Shallow. The parodies have two levels. In the particular, because the antijacobins were so sharp and unscrupulous, their attention to individual authors lays weaknesses bare for all the world to see. Southey's instability, for example, or Erasmus Darwin's florid enthusiasm, or Payne Knight's soft-centred philanthropy. Building up, at the same time, is a picture of the nature of radicalism itself, emerging fully in the parody's crowning achievement: the composite portrait of sympathies which emerges in the figure of Mr. Higgins, poet, philosopher and dramatist. This portmanteau agitator wonderfully misrepresents the nature of Jacobinism: its ideals wanton, its altruism selfish, its compassion maudlin, and its love satyrical. Fairness, either to individuals or causes, was irrelevant. William Godwin had made clear in PoliticalJustice what there was to be fought for: All government is founded on opinion. Men at present live under any particular form, because they conceive it in their interest to do so . . . Destroy this opinion, and the fabric which is built upon it falls to the ground.23

Editions The periodical had several elder relatives, including the Anti-Leveller of 1793 - crude but comparable in its accounts of atrocities, irreligion and anarchy in France: lvi

INTRODUCTION

it has appeared to several gentlemen, that the surest method of convincing our countrymen of the fatal consequences of that system which wicked and designing men have attempted to introduce into this Island, and of eradicating every attachment to it which delusion only could induce, is to lay before them a plain and simple account of the calamities it has occasioned where alone it has been tried.24

The Anti-Jacobin, a Hudibrastic Poem in Twenty-one Cantos by Alexander Watson appeared in 1794, a heavily sarcastic effort in rhymed couplets published in Edinburgh, sharing title and ambitions if not dexterity: I've just now read the Rights of Man; We are, by P—tt's corrupted plan, Mere puppets made, I plainly see, Mov'd by the springs of tyranny A d—mn'd shrewd fellow, this Tom Paine, Shows simple government is plain; Demonstrates, too, by common sense, It tax requires not, nor expence!25

None of these precedents are of much interest in themselves. The Anti-Jacobin itself was succeeded by the Anti-Jacobin Review, edited by John Gifford (no relative - his real name being John Richards Green), which began immediately afterwards and lasted until 1821. This aimed simply to take over the purposes of its parent, but is a clumsy, misbegotten thing in comparison. The success of The Anti-Jacobin in 1797-8 ensured several immediate reprintings of the entire periodical, two in quarto and a revised and corrected octavo fourth edition appearing in two volumes in 1799. The poetry was collected together under the supervision of Gifford and published separately for the first time also in 1799. In the same year appeared The Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin, which included 'every article of permanent utility, meaning the substantive prose parodies and other buttressing articles as well as the poetry. This is an excellent volume, but it was William Gifford's edition which proved the more lasting: Numerous duodecimo editions almost exactly resembling each other and the original first edition appeared during the first quarter of the nineteenth century.26

lvii

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

The first scholarly edition was that of Charles Edmonds in 1852, with a second edition in 1854 and a substantially extended version, illustrated with six plates by Gillray, in 1890. In many ways this remains the best available. Edmonds is sharp-eyed and attuned to parody, providing a wealth of fascinating background material on which all subsequent editors have leant, useful footnotes, and a translation of Canning's Latin poem from issue no. 35. Also published in 1890, and also useful, is Henry Morley's Parodies and Burlesques, which contains all the poetry of The Anti-Jacobin together with an eclectic assortment of textual support. This includes selections from the Microcosm, other poetry by Canning, Ellis and Frere, biographical and historical assistance, and a wonderfully inept translation of Goethe's Stella from 1798 which Morley maintains 'immediately suggested the burlesque play in the Anti-Jacobin\27 In 1904 came the Selectionsfrom the Anti-Jacobin by Lloyd Sanders (in the Methuen 'Little Library' series) which, besides the bulk of the poetry, reprints several interesting prose pieces and some of Canning's later poetry. Annotations in Sanders's volume are deliberately kept to a minimum; this makes no pretence to be a comprehensive edition, although it includes much more than its diminutive title and series-title imply. Twenty years later the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin was edited by L. RiceOxley, an edition still on many library shelves. Rice-Oxley has a low opinion of parody, which 'can never have a place of great dignity or veneration in letters'. 28 This may account for his lack of interest in adding to, or even including much of, the assistance given to readers by Edmonds. Two reprints of the fourth edition of the entire periodical are listed in some catalogues, one published by Lubrecht and Kramer in 1970, another subsequently by A. M. S. Press. A facsimile (1991) of the first edition of the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin is among the reprints in the 'Revolution and Romanticism' series edited by Jonathan Wordsworth (Woodstock Books, Oxford). This new edition, in Parodies of the Romantic Age, reprints the Prospectus to The Anti-Jacobin, followed by the poetry as published in the first collected edition of 1799. To this is added the best of the prose lviii

INTRODUCTION

parodies, interspersed as they were in the periodical (though actually taken from the Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin out of respect for the fragility of the original paper). These include Fox's Birthday-party, the Meeting of the Friends of Freedom, letters from Letitia Sourby and Sam Shallow, and the Linnaean description of the French Directory. The last of these is translated from the Latin and annotated by Mark Edwards, Tutor in Theology at Christchurch, Oxford, who also provides a new translation of Canning's verses from issue no. 35 as well as tracing and translating miscellaneous tags and phrases throughout the volume. Each issue's parodies are introduced with a headnote which hopes to give enough context and insight for the parodies to yield something of themselves on a first reading. Extensive annotations are, rather unhappily, confined to the endnotes: many of the parodies would benefit from annotation on the page, but are already too cluttered. Editing parody is bound to have peculiar problems. Adding notes to parodie footnotes mocking pedantic annotation at least keeps editors in their proper humble place. I owe particular debts to the following: Sally Bushell, for advice on Tahiti and the Mutiny on the Bounty; Mark Edwards for the classical contributions described above; Peter Griffin for historical sleuthing, especially in Issue no. 28; Robin Harrison for information and guidance on German Romantic Drama; and Peter and Patricia Stones for translations from the French. GRAEME STONES

NOTES 1 Lord Holland, Memoirs of the Whig Party during my Time (London: Longmans, 1852), 2 vols, v. 2, pp. 38-9. 2 Wendy Hinde, George Canning (London: Collins, 1973), p. 43. 3 Richard Price, A Discourse on the Love of our Country, delivered on Nov. 4,1789, at the Meeting-House in the Old Jewry, to the Society for Commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain (London, 1789), p. 5 1 . 4 Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, ed.David Masson, 14 vols, v. 5 (1890), pp. 129-30.

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VOLUME 1

5 Ibid., p. 117. 6 The Belman of London. BRINGING TO LIGHT THE MOST NOTORIOUS VILLANIES THAT ARE NOW Practised in the Kingdome (2nd Impression, London 1608), (lacks page numbering). 7 From the poem the 'New Morality', in issue no. 36 of The Anti-Jacobin, 1. 195. 8 The Prospectus to the Anti-Jacobin (London, 1797), (lacks page numbering). 9 Cobbett as Peter Porcupine, The Bloody Buoy, Thrown out as a Warning to the Political Pilots of all Nations (3rd éd., London 1797), p. 224. 10 MarkFalcoff, TLS, 13 June 1797, p. 8. 11 The Rights of Man, Part 2 (1792, repr. in Political Writings, ed. Bruce Kuklick, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 153. 12 The Example of France, A Warning to Britain (London, 1793), p. 121. 13 De Quincey, Writings, v. 5, p. 121. 14 Robin Reilly, Pitt the Younger (London: Cassell, 1978), p. 53. 15 Quoted by Hinde, Canning, p. 27. 16 Ibid., p. 42. 17 Edward Hawkins, N&Q 3 May 1851 (1st Series, no.79), p. 348. 18 De Quincey, Writings, v. 5, p. 71. 19 Horace Walpole, 30 October 1784, Correspondence v. 25, p. 612. 20 According to Walter Scott. 21 The Monks and the Giants (1817), Canto 2, stanza 1. 22 The AntiJacobin, Issue no. 1 (20 November 1797), p. 6. 23 An Enquiry concerning Political Justice, and its influence on General Virtue and Happiness (2nd ed., London 1796), 2 vols, v. 1, p. 145. 24 Anti-Leveller no. 1, 10 January 1793, p. 1. 25 The AntiJacobin, from Canto 14 (p. 90). 26 L.Rice-Oxley, ed., Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1924), p. xxiii. 27 Henry Morley, ed., Parodies and other Burlesque Pieces (Carisbrooke Library Series, London: Routledge, 1890), p. 408. 28 Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, p. x.

lx

TABLE OF ATTRIBUTIONS

Given the assorted, miscellaneous and co-operative way in which the periodical was composed each week, the initial secrecy, the haste and gamesmanship, it is unsurprising that attributions are often uncertain or downright contradictory. Sometimes there is no information, more often there is too much. Nevertheless this table may prove helpful if used with caution. Sources are as follows. Notes and Queries no. 79 (3 May, 1851), pp. 348-9, where Edward Hawkins gives a table compiled from: Canning's own copy of the poetry, Lord Burghesh's copy, Wright the publisher's copy, and information from W. Upcott, amanuensis. Burghesh's information is unreliable and is only followed below where there is no alternative. Immediately below Hawkins's table, Bolton Corney adds a note attributing the 'Lines written by a Traveller' to Pitt, on the authority of James Boswell. Charles Edmond's edition of the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin (London: Simpson Low, 1890) has occasional additions to Hawkins. Frere's recollections are taken from The Works in Prose and Verse of John Hookham Frere (2nd éd., 1874). Henry Morley's edition, Parodies and other Burlesque Pieces (London: Routledge, 1890), contains detailed information from a copy of the poetry 'marked at the time by one who was evidently behind the scenes'. The Bodleian Library has a copy marked by George Ellis, and presented to Frances Douce in June 1800; they also hold Ellis's accompanying letter to Douce (10 June) which has additional information. There is a further contribution to the debate in Notes and Queries by J. H. Markland in no.78 (26 April 1851) which is not, however, of much use; and another by 'C.B' in no. 81 (17 May, 1851) which is interesting. Robert Pearce's Memoirs and Correspondence of the Most Noble Richard, Marquess Wellesley

(London: Bentley, 1846), 3 vols., has occasional details (see v. 1, lxi

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

pp. 131-2). Finally, the 'To Correspondents' paragraph of The AntiJacobin itself is sometimes helpful. In compiling the following table priority has been given to reliability; wherever possible, the sources most likely or trustworthy are given first, and misleading attributions are not entered. Abbreviations: B = Lord Burghesh's copy of the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin BC = Ji&Qno. 79 C = Canning's own copy CB=JVâ?Qno.81 Do = Douce's copy Ed = Edmond's edition Fr = Frere's account as reported in the Works of Frere Mo = Morley's edition Pe = R.R.Pearce's Memoirs of the Marquis Wellesley (1846) TAJ = The Anti-Jacobin U = account of W. Upcott, amanuensis W = Wright's copy Prospectus

Canning

(Ed, Mo)

Introduction

Canning

(Do, Ed, Mo)

Inscription

Canning, Frere Canning, Frere and Ellis

(C) (Do, Mo)

The Friend of Humanity Canning Introduction Verse Frere and Canning

(Mo) (C,F)

The Invasion

Hiley Addington

(Mo,W)

La Sainte Guillotine

Canning and Frere

(C, Do, Fr, Mo)

Meeting of the Friends of Freedom

Frere

(Fr)

The Soldier's Friend Verse

Canning and Frere Frere

(C, Do, Fr) (Mo)

lxii

INTRODUCTION

Sonnet to Liberty

George Howard, Lord Morpeth

(B)

Quintessence of Dactylics Introduction Verse

Canning

Giiford

(Do, Mo) (Mo,W)

Latin Verses

Marquis Wellesley

(Do, Mo, Pe, U)

Letter from a Lady

Unknown

Translation of Latin Verses

George Howard, Lord Morpeth

(Do, Mo, Pe)

The Choice

Ellis

(B, but unlikely)

The Duke and the Taxing Man

Sir Archibald Macdonald

(C, Do, Mo)

Epigram

Frere

(B, but unlikely)

Ode to Anarchy

Lord Morpeth

(B)

Song

Canning, Ellis and Frere

(Fr)

Lines at the close of the year

Unknown.

Translation of the New Song Unknown To the Author of the Epistle

Canning

(C, Do, Mo)

Ode to Moira

Ellis

(C, Do, Mo)

A Bit of an Ode to Fox

Ellis

(C, Do, Mo)

Mr Fox's Birth-Day

Unknown

Acme and Septimius

Ellis

To the Author of the AntiJacobin

Mr Bragge-Bathurst (C,B)

Lines written by a Traveller

Pitt

lxiii

(C, Do, Mo)

(BC)

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Canning

(C, Do, Fr, Mo; Ed adds Frere in Canto 23)

The Progress of Man, cont. Canning

(C, Do, Fr, Mo)

Imitation of Bion

Giíford

(W)

The New Coalition

Unknown; but 'J. F

(TAJ)

Imitation of Horace

Ellis

(Do, Mo)

Canning

(C, but possibly mistaken)

The Progress of Man

Chevy Chase

Sir Archibald Macdonald

(C, Mo)

Ode to Jacobinism

Unknown

(Mo suggests Ellis)

The Progress of Man, cont. Argument and verse Notes Unspecified

Canning and Frere Canning Frere Ellis

(C) (Do, Mo) (Mo) (Mo)

The Jacobin

'Nares'

(Do, W; I suggest Robert Nares, 1753-1829)

To the Editor

Unknown

The Loves of the Triangles Frere Introduction Frere Canning Verses Frere The Loves of the Triangles, cont. Ellis

after 1. 144

Canning lxiv

(C) (Do) (Mo) (Mo) (C, Do, W; note this includes three lines from previous poem)

(Do, Mo)

INTRODUCTION

Brissot's Ghost

(B, but unlikely)

Frere

The Loves of the Triangles, cont. Canning, Ellis and Frere Canning, Gifford and Frere 11. 204-246 Canning Frere 11. 247-295

(C) (Do) (Do)

A Consolatory Address Lord Morpeth

(B)

Elegy Introduction Stanzas 1-3 Stanza 4 Stanzas 5-7 Stanza 8 Stanzas 9-10 Stanza 11 Stanzas 12-13 Ode to my Country

Canning, Ellis and Frere Canning, Gifford and Frere Canning Canning Ellis Canning Frere Canning Frere Canning Sir Brooke Boothby

Ode to Director Merlin Lord Morpeth The Rovers Introduction Dramatis Personae Prologue, 11. 1-20 11.21-26 11. 27-end

(Do, Fr, Mo)

(Fr, Mo) (C) (Mo) (Do) (Do) (Do) (Do) (Do) (Do) (Do) (Mo; C gives 'B. B' and Frere, probably meaning Boothby edited by Frere) (B)

Canning, Ellis and Frere (Do, Fr, Mo) Canning, Ellis, Frere and Gifford (C) Canning and Frere (Do) Frere (Mo) Canning (Do) Ellis (Do) Canning (Do) lxv

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Act 1, as far as Song Frere Song Canning, Ellis Canning Stanza 1 Stanza 2 Ellis Canning Stanza 3 Stanza 4 Ellis Canning Stanza 5 Stanza 6 Ellis The Rovers, cont.

Act 2, sc. 1 Act 2, sc. ii Act 2, sc. iii Act 4 Recitative

(Do, Mo) (Do, Fr, Mo) (Do) (Do) (Do) (Do) (Do) (Do)

Canning and I i (Do, Fr) Canning, Frere and Ellis (Mo) Canning, Frere, Ellis and Gifford (C) Canning (Mo, Fr) Frere (Mo, Fr) Canning (Mo, Fr) Frere (Mo, Fr) Ellis (Mo, a possibility only)

An Affectionate Effusion Lord Morpeth

(B)

Translation of a Letter

(Do) (Ed, Fr)

Introduction Verse to 1. 26 Verse 1. 27-end

Canning and Ellis Canning, Ellis, and Frere Canning, Ellis, Frere and Gifford Canning Canning Ellis

Ode to a Jacobin

Unknown

To the Editor

Unknown

Ballynahinch

Canning

De Navali Laude Brittaniae

canning

lxvi

(C) (Do, Mo) (Do) (Do)

(C, Mo) (B)

INTRODUCTION

New/ Moralit

11. 1-14 11. 15-157 11. 15-70 11.71-80 11. 158-167 11. 168-248 11. 249-260 11. 261-286 11. 287-301 11. 287-292 11. 293-301 11.302-317 11. 302-307 11. 318-327 11. 11. 11. 11.

328-355 348-355 356-end 372-381

y

Canning, Ellis and Frere Canning, Ellis, Frere and Gifford Canning, Ellis, Frere, Gifford and Pitt Frere Canning and Frere Canning Frere Frere and Canning Frere Canning Canning, Ellis and Frere Canning Canning and Frere Canning and Frere Canning, Frere and Ellis Canning, Ellis and Frere Frere Ellis and Gifford Ellis Canning and Frere Canning Canning Pitt

lxvii

(Do, Mo) (C,W) (Ed) (W) (Mo) (W) (Mo, Fr) (Mo) (Mo,W) (Mo,W) (Mo,W) (Fr, Mo, W) (W) (Mo) (Mo) (Mo,W) (Fr, Mo) (W) (Mo) (Mo,W) (Fr) (Mo, Fr, W) (CB)

ABBREVIATIONS

Caricature History T h o m a s Wright, Caricature History of the Georges (London: Hotten, 1868). Celebrated Trials Celebrated Trials, and Remarkable Cases of Criminal Jurisprudence, from the Earliest Records to the year 1825 (London: Knight and Lacey, 1825). Characteristicks J o h n Courtenay, Characteristick Sketches of some of the Most Distinguished Speakers in the House of Commons, since the year 1780 (London: 1808, but apparently unpublished: presented to the Bodleian Library by the author). Cobb Richard Cobb and Colin Jones, The French Revolution; Voices from a momentous epoch, 1789-1795 (London: Simon and Schuster, 1988). Consumer Society Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: the Commercialization of Eighteenth-century England (London: Europa, 1982). The Creevey Papers: A Selection from the Correspondence & Creevey Papers Diaries of the late Thomas Creevey, ed. Sir H e r b e r t Maxwell (London: Murray, 1903), 2 vols. Dictionary of National Biography. DNB Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, ed. Charles Edmonds (London: Simpson Low, 1890). Edmonds J o h n Gale Jones, Five Letters to the Right Honourable G. Tierney, Esq. (London: Jordan and Maxwell, 1806). Five Letters Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis, K. C.B.; with Correspondence and Journals, ed. Herman Melville (London: Francis Longmans, 1867), 2 vols. lxix

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Howe Kings Lémpriére Letters Letters

Masson Memoirs

Memoirs

Memoirs

Morley

Mutiny

N&Q, OED Pitt P Memoirs Recollections

The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. P. P. Howe (London: Dent, 1930-34), 21 vols. J o n n Wardroper, Kings, Lords and Wicked Libellers: Satire and Protest, 1760-1837 (London: Murray, 1973). Lémpriêre's Classical Dictionary. Helen Maria Williams, Letters containing a Sketch of the Politics of France (London, 1795), 2 vols. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956-71) 6 vols. The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, ed. David Masson (Edinburgh: Black, 1889), 14 vols. the Mémoires du General Dumouriez, published in London in 1794, were translated by John Fenwick as Memoirs of General Dumouriez> Written by Himself (London: 1794). Robert Pearce, Memoirs and Correspondence of the Most Noble Richard, Marquess Wellesley (London: Bentley, 1846) 3 vols. Nathaniel Wraxall, The Historical and the Posthumous Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall, ed. Henry B. Wheatley (London: Bickers, 1884), 5 vols. Parodies and other Burlesque Pieces, by George Canning, George Ellis and John Hookham Frere, with the whole Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, ed. Henry Morley (London: Routledge, 1890). Sir John Barrow, The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H M. S. Bounty: its Cause and Con­ sequences (London: John Murray, 1831). Notes and Queries Oxford English Dictionary Robin Reilly, Pitt the Younger (London: Cassell, 1978). Nathaniel Wraxall, Historical Memoirs of My Own Time, (1815, repr. London: Kegan Paul, 1904). John Nicholls, Recollections and Reflections, Personal and Political, as connected with Public Affairs, during the reign of George III (London, 1820 and 1822), 2 vols. lxx

INTRODUCTION

Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin ed. L. Rice-Oxley (Oxford: Blackwells, 1924). Speech of John Nicholls, The Speech of John Nicholls, Esq., in the John Nicholls House of Commons, Wednesday, January 3,1798, on the Bill for augmenting the Assessed Taxes (London, 1798). Table Talk Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers. First Collected by the Rev. Alexander Dyce, ed. M. Bishop (London: Richards Press, 1952). Three Trials The Three Trials of William Hone, ed. William Tegg (London: Tegg, 1876). Watchman Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Watchman, ed. Lewis Patton (London: Routledge 1970, the Bollingen Series). Whig Party Henry Richard Fox, Lord Holland, Memoirs of the Whig Party during my Time (London: Longman, 1852), 2 vols.

Rice-Oxley

lxxi

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Prospectus of The Anti-Jacobin) The epigraph to the Prospectus of The Anti-Jacobin loosely translates as: 'it is allowable to try anything that virtue can manage; nor indeed does one have to look far for enemies'. This is apt. The anti-jacobins have few inhibitions, and find their enemies close at hand. The Prospectus is bald, pugnacious, and unusually accurate: throughout its short life The Anti-Jacobin adheres closely to the design and intentions outlined here. An exception is the absence of any reference to a section dealing with poetry; that part of the periodical appears to have been an inspired afterthought. The clarity and conciseness of the Prospectus indicates equally faithfully what is to come. Unlike its opponents in the daily press, particularly its principle antagonist the Morning Chronicle, The Anti-Jacobin will contain no padding, waffling, or laxity. Their claim to be redressing an imbalance is sound, if rather surprising. The establishment lacked any effective mouthpiece before The Anti-Jacobin appeared. The tone of the Prospectus echoes Burke on the French Revolution, though the anti-jacobins are more sparing with their words. Like Burke their allegiances are organic, local, consensual and partisan, loving their kindred before their kind. They reject theory and universalism as continental nonsenses, foreign to English instincts which are, they imply, naturally pragmatic and conservative. Their aversion to abstractions is more than tactical, it is a deep-seated distrust which will inform their attitudes throughout the coming year. Like Arthur Young in The Example of France, A Warning to Britain (1793), they hold, and fully intend to demonstrate, that theoretical 'Rights' are but 'well adapted foundations for a republic in Bedlam' 1 .

1

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348280-1

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC

AGE:

NOTE 1 The Example of France (London, 1793), p. 121.

2

VOLUME 1

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: nee longe scilicet hostes Quœrendi.

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 obstrusion 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. 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, correspondences abroad, and, above all, a profession of impartial and unprejudiced attention to all opinions, and to all parties and descriptions of men. O N none of these Topicks is it Our intention to enlarge. O F 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 3

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348280-2

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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. O F 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 ever 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 4

PROSPECTUS TO THE ANTI-JACOBW

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. T o 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. W E 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 politiks or morals, as it arises, by lights entirely its own, without reference to recognized principle, or established practice. W E 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 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 prejudicedin 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 them in the scale of the universe. We should be averse to hazarding the smallest part of the practical 5

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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 are assured that on its ruins might be erected the only pillar that is yet wanting to complete the "mostgloriousfabrick which the Integrity and Wisdom of man have raised since the Creation". IF, as Philosopher Monge avers, in his eloquent and instructive address to the Directory, "The Government of England and the French Republik 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 their recital of what has been achieved by HOWE, by JERVIS, or by Duncan, than at the "glorious victory of Jemappê\ or "the immortal battle of the bridge ofLodi". 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 or 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 judgement or conscience in his own particular instance. W E 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; 6

PROSPECTUS TO THE ANTI-JACOBIN

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. W E 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 irreconcilable 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. 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 IT

7

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

of

and IRRELIGION, to the pay or principles of FRANCE. 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. W E 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 ground-work 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. T o 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. SEDITION

THIS

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. W E have a further reason for not occupying this province, which will WITH

8

PROSPECTUS TO THE ANTI-JACOBIN

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. W E 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 this 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 9

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1 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.

10

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. I) Canning's Introduction obliquely reiterates the task of The Anti-Jacobin: to offer a composite picture of the art and arts of subversive poetry. If inspiration is only available to dissenters, The Anti-Jacobin will print Jacobin poems and endeavour to learn 'by dint of repeating after them5 how to manage (at best) pale imitation. Canning recovers ground he has ironically given up, by separating traditional poetic dissent from the modern Jacobinical perversion, casts round for an exemplary Jacobin, and lights on Robert Southey. Southey's early radicalism was intemperate. 'I had rather have heard of the death of my own father' he is supposed to have said, at the news of Robespierre's passing. Consequently, he has two particular attractions for the parodists. First visibility, in his Poems of 1797: 'no other poet was wondering what it felt like to be transported to Botany Bay'.1 Secondly, a form of vulnerability. In their insistencies, his early poems can seem unstable, or even insincere. Hazlitt, who would not forgive Southey the subsequent desertion of youthful ideals, made the same diagnosis which underlies the parodies: 'His violence is not the effect of attachment to any principles, prejudices, or paradoxes of his own, but of antipathy to those of others'. 2 Southey's intellectual mentor in the 1790s was William Godwin, whose philosophy offered Southey a kind of principled antipathy, the quality Southey celebrates here in the regicide, Henry Marten. NOTES 1 J. Wordsworth, Introduction to Poems, 1797 (Woodstock facs, 1989). 2 Hazlitt, Howe, vol. 7, p. 87.

11

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348280-3

NO. I INTRODUCTION. JVba20, 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 freedomfound"1 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 In the wild war of Democratic strife,"2

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 3 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 12

INTRODUCTION

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 Readers5 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 Reader's 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"4 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." 5 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 13

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

necessary to mention, that is 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" 6 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 mountaintops. But let his own country triumph, or her Allies obtain an advantage; straightaway the "beauteous face of war" is changed; the "pride, pomp, and circumstance"7 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.s 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 SirJohn Brute10 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.

14

FOR THE APARTMENT

IN CHEPSTOW

CASTLE

INSCRIPTION For the Apartment in Chepstow Castle, where Henry Marten,11 the Regicide, was imprisoned thirty years.

For thirty years secluded from mankind Here MARTEN linger'd. 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

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! a while From man withheld, even to the latter days When Christ shall come, and all things be fulfill'd! IN JUDGEMENT ON HIM;

IMITATION.

INSCRIPTION. For the Door of the Cell in Newgate, where Mrs. Brownrigg,12 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 scream'd for fresh Geneva 13 . Not to her Did the blithe fields of Tothill, or thy street, St. Giles14, its fair varieties expand; 15

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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.

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 college15. For this act Did Brownrigg swing. Harsh laws! But time shall come, When France shall reign, and laws be all repeal'd! AND HID THEM IN THE COAL-HOLE.

16

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. II) Southey offers silhouettes of the Jacobin Muse from several angles. Canning's Introduction first reveals that Issue No. I focused on 'the animadversion of human laws upon human actions'. The quotation is pastiche, rather than specific parody, but it does point beyond Southey to William Godwin. Instinctive assumptions about criminal justice were being widely questioned. Retributive attitudes were waning against the utilitarian and humanitarian: Hutcheson, Beccaria, Mably and d'Holbach are reputable examples. Southey read Beccaria, but the main influence on his thought and early poetry, and the real target of Canning's satire, is Godwin's PoliticalJustice (1793). 'Animadversion' is a favourite word in Godwin's discussions of criminality and legislation. If Godwin is a good deal more sensible than Canning implies in this Introduction, the very reasonableness of Political Justice may be what worries the anti-jacobins. The first edition in particular arrives at extreme positions calmly and persuasively: 'we cannot hesitate to conclude universally that law is an institution of the most pernicious tendency'. 1 The most effective way for the anti-jacobins to parody Godwin was through Southey. This holds true for the principle now in view: 'the natural and eternal warfare of the POOR and the RICH'. Southey is again easier to undermine than Godwin. His egalitarianism had already been tested and found wanting. In 1794-5, the communalist scheme of pantisocracy finally foundered when Southey insisted on taking a manservant along with him to America, reducing Coleridge almost to apoplexy: 'Is every Family to have one of these Unequal Equals?'. 2 Whether or not Canning knew of this, he certainly senses de haut en bas in Southey's poetry. The result is 'The Knife-Grinder', one of the best-loved and 17

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most enduring of The Anti-Jacobirís poems. It inspired many subsequent parodists of Wordsworth. NOTES 1 Political Justice, bk. vii, ch.viii, p. 771. 2 Letters, vol.1, p. 114.

18

NO. II

Nov. 27. In the specimen OÍJACOBIN POETRY which we gave in our last Number, was developed a principle, perhaps one of the most universally recognized in the Jacobin Creed; namely, "that the animadversion of human laws upon human actions is for the most part nothing but gross oppression; and that, in all cases of the administration of criminaljustice, 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. 1 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 a reasoner of this cast. He contemplates, he examines, he turns him in every possible light, with a view of extracting from the 19

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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 proportionally 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 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. 2 Cold wàs thë nïght wind: drifting fast the snows fell, Wide were the downs, and shelterless and naked: When à poor wând'rër struggled on her journey Weary and wãy-sõre. This is enough: unless the reader should wish to be informed how Fast o'er the bleak heath rattling drove ã chariot; or how, not long after, Loüd blew the wind, unheard was her complaining õn went the horseman. We proceed to give our imitation, which is of the Amœbœan or Collocutory3 kind.

20

THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY

IMITATION.

SAPPHICS. The Friend of Humanity* and the Knife Grinder. FRIEND OF HUMANITY.

"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 came you 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.

21

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

"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.

"/give thee sixpence! I will see thee damn'd 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^

22

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. Ill) 'Loyal Correspondent' suits John Hiley Addington, a man of party, who contributed this jaunty piece of jingoism. Hiley's abiding loyalty, however, was to his brother and benefactor Henry who was a childhood friend and colleague of Pitt. Henry became speaker of the House, and eventually a feeble Prime Minister; in 1801 he was the King's only alternative when Pitt refused to stand.1 Whatever his shortcomings in office, Henry had a gift for nepotism, shoring himself up with relatives and supporters. Hiley made a useful henchman, involving himself not only in The Anti-Jacobin, but also in two government-supporting newspapers, The Sun and The True Briton. His reward in Henry's ministry was a post as Joint Secretary to the Treasury Later Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office, he died in 1818. Hiley's 'British War Song', a chins-up, arm-swinging iambic route-march scornful of 'the bloody Revolution', suits English stoicism. It is unsurprising to find it reprinted in Armagh in 1848, in The Standard Orange Song Book; A Collection of Loyal and Constitutional Songs. Hiley based his 'Song' on a similarly stirring one by Miles Peter Andrews.2 The defiance of the 'Song' is largely a result of French plans to invade England, announced in a Proclamation on 21 November by the Directory in Paris, and backed by Bonaparte. NOTES 1 John Gale Jones summarizes thus: When the Gazette first announced to the public Mr. Addington's appointment to be Prime Minister of England; according to the different habits and complexions of men's minds, the intelligence excited the various emotions of laughter, pity, surprise and indignation.

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OF THE ROMANTIC

AGE:

VOLUME

1

They could not conceive, accustomed as they had, hitherto, been to see the most exalted situations filled by persons who, to consummate abilities, added the most extensive influence and the proudest connexions; how an individual who, for years, had slumbered with happy indolence in his chair of office, or just waked to silence unruly members and regulate the order of debate; should, suddenly, be called to assume the reins of power, and wield the resources of a mighty (Five Letters, pp. 31 -2) empire. 2 '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 "Delia Crusca", was savagely attacked and extinguished by W. Gifford in "The Baviad". His song was set to music by Sir HENRY BISHOP. H e died in 1814'. (Edmonds, p. 27) For comparison, the first two stanzas from Andrews's Song: I. Whilst happy in my native land I boast my country's charter, I'll never basely lend my hand Her liberties to barter. T h e noble mind is not at all By poverty degraded; 'Tis guilt alone can make us fall, And well I am 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, T h e lordly hireling often wants That freedom which defends us. By law secur'd from lawless strife, O u r 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!"

24

N O . III.

Nov. 30. 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;

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 guard 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: 25

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

These from our hearths by force to tear (Which long we've learn'd 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, 26

THE INVASION

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."

27

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. IV) 'La Sainte Guillotine' is sharply sarcastic. The anti-jacobins were exasperated by English francophiles who would not confront the violence of the Revolution. William Roscoe (1753-1831), of whom Fox thought highly, was a perfect example. A belle-lettrist in gentrified liberal circles in Liverpool, Roscoe's poetry (slavishly conventional in form), showed 'a horror of throwing itself boldly upon the great realities of life'.1 His songs were sung at meetings of the 'friends of liberty' in Liverpool, meetings first held in 1788 to celebrate the centenary of the English revolution. The source for 'La Sainte Guillotine' is one of Roscoe's effusions: O'er the vine-cover'd 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.

The content of the 'La Sainte Guillotine' alludes to a letter sent by the Friends of Parliamentary Reform to Paris, expressing support for the Revolution. To the dismay of many, this was received rather too literally. When the Revolution's executive council issued their Proclamation in the autumn, announcing the imminent invasion of England, 2 they were apparently confident that English reformers would rush to join their conquering army.3 Even the Morning Chronicle could see how damaging this assumption was to the cause of reform: In the miserable Diatribe that follows, the French Directory falsely and

28

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

impudently strive to persuade their armies that they would find partizans in England itself for the conquest of England, and among others, they name the friends of Parliamentary Reform! They would find, to their cost, that however Englishmen may differ as to the means of restoring the ancient and genuine vigour of the realm, there would indeed be but one feeling in the exertion of its energy to defeat and punish their impotent attempt. They have furnished, however, a fine topic for declamation against any Englishman who is an advocate for reforming the abuses that have crept into our system.4 The parody of Roscoe is followed by a lengthy, mischievous recreation of a 'Meeting of the Friends of Freedom'. Among much else, this contains fine parody of Fox's declamatory style, which, unlike that of Pitt, relied neither on fact nor consistency. As Nathaniel Wraxall dryly remarked: From Fox's finest specimens of oratory much, as it struck me, might generally have been taken away without injuring the effect or maiming the conclusion.5 NOTES 1 De Quincey, Masson vol. 2, p. 130. 2 'CITIZENS', trumpets the Proclamation, 'The interest of the republic prescribes to you a final triumph. After the innumerable battles in which you have been victorious, it remains for you to reduce the first, the most insatiable, the most cunning of all your enemies'. 3 As the Proclamation optimistically estimates: 'those millions of men who have so generously struggled for Parliamentary Reform'. 4 29 November 1797. 5 Memoirs, vol. 3, p. 225.

29

NO. IV

Decemb. 4. We have beenfavoured 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.

LA SAINTE

GUILLOTINE.

A NEW SONG. ATTEMPTED FROM THE FRENCH.

Tune, "O'er the vine-cover'd hills and gay regions of France." I. From the blood bedew'd vallies 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. * Confiscation and Murder attend in her train, With meek-eyed Sedition, the daughter of Paine;^ While her sportive Poissardes1 with light footsteps are seen To dance in a ring round the gay Guillotine.* * See Proclamation of the Directory. f The "too long calumniated author of the Rights of Man." - See a Sir Something Burdet's speech at the Shakspeare, as referred to in the Courier of Nov. 30.2 { The Guillotine at Arras was, as is well known to every Jacobin, painted "Couleur de Rose. "

30

LA SAINTE GUILLOTINE

II. To London3 "the rich, the defenceless"* 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. - 4 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 Directories5 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 Casement1.* When the National Razor^ has shaved them quite clean, What a handsome oblation to Sainte Guillotine!

* See Weekly Examiner, No. 11. Extract from the Courier.^ j" La petite Fenêtre, and La Razoire Nationale, fondling expressions applied to the Guillotine by the Jacobins in France, and their pupils here.

31

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

M E E T I N G O F T H E FRIENDS O F F R E E D O M . The curiosity, and even anxiety, which several of our readers have exprest respecting the final Declaration expected from the Party, upon the subject of the events of the 18th Fructidor,7 have induced us to lay before them an authentic copy of a part of a future Morning Chronicle, which a correspondent of ours has had the good fortune to anticipate. The celebration of this great epocha of the French Revolution had excited a general enthusiasm - The dinner-room was crowded at an early hour, and part of the company, among which was the Duke of Norfolk,8 overflowed into the tap-room. At about sixteen minutes after five Mr. Fox entered the room, and walked up to the end of the table, amidst the universal plaudits of the company. The general appearance of his health was perfectly satisfactory - it appeared, indeed, to have been improved by his residence in the country; his hair was, as usual, without powder.9 After dinner, when a few appropriate toasts had been given, Mr. Fox rose, upon his health being drank, and began by stating - That he felt peculiar satisfaction in considering that the character and object of this meeting were perfectly congenial to his feelings, and to those principles he had uniformly professed. What was the conclusion which the event they were now celebrating naturally suggested to every thinking mind? It was this - that the example of one or more revolutions did not always prevent the necessity of another. There was likewise another conclusion, which he trusted it would impress very forcibly on the minds of all who heard him - they would learn, he hoped, from the example of all that had passed in France, that vigorous measures were no less requisite for the support of freedom than for its original establishment; and that, when these measures were once determined upon, it was mere affectation to be scrupulous or fastidious in the choice of means. Mr. Fox appealed to the whole tenor of his public life - he had acted with very different men, and upon a great variety of political principles; and if, in the course of all his experience, he had acquired any knowledge of his 32

MEETING OF THE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM

own character, he could declare, with confidence, that a squeamishness or hesitation, in the choice of means, was a weakness, of all others, the most alien to his nature. How did the case stand between the majority of the Directory (the Triumvirate,10 as some persons in this country had thought proper to style them,) and that majority of the nation who were accused (and, in his conscience, he believed they were justly accused,) of a wish to terminate the revolution? The majority of the nation seemed to have acted pretty much in the style and temper of the Minister of this country; proceeding to their ultimate object with infinite art and subtlety, they had entrenched themselves within the forms on the constitution, on the one hand, while, with the other, they were sapping the vitals of liberty, and poisoning its very foundations. As for the Directory, the scene was fairly open before them. - On the one hand, they saw a termination to the revolution; on the other, there were certain rights to be invaded, and certain principles to be infringed. Placed between these two alternatives, they were not long in forming their resolution, and a manly and vigorous resolution it was; - they determined to break through every obstacle of form, and to save their country in spite of precedent. The seditious Journalists, with the refractory members of the Two Councils, 11 and of the directorial body itself, were seized and imprisoned, or otherwise disposed of. - The vacancies, thus made, were supplied by other persons, appointed by the directorial majority, upon their own personal knowledge and good opinion. - He was aware, Mr. Fox said, that an objection might be raised to this species of nomination, but, for his part, he conceived that the Directory had acted well and wisely they were convinced that the majority of the nation were infected with the new principles of pretended order and moderation - they were aware that in this disorder of the public mind, they had nothing to expect from the re-elections - they saw the necessity, and they acquiesced in it. - They inverted that order which prevails in those countries where liberty has been established by a more tedious process - they abrogated the instructions of the constituent to his representative, and they addressed their own instructions to the Constituent Body. - In all this there was nothing but what was perfectly just and natural; nothing inconsistent with the principles of freedom, nor with those principles 33

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AGE:

VOLUME 1

which he himself had professed in the outset of his political life. - {Mr. Fox here alluded to his well-known opinion on the Middlesex election*)

With regard to the absolute abstract inviolability of the press - Mr. Fox declared - that he considered himself as particularly fortunate in having had a very early opportunity of asserting his opinions upon that subject also; it was pretty well known that the first ground of difference between himself and a Noble Lord (with whom he had originally acted, whom he had afterwards opposed, but with whom he had ultimately united, and of whom he should always speak in the language of friendship,) was laid in a subject of this kind. That Noble Lord had refused, in spite of his remonstrances, to proceed against a printer, and upon that difference they parted, till the necessity of the times, and the voice of the country, calling aloud for a coalition, had brought them together again.12 With regard to the morality and justice of this conduct in the Directory, he was aware, Mr. Fox said, that different opinions were avowed; for his own part, he had never entertained the least doubt upon the subject. The question seemed to him to lie in a very narrow compass indeed - he was no friend to the pretended refinements and abstractions of political justice; in his opinion, there were rules sufficient for the direction of every man's conduct, lying upon the surface, and within every body's reach. Of this kind was that excellent rule, which an eminent writer, the late Mr. Adam Smith,13 had established, as the only true test upon which we could pretend to decide upon the conduct of other persons. We should put ourselves in their place, and unless we could be thoroughly convinced that, under the same circumstances, we ourselves should have acted differently, we might rest assured that the conscientious disapprobation which we were so ready to affect, was nothing better than a despicable farce of hypocrisy and self-delusion. * Commons' Debates Vol. xxv. p. 28 - Mr. C. Fox said, "We had not lost the confidence of the people by the Middlesex election, as was foolishly said, but by suffering with tameness the many insults which had been offered to the Sovereign and that House - that had he his will, those Aldermen and others who presented a remonstrance to the throne should be taken into custody; that a few years back they sent two Aldermen to the Tower, but suffered a paltry printer to hold them in contempt; that it was by these means we lost the good will of our constituents." - Lord North's motion was for sending the printer to the Gate-house Mr. Fox insisted upon Newgate.

34

MEETING OF THE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM

He would apply this rule to the conduct of the Directory - Let any man for a moment place himself in the situation of those gentlemen (Mess. Barras and Rewbell,) could they, after all they had acted themselves, and all they had inflicted on others in the course of the revolution - could they, admitting them to be men endowed with the common sentiment of self-preservation - he would put it to the feelings of every gentleman - could they, consistently with that sentiment, permit, for a single moment, the expression of the public voice, which had almost unanimously declared against them? While human nature was human nature, it was impossible - and it was idle to imagine it. The conduct of the Directory was perfectly just and natural - and he was at a loss for words to express his contempt of the hypocrisy of those who would assert that, under the same circumstances, they themselves would have acted differently. With regard to the political propriety of the measure, he had ever held, as a fixed and unalterable principle, the maxim which had been advanced upon this subject by Machiavel14 - it was this, that when a government, for practical purposes, had become exhausted and effete, there was only one method for renewing its energies; this was by having recourse to those principles upon which it had been originally constituted. - In what did the essence of the French system consist? In the activity of the insurrectionary energy. - Through the whole course of the revolution, whenever this energy had been suffered to lie dormant for any considerable time, the whole system had invariably been affected with a general torpor and lassitude. That period, the happy issue of which they were now commemorating, was, in fact, truly critical. If the energy of insurrection had not rouzed and exerted itself as it did, it must have sunk into the sleep of death; or it would only have been awakened to return again under monarchical domination. - On the other hand, what had been the effect of this new stimulus? Fresh life and vigour had been infused into the whole system - they had concluded peace with the Emperor on their own terms 15 - they had resolutely dismissed their own negociator from Lisle16 - and they were now preparing for the invasion of this country! {Loud applauses) It remained only to speak of the means employed for effecting such an happy change. The legislative body, representing the disaffected 35

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

majority of the nation, had been dispersed by a party of soldiery, acting under a temporary discretionary insurrectionary commission. - Mr. Fox here claimed the attention of his audience - He was aware, he said, that an attempt would be made to impute to him certain principles inconsistent with his approbation of this measure; an approbation which he was by no means disposed to disguise or qualify. - The principle, briefly stated, was this - "The subordination of the military to the civil power." It would be alleged that, at some time or other, he had maintained and professed this principle - He anticipated the calumny, and he would answer it. It would be sufficient for him to call back their re-collection to a very late event. They all remembered the mutiny17 - (Loud applause) - It was fresh in the recollection of every body. - How happened it then, if, in fact, he had ever entertained this principle, that an event of such a magnitude should never have called it forth? Was the expression of any such principle to be found in the reports of his speeches at that period? Had he ever, directly or indirectly, intimated the least disapprobation of the conduct of the seamen then in a state of insurrection? Or, the mutineers, as some gentlemen thought proper to call them. - (Loud laugh and applause.) He appealed to the memory of his auditors - he challenged the malignant recollection of his enemies, and the spies of government, if any such were present. - (Here a considerable tumult.) He defied all the quibbling sophistry of the Minister himself to put such an interpretation on any word he had said. He had been upon his guard at the time - he was aware of the use that might have been made of his name, and this consideration had suggested the necessity of caution. Political caution he considered as no less necessary in public life than political courage - he had always thought and felt so, and never had this sentiment been impressed upon his mind with a more tremendous conviction than at the period he was alluding to. After concluding his defence of the conduct of the Directory, and of his own consistency in approving it, Mr. Fox entered into the discussion of a very delicate point. "Since I am upon the subject of the mutiny," said Mr. Fox, ("and I give it that name without meaning to connect with it any idea of criminality or reproach, but merely for the sake of a distinction, which we may hereafter have occasion for, 36

MEETING OF THE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM

between civil and military insurrection;) I am naturally led to take notice of a difference of opinion between myself and an honourable friend with whom I have long acted; 18 that gentleman thought it his duty to declare in Parliament that he disliked mutinies; - now, for my part, I like them — and for this plain reason, because in every mutiny, as it arises, I see the possibility, at least, of the accomplishment of our great ultimate object - a change of system. But if I should be - as I trust I ever shall be - the last man to discourage a mutiny on practical grounds, still less should I object to it on principles of pure theory What does a mutiny prove? If it proves any thing, it proves this: That the principles of liberty in the human mind are inextinguishable. You must either govern in conformity with the will of the mass of the people, and of the individuals composing that mass, or you must employ force - there is no alternative - while the individual is left at liberty to make his own laws, and when he is permitted to repeal them as he find occasion - in such a case I am unable to conceive how it is possible that, under any circumstances, he should be tempted to disobey them. 'But no,' says the government, 'this will not answer our purpose we will strip you of this privilege - we will go a step farther - we will not even permit you to make your own laws. Even this will not satisfy us you are a single insulated being, and we have you in our power - we will fetter you with laws and precedents - we will bind you down with usages and statutes which were enacted before you were born!' - What must be the state of things where such a system is established? where it is acted upon without disguise? where it is openly defended and avowed? What is to be expected, but that which we daily witness in this country? A state of sullen ill-dissembled discontent! This discontent displays itself in actions which are in the natural expression of such a sentiment. - Now mark how all this follows - Government, instead of removing the discontent, can see no remedy, but in coercion; but how is coercion to be obtained? Why, by the very means which have occasioned the discontent - by a still grosser violation of individual liberty: they take a number of individuals, and when they have subjected them to a military discipline, they flatter themselves that they can employ them as a means of suppressing discontent in others. - But what is the necessary consequence of all this? - The spirit of 37

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

freedom, which they are endeavouring to keep down, explodes first in that body in which it had been comprest, with the greatest violence. The military system is blown to pieces; and the whole ill-constructed scaffolding is brought down in ruin upon the heads of its architects. "I sincerely hope," said Mr. Fox, "that no such explosion may take place to the destruction of a constitution which I venerate; - but Ministers have already made the first step in this vicious circle of politics. - The original defect was undoubtedly to be found in the constitution itself, even as it existed in better times. These defects were the natural subject of a peaceable and salutary reform. But what have Ministers done? Instead of reforming the constitution, by removing the abuse, they have exaggerated the abuse till they have destroyed the constitution: by their two last infamous bills19 they have put the finishing stroke to our liberties - they have taken away from every Englishman his NATURAL INDIVIDUAL COMPETENCE IN MATTERS OF LEGISLATION."

Mr. Fox concluded a very animated and impressive speech, by recommending to his auditors, that they should immediately strike a blowfor the destruction of the present system; as a pledge of his earnest wishes for the accomplishment of this object, he would give them for a toast "Rewbell, and a free representation!" We have no hesitation in declaring our opinion, that this speech was one of the best that Mr. Fox ever delivered: it abounds in all those characteristic traits which distinguish and elevate the tone of that gentleman's eloquence, above that of all his rivals and opponents. 20 The references to Machiavel and Adam Smith evinced the extraordinary facility which he possesses, of drawing an unforeseen inference from some acknowledged truth; that ardent deprecation of the allviolent and repressive measures, with the irrefragable demonstration of the absurdity and inutility of coercion in every possible case - all these, and, above all, the spirited and undaunted appeal to his own past life and conduct, were in Mr. Fox's very best manner. We have only to regret that, while we do justice to his sentiments and general style of argument, it is impossible for us, in a report of this kind, to give our readers any idea of the language in which those sentiments were conveyed. " The House of Russell" being given, LordJohn and Lord William rose both at once.21 38

MEETING OF THE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM

Lord John made a very neat, and Lord William a very appropriate, speech. Alderman Combe 22 made a very impressive speech. Mr. Tierney 23 made a very pointed speech. Mr. Grey 24 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. Byng25 said a few words. "General Tarleton2-^ 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 - Olaudam Equiano, the African, and Henry Yorke,27 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. Erskine28 now rose, in consequence of some allusions which had been made to the 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." 29 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 39

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

of those super-human 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 gentleman of the Directory; - he understood, however, that one of them (Mr. Merlin,)30 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 sub-divisions, 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;" 31 Mr. Reeves metaphor of the "Tree of Monarchy;" 32 the "Battle of Tranent;" 33 and 40

MEETING OF THE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM

the "March to Paris;" 34 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; 35 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;" 36 he regretted the "Fate of Mess. Muir and Palmer;"37 he exulted in the "Acquittal of Citizens Tooke, Hardy, Thelwall, Holcroft and others;" 38 and he blessed that Providence to which (as it had 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 upon the captivity of La Fayette,39 and the dividend of the Imperial Loan. 40 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 shewed itself in complete unison with the genius of the orator; and the whole of this passage was covered 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 was 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 of omitting them altogether, which latter alternative we adopted the more readily, 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 41

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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 there 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 pamphlets 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 Rewbell) 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!" - 41 And for these reasons, thanking the gentlemen who had done him the honour to drink his health, he should propose - "Merlin, the late Minister ofJustice, and Trial by Jury!" Mr. Erskine here concluded a speech which had occupied the attention, and excited the applause, of his audience, during the 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 principle 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; they these fellows having contrived to intoxicate themselves with the money which the coachmen had advanced to them upon account, were become so restive and unruly, and withal so exorbitant in their demands, (positively refusing to abide by their former engagement,) 42

MEETING OF THE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM

that Mr. Erskine deemed it unsafe to trust himself in their hands, and determined to wait the return of his own tractable and less chargeable animals. This unpleasant scene continued for over an hour. Mr. Sheridan's health was now drank, 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.42 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 chearing to him - he felt them warm at his heart - and while a single fibre of his fame 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 concenter 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 honourable 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 honourable gentleman - he agreed with him in many points - in his general love of liberty and revolution; in his execration of 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 to the celebration of any revolution whatever. These doubts, however, were not satisfactorily done away. A pledge had been entered into for accomplishing an effectual radical revolution; 43

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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 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 honourable 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 past 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 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 croud 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 consolotary shade. "There our infants shall be taught to lisp, in tender accents, the revolutionary hymn - there, with wreaths of myrtle, and oak, and 44

MEETING OF THE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM

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 chissels 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 memories. Their bones will be entombed in the vault below, while their sacred shades continue hovering over our heads - Those venerated names 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 altar of patriotism, and the revolutionary pontiff, with the thrilling volcanic sympathies, whether of holy fury or of ardent fraternal civism, uniting and identifying, as if 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 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 43 in the field, or with Sidney44 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 upon 45

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Temple Bar,45 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 5s 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 mixt 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 for the occasion by Capt. Morris, 46 received its sanction in the warmest expression of applause. The whole company joined, with enthusiasm, in their old favourite chorus of - Bow! Wow! Wow!!!

46

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. V) Southey is again the occasion here; this time it is Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man (1791) which is in the background. Unrest in the armed forces (a prolonged naval mutiny and a brief but significant rebellion among the artillery) had its source in disgraceful conditions of service and incompetent command. It suited the national interest to blame Paine instead. The Rights of Man is too eloquently plain-speaking to be easily parodied. As with Godwin, it is easier for the anti-jacobins to play on Southey's extravagancies than to attack Paine directly. Southey's 'The Soldier's Wife' is a fine example of the falling quality imparted to English verse by the use of dactyls. One stressed followed by two unstressed syllables reverses the rising anapaestic rhythms of English, over-emphasizing the elegiac. Southey's weary way-wanderings beg to be parodied. The innate absurdity of dactylic metre makes it a favourite for nursery rhymes, and the well-versed anti-jacobins knew it. The result is their nursery-tale imitation, 'The Soldier's Friend'. This is followed by a sonnet on the theme that 'the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty',1 from George Howard (1773-1848). Howard was an Eton and Oxford scholar, MP and Earl of Carlisle after 1825; until then he was known as Lord Morpeth. As a poet he was a painstaking; his contributions to The Anti-Jacobin are more correct than lively. NOTE 1 Abraham Lincoln.

47

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348280-7

NO. V

Decemb. IL 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, whose happy effort in English Sapphics we presumed to intimate; the present effusion is in Dactylics, and equally subject to the laws of Latin Prosody.l

THE SOLDIER'S

WIFE

Wêary wãy-wãnderer, languid and sïck ãt heart, Travelling painfully over the rugged road, Wild vïsag'd wanderer - ãh for thy heavy chance. We think that we see him fumbling in the pocket of his blue pantaloons; 2 that the splendid shilling3 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!

48

THE SOLDIER'S WIFE

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: 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. 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 4 [Exit Drummer Boy, with Handbills, and Half-a-crown. Manet5 Soldier's Friend.] Liberty's friends thus all learn to amalgamate, Freedom's volcanic explosion prepares itself, Despots shall bow to the Fasces6 of Liberty, Reason, philosophy, "fiddledum diddledum," 7 Peace and Fraternity, higgledy, piggledy, Higgledy, piggledy, "fiddledum, diddledum." Et caetera, et caetera, et caetera.

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! 49

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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 changed rite, O LIBERTY! to thee shall be renew'd: O still be sea-girt ALBION thy delight!

50

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. VI) The point about Southey's metres has already been adequately made, but a riposte in the Morning Chronicle prompts reiteration. The Chroni­ cles poem, called 'The Collector and the Householder', was an inversion of 'The Knife Grinder', protesting about Pitt's proposed increases in Assessed Taxes: Greedy Collector, whither are you going, T h u s with your ink-horn in your buttonhole, and Ledger so snugly underneath your coat? say, Greedy Collector.

When this first appeared, on Monday 11 December, it was mistakenly printed in prose: most peculiar to read, and further highlighting the absurdity of English Sapphics. Also printed in this issue is a patriotic poem in Latin, by Richard Wellesley (1760-1842), Marquis and later Governor-general of India. Another graduate of Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and another classical enthusiast, his 'style of writing and speaking was largely affected by his constant study of the great orators and poets of antiquity'.x Wellesley wrote these verses 'at the desire of Mr. Pitt' before sailing to India on 7 November 1797; 'they were very much admired at the time . . . and in the succeeding number of the Anti-Jacobin, December the 25th, a very beautiful translation of them, from the pen of the present Earl of Carlisle (then Lord Morpeth) was printed'. 2 Finally, here is to be found the most charming of the spoof correspondents in The Anti-Jacobin, Letitia Sourby, writing to bewail her father's conversion to republicanism. NOTES 1 DJVB.

2 Pearce, Memoirs vol. 1, pp. 131-2.

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DOI: 10.4324/9780429348280-8

NO. VI.

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 subjects of our late Jacobinical Imitations. The fashion of admiring and imitating these productions has spread in a surprising degree. Even those who sympathize 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.l 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 lyre2 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.

52

QUINTESSENCE OF ALL THE DACTYLICS

THE SOLDIER'S

WIFE.

DACTYLICS.

"Weary way-wanderer, &c. &c. IMITATION. DACTYLICS.

Being the quintessence of all the Dactylics that ever were, or ever will be written. HUMBLY ADDRESSED T O THE AUTHOR O F T H E ABOVE.

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 would'st urge to speed, Lame and o'erburthen'd, and "screaming its wretchedness"

WEARISOME

Ne'er talk of ears again! look at thy spelling-book; Dilworth and Dyche are both mad at thy quantities - 3 DACTYLICS, calPst thou 'em? - "God help thee, silly one!"

The Verses, which we here present to the Public, were written immediately after Revolution of the Fourth of September.4 We should be much obliged to any of our Classical and Loyal Correspondents, for an English Translation of them.

mali Hortatrix scelerumque uberrima Mater In se prima suos vertit lymphata furores, IPSA

* 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. 5

53

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Luctaturque diú secum, et conatibus aegris Fessa cadit, proprioque jacet labefacta veneno. Mox tamen ipsius rursum violentia morbi Erigit ardentem furiis, ultróque minantem Spargere bella procul, vastaeque incendia cladis, Civilesque agitare faces, totumque per orbem Sceptra super Regum et Populorum súbdita colla Ferre pedem, et sanctas Regnorum evertere sedes. Aspics! 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 rápido se turbine vertit, Cernis ibi, prisca morum compagne soluta, Procubuisse solo civilis fcedera vitae, Et quodcunque Fides, quodcunque habet alma verendi Religio, Pie tasque et Legum fraena sacrarum. Nec spes Pacis adhúc - necdum exsaturata rapinis EfFera Bellatrix, fusove expleta cruore. Crescit inextinctus Furor, atque exaestuat ingens Ambitio, immanisque irâ Vindicta renatâ Relliquias Soliorum et adhuc resantia Regna Flagitat excidio, praedaeque incumbit opimae. Una etenim in mediis Gens intemerata ruinis Libertate proba, et justo libramine rerum, Securum faustis degit sub legibus aevum; Antiquosque colit mores, et jura Parentum Ordine firma suo, sanoque intacta vigore, Servat adhuc, hominumque íidem, 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 Oceansi sceptrum faedaverit Hostis! 54

LETTER FROM A LADY

L E T T E R F R O M A LADY Our fair correspondent has stated her case in so simple and artless a manner, and the misfortune, under which she labours, is one so common, and, as we fear, so increasing, throughout the country, that we lose no time in laying it before the public, exactly as it has come to our hands. TO THE EDITOR OF THE

ANTI-JACOBIN;

OR, WEEKLY EXAMINER.

Sir, I do not know if you will admit a female correspondent, having seen none such acknowledged in your paper, as yet, though I have seen it from the very beginning. But I hope you will, having a case to lay before you, which I think you ought to consider. What I find most fault with you for, is, that you confine your readers chiefly to public matters, as if the Jacobinism and principles which you set up to oppose did not disturb domestic felicity and comfort as much as it does kingdoms and empires, though, in your preface or prospectus, you mention it in that light - "Whether as it openly threatens the subversion of states, or gradually saps the foundation of domestic happiness" 6 - which expression has encouraged me to write to you on this subject. My father is a respectable manufacturer in the callico line, and used to be one of the chearfullest, best humoured men, in the world, and the most indulgent parent, and husband, and master of a family. It was not till these times came to their height that he was so greatly altered. He was always, to be sure, an Opposition-man, having, as he frequently used to say, inherited those principles from his forefathers, who were independent men, and enemies to the Ministers of their time. But then his politics were without bitterness or gall; and though he was a warm speaker at the parish meetings against oppression, and poor-rates, he never brought his violence home with him, but told us (my mother and 55

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

me, and my brother John, who was with us at that time) how well he had spoken, and that was all; and so late as the great victory of Lord Howe 7 over the French, on the first of June, I remember his sending to the rector, who is quite in other principles, being a staunch Government-man, to come and drink a bottle of wine with him to the Wooden Walls of Old England. Alas! Sir, it is since that period that he has been growing every day bitterer and bitterer, and unkinder and unkinder; ever since the very month after, (I think I could almost fix the day in my own mind,) when he came from hearing a lecturer who went about the country reading history and philosophy, and, as my father said, "kindling a holy enthusiasm of freedom." - I remember the words as if it were but yesterday. I am sure I have reason, and so have we all, for from that moment his whole temper and manner changed so, that our house, from being the pleasantest in the village for chearful society and kindness one to another, is become gloomy disconsolate to us all. My brother, indeed, has left us, being gone to London, to a conveyancer, I think they call it, whom you, perhaps, may know, Sir and if you should see my brother with him, you would do a great good in advising him to leave the Speaking Society, (in which I am sorry to say my father encourages him by letter,) where he makes speeches about reform, which he sends my father by the post, but does not mind his business of conveyancer, alledging that he is born to greater things, having a spirit above such a plodding business, and that he looks to first principles, and to other times which are coming on, when the conveyancers will be good for nothing, and only politics thought of, and great talents make their way to the top. He writes all this to me; and I am sure it only adds to my sorrow, instead of those bright hopes which he intends to inspire. But to return to my father who is now always reading books and pamphlets, that seem quite wicked and immoral to my mind and my poor mother's; whom it vexes sadly to hear my father talk, before company, that marriage is good for nothing, and ought to be free to be broken by either party at will. It was but the other day that he told her, that if he were to choose again, by the new law, in the only free country in the world, he would prefer concubinage - so he said in my hearing. 56

LETTER FROM A LADY

He used to be compassionate to the poor, and to beggars even - but now he drives the latter from his door, saying, if they are oppressed, why do not they right themselves? and that the good things of the world are divided unequally, and the moment is at hand when those who have nothing will bear it no longer; and that he will not, for his part, be guilty of making the evil less felt, and so keep off the remedy. Then he tells us that gratitude is a bad passion, and has actually quarrelled with Sir , his landlord, who raised him, and lent him money when he was in distress, just after setting up for himself in business, (though now he is so affluent,) because, he said, he could not abide a man who had laid upon him the weight of an obligation. He used to go to church too, regularly every Sunday - but of late he has left it off entirely, though professing at the same time to be more religious than ever, and to adore the Supreme Being in his works. - So he makes me walk in the open air during the service time, and bids me gaze up and look around, and overflow with divine sensation - which he says is natural religion, and better than all the preaching and saying printed prayers, in the world. I do not know why it is, but though I have walked in all weathers at this devotion, I have not felt so devout, nor come home so comfortable and satisfied with myself, as if I had been to church in the old way to which I was accustomed. As for my poor mother, she is by no means to be persuaded to it, but calls it downright Heathen, and goes to church the more, which makes my father only more angry. But, perhaps, the greatest grievance of all is about my marrying, which I was going to be, but my father has put a stop to it, because my Edward, to whom I was betrothed (and a match every way suitable in situation, as all the world allows,) went into the yeomanry cavalry for the defence of his King and country - which angered my father past all enduring. He hates all war and bloodshed, he says, and was always twitting and reproaching Edward with his military ardour, and thirst of human blood, (as he called it,) till at length, one day, in his drink (for though formerly very sober and abstemious, he has taken much to drink of late,) he downright quarrelled with him for good and all, and turned him out of the house, saying, he would have no butcher of his fellow-creatures there. - This was last month, at the dinner which he gave 57

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

on the christening of my little brother Buonaparte Sourby, which name he gave him against the advice of the clergyman and all his neighbours. I am afraid these particulars may seem tiresome and uninteresting; and I feel that I have not half described the uneasiness which this new temper and principles of my father occasion, and the change that has been in him, nor how surprizing it seems to me that the more he has liberty and independence in his mouth, the more he should be a tyrant (if I might say so) in his conduct to his family But I will intrude no longer than to say that I am, Sir, Your afflicted humble servant, LETITIA SOURBY. I forgot to mention that my father does not know of my seeing your paper, which I see at a neighbour's in the village, (a widow lady) who takes it in, and lets me read it when I call upon her. My father would be very angry if he knew it.

58

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. VII) Marquis Wellesley's patriotic poem aims to elevate 'Duncan's name'. Admiral Adam Duncan (1731-1804) became commander-in-chief in the North Sea early in 1795, responsible for blockading enemy fleets and upholding British maritime supremacy. Massively built, his physical presence kept his crew on the flagship Venerable obedient during the naval mutiny of April to June 1797. Early in October, the Dutch sent an invasion fleet to Ireland. Duncan intercepted and, breaking admiralty rules of engagement, won a splendid, if expensive, victory. It was a timely boost to national morale, and Duncan - the very figure of a man with heart of oak - was cheered wherever he went. Lord Morpeth renders Wellesley's poem into appropriately heroic closed couplets. Marquis Wellesley also composed a ballad, at the request of Pitt, which was sung at a dinner given for Duncan by the East India company in honour of his triumph. It catches the country's mood: Enrolled in our bright annals lives full many a gallant name, But never British heart conceived a deed of prouder fame, To shield our liberties and laws, to guard our Sovereign's crown, Than noble Duncan's mighty arm achieved at Camperdown.

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NO. VIL

Dec. 25. 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 receivefrom the same hand.

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 seen she fees thro5 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 crime, 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,

60

TRANSLATION OF THE LATIN VERSES

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, 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. ONE FAVOUR'D NATION

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 injur'd Freedom shall her life resign, If e'er, propitious to the vows of hate, 61

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Unsteady Conquest stamp our mournful fate, If e'er proud France usurp our ancient reign, And ride triumphant o'er the insulted main! *

*

*

Far hence the unmanly thought - The voice of Fame Wafts o'er the applauding deep her Duncan's name. What tho' the Conqueror of th'Italian plains1 Deem nothing gain'd, while this fair Isle remains, Tho' 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.

62

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. VIII) 'The Choice', dubiously attributed to Ellis, warns of a comparison between Bonaparte and the Prophet Mohammed. In the summer of 1797 Pitt sent Malmesbury to Lisle to negotiate for peace, offering terms generous enough to have caused an outcry in Britain, had they been made public. Malmesbury's efforts were prolonged by intransigence from the Directory. Any genuine chance of settlement was lost in the coup d'état of 4 September, which ousted the Directory's moderates. The 'negotiation at Lisle exposed the unreasonable pretensions and preposterous conduct of the French in a light which reconciled the country to the continuance of war' wrote Lord Holland. 1 The Directory's Proclamation on 21 November 1797 promised invasion by 'The Army of England' (commanded by Bonaparte), which would then 'dictate Peace in London'. Divided and dithering heads of state in Europe offered no effective opposition to French expansion. England stood almost alone. J. D. Carlyle's 'Battle of Sabla', from his Specimens of Arabian Poetry (1796), describes 'the rapid progress of Mohammed': 'finding the tribes disunited, and unable to form any confederacy to oppose him, he attacked them separately and thus easily reduced them all under his subjection'.2 Ellis's poem (if his it is) weaves neatly in and out of Carlyle's: the eight-line stanzas being virtually pastiche, while the quatrains are independent. After this, 'The Duke and the Taxing-Man' offers light relief; it is by Sir Archibald Macdonald (1747-1826), Solicitor- then AttorneyGeneral under Pitt, MP, and judge. Among his services to the State were the prosecution of Paine in 1792, for publishing the Rights of Man; and assistance at the trial of Thomas Hardy in 1794. He 'was distinguished neither as a lawyer nor as a parliamentary speaker, and owed his successful career mainly to a fortunate marriage'. 3 The 63

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

introduction to 'The Duke and the Taxing-Man' alludes to the imposter W.H.Ireland (1777-1835), best known for forging manuscripts of Shakespeare although he was also, like Thomas Chatterton, an accomplished parodist. Macdonald's poem adopts a medieval costume to mock Francis Russell (1765-1802), Duke of Bedford, friend of Fox and of the Prince of Wales, antagonist of Burke, and a frequent butt of jokes and caricature in The Anti-Jacobin. Bedford's attempts to avoid paying his full dues in Assessed Taxes were, to the anti-jacobins, a subject of irritation, laughter, and a prolonged exchange of insults with his supporters in the newspapers. Finally, the poetry of this issue is rounded off with an epigram. This employs the French equivalent of counting chickens before they hatch: '// nefaut pas vendre la peau de l'ours, avant de l'avoir tué' (One must not sell the bear's skin before it has been killed). The 'Paris Loan' which prompts this retort is explained by the anti-jacobins elsewhere in this issue: 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 " T H E LOAN OF ENGLAND," to be raised by anticipation on the security and mortgage of all the Lands and Property of this Country. This Gasconnade, 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. 4

64

INTRODUCTORY

NOTES 1 2 3 4

Whig Party, vo\.\, y. 83. Specimens, p. 25. DNB. p. 57.

65

NOTE

NO. VIII

Jan. 1st, 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, IN CARLYLE'S SPECIMENS OF ARABIAN POETRY.)

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 ransomed England bow to Gallic sway? 66

THE CHOICE

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 glid our future hours." Yes! we will guard our old renown; Assert our empire of 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, " O U R 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 -

67

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Resolv'd to conquer or to die, True to their KING, their LAWS, their LIBERTY: No barb'rous foe here finds an easy prey Un-ransom'd England spurns all foreign sway.

Thefollowing poem has been transmitted to us, without preface or introduction, by a gentleman of the name of Ireland. We apprehend from the peculiarities of 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. THE DUKE AND THE

TAXING-MAN.

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 visage 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, O f varlets twenty-five. "

68

THE DUKE AND THE

TAXING-MAN

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 astound, *Twaie coneynge Clerks, 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 straught 'gan for to say, t"A seely 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 signife 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."

* Twaie coneynge Clerks. - Coneynge is the participle of the verb to ken or know. It by no means imports what we now demoninate a knowing one: on the contrary, twaie coneynge clerks means two intelligent and disinterested clergymen. t Seely evidently the original of the modern world silly. - A seely wight, however, by no means imports what is now called a silly fellow, but means a m a n of simplicity of character, devoid of all vanity and of any strange ill-conducted ambition, which, if successful, would immediately be fatal to the m a n who indulged it.

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

"Naie," quoth the Clerk, "both horse and foot To hide was thine intent, Ne seely wight be ye, but did With good advisament.*2 Surcharge, surcharge, good Taxing-man, Anon our seals we fix, Off sterling pounds, Lord Duke, you pay Three hundred thirty-six."

EPIGRAM ON T H E PARIS LOAN, 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?

Good advisament means cool consideration.

70

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. IX) Lord Morpeth contributes another Ode, based on one from Horace. Morpeth's parodie paean adds to The Anti-Jacobin's current emphasis on the bloodiness of the Revolution, which is to reach a climax in Issue no.X. The 'Song' which follows weaves together several prevailing themes. Violence is one, with an aside on mass drownings in Rochefort helping pave the way for Issue no. X. Another is the long-running campaign to promote Pitt's measures to finance the war-effort, against a public made mulish by unprecedented rises in taxes. Also important is reiteration of the import of September's coup d'état, first raised in Issue no. VI.

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NO. IX. Jan. 8. O D E T O ANARCHY. BY A JACOBIN. (BEING AN IMITATION OF HORACE, ODE 25, BOOK I.)1

0 Diva, gratum qua regis Antium/2 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 raised, 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!" 3 72

ODE TO ANARCHY

With thee Proscription, child of strife, With death's choice implements, is seen, Her murd'rer's gun, assassin's knife, And, "last not least in love," 4 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." 5 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'erturn'd 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.

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC

AGE:

VOLUME 1

Thefollowing 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 atfirst led to apprehend that the 120th part of their income was too great a sacrifice, for thepreservation of the remainder of their property from French Confiscation.

You have heard of Rewbell,6 That demon of hell, And of Barras,7 his brother Director; Of the canting Lepaux, 8 And that scoundrel Moreau, 9 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 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. 10 The first law that they see,

Is "the press shall be freer T h e next is "the trial by jury:" T h e n , "the people's free choice;" T h e n , "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: 74

SONG

No period so fit For a desperate hit, As our old 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, (Let Carnot 11 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 ourfifthRevolution, 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!"

75

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. X)

The 'Lines9 contributed by an unknown 'Englishwoman' celebrate seagirdled Britain. Chalk cliffs, stout hearts, and piety sharpen contrasts with perfidious, sanguinary Frenchmen in the following poem. This, an Invasion Song, pretends to be written by Talleyrand. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (l 754-1830), known in Royalist circles simply as le scélérat (the villain), was a lecherous cleric who became the tame bishop of the revolutionaries. On the first anniversary of the Fall of the Bastille he appeared, conducting an open-air mass, in a cope coloured red, white and blue. He renounced his bishopric in January 1791, was briefly ambassador in England in 1792, and became Foreign Minister in 1797. Elsewhere in this issue The Anti-Jacobin reports Talleyrand's incitements to invasion: We find that the Ex-Bishop of AUTUN, Minister for Foreign Affairs, has addressed a sort of Pastoral Letter to the several Diplomatic Agents of the Republic, inviting all those ministers of Peace to unite their efforts, with those of the Military, for the utter destruction of this Country.1

In the 'Song' much is achieved in the footnotes, which rely on evidence collated by William Cobbett (under his pseudonym Peter Porcupine), of atrocities committed in the name of the Revolution.2 The style of this collection may be deduced from Cobbett's title: The Bloody Buoy, Thrown out as a Warning to the Political Pilots of all Nations. Or a Faithful Revelation of a Multitude of Acts of Horrid Barbarity, Such as the Eye never witnessed, the Tongue never expressed, or the Lmagination conceived, until the Commencement of the French Revolution. To which is added, an Instructive Essay, tracing these dreadful effects to their real cause. T h e third, revised edition of

this was printed in London in 1796. Cobbett was proud of his sources:

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The materials for the work have been collected from different publications, all written by Frenchmen, and all, except one, from which only a few extracts were made, printed at Paris . . . the author has taken particular care to mention the work, and even the page, from which each fact is extracted.

The material extracted by the anti-jacobins from Cobbett's book is comparatively restrained; The Bloody Buoy is as lurid as its title promises. NOTES 1 p. 77. 2 Cobbett 'naturally butts at all obstacles,' wrote Hazlitt, 'as unicorns are attracted to oak-trees' (Howe vol.8, p.54). Despite his activism, Cobbett was a vehement opponent of France. He explains of himself that: having adopted sentiments favourable to Democracy, he went to France, in the early part of the Revolution, where personal observation of the practical effects of revolutionary Doctrines convinced him of his error, and rendered him the determined enemy of a system, which he (Bloody Buoy, p.vi) found to be fraught with misery to mankind.

77

NO. X.

Jan. 15 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 1 7 9 7 .

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 throphies 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, And slowly bending to the ETERNAL KING,

78

AT THE CLOSE OF 1797

Thy SOVEREIGN bids a nation's praise arise In grateful incense to the fav'ring skies - l 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. 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" 2 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.

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TRANSLATION O F T H E N E W S O N G OF THE

"ARMY OF ENGLAND. " WRITTEN BY THE CI-DEVANT BISHOP OF AUTUN. WITH NOTES BY THE TRANSLATOR.

Good Republicans all, The Director's call Invites you to visit JOHN BULL;

Opress'd by the rod Of a King, and a God* 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, Greater 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!

* 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 a 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.

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SONG OF THE "ARMY OF ENGLAND"

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.*

JOHN,

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.

* T h e Reader will find the works of Peter Porcupine (a spirited and instructive writer), an ample and satisfactory commentary on this and the following stanza. T h e 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 c o m m a n d 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. T h e waters of the Loire became putrid, and were forbidden to be drank, by the savages who conducted the massacre. - T h a t at Paris 150,000, and in La Vendée 300,000 persons were destroyed. - U p o n the whole, the French themselves acknowledge, that TWO MILLIONS of h u m a n beings (exclusive of the military), have been sacrificed to the principles of EQUALITY and the RIGHTS OF M A N : 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 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.

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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,* 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^tf honest men 5 to defend 'em? And Barras and Co. When to England we go, Will kindly take John's in commendam.6

* At Lyons, Jabogues, the second murderer (the actor being the Jirst), 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,^ the purpose of preserving ourselves from thefate of Lyons, La Vendée, andNantz. STYPTIC.

82

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XI) A blow-for-blow exchange with the Morning Chronicle. In Augustan couplets, this is an old-fashioned bout conducted much along the lines, say, of Dryden swapping punches with Shadwell. Dryden's invective was memorably deft: 'His Brows thick fogs, instead of glories grace, / And lambent dullness played about his face'.1 Here, again the contest is unequal; visibly so, because Canning prints the initial assault below his own response. While his opponent plods along underneath, Canning floats and stings overhead. The Morning Chronicles contributor was a young William Lamb. At the time, aged nineteen and an extreme Whig, Lamb admired Bonaparte even more than Fox. Mellowing later, he became a protege of Canning, then Viscount Melbourne and twice Prime Minister. Lamb had a talent for nailing quirks - 'Croker,' he said, 'would dispute with the Recording Angel about the number of his sins'2 - but the gift is scarcely visible in this early poem. Canning's counter-epistle is followed by an 'Ode to Lord Moira' by Ellis. This poem dealt with an intrigue to form an alternative ministry, behind Pitt's back: Before Easter, 1797, some members of the House of Commons met to form a new Administration, excluding persons who, on either side, had made themselves obnoxious to the publick, and to place Earl Moira at the head, who, though he approved the theory of their plan, deemed the execution impractible.3

The Ode plays on a virulent poem from Horace, and to avoid embarrassment Pitt apparently requested its deferral until the new year. Moira was Francis Rawdon-Hastings (1754-1826), Marquis and 2nd Earl, who fought courageously in the war with America in the 1770s. He took his seat in the House of Lords in 1783, soon opposed 83

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Pitt, supported the Prince of Wales in the Regency crisis, and used conditions in Ireland to agitate for peace. Gillray portrayed him in a cartoon of 12 March 1798 as 'Lord Longbow, the alarmist, discovering the miseries of Ireland', and puffing flames of discontent across the Irish Channel. NOTES 1 MacFlecknoe,\L 110-11. 2 DNB. 3 Gentleman's Magazine \. 68, pt. 1 (1798), 225-6.

84

NO. XL

Jan.22. We have said in another part of our Paper of this day, uthat though we shall never begin an attack, we shall always be prompt to repel it. "l 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 havefortunately been furnished with a Motto2 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.

T O THE A U T H O R OF THE EPISTLE TO THE EDITORS OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN* Nostrorum sermonum candide judex!3 Bard of the borrow'd lyre! to whom belong The shreds and remnants of each hackney'd song;

* 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

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OF THE ROMANTIC

AGE: VOLUME

1

Whose verse thy friends in vain for wit explore, And count but one good line in eighty-four!

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 though proper to connect with the "ANTI-JACOBIN," no apology is made for thus preserving this otherwise perishable specimen of dullness4 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 byfar the best of all the attacks that the combined wits of the cause have been able to muster against "ANTI-JACOBIN."5 EPISTLE TO THE

EDITORS OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN. Hie Niger est; hune tu, Romane, caveto/6

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 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;

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-earn'd fame Virtue your hate, and Calumny your aim! Whoe'er ye are, all hail! - whether the skill Of youthful C—nn—g7 guides the rane'rous quill,

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EPISTLES TO THE EDITOR

Whoe'er thou art, all hail! thy bitter smile Gilds our dull page, and cheers our humble toil! 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; O r H — m m — d , 8 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 belov'd no more! Proceed to prop the Ministerial cause; See consequential M — r p — t h 9 nods applause; In ev'ry fair one's ear at balls and plays T h e gentle Gr—nv—le L—v—s—n 1 0 whispers praise: Well-judging Patrons, whom such works can please; Great works, well worthy Patrons such as these! W h o heard not, raptur'd, the poetic Sage W h o sung Gallia in a headlong rage, And blandly drew with no uncourtly grace T h e simple manners of our English race Extoll'd great Duncan, 1 1 and, supremely brave, Whelm'd Buonaparte's pride beneath the wave? I swear by all the youths that M—lm—sb—ry 1 2 chose, By Ell—s' 1 3 sapient prominence of nose, By M—rp-th's gait important, proud, and big By L—s—n G—w'r'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 father's shame! 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! 14 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! But softer numbers softer subjects fit:In liquid phrases thrill the praise of Pitt;

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Foryet - though firm and fearless in the cause Of pure religion, liberty, and laws, Though truth approved, though fav'ring virtue smiled, Some doubts remain'd: - weyet were unreviled. Thanks to thy zeal! those doubts as 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 sense like thine! But say - in full blown honours dost thou sit 'Midst Brooks's15 elders on the bench of wit, Where H—re, 16 chief-justice, frames the stern decree, While with their learned brother, sages three, F—tzp—tr—k,17 T—wnsh—d, 18 Sh—r—d—n, 19 agree? Or art thou one - THE PARTY'S flatter'd fool, Train'd in Debrett's, 20 or Ridgeway's civic school -

Extol in eulogies of candid truth The Virgin Minister21 - 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 Skillful to GAG, and knowing how to TAX! With him companions meet in order stand A firm, compact, and well-appointed band: Skill'd to advance or to retreat Dundas, 22 And bear thick battle on his front of brass; Grenville23 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 th' applauses of great M—lm—sb—ry's train; Proceed - be more opprobrious if you can; Proceed - be more abusive ev'ry hour; To be more stupid is beyond your power.

88

EPISTLES TO THE EDITOR

One, who with rant and nonsense daily wears, Well-natured R—ch—rds—n! 24 thy patient ears; Who sees nor taste nor genius in these times Save P—r's 25 buzz prose,* and C—rt—ny's 26 kidnapp'd rhimes?^ * 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 among a number of hats thrown together in one corner of the room, there is not one, 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 of the writings. 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. f KIDNAPP'D RHIMES. - 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 passfor their own.''''21

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 Though Brutus dealt the godlike stroke, Yet peris'd fated Rome!"28

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 vita exemplar dedit29 of Lord Nugent, to a mere question of inhabitancy. Ubi habitavit Cato30 where he was an inhabitant-house-holder, 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 with godlike stroke . . . By which his glory rose!!!^

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Or is it he, - the youth,31 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; Though when he strives his metaphors to reach, One luckless slip his meaning overstrains, And loads of blunderbuss with B—df—d's32 brains.* Whoe'er thou art - ne'er may thy patriot fire, Unfed by praise or patronage, expire! Forbid it, Taste! - with compensation large 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. * And loads the blunderbuss with B—df-—d'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. Rob1. Ad—r, in answer to Mr. Burke's "Letter to the D. of B." nothing is so remarkable as the studious imitation of Mr. Burke's styled 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 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.34 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 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. &c. The thing is scarcely credible: but it is so! We write with the book open before us.

90

EPISTLES TO THE EDITOR

Patrician hands thy labours shall o'ercharge!* B—df—rd and Wh—tbr—d 35 shall vast sums advance, The Land and Malt of Jacobin Finance! Whoe'er thou art! - before thy feet we lay, With lowly suit, our Number of to-day\ Spurn not our offering with averted eyes! Let thy pure breath revive the extinguished Liesl Mistakes, Mis-statements, now so oft o'erthrown, Rebuild, and prop with nonsense of thy own! Pervert our meaning, and misquote our text Andfurnish us a motto for the nextl

Qu. - Surcharge?36

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

ODE TO LORD

M—RA.

I. If on your head * some vengeance fell, M—ra for every tale you tell The listening Lords to cozen;37 If but one whisker lost its hue, Chang'd (like Moll Coggin's tail)38 to blue, I'd hear them by the dozen. II. But still, howe'er you draw your bow, t Your charms improve, your triumphs grow, New grace adorns your figure; More stiff your boots, more black your stock, Your hat assumes a prouder cock, Like Pistol's (if 'twere bigger.)39 III. Tell then your stories, strange and new, You Father's fame + shall vouch them true; So shall the Dublin Papers:*®

Swear by the stars § - that saw the sight, That infant thousands die each night, While troops blow out their tapers.*1 IV. Sh—br—h 42 ^ shall cheer you with a smile, M—cph—rs—n 43 " simpering all the while, With B—st—rd44 H and with Bruin; H And fierce N—ch—ll, 45 ** who wields at will Th'emphatic stick, or powerful quill, To prove his country's ruin.

92

ODE TO LORD MOIRA

V Each day new followers ^ crowd your board, And lean expectants hail my Lord With adoration feverent: Old Th—rl—w, 46 ++ though he swore by G— No more to own a master's nod, Is still your humble servant. VI. Old P—It—n—y47§§ too your influence feels, And asks from you th' Exchequer seals, To tax and save the nation: T—ke 48 trembles,*** lest your potent charms Should lure C—s F—x ^ from his fond arms, To YOUR Administration.

HORACE.

O D E VIII.

IN BARINEN.

B O O K II. 4 9

Ridet hoc, inquam, ^ Venus ipsa, rident SimplicesW Nymphe; fer us et ** Cupido, Semper ardentes acuens sagittas Cote cruenta.

*Ulla si juris tibipejerati Pœna, Barine, nocuisset unquam; Dente si nigrofieres, vel uno Turpior ungui,

Adde quod pubes tibi crescit omnis ^Servitus crescit nova; ++. . . nee priores ímpia tectum domina relinquunt Sape minati.

Crederem. ^Sed tu simul obligâsti Perfidum votis caput, enitescis Pulchrior multo, juvenumque prodis Publica cura. +Expedit matris cineres opertos Fallere, et toto § taciturna noctis Signa cum ccelo, gelidâque Divos Morte carentes.

Te suis matres metuunt juvencis Te §§ senes parci, miscreeque ^ nuper Virgines nuptœ, tua ne retardei Aura Maritos.

*** y n e trepidation of Mr. T—ke, though natural, was not necessary; as it appeared from the ever-memorable "Letter to Mr. M a c M a h o n , " (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! 5 0

93

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XII) Robert Adair is returned to sight here, for further mockery, as the putative author of ÉA Bit of an Ode to Mr. Fox'. The poem is attributed to Ellis by a reliable source, to Frere by one less trustworthy. It has the grace of Frere's Whistlecraft verse. The pretext is Adair's visit to the Continent in 1791, investigating the reception of the Revolution in Berlin, Vienna and St Petersburg. It was widely believed that Adair was dispatched to frustrate Pitt's foreign policy by underhand means. Fox 'sent Mr. Adair as his own private Agent, to Petersburg; an act, for which many persons thought that he deserved Impeachment' wrote Wraxall.1 A delightful play on Adair's airy self-assertions, this poem's flight of fancy is loosely based on Horace, Odes 2.20, where the narrator changes into a swan. Also in this issue is a spoof account of cMr. Fox's Birth-Day'. It closely follows a genuine event. The occasion was a huge dinner given to celebrate Fox's birthday on 24 January. This was presided over by Charles Howard (1746-1815), Lord Norfolk. Norfolk was almost a walking caricature of the ill-educated aristocrat: convivial, slovenly, exuberant. His servants washed him when he was drunk, for he 'detested soap and water when sober'. 2 He made a natural Foxite Whig. Supported not only by Fox and Tooke, but also Bedford, Sheridan, Tierney, Erskine, and many others, the evening was a great success: The annals of British liberty do not record an instance of so large a meeting as was held yesterday at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, on the occasion of the festival of Mr. Fox. The capacity and arrangements of that immense Tavern were put to the proof, for dinner was served without confusion or disorder to near 2000 persons, assembled to testify to their affection for the

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE virtues of this illustrious Statesman, or to rally under the standard of his political opinions. It was the Feast of Liberty; and the enthusiasm of the company corresponded with the sentiment that animated their souls. 3

Flushed with wine and bonhomie, Norfolk closed a series of liberal toasts with a rousing: 'Our Sovereign's health - the majesty of the people!'. The King was unamused to be deposed - 'Kings never forgive the sins of the friends of the people. They are wormwood to them' 4 - and promptly deprived Norfolk of his posts. As the antijacobins gleefully reported at the beginning of Issue XIII: T h e DISMISSAL of His GRACE the D U K E of NORFOLK from the LIEUTENANCY of the W E S T RIDING of YORKSHIRE and

the COMMAND of his REGIMENT of

MILITIA, appears to have given the most general satisfaction to the Public; and to have driven [the Whigs] to a state of rage, bordering upon phrenzy. T h e furious declamations upon this subject, which have filled the pages of the Morning Chronicle for these last two days, coupled with the whining Recantations and Explanations attempted in that Paper a short time before this measure was announced, plainly prove that they feel the most painful conviction of its popularity, as well as the most unwilling sense of its justice. 5

The incident reverberated on for months, a source of contention which was later to cost Fox his own position as Privy Councillor.6 NOTES 1 Memoirs-, p. 174. 2 DNB. 3 Morning Chronicle, 25 January 1798. 4 Francis, vol. 2, p. 203. 5 p. 97. 6 Fox repeated the toast, or one very like, at subsequent meetings of the Whig club (not just once, as commonly reported); the King's patience ran out in May and Fox was removed from the list of Privy Councillors.

95

NO. XII.

Jan.29. Thefollowing Ode was dropped into the letter-box in our Publisher's window. From its title - "A BIT OF AN O D E TO M R . F O X " - we were led to imagine there was some mistake in the business, and that it was meant to have been conveyed to Mr. Wright's1 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 afree translation, or rather, perhaps, imitation, of the 20 th Ode of the 2d Book of Horace? We have taken the liberty to subjoin the passages of which the parallel is the most striking.

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

A BIT OF AN ODE TO MR. FOX. I. On * 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 Home Tooke's) A bold and free Seceder.3 II. I í whom, dear Fox, you condescend To call your Honourable Friend, Shall live for everlasting: That + Stygian gallery I'll quit, Where Printers crowd me as I sit Half-dead with rage and fasting. III. I § feel! the growing down descends, Like goose-skin, to my fingers' ends Each nail becomes a feather: My ^ cropp'd head waves with sudden plumes, Which erst (like B—df—rd's, or his groom's) Unpower'd, brav'd the weather.4

* Non usitatiâ nee tenui ferar Pennâ, biformis per liquidum aethera Vates. t. . . Non ego, quam vocas Dilecte, Maecenas, obibo, + Nee Stygiâ cohibebor undâ. Sjamjam residunt cruribus asperse Pelles: et album mutor in alitem ^ Superné; nascunturque laeves

98

A

BIT OF AN ODE TO MR. FOX

IV I mount, I mount into the sky, "Sweet* bird," tot 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,* English, Irish Whigs shall read The pamphlets, letters, odes I breed, Charm'd with each bright endeavour: Alarmists^ tremble at my strain, E'en ^ Pitt, made candid by champaign, Shall hail Ad—r «the clever." VI. Though criticism assail my name, And luckless blunders blot my" fame, O!** make no needless bustle; As vain and idle it would be To waste one pitying thought on me, As tott "unplumb a R—ss—ll."5

Per digitos humerosque plumae. Visam gementis littora Bosphori, Syrtesque Gaetulas,* canorus Ales,t Hyperboreosque campos. +Me Colchus, et qui § dissimulât metum. . . . me peritus Discet Iber, Rhodanique ^ potor. Absint" inani funere naeniae. **Luctusque turpes, et querimoniae. ft. . . sepulchri Mitte supervacuos honores.

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

MR. FOX'S

BIRTH-DAT.

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 page, of what passed at a Meeting of the Friends of Freedom.6 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, and, above all, from our own personal knowledge. 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,7 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 eclat it had not experienced since the fatal schism of 1792.8 This hint, so reasonable in itself, was immediately adopted, and Sir Francis Burdett, 9 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, thatforgery was so common at present, that he hardly thought it prudent to admit all who might come with a bit of scribbled paper: 10 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 100

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England. It now remained to determine the sum: this, after a short discussion, was fixed at eight shillings and six pence per head, "which," said the editor of the Morning Post, "will show we cannot be persons of means rank, since we can afford, in these hard times, to give so much for a dinner;"* and Citizen Bosville11 was desired to advance the money, upon the credit of the Whig Fund. Previous to the meeting, the chairman despatched a note to Sir William Addington, 12 requesting that the Crown and Anchor might be exempted from the visitation of his runners during the morning of the 24th. 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 every thing 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 far as they paid down their money, Two or three had already passed in good order, when Mr. John Nicholl13 advanced, and, instead of 8s.6d. produced to the astonished receiver seventeen of his PRINTED SPEECHES, which, valuing them at 6d. 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 14 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. Nicholl 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 enquiry into the cause of this new tumult, we found that a wag (whom we afterwards discovered to be Mr. Jekyl)15 had played the member for Tregony a trick, having taken an opportunity, in the croud, of extract* Morning Post, Jan. 25. j" Morning Post, Jan. 25. This seems to be the room which the inaccurate reporter, in the True Briton of Thursday last, calls the LONG ROOM.

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ing the genuine speeches from the pocket of the honourable member, and replacing them by the same number of the spurious ones, printed for the publisher of this paper. These the man very properly refused to receive, alledging, 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, 16 a little ashamed for 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. B. 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.17

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 18 from the bosom of his shirt, which he put into the hands of the Duke of Bedford, who was appointed collector general 19 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, 20 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 2221. 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 Captain Morris, who pays for every thing with a song. 102

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Nothing material occurred during the dinner, which was allowed to be excellent of its kind, and where, at least as far as we saw, 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,* and addressed the company in these words: "Three virtuous men, citizens, have stood up in defence of liberty Maximilian Robespierre, Collot d'Herbois, 21 and Charles James Fox: - The first is guillotined; the second transported to Cayenne; and the third" - Here all eyes were immediately turned upon Mr. Fox, who now entered the room, supported by citizens John Gale Jones 22 and John Home Tooke 23 - "As the Right Honourable 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 rose, 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 extra ordinary measures: he would, therefore, if they pleased, compress * Morning Chronicle, Jan. 25. | Mr Fox alluded to P.26, in which we certainly endeavoured to do him justice. We have been told by the great bulk of our readers that we succeeded and the testimony of the Right Hon. Gentleman himself leaves us without a doubt on the subject. We earnestly recommend that article to every one who wishes to acquire a PERFECT KNOWLEDGE of Mr. Fox.

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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 23d,24 found there A BEGGING ADDRESS to the Nation, with DATE OBOLUM BELISARIO25 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, tradesmen, come 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, 27 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 28 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 JVore;29 Ye who heard - no; I mean, who did not hear me speak, While SHERIDAN,* damn him! affected to squeak, Date Obolum Belisario. * This appears to allude to Mr. Sheridan's honourable and manly conduct during the Mutiny; - a conduct of which, he may assure himself, his country will long retain a grateful recollection.

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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 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 Captain Morris, 30 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 dextrously 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 sumno, vinoque gravatus^1 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 upon him!" Here, as soon as he was seated, his noble friend called upon him for a song. The Captain sung 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 any thing like ridicule on the bible. (Much coughing and scraping.) Mr. Erskine32 took Heaven to witness that he thought the Captain meant no harm; and a 105

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

gentleman from Cambridge, whose name we could not learn, said, with great naivete, that it was no more than was done every day by his acquaintance. Mr. Tierney,33 however, persisted in his opposition to the song, and Capt. 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 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. 34 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. Home 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. Took'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 Home Tooke. - [Three times three.) Mr. Tooke rose, and spoke nearly as follows: - "You all know,

* This is not the first time that we have heard of Mr. Tierney's discouragement of impiety. - However we may differ from this gentleman in political opinion, we are not insensible to the merit of such conduct: - and we cannot avoid adding, that, however violent his opposition to the measures of government may be, it is, generally speaking, an English opposition.

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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 PORTRAITS35 I formerly published, nor the glaring light in which I hung up him and his father to the contemplation 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 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 - 'lam 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 * / / / ' " Mr Tooke then begged leave to propose Mr. Fox's health, for the second time, and sat down amidst a thunder of applause.î 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* - here a hiccup interrupted * Morning Post, Jan. 25. | Morning Chronicle, Jan. 25 J Morning Chronicle, Morning Post, Morning Herald, &c.

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his Grace, and a most violent cry of "No Sovereign! No Sovereign!" resounded through the room, and continued for several minutes, nothwithstanding the earnest intreaties 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 first intended - " T H E HEALTH OF O U R SOVEREIGN - T H E MAJESTY OF THE PEOPLE.*" - {Loud and incessant shouts of applause.)

A disgusting scene of confusion and uproar followed, which we shall not attempt to detail. The chairman sunk 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; 36 and not a few of them slept out the remainder of the night upon the steps of the neighbouring houses. The reporters of Jacobin papers were sought out, and conveyed home by the press-men, 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/) had his pockets picked of a clean white handkerchief and a note-book, after being severely beaten for deserting his former employers.

* 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 the regiment of Militia. •f See the True Briton of Thursday, Jan. 25.

108

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no.

XIII)

Acme and Septimius' takes further advantage of Fox's bucolic birthday celebration. At this event he was seen, in public, apparently at ease in the company of H o m e Tooke, a man whom Fox had previously taken care to keep at a distance. Fox had been partly responsible for Tooke's first prosecution, in 1774, had contested Tooke for the seat of Westminster, and appears to have distrusted his politics and disliked his person: the only persons whom Fox positively could not endure, were Home Tooke and Sheridan . . . At my own table I have heard him abuse Tooke as the greatest villain he had known.1 To the joy of the anti-jacobins, Fox, weary in long exile from power, was becoming incautious about the company he kept. The fuss over the Duke of Norfolk's toast at the Crown and Anchor kept the event in the public eye for several weeks. The attention thus drawn to the wooing of Fox by Tooke clearly delighted the anti-jacobins, who took full advantage: INDIGNATION has been expressed at every insinuation, that the friends of Mr.Fox, and of Messrs. JOHN HORNE TOOKE and JOHN GALE JONES, were

actuated by common sympathies, and looked to common objects. But who shall have the effrontery to tell us so now? Who is the reasoner so subtle, or so shameless, that shall, after the Fête of the 24th of January (5th Pluviôse, 6th Tear) attempt to draw the line of demarcation between the different Sects united to compose that Meeting of Two THOUSAND?2

T h e p o e m is shaped around declarations of two lovers in Catullus, Poems, 45, where Septimius usefully vows he would even give up Britain for his darling Acme. NOTES 1 Francis, vol. 2, p. 451. 2 Anti-Jacobin no. 13, p. 98. 109

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NO. XIII.

A CME AND

SEPTIMIUS;

l

OR,

THE HAPPY UNION CELEBRATED AT THE CROWN AND ANCHOR TAVERN.

Fox,* 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 Home Tooke, Doom me to ridicule and ruin, In the coarse hugî of Indian Bruin!" He spoke + and to the left and right, N—rf—Ik2 hiccupp'd with delight. Tooke,§ 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^ 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!" 110

Feb. 5.

ACME AND SEPTIMUS

He spoke, I' and to the left and right, N—rf—Ik hiccupp'd with delight. With this good omen they proceed;** Fond toasts their mutual passion feed; In Fox's breast Home Took prevails Before*** rich Ireland^ and South Wales? And Fox (un-read each other book), Is Law and Gospel to Home Took. When were such kindred souls** united! Or wedded pair so much delighted?

Sic, inquit, mea vita,^ Septimille, &c. II Hoc ut dixit, Amor sinistram, &c. **Nunc ab auspicio bono profecti Mutuis animis amant, amantur. Unam Septimius misellus Acmen Mavult quam^ Syrias Britanniasque. *+ Quis ullos homines beatiores Vidit, quis venerem auspicatiorem?

* Acmen Septimius suos amores Tenens in grêmio, mea, inquit, Acme, Ni te perdite amo, &c. t Caesio veniam obvius Leoni. + Hoc ut dixit, Amor sinistram, ut Dextram, sternuit approbationem. § At Acme leviter caput reflectens, Et dulcis pueri ébrios ocellos Illo purpúreo ore suaviata.

***

i.e. The Clerkship of the Pells in Ireland, and Auditorship of South Wales.

Ill

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XIV) First in this issue comes an encomium contributed by one of Pitt's ministers, Mr. Bragge,1 praising the work of The Anti-Jacobin, and crowded with capitals showing how hard the verse is working to impress. This is followed by an elaborate game revolving around two busts of Fox, one currently in the Crown and Anchor, the other once in St Petersburg, in a cabinet belonging to Catherine the Great. A flattering epigraph to the first bust, quoted in the Morning Post, provides the antijacobins with an excuse to remember the fate of the second: Fox, in consequence of his successful interference to preserve Catherine's conquests, enjoyed for a short time a high degree of her favour. She placed his bust in her cabinet between two of the most illustrious statesmen of modern ages, and spoke of him in language of the warmest encomium. But the part which he took in Parliament subsequent to 1793, and the eulogiums lavished by him on the French Revolution, soon changed the Empress's tones. She caused the bust to be removed, and when reproached with such a change in her conduct, she replied, 'C'etoit Monsieur Fox de quatre-vingt-onze que j'ai place dans mon cabinet.'2

The poem weaves a classical pattern around this beginning, implying parallels between the oratory of Fox and Aeschines, and that of Pitt with both Demosthenes and Cicero. The poem appears to have been written by Pitt himself;3 but the parallels go back a long way, in a House of Commons which delighted in comparing speakers with classical models. In March 1785, after a series of rancorous exchanges between Pitt and Fox, Sayer produced a print called 'Cicero in Catilinam', which had Fox as the disreputable Cataline (enemy of morals and the state), vanquished by Pitt as Cicero. The Tines' arrive at a similar picture. 112

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INTRODUCTORY

NOTE

NOTES 1 'Mr. Bragge, afterwards Bathurst': attribution by 'C. B.' in N&Q, 1st Series no. 81 (17 May 1851), p. 396. Charles Bragge, member for Bristol, was brother-in-law of Hiley Addington (see p. 23 above). 2 Wraxall, P. Memoirs, vol. 4, pp. 225-6. 3 According to James Boswell, who wrote: These lines were written by William PITT - as I learnt from his nephew on the 28th May 1808, at a dinner held in honour of his memory. N&QUt Series no. 79 (3 May 1851), p. 349

113

NO. XIV

FebJ 2. 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!

T O 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 proffer'd 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 Astraea's1 reign But soon the vizor dropp'd - her haggard face 114

To THE AUTHOR

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 shew'd AMBITION'S mantle reeking fresh with blood; Presumptuous FOLLY stood in REASON'S form, Pleas'd 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 humankind; Then talk'd 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, spreads 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;2 Had not the Civic Consul's watchful eye Track'd through the windings of conspiracy, The crew that leagued their country to o'erthrow; The base confederates of a Gallic* foe; * Conjuravere Cives noblissimi Patriam incendere - Gallorum gentem infestissimam nomini Romano in bellum arcessunt - Dux Hostium cum exercitu supra caput est. - ORAT. CATON.ap. SALLUST. 3

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Expos'd, confounded, sham'd, and forc'd away, The "JACOBIN REFORMER* 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; 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 inspir'd, or foreign gold; Traitors absolv'd, and libellers releas'd, The recreant peer, or renegado priest; The Sovereign-peopled 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 take the listless, slumb'ring as they lie, Lapt in the 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;

* Turn Catalina polliceri tabulas novas, proscriptionem locupletium, Magistratus, Sacerdotia, rapinas, alia omnia quae bellum atque lubido Victorum fert. - SALLUST.5

116

To THE AUTHOR

That standard, which the Patriot Barons bore, Restor'd, from Runnimede's resounding shore; Which since consign'd to William's guardian hand, Wav'd 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 earthborn, 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; Admir'd, 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 Knoll, Charles Surface cries; - 6 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 bother. Morning Post, Feb. 6.

To make our Readers some amends for this miserable doggerel, we will present them, in our turn, with some lines written under a bust, NOT at the Crown andAnchor, by an English traveller. We believe they are more just; we are certain they are more poetical.

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LIMES Written by a Traveller at Czarco-zelo under the Bust of a certain Orator, once placed between those of Demosthenes and Cicero.1 I. The Grecian Orator of old, With scorn rejected Philip's8 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' honour'd 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 iEschines9 of later days. V. What chosen name to Tully's10 join'd, Is thus announced to distant climes? - Behold, to lasting shame consign'd, The Catiline11 of modern times!

118

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XV) Here the periodical's finest creation is introduced, the portmanteau poet Mr Higgins (although this first poem is not 'discovered' to be his until Issue no. XXI). In time he will come to embody every subversive folly, secret vice, and warped ideal to which the anti-jacobins wish to call attention. Higgins features in eight issues in all, gathering complexity and conviction as the weeks pass. Each appearance is nominally particular, selecting one principal source to mimic, but parodies shade one into another, and in time the character of Higgins acquires its own momentum. His first incarnation is modelled on Richard Payne Knight, 1 whose six-volume Progress of Civil Society appeared in 1796. Knight's Progress is an Evolution of the Species in verse, beginning at the beginning of the world, and ending in modern France. It is not in itself a provocative poem. But the anti-jacobins make Knight a figurehead of scientific and quasi-scientific perfectibilism, of the kind which underwrote the French revolution and encouraged Utopian enthusiasm in England. Inspired by Priestley's investigations, for example, Coleridge wrote of 'heavenly Science: and from Science Freedom', in his Poems of 1796. Priestley and Coleridge, along with the likes of Beddoes and Erasmus Darwin are all visible through Higgins, and will grow more so in subsequent issues (the parodie footnotes to this first poem are already more reminiscent of Darwin than of Payne Knight). In this issue Higgins imitates Knight's sentimental primitivism, and the way that evolution in his poem is overseen by 'Almighty Love! whose unresisted sway, / Earth, air, and sea, with one accord obey'.2 The parody is delightfully achieved: lines like 'Mark the grim savage scoop his light canoe' are indistinguishable from Knight at his best. In Knight's account, everything in the natural world, except man119

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

kind, has reached its allotted locus on the Chain of Being, and knows it: Beneath the tropics only, tigers growl, And bears, o'er snowy mountains only, prowl; Vast elephants through Indian forests stray, And elks, through Lapland snows, explore their way; In Egypt's loam, beneath a torrid sky, Conceal'd the tortoise and ichneumon lie.3

Man, however, has not settled. Born savage, under Africa's brutal sun, he wanders into more temperate climes; these begin to release his naturally-rmWemotions, but the state of grace for which he is destined has not yet arrived. In miniature this describes Knight's conviction: innately good, man is driven to intemperate behaviour only by external influences, whether climatic, hieratic, or monarchical. Given the right environment, 'social love' will 'embrace / Kind after kind, and spread from race to race'. 4 Higgins's version rapidly strings together a mock Chain, each link of which is forged by love, which 'fierce pangs to Perch imparts, / Shrinks shrivell'd shrimps, but opens oysters' hearts'. Soon everything in the natural world is in its place, for 'who has seen the mailed lobster rise, / Clap his broad wings, and soaring claim the skies?'. Although lobsters rightly limit their ambitions, Higgins's poem ends implying that the Perfect Man would be free to defy gravity, were he not everywhere in chains.

NOTES 1 Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824), scholar, archaeologist, numismatist, connoisseur of antiquities, landscaping enthusiast, and poet. A supporter of Fox, he became MP for Leominster in 1780, and later for Ludlow. 2 Progress^.

1,11.91-2.

3 Progress, bk. 5,11. 13-18.

4 Bk. 2,11. 73-4.

120

NO. XV. Feb. 19. THE PROGRESS OF MAN. A DIDACTIC POEM. IN FORTY CANTOS, WITH NOTES CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY: CHIEFLY OF A PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCY. DEDICATED T O 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 - Mackarel. - Bears remarkablefor their fur Mackarel cried on a Sunday - Birds do not graze - nor Fishesfly - nor Beasts live in the Water. - Plants equally contented with their lot: - Potatoes - Cabbage Lettuce - Leeks - Cucumbers. - M A N 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 apart of it - lights afire - APOSTROPHE to Fires - Spits andjachs notyet 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.

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

some great, supreme o'er-ruling Power1 Stretch'd forth its arm at nature's natal hour, Composed this mighty whole with plastic skill, Wielding the jarring elements at will? Or whether sprung from Chaos' mingling storm, 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 instinctive mind, Which to one centre points diverging lines, Confounds, refracts, invig'rates, and combines? Whether the joys of earth, the hopes of heaven, By Man to God, or God to Man, were given? If virtue leads to bliss, or vice to woe? Who rules above? or who reside below? 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! WHETHE R

Let us plainer, steadier theme pursue - 2 Mark the grim savage scoop his light canoe; Mark the dark rook, on pendant branches hung,

5

10

15(

20

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. T h e 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. 3 Ver. 12. T h e influence of Mind upon Matter, comprehending the whole question of the Existence of Mind as independent Matter, or as co-existent with it, and of Matter considered as an intelligent and self-dependent Essences 4 will make the subject of a larger Poem in 127 Books, now preparing under the same auspices. Ver 14. See Godwin's Enquirer; Darwin's Zoonomia; Paine; Priestley, &c. &c. & c ; also all the French Encyclopedists. 5 Ver. 16 Quœstio spinosa et contortula.6

122

THE PROGRESS OF MAN

With anxious fondness feed her cawing young. Mark the fell leopard through the desert prowl, Fish prey on fish, and fowl regale on fowl; H o w Lybian tigers' chawdrons love assails, And warms, midst seas of ice, the melting whales; Cools the crimpt cod, fierce pangs to perch imparts, Shrinks shrivelPd shrimps, but opens oysters' hearts; T h e n say, how all these things together tend 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. T h e feather'd race with pinions skim the air Not so the mackarel, and still less the bear: This roams the wood, carniv'rous, for his prey; That with soft roe, pursues his watery way: This slain by hunters, yields his shaggy hide; That, caught by fishers, is on Sundays cried. But each contented with his humble sphere, Moves unambitious through the circling year; N o r e'er forgets the fortune of his race, N o r pines to quit, or strives to change, his place. Ah! who has seen the mailed lobster rise,

25

30

35

40

Ver. 26. "Add thereto a tiger's chawdron." - Macbeth.7 Ver. 26, 27. "In softer notes bids Lybian lions roar, And warms the whale on Zembla's frozen shore." Progress of Civil Society. Book 1. ver. 98 Ver. 29. "An oyster may be cross'd in love." - Mr. Sheridan's Critic.8 Ver. 34. Birds fly. Ver, 35. But neither fish, nor beasts - particularly as here exemplified. Ver. 36. The bear. Ver. 37. The mackarel - There are also hard-roed mackarel Sed de his alio loco.9 Ver. 38. Bear's grease, orfat, is also in great request; being supposed to have a crinipdrous, or hair-producing quality.10 Ver. 39. There is a special Act of Parliament which permits mackarel to be cried on Sundays.

123

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC

AGE:

VOLUME 1

Clap her broad wings, and soaring claim the skies? W h e n did the owl, descending from her bow'r Crop, 'midst the fleecy flocks, the tender flow'r; O r the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb, In the salt wave, and fish-like strive to swim?

45

T h e same with plants - potatoes 'tatoes breed - ] Uncostly cabbage springs from cabbage seed; Lettuce to lettuce, leeks to leeks succeed; N o r e'er did cooling cucumbers presume To flow'r like myrtle, or like violets bloom. - M a n , only, - rash, refined, presumptuous M a n , 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 m e a n e r things, For Faith and Fetters - Laws, and Priests, and Kings. (75 be continued.)

50

55

60

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.

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. Ver. 49. Salt wave - wave of the sea - "briny wave." - Poetae passim.1 ' Ver. 50. A still stronger contrast, and a greater shame to man, is found in plants; - they are contented - he restless and changing. Mens agitât mihi, nee plácida contenta quiete est}2 Ver. 50. Potatoes 'tatoes breed. Elison for the sake of verse, not meant to imply that the root degenerates. - Not so with Man Mox daturus Progeniem vitiosiorem. ' 3

124

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XVI) Payne Knight returns as notional source of parody in this renewed 'Progress', but again others - particularly Darwin - are not far below the surface. This time the critique focuses on pastoral nostalgia and naivety. Behind Payne Knight, Darwin, and other such writers, is the giant Rousseau, and here particularly Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality (1754), which held that 'man is naturally good, and only by institutions is he made bad'. Rousseau's campaign for savage simplicity and innocence drew a tart response from Voltaire which serves to paraphrase the anti-jacobins's impatience: I have received your new book against the h u m a n race, and thank you for it. Never was such cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. O n e longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it. l

Knight's optimism, like that of Darwin and Rousseau, evades the problem of evil. Discarding, displacing, or disinterested in original sin, such optimism skates or falters in explanation of violence, from its first carnivorous manifestations to the sophisticated slaughter of war and revolution. As throughout, the anti-jacobins are determined to draw attention to the weakness. A footnote alludes Pope's Windsor Forest, but the engagement with Pope is more than passing. Knight compared himself with Pope; the anti-jacobins take him at his word, and offer a parallel. Pope's poem also considers the primitive state, but less rosily: Not thus the land appear'd in ages past, A dreary desert, and a gloomy waste, To savage beasts and savage laws a prey. 2

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Pope celebrates the passing of barbaric times, and grows progressively more patriotic and monarchist in his paean to the tended Royal forest. NOTES 1 Quoted in The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell, p. 663. 2 Windsor Forest, \\. 43-5.

126

NO. XVI.

Feb. 26. 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?1 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 farther, 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. 127

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC

AGE: VOLUME 1

PROGRESS O F MAN. Lo! the rude savage, free from civil strife, Keeps the smooth tenour of his guiltless life; Restrained 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 slight, the wondering Savage stands, Rolls his broad eyes, and claps his lifted hands; Then restless roams - and loaths his wonted food; Shuns the salubrious stream, and thirsts for blood. By thought matur'd, a n d 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; T h e ' unfashion'd bow with labouring efforts bends In circling form, and joins the' unwilling ends. Next some tall reed he seeks - with sharp-edg'd stone Shapes the fell dart, a n d points with whiten'd bone.

65

70

75

80

Ver. 61-66. Simple state of savage life - previous to the pastoral, or even the hunter state. Ver. 66. First savages disciples of Pythagoras.2 Ver. 67, &c. Desire of animal food natural only to beasts, or to man in a state of civilized society. First suggested by the circumstance here related. Ver. 71. Pigs of the Chinese breed most in request. Ver. 76. First formation of a bow. Introduction to the science of archery. Ver. 79. Grass twisted, used for a string, owing to the want of other materials not yet invented. Ver. 83. Bone - fish's bone found on the sea-shore, shark's teeth, &c. &c.

128

THE PROGRESS

OF MAN II

T h e n forth h e fares. A r o u n d in careless play, Kids, pigs, a n d lambkins unsuspecting stray. With grim delight he views the supportive b a n d , Intent on blood, a n d lifts his murderous hand. Twangs the bent bow - resounds the fateful dart, Swift-wing'd a n d trembles in a porker's heart. Ah! hapless porker! what can now avail T h y back's stiff bristles, or thy curly tail? Ah! what avail those eyes so small a n d round, L o n g p e n d e n t ears, a n d snout that loves the ground? N o t unreveng'd thou diest! - In after times From thy spilt blood shall spring u n n u m b e r ' d crimes. Soon shall the slaught'rous a r m s that wrought thy woe, Improv'd by malice, deal a deadlier blow; W h e n social M a n shall p a n t for nobler game, A n d 'gainst his fellow m a n the vengeful weapon aim. 3 As love, as gold, as jealousy inspires, As wrathful hate, or wild ambition fires, U r g e d by the stateman's craft, the tyrant's rage, Embattled nations endless wars shall wage, Vast seas of blood the ravaged field shall stain, A n d millions perish - that a King m a y reign! For blood once shed, new wants a n d wishes rise; Each rising w a n t invention quick supplies. To roast his victuals is M a n ' s next desire, So two d r y sticks h e rubs, a n d lights a fire; Hail fire! &c. &c. 4

85

90

95

100

105

no

Ver. 90. Ah! what avails, &c. - See Pope's Description of the Death of a Pheasant.5 Ver. 93. "With leaden eye that loves the ground."6 Ver. 94. The first effusion of blood attended with the most dreadful consequences to mankind. Ver. 97. Social Man's wickedness opposed to the simplicity of savage life. Ver. 100 and 101. Different causes of war among men. Ver. 106. Invention of fire - first employed in cookery, and produced by rubbing dry sticks together.

129

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XVII) This issue returns to the alliance, or dalliance, of Fox and Home Tooke. The 'Imitation', written as if by Fox, upturns a charming lovepoem from Bion, to have Tooke as a perverted Cupid. With Fox's affection for the House of Commons weakening, the anti-jacobins show Fox seduced into overtly radical politics. T h e New Coalition' redoubles their efforts, mercilessly reminding readers of a previous affair and so of Fox's opportunism, his shifting, 'shuffling' principles. Following his resignation under Shelburne in 1782, Fox recovered ministerial position by a coalition with Lord North. It was a shameful episode: Tox knew, as his friends were obliged to admit, that he had made a shabby bargain with a man whose political convictions were directly opposed to his own, and that his motive, like North's, was the pursuit of power'. 1 Fox's 'Indian bantling' was the Bill he subsequently proposed, on 18 November 1783, derived largely from Burke. This was an attempt to sort out a besetting problem, the decadence of the East India Company. Along the way, it would have effectively placed much of the company influence in Fox's hands, and greatly strengthened his position. The Bill became the centre of Machiavellian double-dealings, and was finally scuppered by the King in the House of Lords. This brought down North's administration and returned Pitt to power. NOTE 1 Reilly, Pitt, p. 75.

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NO. XVII.

March 5.

We are obliged to a learned Correspondent for the following ingenious imitation of Bion.l - 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 andprogress 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 lesson, says Bion, I forgot what I lately taught Cupid, and recollect in its stead, only what Cupid taught me. IMITATION, &C.

Written at St. Ann's Hill.

had sleep my eyes o'erspread, Ere Alecto2 sought my bed; In her left hand a torch she shook, And in her right led J—n H—ne T—ke. SCARCE

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 M—ra sung of lights3 Blown out by troops o' stormy nights; 131

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

How E—sk—e,4 borne on rapture's wings, At clubs and taverns sweetly sings Of .y^fwhile yawning Whigs attend &//Tirst, last, midst, and without end; How B—df—d5 piped, ill-fated Bard! Half-drown'd, in empty Palace-yard;6 How L—sd—ne,7 nature's simple child, At B—w—d trills his wood-notes wild 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!"

T—ke 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."

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,9 and for which, though confessedly in a lower style of poetry, and conveived rather in the slang, or Brentford dialect,™ than in the classical Doric11 of theforegoing Poem, we have many thanks to return to an ingenious academical Correspondent. 132

THE NEW COALITION

T H E NEW C O A L I T I O N . I. E WHEN erst I coalesced with North, 12 And brought my Indian bantling12, forth, In place - I smil'd at faction's storm, Nor dreamt of radical Reform. II. T. While yet no patriot project pushing, Content I thump'd Old Brentford's cushion, I pass'd my life so free and gaily; Nor dreaming of that d—d Old Bailey}* III. E Well!" now my favourite preacher's Mckle,15 He keeps for Pitt a rod in pickle; His gestures fright the' astonish'd gazers; His sarcasms cut like Packwood's razors. 16 IV. 77 ThelwaWs my man for state alarm; I love the rebels of Chalk Earm;17 Rogues that no statutes can subdue, Who'd bring the French, and head them too. V. E A whisper in your ear, J—n H—ne, For one great end we both were born, Alike we rear, and rant, and bellow Give us your hand, my honest fellow. VI. T. 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. 133

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XVIII) Reinforcing the drift of the previous issue, no. XVIIFs 'Ode' again recalls Fox's birthday and Norfolk's bibulous toast to the 'Sovereignty of The People'. The 'Ode' plays on one from Horace, revelling in eloquence brought on by wine. The anti-jacobins were not alone in keeping the affair alive. The daily papers went through extraordinary contortions to prove that Norfolk had not meant what he was charged with meaning, and should not be punished; alternatively, that he had, and was a martyr to the cause. Fox meanwhile was busy repeating the toast, or one very like, at subsequent meetings of the Whig club, recklessly playing into the hands of the anti-jacobins.

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NO. XVIII. March 12. We are indebtedfor the following exquisite Imitation of one of the most beautiful Odes of Horace,1 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.

O Bacchus, in thy train,* Dost thou transport thy votary's brain With sudden inspiration? Where dost thou bid me quaff my wine, And roast new measures to combine WHITHER,

T h e Great and Little Nation?2

Say, in what tavern I shall raised My nightly voice in Charley's praise, And dream of future glories, When F—x, with salutary sway (Terror the Order of the Day)3

Shall reign o'er K—ng and Tories?

My mighty feelings must have way! + A toast I'll give - a thing I'll say, As yet unsaid by any, " O U R S'VEREIGN LORD!" - let those who doubt My honest meaning, hear me out "His MAJESTY - the MANY!"

Plain folks may be surpris'd, and stare,§ As much surpris'd as B—b Ad—r 4 At Russia's wooden houses; And Russian snows, that lie so thick; ^ 136

IMITATION

OF HORACE

And Russian boors*** that daily kick, With barbarous foot, their spouses. What joy, when drunk, at midnight's hour, I 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 wine, and gin, and beer, ** The nymphs of Billingsgate you cheer; Naiads robust and hearty; As Brooks's5 chairmen fit to wield Their stout oak bludgeons in the field, To aid our virtuous party. Mortals! no common voice you hear ît 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. HOR. LIB. III. CARM 25. DITHYRAMBUS.

* Quo me Bacche rapis, tui Plenum? quae in memora, aut quos agor in specus, Velox mente nova? tQuibus Antris egregii Caesaris aûdiar Eternum meditans decus Stellis inserere, et consilio Jovis? + Dicam insigne, recens, adhuc Indicium ore alio. §Non secus in jugis Exsomnis stupet Evias, Hebrum Prospiciens,

ft

^et nive candidam Thracen, ac pede babaro Lustratam Rhodopen. H Ut mihi devio Ripas, et vacuum nemus Mirari libet! ** O Naiadum potens Baccharumque valentium Proceras manibus vertere fraxinos. Nil parvum, aut humili modo, Nil mortale loquar. Dulce periculum est O Lenaee sequi deum Cingentem viridi têmpora pampino.

*** 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.

137

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XIX) Sir Archibald Macdonald, who contributed the Bedford ballad to Issue no.VIII, had a taste for mock-medieval tax-collecting balladry This sophisticated reworking of Chevy Chase is also his. The occasion which prompts the poem is another evasion of taxes by a member of the opposition, but the energy of the verse derives from agile snobbery. Pitt's graduated tax on incomes, introduced in January 1798, accompanied the increased Assessed Taxes. It was, unsurprisingly, highly unpopular. Voluntary gifts, over and above, were also called for from true patriots; the taxes were presented as a test of loyalty to one's country. The graduated tax was levied on all with incomes of over £60 per annum, but those with large numbers of children were allowed a deduction of ten per cent. The advantage taken of this by the Duke of Northumberland, with an income of 'full Sixty Thousand Pounds' gives Macdonald his opening. Macdonald uses Chevy Chase to shape a sneer at the Duke's lineage. The genealogies are complicated. Hugh Smithson received the title Duke of Northumberland (of the third creation) from his father, Hugh Smithson. Hugh the elder acquired it through marriage to Elizabeth Seymour. She inherited the ancient estate of the Percys of Northumberland (despite her grandfather's attempts to disinherit her), with the title passing to her husband and his heirs. Hugh the elder then took the name of Percy by act of parliament. The original Chevy Chase celebrated the exploits of Sir Percy, conceivably (for Macdonald's purposes) the famous 'Hotspur', son of Sir Henry Percy, Duke of Northumberland of thefirstcreation. It is a bloody and valorous tale of a English aristocrat challenging a Scot:

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The Perse owt of Northomborlande And a vowe to God mayd he, That he wolde hunte in the mountayne Off Chyviat within days thre, In the mauger of doughtè Dogles, And all that ever with him be

The ballad was made popular by yet another Percy: Thomas, Bishop of Dromore (1768-1808), who opens his famous collection, the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, with Chevy Chase. Of humble origins, Percy believed himself related to the noble family, and devoted himself to it. To return almost full circle, he dedicates the Reliques (in the 4th edition, 1794) to Elizabeth Seymour. Macdonald uses these associations to draw attention to the unaristocratic background and behaviour of the family Elizabeth married into.

139

NO. XIX.

March 19. For the authenticity of the inclosed 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.

God prosper long our Noble King, Our lives and safeties all: A woeful story late there did In Britain's Isle befall. D—ke Sm—ths—n, of N—rth—mb A vow to God did make; The choicest gifts in fair England, For him and his to take.

-rl—nd,1

"Stand fast, my merry men all, " he cried, "By M—ra's Earl and me, And we will gain place, wealth, and pow'r As Arm'd Neutrality.2

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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." 3 "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 F—x, A leader ware and tried, And Ersk—ne, Sh—r—d—n, and Gr—y Fought stoutly by his side.4 Throughout our English Parliament, They dealt with 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 D—ke Sm—ths—n to the heart, In shape of Powder tax.5 Sore leaning on his crutch, he cried, "Crop, crop, my merrymen all; No guinea for your heads 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,6 Within his hand bore he. "Yield thee, D—ke Sm—ths—n, and behold The Assessment thou must pay; Dogs, horses, houses, coaches, clocks, And servants in array." 141

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"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 P—rcy's blood Through these cold veins doth run; With Hotspur's castle, blazon, name, I still am poor Sm—ths—n. 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,7 To swear shall be content, That I have children eight, and claim Deductions, Ten Per Centr God bless us all from factious Foes, And French Fraternal Kiss; And grant the King may never make Another Duke like this.

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XX)

Sent in anonymously, the ' O d e to Jacobinism' imitates T h o m a s Gray's ' H y m n to Adversity' (1753): Daughter of Jove, relentless Power, Thou Tamer of the human breast, Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour, The Bad affrights, afflicts 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. Gray's p o e m climbs slowly, through the trials of Adversity, to her benedictions: Thy form benign, oh Goddess, wear, Thy milder influence import, Thy philosophic Train be there To soften, not to wound my heart. The gen'rous 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. In form and phrase the ' O d e ' follows the ' H y m n ' closely, but the deity of the ' O d e ' is a grotesque inversion.

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NO. XX.

Mar. 26. ODE TO JACOBINISM. I. 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, unpity'd and alone! DAUGHTER

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, leagu'd with their invet'rate foe. III. Scar'd at thy frown terrific, fly The morals (antiquated brood) Domestic Virtue, Social Joy, And Faith that has for ages stood; 144

ODE TO JACOBINISM

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 array'd, Immers'd 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; Not yet in Gallic terrors clad, Nor circled by the Marseilles Band,l (As by th'initiate thou art seen) With thund'ring cannon, Guillotine, With screaming horrors 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.

145

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XXI) Higgins reappears to invoke another aspect of the radical Muse: her promiscuity. After violence, this is the Jacobinical vice most useful to Canning and colleagues, with which to exaggerate the dangers of liberal agitation. The poem opens with Payne Knight as the source again. He is vulnerable, with an unfair reputation for an interest in all things priapic in early societies.1 The first sentence of the parody's 'Contents' alludes to Book Three of Knight's Progress, where he insists that the power of dissolution in marriage will confirm, rather than undermine, the contract: 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. 2

The parody then rapidly widens. The setting was topical. 'Otaheite' 3 had immediately promiscuous associations. In spite of Captain Cook's rigid discipline on board ship, accounts of his travels (referred to in footnotes in Knight's poem) vividly conveyed the laxity of sexual mores in the South Seas,4 and the sailors' enjoyment of such freedoms on the islands. This impression was confirmed by the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789. Among the causes for mutiny - which emerged from Bligh's published account (1790) and its refutation by surviving mutineers - was the error of the captain in protracting the stay at Tahiti. The mutiny confirmed the South Seas as a dangerous paradise capable of corrupting Her Majesty's Navy, as Sir John Barrow's account (1831) makes clear: This lovely island is most intimately connected with the mutiny which took place on board the Bounty, and with the fate of the mutineers and their

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

innocent offspring. Its many seducing temptations have been urged as one, if not the main, cause of the mutiny.5

The island is a perfect backdrop for a parody of sensual indulgence, where English self-control is abandoned and consequences left to look after themselves. Erasmus Darwin's sexual investigations are also present in the parody, but Darwin is to receive special attention in later issues and is only in the background (particularly the footnotes) of this one. William Godwin is certainly discernable. Political Justice was notoriously outspoken on marriage as a form of legal selfishness. The anti-jacobins' reference, in their introduction, to contending 'with infinite spirit and philosophy against the factitious sacredness' of marriage catches the tones of V2: The abolition of marriage will be attended with no evils. We are apt to represent it to ourselves as the harbinger of brutal lust and depravity. But it really happens in this as in other cases, that the positive laws which are made to restrain our vices, irritate and multiply them.6

Godwin's involvement with Mary Wollstonecraft added a frisson to this theorizing. Her advocacy of sexual freedom, and on a personal level her love affairs first with the married Fuseli, and then with Gilbert Imlay (with whom she had a child), were the source of much gossip. The parody moves on to take timely advantage of recent events at the Theatre-Royal, Drury Lane. On 24 March Sheridan had staged The Stranger, a translation of Kotzebue's Menschenhass und Rue. This caused quite a stir. The heroine, 'Mrs Haller', first appears as the housekeeper of a Baron Winterton. Her unhappy past is then teased out. As the Morning Chronicle excitedly summarized it, on 26 March: Seduced by a villain, she had abandoned her husband and her family. A mind like hers was not formed for vice: she repents, and flying to solitude under the protection of the Countess of Winterton, she spends her life in contrition for her guilt, and in the practice of virtue.

At the time, this was, as the Morning Chronicle wrote (26 March), 'a bold, and in some measure a new attempt' in drama. On 28 March the Morning Chronicle reports: 147

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1 T h e polite circles have had much conversation on the fable of the new Play. Some think the Lady's repentance possible, - others impossible', of the former class are all who have never tried the experiment, and of the latter all who have tried an action of damages.

The link between Kotzebue and English radicalism is more than one of morals in marriage. The anti-jacobins rightly sensed a deeper engagement, and are to investigate this in later issues. Hazlitt wrote of The Stranger, and German Tragedy in general, that: We see the natural always pitted against the social man; and the majority who are not of the privileged classes, take part with the former. 7

Altogether, this Canto of Higgins's Progress is a hotch-potch, loosely containing many of the ingredients which are later to settle into a coherent whole. NOTES 1 In 1786 Payne Knight published An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus, lately existing at hernia, in the Kingdom of Naples, together with A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, And its Connexion with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients. T h e engravings in this volume are bold. T h e Preface to a privately printed edition of 1865 notes: It happened that, in a time when the violence of political feelings ran very high, the author, who was a member of the House of Commons, belonged to the liberal party, and his book was spitefully misrepresented, with the design of injuring his character. Indeed it is a scholarly, dispassionate work, but much attacked (by Matthias in the Pursuits of Literature among others). Payne Knight defends himself in the Introduction to his Progress of Civil Society. 2 Bk. 3.11. 156-9. 3 'Otaheite': Tahitian nouns are frequently prefixed with the common article V or 'o', meaning 'a' or 'the'. 18th-century visitors to the island thus assumed it to be called 'Otaheite' rather than Tahiti. 4 For a direct connection with Paris, see Helen Maria Williams reporting on the fashion for women to dress 'á la Sauvage\ revealingly draped, and bare of foot, as reported in the Morning Chronicle 11 April 1798:

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INTRODUCTORY

NOTE

These gentle savages, however, found themselves so rudely treated whenever they appeared, by the sovereign multitude, that at length the fashions of Otaheite were thrown aside, and Greece remains the order of the day. 5 Mutiny, p. 4. 6 pp. 850-1. 7 Howe, vol. 6, pp. 360-1.

149

NO. XXI.

April 2. We premised 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 23d 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 M R . HIGGINS, of St. Mary Axe),1 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 "REFORM'D HOUSE-KEEPER," 2 which he expresses a hope of seeing transfused into the language of this country.

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THE

PROGRESS OF MAN HI

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. - OTHAEITE 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 Chirugery. - Catching a Thunny Fish. -Arrival at Otaheite. - Cast Anchor - land -Natives astonished. - Love - Liberty - Moral - Natural - Religious - Contrasted with European Manners - Strictness - Licence - 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. - Resume of the Arguments against Marriage. - Conclusion. PROGRESS OF MAN. EXTRACT. HAIL! beauteous lands* that crown the Southern Seas;

Dear happy seats of Liberty and Ease! Hail! whose green coasts the peaceful ocean laves, Incessant washing with his watery waves! Delicious islands! to whose envied shore Thee, gallant Cook!3 the ship Endeavour^ bore. * 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. f His Majesty's ship Endeavour

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There laughs the sky, there zephyr's frolic train, And light-wing'd loves, and blameless pleasure 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. Learn hence, each nymph, whose free aspiring mind Europe's cold laws,^ and colder customs* bind O! learn, what Nature's genial laws decree What Otaheite § is, let Britain be!

* Injustice to our Author we must observe, that there is a delicacy in this picture, which the words, in their common acceptation, do not convey. T h e 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 shepherd is a perfect sinecure (there being no sheep on the island) the mind of the reader is not offended by any disagreeable allusion. f Laws made by Parliaments, or Kings. % Customs voted or imposed by ditto, not the customs here alluded to. § M. Bailly 5 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.

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Of WHIST or CRIBBAGE mark th'amusing game The Partners changing, but the SPORT the same.6 Else would the Gamester's anxious ardour cool, Dull every deal, and stagnant every pool. - Yet must one* 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^ narrow'd 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,+ 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§ view, A Kotzbue's bold emphatic pencil drew; Such as, translated in some future age, Shall add new glories to the British stage;

* 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. | As a stream - simile of dissimilitude, a mode of illustration familiar to the ancients. { Walks of polished life, see "Kensington Gardens," a poem.7 § Germânia - Germany; a country in Europe, peopled by the Germani; alluded to in Caesar's Commentaries, page 1. Vol. 2. edit. prin. - See also several Didactic Poems.

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- While the moved audience sit in dumb despair, "Like Hottentots,* 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 'kerchif colour'd, and her apron check. Can that be Adelaide, that "soul of whim," 8 Reformed in practice, and in manner prim? - On household cares intent,^ 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,* 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.

* A beautiful figure of German literature. The Hottentots remarkable for staring at each other - God knows why. t This delightful and instructive picture of domestic life, is recommended to all keepers of Boarding Schools, and other seminaries of the same nature. { 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?

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XXII) This exercise in Sapphics recalls the jaunty early days of the periodical, tormenting Southey. It was contributed by 'Nares', 1 and happily joins in the game of classical one-upmanship, flaunting its dexterity with this difficult metre. The poem has nothing novel to offer in content, however, and simply rehearses material already much-used in earlier issues. 'Nares' has been variously identifed, but a likely author is the Reverend Robert Nares, who wrote a pamphlet entitled Principles of English Government deducedfrom Reason, supported by English Experience, and opposed to French Errors (London, 1792). This is packed with antijacobinical sentiments: Men escaped from chains have always raved as [the French] do of liberty and equality, in proportion to the galling of their former bonds: but this is not wisdom, it is only extravagance. 2

Also in this issue is another spoof correspondent, 'Sam Shallow', apparently by the same hand as 'Letitia Sourby' in Issue no.VI, and equally engaging. Sam simply tells a similar story of domestic upheaval from a slightly different perspective. NOTES 1 Attribution by Wright, the publisher of The Anti-Jacobin, supported by Douce, who offers C N'. Rice-Oxley suggests Nares may have been either Edward Nares (1762-1841), miscellaneous writer and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, or Robert Nares (1753-1829), 'assistant-librarian at British Museum'. T h e latter, who was many other things besides a librarian, is the author of (among much else) the Principles of English Government. 2 p. vii.

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NO. XXII.

April 9. 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,l Richard Stanynhurst,2 or Sir Philip Sidney3 himself, have produced in that style -1 mean, of course,your sublime and beautiful Knife-Grinder, of which it is not too high an encomium to say, that it evenrivalsthe efforts of thefine-ear3d 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 4 Gave Ministers so much alarm, And preach'd that Kings did only harm, I fee'd 'em. By Bedord's cut I've trimm'd my locks,5 And coal-black is my knowledge-box, Callous to all, except hard knocks Of thumpers; 156

THE JACOBIN

My eye a noble fierceness boasts, My voice as hollow as a ghost's, My throat oft wash'd 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-* al suffrage. Wakefield6 I love - adore Home Tooke,7 With pride on Jones, 8 and Thelwall 9 look, And hope that they, by hook or crook, Will prosper. But they deserve the worst of ills, And all the' abuse of all our quills, Who form'd of strong and gagging Bills10 A cross pair. Extinct since then each Speaker's fire, And silent ev'ry daring lyre,^ Dum-founded they whom I would hire To lecture. Tied up, alas! is every tongue On which conviction nightly hung,+ And Thelwall looks, though yet but young, A spectre.

B.O.B.

* 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.11 j There is a doubt, whether this word should not have been written Liar. X These words, of conviction and hanging, have so ominous a sound, it is rather odd they were chosen.

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE

SIR,

ANTI-JACOBW.

you had some time back published a letter from a young woman, 12 complaining her father had been misled by these new fangled French doctrines, I take the liberty (though I am but a poor scribe) to relate to you the history of my own family. We live in a small town in Warwickshire. Father is a shoe-maker; I am his apprentice; and mother as eminent a clear-starcher as any in the county. We were very hard-working people, and had plenty of customers, and were as comfortable a family as could be, till about two months ago, when father one evening carried a pair of shoes to the master of the Red Lion. It was twelve o'clock before he came home; he was very drunk, and came in singing (as he called it) patriotic songs; father never could sing in his life, but he made a frightful noise, and mother and I had much ado to get him to bed. Being usually a sober man, next day he was very sick, and could not sit at his work; and a strange ill-looking man came and asked to speak to him, and they were shut up together ever so long, and when he went away father said it was Citizen Rigshaw, a member of the Corresponding Society, and occasionally steward of the Whig Club, a great philosopher, and A patriot, and had been sent down to enlighten and reform, and organize (I think he called it) this part of the nation, and father was to help him. Father said it would be a GLORIOUS work! and FULL OF HUMAN WISDOM and INTEGRITY! Meantime, however, his own work stood still, and we were half starved. My mother had a great affection for my father, and a high opinion of his understanding, but when she found his studying politics made us none the richer, and his neglecting his work made us all the poorer, she grew somewhat crusty, and one evening, when father had been keeping his Decade-day:,13 as he calls it - (for we had no Sundays now, though we did no work,) mother plucked up a spirit, and well scolded him. He only smiled, and told her philosophers did not like a noise; HEARING

158

To THE EDITOR

therefore he should get rid of a brawling wife, for he would be divorced as soon as the French come. "Divorced!" said my mother, colouring as red as a turkey cock - "Nay,female citizen, " said he, "do not blush, it will be no disgrace to thee; I shall only alledge incompatibility of temper, and when thou art divorced from me thou mayest marry as many husbands as thou canst get - one after another, that is." "May I, sure?" said mother, and she seemed quite pacified, and went out of the room telling one, two three, upon her fingers. Then my father turned to me - "My brave boy," said he, "thou art no longer my child, but the child of thy country;" and then he ran on a deal about the old Romans, and a parcel of stuff I did not heed - 1 had heard enough in knowing I was no longer his son, and I determined to shift for myself in the world, and trouble my head no more about him. A few days ago he happened to get drunk again; and as he was roaring liberty and equality in the street, a sturdy fellow came up, and damned him for a. Jacobin, and pushed him into the kennel. I happened not to be far off, so he hollows out to me, "Come hither, Sam, and help thy old father on his legs again." I thought to shew how well I had improved by his instructions, so going up to him, I said, "Citizen, I am not thy child, but the child of my country" - and was walking away; when I met a gentleman who had dealt at our shop, who, seeing father sprawling on his back, he insisted on my going and taking him up, and supporting him home, and he walked with us; so, when we came to our house, the gentleman said to my mother, "Mrs. Shallow, I have brought you home a drunken husband, but you are a good wife, and I doubt not will take care of him." - "Sir," said my mother, calmly, "to oblige you, I will take charge of this citizen, but" - "Citizen!" cried the gentleman, "is he not your husband?" - "Why yes, Sir, I cannot but say he is at present, but we shall soon be divorced for comatability of tempers, as Richard calls it, and then I shall marry neighbour Wilkins the clothier; and then Ephraim Hopkins, a promising youth in the sadlery line; and then perhaps John - . " - "Hold your foolish prating," said the gentleman; and therewith he fell a discoursing upon the nonsensical doctrines that we had been learning, and vowed, as he was Justice of Peace, to clear the parish of that Rigshaw, if he were fifty times a Whig and Corresponding Society-man.

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Next day he came again; father was ill, from the bruises he got by his fall, so the gentleman went and talked to him by his bed-side; and, truth to say, we were all desperately ashamed of ourselves, and very sorry for what had happened; and resolved to keep to our business, which we did understand; and not meddle with politics, constitutions, or divorces any more. Father has shut his door against all citizens, (as for Rigshaw, he was put in gaol for robbing his landlord's henroost,) and we hope, in time, by the help of a few friends to get into business again, though, at present, 'tis but poor doings with us. If you think, Sir, our example may serve as a warning to others, you are very welcome to publish this letter, From your obedient humble servant, SAMUEL SHALLOW.

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XXIII) The 'Loves of the Triangles' is probably the best known and most admired of The Anti-Jacobin's parodies. Higgins arrives at this poem still bathed in the warmth of Otaheite, from Issue no. XXI, and is stirred to explore sensual geometry. The lines closely parody Erasmus Darwin's famously risqué 'Loves of the Plants', from the Botanic Garden. Few poets would dare to versify the Sexual System (of botanical classification) of Linnaeus, with his promiscuous analogies and lingering descriptions of stems, stamens, receptacles and petioles. Anna Seward made an attempt, found the subject improper for a female pen, and suggested it to Darwin. She chose the right man. Darwin's Advertisement to the Botanic Garden announced his design to 'inlist Imagination under the banner of Science'. The Botanic Garden being both astonishingly imaginative and compendious, this 'inlistment' carries Darwin into some exotic subjects for poetry. Nowhere is he more vulnerable to parody than in the 'Loves of the Plants', a hothouse of flowery philanderings where: . . . the young Rose in beauty's damask pride Drinks the warm blushes of his bashful bride; With honey'd lips enamour'd Woodbines meet, Clasp with fond arms, and mix their kisses sweet.] At first sight, transferring this erotic exuberance to the world of geometry seems an odd move. The initial prompt was probably £oonomia, and Darwin's discussion of the sex-life of his 'primordium', or essential filament: I suppose this living filament, of whatever form it may be, whether, sphere, cube, or cylinder, to be endued with the capability of being excited into action by certain kinds of stimulus. By the stimulus of the surrounding fluid, in which it is received from the male, it may bend into a ring; and thus form 161

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

the beginning of a tube. Such moving filaments, and such rings, are described by those, who have attended to microscopic animalcula. This living ring may now embrace or absorb a nutritative particle of the fluid, in which it swims; and by drawing it into its pores, or joining it by compression to its extremities, may increase its own length or crassitude; and by degrees the living ring may form a living tube.2

This divine nonsense is delightfully versified in the 'Loves of the Triangles'. Odd though the use of geometry may seem, this is in fact a traditional trope. Marvell's parodie affection in 'The Definition of Love' has the same elegant draughtsmanship: As lines so Loves oblique may well Themselves in every Angle greet: But ours so truly Paralel Though infinite can never meet.3

No doubt also in the background are the hopeless savants of Laputa: Their Ideas are perpetually conversant in Lines and Figures. If they would, for Example, praise the Beauty of a Woman, or any other Animal, they describe it by Rhombs, Circles, Parallelograms, Ellipses, and other Geometrical Terms . . . 4

The footnotes to the 'Loves of the Triangles' are pure Darwin, particularly 'Ver. 36. How slow progresssive Points . . . ', a masterpiece of parodie recreation. The introduction is as fully achieved as the poem. Up to now, Higgins has been loosely stitched together from whatever Jacobinical material could be quickly scavenged. Now Imagination, boldly transgressing into Science, brings him suddenly into a life of his own. Higgins comes to contain in one person a synthesis of sympathies which are at the heart of English radicalism.

162

INTRODUCTORY

NOTES 1 'Loves of the Plants', 11. 17-20. 2 Botanic Garden, vol. 1, p. 492.

3 'The Definition of Love', 11. 25-8. 4 Swift, Gulliver's Travels, pt. 3, ch.2.

163

NOTE

NO. XXIII.

April 16. 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 newprinciples 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 "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 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. Encylopedias, 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. 164

THE LOVE OF THE TRIANGLES

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 inducingyou 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, isright."1We 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 any thing 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 Oxygène, and never die, but by his own consent.2 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 165

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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 to 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 £odiac, 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 Linnaeus; - 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 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 166

THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES

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 O F T H E T R I A N G L E S . 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 andAlgebra; - 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 andMenecmus - 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 Diligence5 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 - Digamma6 - Double Letters - remarkable 167

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Direction of one - Hippona the Goddess of Hack-horses7 - Parameter and Abscissa unite to overpower the Ordinate, who retreats down the Axis Major, and forms himself in a Square - Isosceles, a Giant-Dr. Asses Bridge - Bridge of Lodis

Rhomboides - Fifth Proposition, or

- Buonaparte - Raft and Windmills

-

Exhortation to the recovery of our Freedom - Conclusion. T H E LOVES O F T H E T R I A N G L E S . A MATHEMATICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL POEM. INSCRIBED TO DR. DARWIN. CANTO I. STAY your rude steps, or e'er your feet invade 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! Debas'd, corrupted, groveling, and confin'd,

5

No DEFINITIONS touch your senseless mind; To you no POSTULATES prefer their claim, No ardent AXIOMS your dull souls inflame; Foryou, no TANGENTS touch, no ANGLES meet, No CIRCLES join in osculation sweet!

10

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. Ver. 6. Definition - A distinct notion explaining the Genesis of a thing - Wolfius. Ver. 7. Postulate - A self-evident proposition. Ver. 8. Axiom - An undemonstrable truth. Ver. 9. Tangents - So called from touching, because they touch Circles, and never cut them. Ver. 10. - Circles - See Chambers's Dictionary, Article Circle. Ditto. Osculation - For 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.9 168

THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES For me, ye CISSOIDS, r o u n d my temples b e n d Your w a n d e r i n g Curves: ye C O N C H O I D S extend; Let playful PENDULES quick vibration feel, While silent CYCLOIS rests u p o n her wheel; Let HYDROSTATICS, simpering as they go,

15

Lead the light Naiads on fantastic toe; Let shrill ACOUSTICS tune the tiny lyre; With EUCLID sage fair ALGEBRA conspire; T h e ' obedient pulley strong MECHANICS ply, A n d w a n t o n O P T I C S roll the melting eye!

20

I see the fair fantastic forms appear, T h e flaunting drapery, a n d the languid leer; Fair Sylphish forms - w h o , tall, erect, a n d slim, D a r t the keen glance, a n d stretch the length of limb; To viewless harpings weave the meanless dance,

25

Wave the gay wreath, a n d titter as they p r a n c e .

Ver. 11. Cissois - A Curve supposed to resemble the sprig of ivy, from which it has its name, and therefore peculiarly adapted to poetry. 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 oï young Conchoids for several generations, in the same manner as the Aphides, and other insect tribes, are observed to do. 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. Ver. 17. Acoustics - The doctrine or theory of sound. 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. Ver. 19. Pulley - So called from our Saxon word to PULL, signifying to pull or draw. Ver. 23. Fair Sylphish Forms - Vide modern prints of nymphs and shepherds dancing to nothing at all.

169

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE:

VOLUME 1

Such rich confusion charms the ravish'd sight, W h e n vernal Sabbaths to the Park invite. Mounts the thick dust, the coaches crowd along, Presses round Grosvenor Gate the' impatient throng; White-muslin'd misses and m a m m a s are seen, Link'd with gay Cockneys, glittering o'er the green: T h e rising breeze u n n u m b e r ' d charms displays, And the tight ancle strikes the'astonish'd gaze.

30

35 But chief, thou Nurse of the Didactic Muse, Divine NONSENSIA, all thy soul infuse; T h e charms of Secants and of Tangents tell, H o w Loves and Graces in an Angle dwell; H o w slow progressive Points protract the Line, 40 As pendant spiders spin the filmy twine; 1 0 H o w Lengthen'd Lines, impetuous sweeping round, Spread the wide Plane, and mark its circling bound; H o w Planes, their substance with their motion grown, Form the huge Cube, the Cylinder, the Cone. 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. l ' Ver. 38. Angle - Gratus puelke risus ab Angulo. - Hon12 Ver. 39. How slow progressive Points - T h e 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. Quœre - 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 concentered 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 forwards 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,

170

THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES

Lo! Where the chimney's sooty tube ascends, 45 The fair TROCHAIS from the corner bends! Her coal-black eyes upturn'd, incessant mark The eddying smoke, quick flame, and volant spark; Mark with quick ken, where flashing in between Her much loved Smoke-Jack13 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 polish'd axles flow, While slowly circumvolves the piece of beef below: The conscious fire with bickering radiance burns, 55 Eyes the rich joint, and roasts it as it turns. 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 Idiosyncracy, 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 hindfeet: 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 mean while, the Fuci and Alga, with the Corallines and Madrepores, would transform themselves mio fish, and would gradually populate all the sub-marine portion of the globe.14 Ver. 46. Trochais - The Nymph of the Wheel, supposed to be in love with Smoke-Jack. Ver. 56. The Conscious Fire - T h e Sylphs and Genii of the different Elements have 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 slow phosphor's self-consuming flame."15

171

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

So youthful Horner roll'd the roguish eye, CulPd the dark plum from out his Christmas pye, And cried, in self-applause - "How good a boy am I." 60J So she, sad victim of domestic spite, Fair Cinderella, past the wintry night, In the lone chimney's darksome nook immur'd, Her form disfigur'd, and her charms obscur'd. Sudden her God-mother appears in sight, 65 Lifts the charm'd rod, and chants the mystic rite. The chanted rite the maid attentive hears, And feels new ear-rings deck her listening ears; 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-tail'd mice transport her to the ball, And liveried lizards wait upon her to call. Alas! That partial Science should approve The sly RECTANGLE'S too licentious love! For three bright nymphs, &c. &c. {To be continued.)

75

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 pendant ears. In poetical diction, a person is said to 'breathe the BLUE air,1 and to ldrink 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. Ver. 73. Cock-tail'd 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.16

172

THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES

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.17 - In Germany, it is recorded that any army of rats, a larger animal of the mus tribe, were 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.

173

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XXIV) Full of devious tangents, this continuation of the 'Loves of the Triangles' grows more varied and lascivious, exposing the Jacobin libido under its scientific rationale. The science is further undermined by this poem's cabbalistic atmosphere. The incantatory trilogies may be prompted by the Botanic Garden, Part Two, Interlude Three, where Darwin digresses lengthily on the 'Three Sisters' of Poetry, Painting and Music (and mentions Lear).

174

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348280-26

NO.XXIV

April 23. THE LOVES OF THE

TRIANGLES.

A MATHEMATICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL POEM.

[Continued] CANTO I.

That partial Science should approve The sly RECTANGLE'S too licentious love! For three bright nymphs the wily wizard burns; Three bright-ey'd nymphs requite his flame by turns. Strange force of magic skill! Combin'd of yore With Plato's science and Menecmus' lore. In Afric's schools, amid those sultry sands High on its base where Pompey's pillar stands,1 This learnt the Seer; and learnt, alas! too well, Each scribbled talisman, and smoky spell: What mutter'd charms, what soul-subduing arts Fell Zantanai to his sons imparts.

ALAS!

75

80

85

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. Ver. 80. Platos and Menecmus' lore- Proclus 2 attributes the discovery of the Conic Sections to Plato, but obscurely. Eratosthenes 3 seems to be adjudge it to Menecmus. 4 "Neque Menecmeos neccesse erit in Cono secure ternários.''' (Vide Montucla.)From Greece they were carried to Alexandria, where (according to our Author's beautiful fiction) Rectangle either did or might learn magic. Ver. 86 ^atanai - Supposed to be the same with Satan. - Vide the New Arabian Nights, translated by Cazotte, author of "Le Diable amoureux."0

175

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1 GINS - black and huge! Who Dom-DaniePs cave Writhe your scorch'd limbs on sulphurs' azure wave, Or, shivering, yell amidst eternal snows, Where cloud-cap'd Caf protrudes his granite toes; (Bound by his will Judaea's fabled king, Lord of Aladdin's Lamp and mystic Ring.) Gins! Ye remember! - for your toil convey'd Whate'er of drugs the powerful charm could aid; Air, earth, and sea ye search'd, and where below Flame embryo lavas, young volcanoes glow, Gins! ye beheld appall'd the enchanter's hand Wave in dark air the' Hypothenusal wand; Saw him the mystic Circle trace, and wheel

90

95

Ver. 87. Gins - the Eastern name for Genii. - Vide Tales of ditto.6 Ver. 87. Dom-Daniel - a sub-marine palace near Tunis, where Zatanai usually held his court. - Vide Mew Arabian Nights. Ver 88. Sulphur-h substance which, when cold, reflects the yellow rays, and is therefore said to be yellow. When raised to a temperature at which it attracts oxygène (a process usually called burning), it emits a blue flame. This may be beautifully exemplified, and at a moderate expence, 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. 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.7 Ver. 9l.Judœa'sfabled king -Mr. HIGGINS does not mean to deny that Solomon was really King of Judea. The epithet fabled, applies to that empire over the Genii, which the retrospective generosity of the Arabian fabulists has bestowed upon this monarch. 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.8

176

THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES

II

With h e a d erect, a n d far extended heel;

100

Saw him, with speed that mock'd the dazzled eye, Self-whirPd, in quick gyrations eddying fly: Till d o n e the p o t e n t spell - behold h i m grown Fair Venus' e m b l e m - the Phoenician C O N E . T r i u m p h s the Seer, a n d n o w secure observes

105

T h e kindling passions of the rival CURVES. A n d first, the fair PARABOLA behold, H e r timid a r m s , with virgin blush, unfold! T h o u g h , on one focus fix'd, h e r eyes betray A h e a r t that glows with love's resistless sway,

110

T h o u g h , climbing oft, she strive with bolder grace R o u n d his tall neck to clasp her fond e m b r a c e , Still e'er she reach it, from his polish'd side H e r trembling h a n d s in devious Tangents glide.

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 the Triangle that expansive nisus, discovered by Blumenbach,9 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 extremitites 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.10 By this simple process the transformation is very naturally accounted for. Ver. 104. Phoenician Cone - It was under this shape that Venus was worshipped in Phoenicia. Mr HIGGINS thinks it was the Venus Urania, or Celestial Venus; in allusion to which, the Phoenician 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 grenadiers' caps was typical of the loves of Mars and Venus. Ver. 107. Parabola - The curve described by projectiles of all sorts, as bombs, shuttlecocks, &c.

177

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Not thus HYPERBOLA: - with subtlest art T h e blue-eyed wanton plays h e r changeful part; Quick as h e r conjugated axes move T h r o u g h every posture of luxurious love, H e r sportive limbs with easiest grace expand; H e r charms unveil'd provoke the lover's hand: Unveil'd, except in m a n y a filmy ray W h e r e light Asymptotes o'er her bosom play, N o r touch her glowing skin, n o r intercept the day.

115

120

Yet why, ELLIPSIS, at thy fate repine?

More lasting bliss, securer joys are thine. 125 T h o u g h to each fair his treacherous wish may stray, T h o u g h 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. T h u s , happy France! In thy regenerate land, Where TASTE with RAPINE saunter h a n d in hand; Where, nurs'd in seats of innocence and bliss,

130

R E F O R M greets T E R R O R with fraternal kiss;

Where mild PHILOSOPHY first taught to scan T h e wrongs of PROVIDENCE, a n d rights of M A N ;

I 35

W h e r e MEMORY broods o'er FREEDOM'S earlier scene,

T h e Lanthern bright, a n d brighter Guillotine] Three gentle swains evolve their longing arms,

Ver. 115 Hyperbola - Not figuratively speaking, as in rhetoric, but mathematically; and therefore blue-eyed. 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. 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.

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THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES

II

And woo the young REPUBLIC'S charms: And though proud Barras with the fair succeed, T h o u g h not in vain the'Attorney Rewbell plead, Oft doth the' impartial nymph their love forego, To clasp thy crooked shoulders, blest Lepauxl So, with dark dirge athwart the blasted heath, Three Sister Witches hail'd the' appall'd Macbeth. So, the Three Fates beneath grim Pluto's roof, Strain the dun warp, and weave the murky woof; 'Till deadly Atropos 1 1 with fatal sheers Slits the thin promise of the' expected years, While 'midst the dungeon's gloom or battle's din, Ambition's victim perish, as they spin. T h u s , the Three Graces 1 2 on the Idalian green, Bow with deft homage to Cythera's Q u e e n ; H e r polish'd arms with pearly bracelets deck, Part her light locks, and bare her ivory neck; R o u n d her fair form etherial odours throw, A n d teach the' unconscious zephyrs where to blow. Floats the thin gauze, and glittering as they play, T h e bright folds flutter in phlogistic 1 3 day.

140

145

150

155

So, with his Daughters Three, the' unscepter'd Lear 160 Heav'd the loud sigh, and pour'd 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 H u n d r e d Knights retrench; 165 Mock his m a d sorrow, and with alter'd mein 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 A n d folds the Parent-Monarch to her breast.

179

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC

AGE: VOLUME 1

T h u s some fair Spinster grieves in wild affright, Vex'd with dull megrim, or vertigo light; Pleas'd 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, glides T h e Derby dilly, 14 carrying Three INSIDES. O n e in each corner sits, and lolls at ease, 180 With folded arms, propt back, and outstretch'd knees; While the press'd Bodkin,10 punch'd a n d squeez'd to death, Sweats in the midmost place, and scolds, and pants for

breath.

[To be continued.]

180

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XXV) The key to this poem is buried in its penultimate footnote, in an aside about 'those who admire the French Revolution up to a certain point. Home Tooke famously said that if he was in a coach with committed revolutionaries like Tom Paine, he would get out at Hounslow, leaving them to go on to Windsor. The anti-jacobins aimed to win back moderates: those who believed in parliamentary reform, approved of many of the ideals behind the revolution, but disliked extremism. To this end, the anti-jacobins depict Tooke's coach as a juggernaut. Once on board, there is no stopping short of republicanism, regicide, and Terror. In Issue no. XVII, they said as much directly: Those gentle Citizens . . . who please themselves with the idea of acquiring popularity by accompanying M R . T O O K E "no farther than Hounslow," on the road to a thorough Reform, may be assured that they will be compelled to run before his chariot-wheels as far as Windsor; or, if they presume to stop, will be crushed to death beneath them! 1

'Brissot's Ghost' is an effective poetic enactment of this; the poem uses the Girodin deputy, Brissot, to represent the French equivalent of Home Tooke, and describes the fate of his companions. In 1793 the Girondins, deeply disturbed by the September Massacres in Paris in the previous year, were queasy about their part in the trial and sentencing of the King. The sans-culottes', in contrast, were unequivocal. T am no lover of long speeches on obvious matters', said Robespierre, 'they augur ill for freedom. I vote for death'. Divisions between the two groups widened, and in May there was an outright struggle for power. The Girondins lost. On 31 May The Terror began, with 29 Girondins placed under house arrest. 12 of them subsequently escaped, fled into hiding in Normandy, and were hunted down as 181

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

rebels. On 31 October 26 were guillotined; it was the end of moderation. Helen Maria Williams, writing of these men (many of them close friends), and of the events of the Terror, said that its scenes 'rise in sad succession like the shades of Banquo's line, and pass along my shuddering recollection'.2 'Brissot's Ghost' retells this sad succession. To evoke these spirits, the poem reworks 'Admiral Hosier's Ghost', by Richard Glover (1712-85). Glover's ballad called up dead men from the sea-bed as witnesses: 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 appear'd, All in dreamy hammocks shrouded, Which for winding-sheets they wore, And with looks by sorrow clouded, Frowning on that hostile shore.

Affinities with the war against Spain (the setting of Hosier's story), are close enough to be put to use. Glover's poem was collected in Robert Anderson's Works of the British Poets (1795),3 where Anderson's remarks describe purposes comparable with those of The Anti-Jacobin. Admiral Hosier's Ghost', he says, seems 'to have been written with a view to incite the nation to resent the depradations of the Spaniards'.

182

INTRODUCTORY

NOTE

NOTES 1 The Anti-Jacobin, no. 17, p. 131. 2 Letters vol l,p. 131. 3 v. 11, p. 468. Vice-admiral Francis Hosier (1673-1727), blockaded the Spanish in their West Indian retreat at Porto-Bello in 1727, to prevent the ferrying of treasure back to Spain. His squadron contracted fever; more than 4,000 men died, including Hosier himself. Largely through Glover's poem, a popular misconception took root: that Hosier died broken-hearted at the waste of so many brave lives. In 1739, Admiral Vernon famously captured Porto-Bello with only six ships.

183

NO. XXV.

April 30. BRISSOT'S

GHOST.

As the Shakespeare Tavern 1 dining, O'er the well replenish'd board Patriotic Chiefs reclining, Quick and large libations pour'd; 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 appear'd: Each a head with anguish gasping, (Himself a trunk deform'd with gore) In his hand, terrific, clasping, Stalk'd across the wine-stain'd floor. On them gleam'd the lamp's blue lustre, When stern Brissot's2 grizly shade His sad bands was seen to muster, And his bleeding troops array'd. Through the drunken crowd he hied him, Where the Chieftain state enthron'd, There, his shadowy trunks beside him, Thus in threatening accents groan'd. 184

BRISSOT'S GHOST

"Heed, oh heed our fatal story, (I am Brissot's injur'd 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 contriv'd their heads to save See Barbaroux 3 and Petion*4 starving In Languedocian Cave! See in a higgler's^ hamper buckled How Louvet's soaring spirit lay!5 How virtuous Roland,* hapless Cuckold, Blew, what brains he had, away.6

* Such was the end of these Worthies. They were found starved to death in a cave in Languedoc. Vide Barren's Rep.7 t See Louvet's Récit de mes Perils. % The virtuous Roland. This philosophic coxcomb is the idol of those who admire the French Revolution up to a certain point.

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

How beneath the power of Marat 8 Condorcet, 9 blaspheming, fell, Begg'd some laudaunum of Garat,* 10 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 propt his sinking throne! But hold! - 1 scent the gales of morning Covent-Garden's clock strikes One! 11 Heed, oh heed my earnest warning, Ere England is, like France, undone! To St. Stephen's 12 quick repairing, Your dissembled Mania end; And your errors past, forswearing, Stand at length your Country's Friend!"

* 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 progrés de l'esprit humain, pour porter sur tes levers le breuvage mortel d'atres pensées, et d'autres sentimens, ont incliné ta volenté vers le tombeau, dans ta dernière deliberation. - (Garat, it seems, did not choose to poison himself.) - Tu as rendu à la liberté éternelle ton ame Républicaine par ce poison qui avait été partagé entre nous comme le pain entre des frères. " O h you, who with that hand which was tracing the progress of the h u m a n mind, approached the mortal mixture to your lips - it was by other thoughts and other sentiments that your judgement 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."

186

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XXVI) The concluding lines of the 'Loves of the Triangles' are something of a hold-all for left-overs. The lines lack a binding impetus; each section is effective in its own right, but transitions are casual. The poem opens with more parody of learning, moves through a ghoulish episode based on a recent drowning tragedy, hops into Europe to watch Bonaparte's conquests, returns across the Channel on an Invasion Raft crewed by United Irishmen, and finally puts Pitt to the guillotine. If, overall, the narrative dislocations are unsettling, passages nevertheless retain the earlier parodie flair. The energy with which the mundane and the fabulous are scrambled together in Darwin's Botanic Garden, is perfectly recreated in cameo: 'Where each spruce nymph from city compters free, / Sips the froth'd syllabub, or fragrant tea'. Darwin's exuberant tautological pile-ups, where nouns squash nouns, or more exactly, nouns nouns squash, are wickedly echoed in: 'Ranks close on ranks and squadrons squadrons crush'.

187

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NO. XXVI.

May 7. LOVES

OF THE

TRIANGLES.

The frequent sollicitations 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,1 and the Episode of Hippona, contained, in our apprehension, several reflections of toofree 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!* that rebel heart to tame! In vain coy Mathesis^ thy presence flies: Still turn her fond hallucinating* eyes; * 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. f Mathesis- The doctrine of Mathematics - Pope calls her madMathesis. - Viae Johnson's Dictionary.2 X 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 Ray in the lobby of the playhouse - Vide ^ponaomia, Vol. II. p. 363, 365.3

188

THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES HI

Thrills with Galvanicfires*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 flame confess'd: Where'er he moves, she sees his tall limbs trace Internal Angles^ equal at the Base; Again she doubts him: but produced at will, She sees th' external Angles equal still. Say, blest Isosceles! What favouring pow'r, Or love, or chance at night's auspicious hour, While to the Asses-Bridge^ entranced you stray'd, Led to the Asses-Bridge the enamoured maid? - The Asses Bridge, for ages doom'd 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 5 free, * Galvanic Fires - Dr. Galvani is a celebrated philosopher at Turin. He has proved that 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 disagreable 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?" 6 f Internal Angles, &c. - This is an exact versification of Euclid's 5 th theorem. - Vide Euclid in loco.

% Asses-Bridge - Pon 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 though Spain), the case may possibly be different.

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Sips the froth'd syllabub, or fragrant tea; While with sliced ham, scrap'd beef, and burnt champagne , Her 'prentice lover soothes his amorous pain; - There oft, in well-trimm'd wherry, glide along Smart beaux and giggling belles, a glittering throng; 7 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* reply. - Down the steep fall the headlong waters go, Curls the white foam, the breakers roar below. - The veering helm the dextrous steersman stops, Shifts the thin oar, the fluttering canvas drops; Then with clos'd eyes, clench'd 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, dropt 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 clogg'd each struggling limb, Far o'er the stream the Cockneys sink or swim; While each badg'd boatman^ clinging to his oar, Bounds o'er the buoyant wave, and climbs the applauding shore.

* Fare - A person, or a number of persons conveyed in a hired vehicle by land or water. f Badged boatmen - Boatmen sometimes wear a badge to distinguish them: especially those who belong to the Watermen's Company.

190

THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES HI

So, towering Alp! from thy majestic ridge* Young Freedom gaz'd on Lodi's blood-stain'd 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, display'd her awful form; Bade at her feet regenerate nations bow, And twin'd the wreath round Buonaparte's brow - Quick with new lights, fresh hopes, and alter'd zeal, The slaves of Despots dropt the blunted steel: Exulting Victory own'd her favourite child, And freed Liguria9 clapt her hands and smil'd. Nor long the time ere Britain's shore's shall greet The warrior-sage, with gratulation sweet: Eager to grasp the wreath of Naval Fame, The GREAT REPUBLIC plans the Floating Framel10 - O'er the huge plane gigantic Terror stalks, And counts with joy the close-compacted balks: Of young-ey'd Massacres the Cherub crew, Round their grim chief the mimic task pursue; Turn the stiff screw, î apply the strengthening clamp, Drive the long bolt, or fix the stubborn cramp, Lash the reluctant beam, the cable splice,

* Alp or Alps - A ridge of mountains which separate the North of Italy from the South of G e r m a n y T h e y 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. f Turn the stiff screw,Scc. - T h e 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, T h e granite rock, the nodul'd flint calcine; Grind with strong arm, the circling Chertz betwixt, Your pure ka—o—lins and Pe—tunt—ses mixt Canto 2. /. 297.

191

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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* waves his woven wings in air; Swells the proud sail, the exulting streamers fly, Their nimble fins unnumber'd paddles ply: - Ye soft airs breath, ye gentle billows waft, And, fraught with Freedom, bear the expected Raft! - Perch'd on her back, behold the Patriot train, Muir,11 Ashley,12 Barlow,13 Tone, 14 O'Connor, 15 Paine; While Tandy's 16 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^ 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:

* 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. | 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.

192

THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES HI

- Fir'd with new hopes, the' exulting peasant sees The Gallic streamer woo the British breeze; While, pleas'd to watch its undulating charms, The smiling infant* spreads his little arms. Ye Sylphs of DEATH, on demon pinions flit Where the tall Guillotine is rais'd for Pitt: To the pois'd plank tie fast the monster's back,î 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,+ And simpering Freedom hails the happy blow!

* The smiling infant - Infancy is particularly interested in the diffusion of the new principles. - See the "Bloody Buoy"17 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 &c &c &c. &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 bless. Botanic Garden.™

| The monster's back- Le Monstre Pitt, l'Ennemi du Genre humain. - See Debates of the Legislators of the Great Nation passim. % Atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursus. Catullus}9

193

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (lo Issue no.

XXVII)

O n Friday 11 May, the Morning Chronicle announced a stirring British victory: Yesterday afternoon, at one o'clock, was received at the Admiralty from Portsmouth, by the Telegraph, the agreeable intelligence that the French had made an attack on the little island of Marcou, in which they were defeated with great loss. Fifty-two vessels, including an escort of gun-boats with troops, amounting, it is said, to five thousand men, sailed from Havre to attack this fortress, but were driven off by the batteries and seven of the boats sunk. Several others were so much damaged that it is thought they cannot be fit for further service . . . The vigorous defence made by the batteries was very meritorious; as the Garrison consisted mostly of invalid soldiers. This was the second attempt on the garrison; an expedition a m o n t h earlier had also failed. T h e assaults, led by a Flemish officer called Captain Muskein, were expected to succeed: We understand that the capture of St. Marcou having been long anticipated, was formally announced after the departure of Citizen MUSKEIN and his Gun-boats on that Expedition: that the exultation and triumph occasioned by this event was most lively in the Central Provinces, and languished (as might be expected), on its approach to the Coast, where the real event of the enterprise could not be concealed. At Havre, we are told, they estimate their loss at about 1200 men.l Lieutenant Price, commanding the Badger, a little six-gun cruiser, was the hero of the hour, and an example to rouse English defiance in the face of threatened invasion. As the Morning Chronicle commented, after the first assault: This squadron of gun-boats was probably destined to form part of a greater 194

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

armament with a view to the general plan of operations against this Country. Such disasters as this they have experienced, ought to convince the enemy of the difficulties they have to encounter in the very outset of their plans, and the little chance they have of succeeding2

Already symbolic then, the incident at St Marcou now becomes more so in The Anti-Jacobin's poem, based as it is on an ode from Horace, warning the 'Ship of State' not to tempt fate with further expeditions. The Elegy which follows prolongs the theme of French misfortunes: A letter from Milan, dated April 20, states a melancholy piece of intelligence has been received there; JEAN BON ST ANDRE, known to all patriots as a friend of the people and of liberty; JEAN BON ST ANDRE, who was sent by

the Government of the French Republic to the DEY of ALGIERS, has been, it is said, decapitated by the African despot. If this horrid fact be true, the Moorish tyrant has been serving the White tyrants of Europe; he has sacrificed an enemy of despotism; a lover of liberty3

The Anti-Jacobin showed no such sadness at the news. Saint-André (1749-1813), formerly a Protestant pastor, became a hard-line Montagnard once elected to the Convention, and an enemy to the Girondins. He was sent, as agent of the Convention, to involve himself in the navy, and took part in skirmishes in May to June of 1794. He is said to have distinguished himself by his cowardice. Reports of his death in Algiers were exaggerated. NOTES 1 The Anti-Jacobin, no. 27, p. 215, 'Foreign Intelligence'. 2 Morning Chronicle, 13 April 1798. 3 Morning Chronicle, 1 May 1798.

195

NO. XXVII.

May 14. 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 rewardedfor 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 1 st Book, lfor which we have to return our thanks to a classical Correspondent. A CONSOLATORY ADDRESS TO HIS BY CITIZEN MUSKEIN.

GUNBOATS.

0 navis referent in mare te novijluctus? O GENTLE GUN-BOATS, whom the Seine Discharg'd from Havre to the main; Now leaky, creaking, blood-bespatter'd, With rudders broken, canvas shatter'd 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 fam'd Marseilles, Well-mann'd from galleys, and from jails, Though with Lepaux's 3 and RewbelPs4 aid, By Pleville's5 skill your keel was laid;

196

ADDRESS TO HIS GUN-BOATS

Though lovely Stael,6 and lovelier Stone, 7 * Have work'd their fingers to the bone, And cut their petticoats to rags To make your bright Three Colour'd Flags; Yet sacrilegious grape and ball Deform the works of Stone and Stael, And trembling, without food or breeches, Our sails curse the painted .t 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!

O Navis, referent in mare te novi Fluctus - O qui agis? - fortiter occupa Portum: N o n n e vides, ut N u n d u m remigio latus, Et malus céleri saucius Africo Antennaeque gemant? Ac sine funibus Vix durare carinae Possint imperiosius iEquor? N o n tibi sunt integra lintea; N o n Dii, quos iterum pressa voces malo:

Quamvis Pontica pinus, Silvae filia nobilis, Jactes et genus et nomen inutile Nil pictis timidus navita puppibus Fidit. Tu nisi ventis Debes ludibrium, cave, Nuper sollocitum quae mihi taedium, N u n c desiderium, curaque non levis, Interfusa nitentes Vites aequora Cyclades.

* Stone - better known by the name of Williams. f We decline printing this rhymes at length, from obvious reasons of delicacy; at the same time that it is so accurate a translation of pictis puppibus,8 that we know not how to suppress it, without doing the utmost injustice to the general spirit of the Poem.

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JEAN BON ST. ANDRE.

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 transactions 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 play'd such a prank, As Lepaux must think quite horrid.

198

ON THE DEATH OF JEAN BON ST. ANDRÉ

II. No story half so shocking, By kitchen fire or laundry, Was ever heard tell, As that which befell The great Jean Bon St. André. 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 recover'd from his panic, He translated the plan Of Paine's Rights of Man, Into language Mauritanie. 9 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 work Of the Doctrine they heard, And thought the Consul foolish.

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

VII. He form'd a Club of Brothers, And mov'd 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,10 And Puffendorf11 and Grotius;12 And prov'd from Vattel13 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-edg'd sabre They sever'd from his shoulders, And stuck it on which, Where it caught the eye, To the wonder of all beholders.

200

ON THE DEATH OF JEAN BON ST. ANDRÉ

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 shewn He dislikes Jean Bon, They have sent him Bernadotte. 14 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.

201

INTRODUCTORY NOTE {to Issue no. XXVIII)

This contribution, from Sir Brooke Boothby, amounts to a timely coup for The Anti-Jacobin. 'Brissot's ghost', in Issue no. XXV, hoped to convert moderates of the opposite party. Here is one such, in the person of Sir Boothby, freely admitting his former differences, and as freely joining the anti-jacobins in condemning the present régime in France. Boothby wrote a rebuke to Burke's Reflections, in 1791, and followed this with Observations on the Appealfrom the New to the Old Whigs, and on Mr.Paine's Rights of Man (London, 1792). This last publication situates him precisely in the position of those on board Tooke's coach who are unwilling to travel any further in the company of Paine. He first observes that: T h e French Revolution furnishes sufficient matter for admiration; merit more than enough to satisfy its errors and imperfections; for after all, excess of freedom is a glorious fault.

And then immediately continues, of Paine: But this man has falsely and maliciously endeavoured to apply the principles of that revolution to subvert the excellent constitution of this country, and this must not be silently endured. 1

That he should now ally himself with The Anti-Jacobin must have delighted Canning. Boothby's value as political propaganda outweighs his literary handicaps (he lacks a light touch). His poem turns 'the bright historic page' of British imperial expansion, beginning with the audacious expeditions of Edward the Black Prince into France which culminated in great victory at Poitiers in 1356. Boothby leafs through the Hundred Years' War, the Nine Years' War (1688— 97), the War of the Spanish Sucession (1702-13), the Seven Years' 202

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

War (1756-63), and then on to the present, to boast that Britons never shall be slaves. NOTE 1 Observations, vol. 2, p. 97.

203

NO. XXVIII.

May 21. We have received the following Letter with the Poem that accompanies it, from a Gentleman1 whose political opinions have hitherto differed from our own; but who appears tofeel, 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 SIR,

ANTI-JACOBIN.

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, 204

ODE TO MY COUNTRY

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 sagely be shewn 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.

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

ODE T O MY COUNTRY. MDCCXCVIII. MDCCXCVIII.

. 1. s prepare; hands andSheart hands and hearts prepare; The angry tempest threatens nigh, Deep-ton'd thunders roll in air, Lightnings thwart the livid sky; Thron'd upon the winged 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, BRITONS! BRITONS!

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 destin'd 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 lov'd 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?

206

ODE TO MY COUNTRY

S. 2. Turn the bright historic page! Still in Glory's tented field Albion's arms for many an age Have taught prod Gallia's Bands to yield. Are not W E the SONS of those

Whose steel-clad Sires pursu'd the insulting foes E'en to the centre of their wide domain, And bow'd them to a Briton's reign?* A. 2. Kings in modest triumph led, Grace the SABLE VICTOR'S arms:1" His conquering lance, the battle's dread; His courtesy the conquer'd charms. The lion-heart soft pity knows, To raise with soothing cares his prostrate foes; The vanquish'd head true Valour ne'er opprest, Nor shunn'd to succour the distrest. 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 hallow'd flame; Baffled and scorn'd, the Iberian Tyrant 2 found, Though half a world his iron sceptre bound, The gallant Amazon could sweep away, Arm'd with her people's love the "Invincible" array*

* Henry VI. crowned at Paris. "t" T h e Black Prince. % T h e Spanish A r m a d a .

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S. 3. The Bold Usurper* firmly held The sword, by splendid treasons gain'd; And Gallia's fiery genius quell'd, And Spain's presumptuous claims restrain'd: When lust of sway by flattery fed,î To venturous deeds the youthful Monarch led, In the full flow of Victory's swelling tide Britain check'd his power and pride. A. 3. To the great Batavian's3 name* Ceaseless hymns of triumph raise! Scourge of tyrants, let his fame Live in songs of grateful praise. Thy turrets, Blenheim,^4 glittering to the sun, Tell of bright fields from warlike Gallia won; Tell how the mighty Monarch mourn'd in vain His impious wish the world to chain. E. 3. And ye fam'd Heroes, late re tir'd 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 gain'd, or conquering fell; Britain's dread thunders bore from pole to pole, Wherever man is found, or refluent oceans roll.

* t Í §

Oliver Cromwell. Louis XIV. William III. Blenheim, Ramilies, &c. &c.

208

ODE TO MY COUNTRY

S. 4. Names embalm'd in Honour's shrine, Sacred to immortal praise, Patterns of Glory, born to shine In breathing arts or pictur'd lays: See Wolfe5 by yielding numbers prest, Expiring smile, and sink on Victory's breast! See Minden's 6 plains and Biscay's7 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 8 lies, whose master-hand Guided through seven bright years the might Band, That round his urn, where grateful Memory weeps, Each in his hallow'd marble sleeps. E. 4. Her brand accurs'd when Civil Discord hurl'd,* Britain alone the united world withstood, Rodney 9 his fortune-favour'd sails unfurl'd, And led three Nations' Chiefs to Thames's flood. Firm on his Rock the Veteran Hero^10 stands; Beneath his feet unheeded thunders roar; Smiling in scorn he sees the glittering Bands Fly with repulse and shame old Calpe's 11 hopeless shore.

* American War. f Lord Heathfield.

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

S. 5. Heirs or partners of their toils, Matchless Heroes still we own; Crown'd 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 Brunswick12 sits, a name to fear unknown, With brow erect commands the glorious strife, Unaw'd, 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.

210

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XXIX) Another Horatian poem from Lord Morpeth, the 'Ode to the Director Merlin' draws attention to the perfidy of France, her briberies, opportunism, inconsistencies and untrustworthiness in foreign policy. The ode from Horace on which Morpeth leans is called To a Flirt. In effect, Morpeth versifies a paragraph from the Morning Chronicle of the same date, 28 May: It is a curious fact, and not unworthy of observation, that the professions of the French, which were to destroy Monarchies, and to respect and protect Republics, have been totally reversed by their real conduct. They have entered into treaties of peace with the Emperor of Germany, the Kings of Spain, Prussia, Sardinia, and Naples. A treaty was also entered into with the Pope, though afterwards broken. They have triumphed over, or dissolved the Republics of Holland, Genoa, Venice, and Switzerland, and now threaten war and annihilation to their first and only voluntary Ally, the Republic of America!

Philippe-Antoine Merlin 'de Douai' became a Director on 8 September 1797 and remained one until purged in July 1799. Dumouriez spoke of him as: 'a well-meaning man; but splenetic, and infected with extravagant and theoretic notions'. 1 He was prominent in French foreign policy, particularly in 1795: as negotiator of the Basle treaties with Prussia and Spain in April and July, and as the man intent on annexing Belgium in October. NOTE 1 Dumouriez, Memoirs, p. 7.

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NO XXIX.

May 28. 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.1 -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. 1. O.5.

W H O now from Naples, Rome or Berlin, Creeps to thy blood-stain'd den, O Merlin, With diplomatic gold? To whom Dost thou give audience en costume?

AD PYRRHAM.

2

Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosâ Perfusus liquidis urget odoribus Grato, Pyrrha, sub antro? Cui fiavam religas comam,

Qui nunc te fruitur credulus aureâ: Qui semper vacuam semper amabilem Sperat: nescius aurae Fallacis. Miseri, quibus

Simplex Munditiis? Heu quoties fidem Mustatosque Deos flebit, et áspera Nigris aequora ventis Emirabitur insolens,

Intentata nites. Me tabula sacer Votivâ paries indicat, uvida Suspendisse potenti Vestimenta maris Deo.

212

ODE TO THE DIRECTOR MERLIN

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, Shew how true safety must be sought!

213

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XXX) Towards the end of May 1798, there was a rash of sensational drama on the London stage. Kotzebue's The Stranger reappeared for one night, 25 May, at Drury Lane's Theatre Royal, followed by Isabella; Or, The Fatal Marriage, and then Monk Lewis's extravagance, The Castle Spectre. At Covent Garden, meanwhile, the Theatre Royal had The Orphan; Or, The Unhappy Marriage. On 31 May the Morning Chronicle reported a performance of The Robbers, at a private theatre, 'to an audience of about 200 persons of fashion'. Attuned as always to the public atmosphere, The Anti-Jacobin responded with a fine parodie melodrama, The Rovers. As well as live theatre, a number of excited German plays were available to read in translation. To hand, the anti-jacobins appear to have had The Robbers (Friedrich Schiller, London 1792), Cabal and Love (Schiller, London 1795), Count Benyowsky, or the Conspiracy of Kamschatka (Kotzebue, Cambridge 1798), The Stranger (Kotzebue, London 1798), and Goethe's Stella (London 1798). These, with fragments of Shakespeare, constitute the raw materials of The Rovers. The play is attributed to Higgins, who here abandons didactic poetry for the boards. Changing direction allows him to redefine his ideals, now mediated through Germanic excess. It is a useful setting. A typical stage direction from Cabal and Love gives: Ferdinand's wild and staring looks shew that his mind teems with some horrid purpose.

Like Ferdinand, these plays teem with horrid purposes, forming a perfect milieu for Higgins's antinomian agitation. Hazlitt wrote of German theatre of this period that: It is the violation of decorum, that is its first, and last principle, the beginning, middle and end. 1

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The Sturm und Drang movement in which these plays participate delights in flaunting classical unities, rationalism, and conformity. Tactlessly translated, the plays offered the anti-jacobins colourful scenes for parody. Schiller's The Robbers gave them their title, anarchic momentum, and melodramatic atmosphere. For detail, they turn elsewhere: to Goethe's Stella for situation and dialogue, and to Castle Spectre for a gothic conclusion. The Rovers was actually performed later, at the Haymarket Theatre, 26 July 1811. NOTE 1 Howe vol. 6, p. 360.

215

NO. XXX

June 4. 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 OUR

LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES, has obtained for us the communication 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;1 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" say he in a letter dated from his study in St. Mary Axe, the window of 216

THE ROVERS

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 indefinable 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:3 — 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)4 as a malum in se,5 - 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 of the head, you are sometimes fortunate enough to find a tail (which answer all the same purposes) spring up in its place. This, we 217

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

know, has been the case in France; - the only country in which the great experiment of regeneration has been tried with any thing like a fair chance of success. Destroy the frame of society, - decompose its parts, - and set 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.6 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,7 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; - shew 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 tenfootpads, where you would nor 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.8 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 9 was wont to combine two stories of 218

THE ROVERS

Menander's). The characters are such as the admirers of these plays will recognize 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 six pence. 10 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 PERSONS

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 BEFFINGTON, English Noblemen, exiled by the Tyranny of KingJohn, 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 ofROGERO'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. PRIOR

219

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1 PANTALOWSKY, ^ B R I T C H I N D A , Children O/TVIATILDA, by CASIMERE. JOACHIM, JABEL, and AMARANTHA, Children O/MATILDA, by ROGERO.

Children O/*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 QUEDLINGURGH.

Time, from the \2thto the present Century. PROLOGUE11 -in Character. Too long the triumphs of our early times, With civil discord and with regal crimes, Have stain'd these boards; while Shakspeare's pen has shewn Thoughts, manners, men, to modern days unknown. Too long have Rome and Athens been the rage; [Applause, And classic Buskins12 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* stocks his gloomy caves; Tells how Prime Ministers^ are shocking things And reigning Dukes as bad as tyrant Kings;

* See the "Robbers,"13 a German tragedy, 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. f See "Cabal and Love,"14 German tragedy, 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.

220

THE

ROVERS

How to two swains* one nymph her vows may give, And how two damsels* 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 unjaundic'd view! View and approve! - though in each passage fine The faint translation t mock the genuine line, Though the nice ear the erring sight belie, For U twice dotted is pronounc'd like I;t [Applause. Yet oft the scene shall Nature's fire impart, Warm from the breast, and glowing to the heart! Ye travell'd few, attend! - Onyou 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.

See the Stranger; or "Reform'd Housekeeper,"15 in which the former of these morals is beautifully illustrated; - and "Stella" a genteel German comedy, 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. t These are 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,fulguration 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 archangelican nature or to Smellmynkern Vankelfer, which if literally rendered, would signify made of stuff of the same odour whereof the Devil makesflambeaux. See Schüttenbrüch16 on the German Idiom.

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Flash of lightning. - The Ghost ^/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-door. 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 Net, 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 Huckaback11 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 Brunswick18 post-waggon is not yet come in, and Ordinary 19 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! . . .

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Post-horn blows, Re-enter Landlady. Land. Madam, the post-waggon is just come in with only a single gentlewoman. Mat. Then shew 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 ifjust 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 recall'd 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 liking out for a congenial spirit! - my heart was withered - but the beams of yours have re-kindled it. Mat. A sudden thought strikes me - Let us swear an eternal friendship.20 Cec. Let us agree to live together! Mat. Willingly. [with rapidity and earnestness. Cec. Let us embrace. [they embrace. Mat. Yes; I too have lov'd! - 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! 223

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Landlady enters, and places a Leg of Mutton on the Table, with sour Krout and Pruin Sauce21 - 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. Heaven! Madam, you turn pale. Cec. Nothing - a slight megrim 22 - 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] T h e 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 proffer'd 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;23 a can in his hand). Cas. Here, Waiter, pull off my boots, and bring me a pair of slippers. [Exit Waiter] And heark'ye, my lad, a bason of water [rubbing his hands] and a bit of soap - 1 have not washed since I began my journey. Waiter, [answeringfrom 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. 224

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Cas. Where do they come from? [All this while the Waiter re-enters with the bason and water, Casimerepulls off his boots, takes a napkinfrom the table, and washes hisface 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. Ecstacy! Ecstacy! [embracing the Waiter. Land. You seem to be acquainted with the lady - shall I call her? Cas. Instantly - instantly - tell her lov'd, her long lost - tell her Land. Shall I tell her dinner is ready? Cas. Do so - and in the mean while I will look after my portmanteau [Exeunt severally. Scene changes to a subterraneous Vault in the Abbey of Quedlinburgh; - with Coffins, 'Scutcheons,2* Death's Heads and Cross-bones. - 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 grotesqueform 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 armsfolded. 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 fellowmen. - 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 moments, as if absorbed in calculation] eleven 225

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

years and fifteen days! - Hah! The twenty-eighth of August!25 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 wooes 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 a 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 that 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]

226

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SOJVG 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 at the U -niversity of Gottingen -niversity of Gottingen. [ Weeps andpulls out a blue kerchief with which he wipes his eyes; gazing tenderly at it, he proceeds — II. Sweet kerchief, check'd with heav'nly 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 enter'd at the U -niversity of Gottingen -niversity of Gottingen. 227

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1 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 doom'd to starve on water-gru - el* never shall I see the U -niversity of Gottingen -niversity of Gottingen. 26 [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 thefloor in an agony. The Curtain drops — the Music still continuing to play, till it is wholly fallen.

* A manifest error - since it appears from the Waiter's conversation (p. 173.), 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 that they really were; which is very natural, I think, in such a case as this poor unfortunate gentleman's. Printer's Devil.

228

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XXXI) The second part of The Rovers shows signs of an ambitious parodie exercise cut short for lack of time. The parodie élan of Higgins's introductory Philosophy, in the previous issue, is missing, and the play itself partly paraphrased. Sources are also reduced; Count Benyowsky is the single model given close attention. The Rovers retains its charm, however, skipping vivaciously on through ever more unlikely situations, towards a motley and extravagant dénouement.

229

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348280-33

NO XXXI.

June 11. W E 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 of 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. 1 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 230

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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 that 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, had been censured as unnatural. Be it so. It is taken almost word for word, from "Stella," 2 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 by, 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." 3 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,4 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 name, our Author proceeded in all probability on the authority of Goldoni, 5 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 231

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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 later 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, 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 mean time Casimere, having been called away from the neighbourhood of Matilda's residence to other quarters, becomes 232

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enamoured of, and marries Cecilia, by whom he has a family; and whom he likewise deserts after a few years co-habitation, 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 kamschatka 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 éclaircissements6 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 lodging in the same house with Puddincrantz and Beefinstern, 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 Puddincrantz and Beefinstern to return to England. Young Pottingen opens his case to them, and intreats 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,"7 and having learnt from the Waiter that Rogero is confined in the vaults of the neighbouring Abbeyfor 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 233

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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 Grendiers 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 recognizes 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-Home, 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 invertedposition; 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. Damnation! '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 Ay marry are they in this world. They have the game in their 234

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hands. Your kings are but noddies* to them. Pudd.. Ha! Ha! Ha! - Still the same proud spirit, Beefington, which procured thee thine exile form 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. Theformer begins to recover.

Y Pot. What is the matter Comrades?t - you seem agitated. Have you lost or won? Beef Lost. - 1 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 paternal roof and from my studies in chirurgery;8 to seek him and her, I know not where — to rescue * This is an excellent joke in German: the point and spirit of which is but i\\-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.9 f This word in the original is strictlyfellow-lodgers - "Co-occupants of the same room, in a house let out at a small rent by the week. "- There is no single work in English which expresses so complicated a relation, except perhaps the cant term of chum, formerly in use at our Universities.

235

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Rogero, I know not how. Comrades, your counsel - my search fruitless - my money gone - my baggage stolen! What am I to do? In yonder Abby - 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] Hah, my [turning to Puddingfield. friend, what joy! Pudd. What? tell me - let your Puddingfield partake it. Beef. See here [produces a printed Paper. /Wrf.What? [with impatience. Beef, [in a significant tone] A newspaper! Beef. Yes, Puddingfield, and see here [shews 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 - 1 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 - shew me the paragraph. Beef. Here it is, just above the advertisements. Pudd. [reads] "The great demand for Packwood's Razor Straps" - 10 Beef 'Pshaw! What, ever blundering - you drive me from my patience - see here at the head of column. Pudd. [reads] "A hireling Print, devoted to the Court, Has dared to question our veracity 236

THE

ROVERS

Respecting the events of yesterday; But by to-day's accounts, our information Appears to have been perfectly correct. The Charter of our Liberties receiv'd The Royal Signature at five clock, When Messengers were instantly dispatch'd To Cardinal Pandulfo; and their Majesties, After partaking of a cold collation, Return'd 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. Hah! 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 Pottingenfollowing, 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 returningfrom the Seven years3 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 chaunting Vespers. After which a pause. Then a Bell is heard, as ifringingfor supper. Soon after, a noise of singing andjollity. 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.

Fern. Min. Trust me, Gieronymo, 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 thy question - "what have 237

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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. Fern. Min 'Tis a pretty tune, and hums dolefully. [Plays on her Balalaika* Troubadour sings. I bear a secret comfort here, [putting his hand on the bundle, but without shewing it. A joy I'll ne'er impart; It is not wine, it is not beer, But it consoles my heart. 11 Fern. Min. [interrupting him] I'll be hang'd if you don't mean the bottle of cherry-brandy 12 that you stole out of the vaults in the Abbey cellar. Trou. I mean! - Peace, wench, thou disturbest the current of my feelings [Fern. Min attempts to lay hold on the bottle. Troubadour pushes her aside, and continues singing without interruption.] This cherry-bounce, this lov'd noyau, My drink for ever be; But, sweet my love, thy wish forego; I'll give no drop to thee! Trou. (This)

,

,

[Both together,] (this) , 5J

EM iThat) c h e r r y " b 0 U n C e ithat)

lovdn

°y a u >

EM {Thy} d r i n k f o r e v e r b e ;

Trou. }r> i ( thy wish foreero! _ w > But, sweet m y love, < 3 , , ° FM. ) (one drop bestow.

ÍM{Nor} kee P ÍtaIlfor fô e eé!

[Exeunt struggling for the bottle, but without anger or animosity, the Fern. Min. appearing by degrees to obtain a superiority in the contest. END OF ACT II.

* The Balalaika is a Russian instrument, resembling the guitar. - See the Play of "Count Benyowsky," Rendered into English

238

THE ROVERS

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 for bear 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. Cas. 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* - to fly - to fly - to return - England - our country - Magna Charta - it is liberated - a new aera - 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 - am 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. * See "Count Benyowsky: or, the Conspiracy of Kamschatka," where Crustiew, an old gentleman of much sagacity, talks the following nonsense.

Crustiew. [withyouthful 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."13

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

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 a 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,* is like children playing at soldiers. Beef. Courage without power, î is like a consumptive running footman. Cas. Courage without power is a contradiction.* - Ten brave men might set all Quedlingburgh 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? [douhtingly. 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. * See "Count Benyowsky," as before.15 f See "Count Benyowsky."16 % See "Count Benyowsky" again. 17 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.

240

THE ROVERS RECITATIVE ACCOMPANIED.*

Cas. Pudd. Beef. Wait. Gren.) Trou.)

Cos. T. Pot.

Hist! Hist! Nor let the airs that blow From Night's cold lungs, our purpose know! Let Silence, mother of the dumb, Press on each lip her palsied thumb! Let Privacy, allied to Sin, That loves to haunt the tranquil inn And Conscience start, when she shall view, 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! Thrall'd in a Monkish tyrant's fetters Shall great Rogero hopeless lie? In my pocket I have letters, Saying, "help me, or I die!"

Allegro Allegretto. Cas. Beef. Pudd. \ Gren. Trou. I Let us fly, let us fly, Waiter, and Pot. I Let us help, ere he die! with enthusiasm J [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 Signalfor 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

* 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,forfear of being overheard.l8

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

Un forms. The TROUBADOUR with his attendant Minstrels, bring up the rear martial Music - the Conspirators comeforward, 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 Laybrothers 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 besiegersjoin them, and attempt to force the entrance, but without effect. PUDDINGFIELD makes the signal for the battering ram. Enter Q U I N T U S CURTIUS and MARCUS CURIUS

DENATUS, in their proper Military Habits, preceded by the Roman Eagle - the rest of their Legion are employed in bringing forward a battering ram, which plays for afew minutes to slow time, till the entrance isforced. 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 C O U N T of WEIMAR and the PRIOR, who had beenfound feasting in the

Refectory, are brought in manacled. The C O U N T 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 C O U N T properly guarded. The rest of the Conspirators disperse in search of the Dungeon where ROGERO is confined. END OF ACT THE FOURTH.

242

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XXXII) Lord Morpeth's elegant classicism is at work again in this poem, adapting this time from Catullus. Morpeth returns to the subject of Citizen Muskein (from Issue no. XXVII), but with a lighter touch learnt from his source. Sirmio, the setting of Catullus's poem, is a promontory on Lago di Garda, where the poet had a much-loved home; Morpeth transfers the affection to Muskein's haven after St Marcou.

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NO. XXXII.

June 18. We are indebted for thefollowing Imitation of Catullus,1 to a literary Correspond­ ent. Whether it will remove the doubts weformerly 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 afaithful translation from the French — as such, we present it to our Readers; premising only, that though the Citizen Imitator seems to have Sans-cullottized the original in two or three places, yet he every where expresses himself with a naivete 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. ANAFFECTIONATE EFFUSION OF CITIZENMUSKEIN, TO HAVRE-DE-GRACE. FAIREST of cities,* which the Seine

Surveys 'twixt Paris and the main, Sweet Havre! sweetest Havre, hail! How gladly with my tatter'd sail/ 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, AD SIRMIONEM PENINSULAM

* Peninsularum Sirmio, Insularumque, Ocelle! quascunque in liquentibus stagnis, Marique vasto fert uterque Neptunus; t Quam te libenter, quamque laetus inviso, Vix mî ipse credens Thyniam, atque Bithynos

244

THE EFFUSION OF CITIZEN MUSKEIN

I too am safe, * - 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^ 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,+ Thankful he has not gone to pot; Nor for the bubble glory strive, But bless himself that he's alive! Havre,§ sweet Havre! hail again, O! bid thy sons (a frolic train,^ Who under Chenier 2 welcom'd in With dance and song, the Guillotine), In long procession seek the strand: For Muskein now prepares to land, 'Scap'd, Heav'n knows how, from that curs'd crew That haunt the Rocks of SAINT MARCOU.

Liquisse campos,* et videre te in tuto. t O quid solutis est beatius curis, Quom mens onus reponit, ac peregrino Labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum, + Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto. § Salve! O venusta Sirmio! atque hero gaude! Gaudete! vosque Lydiae lacus undae! Ridete^ quicquid est domi cachinnorum!

245

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XXXIII) This poem has its origins in Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschiffoî 1494, the original 'Ship of Fools' and inspiration behind the voyaging savants in this issue. Brant's Fools were translated into Latin by Jacob Locher (1497); and from there into English by Alexander Barclay (1509), to whom the anti-jacobins refer. Brant's purposes - humanist, enlightened but essentially conservative - are not dissimilar to those of Canning. Juvenalian in spirit, he wrote: For the profit, and salutary instruction, admonition and pursuit of wisdom, common sense, and good manners; also for the condemnation and reproach of folly blindness, error, and stupidity of all ranks and kinds of men . . . 1

Brant collected one hundred and twelve generic examples. Among these, the Fools of Useless Books, Newfangled Ways, Trouble-Making, Speaking Against God, Much-Babbling, and others, find specific embodiments in the crew of the Capricorn. The setting is drawn from a poem by Beddoes: Alexander's Expedition to the Indian Ocean. With Historical and Philosophical Observations (London, 1792). From this the anti-jacobins borrow exotic lists, grand historical gestures, and quasi-scientific clutter. They also wickedly mimic the square-wheeled rhythms: With telescopes, globes, and a quadrant, and sextant, And the works of all authors whose writings are extant

Later the poem mocks Napoleon's imperial ambitions, a theme expanded upon elsewhere in this issue in prose, in a lengthy, bombastic letter pretending to be 'from General Buonaparte to the Governor of Zante'. NOTE 1 Epigraph to the Prologue of Das Narrenschiff ( 77?^ Ship Of Fools, trans. William Gilpin, London: Folio Society, 1971), p. 3.

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NO. XXXIII. June 25

AFTER the splendid account of Buonaparte's successes in the East,1 which our Readers will find in another part of this Paper, 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 behind hand with that of France; but that, aware of the wise and enterprizing 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, 2 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 inquired after, reflects the highest honour on the planners of the Enterprize. Even the celebrity of Doctor P—r 3 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 247

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 1

been for weeks past on ship-board, the brightest star in the bright constellation of talents which stud the quarter-deck of the Capricorn, Mr. Truman (as before mentioned) Commander. The resignation of the late worthy President of a certain Agricultural Board, 4 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 production 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 forestall 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 nearly connected with the young man who writes for the Morning Chronicle, and conducts the Critical, Argumen­ tative, 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 recognize 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.5 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 to the "NAVIS STULTIFERA," the "SHIPPE OF 6 FOOLES" of the celebrated Barclay; and we cannot forbear hoping, that the Argenis of an Author of the same name 7 may furnish a hint for 248

TRANSLATION

OF A

LETTER

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; 8 and that the author of a classical Preface may become the Writer of a no less celebrated Voyage. TRANSLATION

OF A

LETTER

(IN ORIENTAL CHARACTERS)

FROM BAWBA-DARA-ADUL-PHOOLA, 9 DRAGOMAN TO THE EXPEDITION,

TO NEEK-AWL-ARETCHID-KOOEZ. 10 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 joy we are rapt in. At Spithead they embark'd us; how precious a cargo! And we sail'd before day, to escape the embargo. There was Sh—b—h, 11 the wonderful mathematician; And D—rw—n, 12 the poet, the sage, and physician; There was B—dd—s, 13 and Bru—n, 14 and G—dw—n 15 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. P—r, 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 birth 16 they oblige us to cram, And Sir John will insist on a place for his ram.

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Though the Doctor, I find, is determined to think 'Tis the animal's hide that occasions the stink; In spite of the experience opinion of Truman, Who contends that the scent is exclusively human. But B—dd—s and D—rw—n engage to repair This slight inconvenience with oxygène 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, Sabaea17 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,18 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 artill'ry 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:19 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 bénéficient plans, Plunder pyramids, catacombs, towns, caravans, Then inlist under Arcole's gallant Commander, 20 Who will conquer the world like his model Iskander.21 His army each day growing bolder and finer, With the Turcoman tribes22 he subdues Asia Minor, Beats Paul and his Scythians,23 his journey pursues 250

TRANSLATION OF A LETTER

Cross the Indus, with tribes of Armenians, and Jews, And Buchanans, and Affghans, and Persians, and Tartars, Chokes the wretched Mogul in his Grandmother's garters, And will hang him to dry in the Luxemburg Hall, 24 '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. D—n proposed (as might be expected) his celebrated experiment of the ice-island, 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.25 Dr. B—s 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. 26 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. 27

251

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XXXIV) This poem by an unknown contributor is closely patterned on one by John Suckling, a trial of love's ambition. At first sight the debts to Suckling seem straightforward, as does the imitation's message: that anarchy encourages more of the same. Suckling's poem looks linear, a series of lover's tests, implying an arrival at the ideal state of true love. The structure of the 'Ode to a Jacobin' mirrors the original exactly, and simply substitutes revolutionary urges for Suckling's romantic ones. But both source and imitation are more interesting. Suckling's final stanza denies the assumed conclusion. True love demands, it turns out, endless renewal: £ Thou must begin again, and love anew'. Whoever wrote this imitation was sensitive to the source, and applications. Sympathetic accounts of the Revolution assume its history to be linear, a turbulent passage towards an ideal State. This poem insists on the circularity of the term revolution. Lawbreaking invites lawbreaking; Jacobinism is seen as a wheel of violence, going nowhere. Also in this issue is a satire pretending to classify a French plant, The Directory, through parodie Linnaean terminology.

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NO. XXXIV July 2. ODE TO A JACOBIN. FROM SUCKLING'S ODE TO A LOVER.1

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

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When slaughter'd 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 prov'st thee fit for Revolutions; Yet one atchiev'd, to that art true, Nor would'st begin to change anew: Know this, Thou think'st amiss; Deem, to think true, All Constitutions bad, but those bran new.

254

To THE EDITOR

TO THE EDITOR OF THE

ANTI-JACOBIN.

SIR,

I AM indebted to a Member of the National Institute for a description of a very extraordinary plant now growing at Paris. As it was unknown to Tournefort, and has not even been noticed by the laborious Vaillant, in his Botanicon Parisiense, I flatter myself the inclosed account of it will gratify such of your readers as are admirers of the sexual system of Linnaeus. HORTENSIUS. DIRECTOR!, C. Pentandria. O. Polygynia. L. CALYX. - Pileus, lanatus, scaber, campanulatus, ruber,* cauli lignoso, aphyllo, longissimo, erecto, superimpositus. Cauli^ liber deest. COROLLA. - Pétala quinque, lanata, sericea, plumosa, colore caeruleoalbo-rubro rutidissima. Liliaceae Capeti corollae omnino dissimilia. STAMEN. - Quinque corpuscula, sesquipedalia, carnosa, distincta, retroflexa, tunicata, quinquennalia. Unum saepissime abortit. Anthera; globosa, unius unciae plerumque ponderis. - (Vide Pistillum de usu Antheraee ad Fructificationem.) PiSTlLLUM+ - Gérmen lignosum, clavatum, oblongum, reflexum.Styli innumerabiles. - Stylus; tubus cylindricus, trium fere pedum longitudinis, teres, laeevis - Ad basin, germini affixus. Ligula, coriacea, fibulata, tubo subnecitur. Virga, longa, rígida, stricta, germini inserta, ad apicem styli extendit. Stylo latérale foramen ad basin. Filamenta

* T h e author, very properly, I think, notices the colour both of the Calyx and the Corolla. It should, however, be observed, that this is contrary to the usual practice of botanists, who never notice colour, because they say it makes no part of the character of plants. See Rousseau's second letter on botany. - N. Scriblerus Anti-Jacobinus. f T h e French often plant this stem in the ground, as the English do the may-pole. It is singular, that this stalk of the Directoria though leafless and rotten, has, in the neologisms of the moderns, acquired the name of a tree; and, though without an inner bark (liber}) is called arbor liber tatis; ut lucus à non lucendo. - N. Scrib. X Lege, meo periculo pistol lum. - N. Scrib.

255

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plura foramen circum ambiunt. Stigma; trigonum, Ensiforme, acuminatum. Ut fructus maturetur, stamen, inclinatum, antheram pistilli stylo inserit. Ibi polline granulato circumfusa paulim requiescit. Mox pollen motu filamentorum foramen latérale circum-ambientium concussum, antheram longé protrudit. Quaedam pistilla, germine et stigmate carentia, partes inferiores lignosas, rotatas, habent. His anthera insita aut major communi est, aut gravadi est polline, quod matura demittet, elastice explodens.* PERICAPIUM. - Biloculare involucrum, humi serpens, altero loculamento 250, altero 500, capsulas, appendiculatas, linguiformes, geniculatas, quasdem etiam campaniferas continens. SEMINA. - Innumerabilia, mucronata, cuspidata, lanceolata, dolabriformia, Directoria caulem scandentem habet, altíssima petentem, planus inferioribus sustinendum. Folia papyriformia, quadrata, lineis varus inscripta. Solo-granifero, vinifero, aurífero, gaudet. ^Edes máximas, palatia, templa obumbrat. Gallis notissima est. Horto Luxemburgensi-Parisiensi luxuriat. In aliis Europae Continentis partibus languescit. In Hollandiâ et Italiâ non sine cultura viget. Horto Kewensi, plantis rarioribus abundanti, abest. Unum stamen et quaedam capsulae nuperimé in Guianam deportatae sunt. An ibi fructus proférant, in dubio est. QUALITATES. - Amara, nausea, haemorroidalis, purgativa. Usus. - Plantarum medicinalium optima. Calyx insanientibus accommodatissimus pileus. Antherae maximae, cultello chirurgico celerius, membrum amputant. Ex minimis antheris anodynae fiant pilulae, quae somnum (ae ter num, si opis sit) promove ant, Stigmata ad vene-sectionem paratissima. Folia papyriformia saepissime assignata ad corpora, nimiâ pinguedine superbientia, justo regimine castiganda. Semina dolabriformia morbo-regio laborantibus pro remédio habetur. Capsulae ursis esca gratíssima. î Ut omnia uno verbo dicantur, Directoria, apud Francos, (uti Cocos, arbor celeberrimà, apud Indos,) vistitûs, domûs, cibi, vices supplet. * Vide Linn. Phil. Bot. p. 53, 56, 90. f Vide the story of the Swiss Bears attempting to devour a Deputy at Paris.

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TRANSLATION

{Translation: DIRECTORIA, Class: Fivemannery Order: Muchwomanery - A cap, woolly, rough, bell-shaped, red, on top of a stem that is woolly, leafless, extremely long and erect. The bark has no leaves. COROLLA. - Five petals, woolly, silky, feathery, glowing brightly with a blue-white-red hue. Utterly dissimilar to the corolla of the Capetian lily. The stem has no bark. Stamen. - Five small, sesquipedalian2 bodies, fleshy, discrete, fully flexible, tunicated, quinquennial. Very often one miscarries. Anthers: spherical, often an ounce in weight (see pistil, with respect to the use of the anther for fruit-bearing). 3 PISTIL - A Woody ovary, closed, oblong, turned back. - Innumerable styles. - Style: a cylindrical tube, almost three feet in length, smooth, light. Fixed to the sprig at the base. A little tongue of leather, with a clasp, is fastened to the tube. A long, stiff, narrow branch, inserted into the pistil, extends to the tip of the style. At the base of the style is a lateral opening. Many filaments surround the opening. Stigma: triangular, shaped like a sword, pointed. So that the fruit may ripen, the stamen, bending down, inserts the anther into the style of the pistil. There, surrounded by grains of pollen, it rests for a short while. Soon, the pollen, struck by the motion of the filaments which surround the opening, pushes out a long anther. There are a few pistils, lacking ovary and stigma, with woody and rounded lower parts. The anther inserted in these is either larger than usual or heavy with pollen, which it sheds on ripening, with an elastic explosion. PERICARP. - A wrapping with two sacs, creeping on the ground, one sac containing 250, the other 500 capsules (with appendages tongueshaped, bent and some also bearing bells). SEEDS. - Innumerable, sharpened, honed, bristling, mattock-shaped. The Directoria has a climbing stem, seeking the highest places and requiring sustenance from lower plants. Its leaves are paper-shaped, square, inscribed with various lines. It enjoys a soil that is grainCALYX.

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bearing, vine-bearing, and gold-bearing. It overshadows great mansions, palaces and shrines. It is most familiar to the Gauls. It grows thickly in the Luxemburgo - Parisian Gardens. In other regions of the continent of Europe it is languishing. In Holland and Italy it does not thrive without cultivation. It is absent from Kew Gardens, though they abound in rare plants. One stamen and a few capsules were lately deported to Guiana. Whether they are bearing fruit there is a matter for doubt. QUALITIES. - Bitter, nauseous, causing haemorrhoids, purgative. USE. - It is the best of medicinal plants. The calyx is a most suitable cap for the insane. The largest anthers amputate a member more quickly than a surgeon's knife. The smallest anthers produce small pain-killing globules, which induce sleep (eternal, if need be). The stigma is particularly useful for severing veins.4 The paper-shaped leaves are very often applied to bodies which are excessively swollen with pride and need to be chastised with due regimen. The mattockshaped seeds are regarded 5 as a remedy for the royal disease. The capsules are extremely pleasant to bears. To say everything in a single word, the Directoria among the Franks (like the Coca, a most celebrated tree, among the Indians) serves the turn of clothing,6 housing, and food.]

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no.

XXXV)

This issue opens with a lighthearted p o e m on a serious subject, the Irish uprisings of Spring 1798. In these there was a grim inevitability: In the course of several years we have seen a system of coercion in the sister kingdom, rising from one step of severity to another, till the weight of the Administration became intolerable to the people. The progress of the imputed disaffection rose with the supposed remedy; or rather, by an unwise and intolerant policy, discontent has been inflamed into rebellion.l Lord Moira had spoken out, to this effect, at Westminster in the a u t u m n of 1797, prompting the ' O d e to Lord Moira' of Issue no. X I (and several virulent editorials), but the situation continued to escalate. Fourteen United Irish ringleaders were arrested for plotting a rebellion in February, and a later plan to seize control of Dublin collapsed after the capture of Lord Edward Fitzgerald on 19 May. Insurrections broke out all over the South, spreading N o r t h through M a y and June. These were rigorously repressed. Lord Moira raised his voice again, this time in the Irish Parliament, in February: Dublin, Feb. 20. Yesterday, the Earl of Moira, in the House of Lords, made a long and pointed speech on the subject of the distracted state of Ireland, pointing out the impolicy of the system of terror; and insisted much on, what he termed, the most unprovoked and wanton acts of cruelty which have been committed under the sanction of the Government of that country.2 In the course of this long and eloquent speech on the over-reaction of government forces, he evoked Irish loyalty by the example of his own estate at Ballynahinch. But early in J u n e Ballynahinch was the centre of pitched battles between a r m e d rebels and government troops; more than 400 rebels were reported killed, and large parts of 259

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Ballynahinch and the neighbouring town of Saintfield were burned to the ground. The poem is followed by a lengthy Latin paean to Britannia written by Canning. Unlike the 'Verses' of Marquis Wellesley in Issue no. VI, this is an expressive exercise, flaunting Canning's ease in the language of the learned. NOTES 1 Morning Chronicle, 19 June 1798. 2 Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 68, pt. 1 (Feb 1798), p. 161.

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NO. XXXV

July 9. Thefollowing 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. BALLTNAHINCH.

A NEW SONG. I. A CERTAIN great statesman,1 whom all of us know, In a certain Assembly, no long while ago, Declar'd from this maxim he never would flinch, "That no town was so Loyal as Ballynahinch." II. The great Statesman it seems had perus'd 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 resum'd their proceedings; They had most of them worn " We'll be true to the Frinch"* So Loyal a town was this Ballynahinch! * Hibernicépro French. 2

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IV. Determin'd their landlord's fine words to make good, They hid Pikes in his haggard, 3 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 Britainniae, paucis annis ante conscriptum, nuperrimè recensitum atque amendatum, forte arrideat, quaerite in proximis vestris tabulis locum quendam seretum atque securum, ubi repositum suâ sorte perfruatur. Quod si in me hanc gratiam contuleritis, devinctus vobis ero et astrictus beneficio. ETONENSIS.

si freta brevi, fatisque secundis, Europae sub pace vetet requiescere gentes, Inque dies ruat ulterius furialibus armis Gallia, tota instans à sedibus eruere imis Fundamenta, quibus cultae commercia vitae Frimant se subnixa; - tuisne, Britannia, regnis Ecquid ab hoste times; dum te tua saxa tuentur, Dum pelagus te vorticibus spumantibus ambit? SUCCESSU

Tu medio stabilita mari, atque ingentibus undis Cincta sedes; nec tu angusto, Vulcania tanquam Trinacris, interclusa sinu; nec faucibus arctis Septa freti brevis, impostisque coercita claustris. Liberiora tibi spatia, et porrecta sine ullo Limite régna patent (quanto neque maxima quondam Carthago, aut Phaenissa Tyros, ditissima tellus Floruit império) confiniaque ultima mundi. 262

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Erogone formidabis adhuc, ne se inférât olim, Et campis impuné tuis superingruat hostis? Usque adeone parúm est, quod laté litora cernas Praeruptis turrita jugis, protentaque longo Circuitu, et tutos passim praebentia portus? Praesertim australes ad aquas, Damnoniaque arva, Aut ubi Vecta viret, seccessusque 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 nantis tam firma tuis, tam pródiga vitae Pectora, inexpletâ succensa cupidine famae, Nec turpi flectenda metu; dum maxima quercus, Majestate excelsa suâ, atqueingentibus umbris, Erigitur, vasto nodosa atque áspera trunco; Silvarum regina. Haec formidabilis olim Noctem inter mediam nimborum, hyemesque sonantes, Ardua se attollit super aequora; quam neque fluctûs Spumosi atténuât 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, Quae tolerant obsessae urbes, cúm jam hostica clausas Fulminât ad portas acies, vallataque circúm, Castra locat, saevisque aditus circumsidet ar mis. Talia sunt tibi perpetuae fundamina famae, Ante alias diis cara, Britannia! Praelia cerno Inclyta, perperuos testes quid maxima victrix, Quid possis preclara tuo, maris arbitra, ponto. Haec inter, sanctas aetternâ laude calendas Servandas recolo, quibus ilia, immane minata 263

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Gentibus excidium, totunn grassata per orbem Ausaque jam imperiis intactum amplectier aequor, Ilia odiis lymphata, et libertate recenti Gallia, disjectam ferali funere ciassem Indoluit devicta, et non reparabile vulnus. Tempore quo instructas vidit longo ordine puppes Rostratâ certare acie, et concurrere ad arma, iEtheraque impulsu tremere, Uxantisque per undas Lububre lumen agi, atque rubentem fulgure fumum. Cerno triumphatas acies, quo tempore Iberûm Disjectos fastus, lacerisque aplustria velis Horruit Oceanus: - quali formidine Gades Intremere, ut fractâ ciassem se mole moventem Hospitium petere, et portus videre relictos! Quid referam, nobis quae nuper adorea risit, Te rusús superante, die quo decolor ibat Sanguine Belarum Rhenus, fluctusque minores Volvebat, frustra indignans polluta cruore Ostia, et Angliaco tremefactas fulmine rupes. Cerno pias aedes procúl, et regalia quondam Atria, caeruleis quae preterlabitur undis Velivolus Thamesis; materno ubi denique nautas Excipis amplexu, virtus quoscumque virilis Per pelagi impulerit discrimina, quaelibet ausos Pro Patriâ. Hic rude donantur, dulcique senescunt Hospitio emeriti, placidâque quiete potiti Vulnera praeteritos jactant testantia casus. Macte ideó decus Oceani! Macte omne per aevum Victrix, aequorco stabilita Britannia regno! Litoribusque tuis ne propugnacula tantúm Praesidio fore, nee saxi munimina credas, Nee tantúm quae mille acies in utrumque parantur, Aut patriam tutari, aut non superesse cadenti; 264

DE NAVALI LAUDE BRITANNIA

Invictae quantum metuenda tonitrua Classis, Angiliacae Classis; - quae majestate verendâ Ultrix, inconcussa, diú dominabitur orbi, Hostibus invidiosa tuis, et saepe triumphis Nobilitata novis, pelagi Regina subacti.

[Translation: LEARNED SIRS,

If this little poem in praise of Britain's navy, composed a few years ago and lately edited and emended, happens to give you any pleasure, look in your forthcoming issue for some secret and secure place where it may be ensconced, to enjoy whatever is its due. If you will do me this favour, I shall be much obliged to you and bound to your service. ETONENSIS.

So Gaul, relying on her transient success and propitious fortunes, refuses to let the nations of Europe rest at peace, and day by day rushes further on in with raging arms, intent on tearing up, from their deepest layers, the foundations on which the transactions of civilised life depend for their stability. But need you, Britannia, therefore fear anything from the foe, when your own rocks guard you and the deep surrounds you with its foaming pools? You are established in the middle of the main, and sit encircled by gigantic waves, you are not confined in a meagre stretch of water, like the three-cornered isle of Vulcan,5 nor are you fenced in by the tight jaws of a narrow strait, with bolts imposed to constrain you. You have more ample room, and kingdoms of unlimited extent6 are open to you (an empire greater than matchless Carthage or Phoenicean Tyre, the wealthiest of lands, enjoyed in their heyday),7 and the bounds of the earth are coterminous with yours. So you are still afraid that the foe may invade and mass his forces with impunity on your plains? Is it really such a small thing that you see your shores fortified in many places by sheer crags, and extending in a 265

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wide circle to offer safe ports everywhere? Particularly so by the southern shores, where Cornwall's fields are, or where the flourishing Isle of Wight offers trusty recesses behind its projecting flanks; or where rock-built Dover gazes down from an aerial height on the broad sea thick with sails,8 the flowing plains and the adversary's coasts. When I prophesy that your name will endure henceforth for centuries, the portents are not trivial, there is no lack of omens - not while you have such loyal sailors, whose hearts are prodigal of life, inflamed by an unabated love of fame and never daunted by base fear; not while your great oak rises to its own majestic height, with its widespread shade, its vast trunk dour and knotted - queen of the woods.9 This raises its fearsome bulk aloft in the middle of a tempestuous night and the clamouring of winter; the rage of a foaming torrent cannot diminish it, nor can the violence of wind break it and tear it apart in the middle of the waters. Supported by such strength, and surrounded by the chafing brine, you remain unmoved in the midst of wars. You know nothing of the already breathing fire at the bolted gates, and he builds the ramparts of his camp around it, encircling the points of entry with fierce weapons. Such are the foundations of your everlasting fame, Britannia, you who are dear to the gods before the rest! I behold illustrious wars, which testify unceasingly to your powers as the matchless victor, arbiter of the main, pre-eminent in your own waters. Among these things, I recall the day, which ought to be consecrated by eternal praise, when that land of Gaul, which had threatened immense ruin to the nations, spreading throughout the whole world and daring to embrace waters hitherto untouched by her empire, swollen as she was with hatred and new-found liberty, felt the sorrow of the vanquished for a fleet that had been shattered with deadly ruthlessness and a wound that could not be healed. This was the time when she saw a long line of prows drawn up, the strife of embattled hulls, l0 the aether trembling with the shock, a doleful light being driven through the waves of Wishant and smoke red with the glare.

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TRANSLATION

I behold triumph in battle, on the occasion when Ocean quailed at the shattering of Spanish pride and the afterdecks with ravaged sails; Cadiz was shaken by these terrors, when it saw the fleet moving its broken mass in search of refuge, abandoning the ports! Why should I recall the new dawn that smiled upon us lately, as you were once again victorious in the day when the Rhine changed colour with Belgian blood and flowed in a diminishing stream, fruitlessly complaint of an estuary defiled with blood and cliffs that were terrified by the English lightning. Far off I behold a holy edifice, halls once royal, past which glide the blue waves of the Thames, thick with sails. There at last you receive in your maternal bosom all the sailors whom manly virtue has driven on through the perils of the deep, daring everything for their homeland, 11 here they receive a modest pension, and grow old as they deserve in a pleasant refuge; now that they enjoy peace and quiet, they flaunt the wounds that testify to misfortunes overcome. Splendid glory of ocean! Splendid Britannia, victor for all the ages, established as you are in your watery kingdom! Lest you should suppose that the sole defences of your shores are their bastions, the fortifications of the rocks, the thousands of troops prepared for either contingency,12 to preserve their homeland or not to survive its fall how greatly to be dreaded is the thunder of your unconquerable fleet, the English fleet. This, unbroken in its awesome majesty, will rule the world for ages, the bane of your foes and frequently ennobled by new triumphs - queen of the subjugated deep.]

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Issue no. XXXVI) In their final editorial, the contributors declare: 'the SPELL of Jacobin invulnerability is now broken'. They had good grounds for this, and to boast of their part in it: 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.1

The great achievement of the parodies was, in parrotting the various argots of English radicalism, to elicit what they had in common, eventually discovering what Home Tooke's Grammar would have called a 'mother-language', in the designing syntax and turbulent vocabulary of Mr Higgins. Now, in the 'New Morality', the antijacobins take their long and scornful valediction, looking back over the instances which prompted them to 'lash the vile impostures from the land'. 2 La Réveillière-Lepaux is the poem's presiding demon, an unholy 'Hunch-back' whose demented creed upends or perverts native English common-sense and virtues. After much invective, the closing lines plead with their reader to listen: not to French idealism; not to its English adherents; not even to The Anti-Jacobin; but to themselves: 'Guard we but our own hearts', and 'So shall we brave the storm'. NOTES 1 The Anti-Jacobin, no. 36, pp. 281, 282. 2 New Morality, \. 88.

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NO. XXXVI.

July 9. 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 T h e crowded town, and taints the rural shades; To mark how wide extends the mighty waste O ' e r the fair realms of Science, Learning, Taste; To drive and scatter all the brood of lies, And chase the varying falsehood as it flies; T h e long arrears of ridicule to pay, To drag reluctant Dullness back to day; M u c h yet remains. - To you these themes belong, Ye favour'd sons of virtue and of song!

10

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 w a r m t h of Pope's satiric rage: T h e doating miser, and the lavish heir, T h e follies, and the foibles of the fair, Sir Job, 1 Sir Balaam, 2 and old Euclid's thrift, 3 And Sappho's diamonds with her dirty shift, 4 Blunt, 5 Charteris, 6 Hopkins, 7 - m e a n e r subjects fir'd T h e keen-eyed Poet; while the Muse inspir'd H e r ardent child, - entwining, as he sate, His laurelle'd chaplet with the thorns of hate.

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But say, - indignant does the Muse retire, H e r shrine deserted, and extinct its fire? N o pious h a n d to feed the sacred flame, N o raptur'd soul a poet's change to claim? Bethink thee, G—ff—rd: 8 when some future age Shall trace the promise of thy playful page; "*The h a n d which brush'd a swarm of fools away, Should rouse to grasp a more reluctant prey!" T h i n k then, will pleaded indolence excuse T h e tame secession of thy languid Muse?

30

Ah! where is now that promise? why so long Sleep the keen shafts of satire a n d of song? O h ! come, with Taste and Virtue at thy side, With ardent zeal inflam'd, and patriot pride; With keen poetic glance direct the blow, A n d empty all thy quiver on the foe: 40 N o pause - no rest - till weltering on the ground T h e poisonous hydra lies, and pierc'd with m a n y a wound. T h o u too! - the nameless Bard,^ 9 - whose honest zeal For law, for morals, for the public weal, Pours down impetuous on thy country's foes T h e stream of verse, and many-language'd prose; T h o u too! - though oft thy ill-advis'd dislike T h e guiltless head with r a n d o m censure strike, T h o u g h quaint allusions, vague and undefin'd, Play faintly round the ear, but mock the mind; 50

* 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. ,0 t The Author of "the Pursuits of Literature."

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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; 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 loaths the world, - or, with reflection sad, Concludes it irrecoverably mad; Of taste, of learning, morals, all bereft, No hope, no prospect to redeem it left. Awake! for shame! or e'er thy nobler sense Sink in the' 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. 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, 271

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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; 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, 11 filter'd through the dregs of Paine, Each pert adept disowns a Briton's part, And plucks the name of England from his heart. What shall a name, a word, a sound control The' aspiring thought, and cramp the' expansive soul? Shall one half-peopled Island's rocky round A love, that glows for all Creation, bound? And social charities contract the plan Fram'd for thy Freedom, UNIVERSAL MAN? - No - through the' extended globe his feeling run As broad and general as the'unbonded sun! No narrow bigot he; - his reason'd view Thy interests, England, ranks with thine, Peru! France at our doors, he sees no danger nigh, But heaves for Turkey's woes the' 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

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Breathes on her lips; - the tear-drop gems her eye. Sweet Sensibility, who dwells enshrin'd In the fine foldings of the feeling mind; With delicate Mimosa's 12 sense endu'd, Who shrinks instinctive from a hand too rude; Or, like the anagallis,13 prescient flower, Shuts her soft petals at the' approaching shower. Sweet child of sickly Fancy! - her of yore From her lov'd France Rousseau to exile bore; 14 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; 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 beetleJirst, - 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.

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Mark her fair votaries, prodigal of grief, l140 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; - 15 But hear, unmov'd, of Loire's16 ensanguin'd flood, Chok'd up with slain; - of Lyons17 drench'd 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, 1150 Of talents, honour, virtue, wit, forlorn, In friendless exile, — of the wise and good 273

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Staining the daily scaffold with their blood, O f savage cruelties, that scare the mind, T h e rage of madness with hell's lusts combin'd O f hearts torn reeking from the mangled breast, T h e y hear - and hope, that ALL IS FOR THE BEST. 1 8 Fond hope! - but JUSTICE sanctifies the pray'r JUSTICE: - here, Satire, strike! 'twere sin to spare! Not she in British Courts that takes her stand, T h e 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, T h e ' avenging angel of regenerate France, W h o visits ancient sins on m o d e r n times, And punishes the Pope for Caesar's crimes.* Such is the liberal JUSTICE which presides In these our days, and m o d e r n patriots guides; JUSTICE, whose blood-stain'd book one sole decree, O n e 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 T h e poor man's pittance with the rich man's spoils, Mix'd in one c o m m o n mass, are swept away, To glut the short-liv'd tyrant of the day: By laws, religion, morals, all o'erthrown: -

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* 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.

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- Rouse then, ye sovereign people, claim your own: T h e licence that enthrals, the truth that blinds, 180 T h e wealth that starves you, a n d the pow'r that grinds. - So JUSTICE bids. - 'Twas her enlighten'd doom, Louis, thy holy head devoted to the tomb! 'Twas JUSTICE claim'd, in that accursed hour, The fatal forfeit of too lenient pow'r. - 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, ] 190 Thou drivelling virtue of this moral age, > CANDOUR, which softens party's headlong rage. J 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 O f acting foolishly, but meaning well; Too nice to praise by wholesale, or to blame, Convinc'd that all men's motives are the same; And finds, with keen discriminating sight, BLACK'S not so black; - n o r W H I T E SO very white,

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"Fox, to be sure, was vehement a n d wrong: But then Pitt's words, you'll own, were rather strong. Both must be blam'd, both pardon'd; - 'twas just so With Fox a n d Pitt full forty years ago; So Walpole, Pulteney; 1 9 - factions in all times, Have h a d their follies, ministers their crimes." Give m e t h e ' avowed, t h e ' erect, the manly foe, Bold I can meet - perhaps m a y turn his blow; But of all plagues, good heav'n, thy wrath can send, Save, save, oh! save m e from the Candid Friend).

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"Barras 20 loves plunder, - Merlin21 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? 22 - 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. Priestly's a Saint, and Stone 23 a Patriot still; And La Fayette24 a Hero, if they will.

220

I love the bold uncompromising mind, Whose principles are fix'd, whose views defin'd: 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 the' avenging rod, Just retribution, and the hand of God; Who hears the groans through Olmutz' roofs that ring,25 Of him who mock's misled, betray'd his King Hears unappall'd: - though Faction's zealots preach Unmov'd, unsoften'd by F—tzp—tr—ck's 26 speech. - *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

* The speech of General F—tzp—tr—ck, 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

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How Popish ladies trust their pious fears And naughty actions in their chaplain's 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 C—W— n 27 dropt a sentimental tear, And stout St. A—dr—w 28 yelp'd a softer "Hear!" O! nurse of crimes and fashion! 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 C—rtn—y* 29 mars the verse he steals.) How do we ape thee, France! - nor claim alone Thy arts, thy tastes, thy morals for our own, But to thy Worthies render homage due, Theirt "hair-breadth scapes" with anxious interest view;30 Statesmen and heroines whom this age adores, Tho' plainer times would call them rogues and whores. See Louvet, patriot, pamphleteer, and sage, Tempering with amorous fire his virtuous rage.

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the prison of Olmutz, 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? * See p.51, in the note, for a theft more shameless, and an application of the thing stolen more stupid, that any of those recorded of Irish story-tellers by Joe Miller. f See Récit de mes Perils, by Louvet; Mémoires d'un Detenu, by Riouffe,31 &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.

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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.32 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; Plung'd 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* - Yet hapless Louvet! Where thy bones are laid, The easy nymphs shall consecrate the shaded There, in the laughing morn of genial spring, Unwedded pairs shall tender couplets sing; Eringoes,33 o'er the hallow'd spot shall bloom, And flies of Spain buzz softly round the tomb.+

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But hold, severer virtue claims the Muse Roland the just, 34 with ribands in his shoes - § And Roland's spouse who paints with chaste delight * Every lover of modern French literaure, 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 caster oil, were served up in daily messes from the French papers, till the public absolutely sickened. | Faciles JVapeœ.35

X See Anthologia passim. § Such was the strictness of this Minister's principles, that he positively refused to go to court in shoe-buckles. - See Dumourier's Memoirs.36

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The doubtful conflict of her nuptial night; Her virgin charms what fierce attacks assail'd, And how the rigid Minister* prevaiPd.37 And ah! what verse can grace thy stately mien, Guide of the world, preferment's golden queen, Neckar's fair daughter, - Stael the Epicene!38 Bright o'er whose flaming cheek and pumple^ 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,*39 - Sad Quatremer 40 - the bold presumption checks, Forbid to question thy ambiguous sex.

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To thee, proud Barras 41 bows; - thy charms control Rewbell's42 brute rage, and Merlin's 43 subtle soul; Rais'd by thy hands, and fashion'd to thy will, Thy pow'r, 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;§ To stand the playful buffet, and to hear 310

* See M a d a m e Roland's Memoirs - "Rigide Ministre" Brissots à ses Commetans. f T h e "pumple" nosed attorney of Furnival's Inn. - Congreve's Way of the World. 44 } These lines contain the secret History of Quatremer's deportation. H e presumed in the Council of Five H u n d r e d to arraign M a d a m e de Stael's conduct, and even to hint a doubt of her sex. H e was sent to Guyana. T h e transaction naturally brings to one's mind the dialogue between Falstaff and Hostess Quickly in Shakespeare's Henry IV. Fal. T h o u art neither fish nor flesh - a m a n cannot tell where to have thee. Quick. T h o u art an unjust man for saying so - thou or any man knows where to have me. 4 5 § For instance, in the course of a political discussion, Rewbell observed to the Exbishop - "that his understanding was as crooked as his legs" - "Vil Emigre, tu n'as pas le sens plus droit que les pieds" - and there withal 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 past over him, innocuous and guiltless of his blood or brains.

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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"* Last of the' ANOINTED FIVE behold, and least, The Directoria Lama, Sovereign Priest, Lepaux: 46 - whom atheists worship; - at whose nod Bow their meek heads the men without a God.^ Ere long, perhaps, to this astonish'd Isle, Fresh from the shores of subjugated Nile, Shall Buonaparte's victor fleet protect The genuine Theo-Philanthropic sect, 47 The sect of Marat, 48 Mirabeau, 49 Voltaire, Led by their Pontiff, good La Reveillere. - Rejoic'd our CLUBS shall greet him, and install The holy Hunch-back 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, Your Country libel, and your God blaspheme, Or dirt on private worth and virtue throw, Still blasphemous or blackguard, praise Lepaux.

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* See Homer's description of Vulcan First Iliad. Inexinguibilis vero exoriebatur risus beatis numinibus Ut viderunt Vulcanum per domos ministrantem.50 f 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 in their great coats and wait the approach of death," &c.

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"And ye five other wandering Bards, that move In sweet accord of harmony and love, C dge 51 and S—th—y,52 L—d,53 and L—be 54 and Co. 55 Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux! Pr—tl—y,56 and W—f— Id,57 humble, holy men, Give praises to his name with tongue and pen! Th—lw—l, 58 and ye that lecture as ye go, And for your pains get pelted, praise Lepaux!

340

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, W—11—ms,59 G—dw—n, 60 H—1er—ft,61 praise Lepaux! and with join'd, And every other beast after his kind.62 And thou Leviathanl63 on ocean's brim Hugest of living thing that sleep and swim; Thou in whose nose by Burke's gigantic hand The hook was fix'd to drag thee to the land, With , , and * in thy train, And wallowing in the yeasty main^"64 Still as ye snort, and puff, and spout, and blow, In puffing, and in spouting, praise Lepaux!"

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* T h e 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. t

T h o u g h the yeasty sea Consume and swallow navigation up.

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Macbeth.65

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC

AGE:

VOLUME 1

Britain, beware; nor let the' insidious foe, 66 O f force despairing, aim a deadlier blow. T h y 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, contended labour, smile; Far seas are studded with thy countless sails; W h a t 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; T h y 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, 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. T h e treacherous current works its noiseless way, T h e fibres loosen, and the roots decay; Prostrate the beauteous ruin lies; and all T h a t shar'd 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 T h e guilt of France, and Europe's world of woes; T h o u , on whose n a m e each distant age shall gaze, T h e mighty sea-mark of these troubled days! O large of soul, of genius unconfin'd, Born to delight, instruct, and m e n d mankind! -

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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! 67 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 thro' 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 lov'd to urge The labouring theme to Reason's utmost verge, Kindling and mounting from th'enraptur'd sight; Still anxious wonder watch'd thy daring flight! - While vulgar minds, with mean malignant stare, Gaz'd 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 flow'd in metaphoric strain, And apt allusions to the rural trade, Tell of what woodyoung JACOBINS are made; How the skill'd Gardener grafts with nicest rule

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The slip of Coxcomb, on the stock of Fool; Forth in bright blossom bursts the tender sprig, A thing to wonder at,* perhaps a Whig. Should tell, how wise each half-fledg'd 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.m So should be the Muse, with verse in thunder cloth'd, Proclaim the crimes by God and Nature loath'd. 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 Blots the fair records of Humanity. To feebler nations let proud France afford Her damning choice, - the chalice or the sword, To drink or die; - oh fraud! oh specious lie! Delusive choice! For zf 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 pow'rs, "Be they not back'd by those that should be ours," 450 High on his rock shall BRITAIN'S GENIUS stand, Scatter the crowded hosts, and vindicate the land.

* i.e. Perhaps a Member of the W H I G 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 W H I G CLUB sometimes rejects a candidate, whose PRINCIPLES (risum teneatis)69 it affects to disapprove.

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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 460 Thy refuge, Europe, in some happier hour. - But, French in heart - tho' 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. FINIS.

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NOTES ISSUE N O . I 1 From the first line, last stanza of 'Rule Britannia', by James Thomson, first published as an ode in Alfred: A Masque (1740). 2 Plays on Richard Payne Knight's Progress (1796), bk. 1,11. 1-2: Whether primordial motion sprang to life From the wild war of elemental strife 3 Gaspard Monge (1746-1818), scientist and invasion bogeyman, helped keep France and its military machine ahead of the times. Physicist, engineer, inventor of descriptive geometry, he was Navy Minister in the Revolutions's Provisional Executive Council until April 1793, and later a close associate and advisor of Bonaparte. In England he was believed, for a while, to be architect of a fabulous scheme to float thousands of soldiers and horses on rafts across the channel. 4 Milton, I Allegro, 1. 135. A good example of how sophisticated allusions in The Anti-Jacobin can be. Through 'fancy's child' Milton's lines look back to Love's Labour's Lost (I. i. 163-6) and a 'child of fancy': A man in all the world's new fashion planted, T h a t hath a mint of phrases in his brain; O n e who the music of his own vain tongue Doth ravish like enchanting harmony. 5 Horace, Odes 3. 1. 1: 'Odi profanum vulgus et arceo'. 6 Othello, III. iii. 356. Othello speaks of his former pride, his martial glory: now corrupted. 7 Othello, III. iii. 360. 8 'She has a thousand adornments': (Tibullan, Corpus, III. 8. 14). 9 'She has a thousand in good taste': (Tibullan, Corpus, III. 8. 14). 10 Sir John, in Vanbrugh's The Provok'd Wife, is usefully louche: 'damn morality', he curses, and with it sobriety, marriage, and decorum. However it is a clergyman's dress in which he disguises himself, not that of a woman. 11 Henry Marten (1602-80), took a leading role in bringing Charles I to trial

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and signed the king's death warrant. Under Charles II he spent the rest of his life in prison. 12 Elizabeth Brownrigg infamously maltreated three apprentices, when midwife to the poor of St Dunstan's parish. O n e of them, Mary Clifford, was frequently tied up naked, and beaten with a hearth-broom, a horsewhip, or a cane, till she was absolutely speechless. This poor girl having a natural infirmity, the mistress would not permit her to lie in a bed, but placed her upon a mat, in a coal-hole that was remarkably cold. {Celebrated Trials, pp. 425-31). 13 T h e liquor, originally Dutch, which came to be known as gin. Notorious for undermining the morals of the lower classes. 14 'Tothiir and 'St. Giles': sinks of iniquity in London. Now W.C. 1, St Giles was once such a nest of thieves that in underworld cant the name was a collective: 'Giles's breed'. 15 Lycurgus, celebrated Spartan legislator, was a strict disciplinarian, especially of youth. At Sparta, Orthia was a name for Diana; boys were whipped in ceremonies dedicated to her. J o h n Aubrey put it about that young Milton was flogged by his tutor at Cambridge. Finally, it may be relevant that Southey was expelled from Westminster for writing against corporal punishment in his school periodical The Flagellant. ISSUE N O . II 1 For example, Southey in Wat Tyler (written in 1794, although unpublished until the pirated edition of 1817): . . . Nature gives enough For all; but Man with arrogant selfishness, Proud of his heaps, hoards up superfluous stores, Robb'd from his weaker fellows, starves the poor, O r gives to pity what he owes to justice. 2 A sneer at Southey's craftsmanship. Sapphics are a risky exercise in English verse; the first three lines of a stanza should end in a long syllable, not a short. Canning and Frere wickedly mimic Southey's clipped line in their 'imitation'. Southey no doubt already knew what was incorrect in his metres, imperfect Sapphics being almost inevitable. 3

Amoebean' verses are, according to Edward Phillips in The New World of English Words (1685), 'those which answer one another'. 'Collocutory' is so arcane that the OED's sole example is this one in The Anti-Jacobin, meaning 'of the nature of a dialogue'.

4 'Friend of Humanity' doubles as general gesture, and specific allusion: the

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soubriquet of George Tierney MP, who had attacked the Chancellor's measures proposed in the House on 24 November 'as they would be adding burthens on the poor and middling classes, without contributing to the object for which these extraordinary expences were intended' {Gentleman's Magazine, pt. 1, no. 4 (April 1798), p. 307). Tierney's antagonism eventually led to a duel with Pitt late in May 1798. This had its lighter side: Tierney's short corpulent body presented an easier target than Pitt's thin and angular figure. It was suggested that Pitt's outline might be chalked onto Tierney and that no shots outside it should be allowed to score. Pitt took the matter more seriously and made his will. (Reilly, Pitt, p. 280) ISSUE N O . IV 1 T h e Parisian market-women, Amazons of the revolution, and infamously coarse. 2 Sir Francis Burdett (1770-1844), M P for Boroughbridge and a populist politician, but a man of principle. A champion of reform all his life, he was briefly imprisoned in the Tower after defending J o h n Gale Jones, and became a close friend of H o m e Tooke. No copies of The Courier of 30 November appear to survive. T h e Shakespeare Tavern was a meeting-place of Whigs and democrats, according to Reeves (p. 293 below) in Thoughts on English Government. 3 London 'the rich, the defenceless' echoes Julius Caesar, The Gallic Wars (bk. 1, para. 10). 4

J. Victor Moreau, once a law-student, became a gifted soldier of the Revolution, rising to command of the Army of the Rhine-and-Moselle by 1796. According to the Morning Chronicle (5 July 1796), he was a principled man, guided by 'moderation and wisdom'. Later, disapproving of Bonaparte's ambition, he died fighting against him for the Russians.

5 T h e Directory was a five-man executive council set up by the new constitution of 1795, with little accountability to the ordinary citizens of the Revolution. 6 The Courier, 20 November: Listen to the voice of COMMON SENSE, Men of England! Behold 300,000 Frenchmen, fresh from the conquest of your late Allies, flushed with the blood and spoils of all Europe, marching with rapid strides to the neighbouring Coast, within seven short leagues, within two days forced march of the opulent and defenceless City of London.

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NOTES TO PAGES 32-4 1 O n 4 September (18th Fructidor in the Revolutionary calendar), a coup d'état took place in the Directory, the executive body of the French legislature. T h e 'Moderates' were ousted. 8 For Norfolk, see pp. 9 4 - 5 above. 9 For hair-powder, see pp. 304-5 below. 10 'Triumvirate': meaning the three hardliners Barras, Reubell, and La Révellière-Lépaux: Jean-Francois Rewbell, or Reubell (1747-1807), once a lawyer from Alsace, was elected to the Estates-General and made a name for himself as agent of change. He became a member of the Directory in 1795, with special responsibility for foreign affairs: in these, he showed an appetite for annexation. Jean-Nicolas-Paul-Francois Barras (1755-1829) had a bloody reputation. A dissolute, aristocratic army officer under the ancien regime, he was brutally effective in the new order after 1789. His amoralism served him well in revolutionary politics, preserving his place in the Directory while associates came and went. T h e anti-jacobins thought Barras the most dangerous of the five: BARRAS, confident in his connection with BUONAPARTE, and relying upon the assistance of the Military, has ventured to separate himself from his Colleagues:- In his equipage and entertainments he exhibits a species of theatrical ostentatious parade; he even affects to pride himself upon his family, which it seems is ancient, and had hitherto been a respectable one. In short, his whole conduct is expressive of the extreme contempt which he entertains for his present Partners in the Sovereignty, and seems to betray the secret of that design which is imputed to him, of establishing a Military Despotism. (Issue no. 5, p. 39) This is not wildly exaggerated; it took action from Bonaparte himself finally to dislodge Barras and force him into exile. Louis-Marie de la Révellière-Lépaux (1753-1824), once a bourgeois botanist, later an enthusiast for theophilanthropy; later he rose to become a member of the Directory. 11 T h e new constitution drafted in Paris in August 1795 arranged a bicamerel legislature: a lower 'Council of 500', and above this the 'Council of Elders'. Executive power remained with the five Directors, who were selected by the Elders from a list presented by the 500. 12 This paragraph makes much of Fox's opportunism and inconsistencies. It looks back to an earlier Fox, the man who announced in the House on 25 March 1771 that 'I pay no attention to the voice of the people'. T h e episode

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of the printer began on 11 February 1774, when an article by H o m e Tooke, criticizing the speaker of the House, appeared in the Public Advertiser. William Woodfall, the printer, was summoned to the bar of the House. Crestfallen, apologetic, and respectful, he made a good impression, claiming to be too pressed for time to have read this article before printing it. Lord North, previously outraged, softened; Fox, however, stubbornly insisted on the full weight of the law, demanding Woodfall be sent to Newgate. To his considerable embarassment North, who had given his word to Fox that he would vote for imprisonment, was forced to do so; but he publicly advised his friends to vote against. T h e motion for imprisonment was defeated. T h e resulting estrangement between North and Fox made their subsequent partnership in coalition all the more repugnant to most observers (see p. 306 below). 13 Adam Smith ( 1723-90), the political economist, author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). His social theory relied on sympathetic individualism; Fox professed to admire him. 14 Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), whose guide to the use of political authority, // Principe (1513), is notoriously casual about the ethics of acquiring it. 15 A separate peace with the Austrian Emperor Francis II was finally arranged at the treaty of Campo Fornio, in October 1797; anticipating this, the French grew less and less inclined to make concessions with Britain. 16 Negotiations between France and Britain at Lisle began with promise, late in June 1797. French attitudes hardened later, and the coup d'état of 4 September ended any real hope of peace; the Directory's representatives at Lisle were immediately replaced, and pending concessions terminated. 17 For the naval mutiny of the spring of 1797, see p. 295 below. T h e protests of the sailors were self-evidently justified; Fox and the Opposition naturally took full advantage of the government's discomfiture. 18 Meaning Sheridan, who, concerned at England's vulnerability, uncharacteristically sided with the government. 19 'Two Bills': the Treasonable Practices and Seditious Meetings Acts of 1796, which extended the concept of treason to cover any criticism of either King or Government, and allowed public meetings to be more carefully controlled. 20

'In his speeches, as in his life, he was an opportunist' wrote Reilly concisely {Pitt, p. 100).

21 Lord J o h n Russell (1766-1839), brother of the 5th Duke of Bedford (Francis Russell, see p. 64 above), M P for Tavistock, parliamentary reformer and member of the Society of the Friends of the People. At the death of Francis in

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NOTES TO PAGES 39 1802, J o h n became 6th Duke of Bedford. William Russell (b.1767), the youngest of the three brothers, was elected member for Surrey in 1788, and held his seat until 1807; afterwards he represented Tavistock, until ill-health forced him to retire from politics. 22 Alderman Combe was a Whig enthusiast, listed among the stewards at Fox's birthday party (see p. 100 above). 23 For Tierney, see pp. 288-9 above. 24 Charles Grey ( 1764-1845), later second Earl, Viscount Howick, Baron Grey. Entered the House of Commons as M P for Northumberland in 1786 and made an immediate impression as an eloquent denunciator of Pitt and his policies. 'You never saw a fellow so vicious as Grey', wrote Thomas Creevey of his oratory {Creevey Papers vol. 2, p. 6). H e was a member of the Whig club; he also 'established the Society of the Friends of the People, for the avowed purpose of bringing men together to declare their opinions on the necessity of a Reform in Parliament' (Nicholls, Recollections, p. 215). He was, at this time, very close to Fox; eventually they drifted apart. A Whig of the oldfashioned, aristocratic variety, Grey was later Prime Minister (1830-4). 25 George Byng, M P for Middlesex; Wraxall speaks of his 'fiery sallies', and calls him: a man of very honourable character and upright intentions, but of an ardent temper, very limited talents, and devoted to the Rockingham party. (Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 90) 26 General Sir Banastre Tarleton (1754-1833), a distinguished soldier, became M P for Liverpool in 1790 and sided with the opposition. 27 Henry Redhead Yorke, who was born in the West Indies, was a prominent member of the Sheffield Society for Constitutional Information, and a travelling agitator. 28 Thomas Erskine (1750-1823), 1st Baron, lawyer, Whig MP, close friend of Fox, Sheridan and the Prince of Wales. A contradictory character, the ups and downs of his varied career are not made more explicable by his own imaginative retellings. In the navy he was struck by lightning and drove his ship on the rocks. His progress in the army was equally erratic. He pitched into law, almost by accident, then persevered in poverty until a case he chanced on made him famous, and rich. As a defence lawyer he found his vocation: 'nobody had ever more power over a jury' said Samuel Rogers (Table Talk, pp. 88-9). He defended Paine when prosecuted for the Rights of Man in 1792, then Tooke, Thelwall and others in the 'Treason Trials' of 1794. Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales in 1783, he was later Lord

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Chancellor (1806-7). As an M P however, he was much less successful, a surprisingly weak speaker much cowed by Pitt. Vivacious in company, he ruined his graces by delighting in his own accomplishments, becoming known as 'Baron Ego'. 29 cf. Psalms 8:5: 'For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.' 30 For Merlin see p. 329 below. 31 Burke's famous sneer from Reflections; it is worth noting that in fact Burke uses the indefinite article, so he may have simply meant 'a mob', not the French people in general. 32 J o h n Reeves (1752-1829), anti-reformer, founded 'An Association for preserving Liberty and Property against Levellers and Republicans' in 1792, and published an anonymous pamphlet, Thoughts on the English Government (1795), where the Tree appears: In fine, the Government of England is a Monarchy, the Monarch is the ancient stock from which have sprung those goodly branches of the Legislature, the Lords and Commons, that at the same time give ornament to the Tree, and afford shelter to those who seek protection under it. [Thoughts, p. 12) 33 Tranent was the site of a riot in Scotland, 29 August 1797, over the imposition of the Militia Act (which aimed to raise 6,000 Militia-men from among the population). Estimates of the numbers of rioters varied from 2,000 to 5,000; 36 people were arrested. 34 T h e march of thefédérés from Marseilles, see p. 322 below. 35 William Wyndham, later Baron, Grenville (1759-1834), cousin, friend, and long-term colleague of Pitt. Aggressively conservative on many issues, he guarded Pitt's flank during the coalition ministry. His speeches were heavy going, and particular: 'His imagination is microscopick, and perceives a resemblance in objects invisible to less acute optics' (Courtenay, Characteristic^). Wyndham used the epithet Acquitted Felons' in the House, for those freed in the Treason Trials of 1794, for which he was called to order. 36 Quiberon Bay, on the southern coast of Brittany, was the landing-place of a half-baked expedition approved by Pitt in June 1795. Some 3,000 men, mostly French emigres, were sent from England to join forces with royalist guerillas on the peninsular. T h e insurgents were immediately crushed by General Hoche. 37 Thomas Muir (1765-98), a Scottish lawyer who agitated for parliamentary reform in Scotland, modelled his campaigns on those of London's Society of

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the Friends of the People. He was prosecuted for recommending Paine's Rights of Man and sentenced to fourteen years transportation in 1793. T h e Reverend Thomas Palmer, another prominent advocate of reform, was tried a month later, and sentenced to five years. T h e severity of the punishments shocked the public at large. Muir was rescued from Botany Bay by American sympathisers, and after an extraordinary series of maritime adventures arrived in Paris in February 1798, mortally wounded by English naval artillery. 38 Referring to 1794, when members of the Society for Constitutional Information and the London Corresponding Society were tried for high treason. Defended by Thomas Erskine, they were acquitted. 39 Marie-Joseph Motier (1757-1834), Marquis de Lafayette. A wealthy, liberal aristocrat, Lafayette became a national hero after the American War of Independence, commander of the Parisian National Guard, and Commander of the Army of the Centre in 1792. By then his reputation was on the wane; he turned against the new France, defected, and was imprisoned by the allies until 1797. 40 T h e 'Imperial Loan' was an unprecedented scheme of Pitt's to shore up Austria against France in 1795; £ 4 . 6 million was raised from subscribers, with the Treasury as guarantor. 41 Matthew Prior, An English Padlock (1707). 42 'Macfungus' is a caricature of Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832), philosopher, Brunonian enthusiast (see p. 324 below), and leading radical. H e wrote Vindicae Gallicae (1791) in response to Burke, became a friend of Fox, and Honorary Secretary of the Friends of the People, defending their ideals in a letter to Pitt published in 1792. Later in life his views altered; in 1800 he renounced the Revolution. 43 John Hampden (1594-1643), Parliamentary leader and opponent of Charles I. A Colonel in the Civil War, he was mortally wounded in a skirmish with Royalists at Chalgrove Field, near Thame. 44 Algernon Sidney (1622-83), Whig politician, was executed for plotting the overthrow of the government of Charles II. Sidney's guilt was never satisfactorily established and he is remembered as a martyr in the Whig cause. 45 Temple Bar, which once marked the Western limits of the City of London, later became one of the eight Gates of the City. T h e dismembered body of Sir Thomas Armstrong was displayed there in 1684, and the heads of traitors continued to be shown at Temple Bar until the mid-18th century.

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46 Captain Charles Morris (1745-1838), officer of the Lifeguards, songwriter, wit, bon-vivant and man about town. A close associate of Fox, and the Prince of Wales, his post-prandial singing was much in demand at Whig meetings. ISSUE N O . V 1 Again, ultimately this is unfair, as Henry Morley points out: As to the measure of ['The Soldier's Wife'], it is also to be remembered that if the principles of Latin quantity be applied to an English use of Latin measures, not only Southey's, but all such pieces, are metrically ridiculous' [Morley, p. 241). 2 Probably the tricolour suits, blue trimmed with red and white, fashionable in revolutionary Paris. 3 T h e 'splendid shilling' links Southey's plaints with those of John Philips's Miltonic parody of that name (1705): . . . distressed, forlorn, Amidst the horrors of the tedious night, Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts My anxious mind, or sometimes mournful verse Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades, O r desp'rate lady near a purling stream. 4 1797 brought a naval mutiny which began at Spithead on 16 April and dragged on to 15 June. O n 25 May at Woolwich, the Horse Artillery refused to follow orders. 5 'He remains'. 6 Fasces are bundles of sticks carried before high magistrates; hence fasces by metonymy denotes state office. 7 A quotation from the British Critic's review of Southey's Poems in July 1797 (vol. 10, no. 1, p. 75). This was scathing: We had hoped, that the folly of writing ancient metres in modern languages was quite extinct. T h e review reprints the same weary lines from Southey, and then ends, dactylically, 'Fiddledum, diddledum'. ISSUE N O . VI 1 There was no 'erratum' as such, but a reprinting of their hobbling poem, now properly divided. 2 Sappho, the greek poetess who gives her name to this metre, was born in the island of Lesbos, c.600 BC.

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NOTES TO PAGES 53-72 3 Thomas Dyche (d. 1731-5) and Thomas Dilworth (d. 1781) were compilers of Latin and English grammars, vocabularies, and guides to language. 4 Referring to the coup d'état in the Directory (see p. 290 above). 5 A footnote to Southey's 'The Soldier's Wife' attributes his third stanza to Coleridge; Gifford snipes at Coleridge's Watchman, with its early manifestations of Coleridgean deferral. 6 From the Prospectus of The Anti-Jacobin. 1 Richard, Earl Howe (1726-99), admiral; as Commander of the Channel Fleet he won an impressive victory over the French on 1 June 1794, capturing six of their ships. ISSUE NO. VII 1 Bonaparte, whose campaign in Italy began in the spring of 1796. ISSUE NO. VIII 1 British dominion over the oceans was always a sticking point in negotiations, and inevitably a theme of the anti-jacobins, who heeded Thomson's warning in Brittania (1729): For oh! it much imports you, 'tis your all, To keep your trade entire, entire the force And honour of your fleet - o'er that to watch Even with a hand severe and jealous eye.

(11. 173-6)

2 The Anti-Jacobin, no. 7, p. 53: T H E Appeal on this subject was heard before Commissioners on Wednesday last, December 20th. It lasted near an hour and a half, during which time the Duke endeavoured to convince the Commissioners, that the omission arose solely from his idea, 'that as the Helpers did not wear a LIVERY, and were engaged by the WEEK, they were not liable to the Duty.' Bedford also forgot, or miscounted, how many horses he owned; the commissioners were unsympathetic. ISSUE NO. IX 1 This is mistakenly labelled 1. 25 in both the original periodical, and subsequent reprints. In fact, the poem imitated is 1. 35: O G O D D E S S that rulest pleasant Antium, mighty to raise our mortal clay from low estate or change proud triumphs into funeral trains, thee the poor peasant entreats with anxious prayer; thee, as sovereign of the

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NOTES TO PAGES 72-4 deep, whoever braves the Carpathian Sea in Bithynian bark; thee the wild Dacian, the roving Scythian, cities, tribes, and martial Latium, and mothers of barbarian kings, and tyrants clad in purple, fearing lest with wanton foot thou overturn the standing pillar of the State, and lest the thronging mob arouse the peacable "to arms, to arms!" and thus wreck the ruling power. Before thee ever stalks Necessity, grim goddess, with spikes and wedges in her brazen hand; the stout clamp and molten lead are also there. Thee, Hope cherishes and rare Fidelity, her hand bound with cloth of white, nor refuses her companionship, whenever thou in hostile mood forsakest the houses of the great in mourning plunged. But the faithless rabble and the perjured harlot turn away; friends scatter so soon as they have drained our wine-jars to the dregs, too treacherous to help us bear the yoke of trouble. Do thou preserve our Caesar, soon to set forth against the Britons, farthest of the world! Preserve the freshly levied band of youthful soldiers who shall raise fear in Eastern parts beside the Red Sea's coast. Alas, the shame of our scars, and crimes, and brothers slain! What have we shrunk from, hardened generation that we are? What iniquity have we left untouched? From what have our youth kept back their hands through fear of the gods? What altars have they spared? O mayst thou on fresh anvils reforge our blunted swords, and turn them against the Arabs and Massegetae! (Loeb Classics) 2 T h e first line of Horace, Odes, 1. 35. 3 From the battle-cry of the Marseillaise, Aux armes, citoyenes!', a call with chilling resonance. Composed by an army engineer, Joseph Rouget de Lisle, in 1792 and originally called Chant du Guerre de l'armée du Rhine, the song was carried to Paris in the march by the die-hard patriots of Marseille. 'They sing it very harmoniously, and when they get to the bit where they wave their hats and swords in the air and all shout together, Aux armes, citoyens!, it really sends a shiver down the spine. These latter-day bards have spread this martial air in all the villages they have passed through, and in this way have inspired the rural areas with civic and warlike feelings' {La Chronique du Roi, quoted in Cobb, p. 148). Carnot declared that the Marseillaise brought in a hundred thousand recruits to the armed forces. 4 Julius Caesar, III. i. 189 (Antony shakes the 'bloody hand' of Trebonius). 5 Collins, Oriental Eclogues, 4,1. 70. 6 For Rewbell, see p. 290 above.

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NOTES TO PAGES 74-86 1 For Barras, see p. 290 above. 8 For Lepaux, see p. 290 above. 9 For Moreau, see p. 289 above. 10 T h e 'Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen', of 28 August 1789, contained, in its seventeen articles, principles abandoned, forgotten, or flouted by the Directory after the coup d'état. 11 Lazare-Nicolas-Marguerite Carnot (1753-1823), with a background in military engineering became an army technical expert, and then a successful administrator. T h e Committee of Public Safety, instated to overhaul France's ailing war machine, made him 'organizer of victory', a post in which he flourished. He became a Director, in November 1795, but he was distrusted by Barras and friends. ISSUE NO. X 1 Edmonds gives: Alluding to the National Thanksgiving for the three great naval victories achieved by Lords Howe, St. Vincent, and Duncan. (p. 62) 2 Macbeth, III. iv. 127. 3 i.e. the Guillotine. 4 George the Third. 5 T h e Directory. 6 Legal term meaning 'in trust'. ISSUE NO. XI 1 p. 82, as quoted, at the end of the 'Misrepresentations' section, referring there to the prolonged wrangle with the Morning Chronicle over the Duke of Bedford's evasion of Assessed Taxes. 2 Their motto quotes four lines from Lamb's 'Epistle', beginning 'Hail, justly famous!... H a i l ! . . . ' . Below this they add, 'What! Can the Devil speak truth?' (Macbeth III. iii. 107: Banquo's reaction to the witches, after similar hailings). 3 Trans: 'Fair judge of our satires' (Horace, Ep,\. 4. 1). 4 Dullness, with all the weight of Pope's Dunciad behind it, is the failing for which the anti-jacobins mock anyone who tries to beat them at their own game. In particular, the Morning Chronicle's attempts at wit are repeatedly ridiculed. One of their many feeble epigrams eventually wins The AntiJacobin's conclusive Prize for Dullness in a spoof competition. 5 In the original periodical's version, the 'Epistle' is not reprinted - and therefore this note does not appear. Other changes are insignificant.

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NOTES TO PAGES 86-8 6 Trans: 'this man is black (in heart); Roman beware of him' (Horace, Sat, 1. 5. 12-13). 7 Canning. 8 George H a m m o n d (1763-1853), an accomplished diplomat, was a close friend of Canning, his partner at the Foreign Office from 1796, and a contributor to The Anti-Jacobin. 9 George Howard, Lord Morpeth (see p. 47 above). 10 Granville Leveson-Gower (1773-1846), later Earl Granville, MP, diplomat, close friend of Pitt and even closer to Canning, who said he was 'discretion and prudence personified'. 11 Admiral Adam Duncan, Viscount and naval giant, celebrated in The AntiJacobin, No. 7 (p. 59 above). 12 James Harris, Earl Malmesbury (1746-1820). A highly-accomplished diplomat, he was formerly a committed Whig, a friend of the Prince of Wales and supporter of Fox. Eventually however, he sided with the Portland Whigs and joined Pitt. T h e friendship with the Prince of Wales did not survive Malmesbury's part in binding the Prince to Princess Caroline. 13 Ellis. 14 It seems unlikely that Fox would thank Lamb for rehearsing these characterizations, some not so easily dismissed. Lloyd Kenyon (1732-1802), Baron Kenyon and Master of the Rolls, presided over some of the most notorious trials of the time and was not a patient or courteous man. 15 Brooks's Club was by 1778 the centre of extravagant gambling, and the second home of Fox and his friends. 16 James Hare (1749-1804), MP, and friend of Fox from youth. Witty, fashionable, extravagant and rich enough to be so. 17 General Richard Fitzpatrick (1747-1813), MP, wit, and probably Fox's closest friend. He was among the principal contributors to the Rolliad. 18 Lord J o h n Townshend, M P for Knaresborough, wit and satirist. 19 Sheridan. 20 J o h n Debrett (d. 1822), remembered for ranking the aristocracy in his Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland, was a publisher whose shop in Piccadilly was much patronized by Whigs. 21 Lamb aims below the belt - Pitt's disinterest in women had long been a source of innuendo: 'For Pitt, so young,' cries Ned, 'just twenty-five, Why don't the women make a fuss?' 'A fuss for him!' quoth Nell, 'Why, man alive, He never sure stands up for us.'

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{Kings, p. 102)

NOTES TO PAGES 88-9 22

Henry Dundas, otherwise 'The T h a n e ' , lawyer, politician and 1st Viscount Melville. At this time he was Secretary of State for War. In a long, distinguished and dextrous parliamentary career he withdrew from asserted positions on a number of occasions. But he was broad-chested and thickskinned. 'He seldom scrupled to advance bold and sometimes questionable assertions, to serve a momentary purpose in debate; and palliated, explained, and supported them with some degree of plausibility and ingenuity' (Courtenay, Characteristicks).

23 William Windham (Baron Grenville), see p. 293 above. 24 Joseph Richardson, Whig author and Rolliad contributor, M P after 1796, partner of Sheridan at the Drury Lane Theatre. Admired for and widely characterized by his geniality. 25 Samuel Parr (1747-1825), disputatious scholar, schoolmaster, clergyman and pedant, friend of Sir Francis Burdett. He had ambitions to rival Johnson in letters, though an out-and-out Whig in politics. De Quincey was among many who were unimpressed: In most cases, the occasion which suggested the mention of his name was some pointless parody of a Sam-Johnsonian increpation, some DruryLane counterfeit of the Jovian thunderbolts. (Masson vol. 5, p. 12) Parr's wig, and eccentric costume, were notorious, and the metonomy drawn in The Anti-Jacobin's note delighted satirists for years. Francis Jeffrey imitates it in the first issue of the Edinburgh Review in 1802: Whoever has the good fortune to see Dr. Parr's wig, must have observed, that while it trespasses a little on the orthodox magnitude of perukes in the interior parts, it scorns even Episcopal limits behind, and swells out into boundless complexity of frizz, the [despair] of barbers, and the terror of the literary world. After the manner of his wig, the Doctor has constructed his sermon, giving us a discourse of no common length, and subjoining an immeasurable mass of notes, which appear to concern every learned thing, every learned man, and almost every unlearned man, since the beginning of the world. (vol. 1, p. 18) 26 J o h n Courtenay (1741-1816), MP, noisily sympathetic to French philosophy and revolution, had literary aspirations. Comments on parliamentary colleagues from his Characteristicks are included here. Although he published a great deal, sketches best suited his writing.

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27 The Critic (1. 1., Sir Fretful Plagiary) 28 Lord Nugent's lines are from An Ode to William Pultney Esq. (1739), attractive to Courtenay in the distaste for genuflection visible in this opening stanza: Remote from Liberty and Truth By Fortune's Crime, my early Youth Drank Error's poison'd Springs: Taught by dark Creeds and My stick Law, Wrapt up in reverential Awe, I bow'd to Priests and Kings. 29 'He gave an example in life' (close to 1. 317 of Horace, Ars Poética, but not precise quotation). 30 'Where Cato d w e l t ' 31 Sir Robert Adair ( 1763-1855), M P and another of Fox's intimates. He is to be a frequent target in The Anti-Jacobin. 32 Bedford, see p. 64 above. 33 Part of a Letter from Robert Adair, Esq., to the Right Honourable Charles James Fox; occasioned by Mr. Burke's mention of Lord Keppel, in a recent publication (London, 1796). Adair, a natural disciple, adored Burke until the separation from Fox, and openly admits he 'gathered up, with diligence and care, the crumbs which fell from the rich table of his conversation' (p. 7). Burke's publication has an even more sententious title: A Letter from the Right Honourable Edmund Burke to a Noble Lord, on the attacks made upon him and his Pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, Early in the present Sessions of the Parliament (London, 1796). 34 Letter to a Noble Lord, pp. 4 - 5 : Neither sex, nor age - not the sanctuary of the tomb is sacred to them. They have so determined a hatred to all privileged orders, that they deny even to the departed, the sad immunities of the grave. They are not wholly without an object. Their turpitude purveys to their malice; and they unplumb the dead for bullets to assassinate the living. Canning is being disingenuous. Burke, as often, picks up a contemporary item - some symbolic 'fact' already become mythic currency - and sends it rolling down the long slope of his prose, to gather metaphorical bulk and momentum as it goes. Burke's figurativeness is catching. Adair is indeed infected, and like most imitators of Burke, lacks his majestic rhetorical command. 35 Samuel Whitbread (1758-1815): brewer, politician, philanthropist, and associate of Fox. Whitbread: 301

NOTES TO PAGES 91-2 pertinaceously adheres to his own opinion, as if proudly conscious of the rectitude of his own views, and disdaining a degrading subserviency either to a party, or even to the generous attachment of friendship, if irreconcilable to his publick duty. (Courtenay, Characteristicks, p. 35) Later in life, funding the reconstruction of the Drury Lane Theatre, he helps provide the occasion for parodies by Horace and James Smith in the Rejected Addresses. 36 Another aside at Bedford, surcharged for avoiding full payment of Assessed Taxes (see p. 64 above). 37 O n truthfulness: despite Moira's support in the Regency Crisis, the Prince of Wales (always careless of loyalties), said that 'Moira was a fellow no honest man could speak to' (Creevey Papers, vol. 1, p. 158). 38 Moll Coggin appears to have been an Irish witch. The Anti-Jacobin (Issue No. 9, p. 70) repeats a report from The Batchelor, no. 29, p. 171, (1772), in which Moira's father is caricatured: apparently inebriated, entertaining the Irish House of Lords with a tale of an encounter with Moll, whom he blames for inciting insurrection on his estates. J o h n Courtenay may have been the author. 39 'Pistol': Falstaff's strutting companion. This lewdly alludes to Henry V, II. i. 53-4; 'and Pistol's cock is up, / And flashing fire will follow'. 40 Prefiguring the 'LIES' section of the periodical, Issue No. 13 (5 February), when the anti-jacobins quote the Morning Post of 31 January: 'The Dublin Papers are full of the praises of the Earl of MOIRA'. 41 Moira spoke out vehemently on Ireland's behalf in a debate in the House of Lords on Wednesday 22 November, protesting at the burdens laid on Ireland in this time of war. O n e example he gave, about the curfew, became notorious: At nine o'clock every m a n was called upon to extinguish his candle and his fire, and the military enforced the regulation with the utmost insulting expressions.-The hardship of this regulation was frequently felt in the most cruel manner. An instance had occurred within his knowledge in which a party of soldiers had come to the house of a man by the road side; they insisted that he should extinguish his candle; the man entreated that he might be permitted to retain his light, because he was watching by the bed side of his child which was subject to convulsion fits, and might every moment require assistance. T h e party, however, rigorously insisted that the light should be extinguished. (Moira as reported in Morning Chronicle, 23 November 1797)

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42 Sir George Augustus William Shuckburgh-Evelyn (1751-1804), baronet and mathematician, and M P for Warwick from 1780. 43 Sir J o h n Macpherson, MP, Governor-General of India, a close friend of the Prince of Wales, and socially graceful. 44 J o h n Pollexfen Bastard (1756-1816), MP; he 'approved Pitt's foreign policy whilst occasionally opposing his domestic measures' (DJVB). 45 J o h n Nicholls, M P for Tregony, was independently-minded, self-assertive, committed to parliamentary reform, and a long-term antagonist of Pitt. He spoke vehemently against the Assessed Taxes in the House on 3 January 1798 (and published the speech shortly afterwards). In the course of this performance he had to be called to order several times by the Speaker, and ended with this tirade: I have no wish to do injustice to the reputation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer: I acknowledge his talents as a debater in this house, that he possesses sarcasm, sneer, irony, wit; above all, he possesses the happy talent of multiplying and stringing together his words, in such a manner that it is hardly possible to affix a precise meaning to his language. (Speech of John Mcholls, p. 20) 46 Edward, Baron Thurlow (1731-1806), MP, later Lord Chancellor. He was a confidante and assistant to the King, an intriguer who became distrusted on all sides. Fox said of him 'no man was ever so wise as Thurlow looks', a jibe which catches Thurlow's hauteur. 47 Sir William Pulteney (d. 1805), member for Shewsbury, was to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in Moira's alternative ministry. 48 J o h n H o m e Tooke (1736-1812), who began as a clergyman, became a name to conjure with. Intemperate, excitable and rash, he made a career out of agitation, and helped to establish the Constitutional Society in 1771. Tooke is a recurring figure in The Anti-Jacobin. His Diversions of Purley, a grammar prompted by ambiguities in the legal language of a prosecution (one of a number brought against him by the State), appeared in 1798. It became influential and a source of hope to linguistic levellers with its egalitarian, anti-latinate emphasis on 'our Mother-language the Anglo-Saxon'. Fox disliked him, fought a quarrelsome campaign against him for the seat of Westminster in 1790, and again in 1796, but they were later reconciled (or prepared to seem so), to the amusement of the anti-jacobins (see Issue no. 13 above). Tooke is particularly remembered as the focus of the 'Treason Trials' of 1794. He was much more moderate than his notoriety would indicate: a reformist, never a revolutionary.

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NOTES TO PAGES 93-8 49 Horace, Odes, 1 1 . 8 , 'Barine's Baleful Charms': H a d ever any penalty for violated vows visited thee, Barine; didst thou ever grow uglier by a single blackened tooth or spotted nail, I'd trust thee now. But with thee, no sooner hast thou bound thy perfidious head by promises than thou shinest forth much fairer and art the cynosure of all eyes when thou appearest. 'Tis actually of help to thee to swear falsely by the buried ashes of thy mother, by the silent sentinels of night, with the whole heaven, and by the gods, who are free from chilly death. All this but makes sport for Venus (upon my word it does!) and for the artless Nymphs, and cruel Cupid, ever whetting his fiery darts on blood-stained stone. Not only this! All our youths are growing up for thee alone, to be a fresh band of slaves, while thy old admirers leave not the roof of their heartless mistress, oft as they have threated this. Thee mothers fear for their sons, thee frugal sires, thee wretched brides, who but yesterday were maidens, lest thy radiance make their husbands linger. (Loeb Classics) 50 An explanation of Lord Moira's involvement in the alternative ministry appears in form of letter to SirJ o h n M'Mahon, crony of the Prince of Wales. ISSUE N O . XII 1 T h e publisher of The Anti-Jacobin. For Debrett, see p. 299 above. 2 Horace, Odes, 2. 20: O n no common or feeble pinion shall I soar in double form through the liquid air, a poet still, nor linger more on earth, but victorious over envy I shall quit the towns of men. Not I, the son of parents poor, not I, who hear your voice, beloved Maecenas, shall perish, or be confined by waters of the Styx. Even now the wrinkled skin is gathering on my ankles, and I am changing to a snowy swan above, and o'er my arms and shoulders is spreading a plumage soft. Soon, a tuneful bird, I shall visit the shores of the moaning Bosphorus, more renowned than Icarus, born of Daedalus; I shall visit the Gaetulian Syrtes and the plains of the Hyperboreans. Me the Colchian shall come to know, and the Dacian, who feigns to feel no dread of our Marsian cohorts, and the far Geloni; by the study of my writings the Spaniard shall become learned and they who drink the waters of the Rhone. Let dirges be absent from what you falsely deem my death, and unseemly show of grief and lamentation! Restrain all clamour and forgo the idle tribute of a tomb! (Loeb Classics) 3 For Adair on Burke, see p. 301 above; for Tooke's Grammar, p. 303 above. 4 Yet another snipe at Bedford's tax-avoidance. T h e hair tax was a long-

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standing joke; brought in by Pitt on 23 February 1795, it was one of several extraordinary new measures to finance the war, and a fiasco: . . . the use of hair-powder was almost immediately discontinued, and the produce of the tax was hardly worth the trouble of collecting it. It became at first a party distinction; the Whigs wore their hair cut short behind, and without powder, which was termed wearing the hair à la guillotine', while the Tories, who continued the use of hair-powder, were called guinea-pigs, because one guinea was the amount per head of the tax. T h e hair-powder tax was the subject of many songs and jeux d'esprit, as well as of several caricatures. (Caricature History, p. 499) 5 For unplumbing a Russell, see p. 301 above. 6 T h e subject of prose parody in Issue nos III and IV. 7 This is not unfair; Fox seceded from Parliament in the spring of 1798, ostensibly after Grey's attempt to introduce a bill for electoral reform was defeated, but, in truth, more in pique and depression at the retreat of all possibility of power. 8 The 'schism of 1792' occurred when Foxite Whigs, alarmed at the success of the London Corresponding Society (set up by Thomas Hardy), formed their own Society of the Friends of the People to retain the leadership in matters of reform. 9 For Sir Francis Burdett, see p. 289 above. 10 Edmonds gives: O n 7th Feb., 1796, a forged French newspaper called L'Eclair, containing false intelligence, was circulated in London for stock-jobbing purposes. O n 3rd July a verdict of £ 1 0 0 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 £ 1 5 0 0 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. (p. 90) 11 William Bosville (1745-1813), close friend of H o m e Tooke and Burdett. Rich, and a most enthusiastic Whig, Bosville was unstinting in his support for friends and the cause of reform. 12 William Addington, Bow Street Justice of the Peace 13 John Nicholls, see p. 303 above. 14 Sir Christopher Hawkins was the author of two treatises on Cornish mining. 15 Joseph Jekyll (d. 1837) began in law but entered parliament in 1787; he was a well-known Westminster wit.

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16 Bryan Edwards (1743-1800), companion of J o h n Nicholl.

MP

102-4

for

Grampound

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17 'All was in flames and falling to ruin as the fabric shattered': Juvenal, Satires 6. 618. 18 'Red cap': i.e. as worn by Jacobins. Burdett lived in Paris through the early years of the Revolution, returning in 1793. 19 T h e anti-jacobins never miss an opportunity to recall Bedford's taxavoidance. 20 'Pattens': wooden overshoes, worn to raise good shoes out of mud. 21 Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois (1749-?), formerly a theatre director, was elected to the Convention, took part in brutal repressions in Lyons late in 1793, fell from favour, and was deported to Guiana, where he died. 22 John Gale Jones (1769-1838) began in medicine, but quickly gave himself whole-heartedly to political campaigning. He was a member of the London Corresponding Society. 23 For Tooke, see p. 303 above. 24 T h e article referred to actually appeared on 24January, addressed ' T O T H E CHARITABLE AND H U M A N E , AND T H O S E W H O M G O D HAS BLESSED W I T H AFFLUENCE', a long letter about the injustices of Pitt's financial measures, signed A Friend to the Poor'. 25 Date Obolum Belisario translates as: 'Give an obol to Belisarius'. An obol is a small Greek coin. These words were allegedly said by the Byzantine general Belisarius after he was reduced to beggary by his jealous master, the Emperor Justinian. 26 'With due alteration of details'. 27 Frederick North (1732-92), 2nd Earl of Guilford, was first returned to the House of Commons in 1754. A supporter of the King, he was made member of the Privy Council in 1766, and First Minister in 1770. He led the House for the next twelve years, usually more an agent of George III than his own man. His close association with the King was ended by the coalition with Fox, whom George could not abide. T h e coalition government was regarded with contempt: 'it disgusted the country, and excited that odium against Mr. Fox which many years were scarcely sufficient to extinguish' (Nicholls, Recollections, p. 51). No-one has ever bettered Wraxall's description of North: In his Person he was of the middle size, heavy, large, and much inclined to Corpulency. . . . His Tongue being too large for his Mouth, revealed his Articulation somewhat thick, though not at all indistinct . . . In Parliament, the Deficiency of Lord North's Sight, was productive to him of many Inconveniences. For, even at the distance of a few Feet, he saw

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very imperfectly; and across the House, he was unable to distinguish Persons with any degree of Accuracy. In speaking, walking, and every Motion, it is not enough to say that he wanted Grace: he was to the last degree awkward. It can hardly obtain Belief, that in a full House of Commons, he took off on the point of his Sword, the Wig of Mr. Welbore Ellis, and carried it a considerable Way across the Floor, without ever suspecting or perceiving it . . . In addition to his defect of Sight, Lord North was subject likewise to a constitutional Somnolency, which neither the animated Declamations of Fox, nor the pathetic Invocations of Burke, nor the hoarse menaces of Barré, could always prevent . . . Lord North was powerful, able, and fluent in Debate; sometimes repelling the Charges made against him, with solid Argument; but still more frequently eluding or blunting the Weapons of his Antagonists, by the force of Wit and Humour. H e rarely rose however to Sublimity, though he possessed vast Facility and C o m m a n d of Language. When necessary, he could speak for a long Time, apparently with great Pathos, and yet disclose no [Memoirs, pp. 294-7) Fact, nor reveal any Secret. 28 Reeves see p. 293 above. 29 Richard Parker led the mutiny at the Nore in May 1798. 30 For Captain Morris, see p. 295 above. 31 'Heavy with sleep and wine'; should read, 'somno'; cf. Livy, Histories 25. 24. 6. 32 For Erskine, see p. 292 above. 33 For Tierney, see pp. 288-9 above. 34 T h e most likely of Jones's recent publications here is his Sketch of a Political Tour through Rochester, Chatham, Maidstone, Gravesend, &c. pt. 1 (London, 1796). Ironically, when this was reprinted in 1825, Jones wrote to Canning asking for his subscription. 35 H o m e Tooke's Two Pair of Portraits (1788), compares Fox unfavourably with Pitt. 36 A Roundhouse (roundy, or roundy-ken in demotic) was a lock-up for drunks and troublemakers. ISSUE N O . XIII 1

Catullus, Poems, 45: Septimius, holding in his arms his darling Acme, says, "My Acme, if I do not love thee to desperation, and if I am not ready to go on loving thee continually through all my years as much and as distractedly as the most distracted of lovers, may I in Libya or sunburnt India meet a green-eyed

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lion alone." As he said this, Love on the left, as before on the right, sneezed goodwill. T h e n Acme, slightly bending back her head, kissed with that rosy mouth her sweet love's swimming eyes, and said, "So, my life, my darling Septimius, so may we ever serve this one master as (I swear) more strongly and fiercely burns in me the flame deep in my melting marrow." As she said this, Love, on the left, as before on the right, sneezed goodwill. And now, setting out from this good omen, heart in heart they live, loving and loved. Poor Septimius prefers Acme alone to whole Syrias and Britains. In Septimius, him alone, his faithful Acme takes her fill of loves and pleasures. W h o ever saw human beings more blest? W h o ever saw a more fortunate love? (Loeb Classics) 2 For Norfolk, see pp. 9 4 - 5 above. 3 Fox inherited the Clerkship of the Pells, a sinecure paying £2,000 a year for life, from his brother Stephen in 1774. He sold it to M r Charles Jenkinson (later the Earl of Liverpool), to pay off gaming debts. ISSUE N O . XIV 1 Astraea': the 'starry maiden' of the constellation Virgo. She lived on earth during the Golden Age, of which she is the symbol, but retreated to heaven when humanity became corrupt. With scales and sword she represents Justice, and was commonly identified with the reign of Elizabeth I. 2 Pompeius Gnaeus (Pompey the Great, d.48 BC), consul, famously cleansed the Mediterranean of its pirates in under three months. 3 'Citizens of the highest rank have set their country aflame - They are calling upon the Gauls, a race especially hostile to the Roman name - T h e leader of the enemy, with his army, is over our heads.' (Cato the Younger, arguing for the execution of the catalinarian conspirators in Sallust, Catilina, 52). 4 Lord Norfolk's toast again (pp. 9 4 - 5 above). 5 'Then Cataline promised clean slates [for debt], the proscription of the rich, offices, priesthoods, plunder, everything else that war and the lust of the victors entail.' (Sallust, Catilina 21). 6 Sheridan's Schoolfor Scandal, Act iv, sc. i: 'No hang it, I'll not part with poor Noll', says Charles, in a test of integrity. 7 T h e epigraph differs slightly from the periodical's original. 8 Philip II of Macedonia (father of Alexander the Great), an expansionist who threatened Athens. 9 Aeschines was an Athenian orator and a rival of Demosthenes. He is said to have been bribed by Philip into supporting peace with Macedonia. He was humiliated by Demosthenes in public competition.

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10 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, orator and statesman. 11 Catiline, Lucius Sergius, notorious aristocrat: When he had squandered away his fortune by his debaucheries and extravagance, and been refused the consulship, he secretly meditated the ruin of his country, and conspired with many of the most illustrious of the Romans, as dissolute as himself, to extirpate the senate, plunder the treasury, and set Rome on fire. This conspiracy was timely discovered by the consul Cicero, whom he had resolved to murder. (Lemprière) Wraxall wrote that: Fox's latent blemish lay in his dissolute habits and ruined fortune, which enabled his enemies to compare him with Cataline. (Memoirs, p. 360) ISSUE N O . XV 1 cf. Progress, opening lines: 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; Unnumber'd worlds to one great centre draws; And governs all by pre-established laws? 2 cf. Progress, bk. 1,11. 15-22: Let us less visionary themes pursue, And try to show what mortal eyes may view; Trace out the slender social links that bind, In order's chain, the chaos of mankind, Make all their various turbid passions tend, Through adverse ways, to one benignant end, And partial discord lend its aid, to tie T h e complex knots of general harmony. 3 T h e Vicar of Wakefield's Ephraim Jenkinson, 'the greatest rascal under the canopy of heaven', parades his faked learning with the quoted lines, in Chapter 14. Knight concludes of cosmogony's puzzles: 'Let learned folly seek, or foolish pride; / Rash in presumptuous ignorance, decide.' 4 A commonplace of teleologies, but cf. ^ponomia, 5: T h e whole of nature may be supposed to consist of two essences or

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substances; one of which may be termed spirit, and the other matter. T h e former of these possesses the power to commence or produce motion, and the latter to receive and communicate it. So that motion, considered as a cause, immediately precedes every effect; and, considered as an effect, it immediately succeeds every cause. 5 Line 14 is another commonplace of 18th-century philosophical enquiry. 6 A thorny and very intricate question'. 7 Macbeth, IV. i. 33. 8 The Critic, Act m, sc. i, Tilburia's song of madness: An oyster may be cross'd in love! - W h o says / A whale's a bird?'. 9 'But of these matters [I shall speak] in another place'. 10 O n 11 January 1798 the Morning Chronicle contained this advertisement: J U S T KILLED, a very fine fat RUSSIAN BEAR, at the only Warehouse in Great Britain, for Genuine Bear's Grease . . . T H E inestimable qualities of genuine BEAR'S GREASE, in causing, by proper attention and perseverance, the hair to grow upon heads that were absolutely bald, is a theme that cannot be descanted upon too largely, since it embraces no less an object than the preservation and improvement of the greatest ornament of nature, and without which the most exquisite countenance is devoid of that embellishment which is the richest grace to exterior appearance. 11 'The poets [say] everywhere'. 12 'My mind is in turmoil, and is not satisfied with peaceful calm' (Virgil, Aeneid, 9. 187). 13 T h e full quotation is: aetas parentum peior avis tulit nos nequiores, mox daturos progeniem vitiosorem. From Horace, Odes 3. 6. 4 6 - 8 , meaning: the age of our parents, inferior to that of our grandparents, bore us who are weaker and soon to bear more vicious offspring. (editor's italics) ISSUE NO. XVI 1 A jibe at Knight's rather earnest Preface, which includes a lecture

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(transparently warding off criticism) on the difficulties he faced, compared with writers of pure epic, dramatic, pastoral or satiric forms: T h e didactic or philosophical poet alone has nothing to trust to, but the simple ingredients of his art, versification, and imagery. [Progress, xii) 2 T h e ascetic regime of Pythagoras (c.580-500 BC), Greek philosopher and mystic, included vegetarianism. 3 cf.Progress, bk. 1, 11. 279 onwards, on the growth of tribal life and vengeance. Knight footnotes (to 1. 296) a quotation from 'Adair's Hist, of Amer. Indians': I have known Indians go a thousand miles, for the purpose of revenge, in pathless woods, over hills and mountains, through huge cane swamps, exposed to the extremities of heat and cold, the vicissitudes of seasons, to hunger and thirst. 4 cf. Botanic garden, pt. 1, Canto 1,11. 213-15: the first Art! with piny rods to raise By quick attrition the domestic blaze, Fan with soft breath, with kindling leaves provide, And list the dread Destroyer on his side. 5 Pope's Windsor Forest, 11. 111-18: See from the brake the whirring pheasant springs, And mounts exulting on triumphant wings: Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound, Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground. Ah! what avails his glossy, varying dyes, His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes, T h e vivid green his shining plumes unfold, His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold. 6 Gray, Ode to Adversity, 1. 28. ISSUE N O . XVII 1 Bion V, [Love's Schooling]: I DREAMED and lo! the great Cyprian stood before me. Her fair hand did lead, with head hanging, the little silly Love, and she said to me: "Pray you, sweet Shepherd, take and teach me this child to sing and play," and so was gone. So I fell to teaching master Love, fool that I was, as one willing to learn; and taught him all my love of country-music, to wit how Pan did invent the cross-flute and Athena the flute, Hermes the lyre and sweet Apollo the harp. But nay, the child would give no heed to aught I

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might say; rather would he be singing love-songs of his own, and taught me of the doings of his mother and the desires of Gods and men. And as for all the lore I had been teaching master Love, I clean forgot it, but the love-songs master Love taught me, I learnt them every one. (Loeb Classics) 2 Allecto was one of the three Furies, retributive spirits whose role was to avenge wrongdoing; particularly crimes against kindred. 3 For Moira and 'lights' see p. 302 above. 4 For Erskine, see p. 292 above. 5 For Bedford, see p. 64 above. 6 Edmonds gives: O n 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. (p. 112) 7 William Petty (1737-1805), Lord Shelburne, Marquis of Lansdowne, probably the most disliked and distrusted politician of the time. Fox detested him so much that he resigned his place under Rockingham when Rockingham died and Shelburne took over. Pitt, who subsequently took his first office as Chancellor of the Exchequer with Shelburne, came to regard him with equal distaste. Later, as an energetic supporter of the Revolution, and of peace with France, he and Fox were reconciled and by 1796 were cooperating warmly with each other. His seat at Bowood, improved by Capability Brown, was an abiding interest to him. 'Woodnotes wild' repeats a favourite allusion of the anti-jacobins, to Milton (see p. 287 above). 8 Dorus, Giiford's rather grandiloquent nom-de-plume, was the son of Hellen, mythical ancestor of the Greek race. 9 Horace, Odes 3. 9. 10 An aside at Tooke, whose clerical duties began at Brentford. 11 Doric: originally the dialect arising from an influx into Greece from the north-west, after the Trojan War. After Theocritus, increasingly associated with pastoral poetry. 12 Frederick North, see p. 306 above. 13 A brat, or bastard child.

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14 Tooke's tangles with the courts began in 1769 and reached a peak of notoriety in the 'Treason Trials' of 1794. 15 J o h n Nicholls, see p. 303 above. 16 Referring to George Packwood, whose advertisements for shaving products were a national entertainment. Packwood: launched and sustained a quite remarkable advertising campaign in the newspapers of late eighteenth-century England. It was a campaign, which between October 1794 and July 1796, used advertisements of astonishing variety in type, language, and appeal. . . . [using] riddles, proverbs, fables, slogans, jokes, jingles, anecdotes, facts, aphorisms, puns, poems, songs, nursery rhymes, parodies, pastiches, stories, dialogues, definitions, (Consumer Society, pp. 152-3) conundrums, letters and metaphors. 17

J o h n Thelwall (1764-1834), initially a minor poet and writer, became involved in politics after the Revolution and made an early friend of H o m e Tooke. As a member of the Corresponding Society he soon acquired a reputation for himself as a speaker and satirist; he was an obvious choice for prosecution in the 'Treason Trials' of 1794. T h e Society held an open-air meeting at Chalk Farm in Hampstead in April 1794 'at which several strong resolutions against the repressive measures of the Government were passed' (Rice-Oxley, p. 69). In 1798 Thelwall retired from political agitation to a farm in Wales.

ISSUE N O . XVIII 1 Horace, Odes,3. 25, A Dithyram': Whither, O Bacchus, dost thou hurry me, o'erflowing with thy power? Into what groves or grottoes am I swiftly driven in fresh inspiration? In what caves shall I be heard planning to set amid the stars, and in Jove's council, peerless Caesar's immortal glory? I will sing of a noble exploit, recent, as yet untold by other lips. Just so upon the mountain-tops does the sleepless Bacchanal stand rapt, looking out o'er Hebrus and o'er Thrace glistening with snow, and Rhodope trodden by barbarian feet even as I love to stray and to gaze with awe upon the unfrequented banks and groves. O thou master of the Naiads and of the Bacchanals that have might to uproot lofty ash-trees with their hands, nothing trifling or of humble strain, nothing mortal will I utter. Sweet is the peril, O lord of the winepress, to follow the god, crowning my temple with verdant vine-sprays. (Loeb Classics) 313

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2 Morning Chronicle, 1 April 1798: T h e French now affect in all their public harangues and addresses to stile themselves the Great Nation- This piece of ostentation, however, cannot be exactly charged upon democratic vanity. T h e idea is not new. It is an imitation of the old Court Stile. Formerly it was the Grand Monarque: now it is the Great Nation; and after all what is it but the paltry vanity of a title? 3 T h e Order of the Day contains Items of Business appearing by order of the House. 4 For Bob Adair's Russian travels see p. 94 above. 5 For 'Brooks's' see p. 299 above. ISSUE N O . XIX 1 Hugh Smithson ( 1742-1817), second Duke Percy of Northumberland of the third creation, distinguished himself as a soldier before entering politics as a rather tendentious M P in 1763. T h e Morning Chronicle was incensed on his behalf to see him parodied (20 March 1798): T h a t the gallant and worthy Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND should become an object of obloquy to GEORGE ROSE or his paragraph mongers is nothing extraordinary. T h e zeal and spirit which have ever marked his Grace's real services against the enemies of his country are naught to them, compared with the wordy and subscription patriotism of the Lives and Fortune men. His known attachment to his Sovereign, his tried detestation of French principles, his amiable private life, adorned with uniform acts of exemplary liberality, are no protection to his public character against the spite of Treasury Myrmidons . . . 2 For Armed Neutrality' see p. 335 below. 3 Sir George Rose (1744-1818), long-serving statesman with a gift for financial affairs. He began in the navy, but after working as a clerk at the record office of the Exchequer he rose rapidly to high office. North made him Secretary to the Board of Trade in 1777, then Secretary to the Treasury. Rose lost his place after quarrelling with Shelburne, whom he detested, but returned to power in the Treasury with Pitt. H e was a friend of 'Duke Smithson' and owed his position as M P for Launceston to Hugh's father. T h e friendship later failed, but by then Rose was an intimate of Pitt. Wraxall wrote of him that: Indefatigable, methodical, and yet rapid; equal to, but not above, the business of the Treasury, he earned his reward by long and severe exertion. (P. Memoirs, vol. 3, p. 457)

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Among his powers was the patronage of Government: allocating honours, places and sinecures. T h e 'Garter'jibe cleverly looks back to Sir Henry, son of the Duke of Northumberland, of the first creation, who was invested with the Garter in 1387. 'The Blues' was the nickname of T h e Royal Houseguards; perhaps Hugh Smithson hoped for a commission. 4 Fox, Erskine, Sheridan; followed by Charles Grey (1764-1845), later 2nd Earl, Viscount Howick, Baron Grey. Entered the House of Commons as M P for Northumberland in 1786 and made an immediate impression as an eloquent denunciator of Pitt and his policies. 'You never saw a fellow so vicious as Grey', wrote Thomas Creevey of his oratory (Creevey Papers vol. 2, p. 6). He was a member of the Whig club; he also 'established the Society of the Friends of the People, for the avowed purpose of bringing men together to declare their opinions on the necessity of a Reform in Parliament' (Nicholls, Recollections, p. 215). He was, at this time, very close to Fox; eventually they drifted apart. A Whig of the old-fashioned, aristocratic variety, Grey was later briefly Prime Minister (1830-4). 5 For Hair-powder Tax, see pp. 304-5 above. 6 Ballads traditionally refer to the 'cloth-yard shaft' of a long-bow's arrow, being the yard's length by which cloth was measured. 7 As the anti-jacobins' headnote describes, St Martin's in the Fields is the seat Sir Hugh's arch-enemy, the Deputy Collector of Taxes. ISSUE N O . XX 1 For 'Marseilles band' see p. 322 below. ISSUE N O . XXI 1 'St. Mary Axe' has been variously interpreted. Rice-Oxley (p. 78), reads it as alluding to Godwin's marriage to Mary Wollstonecraft. Jonathan Wordsworth (Poetry of the Antijacobin, Woodstock facs. 1991, Introduction), discovers Coleridge: 'St Mary Axe, with its bucolic pump, is his Devonshire birthplace' (Ottery St Mary). It may be relevant that 'St. Mary Axe' is a street in London (E.C.3). 2 T h e 'Reformed Housekeeper' is The Stranger, by August von Kotzebue (17611819). This G e r m a n dramatist, enjoyed a period of considerable popularity after Sheridan introduced him at the Theatre Royal. Twenty of his plays were translated by 1801. A version of The Stranger was rushed into print immediately after the play appeared at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, by an aggrieved playwright, convinced that Sheridan had stolen the script. This was denied, publicly in the Morning Chronicle 31 March 1798:

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We are authorized to say that the translation of Kotzebue's Play, advertised by Mr. Dilly, excepting in the story and outline, has no similitude to the Play of The Stranger now performing at Drury Lane Theatre 3 James Cook (1728-79) arrived on the South Sea islands in April 1769. T h e three accounts of his major voyages were first published in 1773, 1777 and 1784. He was slaughtered on a beach in Hawaii by natives of the island on 13 February 1779. 4 'Bonzes': Buddhist clergy of the Far East. 5 Jean-Sylvain Bailly (1736-93), academician and astronomer specializing in the moons of Jupiter. He was made mayor of Paris in 1789 but resigned in 1791 and was guillotined in the Terror. 6 cf. Pope, Rape of the Lock, Canto 3,11. 8 7 - 8 : T h e Knave of Diamonds tries his wily Arts, And wins (oh shameful Chance!) the Queen of Hearts. 7 Kensington Garden, by Thomas Tickell (1686-1740), was published in 1722. T h e poem opens with this civilised preamble: T h e Dames of Britain oft in crowds repair To gravel walks, and unpolluted air. Here, while the Town in damps and darkness lies, They breathe in sun-shine, and see azure skies; Each walk, with robes of various dyes bespread, Seems from afar a moving Tulip-bed, Where rich Brocades and glossy Damasks glow, And Chints, the rival of the show'ry Bow. T h e allusion goes further. T h e poem becomes a tale set in a Fairy Empire, where true love, blessed by the gods, is thwarted by a jealous father who imposes marriage to another; war and destruction follow: This Dale, a pleasing region, not unblest, This Dale possest they; and had still possest; H a d not their monarch, with a Father's pride, Rent from her lord th'inviolable Bride, Rash to dissolve the contract seal'd above, T h e solemn vows and sacred bonds of love. Now, where his elves so sprightly danc'd the round, No violet breathes, nor daisy paints the ground, His powers and people fill one common grave, A shapeless ruine, and a barren cave. 316

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8 Adelaide is Mrs Haller of The Stranger] 'soul of whim' does not appear in the published version, but may have been a line from the play as staged. 9 T h e figurative infusing is very like Knight, but there are no brandied cherries in the Progress of Civil Society. ISSUE N O . XXII 1 Abraham Fraunce (1587?-1633), poet, was a protege of Sidney. He 'proved himself one of the most obstinate champions of the school which sought to naturalise classical metres in English verse. All his poems are in hexameters, and all are awkward and unreadable' (DJVB). 2 Richard Stanyhurst (1547-1618) has an even worse reputation: he developed that theory of English prosody of which Gabriel Harvey was the champion, maintaining that quantity rather than accent ought to be the guiding principle of English as of Latin metre. Stanyhurst rendered 'Virgil' into hexameters by way of proving that position. T h e result was a literary monstrosity. T h e Latin was recklessly paraphrased in a grotesquely prosaic vocabulary, which abounded in barely intelligible words invented by the translator to meet metrical exigencies. Frequent inversions of phrase heightened the ludicrous effect. (DJVB) 3 Hazlitt's summary of Arcadia will serve for a similarly testy reading of Sidney: O u t of five hundred folio pages, there are hardly, I conceive, half a dozen sentences expressed simply and directly, with the sincere desire to convey the image implied, and without a systematic interpolation of the wit, learning, ingenuity, wisdom and everlasting impertinence of the writer, so as to disguise the object instead of displaying it in its true colours and real properties. Every page is 'with centric and eccentric scribbled o'er;' his Muse is tattered and tricked out like an Indian goddess. {Howe, vol. 3, p. 320) 4 For Chalk Farm, see p. 313 above. 5 For Bedford's haircut, see pp. 304-5 above. 6 Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801) was friend of Fox, Erskine, Bedford and others, a scholar with a gift for quarrelling and a taste for radical politics: 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 political or religious controversy, his pen was dipped in gall. (Henry Crabb Robinson, as quoted in DJVB)

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7 Tooke, see p. 303 above. 8 J o h n Gale Jones (1769-1838) began in medicine, but quickly gave himself whole-heartedly to political campaigning. H e was a member of the London Corresponding Society. 9 Thelwall, see p. 313 above. 10 i.e. T h e Seditious Meetings and Treasonable Practices Acts, 1796. 11 The Counter-Scuffle. Whereunto is added, the Counter-Rat, by Robert Speed (London, 1628). These are two lively burlesques in Sapphics, with, it is true, some disgraceful rhymes: And at his weapon any way He would performe a single fray Euen from the long Pike to the Tay­ lors Bodkin. (Counter-Scuffle, stanza 7) 12 Letitia Sourby, see p. 55 above. 13 'Decade-day': the Revolutionary Calendar replaced the normal week with a period of ten days. ISSUE N O . XXIII 1 Pope, Essay on Man, Ep. 1,1. 294. 2 This paragraph charmingly blends Darwinian science with Godwinian rationalism. Evolutionary energies and the elixir of 'Oxygène' come from £oonomia; the analysis of impediments to mental evolution is drawn from Godwin; the closing flight of fancy is a perfect synthesis, c.f Political Justice at its most fanciful: T h e sum of arguments which have been here offered amounts to a species of presumption, that the term of human life may be prolonged, and that by the immediate operation of intellect, beyond any limits which we are able to assign. Mind, though it will perhaps at no time arrive at the termination of its possible discoveries and improvements, will nevertheless advance with a rapidity and firmness of progression of which we are at present unable to conceive the idea. (v. 2, 520; 481) 3 T h e pons asinorum, or Asses' Bridge, is Euclid's fifth Proposition, which balks all dunces.

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4 For Rewbell, Barras and Lepaux, see p. 290 above. 5 'Derby Diligence': a Diligence is a type of horse-drawn carriage. 6 'Digamma': the sixth letter of the original Greek alphabet, later disused. 7 Hippona was a goddess who watched over horses. Her image was commonly seen in stables. 8 T h e Bridge of Lodi, over the river Adda, south-east of Milan, was the scene of a small but significant battle in the first of Napoleon's Italian campaigns. 9 Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist; the 'learned language' alluded to is that of the Huygens Principle, a method of studying optical phenomena, which he formulated in 1690. 10 cf. Pope: W h o made the spider parallel design Sure as De-moivre, without rule or line? [Essay on Man, Ep. 3,11. 217-18) and: T h e spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line [Essay on Man, Ep. 1,11. 217-18) 11 'Loves of the Plants', Canto 1,11. 289-92. 12 ' T h e winsome smile of a girl from a corner': Horace, Odes 1 . 9 . 2 2 . 13 A smoke-jack turns the roasting-spit above a fire, using draughts of hot air. 14 This footnote closely parodies ^joonomia, particularly vol. 1, Sects 28-9; two passages from p. 505 are particularly pertinent: From thus meditating on the great similarity of the structure of the warmblooded animals, and at the same time of the great changes they undergo both before and after their nativity; and by considering in how minute a portion of time many of the changes of animals above described have been produced; would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which T H E G R E A T F I R S T CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and associations; and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!

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In some it has protuded horns on the forehead instead of teeth in the fore part of the upper jaw; in others tushes instead of horns; and in others beaks instead of either. And all this exactly as is seen in the transmutations of the tadpole, which acquires legs and lungs, when he wants them; and loses his tail, when it is no longer of service to him. 15 'Love of the Plants', Canto 1,11. 231-2; and in Darwin's Additional Notes to the Botanic Garden, note 10, p. 19 (here Darwin gives an incorrect line reference): K U N C K E L , a native of Hamburgh, was the first who discovered to the world the process for producing phosphorus. Both spellings of the name are correct for J o h a n n Kunkel von Lowenstjern (c. 1630-1703), German chemist. 16 Semiramis: child of the love between the goddess Derceto and a handsome Assyrian. She became queen of Assyria, making Babylon the grandest city of her empire and the envy of the world. T h e 'mice' are a game on Ovid, Metamorphoses, 4,11. 5 7 - 8 : 'Semiramis is said to have girded a lofty city with burnt [i.e. brick] walls'; mice would be muribus. 17 Howel Dda (d. AD 950), a chieftain known as 'King of all Wales', who is remembered for the codification of Welsh law. ISSUE NO. XXIV 1 Pompey's Pillar: erected by Caesar on the seashore in Egypt, where Pompey was murdered; repaired by Hadrian two centuries later. 2 Proclus (AD 412-85), Neoplatonist philosopher, prolific scholar and head of the Academy in Athens. 3 Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c.280-194 BC), scholar of many disciplines, and curator of the library at Alexandria. He has been called a second Plato, the cosmographer and the geometer of the world. (Lemprière) 4 Menaecmus (il. mid 4th century BC), a geometer whose work on conic sections anticipates that of Euclid. 5 The New Arabian Nights; or, A continuation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, translated by M. Cazotte into French, and then into English, were most recently available in a three-volume edtion printed in London in 1794. T h e passages leaned on here are from 'The History of Maugraby, or the Magician', in vol. 3, p. 48-87. Maugraby was a wizard, servant and favourite of Zatanai whose temple:

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is beneath the sea which washes the coast of Tunis. T h e entrance to it was through nine gates, at each of which was a ladder of four hundred feet in descent....Here it is that Zatanai, or his representative, holds a Council with his dependants, contriving by what means more evil may be introduced upon earth, under the semblance of good. (vol. 3, p. 77) Zatanai's throne can only be approached through 'house' of Daniel. Maugraby is particularly relevant as a false advocate of science. 6 'Gins': i.e. Djinns, the spirits of Muslim demonology who can take human or animal form. 7 Bailly's Lettres, sur l'Atlantide de Platon et sur l'ancienne histoire de L'Asie, pour servir de suite aux Lettres sur l'origine des sciences, addressees à M. de Voltaire were published in London in 1779. 8 Volcanoes are a favourite subject of Notes in the Botanic Garden. 9 J o h a n n Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840), a German physiologist, has been called the father of physical anthropology. 10 T h e whirling dervish is a nice anticipation of Coleridge's wizard in Kubla Khan. 11 'Atropos': the inexorable, one of the three Fates, the others being Clotho and Lachesis. Her role was to cut the thread of life; cf. Milton, Lycidas 1. 75: Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, / And slits the thin-spun life'. 12 T h e Three Graces were daughters of Zeus: Euphrosyne, Aglia and Thalia, companions of the Muses, and often also in company with Aphrodite and Eros. Ida: a mountain, or range of mountains in southern Phrygia where Paris was abandoned, and where he bestowed the prize of beauty on Aphrodite. It was clothed in green forest. Cythera's Queen is Aphrodite; she is said to have landed on this island after being born from sea-spume. 13 i.e. oxygenated. 14 For Derby Diligence, see p. 319 above. Edmonds gives: T h e 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. (p. 163) 15 Bodkin: perhaps one of the three sisters, daughters of Mr Gingham, mentioned in the Contents.

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ISSUE N O . XXV 1 Shakespeare Tavern, see p. 289 above. 2 Jacques-Pierre Brissot (1754-93), journalist, revolutionary politician, editor of Le Patriote Français. Arrested at the end of May 1733; executed along with 21 other Girondins on the 31 October 1793. 3 Charles-Jean-Marie Barbaroux (1767-1794), a lawyer from Marseilles, was the man who called for '600 men who know how to die', the famous fédérés, whom he then marched through the provinces singing the song later to be known as the Marseillaise (p. 297 above). Once there, he helped overthrow the King and was elected to the Convention. From a radical position, however, he became increasingly moderate, eventually a Girondin. He was therefore among those arrested 2 June 1793, but escaped, fled to Normandy and then into hiding in Bordelais. There he appears to have attempted suicide; reports were confused, as seen in The Anti-Jacobiris footnote. In fact he was recaptured, taken to Bordeaux, and executed. 4 Jérôme Pétion (1756-94), 'Pétion the Virtuous', earlier a close ally of Robespierre. Paine brought him to London in November 1791, as guest of honour to the Revolution Society. He became Mayor of Paris when Bailly (p. 316 above) resigned. Pétion was appalled by the September Massacres, rallied to the Girondins, and fled arrest in June 1793. Again, reports were confused, but he and Buzon appear to have committed suicide. Their bodies were later found partly-consumed by wild animals. 5 Jean-Baptiste Louvet's Quelques notices pour Vhistoire, et le récit de mes périls depuis le 31 mai, 1793 was published in Paris in 1795. It was also available in English as Narrative of the Dangers to which I have been Exposed, since the 31st of May, 1793. With Historical Memorandums (London, 1795). Louvet's perils are vividly, if excitably, described. In his flight from persecution he took to hiding himself among the goods of a friendly carrier. 6 Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière (1734—93), earlier a Royal factory inspector, became friends with Brissot, Pétion and others who were to become Girondins. Dumouriez said of him: He was upright in his designs, and was possessed of a mild and philanthropic disposition; but the desire of appearing a rigid moralist induced him to assume a severity of character unnatural to him. [Memoirs, p. 127) Roland was made Minister of the Interior in March 1792, supported the Girondins during the King's Trial, and fled Paris in June 1793. He committed suicide after hearing of the execution of his wife Marie-Jean.

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1 'Barrere 3s Rep. ' : A series of reports, ' imprimé par ordre de la Convention Nationale' by Barère in the early 1790s. 8 Jean-Paul Marat (1743-93) was a physician until the revolution; after 1789 he edited a journal called l'Ami du peuple. Marat was the spokesman of revolutionary violence. His contribution to the verdict on the King is typical: 'I vote for the tyrant's death within twenty-four hours'. He was believed to have taken a leading part in the September Massacres, in which suspected royalists and counter-revolutionaries were butchered in the prisons. Marat was detested by the Girondins, and played a crucial role in the journées of 31 May and 2 June. He was assassinated by Charlotte Corday in July 1793 (Louvet's Narrative is breathless in praise of her character and actions). Cobbett's description of Marat is unforgettable: There was something horrible in the look of this villain. He was very short and thick, had a black beard ascending nearly to the extreme corners of his eyes. This beard was usually long, and his hair short, sticking up like bristles. He had ever been dirty, and it may be imagined, that the fashions of a revolution which has made it a crime to be well-dressed, had not improved his appearance: in short, he was at the very best a most disgusting mortal, and, therefore, when he came out of the prison at La Force, pistol in one hand and a dagger in the other, no wonder that even the sanguinary mob ran back for fear. (Bloody Buoy, pp. 101-2) 9 Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat (1743-94), Marquis de Condorcet, known as the last of the philosophes. Before the Revolution he devoted himself to the study of literature and science, becoming the Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Sciences in 1785. He was elected to the Convention but was arrested, as friend and associate of the Girondins, during the Terror. He committed suicide in his cell. 10 Dominique-Joseph Garat (1749-1833) began as a lawyer with literary leanings; he succeeded Danton as Minister of Justice in October 1792, and was briefly Minister for the Interior in 1793. Garat, whom M m e Roland called a 'political eunuch', condoned the September Massacres. This position later troubled him. His expiatory Mémoires sur la revolution, on expose de ma conduite dans les affaires, et dans lesfonctions publique was published in Paris in 1795. Like Louvet's, this memoir was also available in English, as Memoirs of the Revolution; or, An Apology for my Conduct, in the Public Employments which I have held, translated by R. Heron (Edinburgh 1797), where the episode quoted is on page 49.

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11 Presumably, from the church of St Paul's, in the centre of Covent-Garden. 12 i.e. the chapel which formed the House of Commons until it was destroyed by fire in 1834. ISSUE N O . XXVI 1 See 'Contents' to the First Canto, Issue No. 23, p. 167 above. Selections gives: M r Gingham may conceivably be Jonas H a nway, the first Englishman to carry an umbrella in the streets, in spite of the insults of the hackney coachmen. (p. 114) 2 Johnson's Dictionary gives the définition, and the phrase from Pope, which comes from the Dunciad (1743), bk. 4, 11. 31-2, where Pope is amused at mathematicians puzzling over matters of substance: Mad Mathesis alone was unconfin'd Too mad for mere material chain to bind. 3 T h e references to £oonomia come under 'Diseases of the Volition', and the section beginning on page 363: '4. Erotomania. Sentimental love. Described in its excess by romance-writers and poets'. Later Darwin goes into detail: T h e third stage of this disease I suppose is irremediable; when a lover has previously been much encouraged, and at length meets with neglect or disdain; the maniacal idea is so painful as not to be for a moment relievable by the exertions of reverie, but is instantly followed by furious or melancholy insanity; and suicide, or revenge, have frequently been the consequence. As was lately exemplified in Mr. Hackman, who shot Miss Ray in the lobby of the playhouse. (p. 365) 4 For Asses Bridge, see p. 318 above. 5 Counter. 6 This footnote is less arcane, more pointedly political than it seems. Higgins's opinions on 'Galvanic fire' amount to support for Brunonianism, a theory named after J o h n Brown (1735-88), a physician in Edinburgh, who caused great controversy with a theory that life was based on the excitability of the animal body. T h e theory was used by radical scientists to attack traditional views in medicine inherited from the Enlightenment. Darwin is fascinated by the subject, and the whole of JTponomia is suffused with the 'spirit of animation', a phrase he prefers to Galvani's 'electric fluid'. He is however jealously independent:

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T h e coincidence of some parts of this work with correspondent deductions in the Brunonian Elementa Medecina, a work (with some exceptions) of great genius, must be considered as confirmation of the truth of the theory, as they were probably arrived at by different trains of reasoning. (^bonomia vol. 1, p. 75) 7 T h e Morning Chronicle of Monday 30 April 1798 included this news item: Yesterday morning a boat with a sail, in attempting to pass the middle arch of London-bridge, from unskilful management was overset, and, five out of eight passengers were unfortunatly drowned. 8 At Lodi, on 10 May 1796, Bonaparte pounced on the retreating Austrian and Piedmontese army, and crushed it. It was a crucial victory in his Italian campaign; five days later he marched into Milan. 9 Liguria: formerly the Italian city-republic of Genoa; this, against the wishes of Genoese patriots, was coerced into becoming the Ligurian Republic in June 1797. 10 Invasion fears were in the air again, as the Morning Chronicle notes, 12 April 1798: 'Many contradictory reports have lately been in circulation respecting the much talked of Invasion'. Fables about the French Raft also return. Under 'Foreign Intelligence', The Anti-Jacobin, no. 24 (23 April 1798, p. 192), carries this item: W E are told, that in addition to the immense Armament collected at Flushing, Gun-boats and Rafts of a peculiar construction, are building in all the Ports opposite to our Eastern Coasts. As the mouths of all these Harbours are too narrow to admit of the passage of a square Raft of the larger size, it is intended that these new ones should be constructed in an oblong form, and that they should be grappled and lashed together as soon as they are out of the Harbour. 11 Muir, see p. 293 above. 12 J o h n Ashley, shoemaker, agitator, and prominent m e m b e r of the London Corresponding Society. H e was driven into exile in France in the late 1790s. 13 Joel Barlow ( 1754-1812), was a graduate of Yale and member of the bar. He was one of a group of writers called the 'Connecticut Wits' who were in search of a national literature; Barlow's 'Vision of Columbus', a long patriotic poem published in 1787, made him famous. He came to Paris as a land agent in 1788, became an enthusiastic republican, a friend of Paine, and published radical essays in England including Advice to the Privileged Orders, in 1792, which was banned by the government.

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14 Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-98), an Irish lawyer, campaigned for a united Ireland. Encouraged by events in France, he hoped for a French invasion of Ireland. Discovery of these sympathies eventually forced him to retire to America in 1795; from there he went to Paris in 1796 to discuss the invasion. This finally set out in December, and ended in farce. Further attempts in 1797 also failed. In 1798 Tone was appointed to Bonaparte's Army of England. His attention remained on invading Ireland, however, and he was captured in the attempt which took place in September; condemned to execution, he cut his own throat in prison. 15 Arthur O'Connor (1763-1852), Irish republican, Member of the Irish Parliament until 1795, when he resigned his seat. Arrested and imprisoned for six months in Ireland, early in 1797, for seditious libel; then arrested in England in May 1798, and put on trial. 'Fox, Sheridan, Erskine, Moira, and the Duke of Norfolk, appeared as witnesses in his favour' (DJVB). He settled in France in 1803. 16 James Napper Tandy (1740-1803), United Irishman, and Francophile, colleague of Tone in the United Irish Society. Like Tone, Tandy escaped prosecution by sailing for America late in 1795, and he joined Tone in Paris in February 1798. Tandy's contributions only added to the invasion fiasco; in command of a corvette, he landed on Rutland, an island off Donegal, whose inhabitants were unwilling to be liberated. Tandy returned to his ship considerably the worse for drink. He too settled in France, in 1802, but died soon afterwards. 17 Cobbett's Bloody Buoy fastens on children to highlight the atrocities of the revolution. His examples include A child brought by the murderers to see his father put to death', and 'Women make little guillotines as playthings for their children'. 18 Botanic Garden, Pt. 2, 'The Loves of the Plants', Canto 2,11. 181-93. 19 'See, on and down it swiftly rolls and runs': Catullus, Poems, 65. 23.

ISSUE N O . XXVII 1 Horace, Odes, 1. 14, To the Ship of State: O Ship, new billows threaten to bear thee out to sea again. Beware! Haste valiantly to reach the haven! Seest thou not how thy bulwarks are bereft of oars, how thy shattered mast and yards are creaking in the driving gale, and how thy hull without a girding-rope can scarce withstand the overmastering sea? Thy canvas is no longer whole, nor hast thou gods to call upon when again beset by trouble. Though thou be built of Pontic

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pine, a child of far-famed forests, and though thou boast thy stock and useless name, yet the timid sailor puts no faith in gaudy sterns. Beware lest thou become the wild gale's sport! Do thou, who wert not long ago to me a source of worry and of weariness, but art now my love and anxious care, avoid the seas that course between the glistening Cyclades! (Loeb Classics) 2 T h e first line of Horace, Odes, 1. 14, as above. 3 Lepaux, see p. 290 above. 4 Rewbell, see p. 290 above. 5 Georges-René Pléville-le-Pelley was, for a time, Minister for the Navy. 6 Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker (1766-1817), Baronne de Staèl-Holstein, usually known as M a d a m e de Staël. For several decades she was at the heart of French intellectual life. She was pro-revolutionary in early years, emigrated in 1792 but soon returned to campaign for liberal, enlightened politics. Her writing is unusually concerned with the relationship between literature and culture. 7 Helen Maria Williams (1762-1827). She went to Paris in 1788, became friendly with Mary Wollstonecraft, and with those who were later to become leading Girondins. Her Letters containing a Sketch of the Politics of France, From the Thirty-first of May 1793, till the Twenty-eighth of July 1794, and of the scenes which have passed in the prisons of Paris (London, 1795), are an invaluable, evocative record of the Terror. 8 'painted prows'. 9 T h e coastal territories of Mauritania, in north-west Africa, were claimed by France but disputed among European trading nations. Mauritania was eventually recognized as a French sphere of influence in the Senegal Treaty of 1817. 10 Abraham de Wicquefort (1598-1682), a Dutch diplomat who lived in Paris for years, was the author of L'ambassadeur et sesfonctions (1681). 11 Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-94), a G e r m a n jurist; in De Jure Naturae et Gentium Libri Octo he developed the work of Grotius into a full system of law: private, public, and international. 12 Hugo Grotius (1563-1645), a Dutch jurist, became Swedish Ambassador in Paris for ten years. His De Jure Belli ac Pads (1625) established modern public international law. 13 Emmerich de Vattell (1714-67) was the author of Le Droit des Gens and Questions de Droit Naturel.

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14 Jean-Baptiste-Jules Bernadotte (1763-1844), by 1794 a General in the revolutionary Army. He served in Italy in 1796, was briefly Ambassador to Vienna in 1798, then War Minister, before returning to the army again with Bonaparte. He was later King of Sweden. T h e point of this allusion is that Bernadotte was not a courteous diplomat; he left Vienna in a furious huff, to widespread amusement. Under 'Foreign Intelligence', on 30 April 1798, The Anti-Jacobin summarized his time there: T h e conduct of General BERNADOTTE, from the moment of his arrival at Vienna as Ambassador of the French Republic, had been such as to create the utmost disgust and indignation, and to prove plainly, that he had instructions (which appear to have been well suited to the coarse brutality of his native disposition), to offend against every established form - to shock every principal and prejudice, to vilify the character, and to affront the loyalty of the Nation among whom he was come to reside, and to push to the utmost limit of its patience, by every species of absurdity and impudence, both in the language and nature of his official communications, the Court with which he was destined to maintain the relations of amity and friendship by intercourse. (no. 25, p. 198)

ISSUE NO. XXVIII 1 Sir Brooke Boothby (1743-1824), 7th Baronet. He was a friend of Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward and a member of their literary coterie at Lichfield. 2 Philip II, King of Spain 1556-98. 3 William III, King of England from 1688-1702. Originally 'Batavian' derived from the inhabitants of the island of Betawe, between the Rhine and the Waal, now part of Holland: meaning, pertaining to Holland, or to the Dutch. 4 T h e poem refers to the palace built at the expense of a 'grateful nation' as the home of the Duke of Marlborough. T h e footnote refers to two great victories under the Duke of Marlborough, in the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13): at Blenheim against the French and Bavarians in August 1704; at Ramilies, crushing the French again, in May 1706. 5 Major-General James Wolfe (1727-59), who died leading the dangerous, successful assault on Quebec. 6 Minden: where, in August 1759, with Prince Ferdinand, the British inflicted a humiliating defeat upon the army of Louis X V

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7 Britain blockaded the Bay of Biscay during the Seven Years' War, in 1758 and in 1759. There were operations in the Bay against the French under Keppel in 1761 and under Hawke and Mordaunt in 1757. Further operations in the Bay took place during the Peninsular War, at La Coruna in 1809. 8 William Pitt the elder, Earl of Chatham, architect of British victory in the Seven Years' War against France. 9 George Brydges Rodney (1719-92), 1st Baron and admiral, hero of a number of engagements against the French and Spanish, most particularly the virtual destruction of a Spanish squadron off Cape St Vincent in 1780, and (more controversially) the victory over the French off St Lucia in 1782. 'And led three Nations' Chiefs to Thames's Flood' probably implies leading a united Britain to sail against the foe. 10 George Augustus Eliott (1717-1790), first Baron Heathfield, gifted soldier and champion of the siege of Gibraltar, which lasted from 1779 to 1782. 11 One of the pillars of Hercules in Hispânia Baetica, now known as the Rock of Gibraltar. 12 Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, ally of the British during the Seven Years' War.

ISSUE N O . XXIX 1 Horace, Odes, 1.5, To a Flirt: What slender youth, bedewed with perfumes, embraces thee amid many a rose, O Pyrrha, in the pleasant grotto? For whom dost thou tie up thy golden hair in simple elegance? Alas! How often shall he lament changed faith and gods, and marvel in surprise at waters rough with darkening gales, who now enjoys thee, fondly thinking thee all golden, who hopes that thou wilt ever be free of passion for another, ever lovely, - ignorant he of the treacherous breeze. Ah, how wretched they to whom thou, untried, dost now appear so dazzling! As for me, the temple wall with its votive tablet shows I have hung up my dripping garments to the god who is master of the sea. (Loeb Classics) 2 Merlin 'de Douai' began as a successful lawyer, was elected to the Convention, and was an active agent for it during the Terror. He had a reputation as a deputy from the extreme left. A prominent figure later, he was Minister of Justice, Director, and Police Minister. Henry Morley points out (Morley, p. 280-1), that he 'is often confused with another Merlin (of Thionville)'. Unfortunately Morley's biographical information further confuses the two.

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ISSUE N O . XXX 1 For a comparable New System from a young radical, see Coleridge's proposed curriculum for young men in 1796; his disciples were to study: 1. Man as Animal: including the complete knowledge of Anatomy, Chemistry, Mechanics & Optics. 2. Man as an Intellectual Being: including the ancient Metaphysics, the systems of Locke and Hartley, - of the Scotch Philosophers - & the new Kantian S[ystem - ] Man as a Religious Being: including an historic summary of all Religions & the arguments for and against Natural and Revealed Religion. 'Then', continues Coleridge with the eliding panache of Higgins: proceeding from the individual to the aggregate of Individuals & disregarding all chronology except that of mind I should perfect them 1. in the History of Savage Tribes. 2. of semi-barbarous nations. 3. of nations emerging from barbarism. 4. of civilised states. 6. of revolutionary states. - 7. - of Colonies. - During these studies I should intermix the knowledge of languages and instruct my scholars in Belles Lettres & the {Letters, vol. 1, p. 209) principles of composition. 2 cf. De Quincey, Masson vol. 2, p. 215: As a term of convenience, didactic may serve to discriminate one class of poetry; but didactic it cannot be in philosophic rigour without ceasing to be poetry. 3 cf. Paine, Rights of Man, p. 154: If universal peace, harmony, civilisation, and commerce are ever to be the happy lot of man, it cannot be accomplished but by a revolution in the present system of governments. 4 cf. Godwin, Political Justice, vol. 2, p. 380: Above all we should not forget, that government is, abstractedly taken, an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind. And Paine, Rights of Man, 159: It is impossible that such governments as have hitherto existed in the world could have commenced by any other means than a total violation of every principle, sacred and moral. 5 'an injury to oneself.

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6 cf. Godwin, Political Justice, bk. vu, p. 735: Anarchy, in its own nature, is an evil of short duration'; and The Robbers, Act 1,1. 49, 'glory to him who most shall murder and destroy'. 7 Marie-Joseph Motier (1757-1834), Marquis de Lafayette. A wealthy, liberal aristocrat, Lafayette became a national hero after the American War of Independence, commander of the Parisian National Guard, and Commander of the Army of the Centre in 1792. By then his reputation was on the wane; he turned against the new France, defected, and was imprisoned by the allies until 1797. 8 A theme developed further in the Second Act of The Rovers, see pp. 234-5 above. 9 Terence, Publius Terentius Afer (c. 190-159 BC), Roman comic poet, author of six plays. Four of these are adapted from Menander (342-C.292 BC), Athenian dramatic poet and the greatest writer of the Attic New Comedy. 10 Canning wrote the song. As well as closing this scene's glissade into despondency, Rogero's 'Song' specifically mocks Robert Adair again. After Westminster School, Adair was sent to the University of Gõttingen to complete his education, where he is said to have fallen in love with his tutor's daughter. T h e name of Rogero's sweetheart also chimes with Tone's fiancé, Matilda Witherington, a girl of only sixteen with whom he eloped while at Trinity College, Dublin. 11 Higgins's 'Prologue' borrows and bends Pope's Prologue to Addison's Cato. Pope persuades the audience that the stage 'subsists too long / O n French translation, and Italian song', and should turn to Addison's revival of R o m a n values. T h e Sturm und Drang plays turn their backs on antiquity, though it was French classical tragedy from which the G e r m a n dramatists were most anxious to separate themselves. T h e debt to Pope has other undercurrents. Higgins hopes G e r m a n drama will encourage his readers to indulge (to revel in indulging) their emotions. So too Pope, whose Prologue invites tears from the audience. But, as if disconcerted to be taken literally, Pope appears to be the author of a bracingly crude anonymous satire, ' O n a LADY who P—st at the T R A G E D Y of CATO; Occasion'd by an EPIGRAM on a LADY who wept at it': While maudlin Whigs deplor'd their Cato's Fate, Still with dry Eyes the Tory Celta sate, But while her Pride forbids her Tears to flow, T h e gushing Waters find a Vent below: T h o ' secret, yet with copious Grief she mourns, Like twenty River-Gods with all their Urns. Let others screw their Hypocritick Face, 331

NOTES TO PAGES 220-5 She shews her Grief in a sincerer Place; There Nature reigns, and Passion void of Art, For that Road leads directly to the Heart. 12 'Buskins': high boots, as worn in Greek tragedy. 13 The Robbers. A Tragedy (London, 1792), translated from Friedrich Schiller's Die Raüber (1781). 14 Cabal and Love. A Tragedy (London, 1795), translated from Schiller's Kabale und Liebe (1784). T h e scene referred to is Act 2, Scene 2, where pressed conscripts in the German army are sent to America, 'father and child separated by the inhuman threats of some bloody-minded corporal'. T h e practice of selling troops to fight for foreign powers was widespread in Germany in the second half of the 18th century; it was a means of raising money to finance a lavish court life (in imitation of Versailles) which the German states did not have the resources to support. 15 For details of The Stranger, see pp. 148 and 221 above. 16 'Shüttenbrüch' relies on the substitution of vowels described in the line to which this whole note refers. 17 'Huckaback': A stout linen fabric, with the weft threads thrown alternately up so as to form a rough surface, used for travelling and the like' (OED). 18 'Brunswick': a town and Duchy in Germany. 19 'Ordinary': meaning the Post-waggon. 20 cf. Stella, Act 2,11. 38-9: STELLA: Oh! a thousand years of weeping and sorrow would not be a price too great to give for the delights of young love - the stolen looks, the faltering voice, the agitation, the divine oblivion, the meetings, partings, the first passionate kiss hastily snatched, the first calm embrace. My dear madam, you seem oppressed. Are you well? [And very shortly afterwards] : STELLA: A sudden thought strikes me, madam. Let us be to one another what these men ought to have been to us; let us remain together; give me your hand, we will not part. 21 i.e. Sauerkraut and Prune. 22 A headache. 23 A broad-brimmed hat given a high cock, after the Austrian General A. von Khevenhüller (1683-1744). 24 i.e. Escutcheons: shield with coat-of-arms. The Dungeon scene is a gothic commonplace of sentimental drama. Similar glooms can be found, for

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example, in The Robbers, Robert Merry's Fenelon (1795), and his Lorenzo (1796), and best of all, Lewis's Castle Spectre (partly derived from The Robbers), whose damps and vaults are already self-parodic: SCENE III. - A gloomy subterraneous Dungeon, wide and lofty: the upper part of it has in several places fallen in, and left large chasms. O n one side are various passages leading to other caverns: O n the other is an Iron Door with steps leading to it, and a Wicket in the middle. Reginald, pale and emaciated, in coarse garments, his hair hanging wildy about his face, and a chain bound round his body, lies sleeping on a bed of straw. A lamp, a small basket, and a pitcher, are placed near him. After a few moments he awakes, and extends his arms. Reginald's suburbs of perdition are very like Rogero's: Yes, I was happy! - Yet frown not on me therefore, Darkness! - 1 am thine again, my gloomy bride! - Be not incensed, Despair, that I left thee for a moment; I have passed with thee sixteen years! - Ah! how many have I still to pass? 25 It may be relevant that the birthday of Goethe (and more pertinently, perhaps, his dramatized younger self, Werther) falls on 28 August. 26 T h e final stanza is absent from the periodical's version, first appearing in the first collected edition of 1799. ISSUE N O . XXXI 1 Early English versions certainly did not help. Of the 'comic literalness' with which Goethe's Stella was translated, Henry Morley wrote that it 'blots out the redeeming grace of style in the original' {Morley, p. 408). 2 For Stella, see p. 214 above. 3 Stranger, Act 5 (55-6), although eating occurs offstage. Dinner fills the whole first Act of Stella. 4 From Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet. 5 Carlo Goldoni (1707-93), Venetian dramatist, moved to Paris in 1762. He wrote more than two hundred plays, many of them satires on aristocracy 6 Clarification of an obscure text, solution of a mystery. 7 'Double Arrangement': i.e. Stella. 8 'chirurgery': archaism for surgery. 9 T h e laboured joke in Benyowsky relies on this: A pawn in german is called bauer, literally a boor, a common fellow' (Act 1,1. 1). 10 For Packwood's, see p. 313 above.

333

NOTES TO PAGES

238-45

11 Parodies the song Sheridan wrote for his version of The Stranger. 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.

(11. 1-4)

12 Cherry-brandy features in Castle Spectre, Act 1, sc. ii. 13 Benyowsky, Act 1, sc. 4, as quoted 14 Benyowsky, Act 1,1. 37; the passage is slightly abbreviated in quotation. 15 Act 1: CRUSTIEW: 'Courage without power, is like a child who plays at soldiers'. (1. 20). 16 Act 1: STEPANOFF: 'What is hope without courage? A consumptive running footman'. (1.25). 17 Act 1: STEPANOFF: 'Courage without power is nonsense. Courage is never without power'. (1. 20). 18 Act 2, 1. 43; the anti-jacobins' footnote is unfair; the conspirators sing to cover up the purpose of their assembly. ISSUE N O . XXXII 1 From Catullus, Poems 31 : SIRMIO, bright eye of peninsulas and islands, all that in liquid lakes or vast ocean either Neptune bears: how willingly and with what joy I revisit you, scarcely trusting myself that I have left Thynia and the Bithynian plains, and that I see you in safety. Ah, what is more blessed than to put cares away, when the mind lays by its burden, and tired with labour of far travel we have come to our own home and rest on the couch we longed for? This it is which alone is worth all these toils. Welcome, lovely Sirmio, and rejoice in your master's joy, and you, ye waters of the Lydian lake, laugh out aloud all the laughter you have in your home. (Loeb Classics) 2 Presumably an ironic reminder of André-Marie de Chénier ( 1762-94), wellknown poet, who began by actively supporting the revolution but was imprisoned in the Terror, and guillotined on 25 July 1794. His more extremist brother, Marie-Joseph (1764-1811), a staunch Montagnard, continued to serve the cause.

334

NOTES TO PAGES 247-8 ISSUE N O . XXXIII 1 By this, they mean the prose satire, 'A Letter from General Buonaparte to the Commandant at Zante', which follows in this issue. 2 'Thomas Trueman' was the occasional pseudonym of Jonas Hanway (171286), philanthropist, and loquacious traveller. T h e title of his best-known work (he wrote voluminously), hints at his character: An Historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea; with ajournai of Travels from London through Russia into Persia, and back again through Russia, Germany, and Holland, to which are added the Revolutions of Persia, with the particular History of Nadir Kandi, &c. (London, 1753). 3 Samuel Parr, see p. 300 above. 4 Sir J o h n Sinclair (1754-1835), M P for Caithness, enthusiast for parliamentary reform, advocate of peace, and the presiding genius of the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the interior parts of Africa. After falling out with Pitt, Sinclair tried to form his own third party, widely known as the 'armed neutrality'; Moira was to have been its figurehead. Sinclair was an energetic agriculturalist. He pushed the government into forming a board of agriculture, and appointing him its first president, in 1793. He continued to agitate for peace with France, publishing two pamphlets on the subject in Febuary 1798. 5 T h e article in the Morning Chronicle is an attack on the position taken in The Anti-Jacobin over the death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, martyr of the United Irishmen. T h e style certainly resembles Adair. Reasoned discussion soon turns into a tirade against the anti-jacobins: They are beyond the reach of all correction, arising either from the sense of shame, or the compunctions of remorse. They seem to be acting over again, but with a moral object, the schoolboy cruelties of their greener years. These high-spirited youths are learning to apply the ingenuity they used to display in the torture of flies and other animals, to those feelings which belong to the social relations. (Wednesday 20 June) T h e 'preceding column' in The Anti-Jacobin is on pages 259-60, where Adair receives another mauling: T h e limping style of this unhappy effort at invective, half-hopping and half-flying in pursuit of BURKE, sufficiently betrays its Author - an unfortunate Gentleman formerly noticed by us both in verse and prose. This Gentleman, resenting the involuntary celebrity which had been inflicted upon him, has thought proper to stigmatize us . . . 6 Alexander Barclay (c. 1475-1552), scholar, divine, and poet. He translated

335

NOTES TO PAGES

248-51

Jacob Locher's Latin version of the 'Ship of Fools', StultiferaJVavis(\4:91), into English in 1509. 7 J o h n Barclay (1582-1621) wrote a popular Latin Romance called Argenis. 8 A jibe at Parr, who provided a dedication and preface in Latin to a new edition of William Bellenden in 1787. He announced himself delighted with his own Latin; the preface also contained a covert attack on Pitt and other Tories. 9 i.e. Bob Adair a Dull Fool. 10 i.e. Nicholl a Wretched Goose. 11 Sir William Shuckburgh, see p. 303 above. 12 Erasmus Darwin. 13 Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808), eccentric physician and scientist, political agitator, editor of J o h n Brown (q.v.), and source of inspiration to Coleridge, Southey, Davy and others. 14 Bruin. 15 Godwin. 16 i.e. berth. 17 From Saba, 'a town of Arabia, famous for frankincense, myrrh, and aromatic plants' (Lempriére). 18 A river flowing into the Caspian sea. 19 In 1798 Napoleon invaded Egypt to provide a staging post for the conquest of India. 20 i.e. Napoleon. Arcole was the village in northern Italy giving its name to the battle of 15-17 November 1796, when Napoleon destroyed the Austrians under Allvintzy. 21 Alexander the Great. 22 Turkish tribes, nomadic or settled in Transcapia, northern Afghanistan and Persia. 23 T h e Scythians were among Alexander's conquests. 24 Presumably the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, which was used as a holding prison during the Revolution (Tom Paine was held there, among many others). 25 This mocks a footnote to The Botanic Garden, pt. 1,1. 529: If the nations who inhabit this hemisphere of the globe, instead of destroying their sea-men 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

336

NOTES TO PAGES

251-62

result to mankind, the tropic countries would be much cooled by their solution, and our winters in this latitude would be rendered much milder for perhaps a century or two, till the masses of ice became again enormous. 26 Beddoes was fascinated by respiration and respiratory disease. His Letter to Erasmus Darwin, M.D., on A New Method of treating Pulmonary Consumption, and Some other Diseases hitherto found Incurable (London, 1793), discusses the use of oxygen and includes an account of experimenting on himself. He predicts: Of course I must expect to be decried by some as a silly projector, and by others as a rapacious empiric. (p. 4) 27 Jupiter Ammon. T h e Egyptian god Ammon, an oracle usually represented as having the head of Zeus, with ram's horns, would naturally appeal to the sheep-loving Sinclair. ISSUE N O . XXXIV 1 Suckling's 'Song' in six stanzas (c. 1632-7), of which this is the first: Honest Lover whosever, If in all thy love there ever Was one wav'ring thought, if thy flame Were not still even, still the same: Know this, T h o u lov'st amisse, And to love true, T h o u must begin again, and love anew. 2 T h e Latin means literally 'one and a half feet'. In English 'sesquipedalian' means excessively short when applied to bodies, and excessively long when applied to words. 3 T h e 'editor' notes, 'I read pistol, on my own responsibility'. 4 A mode of suicide more often Revolutionary France.

used among the Romans than in

5 Reading habentur for habetur in the Latin. 6 Reading vestitus for vistitus in the Latin. ISSUE N O . XXXV 1 i.e. Lord Moira. 2 i.e. Irish for French. 3 In Ireland, a haggard is a stack-yard. 4 Measure of length, originally from that of a fore-arm.

337

NOTES TO PAGES

265-70

5 cf. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 1. 721 etc. Sicily (Thrinacia) housed a flourishing Greek civilisation in antiquity, but was more famous for Mount Etna (reputedly the forge of the god Vulcan) and the inhospitable strait of Messina, often identified with Homer's Charybdis. 6 cf. Virgil, Aeneid 1. 279, where it is not clear whether Jupiter is prohesying unlimited extension or unlimited longevity to Rome's conquests. 7 Carthage was the traditional enemy of Rome. T h e composer, as was the custom, assumes that he is contemporary with the classical authors, and thus cannot speak of any later empire. 8 There seems to be an allusion to phrases in Virgil, Aeneid 1. 224 and Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 2. 1-2, both of which describe ships labouring in a storm. Under the rule of Britannia, however, a sea thick with sails is a sign of peace. 9 Apart from the allusion to Thomson's 'Rule Britannia', and Pope's 'Windsor Forest', the composer may also be thinking of the classical image 2X Aeneid 4. 441-6 (Aeneas unbowed by the assaults of Dido). T h e oak is female here because of the implied analogy with Britannia. 10 T h e ramming of vessels with brazen beaks or rostra was a device invented by the Romans to overcome the Carthaginian navy in the First Punic War (264241 BC); it was not, of course, a tactic in Nelson's battles. 11 In the Latin the words dulci (pleasant), and pátria (fatherland, adjusted to homeland here to accord with Brittania's personification as female), occur in the same line, but not, as in Horace, Odes 3 . 2 . 13, to say that it is sweet to die for one's country. 12 At Aeneid 2 . 6 1 , this phrase is used of Sinon, whose cunning overthrew Troy. But in this case, 'perfidious Albion' will conquer by courage, not by guile. ISSUE N O . XXXVI 1 From Pope's Epistles of Horace, bk. 1, ep. 1,1. 138. 2 Epistle to Bathurst, 1. 342 and various following. 3 Epistle to Cobham, 1. 256. 4 Epistle to a Lady, 1. 24. 5 Epistle to Bathurst, 11. 105,135. 6 'Sylvia, A Fragment', 1. 14. 7 Epistle to Bathurst, 11. 87, 291. 8 GifTord. 9 i.e. Thomas Mathias (c. 1754-1835). The first part of The Pursuits of Literature, a long-winded satiric survey of contemporary writers and social degeneracy, was

338

NOTES TO PAGES 270-6 published anonymously in 1794. Additional material appeared in 1796-7. 10 T h e BaviacTs 'motto' appears on page 3, as quoted, and translates: Sometimes against sheepfolds . . . sometimes against writhing serpents'; Horace, Odes 4. 4. 9 and 11 (omitting one line; the indiscriminate courage of the old Romans is the theme). 11 Condorcet, see p. 323 above. 12 Mimosa pudica, the 'Sensitive Plant', a short-lived sub-shrub from Brazil, with pink spheres of flowers and light green leaves. When touched, the leaves fold together and droop. 13 Anagallis is a genus of hardy and half-hardy annuals and evergreen perennials, used for hedging borders, or in rock-gardens (including A. arvensis, the Scarlet Pimpernel). 14 Born in Geneva in 1712, Rousseau lived a peripatetic life, moving frequently between France and Switzerland (as well as Italy, and England). 15 Gesturing towards the literature of sentiment in general, and, in Sterne's Sentimental Journey, the episode of 'The Dead Ass' at Nampont. 16 For Loire, see p. 81bove. 17 For Lyons, see p. 81 above. 18 Alluding to Voltaire's Candide, and the parodie optimism of 'all is for the best in this the best of all possible worlds'. 19 Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), leader of the Whigs from 1703, was opposed in the House by Sir William Pulteney (1684-1764). 20 Barras, see p. 290 above 21 Merlin, see p. 329 above. 22 Father James Quigley, a Catholic priest arrested with other United Irishmen at Margate, where Quigley was discovered to be carrying a letter to the French Directory urging the invasion of England by Bonaparte. T h e party, which included O ' C o n n o r (see p. 326 above), were tried for high treason at Maidstone. Fox, Erskine, Sheridan, and Grey spoke in their defence. Quigley was sentenced to death and hanged on Penningdon Heath, 7th June 1798 (the others were acquitted). Samuel Parr said of him: Y e s , . . . he was a bad man, but he might have been worse; he was an Irishman, but he might have been a Scotsman; he was a priest, but he might have been a lawyer; he was a republican, but he might have been an apostate. (As reported by Samuel Rogers, Table-Talk, p. 33). 23 Stone, see Williams p. 327 above. 24 La Fayette, see p. 331 above. 25 i.e. La Fayette in prison, see anti-jacobins' note to 1. 237. 339

NOTES TO PAGES 276-9 26 Fitzpatrick, see p. 299 above. 27 J o h n Christian Curwen, M P for Carlisle, and a Foxite Whig. 28 Hon. Andrew St John, M P for Bedfordshire, another supporter of Fox. 29 Courtenay. Joseph Miller ( 1684-17 38), an actor and humourist, had his tales supposedly collected by J o h n Mottley in Joe Miller's Jests (1739); Irishmen are frequent butts within. 30 For Louvet's escapes, see p. 322 above. 31 Baron Honore-Jean Riouffe's Mémoires d'un Détenu; pour servir à l'histoire de la Tyrannie de Robespierre were published in 'Paris' (actually London) in 1795. 32 Lodoiska, Louvet's wife, occupies a pedestal throughout his memoir. Louvet's candour and roseate prose can be wearying; but these insults have no real foundation in the source. 33 'Eringoes': presumably one of the genus Eryngium, herbacious perennials often used as border plants 34 For Roland, see pp. 322-3 above. 35 'compliant nymphs of the dell': Virgil, Georgics 4. 535 (should read faciles Napaeas). 36 For the shoe-buckles, Selections gives: T h e anecdote, as related by Dumouriez was that Roland, when appointed minister, went to kiss hands at the Tuileries with his shoes tied with mere ribband or ferret. T h e Supreme Usher pulled Dumouriez aside: "What, Sir! No buckles to his shoes?" "Ah, Sir," answered Dumouriez, "all is lost." (p. 209) 37 A play on Roland's character; during his courtship, Mme Roland writes that her father 'did not like M. Roland's stiffness' {Memoirs, p. 347), and she freely admits her own reservations, postponing their marriage for some considerable time. 38 For M m e de Staël, see p. 327 above. 39 French Guiana was known as the 'dry guillotine', a place of exile in Revolutionary purges. 40 Selections gives: Quatremère de Quincy was ordered to be deported to Guiana, a sentence he managed to evade, not so much, as Canning declares, for denouncing Madame de Staël in the Council of the Five Hundred, and even questioning her sex, as for the vigorously Royalist character of his oratory. (p. 210) 41 Barras: see p. 290 above.

340

NOTES TO PAGES

279-81

42 Rewbell: see p. 290 above. 43 Merlin: see p. 329 above. 44 Congreve, The Way of the World, Act 3, sc. 15: 'honest Pumple-Nose, the attorney of Furnival's Inn'. 45 Henry IV, Pt. 1, III. iii. 126-9. 46 For Lepaux, see p. 290 above. 47 Theophilanthropy was a religion of which Letitia Sourby's father would have approved (p. 55 above), a rationalist substitute for established Christianity. Members of this ecumenical, deist sect included Chénier, Paine, and most importantly, Lepaux, who seems to have seen Theophilanthropy as a source of future power. 48 For Marat, see p. 323 above. 49 Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau ( 1749-91 ), renegade aristocrat, who was very prominent in 1789, but slipped from power, and began doubledealing, as a secret agent of the Court. 50

Inextinguishable laughter arose among the blessed gods When they saw Vulcan at his household task. (Iliad 1.11. 599-600).

51 Coleridge. 52 Southey. 53 Lloyd. 54 Lamb. 55 'Co.' has been variously read: as a rhyme-pressed convenience; as Cottle, publisher of Lloyd, Lamb and Coleridge; or as a coded 'Wordsworth'. 56 Priestley. 57 Gilbert Wakefield, see p. 317 above. 58 Thelwall, see p. 313 above. 59 Not, as often assumed, Helen Maria Williams, but David Williams (17381816), a deist whose lectures were published in 1779, and who founded a chapel in London based on notions comparable to Theophilanthropy. 60 Godwin. 61 Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809) was among those prosecuted in the Treason Trials of 1794 (p. 294 above); a dramatist and novelist, he was a member of the Society for Constitutional Information, and an enthusiast for France, and parliamentary reform. 62 Prosecuted for parodying scripture in 1817, these two lines played a crucial part in William Hone's defence, where he points to them as parody of 'the account of Creation in the book of Genesis' (Three Trials, p. 49). 341

NOTES

TO PAGES

281-4

63 T h e Duke of Bedford, immortalized by Burke in the Letter to a Noble Lord as 'the leviathan among creatures of the crown'. In the background of these lines is Job 41:1: 'Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?'. 64 The Courier filled in the blanks of 11. 352-3 as Coke, Colquhoun, Anson, and then Whitbread. Much more reliably (although they do not scan so well), Gillray's print for the 'New Morality' [Anti-Jacobin Review, 1 Aug 1798) has Norfolk, Shuckburgh, Burdett and a barrel of 'Whitbread's intire' immediately behind the whale of Bedford, and, floundering further back in the wake, Lord Derby, Byng and Courtenay. 65 Macbeth IV i. 5 3 - 4 (but 'yesty' sea). 66 Lines 356-81 contain echoes of the Latin paean of Issue no. 35, and appear to qualify that poem's confidence in Britain's security. 67 Burke died at Beaconsfield, 9 July 1797. 68 A reference to the undemocratic electoral proceedure of the new bicamerel legislature (p. 290 above), by which two thirds of the new legislators were chosen from among existing members of the Convention. This came to be known as the 'Law of Two-Thirds'; in practice the Directory (and so the two Councils), was controlled by the 'Rule of Three': Barras, Rewbell, and Lepaux. 69 'Would you contain your laughter?': Horace, Ars Poética (i.e. Epistles 2. 3), p. 5. Alludes to the secession of conservatives from the Whig Club, in disapproval of Fox and his supporters.

342

Parodies of the Rotnantic Age Collected Verse Parody

Edited by John Strachan

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE VOLUME 2. Collected "Vt?rse Parody

c. Williams , 'The Genius of the Times' (plate for

Town Talk, I December 1812) ...0

I-
Mi,XVI,st.26. The tomb of the Prophet Muhammad at Medina. 3 In London's East End. Much of the farm produce of Essex arrived in the city at Whitechapel to be sold at its haymarket. The area was one of the poorest and most squalid parts of the capital. 2

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4

6. A truce to thought, for attic Billingsgate1 Already lures the pilgrim from his road; Awe-struck he sees each naiad 2 and her mate, Haggling for halfpence with some river god, / Her Doric 3 dialect, beautiful as broad, Her plump cheek redolent of ancient grease, Herfleecyhose with yellow worsted sewed, Recall proud Athen's days, its golden fleece, Its academic wits, and fame that nee shall cease. 7. Not so thy street, Boeotian4 Leadenhall! Famed for new novels,5 leaden all and dull Though wags thy library "Minerva" 6 call, Yet very British is Minerva's skull. Her brainless books seem'd doom'd to gather wool, Or sold to vile cheesemongers by the pound, To scour the soulless sculleries of John Bull, While pots and pans (not sylvan) aye surround Each panic-stricken tome, despite its lore profound. 8. And this is fame, that covetous cooks' shops Should form the graves of every martyr'd work, That Southey's strains should wrap up mutton chops, Or Cheshire cheese anoint the leaves of Burke. - /

i

Site of a long-established fish market. Cf. 'Imitation of Horace, Lib. 3 Carm. 25', 11. 32-3 in the Anti-Jacobin ('The nymphs of Billingsgate you cheer; / Naiads robust and hearty'). 3 Broad and unrefined in this case, with the pun on 'Doric' in the Greek sense. Billingsgate was notorious for the foul mouths of its traders. 4 Stupid and dull. 5 The Minerva Press, which published many sentimental novels and romances, was based in Leadenhall Street. 6 The Roman Goddess of Wisdom. 2

106

THE CHILDE'S PILGIMAGE

[85/86]

That Theodore Ducas 1 - Catiline2 - should lurk 'Mid Granger's sweets, with Wordsworth's Peter Bell, Or Chalmers's 3 Lecture on the Scotish kirk Sleep with its fathers in some London hell, Some fruiterer's fruitful shelf where dirt and dulness dwell. 9. But, lo, th' Exchange!4 a busy world is here, A world of knaves in wide confusion blent; Here beams the smile, - there falls th' unheeded tear, For stock well-purchased, or for gold ill-spent. All are on one fool's errand madly bent, And Turk and Christian pass unnoticed by, While Israel's sons nee more to discontent A prey, - the new Jerusalem espy, In this barbaric booth, this fair of vanity. 10. Ah me! how grovelling is the mind of man! How fixed on perishable hopes, and mean! / Wealth, honor, pride, engross his paltry span Of life, - then leave him scathed in heart as mien. Here where I stand, the spirit of the scene Enchains all hearts with talismanic spell, In vain aspiring youth with blossoms green, Bedeck'd comes forth; - here Mammon tolls his knell, And round him weaves the chain of avarice and of hell.

1 Theodore Ducas was the pseudonym of Charles Mills (Warreniana's ' C . M.'). The Travels of Theodore Ducas, in Various Countries in Europe at the Revival of Letters and Arts was published in 1822. 2 Catiline: A Tragedy, in Five Acts; with Other Poems (1822) by the Rev. George Croly (1780-1860). 3 T h o m a s Chalmers (1780-1847), Scottish theologian and preacher. 4 T h e Royal Exchange between Threadneedle Street and Cornhill in the City was the traditional meeting place for London merchants.

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PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME

4

11. Th' Exchange is past, the Mansion House 1 appears, Surpris'd the Childe surveys its portly site, Dim dreams assail him of convivial years, And keener waxes his blunt appetite. Luxurious visions whelm his fancy quite, Of calipash and eke of calipee,2 While sylphs of twenty stone steal o'er his sight, Smiting their thighs with blythe Apician 3 glee, And licking each his lips right beautiful to see. / 12. 'Twas here they tucked, - these unctuous city sprites, 'Twas here like geese they fattened and they died, Here turtle reared for them her keen delights, And forests yielded their cornuted pride. 4 But all was vain, 'mid daintiest feasts they sighed; Gout trod in anger on each hapless toe; Stern apoplexy pummelled each fat side, And dropsy seconded his deadly blow, 'Till floored by fate they sunk to endless sleep below. 13. But hark, the hum of multitudes, the roar Of carts and coaches, and the various squalls Or cries, that pierce the ear-drum's inmost core, Have roused the Childe's attention at Saint Paul's.

i

The official residence for the Lord Mayors of Lord London Respectively, a turtle's upper and lower shell. Cf. Moore's A Dream of Turtle. By Sir W. Curtis', 11. 42-3 ^calipash and calipee / Are the English forms of Diplomacy'). See the speech by 'Sir W—m C—s' in 'Warren at Saint Stephen's' below. 3 Epicurean. 4 I.e. venison. 'Cornuted' means horned. 2

108

THE CHILDE3S PILGIMAGE

[87/89]

Cheapside 1 to near Guildhall2 in thunder calls,3 Guildhall replies, of lungs with justice proud; Milk-street and Lothbury, glad to join the brawls, / Have found a tongue, while Wood-street from her shroud Rebellows to Lad-lane, who calls to her aloud. 14. And in the midst, as leader of the band, Stands the magnificent Saint Paul's; — he towers Sublime to heaven, by winnowing breezes fanned, Unknown on lower earth; - the rattling showers, The storm, the whirlwind that in vengeance lowers, Pass him unharm'd; — he lifts his giant brow, As if in mockery of their puny powers, Or rapt in clouds like conscious guilt in woe, Soars from the vulgar ken a mystery as now. 4

15. Something too much of this; but now 'tis past,5 And Fleet-street spreads her busy vale below: Lo! proud ambitious gutters hurry past, To rival Thames in full continuous flow; The Inner Temple 6 claims attention now, That Golgotha of thick and thread-bare skulls, / Where modest merit pines in chambers low, And impudence his oar in triumph pulls Along the stream of wealth, and snares its rich sea-gulls.

1 All of the sites mentioned in this stanza are streets or buildings in the City of London. All survive (though Lad-Lane is now part of Gresham Street). 2 The administrative centre of the City of London. 3

Echoes Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, III. 11. 8 6 5 - 8 .

4

ΠDon Juan, VI. 1.601.

5

6

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, III. 1. 64.

One of the four Inns of Court.

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4

16. Hail to this shrine of barristers and brass! Of wigs and wags of learning and of lead! Solomon's brazen temple - but alas! With old king Log,l king Solomon instead. Ye gifted spirits2 of the legal dead, Will none arise to grace degraded law? Vain hope, despite the lore of each long head, Satan hath found their lives a moral flaw, And on them, bailiff-like, hath laid his ebon paw. 17. And thus the world is rife alone with fools, Who clank in chains while fashion holds the noose; Court, camp, and church, - what are they but the tools Of sin, shame, slang, buffoonery, and abuse? Momus 3 with man has made a lasting truce. / And hence our patriots puff, - our warriors bray, Hence critics flood us with a muddy sluice Of maudlin prose, - hence cant holds sovereign sway, And sinless saints are spurn'd, while sainted sinners pray. 18. Our life is one fierce fever - death the leech Who lulls each throb; - the has been, and to be; The sole divine whose welcome aid can teach The mysteries of a dread futurity. Come when he may, his advent will to me Be spring and sunshine, for my soul is dark,4

1 In Aesop's fable, Jupiter made a log king over the frogs. The term 'King Log' is used to suggest lassitude and inertia. 2 Cf. The Two Foscari, II. i. 1. 334. 3 See note to p. 87 above. 4 'My Soul is Dark' is one of the Hebrew Melodies.

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THE CHILDE'S PILGIMAGE

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And o'er the billows of life's shoreless sea,1 A sea uncheer'd by hope's celestial ark, Cradled in storms and winds floats lone my little bark. 19. Thus mused the Childe, as thoughtful he drew near The sacred shrine 3 of Number Thirty, Strand, And saw - bright glittering in the hemisphere - / Like stars on moony nights - a sacred band Of words that formed the bard's cognomen - grand Each letter shone beneath the eye of day, And the proud sign-boot, by spring breezes fanned, Shot its deep brass reflections o'er the way, As shoots the tropic morn o'er meads of Paraguay 20. Childe Higgins hied him to this bless'd abode Not forked Parnassus - Crete's Olympian hill Not Ilium's plain - by kings and warriors trod Calypso's cavern, Aganippe's rill,4 Or Circe's isle famed for enchantment still Ere thrilled his soul with such intense delight As thrilled it now when Warren's magic till Thro' each shop-window gleamed upon his sight, Clear as Italian dawn that gilds the brow of night. 21. But I forget - my pilgrim's shrine is won 5 And he himself - the lone unloving Childe His Limehouse-birth, his name, his sandal-shoon, / And scallop shell, are dreams by fancy piled:

1

Echoes Heaven and Earth, I. iii. 1. 82.

2

Cf. Childe Harold's 'little bark of hope' (IV 1. 938).

3

Cf. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, II. 1. 106.

4

A spring on Mount Helicon.

5

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, IV I 1567.

Ill

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His dull despairing thoughts alone - once mild As love - now dark as fable's darkest hell, Are stern realities; - but o'er the wild Drear desert of their blight the soothing spell Of Warren's verse flits rare as sun-beams o'er Pall Mall. 22. Farewell - a word that must be and hath been 1 Ye dolphin dames who turn from blue to grey, Ye dandy drones who charm each festive scene With brainless buzz, and frolic in your May, Ye ball-room bards who live your little day, A nd ye who flushed in purse parade the town, Booted or shod - to you my Muse would say, "BUY WARREN'S BLACKING," as ye hope to crown Your senseless souls or soulless senses with renown.

1

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, IV. 1. 1666.

112

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to The Dream, A Psychological Curiosity. By S. T. C.)

Taken together, the two parts of Deacon's 'The Dream' provide one of the finest Coleridgean parodies. The 'Advertisement to the Reader' is based upon Coleridge's famous account of the composition of 'Kubla Khan' and 'The Dream' is a parody of 'Christabel'. The Advertisement', in its mockery of the opacity of Coleridge's philosophical prose manner, demonstrates a critical perspective which is very close to that of Byron's 'Dedication' to Canto I of Donjuán: And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But, like a hawk encumber'd with his hood, Explaining metaphysics to the nation I wish he would explain his Explanation.1

Blackwood's fearsome October 1817 review of Biographia Literaria, which declared that 'the greatest piece of Quackery in the Book is his pretended account of the Metaphysical System of Kant', 2 also resonates through Deacon's parody. The S. T. C. of the Advertisement' is a deranged Germanist, an incomprehensible metaphysician who rounds off a mock-Kantian piece of gibberish by asking 'To such simple and satisfactory reasoning what answer can be made?'. The Advertisement' also parodies Coleridge's famous 'On the Fragment of "Kubla Khan'", published in Christabel; Kubla Khan: A Vision; The Pains of Sleep (1816), which details the supposed origins of that poem in a 'sleep (at least of the external senses)' which follows Coleridge's reading of Purchases Pilgrimage. Instead of reading about Kubla Khan's 'palace', Deacon's S. T. C. has been poring over a report of a boxing match, the battle for the championship of England between Cribb and Molineaux. This prompts him into composing 'The Dream', a marvelously sustained account of a pugilistic contest 113

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 4

between Warren and Satan which is called to decide which of Warren's blacking and the waters of the Styx is the darkest. The poem is a brilliant example of the subgenre of boxing parody which enjoyed a brief vogue in the decade after Waterloo. Pugilism is a popular, if ephemeral, subject in the periodical press during this period. The most notable 'reporter of sporting events' was Pierce Egan (1772-1849), the 'regius professor of pugilism' as he is labelled elsewhere in Warreniana. Egan writes in a highly mannered and often florid prose style and his language is peppered with the pugilistic cant which Deacon uses to such effect in 'The Dream'. The Press declares that 'Egan astounds with civic slang our ears' 3 and Deacon employs many of his favoured terms: 'castor', 'fogle', 'Yellowman' and so on. Egan's collection Boxiana; or Sketches of Modern Pugilism was published in parts from 1818 to 1824. Such writing prompted many literary treatments of boxing and its devotees in 'The Fancy'. Hazlitt's essay 'The Fight', an account of the match between Spring and Neat published in the New Monthly Magazine in February 1822, is the most famous example. However, there is also a body of comic literature, published in the five years before Warreniana, which uses pugilism as a starting point and this trend informs Deacon's work. Thomas Moore's highly successful Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress, with Preface, Notes and Appendix, by one of the Fancy (1819) offers a series of poems on boxing themes which are prefaced by a parodie scholarly history of pugilism. John Hamilton Reynolds adapted Moore's formula in The Fancy: A Selection from the Poetical Remains of the late Peter Corcoran, of Gray's Inn, Student-at-law, with a Brief Memoir of his Life ( 1820), his own collection of the supposed literary remains of a deceased prizefighter. However, Deacon is more directly influenced by the boxing parodies published in Blackwood's: the Latin ode 'Boxing match at Wimbledon', 4 Maginn's extraordinary parodie masterpiece '"Luctus" on the Death of Sir Daniel Donnelly, LATE CHAMPION OF IRELAND',5 the Wordsworth parody 'On the Battle between Mendoza and Tom Owen, at Banstead Downs, July 4th, 1820'6 and the Southey parody 'An Idyl on the Battle'7. The latter poem, with its round-byround descriptions and black letter headings, is closest to Deacon's parody. Blackwood's, of course, also parodied 'Christabel' in 114

INTRODUCTORY £

NOTE

Christabel, Part Third'. 8 T h o u g h ' T h e D r e a m ' is a far better parody of Coleridge, both poems' comedy depends on the structural parodie device of the comic misapplication of grotesquerie. Such a manoeuvre informs m a n y parodies of Coleridge's preternatural balladry, but rarely is it used to such pleasing effect as here. Finally, it should be pointed out that Deacon's account of the confrontation between Robert Warren and Satan itself owes something to an early 1820s puff for Warren's blacking, '30, Strand. N e d Capstan: or, A Land-Cruise Postponed.' (fig. 11), which also tells the story of an encounter between a mortal m a n and the evil one. NOTES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Byron, vol. V (1986) p. 3. BEM, II (October 1817), p. 17. The Press, p. 126. BEM, II (March 1818), pp. 669-70. Ibid, VII (May 1820), pp. 186-205. Ibid, VIII (October 1820),pp. 63-4. Ibid, XIV Quly 1823), pp. 65-72. Ibid, V Qune 1819), pp. 286-91.

115

Fig. 11 : '30, Strand. Ned Capstan: or, A Land-Cruise Postponed.' (c. 1820)

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THE DREAM, A PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITY.

By S. T. C.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER

THE following "wild and singularly original and beautiful poem" 1 was written at the instigation of Mr. Warren, who was desirous of enrolling me among the number of his panegyrists. The circumstances that led to its original composition are as follows: I had been considering in what way I might best introduce the subject, when suddenly falling asleep over a provincial newspaper which detailed the battle between Cribb 2 and Molineux, 3 the thoughts of my waking hours assumed the aspect of the present poetical reverie. This to an unidead 4 "reading public" may appear incredible, but minds of imaginative temperament are ever most active / during the intervals of repose, as my late poem, entitled "The Pains of Sleep," will sufficiently attest. Dreams in fact are to be estimated solely in proportion to their wildness; and hence a friend of mine, 5 who is a most magnificent dreamer, imagined but the other night that he invited a flock of sheep to a musical party. Such a Jlocci, nauci, nihili absurdity will, I am afraid, puzzle even our transcendental philosophers to explain,

1 Byron's depiction of 'Christabel' in a note to The Siege of Corinth (1816). Th e description was used in the advertisements for Christabel; Kubla Khan: A Vision; The Pains of Sleep. 2 Tom Cribb (1781-1848), English champion prize-fighter. 3 Tom Molineaux (1784-1818), black American boxer and former slave. Cribb twice defeated Molineaux (in 1810 and 1811) in defacto world championship fights. 4 A mind lacking in ideas. 5 Thomas De Quincey.

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although Kant, in his treatise on the Phaenomena of Dreams, is of opinion that the lens or focus of intestinal light ascending the oesophagus at right angles, a juxtaposition of properties takes place, so that the nucleus of the diaphragm reflecting on the cerebellum the prismatic visions of the pilorus, is made to produce that marvellous operation of mind upon matter better known by the name of dreaming. — To such simple and satisfactory reasoning what answer can be made? Before I conclude I think it but right to observe, that the poem, with the exception of a few lines / subsequently added to suit the immediate purposes of its publication, was written on the first of April,1 A.D. 1812, (17) at Nether Stowey, a small village in Somersetshire,2 about two miles from All Foxden, on the high western road, a little on this side of Bath, and about eighteen miles and a half from Bristol. /

THE DREAM, A PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITY

Ten minutes to ten by Saint Dunstan's clock,3 And the owl has awakened the crowing cock: Cock-a-doodle-doo, Cock-a-doodle-doo. If he crows at this rate in so thrilling a note, Jesu Maria! he'll catch a sore throat. Warren the manufacturer rich Hath a spectral mastiff bitch; To Saint Dunstan's clock, tho' silent enow, She barketh her chorus of bow wow, wow: 1

All Fools'Day. Cf. the 'Preface' to 'Christabel'. 3 The first twelve lines are closely based on 'Christabel', 11. 1-11. 'St Dunstan's' is St Dunstan in the West Church, Fleet Street. 2

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THE DREAM

Bow for the quarters, and wow for the hour; Nought cares she for the sun or the shower; But when, like a ghost all-arrayed in its shroud, The wheels of the thunder are muffled in cloud, When the moon, sole chandelier of night, Bathes the blessed earth in light, / As wizard to wizard, or witch to witch, Howleth to heaven this mastiff bitch. Buried in thought O'Warren lay, Like a village queen on the birth of May; He listed the tones of Saint Dunstan's clock, Of the mastiff bitch and the crowing cock; But louder, far louder, he listed a roar, Loud as the billow that booms on the shore; Bang, bang, with a pause between, Rung the weird sound at his door, I ween. Up from his couch he leaped in affright, Oped his grey lattice and looked on the night, Then put on his coat, and with harlequin hop Stood like a phantom in midst of the shop In midst of his shop he stood like a sprite, Till peering to left and peering to right, Beside his counter, with tail in hand, He saw a spirit of darkness stand; I guess 'twas frightful there to seel A lady so scantily clad as she Ugly and old exceedingly. / In height her figure was six feet two, In breadth exactly two feet six, One eye as summer skies was blue, The other black as the waves of Styx.

1

Lines 35-7 closely parody 'Christabel', 11. 66-8.

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Her bloodless lips did aught but pair, For one was brown and one was fair, And clattered like maid in hysteric fit, Or jack that turneth a kitchen spit; Jesu Maria! with awe, I trow, O'Warren beheld this worricow,1 For dreary and dun the death-hue came O'er her cheek, as she traced the words of flame; The words of flame that with mystic fuss Are batched from a still-born incubus, And doom each wight who reads, to dwell Till the birth of day in the caves of hell. Oh! read thee not, read thee not, lord of the Strand, The spell that subjects thee to elfin command; Vain hope! the bogle2 hath marked her hour, And Warren hath read the words of power; Letter by letter he traced the spell, Till the sullen toll of Saint Dunstan's bell, / And the midnight howl of the mastiff bitch, Announced his doom to the Hallowmass3 witch. Still in her grandeur she stood by, Like an oak that uplooketh to sun and sky; Then shouted to Warren with fitful breath; "I'm old mother Nightmare-life-in-death;4 (18) Halloo! halloo! we may not stay, Satan is waiting; away, away; Halloo! halloo! we've far to go, Then hey for the devil; jee-up! jee-hoe - "

1

Hobgoblin. A hideous supernatural being. 3 All Hallows' Day, 1st November. Cf. 'St Swithin's Chair' in Scott's Waverley, ch. xiii ['For on Hallow-Mass Eve the Night-Hag will ride'). 4 Echoes 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', 1. 193. 2

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O'Warren requested a little delay, But the evil one muttered "too late, by my fay;" So he put on his breeches and scampered away. And here mote I tell how they rode on the wind, The witch before and the Warren behind; How they passed in a twinkling the haunts of man, And the proud pagodas of Kubla Khan; How they peeped at the planets like Allan-a-roon, And supped on green cheese with the man in the moon; Or listed the dulcimer's1 tremulous notes, Or the voice of the wind through the azure that floats, / Till pillar and palace and arching sky Rung to the mingled melody. The eye of night is veiled in cloud, Like a nun apparelled in sable shroud; But the twain have past her starry dome, And are bound to the realms of eternal gloom; They have past the regions of upper air, Where zephyr is born amid music rare, And the shadows of twilight featly fall On starry temple and cloudy hall, Whose floors by spirits are paced, and ring With the harp's seraphic murmuring. Away, away, through the thunder-cloud, Where tempest and ruin sit laughing aloud; Away, away, through the fields of air, Where the night-wind howls to the falling star; This amiable couple have past, and now They gain the swart regions of darkness and woe. O'Warren beheld them, and shrunk with awe, Like a client held fast in the grasp of law,

1

Cf. 'Kubla Khan', 1. 40.

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Then hymned to the Virgin for aid and for pity,l A highly correct and devotional ditty: "Miserere Maria," he cried in despair, While the bullet-nosed bogle drew back at the prayer, For Mary, sweet Mary, hath power to fright, And palsy the souls of the daemons of night; "Miserere Maria," he bellowed again, And the worricow dropt her eye-tooth at the strain, But spite of her teeth, she eschewed complaint, Till troubled in spirit, and cowed and faint, She collared the tradesman with horrible yell, Then plunged with him head over heels into hell. Oh, how its wild waves bellowed and boomed!! Oh, how its vapors the air perfumed!! As Warren with timid and stifled breath, And followed by old Mrs. Life-in-death, Moved to where Satan reclined alone, In the silence of thought on his ebon throne. His brow was dark as death, for care Had heavily laid her impress there, And throned, like a king, in his hollow eye Sate the ghost of a sullen dignity; His look was of hate, but grand and still As the pine that frowns on an Alpine hill, / His figure majestic, and formed for braving, Battle or blood - and he wanted shaving. (19) Proudly he strode to his palace gate, Which the witch and the Warren approached in state, But paused at the threshold as onward they came, And thus, with words of fever and flame, The tradesman addressed, "Your name, Sir, is known

1

Cf. 'Christabel', 11. 69-70.

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As a vender of sables1 wide over the town; But in hell with proviso this praise we must mix, For though brilliant your blacking, the water of Styx Is blacker by far, and can throw, as it suits, A handsomer gloss o'er our shoes and our boots." Answered the Warren, with choleric eye, "Oh, king of the cock-tailed incubi! (20) The sneer of a fiend to your puffs you may fix, But if, what is worse, you assert that your Styx Surpasses my blacking, ('twas clear he was vexed), By Jove! you will ne'er stick at any thing next. I have dandies who laud me at Paine's2 and Almack's, (21) Despite Day and Martin, those emulous quacks, / And they all in one spirit of concord agree, That my blacking is better than any black sea Which flows thro' your paltry Aver nus, 3 I wis," "Pshaw," Satan replied, "I'll be damned if it is." The tradesman he laughed at this pitiful sneer, And drew from his pocket, unmoved by the jeer Of the gathering daemons, blue, yellow, and pink, A bottle of blacking more sable than ink; With the waves of the Styx in a jiffey they tried it, But the waves of the Styx looked foolish beside it; "You mote as well liken the summer sky," Quoth Warren the bold, "with an Irish stye; The nightingale's note with the cockatoo's whine, As your lily-white river with me or mine."

1 Dark-coloured liquids. As so often in Warreniana, the italics signal a pun. Satan, 'his sable majesty', addresses the vender of sables, Warren. 2 James Paine, the 'King of Quadrilles'. 3 The infernal regions.

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Round the brow of Abaddon 1 fierce anger played, At the Strand manufacturer's gasconade; And lifting a fist that mote slaughter an ox, He wrathfully challenged his foeman to box; Then summoned each daemon to form a ring, And witness his truculent triumphing. The ring was formed and the twain set to, Like little Puss with Belasco the Jew 2 . (22) / Satan was seconded in a crack, By Molineux, the American black, (Who sported an oath as a civil Salãm), While Warren was backed by the ghost of Dutch Sam. 3 Gentles, who fondly peruse these lays, Wild as a colt o'er the moorland that strays, Who thrill at each wondrous rede I tell, As fancy roams o'er the floor of hell, Now list ye with kindness, the whiles I rehearse In shapely pugilistic verse, (Albeit my fancy preferreth still The quiet of nature,) this desperate Mill^ (23)

1

'And they had a king over them, which is, the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon' (Rev. 9:11). 2 Boxers; cf. Blackwood's, March 1820: ' M r Leigh H u n t thinks [boxing] cruel - brutal and unworthy of the pages of the Examiner. No doubt, M r Leigh H u n t would be entitled to complain of the cruelty of boxing, were Little Puss to tip him a stomacher while meditating a crisp sonnet in some farmy field, in front of Hampstead.' Cf. also Reynolds' 'Lines to Philip Samson, T h e Brummagem Youth', 11. 7-8, published in The Fancy:

For the graceful and punishing hand of Belasco Foils, - and will foil all attempts on the Jews. 3 Samuels, the boxer, was known as 'Dutch Sam'. Cf. Maginn's mock-heroic address to the pugilistic greats in the 'Luctus', 'Odonelly, An O d e by Morgan Odoherty', 11. 2 8 - 9 :

Great Spirits of Broughton, J e m Belcher, and Fig, Of Corcoran, Pierce, and Dutch Sam. 4

Fight.

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Stye Jtglft Both men on peeling showed nerve and bone, And weighed on an average fourteen stone; Doffed their silk fogle,l for battle agog, Tellowman,2 castor3 and white upper tog]4 Then sparred for a second their ardor to cool, And rushed at each other like bull to bull. /

e Jtglft 1. Was a smasher, for Brummagem Bob* Let fly a topper5 on Beelzebub's nob;6 Then followed him over the ring with ease, And doubled him up by a blow in the squeeze.1 2. Satan was cautious in making play, But stuck to his sparring and pummelled away; Till the ogles8 of Warren looked queer in their hue, (Here, bets upon Beelzebub; three to two.) 3. Fibbings,9 and facers,10 and toppers abound, But Satan, it seems, hath the worst of the round.

* It is currently reported at Carlton House, and the higher circles of fashion, that Robert Warren, Esq. is a native of Birmingham.1 ] "On this hint I spake."12 1

'A fogle is a handkerchief (Blackwood's, July 1823). Yellow silk cravat. Cf. the neckwear colourfully described by the Sporting Magazine in 1821: 'A prime yellow-man round his squeeze'. 3 4 Beaver hat. Coat. 5 6 Blow on the head. Head. 7 8 Neck. Eyes. 9 A rapid succession of punches. 10 Blows in the face. 11 A reference to the boxer Philip Samson, who was known as the 'Brummagem Youth'. 12 Adapted from Othello, I. iii. 165. 2

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4. Satan was floored by a lunge in the hip, And the blood from his peepers, went drip, drip, drip,1 (24) Like fat from a goose in the dripping pan, Or ale from the brim of a flowing can; / His box of dominos2 chattered aloud, (Here, "Go it, Nick!" from an imp in the crowd,) And he dropped with a Lancashire purr0 on his back, (25.) While Bob with a clincher fell over him, whack. 5. Both men piping 4 came up to the scratch,5 But Bob for Abaddon was more than a match; He tapped his claret,6 his mug he rent, And made him so groggy with punishment. That he gladly gave in at the close of the round, And Warren in triumph was led from the ground. Then trumpet, and timbrel, and deafening shout,7 Like wind through a ruin rung lustily out, High o'er the rocks that jut over the deep, Where the souls of the damned to eternity weep; Echo threw forward her answer of fear,

1 Cf. the preface to Remorse, where Coleridge complains that Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who originally asked him to write a tragedy, rendered his discarded line 'Drip, drip! a ceaseless sound of water-drops' as 'Drip! drip! drip! there's nothing here but dripping'. T h e poet indignantly relates how Sheridan 'amused and delighted . . . a large company at the house of a highly respectable M e m b e r of Parliament' with the fabricated line, labelling it a 'fair specimen' of the whole. 2

Teeth.

3

Headbutt.

4

Breathing heavily.

5

I.e. stood up to fight (after 'scratch', the line drawn on the floor to set out a boxing-ring).

6

M a d e him bleed copiously. Egan uses similar metaphors in Boxiana ('His mug was often disfigured with the claret trickling down'). 7 Echoes £apolya, Part I, Scene ii, 1. 107 ('With trump and timbrel-clang, and popular shout').

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Dull as the dust that clanks over a bier, Or death-watch that beats in a sick man's ear.l From the gulph where they howl to the lead-colored night, The shadowless spectres leaped up with delight, / And "Buy Warren's Blacking" they shouted aloud, As the night-wind sighs through a coffinless shroud. The evil one frowned while they bellowed amain, But "Buy Warren's Blacking" he chorussed again; For tho' worsted in fight, yet, by order of fate, The vanquished must temper the pulse of his hate, And yield to the victor (his will's despite) Unbridled sway o'er the fiends of night. 'Tis done, and sore with his recent thwacking, Abaddon hath purchased O'Warren's Blacking; Fate stood by while the bargain was made, Signed a receipt when the money was paid, Then summoned her sprites, an exemplary band, To kneel in respect to the Lord of the Strand. They came with harp and timbrel,2 And dulcimer and lute, With double-drum and cymbal, Fife, flageolet and flute; There was one o'er the ocean Sate singing and lone, While the Styx in commotion, Re-echoed each tone, / He sate in his beauty on billows of flame, And marshalled the daemons as onward they came; Till at once they struck up at his tuneful command, "WHACK FOR O'WARREN, THE PRIDE OF THE STRAND!!!"

1 2

Echoes Remorse, IV 1.1. 12. Cf. 'Kubla Khan', 11. 37-47.

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But hark, 'tis the voice of the crowing cock! And hark, 'tis the toll of Saint Dunstan's clock! The morn rides high in the Eastern sky, And the little birds carol it merrily: Already have waned at the gladsome sight, Each scene of darkness, each goblin sprite; Abaddon to whit, and the whole of his crew, Pink, yellow, or rosy, green, purple, or blue, For cheered by the rays thro' his lattice that peep, The bard hath awoke from the "Pains of Sleep."

128

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Annus Mirabilis; or, A Parthian Glance at 1823. By the N M. M)

'Annus Mirabilis' is the second parody of a literary journal in Warreniana, this time of the then highly successful New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal (1821-36). The New Monthly, which was generally liberal in its politics, was founded by Henry Colburn. It published several significant literary figures, notably Thomas Campbell (the journal's nominal editor),1 Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb and the parodists P. G. Patmore and Horace Smith. Whilst its 'Historical Register' carried the usual journalistic accounts of political events, lists of births, marriages and deaths and announcements of forthcoming publications, it was the 'Original Papers' which defined the tone of the magazine. These included much ephemeral material about contemporary London manners and fashions. As Marilyn Butler has written, 'The New Monthly . . . seemed to exist to catch "fashion as it flies". It was indeed so preoccupied with the epiphenomena of urban social life and amusements that it seemed to live by them and for them, achieving the highest monthly sale for the highest price.' 2 The magazine included a great deal of humorous writing, notably whimsical essays (with such titles as 'Advantages of having no Head' 3 and 'Reflections on PlumPudding') 4 and comic verse. The account of the New Monthly in Blackwood's, though highly, and unsurprisingly,5 antipathetic, is accurate in many respects: I have been looking occasionally, and rather carelessly, over Campbell's Magazine, ever since its commencement; sometimes amused by light playful humour, though even that is local, transitory, and merely suited to the atmosphere of fashion; sometimes pleased with poetry, at most graceful and elegant; often wearied with frivolity, which is revolting to a sound masculine taste; but always dissatisfied with the prevalent tone of sentiment and opinion that runs through the whole work. 6

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AGE: VOLUME 4

It is the local, transitory and fashionable which is evoked in Deacon's parody. Unlike the Blackwood's parody, which conflates the 'Lake School' and 'Cockney School' series, here Deacon has a specific article in mind. In J a n u a r y 1823, the New Monthly published a comic farewell to the previous year, Annus Mirabilis! or, a Parthian Glance at 1822', 7 an amusing month-by-month account of the departed year by J a m e s Smith: JANUARY. - . . . Mr. Southey published a reply to Lord Byron, wherein he assaulted that eccentric nobleman with "whip and a branding iron:" the cause alleged to be the following paragraph in an opposition newspaper, under the head of "Births": - "At his bookseller's, Mr. Robert Southey, of a still-born Vision of Judgment." The offence lenient: poetical parturitions ought to be commemorated . . . April. - . . . Nineteen labourers out of work at Stockbury ordered by overseers to play at marbles from nine in the morning to seven in the evening. . . May. - Horse-Bazaar at King-street Barracks: impossible to say nay to any proffered filly, mocking being rude. . . Othello stabbed and smothered his wife to a fiddlestick accompaniment at the Opera-house . . . September. - . . . A man of fashion seen in London, who made no excuse for being there in September: the crowd was immense . . . November. - . . . A million bushels of human bones were landed at Hull from thefieldsof Dresden and Waterloo: human bones best adapted to fertilize land, whence we derive the word manure . . . December. - . . . Diabolical attempt to poison a whole family at breakfast, in Lombard-street, by putting Paine's Age of Reason under the tea-pot: providentially none of the family could read. In a piece which closely follows the formula of this comic ephemeris, Deacon offers a vade-mecum to the social life of London in 1823 and its preoccupations: art exhibitions, popular drama, boxing, D r u r y Lane concerts, even the weather. A cast of now forgotten but then famous or infamous characters populate its pages: the demented Lord Portsmouth, also known as the 'King of Hampshire'; R o m e o Coates, the legendarily untalented actor; Olivia Serres, the self-styled 'Princess Olive' of Cumberland and Prince Hohenlohe, the G e r m a n worker of miracles. T h e r e are comic glances at m a n y of the notable literary and artistic figures of the day: Byron, Haydon, H u n t , M a r y Shelley and the prolific Scott (March is remarkable because it sees the publication of 'Only one novel from the author of Waverley'). As so 130

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

often in Warreniana, the preoccupations of what we now designate high Romantic art are set in the context of the quotidian manifestations of less highly renowned forms of culture.

NOTES 1 His assistant Cyrus Redding, later the biographer of William Beckford, seems to have had most of the day-to-day editorial responsibilities. 2 Marilyn Butler, 'Culture's medium: the role of the review', in The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism, ed. Stuart Curran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 143. 3 NMM, V (August 1822), pp. 108-10. T h e essay is by Horace Smith. 4 Ibid., IV (January 1822), pp. 8 8 - 9 . 5 Unsurprising given the difference in politics and that Blackwood's might justifiably think that the tendency to run humorous items evident in the New Monthly after the launch of Maga was an attempt to to steal its comic thunder. Indeed, a comic postscript to the June 1822 number explicitly accused the New Monthly of copying Blackwood's, even down to the 'very tricks of our Printer's Devils' {BEM, X I (June 1822), p. 751). 6 BEM, X I X (April 1826), p. 470. 7 NMM, VII (January 1823), pp. 2 1 - 7 . In the following year, the New Monthly published a follow-up article, Annus Mirabilis! or, a Parthian Glance at 1823'; NMM, X (January 1824), pp. 10-16.

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ANNUS MIRABILIS; OR,

A PARTHIAN GLANCE AT 1823. SHOWING, AMONG OTHER MEMORABLE MINUTLE, THE PROGRESSIVE POPULARITY OF WARREN'S BLACKING.

BY THE N. M. M. January. - Intense frosts, and the Serpentine unusually thronged with skaiters.1 Mr. Horner 2 published a series of engravings taken from the summit of Saint Paul's; built an attic above the cross, and made divers domestic discoveries with his telescope. A Major Paull, of the Bombay establishment, was caned by his black servant; a wag observed on the occasion, that the negro appeared to have followed Virgil's advice of "Paullo majora canamus;" 3 the trial came on at Calcutta. A lady in Dyott Street stirred up her husband with a poker. Four pair of old bachelors committed matrimony at Saint George's, Hanover Square. - / Verdict, Lunacy.4 Warren's Blacking increased in circulation, by means of 50 additional Agents.

1 Cf. the January 1824 Annus Mirabilis':'Serpentine-river covered with skaiters: usual average of human heads just peeping above the slippery horizon: printed notice from the Humane Society to the public, not to venture on, actually obeyed by three individuals' (p. 11). 2

Probably J o h a n n H o r n e r (1774-1834), the Swiss astronomer.

3

A more accurate reading of the line would be 'Let us sing of somewhat loftier things' (Virgil, Eclogues, IV. 1). Deacon is much given to excruciating Latin puns. 4 '[SJeven bachelors were married in one day, at the parish church of St. Andrew's Holborn. A clergyman attended to give the unhappy wretches the last consolations of religion' (AM, p. 26).

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[110]

February. - Tom and Jerry mania 1 on the decline; only four Charlies2 with black eyes to be found in all Piccadilly; some of them with no eye at all, except to their own interest. Mr. Pope 3 enacted the ghost of Banquo in Macbeth: he made a very spirited and lively apparition. Valentine's day; postmen oppressed with a weight of delicate embarrassments, and shops pleasantly replete with bleeding hearts, and Cupids in buckskin breeches. Lord v. Lady Portsmouth 4 at the Court of Chancery; his Lordship convicted of black jobs and bellringings; Mr. Bell5 rung the changes in his (the Plaintiff's) favor; expenses of the whole suit only 30,0001. Pioneers,6 an American novel, published by Murray; exceedingly interesting to those who can comprehend it. Lord Clanmorris 7 failed in his attempts to become a

1

The vogue for Pierce Egan's Life in London (see note to p. 38 above). There were several highly successful theatrical adaptations: 'The Tom and Jerry fever extending to all the minor theatres' (AM, p. 23).. 2 London watchmen. In Life in London, Tom overturns a watchman's box. This is reflected in AM: 'Tom and Jerry, or Life in London, still acting at the Adelphi Theatre, teaching the rising generation "that great moral lesson", how to patter slang, mill a lamplighter, or box a Charley' (p. 21); 'nineteen watchmen prostrate with their boxes on their backs' (p. 23). There were calls for the Adelphi dramatisation of Egan's work to be banned as it supposedly encouraged attacks on watchmen. Blackwood's commented in March 1822 that ' This drama has fired all the young men about town with an ambition for nocturnal "sprees''' and for ""milling the Charlies" '. In Charles Dibdin the Younger's adaptation Life in London; or, The Larks of Logic, Tom and Jerry, an Extravaganza, in Three Acts, . . . Founded on Pierce Egan's Highly Popular Work: as Performed at the Olympic Theatre (1822), a watchman's box is overturned and stolen, leading to a pun worthy of Deacon; 'That's what the fancy gentlemen call Boxiana, I suppose'. 3 Alexander Pope (1763-1865), Irish actor, was a noted tragedian. 4 The marriage of John Charles Wallop (1767-1853), 3rd Earl of Portsmouth, and his wife, Mary Anne, was dissolved by the Court of Chancery in 1823 on account of the Earl's derangement. Portsmouth was declared insane in March 1823 after a hearing which alleged that he considered himself to be the 'King of Hampshire' and that he had an inordinate fondness for bell ringing and for following funerals (which he supposedly labelled 'black jobs'). The court heard that his wife had slept with her lover whilst he was present in the marital bed and that she had horse-whipped him. 'Lord Portsmouth horsewhipped by his lady, to verify the dictum of Orator Hunt, that all the fair sex are reformers' (AM, p. 26). 5 John Bell (1764-1836) was a barrister who was noted for his Court of Chancery work. 6 The Pioneers (1823) by James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). 7 Charles Barry Bingham (1796-1853), 2nd Baron Clanmorris.

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fashionable Corinthian - "Non cuivis homini contingit adiré Corinthum." 1 Warren's Blacking much circulated in Scotland. March. - London rapidly improving in the number of its fashionable arrivals. Mr. Bochsa2 highly attractive as usual in the oratorios at Drury Lane. Symptoms of modesty in Blackwood's Magazine; utterly disbelieved by Mr. Hazlitt. Only one novel from the author of Waverley. A Scotch apothecary in — Street invited a friend to dinner, and sate him down to a bottle of castor-oil; observing, by way of consolation, that the welcome was every thing. Sheridan's comedy of the School for Scandal revived at Drury Lane; the part of Charles Surface exquisitely performed by Mr. Elliston;3 in every respect but that of resemblance to the character. "Buy Warren's Blacking" discovered written up on the ruins of the Coliseum, a picturesque proof of its popularity. April. - All Fools' day. (26) - Mrs. Siddons didaxi abridgment of Paradise Lost,4 and left out the character of Satan, to prove her abhorrence of Mr. Southey's "Satanic School." The Lord Chancellor came to a decision.5 John Bull Newspaper accused Lord Holland 6 of being a Zephyr.7 A shipload of Peverils of the Peak8 landed at the Custom House. An Irish bog took a fancy to see the world, and eloped from the country where it was / born and educated; Mr Martin's 9 estates went 1

'It is not everyone that can get to Corinth' (Horace, Epistles, I. xvii. 36).

2

Nicholas Charles Bochsa (1789-1856), French musician, directed and sang in many concerts of oratorical works at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. 3 Robert William Elliston (1774—1831), English actor, was then the lessee and manager of the Theatre Royal. 4 Sarah Siddons (1755-1831), actress. 'Mrs Siddons is the author of an abridgement of Milton's Paradise Lost' {BEM, July 1823). 5 ' T h e Lord Chancellor gave judgment on the Doge of Venice, who had, in the mean time, wedded the Waters of Oblivion' (AM, p. 23). 6 Henry Richard Vassal Fox, 3rd Baron Holland (1773-1840), was a nephew of Charles James Fox and a Whig grandee. 7 Cf. John Bults satirical cod playbill for 'Harlequin Humbug, Or, The Genius of the Whigs', where 'Owlet, a malicious Zephyr' is to be played by 'Lord Holland, who has borrowed some wings for the occasion from one of Tommy Moore's Angels' (February 3 1823). 8

Scott's 1822 novel.

9

T h o m a s Barnewall Martin (1786-1847), Irish landowner.

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[112]

with it. Exhibition of water colors opened with some splendid masterpieces by Glover.1 Heliacal rising of Thomas Moore and his three angels,2 but being somewhat defective in point of wings, they shared the fate of Icarus, and dropped into the waters of oblivion. "Buy Warren's Blacking" chalked up on every wall of the metropolis. May. - High season of fashion at the west end. Exhibition at Somerset House, 3 much discussed to the imminent neglect of the weather. Marriage Act4 universally deprecated; in consequence of the generality of females being averse to see their weakness made manifest on the church doors. Haydon 5 put forth his picture of the Raising of Lazarus, 6 but found it more difficult to raise the wind than to raise the dead; scanty show of visitors, though the artist is of first-rate celebrity, and wears no cravat.7 (27) Grand fight for the championship of England between Spring8 and Neate. Meeting at the Free-Mason's tavern in favor of the Spaniards and consequent altercation between

1

John Glover (1767-1849), eminent member of the Society of Painters in Water-colours. A reference to the three angels who tell their stories in Thomas Moore's The Loves of the Angels: A Poem (1823). 'Moore's Loves of the Angels: two omitted, viz. one at Islington and the other at the back of St.Clements' (Annus Mirabilis' (January 1824), p. 11). 3 Somerset House in the Strand was home to the Royal Academy from 1771 to 1836. 'Exhibition at Somerset-House: irruption of one-shilling critics' {AM, p. 24). 4 The Marriage Act of 1822 required that the ages of intending brides be displayed in church. Cf. the New Monthly's 'The New Marriage Act: Cases for the Opinion of Doctor Lushington' (October 1822), 11. 55-60: 2

Case three. - Martha Trist, of Saint Peter-le-Poor, Had stuck up her notice upon her church door. The Act (section eight) says, the wife must annex Her proper description, age, station, and sex. Her age, four-and-thirty, she fix'd to the door, But somehow the wafer stuck over the four; 5

Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846), the painter, was a friend of both Hunt and Keats. 6 First exhibited in March 1823 and now in the National Gallery. 7 See note to p. 97 above. 8 Tom Winter (1795-1851), pugilist and adopted son of Tom Cribb, was jocularly known as Tom Spring. Spring beat Bill Neat of Bristol (1791-1858) in May 1823. Neat's fight with Tom Hickman (the 'Gasman') is immortalised in Hazlitt's 'The Fight'.

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4

Messieurs Hunt and Rowcroft.x A masquerade at the Opera House, where a nobleman, in making love to a masked lady, kissed his own wife by mistake; he has been a sincere penitent ever since.2 Discovery of a witch in Devonshire. Almack's and Warren's Blacking in their zenith of fashionable notoriety 3 June. - Elegant display of female equestrians in the Park. Mrs. Coutts 4 still a widow. Subscription in behalf of the Spaniards, towards which one patriot contributed a pair of old shoes. Treadmill5 and Mr. Scarlett6 in equal practice. New number of The Liberal7 made its appearance in the literary horizon, but proved to be a star shorn of its beams: "How are the mighty fallen!" Horrible effects of gluttony - a hog belonging to Mr. Bath, of Reading school, being overcome by hunger walked into the school-room, and deliberately devoured the writing-master. A ship-load of Warren's Blacking sailed for Kingston, Jamaica, by order of the governor. 1 Cf. the New Monthly's mock council report in the J a n u a r y 1824 'Annus Mirabilis': 'Flowers of Billingsgate mutually scattered by Alderman Rowcroft and Mr. Hunt: the latter bound over by the Lord Mayor to keep the peace; a ceremony voluntarily performed by him for many years last past'. 'Flowers of Billingsgate' are curses. 2 '[OJne Simon Spade, a body-snatcher, while sounding for subjects in St. Martin's church-yard, dug up his own wife. T h e poor m a n has been inconsolable ever since' (AM, pp. 26-7). 3 Probably a reference to the controversy over the waltz, which had been introduced to England at Almack's and which The Times described in 1816 as an 'indecent foreign dance'. 4 T h e quondam actress Harriet Coutts, née Mellon. O n the death of her banker husband T h o m a s Coutts in 1822, Mrs Coutts became, at least by reputation, the richest woman in England. 'Death of Coutts the banker: his will opened in Stratton-street: only 900,000/. bequeathed to his poor widow' (AM, p. 22). Mrs Coutts became, perhaps unsurprisingly, Duchess of St Albans in 1827. Leigh H u n t wrote a jocular essay on Harriet Mellon, 'Duchess of St. Albans, and Marriages from the Stage'. 5 T h e treadmill, invented by Sir William Cubitt (1785-1861), had recently been introduced to English prisons. 6 James Scarlett (1769-1844), later Lord Abinger, was a Whig M P and noted criminal barrister. 'New Tread-Mill erected at Brixton prison, . . . business at the Old Bailey consequently on the increase' (AM, p. 23). 7 The Liberal: Verse and Prosefrom the South was the magazine founded by Byron and H u n t and published from 1822 to 1823. Appearance of " T h e Liberal" from the south: so called by the godfather of the the Serpentine River, who gave it that name because it was neither serpentine nor a river' (AM, p. 25).

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July. - M r s . Olivia Serres,1 soi-disant princess of Cumberland, accused by Mr. Peel in the House of Commons of having a brown spot under her fifth / rib. Three new cantos of Don Juan published, and proscribed according to law. Symptoms of desertion at the west end. Sir Robert Wilson2 wounded at Corunna, and Prince Hilt 3 threatened with an explosion. A farmer at Egham accused our gracious Sovereign of being an "old chap:" Stocks fell Vh per cent, in consequence. Prince Hohenlohe 4 commenced a series of miracles for the season; began his entertainments by causing a dumb Irishwoman to speak, but forgot the most miraculous part, to make her hold her tongue again. Reverend Edward Irving 5 attempted an imitation of the famous apostrophe of Demosthenes (28) to the shades of the Marathonian dead: he made a very Scotch Demosthenes. Orders received at the India House for a supply of Warren's blacking: intelligence reached No. 30. Strand, by a special messenger from the court of directors. August. - Saint Swithin6 rehearsing daily for the winter; much improved in his performances, but too persevering in the display. Three new cantos of Don Juan appeared, - obliged to Hunt for a publisher.7 Melancholy solitude in the neighbourhood / of Portman 1

Olivia Serres (1772-1834), artist and adventuress, was the daughter of a London housepainter. She claimed, highly implausibly, that she was the 'Princess of Cumberland', legitimate daughter of the Duke of Cumberland. In 1823, Peel, then Home Secretary, declared that Serres' claims were without foundation. 2 Sir Robert Wilson (1777-1849), general and Whig MP, fought at the Battle of Coruña in 1809 and returned there in May 1823 to fight with the constitutional Spanish government against the French-backed forces of Fernando VII. 3 'Prince Hilt' was the label commonly used in English newspapers for the Due d'Angoulême, leader of the French insurgents in Spain. 4 Prince Alexander von Hohenlohe of Bamburg (1794-1850) was a German faithhealer who visited England in 1824 and whose supposed miracles received much press attention during the 1820s. 5 Edward Irving, Scottish divine. See headnote to 'Appendix' below. 6 Tradition has it that if it rains on Saint Swithin's day, it will rain for forty days and forty nights thereafter. 7 More groan-inspiring word-play. John Murray lacking the stomach for them, Leigh Hunt and his brother John published cantos VI-XVI of Donjuán.

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4

Square. "Desolate is the dwelling of Moina." l A good thing discovered in the Gentleman's Magazine. Not more than twenty pairs of boots on a daily average heard clattering up Bond Street. Novel of Frankenstein2 diabolized at the English Opera House. A cockney met Lord Byron at Genoa, and having heard that he was a complete devil, was astonished to find him only a man. Returns for Warren's blacking during the last month, twelve hundred pounds, exclusive of foreign agencies. September. - Shooting season commenced: three old gentlemen had their wigs shot off by a party of cockney sportsmen, while smoking in their wigwams at Hornsey Wood tavern: an old lady who was passing in the neighbourhood, just bobbed in time to save the penúltima of her nose. Astonishing abundance of plums, and other stone fruit; hence Horace has not inaptly termed this season "Plumbeus Auctumnus." 3 Romeo Coates, 4 esquire, personated the character of Benedict, at Saint George's church, to the life: after the comedy, he set off with his fair heroine for Portsmouth, where / the happy couple are engaged to perform the "honey moon" 5 for a limited number of nights. Vauxhall gardens 6 closed for the season with only 80,000 additional lamps oiôèv zka\mzJ Warren's blacking and consols8 still looking up. 1 From James Macpherson's 'Carthon: A Poem', in The Poems of Ossian, Translated by James Macpherson (1765): 'Desolate is the dwelling of Moina, silence is in the house of her fathers'. 2 Cf. Mary Shelley's letter to Leigh Hunt of September 9, 1823: 'But lo & behold! I found myself famous! - Frankenstein had prodigious success as a drama & was about to be repeated for the 23rd night at the English opera house'. Blackwood's was less enthusiastic: 'the English Opera-House rests its popularity upon Frankenstein, a dull adaptation from a mad romance'. 3 'Leaden autumn'; adapted from Horace, Satires, II. vi. 11. 18-19. Another punlet. 4 Robert Coates (1772-1848) was a wealthy Antiguan landowner and amateur actor who was popularly known as 'Romeo Coates'. His performances were much derided and his audiences eventually came with the primary purpose of scoffing. Coates was given to such eccentricities as greeting his friends across the footlights during speeches and threatening hecklers with his sword. 5 Punning on the title of John Tobin's comedy, The Honey Moon (produced 1804). 6 The main walks at Vauxhall Gardens were illuminated by hundreds of lamps. 7 'It illumined nothing'. 8 Government bonds.

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October. - The Fonthill fever1 eradicated, in consequence of its fashionable victims being inoculated instead with the Hatton Garden 2 influenza. The following advertisement made its appearance in the Englishman: "Mr. Smallwood's academy for young gentlemen, Laurence Lane, Exeter; price of tuition 2d. per week, them as larns manners pays 2d. more." King of Spain 3 restored to his throne; (29) proscribed one half of his subjects, and arrested the other: highly complimented on his disinterested impartiality. Heraldic discovery: - a special messenger arrived from Paris with intelligence that Warren was proved to be the grandson of Rousseau, by Madame de Warrenne. 4 This goes a great way to account for the sentimental beauty of his rhythmical advertisements, which, as well as his blacking, are, at present, in great vogue among the Parisian dilletanti. / November. - Three square yards of blue sky discovered within a mile of Eastcheap. The crowd was incalculable. Private theatricals5 projected at Devonshire house 6 for the ensuing spring; among the numerous histrionic performers, Lord G—e,7 it is said, has kindly condescended to perform Bottom in the Midsummer Night's Dream; while the Duke

1 Deacon is referring to the recent auction of William Beckford's effects. 'England's wealthiest son' had fallen on hard times. T h e sale, held in 1823, lasted thirty-seven days. Cf. The Press, Il 111-4:

Alas! for grandeur in his humbled hour, H o w veer the gales of worldly wealth and power! To-day a Beckford builds his Babel-pile, To-morrow auctioneers disperse its spoil; 2

living's church was the Scotch Chapel in Cross Street, Hatton Garden.

3

In 1823, after being restored to power by the French, Fernando VII initiated a bloody purge of his political opponents. 4

M a d a m e de Warens was one of Rousseau's mistresses.

5

'Private theatricals at the Lyceum' {AM, p. 23).

6

A mansion in St James's Street owned by William Spencer Cavendish (1790-1858), 6th Duke of Devonshire, who owned the largest contemporary collection of plays in print and manuscript. In 1822 he had purchased J o h n Philip Kemble's library for £ 2 , 0 0 0 . 7 Probably Granville Leveson-Gower (1773-1846), 1st Earl Granville, who was married to the daughter of the 5th Duke of Devonshire.

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of B— 1 volunteers the character of Ariel in the Tempest. Afineday. Eight hundred suits of old clothes exported from Monmouth Street as court dresses for the German princes. Apothecaries' boys discovered flying about the city in busy anticipation of the Lord Mayor's dinner. Autumnal sky said to be unusually beautiful: very true, if one could but see it. Official dispatches received at Warren's warehouse for a supply of blacking for the use of the United States. December. - Taylors' bills of the young London swells drawing to a precipitate close, somewhere about the fourth page of the largest sized foolscap paper. No assassinations of private character in the John Bull.2 A true statement discovered in Cobbett's Register. (30) The Bond Street loungers3 / in a state of awful suspence respecting the shape of the next spring coat. A young lady shot her lover, as he stood in a sentimental attitude behind the counter of a grocer's shop in the Borough: she is reported to have done it for the purpose of proving that love can take as sure aim with a pistol as with a bow and arrow. Warren closed his accounts for the year with a prodigious balance in his favour. Grand fête given on the occasion at No. 30. Strand, where the guests continued till a late hour, toasting (as the rest of the world is here invited to do,) "SUCCESS TO WARREN'S BLACKING."

1 Probably Richard Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville (1776-1839), 1st Duke of Buckingham a n d Chandos, who was famously obese. 2 T h e scurrilous ultra-Tory weekly newspaper. See headnote to 'A Letter to the Editor of Warreniana' below. 3

Layabouts.

140

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Warren at Saint Stephen's. By the R. of the T.)

Here Deacon offers a spoof account of a House of Commons debate in the manner of The Times. The paper, founded in 1785 as the Daily Universal Register and renamed The Times in 1788, carried regular an d detailed reports of Parliamentary proceedings. The Times, which prided itself as offering a voice for public opinion, was then politically independent, though its support for causes associated with Whigs and Radicals, notably its strong support for Queen Caroline in 1820 and for the constitutional Spanish government in 1823, led to acerbic relations with pro-governmental organs such as the John Bull (see 'A Letter to the Editor of Warreniana' below). Rather than being partisan newspaper parody in the manner of his quondam publisher Hone, the comedy in Deacon's parody lies in his welljudged references to the oratorical styles and personal preoccupations of individual members which would have been easily recognisable to the contemporary follower of political life:1 Joseph Hume's obsession with the public finances; Lord Brougham's methods of cross-examination; Canning's wit, classical references and fondness for Latinate diction; the piety of Wilberforce; the peculiar voices of the brothers Wynn and the oratoricalfaux pas of Sir William Curtis. The parody takes the form of a parliamentary debate of a motion brought by Hume for the reduction of expenditure amongst the Horse Guards on Warren's Blacking. Hume's Whig colleague Brougham seconds the motion, Canning opposes it and is himself seconded by an gloriously ungrammatical effusion by Curtis, the portly Tory devotee of turtle soup. NOTE 1 Perhaps less so to the modern reader. Accordingly, the parody is heavily furnished with explanatory footnotes.

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WARREN AT SAINT STEPHEN'S. 1 BY THE

R.

OF THE

T.

1st of April, 1823. T h e gallery doors were opened at twelve. T h e rush was prodigious, and the house more crowded than on any night since Mr. Burke's celebrated motion on Economical Reform. T h e Speaker took the chair at the usual hour. After the routine business was disposed of, the hour for commencing public matters arrived, and he then called on Mr. H—e. 2 That gentleman arose, and spoke as follows, attention holding the rest of the members mute, as of old it did when the person called by Dr. Johnson "the first Whig," 3 addressed a certain Stygian council.

" M R . SPEAKER,

"In proposing a reduction of the expences attending Mr. Warren's blacking, as it is used for the army, and more particularly for the regiments / of Horse Guards, I feel it but right to state, that I am swayed by no interested motive whatever. For Mr. Warren, indeed, though personally a stranger to him, I feel the highest respect; and when I reflect on the benefits that have accrued to society from the use of his invaluable commodity, that respect is increased almost to veneration. {Cries of hear, hear.) Still less, Sir, am I averse to the necessary expenditure of the army; I look upon it as an exceedingly useful institution, and should be sorry, even for an instant, to speak against it. But when England is manifestly going to ruin, when the most unprincipled waste4 prevails in every department of government, [loud cheers from the 1 Until it was destroyed in 1834, Saint Stephen's in the Palace of Westminster was the site of the House of Commons. 2 Joseph Hume (1777-1855), Radical MP. 3 Satan. Boswell records Johnson saying 'And I have always said, the first Whig was the devil'on 28th April 1778. 4 Hume unceasingly accused the government of extravagance.

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Opposition), when, as on a late melancholy occasion, the state room of a deceased queen 1 is hung with black velvet, though broad cloth would have been handsome enough, I feel it my bounden duty to protest against such profligate extravagance. Upon this principle I shall tonight bring forward my long-promised motion relative to the estimates of Mr. Warren's blacking, firmly persuaded that the expences attending it may be greatly reduced. / I shall begin by enumerating the sum total of the whole2 of what is technically termed the Horse Guards. On examination it will be found, I believe, that the regiments properly so called, are four, and if we allow each regiment, on a hasty calculation, to be 800 strong, (to say nothing of the band), and multiply this 800 by four, we shall have a clean product of no less than 3200 men, all of whom are in the constant habit of using Warren's blacking. This, sir, to say the least of it, and provided that only shoes were the articles polished, would be an intolerable expense; but what shall we say when told, that the ministry, as if in mockery of reform, (hear, hear, from Sir F. B—if compel the four regiments to wear jack boots. Now the motion I have the honour to make, regards these very articles, and proposes that they be henceforth cleaned but twice a week, on a presumption that the country would be materially benefited by the alteration. This presumption is much strengthened by the following statements, by which it appears that 3200 pairs of jack boots are at present daily polished, and that the consequent expences (allowing one pot / of blacking, price sixpence, to be used between three pairs), are 9733/. 6s. 8d. per annum.* But if we restrict this extravagance to twice a week, the expenditure would then be 2771 /. 12s., whereby there would be an annual saving of 6961 /. 14s. 8d. Again, on a supposition that the jack boots are abridged 5 to Wellingtons, and these Wellingtons cleaned in like manner but twice a 1

Queen Caroline, the estranged wife of George IV, who died in 1821. Hume's tautology, the 'total of the whole', provoked much derision. Cf. AM: 'Mr. Hume's "total of the whole" much discussed: Cobbett sends him his new Grammar' (p.22). 3 Sir Francis Burdett (1770-1844), leader of the parliamentary Radicals. 4 Hume employed several clerks to analyse the level of public expenditure. 5 Jackboots come above the knee. 2

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4

week, to wit, on Fridays and Sundays, the expences would then be 923/. 1 Is. 8d., making on the whole a reduction of 8809/. 9s. per annum. I must not, however, forget to mention, that in this statement there is an odd sixpence over, which, after every necessary retrenchment has been made, may be fairly divided between the Chancellor1 and Lord Liverpool.2 I am far from meaning offence to Mr. Warren by any proposal to reduce the sale of his article; I acknowledge its unrivalled merit, and comparative cheapness, but still I have a paramount duty to perform, to which I feel that I must sacrifice all private affections. And here, in passing, I cannot refrain from noticing a fresh instance of the profligacy of government. The allowance that they / make to the officers of the Guards (hear, hear, from Lord P—rc),3 is ruinous beyond all bounds. Not content with a wholesome and sensible repast, (31) they must needs give them coffee, ham, eggs, chocolate, orange marmalade, and gooseberry jam, according even to their own bill of fare, which I have seen, and which actually measures 36 feet, 9 inches, and 7-8ths in length, by 2 feet, 7 inches, and 3-4ths in breadth. In the patriotic days of England, in the days of Elizabeth and Burleigh, our military would have scorned such effeminate luxuries; but on the simplest and cheapest species of food, would have cherished a stomach fit either for fighting or for feasting. Now, however, the case is altered, and if our Guards ever condescend to eat beef, they cut it from the sides of John Bull himself. I call upon the house then to desist from these ravenous attacks; I call upon them to do justice, though late, to an impoverished nation, and by way of commencement, to limit the Guards to one pound of fresh meat, and one pint of porter per diem, convinced that none but a shark or an alderman 4 could possibly digest more. / Having thus noticed the unprincipled breakfasts of the soldiery, I 1 Frederick J o h n Robinson (1782-1859), Chancellor of the Exchequer and Canning's successor as Prime Minister. 2

Lord Liverpool (1770-1828), then Prime Minister.

3

Henry J o h n Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784-1865), then Secretary at War.

4

Legendarily gluttonous bon vivants. See 'The Childe's Pilgrimage', st. 11.

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[124/126]

shall once again revert to the especial extravagance of their jack boots and blacking. The house will see throughout my speech, that I have linked these two latter items together, and my reason for so doing is because I consider them, like man and wife, so inseparably united in interest, that if one falls, the other must follow. The observation I have to make respecting them is, that during his majesty's late levees at Holyrood house,1 there was not one jack boot visible, although the flower of the kingdom was in attendance, and even the sovereign himself was pleased to declare that the Scotch were a nation of gentlemen. This clearly proves that the most accomplished personage in the realm, considers jack boots in nowise essential to gentility; and that they are much less elegant than Wellingtons, all who hear me will, I am sure, be willing to admit. In furtherance, then, of their immediate abridgment, I shall beg leave to introduce the following series of resolutions; all of which, however unconnected they may appear, tend to the same grand / cause of retrenchment. (Mr. H—e then read the following statements.) 1. That it seems, by returns to this house, that the expences attending the use of Warren's blacking in four regiments alone, are 9733/. 6.5-. 8rf. per annum, and that a great part of this expence is occasioned by the jack boots of the Horse Guards. 2. That from the size of these jack boots, the time of the Horse Guards must be necessarily employed in cleaning them, whereby a spirit of vanity is encouraged, to the neglect of good order and discipline. 3. That an humble address be presented to his majesty, imploring him to order an enquiry to be made into the estimates of Warren's blacking, for the purpose of ascertaining how far they are influenced by these jack boots. 4. That his majesty will graciously command these jack boots to be abridged into Wellingtons, / to be worn only on field days, and to be cleaned only twice a week.

1

Part of George IV's visit to Scotland in 1822.

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VOLUME 4

5. That by and through the advice of the lords spiritual and temporal, and his own faithful commons, his majesty will propose a premium to any who will undertake to clean these jack boots by steam. 6. That the house considers all these resolutions essential to the dignity of the crown, and the glory and happiness of the people. [Towards the close of his speech, the majority of the commons awokefrom a deep sleep, which the hon. member's eloquence had occasioned. All parties rubbed their eyes, and among other singular appearances that the house at this moment exhibited, our reporter says that it was quite beautful to see Mr. B—ml and Mr. C—g* nodding to each other like two sisters, from different sides of the house. He adds, that Mr. B—m's countenance displayed an air of the most touching resignation, and formed a striking contrast I to the brazen beauties of Mr. C—r? Even the Speaker appeared to have caught the general infection, till starting up with an air of profound attention, he exclaimed, "Is this motion seconded?" upon which Mr. B—m rose and addressed the house. Thefollowing is a tolerably correct report of his speech, although candour compels us to assert that he was occasionally inaudible in the galleries.)

In seconding the motion which my hon. friend has this night thought proper to bring forward, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of doing justice to his public services in the cause of retrenchment and reform. On the present occasion, these services have been truly unprecedented, and he has laid before us such atrocious proofs of profligacy, - of a profligacy unequalled in the corruptest ages of the world, when the world itself was sunk in the very lowest abyss of all possible corruption, the corruption of the Roman Nero, (hear, hear, from Mr. D—rc),4 that the human mind literally shudders to detail them. In 1 Henry Peter Brougham (1778-1868), 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, co-founder of the Edinburgh Review and defender of the Hunts against the charge of libelling the Prince Regent, was an eminent Whig with a considerable Parliamentary reputation. 2

George Canning (1770-1827), once of the Anti-Jacobin, now Tory Foreign Secretary.

3

J o h n Wilson Croker (1780-1857), Irish MP, essayist and contributor to the Quarterly Review (notably of a ferocious attack on Keats). 4 T h o m a s D e n m a n (1779-1854), Whig M P and close ally of Brougham. In his summing up for the defence at the 1820 trial of Q u e e n Caroline, D e n m a n compared George IV's behaviour to his wife to that of Nero towards Octavia. Blackwood's labelled him ' M r Nero D e n m a n ' .

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this distressing predicament, I shall once more offer an appeal to the common sense of the house, well aware that though, / by so doing, I appeal to an alarming minority, I still speak the indignant language of a prostituted, insulted, and inconceivably impoverished nation. [Loud cheersfrom the Opposition.) My hon. friend has contented himself by questioning the propriety of this singular and superlative extravagance; but I shall descend to more minute particulars, by showing its positive and pernicious consequences. It is a well accredited fact, sir, that Warren's blacking possesses the lucid properties of a mirror,1 and when rightly applied to leather, lends it an inexpressible polish. Now supposing that our Horse Guards have already made this discovery, - a discovery as palpable as the characteristic activity of our chancellor, - is it not highly probable that, from motives of economy, they will forthwith dispense with mirrors? And if this omission is to take place in four full regiments of Guards alone, - to say nothing of the band, as my hon. friend observed, and a more accomplished band of brigands never yet disturbed the patience of an insulted nation, a patience equalled only by the identical animal that chews / the thistle;2 - if, I repeat, this diabolical omission is to take place, is it not as notorious as the corruption of parliament, - (and what can be more notoriously corrupt?) - that the glass manufacturers must be ruined? We all know the contemptible caprice of that senseless idol, fashion; and I make no doubt, that if Warren's blacking be encouraged among these Praetorian guards to its present extent, - an extent destructive alike to the country and the crown, to the country from its precedent, and to the crown from its absurdity, - we shall see mirrors universally discarded. Let me intreat this house then to reflect, solemnly reflect, ere it sanction such notable injustice. Every manufacturer, be he who or what he may, merits equally the encouragement of Parliament; but why sacrifice hundreds to the interests of one individual? Did the house, let me ask, ever see the individual for whose gains it is thus 1 A reference to Warren's 'The Cat and the Boot; or, An Improvement Upon Mirrors' advertisement. 2 Cf. the proverbial A thistle is a fat salad for an ass'.

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shamefully solicitous. (32) If they did, they will not easily forget him, 1 for a more horrible and hoary wretch exists not on the face of the earth. The never-to-be forgotten expression of that eye - that nose that mouth, - the muddy channels of those cheeks, - channels / to which Fleet ditch were a river of paradise, and a horse pond a fountain of the Nile, - all - all betoken the pander to public prodigality. Yet this is the man, - this the Eblis,2 - this the Juggernaut 3 of commerce, under whose overwhelming influence its very life-blood must be crushed out. Oh! let it not be said that the corrupt partialities which taint our political constitution could, even in this humble instance, so effectually blight its character as to sink it in eternal condemnation at the tribunal of after ages. (The awful solemnity of this address drew thunders of applausejrom all parts of the house.) But despite the opposition of government, - opposed as it is from some curious obliquity of principle, that is to say, if extravagance can be called principle, to every motion that savours of reform - despite, I say, this most brazen-faced opposition, I am not without hopes that one at least of my hon. friend's resolutions may succeed. In the highest quarter, whence all gentility derives its origin, an amiable predilection has lately been evinced in favour of tight shoes.4 This predilection, / influenced no doubt by motives of patriotic economy, is evidently intended for imitation, and I move, in consequence, that our soldiery be compelled to follow the discreet example, with an assurance to the house - if the house yet feel an interest in the prosperity of the kingdom — that at the end of the year there will be a truly astonishing reduction. I do not address myself to Lord Liverpool on the subject, 1 T h e description of Warren is based on a speech delivered at Q u e e n Caroline's trial which centred on her alleged adultery with Bartolomeo Bergami. Brougham was chief defence counsel. O n 4 October 1820 he attacked Pietro Cuchi, a Trieste waiter who had given evidence against the Queen: ' C a n any m a n who saw him have forgotten him . . . D o your lordships recollect . . . those eyes - that nose - that lecherous mouth . . . D o you recollect the eye of that great hoary pander from Trieste?'. 2 In Mohammedanism, Eblis is the 'father of devils', the ruler of the evil genii or fallen angels. 3 An idol of Krishna which was dragged in a huge car. Devotees were said to throw themselves under its wheels. 4

A reference to George IV's corpulence.

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because I consider him a staunch member of the opposition; and still less do I apply to the honourable secretary for foreign affairs, when I reflect that in every - even the most trifling instance of his diplomacy, - he has exhibited more monstrous specimens of incredible truckling than the whole history of Parliamentary tergiversation - fruitful as it is in such obliquities - can parallel. Mr. C — g . - That's a lie.1 {Here the confusion and cries of "order, order, " became general; Mr. B— m rose to depart, and the whole business seemed likely to have a hostile termination. Anxious, however, to restore harmony, the member for Corfe Castle2 modestly proposed, that the / disputants should cool themselves by perusing each two chapters of his (CConstitutional History of Rome. " A punishment so heavily disproportioned to the offence alarmed the compassionate justice of the whole house; and Sir J. M—h,3 in tones of the kindest sympathy,4 was heard to whisper something about the Criminal Code and the Law of Nations? An awful pause ensued, during which Mr. W—e6 slipped behind Mr. B—m, and thrust into his hand the "Whole Duty of Man,"1 while Mr. B—t-t—h8 presented Mr. C—g with "Baxter's Call to the Unconverted."^ Order being at length restored by an indirect apologyfrom Mr. C—g, and afew words respecting the rules of the house 1

Canning accused Brougham of lying in a debate on Catholic Emancipation in April

1823. 2 H e n r y Bankes (1757-1834), author of The Civil and Constitutional History of Rome from its Foundation to the Age of Augustus (1818). 3 Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832), philosopher and politician. Mackintosh manifested an early enthusiasm for the French Revolution, later recanted, in his Vindiciae Gallicae (\79\). 4 Mackintosh was a liberal in terms of criminology and in 1823 proposed resolutions for the abolition of the death penalty for a range of offences. 5

Mackintosh's A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and of Nations (1799).

6

William Wilberforce (1759-1833), anti-slave trade campaigner and, in Burdett's sarcastic terminology, 'the honourable and religious member'. 7 By Richard Allestree (1619-81) and first published in 1658. 8 Joseph Butterworth (1770-1826), M P for Dover and Wesleyan friend of Wilberforce. T h o m a s Moore attacked him in ' T h e Canonization of Saint B-tt-rw-rth' ('Cant is his hobby, and meddling his bliss'). 9 A Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live (1658) by the prolific divine Richard Baxter (1615-91). De Quincey comments drily that Baxter wrote more books 'than any Englishman', publishing 'three hundred and sixty-five, plus one, the extra one being probably meant for leap-year'.

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melodiously expounded by Mr. W—n,1 and enforced with equal beauty of intonation2 by his brother, Sir W. W. W—n,3 Mr. B—m thus proceeded:) The more deeply I reflect on the notable proceedings of our allaccomplished ministry, the more I feel impressed with the necessity of severest retrenchment. Had Mr. Burke been still alive, he would have agreed with me, I am persuaded, in opinion, and by way of commencement / would have pulled off the jack boots of our Horse Guards - with or without boot jacks, as it may have suited the emergency of the case, - if indeed, any case was ever before reduced to so deplorable an emergency, an emergency proceeding from the superlative follies of government, of a government notorious for every species of gratuitous infamy - Mr. Burke, I repeat (33), would have commenced his labours by abridging, in the first place, the abovementioned extravagance of our Guards; secondly, by applying his cautery to the diseased members of our city institutions - provided at least, that precious body corporate be not already too far advanced in the lowest stages of political putrefaction; - and, thirdly, by a radical overthrow of that carnivorous band of corpulence and voracity, the beef eaters, (a groan from Sir W—C—s)* who under the present delectable regime are kept, like hyaenas at Brookes's,5 to eat up the garbage of government. To the members of this house then, individually and collectively, I address myself, earnestly hoping that they will commence a similar task of retrenchment - if indeed retrenchment be not yet too late, too late, I mean, in allusion to the / time that has elapsed since it was first found to be necessary, necessary, I would observe both to the two houses of parliament and the nation in

1 Charles Watkin Williams Wynn (1775-1850) was President of the Board of Control (1822 to 1828) in succession to Canning. He was a friend of Southey and the poet dedicated his Madoc (1805) to Wynn. 2 The brothers Wynn were labelled 'bubble and squeak' on account of their highpitched accents. When Charles Wynn was a candidate for the Speaker of the House of Commons, Canning commented that he would doubtless be addressed as 'Mr Squeaker'. 3 Sir Watkin Williams Wynn (1772-1840), member for Denbighshire 1796-1840. 4 Sir William Curtis (see note to p. 100 above), whom Blackwood's compared to the greatest English beefeater: 'that great big muckle John Bull, Sir William Curtis'. 5 A gentleman's club in St James's Street.

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general, general, I would add, in the most extended meaning of the term - and I here pour forth my fervent supplications at the throne of mercy1 (Hear, hear, from Messrs. W—e and B—tt—h) that the strong arm of government may be palsied, and its late intolerant acts - acts fit only for a Ferdinand 2 or a fiend - be forcibly crammed down the aesophagus of the bungling artisans who framed them. (Mr. B—m concluded his speech amid loud cheers from all parts of the house, during which the Speaker retired. On his return Mr. C—g rose, and addressed the house asfollows-) As the lateness of the hour prevents me from entering into any specific detail on the subject of this night's debate, I shall make but a temporary trespass on the indulgent attention of the House. The topic in fact requires no support from the flimsy fulcrum of adventitious argument, for, like the sacred edifice that was erected on the rock, / (Hear, hear, from Messrs. W—e andB—tt—h) it rests upon the adamantine basis of strict political expediency. Every plan, however, is more or less the victim of insidious misconstruction, and as the watchful member for Aberdeen 3 has cackled his apprehensions to the nation, it may be expected that I should enumerate my reasons for refusing to acquiesce in the justice of his anserine 4 alarum. In the first place, Sir, I have held repeated consultations with the law officers on the subject, (Here Mr. H—b—e5 snapped his fingers contemptuously) and though the hon. memb er for Westminster, with wit at his fingers ends, (a laugh) expends it on my Egerian 6 advisers, yet I can assure him that the judgment of a solicitorgeneral is in no respect deserving of the contumely which his Furor Digitalis would imply. He (the solicitor-general) informs me, that any

1 Another glance at Butterworth and Wilberforce's piety. In the following pages, every time a speaker makes a reference which might conceivably be interpreted in a religious manner, the two chorus their approval. 2 King Fernando VII of Spain. Brougham had been a partisan of the king's constitutional opponents. 3

Hume. A goose-like warning. ' C — g ' is referring to the story of the sacred geese of the capitol who supposedly woke the R o m a n garrison, thereby saving Rome from attack by the Gauls. 4

5 6

J o h n C a m Hobhouse (1786-1869), Radical M P and friend of Byron. Egeria was a R o m a n tutelary deity.

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reduction in the expenditure of Warren's Blacking, or any abridgement in the perpendicular altitude of the jack boots, would involve our colossal dominions in the inextricable horrors of anarchy, rebellion, and revolution. [Hear, hear,from the country members.) That if the army, for instance, ever insisted on the wear / of a clean shirt but once during the vicissitudes of a month, they would justify the innovation on good manners by the penurious precedent of Warren's Blacking. That if by any caprice inherent in the peccant 1 nature of mortality, they were desirous to curtail the luxuriant abundance of their coat flaps, or dispensing with the etiquette of breeches, permit them to be worn solely by their wives, {a laugh) they would plead in excuse the corresponding abridgement of the jack boots, Now, Sir, although in days of yore, when the gathering gloom of his country's fortunes adumbrated the Athenian lustre of his politeness, it might be pardonable in the Greek warrior Isadas2 to rush unattired to battle, yet we must all allow that a regiment of such denuded patriots would be an object more notorious for the quaintness of its effect than the propriety of its institution. Ah! Corydon, Corydon, quae te dementia cepit?

In discussing the enormous expenditure attendant, as he assures us, on Warren's Blacking, the hon. member for Winchelsea4 has compelled its most decided recommendation to assume the unfavourable / aspect of a defect. Like the scorpion of suicidal notoriety, he has committed murder on his cause by the destructive infelicity of his argument. He has objected to it on the score of its lucid and reflective capabilities, and informed us, with a pathos peculiar to himself, that it has encroached on the province of a mirror, to the detriment of glass manufacturers. Waving every topic of private grievance, which, however important to individuals, is yet of insufficient weight to attract the attention of legislature, I am prepared to prove, that by thus emulating the 1

Corrupt.

2

T h e brave but somewhat foolhardy Spartan warrior.

3

'Ah! Corydon, Corydon, what madness has caught you?' (Virgil, Eclogues, II. 1. 69).

4

Brougham.

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properties of glass, it has withdrawn from the shoulders of the nation an exhausting Atlas of expence. According to the military regulations, as laid down in the stat. Geo. III. cap. 12. every barrack is placed under the superintending providence of a master, who is directed to supply it with furniture, in which mirrors are especially included, at the cost of the British nation. That arrangement, I am happy to inform the house, has now gone to the sepulchral abode of all the Capulets,1 for jack boots, anointed with the refreshing dew of Warren's Blacking, / are found to answer every purpose of a suitable and successful equivalent. In order to corroborate my statement, I have the authority of Colonel W—, of the Guards, who informed me but yesterday, that for three uninterrupted weeks he had mown the adhesive thistles of his chin through the enlightened medium of his jack boots, and that the whole mess had put on their black stocks and stays by the same luminous assistance. {Loud cheers) The process of my speech has now brought me to that particular branch of the hon. mover's philippic, in which he proposes that, for the purpose of facilitating business, the boots of the Horse Guards should be polished by the intervention of steam. And here I beg it to be observed, that, as I am a partisan of qualified innovation, I will cheerfully add my vote to the resolution, with the proviso that its boasted advantages be previously positively and practically established. But why does the hon. member for Aberdeen restrict the terms of his proposition to the individual article of jack boots? If the operation of steam be so speedy as he would seem to insinuate, in the name / of heaven (Hear, hear, from Messrs. W—e and B—tt—h) let him apply its energies to his own eternal orations, and I will answer, that, provided it accelerates their utterance, it will be carried by a triumphant majority. (Loud laughter) I do not however wish to damp his amiable enthusiasm; far from it, sir, I applaud it to the very echo, but strenuously exhort him to confine his speculations to himself, instead of attempting, by the chaotic confusion of his logic, to transform the Metropolitan barracks into museums of animal curiosities. In the course of his professional career,2 the hon. 1 2

Cf. Romeo and Juliet, IV i. 112. Hume was a surgeon.

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mover may probably recollect the well-known theory of the transfusion of blood from one body to another by means of a pipe or quill, or some such circulating medium. Upon this principle, the fluid of a fox transfused into the veins of a goose or a common council man would endow them with its vulpine accomplishments, and I have heard that a late member of opposition, being vaccinated with the blood of one of the "long-eared brethren," brayed an eloquent oration to the astonishment of both houses of Parliament. (A laugh) Now, sir, however apocryphal it may appear, I can scarcely / refrain from hazarding my conjecture, that the hon. mover has been inoculated with the blood of a beaver, [loud laughter) and that this very transfusion has inspired him with a corresponding mania for constructing architectural sophisms. He has this evening in particular erected a Pons asinoruml (a laugh) for the use of the opposition, over which he anticipates a free passage to the Treasury Bench. But let me assure him, that the piles of argument on which he has erected his bridge, have an imbecile foundation in the sand, and when the rains come and the floods descend; (Hear, hear, from Messrs. W— e and B—tt—h,) Shall melt into the air, into thin air, And, like the baseless fabric of a vision, Leave not a wreck behind. I shall detain the house no longer than to return my thanks for the indulgence with which I have been honoured, and to request its unanimous support in outvoting the resolutions of the hon. member for Aberdeen, convinced as I am, that, although "Fundit humus flores,"3 (a laugh) although he pour forth the blossoms of his logic with more than ordinary profusion, yet it is the deadly blossom of the upas 4 which festers in the brain of the unguarded novice who ventures within 1 Bridge of asses: 'a humorous name for the fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid, from the difficulty which beginners or dull-witted persons find in getting over or mastering it. Hence allusively' (OED). 2

Adapted from The Tempest, IV i. 150-6.

3

'Earth pours forth its blossoms' (Virgil, Eclogues ix. 1. 41). C—g is punning on Hume's name. 4

T h e fabulous posion-yielding Javan tree.

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its pestilential circumference. Even now, its envenomed ardour impregnates the atmosphere around us, and we should be worse than traitors to our country and our king were we to pause in the hour of our peril. As a national blessing, Warren's Blacking is entitled to our gratitude, and as the scientific Archimedes of England, its manufacturer enforces our veneration. In the name of justice, then, be he loved, in the name of genius honoured, and in the name of Britain reverenced! Long be his illustrious patronymic the symbol of virtue and of art; and while from clime to clime, from the aestive1 regions of the Eastern Ind to the hybernal 2 hemisphere of either Pole, the nations of the earth uplift their voices in his praise, let England echo back the strain, till one wide acclamatory chorus rings, a millenial trumpet, through the world. (Loud cheeringfrom all parts of the house, followed the conclusion of the hon. Secretary's speech, after which Sir W—m C—s3 rose, and addressed the house to thefollowing effect:) I can't for the life of me help saying a small matter upon the subject of this night's debate, but at the same time as I arn't over nice in point of tongue, I shall say it as speedy and as soon4 as possible. Fine words butter no parsnips, and if so be I'm a bit behind hand in flummery, I will at least make up for it in common sense. What boots it, as the shoemaker said, how we talk, if we talk to the point? For my part, I stand only on facts, and quite blush for the hon. members of opposition, when, not content with cutting up the jack boots of the Horse Guards, they bother us about the expences of blacking them. Now, the long and short of the business is, that Warren's Blacking is dirt-cheap, for it not only saves scores of pounds in the matter of they mirrors, but stirs up other manufacturers besides. For instance now, the

1

Burning.

2

Wintry.

3 T h e hapless Sir William Curtis once again. According to the DNB, Curtis was 'a pitiably bad speaker, very badly educated, and the constant butt of all the Whig wits'. Deacon reflects the drollery in this highly ungrammatical effusion. 4 'Speedy and soon' was a phrase used by Curtis in an early speech which was taken up with glee by contemporary satirists.

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success of Robert Warren has lately brought forward another one,1 who goes and poaches, as it were, in the same Warren, and then comes and takes a house under the very nose of his rival. {Loud laughter.) And what, / you'll ask, is the consequence of such opposition? Why, that by this here Warren trying to outdo that there Warren, both Warrens are obliged to mind their P's and QJs; which we all know they need not do, if so be that there was never no opposition. Opposition, sir, except in Parliament, is the very life of trade, and is just as necessary as marriage {a pensive smilefrom Mr. C—e 2 of Norfolk) to propagate business. I intreat the house then to do away with the resolutions of the hon. member for Aberdeen. The country is in a nation^ flourishing state, for our Aldermen were never so fat as now, and in my last voyage to Ramsgate, 4 1 was pleased to see as how the Corporation of the different towns where I stopped to lay in provisions, seemed some pounds fatter than the year before. But independent of all this, let the house look at the charming appearance of things in general. Let them only look at the swinging5 stock of turtles6 as is daily sold, and see the high price as 1 T h e recently established blacking firm of Jonathan Warren which traded on the Warren name. Such imitators seem to have abounded in this period as Robert Warren's 'IMPOSTURE UNMASKED' advertisement testifies: 'The progress of MERIT, although frequently assailed, is not impeded by Envy and Detraction . . . T h e test of experience is the guarantee of favour, and has established WARREN'S BLACKING in general estimation; of which there exists not a stronger proof than the tacit acknowledgement of a host of servile imitators, who . . . obtrude on the unwary a spurious preparation as the genuine article, to the great disappointment of the unguarded purchaser . . . It becomes therefore, an indispensable duty

to CAUTION T H E PUBLIC against the manoeuvres of UNPRINCIPLED VENDERS, who having no

character to lose, and stimulated by avarice in their nefarious pursuits, aim at the acquisition of money through any medium than that of honour! T h e original matchless BLACKING bears on each bottle a short direction, with the signature of ROBERT WARREN'. It was in Jonathan Warren's blacking factory that the youthful Dickens toiled so unhappily 2 T h o m a s William Coke (1752-1842), veteran Whig M P a n d Father of the House. After being a widower for some twenty-one years, Coke married again in 1822 at the age of sixty-nine, siring six children to his second wife. 3

Extremely ('nation' is euphemistically short for 'damnation').

4

Curtis had a house at Ramsgate.

5

Flourishing.

6

Contemporary satirists portray Curtis, a.k.a 'Sir William Turtle', as being inordinately fond of eating turtle; cf., for instance, Cruikshank's 'Turtle Doves and Turtle Soup! or a Try-O between Geordie, a Northern Lassie, a n d Sir Willey, O!' (1822) a n d Moore's 'A Dream of Turtle. By Sir W Curtis' (1826).

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venison fetches. Not but what I can bring a thousand other proofs of our increasing trade, besides the mere matter of eating; only as I feel myself more / at home in that ere line of argument, I feel more justified in using it. [Laughterfrom all sides of the house) By the bye, this reminds me of the hon. member for Winchelsea's proposal to dish the city feasts.1 My God, what an idea! Do away with the city feasts, and you does away with government, for the constitution of England requires every bit as much nourishment as the constitution of Aldermen. For my part, Sir, I have only to pray [Hear, hear, from Messieurs W—e and B—tt—h) that I may never live to see that ere awful hour when turtle-soup shall cease to be the crack dish at Guildhall. (The touching emphasis with which the hon. Baronet delivered this sentence, drew tears from the eyes of many of the country gentlemen.) I come now to the subject of our national poverty. And, first, the hon. mover assures us as how England is ruined, a fact, however, that sticks in my throat like Amen in Macbeth's, 2 which, as far as I can learn, was nothing more than a piece of dry toast as had gone the wrong way. Moreover, he (Mr. H—e) says, that Reform alone can save us; to which I reply, in the words of Homer, "Credat Judy;" 3 that may be Judy's creed, but I thank heaven it arn't / mine. Once again, then, I beseech the house to vote against the reduction of Warren's Blacking. We have no need of reduction in no shape. John Bull, as I showed just now, is better off than ever; the tread-mill and the new churches are as full as they can hold; the Orphan's Fund is turned into a sort of Sinking Fund, for the use of them as can dip deep enough for she; good wholesome water may be had at Aldgate Pump for nothing; the beggars (thank God) are all hanged, and a new Old Bailey is being built for the rest; and, in short, the whole country resembles the place described by those charming authors, "The Elegant Extracts,"4 where

1 As well as being an MP, Curtis was an alderman and had served as Lord Mayor of London. 2

See note to p. 24 above.

3

A garbled, misattributed version of Horace's 'Credat Judaeus Apella, non ego';' Let Apella, the Jew, believe that; I cannot \Satires, V. 1. 100). 4 Elegant Extracts: or Useful and Entertaining Pieces of Poetry, Selected for the Improvement of Youth, edited by Vicesimus Knox, c. 1770.

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The turtle wantons with the ape, The deer frisks in the dell, And vineyards with the tender grape, Give out a goodly smell.l Upon a due consideration of these advantages, I think it but right to vote against the reduction of Warren's Blacking. ( When the hon. Baronet hadfinished,Mr. H—e briefly replied, after which the galleries were cleared /for a division. The Numbers were as follow: For Mr. H—e's proposition to reduce Warren's Blacking, 32 Against it, 133 Majority against it,

121

The other Orders of the Day were then disposed of; and the house adjourned at 2 o'clock.)

1

Adapted from S. of S. 2:12-13 and referring to the King's relationship with Curtis.

158

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to The Battle of Brentford Green, A Poem in Two Cantos. By Sir W. S.)

'The Battle of Brentford Green' is a parody of Sir Walter Scott's Marmion; A Tale of Flodden Field (1808). Scott's chivalric romance, a 'knightly tale of Albion's elder day', tells the story of Lord Marmion who, after a series of romantic intrigues and a joust (described in loving and elaborate detail) with his bitter rival Sir Ralph de Wilton, is eventually killed at Flodden (giving Scott an opportunity for another martial set-piece). Deacon's parody recounts the story of a pitched battle, in the rather less glamorous location of Brentford, between the forces of Robert Warren and those of the rival venders of blacking, Day and Martin. Deacon captures Scott's fondness for archaisms and his elaborate description of medieval costumes, buildings and soldiery and his battle scene is an effective burlesque of Marmiorís. In his antipathetic Edinburgh review of Marmion, Francis Jeffrey scornfully states that a 'whole Canto is filled up with the account of . . . a supper' 1 and Deacon does not skimp in his own account of Warren's 'rich refectory': 'Tis fit that I should tell you what These gentles had to eat, How ale went round, and how, God wot, T h e tables groaned with meat. Suffice to say, that trim sirloin Of bullock proud in death to join, With raddish of the horse; Flanked by a soup's embossed tureen, And eke by cauliflower of mien, Winsome and white as e'er was seen From Hounslow Heath to Turnham Green; Adorned the firstling course;

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This is only one of a series of wonderfully inappropriate epic catalogues. Deacon's comic technique almost invariably depends on the contrast between the poem's romantic, antiquarian rhetoric and the fact that what is being described is a contretemps between rival gangs of blacking company employees. Walter Hamilton writes that 'The first attribute of a parody is that it should present a sharp contrast to the original, either in subject, or treatment of the subject... If... the topic selected be one of everyday life, it may be made exceedingly amusing if described in high-flown mock heroic diction'.2 Though this is a rather limiting account of parody in general, it captures Deacon's technique here to the letter. However, it should be noted that the use of mockepic is not new in parody of Scott, and of Marmion in particular.3 George Colman's Advertisement' to his own Scott parody, 'The Lady of the Wreck; or, Castle Blarneyrigg; A Poem', speaks for all of Scott's mock-epic imitators: T h e Author of this Work, has, merely, adopted the Style which a northern GENIUS has, of late, render'd the Fashion, and the Rage: - He has attempted, in this instance, to become a maker of the Modern-Antique; a Vender of a new Coinage, begrime'd with the ancient œrugo . 4

Whilst Colman's target is The Lady of the Lake: A Poem (1810), Deacon had been preceded in mock-epic parody of Marmion in Marmion Travestied; A Tale of Modern Times by 'Peter Pry' (1809)5 and in the brothers Smith's A Tale of Drury Lane. By W. S.'. All three parodies play comic games with poetic register, applying, to ludicrous effect, Scott's poetical manner to contemporary and rather humdrum commonplace. For instance, in all three poems the romantic topography of sixteenth-century Scotland is displaced by the mundanity of the early nineteenth-century metropolitan locales. Scott's poem begins in the following manner: Day set on Norham's castled steep, And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, And Cheviot's mountains lone: 6

Marmion Travestied begins thus: 160

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Night threw her veil o'er Cupid's seat, Fam'd Gloucester-Palace — love's retreat, And Portman's-Square so green; Now Paddington and Dorset-Street (The brothels where both sexes meet, And tumble beds, all soft and sweet, In darkness lie unseen; 7

The Smiths have: From Henry's chapel, Rufus' hall, To Savoy, Temple, and St. Paul, From Knightsbridge, Paneras, Camden Town, To Redriff, Shadwell, Horsleydown, 8

And Deacon has this: Day set on Regent Street, Pall Mall, Bathed Westminster's emblazoned hall In one wide ruddy glow; Lit up the brazen Hand-in-Hand Fire-office, eastward of the Strand, And gilt Saint George's Row;

Though they lack his acerbic tone, these parodists are close in critical instinct to Jeffrey, who attacked Marmion's neo-medieval descriptive set-pieces9 and argued that the description of 'modern equivalents' would be absurd: 'Nobody, we believe, would be bold enough to introduce into a serious poem a description of the hussar boots and gold epaulets of a commander in chief, and much less to particularize the liveries and canes of his servants, or the order and array of a grand dinner . . . ridicule .. . would infallibly attach to their modern equivalents'.10 This hints at the comic modus operandi of much parody of Scott, certainly of Deacon's fine effort.

NOTES 1 Edinburgh Review, XII (April 1808), p. 30.

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2 Parodies of the Works of English & American Authors, Collected and Annotated by Walter Hamilton, 6 vols (London: Reeves and Turner), 1884-9, vol. I (1884), p. 1. 3 See introduction to volume 2 for further discussion of parody of Scott. 4 George Colman, Poetical Vagaries . . . and Vagaries Vindicated; A Poem, Addressed to the Reviewers (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1814), p. 41. 5 The pseudonym of Thomas Hill. 6 The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, ed. J. Logie Robertson (London: Oxford University Press, 1913), p. 93. 7 Marmion Travestied; A Tale of Modern Times (London: Thomas Tegg, 1809), pp. 3-4. The bracket is unclosed. 8 Rejected Addresses: or the New Theatrum Poetarum (London: John Miller, 1812) p. 45. In the description of Joe Higgins, the champion of Day and Martin, Deacon is probably glancing at the Rejected Addresses' Higginbottom, the heroic fireman of the 'Tale of Drury Lane'. 9 Jeffrey repudiates the need for the 'length, and minuteness of [the] descriptions of an tient dresses and manners'; Edinburgh Review, XII (April 1808), p. 28. 10 Ibid., pp. 30-2

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THE

BATTLE OF BRENTFORD GREEN, A POEM IN TWO C A N T O S .

BY

SIR W. S.

A few years since, in the autumn of 1818, a serious affray took place between those illustrious rivals, Warren, and Day and Martin, (34) on the subject of their respective pre-eminence. T h e parties, as I learn from the black-letter record of the fray, met at Brentford, and after & "a well-foughten field," victory was decided in favour of the former chieftain. In the present commemoration of that chivalrous event, I have taken the liberty of adding a few particulars and persons, for the purpose of elevating my subject, a principle which induced me to raise a fictitious superstructure on the historical groundwork of Marmion. With respect to localities, it may be proper to observe, that the scene of Canto I. is laid in the refectory, or banquet-hall of Number 30, Strand; while the operations of the Second are carried on in the vicinity of Brentford. T h e time of action employed in each Canto occupies one day

C A N T O FIRST.

StyrHaaaatL1 l. Day set on Regent Street, Pall Mall, Bathed Westminster's emblazoned hall In one wide ruddy glow; / Lit up the brazen Hand-in-Hand 2 Fire-office, eastward of the Strand, 1 2

Cf. Marmion's black-letter canto titles. An insurance company.

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And gilt Saint George's Row; The Warren's sign boot e'rst so gay, Slow darkled as the darkling day, Less wide and less was flung; Each weary gale its task gave o'er, And failed to wave it o'er the door, So heavily it hung, Suspended in sepulchral state, As knave from Newgate's donjon grate. 2. Within his hall the Warren stood, In raiment trim bedight, l Arranging in reflective mood, The wassail of the night: Meantime his friends yspeed them down From each far quarter of the town, Those sister ditches, Houns and Shore, Rival Saint Giles in choicest store Of guests, a motley band, And Bunhill Fields, and Rotten Row, The Hills of Saffron and of Snow, / From Newgate Street, to church of Bow, Join issue in the Strand. Smiles the grey eve, an infant yet, On many a squad complete, Of gig, cart, coach, and cabriolet, Loud thundering down the street; Starts the pedestrian with surprise, Condemns the tar 2 his hapless eyes, While on the passing pageant hies

1 2

Arrayed. Sailor.

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THE BATTLE OF BRENTFORD GREEN

[149/150]

To where the Warren's name*, Dim shadowed 'neath the twilight pale, Appears (strange paradox) to veil Its brazen charms for shame. The band approached its Strand abode The street door slogan clattered loud, And many a beauteous border maid, (35) Stole cautious peep from palisade,l As one by one each guest drew nigh The Warren's rich refectory. / 3. Eight and thirty stalwart wights Sate within his banquet hall, Eight and thirty flickering lights Streamed around each chequered wall; Flaunted their rays on spangled can, 2 Like cannon flash on Barbican, Or Dian in her summer mood And bathed in rich effulgent flood, Sofa, settee, and wickered chair, Till bursting forth in radiance rare, Henchmen and host, and wassail wight, Shone beautiful beneath the light. 4. 'Tis fit that I should tell you what 3 These gentles had to eat, How ale went round, and how, God wot,

* Mr. Robert Warren's name and address, carved in brass letters on the proud front of his abode, exhibits a remarkable feature in the alphabetical beauties of the Strand. 1

W. G.'s note, for once reliable, offers 'a somewhat distorted definition of a window'.

2

Drinking-vessel.

3

ŒMarmionA.l

127.

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4

The tables groaned with meat. Suffice to say, that trim sirloin Of bullock proud in death to join, With raddish of the horse;1 Flanked by a soup's embossed tureen, And eke by cauliflower of mien, Winsome and white as e'er was seen From Hounslow Heath to Turnham Green, Adorned the firstling course; While ale in mantling goblets glowed, And furnished frolic as it flowed. 5. "Now tune me a stave," quoth Robert Warren, To an elder at his side, And stoutly as he gave the call, Each guest the wassail plied; Uprose that elder at the call, A tuneful wight was he, As ever startled London Wall With vigorous harmonie; He sang how he of Eld had been On pilgrimage to Richmond Green, How Highgate tunnel he had seen, And trod the Brixton Mill; Had roamed o'er Windsor's castle steep, Saint George's tower, and Donjon keep,2 Had paced the walls that round it sweep, And rolled down Greenwich hill. /

1 Cf. Marmion, III. 11. 4 9 - 5 0 ('gammons of the tusky boar / And savoury haunch of deer'). 2

Echoes Marmion, I. 1.4.

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6. The whiles he sang, with heedless din, A stalworth stranger clatter'd in, Right valiant was his tread; No time for summons or for call, For stark he stood amid them all, Like warlock from the dead. He looked disturbed and pale as death, But this mote be from want of breath; He looked as scant as Ettrick witches, (36) But this mote be from want of breeches: Thoughtful he stood, and while a shout Rung through the hall of "Turn him out," With scorn he eyed each clamorous guest, And, fearless, thus the host addressed: 7. "What, ho, sir Knight, attend thy doom, For terrible in wrath I come, To tell thee here within thine home, That thou by advertising, Hast dulled the Day and Martin's fame, Decried their worth, assoiled their name, And puffed, - I say it to thy shame, With impudence surprising. / Thus quoth each angered chieftain then, Go, beard the robber in his den, Joe Higgins, (meaning me,) And challenge1 him to feudal fight, On Monday morn, all in the sight Of Brentford's chivalrie."

1

Cf. Marmion's 'awful summons' (V. sts xxv-xxvi).

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4

8. On Warren's cheek the flush of rage, O'ercame the look of wisdom sage; Fierce he broke forth, "And dar'st thou then To brave the lion in his den, The Warren in his hall? And hop'st thou hence unthreshed 1 to go? No, by Saint George of England, no! Up, gemmen, 2 up, what, shop-boy, ho! Let the street-door bar fall." Too late it fell, for Higgins flew, Like goblin elf, the passage through; While thus with changing cheek and eye, The Warren closed his grim reply, "Back, craven, to your chieftains hie, Ill-favoured wights, and say that I, / I, Robert of the sable hand, And lord of Number Thirty, Strand, Obey their summons to the fight, And will on Monday morn, despite Their mercenary mob, Like cataract on their squadrons rush, With banner, broom, and blacking brush I will, so help me Bob!" 9. He ceased, and light as summer vapour, The Higgins vanished in a caper, Then hied him on his way, And at thy bars, High Holborn, told The bluff reply of Warren bold,

1

Archaic form of 'unthrashed'.

2

Gentlemen.

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THE BATTLE OF BRENTFORD GREEN

To Martin and to Day. Meanwhiles the guests sat quaffing, till Saint Paul's, far over Ludgate hill, Knelled forth the deep midnight, But when again its lengthening sound, The wide metropolis around, From Hampstead to Saint Giles's pound, Thence to Bayswater burying-ground, Struck the first hour of light, / They parted, each with wine ymanned, l And silence brooded o'er the Strand.

CANTO SECOND.

( % (Ünmlrat 1. 'Tis merry - 'tis merry on Brentford Green, When the holiday folk are singing, When the lasses flaunt with lightsome mien, And the Brentford bells are ringing Well armed in stern unyielding mood, High o'er that green the Warren stood; A burly man was he, Girt round the waist with kerchief blue, And clad in waistcoat dark of hue, And thick buff jerkin gay to view, And breeches of the knee: Beside him stood his trusty band, With hat on head, and club in hand, Loud shouting to the fight; 'Till answering shrill, street, alley, lane, 1

Equipped; drunk is the clear implication.

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O'er hill and heather, wood and plain, / Sent forth the deepened sounds again, With voice of giant might. 2. Charge, Warren, charge;1 yon battle Green, Glitters afar with silvery sheen, The lightning of the storm; Where bands of braggarts bluff in mien, With ragged Irishmen are seen, Dreadful and drunken all, I ween, A phalanx fierce to form: Saint George! It was a gallant sight, To ken beneath the morning light, The shifting lines sweep by; In mailed and measured pace they sped, The earth gave back their hollow tread, 'Till you mote think the charnelled dead Were howling to the sky "Hark, rolls the thunder of the drum, The foe advance - they come, they come! Lay on them," quoth the Day; "God for the right! on Brentford Heath, Our bugle's stern and stormy breath, Summons to victory or to death Hurrah then, for the fray!" / 3. Hurrah, hurrah! from rear to flank, In vengeance rung along each rank; And the red banners (formed by hap Of two old shirts stitched flap to flap,) (37 )

1

' "Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!" / Were the last words of Marmion'.

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THE BATTLE OF BRENTFORD GREEN

[157/158]

Waved lordlier at the cry; 'Till every proud and painted scrap, Shivered like plume in 'prentice cap, Or cloud in winter sky. The Warren first this squad espied, Ranged man to man in ruffian pride, And to each warrior at his side In vaunting phrase began, "Rush on, ye ragamuffins, rush, All Brentford to a blacking brush, My foeman leads the van." 4. On rushed each lozel1 to the fight, Ruthless as flood from mountain height, The bludgeons clattered fierce and fast, And dealt destruction as they past, While high as some tall vessel's mast, Warren o'erlooked the shock; / Thence bore him back with might and main; Brickbats and bludgeons fell like rain, Stones, sticks, and stumps, all, all in vain, He stemmed them like a rock: His foeman chief with wary eye, The flickering of the fight could spy, And shouted as his bands he led, To Pat O'Thwackum at their head, (38) "Thwackum, press on, - ne'er mind your scars, Press on, - they yield, - and oh, my stars! Each nose is bleeding fast; Strike, strike, — their skulls like walnuts cracking, For Day, for Martin, and his blacking, The battle cannot last."

1

Ne'er-do-well.

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4

5. Vain charge! the Warren dauntless stood, Though ankle deep flowed seas of bood, Till Thwackum fierce towards him flies, His breast with choler glows, Rage flashes from his mouth and eyes, And claret from his nose. The foemen meet, - they thump, they thwack! Hark! burst the braces on their back! / And, hark! their skulls in concert crack! And, hark! their cudgels clatter, whack! With repercussive shocks: See, see they fall, - down, down they go, Warren above, his foe below, While high o'er all ascends the cry Of "Warren," "Warren," to the sky, And "Thwackum" to the stocks. 6. Oh! for a blast of that tin horn, 1 Through London streets by newsmen borne, That tells the wondering host How murder, rape, or treason dread, Deftly concocted, may he read In Courier, Times, or Post; Then in dramatic verse and prose The martial muse should tell How Warren triumphed o'er his foes, How Thwackum fought and fell, And how, despite his cartel, Day Hied him, like recreant, from the fray. /

1 Newspaper sellers in the early nineteenth century announced their presence with a trumpet.

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THE BATTLE OF BRENTFORD GREEN

7. 'Tis done, - the victors all are gone, l And fitfully the sun shines down On many a bruised and burly clown, The flowers of whose sweet youth is mown, To blossom ne'er again; For e'en as grass cut down is hay, So flesh, when drubbed to death, is clay, As proved each hind who slept that day On Brentford's crimson plain. Sad was the sight, for Warren's squad Bravely lay sprawling on the sod; They scorned to turn their tails, - for why? They had no tails to turn awry, So dropped each where he stood. 8. First Ned of Greenwich kissed the ground, Then Figgins from Whitechapel pound, Mark Wiggins from Cheapside, Whackum and Thwackum from Guildhall, The two O'Noodles from Blackwall, (39) / Noggins the Jew from London Wall, And Scroggins from Saint Bride: Tim Bobbin tumbled as he rose, To join the motley chase, Joe Abbott, spent by Warren's blows, Lay snug ensconced, and Danson's nose Was flattened to his face: Stubbs too, of Brentford Green the rose, (40) Would have essayed to pour On one - on all, his wrath red hot As blacksmith's anvil, had he not Been hanged the day before. 1

Cf. Marmion, VI, st. xxxv.

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4

9. Illustrious brave! if muse like mine May bid for aye, your memories shine In fame's recording page; Each wounded limb, each fractured head, Albeit tucked up in honour's bed, Shall live from age to age; And still on Brentford green while springs The daisy, while the linnet sings Her valentine to May, The sympathising hind shall tell / Of those who fought and those who fell, At Brentford's grim foray. 10.

ÜTíEnung tn Ü\t Xrafcr.1 Now, gentles, fare ye well, my rede Hath reached an end, nor feel I need To add to Warren's fame, my meed Of laudatory rhymes; Far loftier bards his praise rehearse, And prouder swells his daily verse In Chronicle or Times. Enough for me on summer day, To pipe some simple oaten lay, Of goblin page or border fray, To rove in thought through Teviotdale, Where Melrose wanes a ruin pale, (The sight and sense with awe attacking,) Or skim Loch Kattrine's burnished flood, Or wade through Grampian moor and mud, In boots baptized with WARREN'S BLACKING. / 1

Cf. MarmiorCs 'L'envoy'.

174

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to A Letter to the Editor of Warreniana)

A Letter to the Editor of Warreniana' is the fourth journal parody in Warreniana. Here Deacon adopts the manner of the fearsome ultraTory weekly newspaper the John Bull (1820-92). Employing vitriolic ad hominem tactics, the John Bull vigorously defended church and king. All methods, the more acrid the better, were acceptable in the anti-Whig crusade: scandal-sheet gossip; political lampoons; vituperative personal abuse and coarse but often amusing satirical verse. The youthful Charlotte Bronte captured the paper's ethos well in 1829: cWe see the John Bull] it is a high Tory, very violent. Mr. Driver lends it us, as likewise Blackwood's Magazine, the most able periodical there is'.1 Like Blackwood's; John Bullhad a taste for character assassination. As Donald J. Gray has written, 'The most obviously scandalous feature of John Bull. . . was [its] publication of gossip and abusive remarks about the personal lives, characters, and appearances of well-known persons'. 2 The paper was founded by loyalists of George IV who were alarmed at attacks on the king over his treatment of Queen Caroline. It set about lambasting the queen's partisans, the likes of Brougham and Hume, and indulging in personal slanders on Caroline's women friends which landed it with a successful prosecution for libel in 1821. Deacon captures the tone and manner oí John Bull well: its Toryism; its rousing support for the status quo and its fondness for patriotic and satirical verse. His parody includes apologetic self-justification in John BulFs usual highly disingenuous manner. The journal's baiting of Whigs and radicals is echoed and, as ever, the methods are personal. Many of the John BulFs bêtes noires are traduced in Deacon's parody (the Whig queenites Brougham, Hume, Parr and Waithman amongst them). After establishing to its satisfaction that Warren has Tory sympathies, the paper hymns him in a song to 'Warren the pride of the 175

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 4

Strand'. The song is in the manner of one oí John BulFs satirical squibs, many of which were penned by its editor Theodore Hook (17881841). Its formal model is 'The Grand Revolution!', published in the number for 17 March 1823, where John Bull adopts the voice of Whiggish friends of the pro-Constitutional Spanish. This is the poem's first stanza: THE GRAND REVOLUTION! TUNE — "The Tight Little Island'."

Ye Whigs now attend, and list to a friend, If you value a free Constitution, Ev'ry nerve let us strain for the Patriots of Spain, And cry up their brave revolution. Huzza! for the brave Revolution! Success to the brave revolution! We'll all to a man, bawl as loud as we can, Huzza! for the brave Revolution!3

Much of Deacon's song - a stanza and a long comic footnote - deals with phrenology and some contextualisation of this quasi-science is needed to appreciate the parody fully. The work of Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), German creator of phrenology, (the 'science' of delineating character from an examination of the shape of the head) was highly contentious in the 1820s. Gall argued that the contours of the skull displayed certain qualities ('adhesiveness', 'destructiveness, 'combativeness' and so on) which determined human nature. Gall collaborated with Johann Spurzheim (1776-1832) on a number of physiological treatises and the latter, in particular, gave many lectures in England. The 'phrenology controversy' prompted many magazine articles and pamphlets, both pro- and anti-, during the 1810s and 1820s and this debate is reflected in Deacon's work. His parody is part of a satirical attack on phrenology initiated in such works as Craniology Burlesqued (1818)4 and 'Essays on Cranioscopy, Craniology, Phrenology, &c. By Sir Toby Tickletoby, Bart'. 5 George Daniel's: The Modern Dunciad (1835) offers a typical example of the satirical riposte to phrenology:

176

INTRODUCTORY NOTE Superlatively queer the cant Of long-ear'd Puritans that rant, Of owl-ey'd critics hypercritical, Of quacks, poetical, political, Of craniologists, and all From Spurzheim, down to Dr. Gall; 6

There is a strand within this body of anti-phrenological satire which attacks its physiological determinism. Thomas Hood's 'Craniology' (1827) sums up this position: Each bias in some master node is: What takes M'Adam where a road is, To hammer little pebbles less? His organ of Destructiveness. What makes great Joseph so encumber Debate? a lumping lump of Number: O r Malthus rail at babies so? T h e smallness of his Philopro - 7

Deacon joins in the fun, arguing that were it not for the fact that his ancestors had highly developed cranial organs of 'combativeness', Byron, 'instead of being now a lord, might have been a cheese-monger'. NOTES 1 Quoted in Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte, (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1950), p. 55. 2 Donald J. Gray, 'Early Victorian scandalous journalism: Renton Nicholson's The Town (1837-42)' in Joanne Shattock and Michael Wolff, eds, The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings, (Leicester: Leicester University Press; Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1982), p. 319. 3 John Bull, III (17 March 1823), p. 853. T h e following extract from John Bull's July 1824 'The Rhyming Review for the Month', which commemorated the brothers Hunt's publication of Shelley's Posthumous Poems, gives a flavour of the paper's satirical manner: And the Hunts - a bad s p e c , as we venture to tell ye, Have published some posthumous trash of Bysshe Shelly; In which you will find, as we found with much sadness,

177

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4

Some talent - obscured by much maundering madness; A good line, here and there, in an ocean of drivel, And a thought, once or twice, sunk in blasphemous snivel. 4 Cranio logy Burlesqued, in Three Serio-Comic Lectures, Humbly Recommended to the Patronage of Dr s. Gall and Spurzheim. By a Friend to Common Sense (second edition, 1818). See also one of Robert Montgomery's notes to The Age Reviewed: A Satire: In two parts, second edition, revised and corrected (London: William Charlton Wright, 1828), p. 122: 'Gall and Spurzheim esteem themselves greater philosophers than Locke, Hartley, &c. &c. W h o shall set the bounds to human ingenuity? We may, without presumption, shortly expect, that flying will be fashionable. . . . "But this is preposterous"; - not a bit reader: it is not half so wonderful as Phrenology - the Bump Philosophy'. 5 BEM, X (August 1821 (part II)), pp. 7 3 - 8 1 . 6 Daniel's 'The Conversazione', 11. 121-6, in The Modern Dunciad: Virgil in London and Other Poems (London: William Pickering, 1835), p. 222. 7 Thomas Hood, Whims and Oddities, in Prose and Verse; with Forty Original Designs, second series (London: Charles Tilt, 1827), p. 83. 'Joseph' is Joseph Hume, devotee of Parliamentary debates on governmental expenditure (see 'Warren at Saint Stephen's' above).

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A LETTER TO

THE EDITOR OF WARRENIANA.

Johnson's Court. April 1. 1823.

SIR, In answer to your polite application for a song in praise of Warren, we beg leave to inclose the following choice eulogium. Before, however, we ventured to do so, we made enquiries, as our duty to church and state demanded, into the private and public character of the object of our praise. The result has been prodigiously gratifying. We hear that he is a staunch admirer of our all-accomplished ministry, holds the bench of bishops in orthodox veneration, and thinks the Morning Chronicle 1 an absurdity As a drawback, however, to these virtues, we regret to state, that he suffered his health to be drank at Lord Waithman's 2 late dinner party. To be sure, there are degrees in / moral obliquity, but if he had gone the extreme length of calling the Whigs patriots, we should assuredly have given him up. There was one man, we remember, who did so, - but he was hanged. The fact is, Sir, we are decided enemies to Whigism, and still more to humbug. Plain sailing is our motto; candour and openness the talismans of our success. We think, for instance, that England is more flourishing than ever, and that Alderman Wood 3 is decidedly not the author of Wood's

1 A Whig journal which was heartily despised by John Bull (and also by the Anti-Jacobin; see 'New Morality', 11. 328-33). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hazlitt considered it 'The paper we have long used to think the best, both for amusement and instruction, that issues from the daily press'. T h e Chronicle consistently attacked John Bull for its intrusions into private life. 2 Robert Waithman (1764-1833), quondam Radical M P and Lord Mayor of London (1823-4) 3 Matthew Wood (1768-1843), radical municipal politician and twice Lord Mayor of London.

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4

Algebra.1 "Non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius." 2 Still less, Sir, do we think, that Lord Waithman is fit (in the coachman's phrase) to handle the ribbands of government. God forbid, however, that we should dispute his right to handle them in his own shop. 3 These opinions have of late subjected us to a host of ridiculous charges, and, among others, to the malice of attacking "the sanctities of private life."4 We scout the calumny. We were never yet malicious; and as for attacking private character, it is what we especially eschew.5 We should / be broken-hearted if we thought we could do so. We really think we should. The plain fact is, Sir, that we have put our hook6 into the gills of the great leviathan of Whiggism, and the brute, being somewhat tickled, naturally spouts a vast quantity of his washy7 fluid upon us. Having thus laid down our principles, you may guess with what enthusiasm we praised a gentleman who thought in accordance with ourselves. Apollo seemed to inspire our pen, and on casting up our accounts with Parnassus, we found that the sum total of the whole,8 as Joseph Hume would say, was the following choice product, or production, or whatever other alias you may please to affix. If it renders any service to Warren, we shall be amply repaid; for, as we have said a hundred times, we would do any thing for so great and

1 The Elements of Algebra (1795) by James Wood (1760-1839), who at this time was Master of St John's College, Cambridge. 2 A pun on the Alderman's name: 'Mercury is not carved out of every kind of wood' (Apuleius). 3

Waithman owned a successful linen draper's shop on Fleet Street.

4

T h e Chronicle accused John Bull of being full of 'infamous detraction and . . . merciless inroads into private life'. J a m e s Scarlett argued that the paper contained 'libels not only couched in terms of insolence and contempt, but filled with insinuations of the most villainous character against the reputations of parties' (The Times, J u n e 23 1821). Scarlett was prosecuting the newspaper in a libel case involving the late queen's friend Lady Elizabeth Wrottesley It was found guilty. 5 Here Deacon captures the paper's self-justificatory tone; cf. for instance, the editorial to John Bull, No. 42, 1 October 1821. 6 A pun on the name of the John Bull's editor, the Tory satirist Theodore Hook (17881841). 7

Feeble, insipid.

8

See note to p. 143 above.

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF WARRENIANA

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good a man. He takes in our newspaper, this proves his taste; he despises "the bloody old Times," 1 this evinces his loyalty; he adores ministers, - ergo, he must be a patriot. Such being the case, we address to him the following song. His popularity it cannot well increase; for the man who, if we may believe report, is sitting / to Sir Thomas Lawrence 2 for his portrait, and to his neighbour Sievier3 for his bust, is already as famous as we can possibly make him; almost as much so, indeed, as Doctor Squintum 4 himself. We are, Mr. Editor, Your sincere well-wishers,

J-B-.

SONG. AIR. - "The tight little island." BY J.

B.

1. Come, gentles, attend, 'tis the voice of a friend, So up, let us make a bold stand now, And drink while we sing, huzza for the king, And Warren the pride of the Strand now; Huzza! for the pride of the Strand now, Success to the pride of the Strand now, We'll all to a man sing as loud as we can, Huzza for the pride of the Strand now /

1

See introductory note to 'Warren at Saint Stephen's' above. See note to p. 96 above. 3 Robert William Sievier (1794-1865), the sculptor, fashioned busts of many famous people. 4 The divine constantly referred to by the religiose bawd Mrs Cole in Samuel Foote's comedy The Minor (1760). John Bull churlishly labelled the Rev. Edward Irving, then at the zenith of his fame, the 'new Doctor Squintum' on account of a supposed eye defect. 2

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2. Caledonian Hume, and Westmoreland Brougham Are famous, if men would but heed 'em, And Mister Grey Bennett,1 so fond of his dennett, 2 Looks grey3 in the service of freedom; Oh! these are a talented band, Sir, A remarkably talented band, Sir, But shed a faint spark, like a cat in the dark, Compared with the sun of the Strand, Sir. 3. T'other day Doctor Gall, in the Free-mason's hall, Took a cast of our artizan's cranium, * And found that each bump stuck out like the stump Of an overgrown summer geranium; / So he drew up a treatise for Bumpus, t The great bibliopolist Bumpus, And a sovereign we'll stake, that his treatise will make A craniological rumpus. t The name of a retail bookseller in Holborn. J. B. * The craniological discoveries of those twin-stars, Doctors Gall and Spurzheim,4 who undertake, it seems, to detect our moral and intellectual qualities by some corresponding bone of the cerebellum, are likely to become a bone of contention among the scientific literati of the day. All who have virtuous bumps believe in the truth of their system, while those who have not, make no bones (probably from their cerebral deficiency) of opposing it. It appears, according to Doctor Gall's late lectures, that both the corporeal and intellectual harmony of our natures is occasioned by certain organs of the skull, which are tuned by the hand of fate. That if a man, for instance, be found full in the organ of "adhesiveness," it is fair to conclude, that destiny intends him for a Lord Chancellor, and that if he be deficient in "conscientiousness," he may calculate on success as a Whig. The organ of "size" indicates his fitness for an alderman, while that of "constructiveness," unusually developed in the skull of (continued over 1

Henry Grey Bennet (1777-1836), queenite Whig MP and penal reformer. 2 A fashionable two-wheeled carriage. 3 Punning on Charles Grey. See note to p. 101. 4 After meeting Spurzheim in September 1814, Byron confessed himself 'a little astonished' by the phrenologist's comment that 'every thing developed in & on this same skull of mine has its opposite in great force so that to believe him my good & evil are at perpetual war - pray heaven the last don't come off victorious'.

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4. Doctor Parr hath a wig horrific and big, As the spectre's in Milton of sin, Sir,1 Yet though full roundabout is his noddle without, 'Tis terribly vacant within, Sir, But Warren's is quite the reverse now, Only look for a proof at his verse now, / How his Pegasus stalks through Helicon's2 walks, As solemn as steeds at a hearse now. Mr. Warren, points to matters of mechanism or science. Innumerable, therefore, must be the people who are either hanged or transported from the mere size of their organs of "destructiveness," and "acquisitiveness." The accidents, however, such as murder, or theft, which result from these iniquitous hillocks, are not the fault of their owners, but are simply the result of destiny. Every thing, in short, is the work of fate. The discoveries of our chemists, and the verses of our minstrels, are nothing more than the necessary development of bumps run to seed. Mr. Wordsworth consequently deserves no praise for his poem of the Excursion, for the organ of "weight" being unusually prominent in his skull, was destined to show its effects in the production of a heavy quarto. The organ of "benevolence," on the same principle, prevents Mr. John Gait3 from punishing us with any more tragedies; "love of approbation" curtails the parliamentary orations of Mr. Horatio Twiss,4 and if the ancestors of Lord Byron, instead of developing the organ of "combativeness" in their country's cause, had possessed some more mechanical bump, their descendant might have inherited the same characteristics, and instead of being now a lord, might have been a cheese-monger. Considering, therefore, that all moral and intellectual qualities, whether good, bad, or indifferent, are the necessary results of a particular formation of the brain, we think it but right that a committee should be appointed to examine the skulls of the rising generation. That all who are full in the organ of "destructiveness" should be instantly put to death with as little inconvenience as possible to the sufferers, while those who are only distinguished for the size of their organs of "acquisitiveness," "secretiveness," or any less obnoxious bump, may be sent to expiate their embryo delinquencies at the tread-mill. Thus, crime would be crushed in the egg, and the proprietors of virtuous bumps would be allowed to develop their valuable deformities for the common benefit of themselves and the community. J. B. 1

Cf. the description of the birth of Sin in Paradise Lost, II. 749-60. Dr Parr's outsized and badly fitting wigs were the subject of much contemporary jocularity. Cf. the note on 'Buzz Prose' in the Anti-Jacobin s 'To the Author of the "Epistle to the Editors of the Anti-Jacobin" '. The 'Ettrick Shepherd' in the Noctes Ambrosianœ marks the death of 'The Man with the Wig' by asking 'Do ye recolleck my shooting his wig for a ptarmigan?'. In The Doctor, Southey writes of 'that awful wig which . . . accompanies [the] formidably obumbrated' Dr Parr. 2 Mount Helicon was sacred to the Muses. 3 John Gait (1779-1839), the Scottish novelist, produced a number of tragedies during the 1810s. 4 Horace Twiss MP (1787-1849).

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5. Old Castaly's fountain,1 high up on the mountain Of Pindus, lends choice inspiration, But then you must drink, or your readers will sink In suspended (awhile) animation A fig for a liquor so racking, Brain, bladder, and bowels attacking, A far better fount to turn to account, Is Warren's Elixir of Blacking. 6. They talk about Southey and Coleridge so mouthy,2 And verse Borough-mongering Crabbe, 3 Sir, But by Warren's side placed, their muses defaced, Look mere Cinderellas in drab, Sir: Other bards raise their wind but in fiction, Are wealthy as Jews but in diction, While Warren can raise the wind a l'Anglaise, Still better in fact than in fiction. / 7. Oh mighty magician! oh learned logician! Each minstrel to thee's but an ass now, E'en the verses of Byron seem formed of cast-iron, While thine are the essence of brass now; The image of Hyde Park Achilles,4 Who brass from the head to the heel is, Thy sole rival stands, though surely the Strand's Paragon beats Piccadilly's.

1

The fountain Castalia on Mount Parnassus endowed those who drank its waters with poetic inspiration. 2 Echoes Byron, Donjuán, 1.1.1636. 3

Crabbe's The Borough: A Poem in Twenty-Four Letters was published in 1810.

4

Richard Westmacott's statue of Achilles at Hyde Park Corner, in honour of Wellington, was unveiled in July 1822.

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SOJVG

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8. But halt! lads, 'tis time to finish our rhyme, For the jorum 1 is quite at a stand now, So pass it and sing, - huzza for the king, And Warren the pride of the Strand now: Huzza! too for administration, No matter who governs the nation, Like Bray's patent 2 vicar,3 we'll bray o'er our liquor, In laud of all administration.

1

A large drinking-bowl. Sanctioned by the monarch. 3 The tergiversatory cleric in the old song ('Whatsoever the King may do / Delighted the Vicar of Bray, sir'). 2

185

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Appendix. By W. G.) Here the 'editor' of Warreniana supposedly brings together those contributions to the great work whose authors 'delayed their contributions until there no longer remained a possibility of inserting them in the body of the work'. This device enables Deacon to include a number of shorter parodies with a comic running commentary by 'W. G'. The first, 'The List of Loves', echoes Thomas Moore's drinking song 'Hip, Hip, Hurra!'. This is the first of the glee's five boozy stanzas: Come, fill round a bumper, fill up to the brim, He who shrinks from a bumper I pledge not to him; 'Here's the girl that each loves, be her eye of what hue, Or lustre, it may, so her heart is but true'. Charge! (drinks) hip, hip, hurra, hurra!1

Deacon's parody, reflects what Blackwood's called 'the early licentiousness of Moore', 2 addressing the amatory content of Moore's highly successful early pseudonymous collection, The Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little Esq. ( 1801 ). 'Mr. Little gave much of his time to the study of the amatory writers' 3 declares Moore in his mockbiographical preface to the volume. However, even more of Little's time seems to have been spent in the study of the various ladies hymned in the collection: Bessy, Fanny, Julia and Rosa et al. Hence T M.'s libidinous verse, with its suggestive excisions and references to the 'girls I have kissed by the dozen'. The formal model of 'The List of Loves' is the Little poem 'The Catalogue': "Come, tell me," says Rosa, as kissing and kist, One day she reclin'd on my breast; "Come, tell me the number, repeat me the list Of the nymphs you have lov'd and carest." - 4

186

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Bessy, Fanny, Kate and Sophie are all catalogued in the parody's 'language of impassioned but apocryphal voluptuousness', Deacon's apt description of Moore's amatory poetry The second parody, 'The Apotheosis of Warren, a Pastoral Mask', is attributed to 'C— W—'. Ian Jack identifies C— W— as Charles Wells (1800-79) 5 and Wells' friendship with Keats supports his position. However, Wells' only work of substance before 1824 is the prose work Stories from Nature (1822) which bears no resemblance to 'The Apotheosis of Warren'. The fact that the parody 'savours strongly of the cockney school', is penned by one 'far gone' in devotion to Hunt, and mentions Keats suggests that Deacon has Cornelius Webb (c.l790-c.l850) in mind as the supposed author of the poem. Webb wrote the doggerel verses which Blackwood's pounced upon (and Deacon was an enormously attentive reader of Maga) and used as an epigraph to its 'Cockney School' series: ON THE COCKNEY SCHOOL OF POETRY.

No.I. Our talk shall be (a theme we never tire on) Of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, (Our England's Dante) - Wordsworth - HUNT, and KEATS,

The Muses' son of promise; and of what feats CORNELIUS WEBB.6

He yet may do.

Webb published his 1817 poem 'Fairy Revels' in his 1821 collection Summer; An Invocation to Sleep; Fairy Revels; and Songs and Sonnets. Her e Fancy shows him a 'swarded spot' where Oberon, Titania, Puck and sundry other 'fays' indulge in nocturnal festivity: In sooth, it was a curious spectacle, to see Their coming to that spot marked out to be The nightly stage of prankish revelry, A lone, deep dell, where none save their light feet Could tread, or ever trode.7

In less than elegant verse ('the bald, monkish crown/Of dandelion old'), Webb's fairy characters indulge in 'mad vagaries': calling on 'old Mab'; riding on 'harnessed yoke of mice' and guzzling an insect feast of epic proportions (featuring such delicacies as the 'round and 187

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 4

honeyed thighs of Hyblaen bees'). I would suggest that this poem informs Deacon's own faery 'contribution', where the 'cockney' bard falls asleep 'one prankish summer's eve'. He sees a vision of the dead body of the 'glorious genius' Warren. There follows a mournful procession, come to pay its last respects to the manufacturer, which is led by Oberon and Titania and features an enormous cast of pastoral characters, leavened with one or two ludicrously inappropriate processionists. The mask, the last word in 'Cockney' ethereal bucolicism, ends in a ceremonial address by Queen Mab. Whilst the fairy dignitaries are found in Webb's poem, the parade itself evokes the various processions in Leigh Hunt's 1815 mask, The Descent of Liberty. Hunt's ethereal parades feature several dignitaries - Ariel, Caliban, Comus, Spenser, Theocritus - who appear in Deacon's mask. Furthermore, 'The Apotheosis of Warren', like The Descent of Liberty, features a motley collection of shepherds, shepherdesses and geniuses. To a certain extent, here Deacon parodies the poetical organ-grinder rather than his monkey. After this, demonstrating once again Deacon's extraordinary imitative versatility, comes 'For Warren's Blacking, an Oration in one part' by 'E. I.', a parody of the Rev. Edward Irving's For the Oracles of God, Four Orations. ForJudgment to Come, An Argument, in Nine Parts (1823). Irving (1792-1834) was an Evangelical Scottish divine who achieved great, if brief, celebrity in London during the early 1820s before his contentious advocacy of prophecy, speaking in tongues and other 'gifts of the spirit' led to his demise. Procter's description encapsulates his remarkable rise to fame: 'Edward Irving, who issued, like a sudden light, from the obscure little town of Annan, in Scotland, acquired, in the year 1822, a wide reputation in London'. 8 Irving was a friend of Coleridge (though the poet disapproved strongly of the 'exhibitions of the spirit', describing them as 'disgraceful breaches of decorum') 9 and of Lamb, who described him as 'one of the best and truest men whom it has been my good fortune to meet in life'.10 He was a remarkable, if highly mannered, orator and the preaching of 'the present Idol of the World of Fashion, the Revd. Mr Irving, the super-Ciceronian, ultraDemosthenic Pulpiteer of the Scotch Chapel in Cross Street, Hatton Garden' 11 became one of the fashionable wonders of the early 1820s. 188

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Blackwood's captures the excitement well: 'The popular show of the day is the preacher of the Caledonian Chapel, in Hatton Garden. This obscure spot is now crowded by all the sight-hunters of London'. 12 However, even his close friend Thomas Carlyle conceded that 'a certain inflation or spiritual bombast' was sometimes evident in Irving's manner. 13 It is this bombasticism which is captured in the parody's soaring fustian and highly self-regarding tone. Deacon's critical position is close to Blackwood's which, in its review of the Orations, labelled Irving 'one of the most absurdly self-conceited persons of our time': 14 'he substitutes pompous verbiage for rational discourse, and is at once extravagant and common-place, rude and affected . . . and theatrical in language, gesture and delivery'.15 The parody, like Irving's rhetoric, is peppered with catch-penny references to contemporary poets and artists and jeremiads on the iniquitous state of contemporary society.16 For Irving, only Wordsworth stands apart from the immoralities of the age (exemplified by the reprobate Byron). Nonetheless, the poet's upright moral and religious stand is greeted by mockery and abuse. In Deacon's hands, this becomes a defence of Warren. Only he is exempted from the bromides, as one 'who hath eschewed the cud of iniquity like a cow'. However, in this 'stiffnecked shameless generation', even Warren, with his 'divers tuns of precious jet black liquid', puffed in 'pure and poetic advertisements', has been jeered and scorned by 'the invidious soul of this degraded age'. The appendix concludes with an imitation of that founding document of Romantic period parody, the Anti-Jacobin's 'The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-grinder'. Even Foreign Secretary Canning, 'amid the combined toils of the cabinet and the gout, can afford time and inclination to befriend' Warren's blacking, offering a description of a meeting between a 'friend of science' and one of Warren's apprentices. Unlike the friend of humanity, he is only too pleased to offer his new acquaintance sixpence and the fragmentary poem ends in a transport of enthusiasm for Warren's blacking: Sing then, oh sing his praises; and may London, Hampstead, and Highgate, echo back the ditty, While every night-wind whistles to the tune of "Buy Warren's Blacking".

189

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NOTES 1 The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore, ed. A. D. Godley (London: Oxford University Press, 1910), p. 306. 2 BEM, 11 (October 1817), p. 4 1 . 3 The Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little Esq. (London: J. and T. Carpenter, 1801), p. v. 4 I b i d , p. 126. 5 Jack, op. cit., p. 177. 6 BEM, II (October 1817), p. 38. 7 'Fairy Revels' 58-62; in Summer; An Invocation to Sleep; Fairy Revels; and Songs and Sonnets (London: C. and J. Oilier, 1821), p. 29. 8 Bryan Waller Procter, Charles Lamb: A Memoir (London: Edward Moxon, 1866), p. 187. 9 Coleridge, Table Talk, ed. Carl Woodring, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), vol. II, p. 252. 10 Procter, Charles Lamb, p. 188. 11 Coleridge's description; Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956-71), vol. V (1971), p. 280. 12 BEM, X I V (August 1823), p. 192. 13 Thomas Carlyle, Reminiscences, ed. Charles Eliot Norton (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1972), p. 195. 14 BEM, X I V (August 1823), p. 147. 15 I b i d , p. 192. 16 In Blackwood's review of the Orations, Irving's rhetoric is summed up in an echo of Pope: 'whatever is, is wrong' (BEM, X I V (August 1823), p. 149).

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APPENDIX. BY

W. G.

While this volume was yet in the progress of publication, the interest that it excited was unprecedented. The first literary characters of England expressed the most affectionate anxiety for its success. Contribution followed contribution, hint succeeded to hint, and criticism to criticism, till enthusiasm, quickened beyond its wonted pace, made sanguine strides towards perfection. But there are certain boundaries affixed to human intellect, and Warreniana was still incomplete. A few of the great authors, to whom application had been made, delayed their contributions until there no longer remained a possibility of inserting them in the body of the work. In addition to this, their authenticity in some parts appeared questionable and as the editor had little or no time left for enquiries, / he determined to introduce those passages only which bore the stamp of genuineness. The task of selection, however, was more difficult than he had imagined. The indisputably legitimate were so mixed up with the probably apochryphal paragraphs, that analysis became a matter of as much nicety as the resolution of chemical compounds. Nevertheless he persisted in his task, which, having at last brought to a close, he has here ventured to arrange in one general appendix, in order that by so doing he may stop up every "loop hole" through which criticism could possibly intrude itself.

The first contribution that suggests itself is the following delectable ditty. It reached the editor but four days since, when the last sheet of the "Battle of Brentford Green" had been worked off, and the "Notes" were already in the compositor's hands. From the nature of the subject, he could have little doubt respecting its legitimate owner, were not the sparkling scintillations of the verse / somewhat unusually bedimmed. 191

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Such, however, as the poem is, he offers it to the notice of criticism, and need scarcely add, that the small irrelevant portions here presented to the public, stand precisely the same as in the original MS.

THE LIST OF LOVES. BY

T. M.

List, list, Oh list!

HAMLET.l

1. fill high the bowl, 'tis in vain to repine That the sun of life's summer is o'er, 'Mid the autumn of age this Elixir* of mine Shall each moment of freshness restore; / E'en now its bright glow by acquaintance improved, Suns o'er each past extacy frozen, Till fancy recalls the few friends I have loved, And the girls I have kissed by the dozen. COME,

2. By the dozen, oh monstrous mistake of the press, For dozen read hundreds, beginning With Fanny of Timmol, 2 (41) the sylph whose caress * Supposed to have been the identical Elixir with which Saint Leon preserved his immortality. Vide Travels of Saint Leon, by Godwin. 3 T. M. 1

Hamlet, I. v. 22

2

T h e Little poems attracted much condemnation of, to use The Champion's phrase, their 'naked and deformed sensuality'. 'Fanny of Timmol. A Mail-Coach Adventure' was probably the most notorious poem in the volume. T h e second stanza was often cited by disapproving critics as evidence of Moore's salaciousness: For your dear little lips, to their destiny true, Seem'd to know they were born for the use of another; And to put me in mind of what I ought to do, Were eternally biting and kissing each other! 3

See note to p. 99 above.

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APPENDIX

First set my weak spirit a sinning: I met her by night in the Liverpool stage, Ere the stage of my youth was resigned, Ah Fan! thy sole guard in that passionate age, Was the guard on the dickey1 behind. 3.

4. Pretty Sophy stood next on the lists of my love, Till I found (but it might not be so) That her tenderest transports were tendered above,2 While mine were all centered below:3 / So I left her on Midsummer eve with a kiss, For I ne'er could from kissing refrain, But honestly mean, when we next meet in bliss, To give her the kiss back again. 5. 4 Oh, Kate was then all that a lover could seek, With an eye whose least spark full of soul Would madden a dozen young sparks in a week, Though, like Parry,5they lived at the Pole; In the fullness of bliss she would whisper so coy, "We were born, love, to bill6 and to coo." Oh Kitty, I ne'er paid a bill with such joy, As I paid my addresses to you. ^«

1 2 3 4 5 6

î|e

îfc

:jc

H«

The seat at the back of a coach. Susan in 'The Catalogue' is 'piously given'. Echoes 'The Catalogue', 11. 35-40. This stanza parodies 'The Catalogue', 11. 9-16. Rear Admiral Sir William Parry (1790-1855), Arctic explorer. Cf.'The Kiss', 1. 1.

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*

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The poet, or more properly speaking, his interpolator,1 then proceeds to detail his amours with one "Bessy,"2 whom he calls, in an affectionate parenthesis, "bewitchingly simple."3 He describes her as a native of Erin's "green isle,"4 and discusses the merits of her "delicate slim feet,"5 in language of impassioned but apocryphal voluptuousness. It seems that her graceful dancing first captivated / his fancy, an exercise to which the splendor resulting from the use of Warren's blacking, (which she applied profusely to her pumps), lent additional elegance. "Her feet," quoth our animated minstrel, "flashed fire as she waltzed, and her dear little eyes shone reflected in their sable mirror like the westering sun-beams on the ocean." He then addresses himself to Warren, whose blacking he panegyrises as the chief object of Miss Elizabeth's attraction. As this part, however, is, in the editor's opinion, heterodox, he rejects it for the closing stanza, which bears the undoubted impress of orthodoxy. The poet, it must be premised, has been specially recommending Warren's blacking, and thus winds up his apostrophe. 8. But away with regret - while the suns of my youth Shall gild the grey eve of my age, While memory shall borrow the pencil of truth To illumine life's desolate page; While my heart, like some moon-silvered abbey, shall stand, All ruined though decked in a smile; / I'll drink to O'Warren the lord of the Strand, And the pride of the Emerald Isle.

1

A reference to Moore's presentation of himself as *T. M ' , editor of Little's Works.

2

'Little' addresses two poems to 'Bessy': 'Sweetest love! I'll not forget thee' and 'Fly from the world, oh! Bessy to me'. 3

From 'Oh! nothing in life can sadden us', 1. 31 ('Fill for Chloe! - bewitchingly simple').

4

Cf. 'Remember the Time. T h e Castilian Maid', 11. 9-10.

5

Echoes The Fudge Family in Paris ( 1818), V 1. 5 1 .

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The next contribution savors strongly of the cockney school, being written by a young gentleman who seems far gone in a confirmed admiration of Leigh Hunt. It is intitled "The Apotheosis of Warren, a Pastoral Mask;" and is, of course, well manured with the requisite modicum of daffodils, eglantines, and cherubs. Even the "great Boreas" himself is pressed into the service (a great bore he is, by the bye), and trained to blow over the Regent's Canal 1 with very pretty effect. The bard commences his pastoral by supposing himself lying "one prankish2 summer's eve" in a cart-rut at the foot of Primrose Hill. While thus prostrated, he suddenly falls asleep; and is forthwith visited by some half dozen shepherds and shepherdesses, whom he described as being busied in toying with "the perked up hay-cocks" of Fairy-land. On a sudden the scene changes to "the Temple of Art and Science" on Mount Parnassus, where a "glorious / genius" is discovered lying dead. This glorious genius is no other than Warren, over whose corpse a set of sylphs are strewing flowers, consisting, for the most part, of the following poetic plants: Cowslips, buttercups, and roses, Thyme with dulcet dew-drops 3 wet, Sage and onions, pinks and posies, Cauliflower and mignionet. While this is going forward, Oberon, king of the fairies, enters, and desires the pastoral worthies to pay their last respects to the defunct and gifted manufacturer. No sooner said than done; the monarch waves his gossamer spear, and instantly a select abundance of cherubs walk two by two, like young ladies in a Sloane Street boarding school, around the body First come Oberon and Titania hand in hand, and then the following peculiarly appropriate individuals, all of whom, it must be observed, have got pocket-handkerchiefs, "woven of aspen leaves,"4 applied to their eyes. - Mab and Melibaeus;5 Pease-blossom6 and

1

See introductory note to 'A Nursery O d e ' above. 4

Cf

2

Echoes Webb, 'Fairy Revels', 1. 60.

5

A

3

Cf. Webb, 'Fairy Revels', 1.201.

6

A fairy in A

195

Keats, Endymion, I. 1. 804. character in Virgil's Eclogues. Midsummer Night's Dream.

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Theocritus; 1 / Pan, Puck, and Priapus; Vertumnus,2 Veshnoo,3 and Virgil; Ruth, Boaz,4 and Bottom; Gessner5 and Metastasio;6 Adonis and Caliban; Spenser and Proserpine;7 Flora, 8 Faunus, and a Glendoveer9 in corduroy 10 shorts; Amaryllis,11 Arethusa, 12 and Ambrose Phillips;13 Chloe, 14 Comus, and Corydon; 15 Florizel, Perdita,16 a warlock, two kelpies17 and a bogle;18 Bion and Moschus;19 Ariel in top-boots; Endymion and John Keats; Actaeon20 and a wood nymph in short petticoats; ^Enone21 and Leigh Hunt, (this last in yellow breeches); Hesiod,22 James Hogg, Charles Lamb, and the Faithful Shepherdess; and lastly, the poet himself, with an ass's head

1 T h e r e are three translations from Theocritus in Hunt's Foliage and he is a processionist in The Descent of Liberty. 2

Deity of the spring in R o m a n mythology. Cf. Endymion, II. 1. 445.

3

Vishnu.

4

Ruth caught Boaz's eye when she was toiling in a corn-field.

5 Salomon Gessner (1730-88), Swiss writer whose pastorals were admired by Byron, Scott and Wordsworth. 6

Italian pastoral poet and librettist.

7

T h e queen of the underworld. Cf. Endymion, 1.1. 944.

8

T h e R o m a n goddess of flowers.

9

A spiritual being in Southey's Curse of Kehama.

10 Cf. Hunt's stage direction to The Descent of Liberty, III. 1. 553: 'Enter three rustic figures . . . the first a manly swain in corderoy'. 1]

A shepherdess in Ovid, Theocritus and Virgil.

12

A Greek nymph, the subject of Shelley's Arethusa'.

13 Ambrose Philips (c. 1675-1749), English poet and author of Pastorals (1709). Philips was the butt of much Popean satire. 14

I.e. Demeter the corn-goddess.

15

A shepherd in Theocritus and Virgil.

16 In The Winter's Tale, Florizel, Prince of Bohemia marries the rustic Perdita. George IV, when Prince of Wales, used the name 'Florizel' in his correspondence with his mistress Mary Robinson, 'Perdita', who had come to his attention playing the role. 17

In Scots, a water-demon.

18

In Scots, a hideous phantom or ghost.

19

Classical Greek pastoral poets. T h e r e are four verse translations from Bion and Moschus in Hunt's Foliage. 20

A huntsman who was killed for inadvertently viewing Artemis naked.

21

A nymph of M o u n t Ida who was the spurned lover of Paris.

22

T h e early Greek pastoral poet.

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for a hat, which he says was given him by Oberon, "the jealous and jaunty 1 fay-king." When this procession is concluded, Mab, "she of the witching tongue," is called on for a speech, which, as it is a long one, the editor forbears to insert. It consists wholly of compliments to Warren, whose blacking is characterised as the light of the modern world, as that light by which mortals pick their way through the "swaling2 snares of life," as an Irishman picks his way through the "flowerless bog of Allan." At this period, the / bard awakes, but finding (naturally enough) his slumbers in the cart-rut have given him a rheumatism, he goes home with the resolution to beguile its pain by an account of what "happ'd him in slumber." As a specimen of his poetry, the editor contents himself with the above brief extract, partly from the spurious, and partly from the mediocre character of the rest. He may observe, however, that the whole is the production of Mr. C— W—, whose mind, though somewhat deteriorated by the maudlin affectations of the cockney school, is yet not devoid of fancy.

The next contribution is from the pen of the reverend orator of H— G—, and is rather quaintly intituled, "For Warren's Blacking, an Oration in one part." In it Mr. I— observes, that by reason of his time being so fully taken up with the cure of souls, he is unable to do that full-length justice to Warren that his genius requires, and has therefore been obliged to content himself with an abridged, or miniature contribution. This contribution, / it seems, is intended "to be after the manner of the ancient oration, the best vehicle," adds Mr. I—, "for addressing the minds of man that the world hath seen,"3 and is fashioned into a letter to the editor, (in answer to one that he wrote respecting an article of Warreniana) which is thus headed.

1 Cf. The Story of Rimini, I. 1. 212. The word 'jauntiness' is often linked by satirists to 'Cockneys'; Blackwood's called it Hunt's 'own dear word'. 2 See note to p. 48 above. 3 Irving, Oracles, p.ix

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Hatton Garden, April 1st, 1823. My honored Friend,l The lusts of the masters of this thoughtless godless generation (like generation like masters) whose vile and filthy speculations,2 engendered in the limbo of vanity, are hatched by the suns of sin upon the quicksands of this ball of earth, engross the leisure that I had set apart for the consideration of thine artless appliance. Much it dispiriteth me to think of thy discomfiture, but the flush and flashy spirit of the age claimeth exclusive attention, and I thank heaven that hath ordained me by signs unequivocal to sit in judgment upon it. Of a verity, my mind likeneth it to a huge temple erected in honour of iniquity, and the sons of men to the hardened brick-bats wherewith it is built up. For, behold, they are given to sordid and slavish sensualities, / and aye continue reckless of the hole that mammon daily puncheth in their souls, as though it were but a hole in their nether garments. I can testify, - I can testify that they are crusted all over with leprous iniquities, that they feed on virginity3 as though (oh shocking!) it were a mutton chop, and no more heed the voice of wisdom that crieth in Hatton Garden, than they heed the voice of the Israelite who crieth "old cloaths" in the street. Men and brethren! is this always to continue, or is it to have an end? If, oblivious of your spiritual interests, ye resolve to brave it out, then look well to yourselves, for even now I behold ye bound, one and all, to the ocean of darkness, the steam-boat of sin awaiteth to carry ye across, the wind sits fair for Tophet, and the pilot, Death, stands sniggering for very joy upon the deck. But yet amid the sins and the snares and the sneers of this stiffnecked shameless generation, there is one man 4 who hath eschewed 1

Cf. Oracles, p. xi.

2

Echoes Oracles, p. 496.

3 ' O h these topers, these gamesters, these idle revellers, these hardened deathdespisers! they are a nation's disgrace, a nation's downfall. They devour the seed of virtue in the land; they feed on virginity, and modesty, and truth' (Oracles, p. 529). 4 Cf. Irving on Wordsworth: 'There is one m a n in these realms who hath addressed himself to such a godlike life, and dwelt alone amidst the grand and lovely scenes of nature' {Oracles, p. 504).

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the cud of iniquity like a cow, and, addressing himself to a godlike life of science, hath dwelt alone amid the / crowded chaos of the Strand, like some bashful blossom in the wilderness. And he hath been rewarded 1 with many new scientific discoveries, for behold he hath made, in the stillness of his retreat, divers tuns of precious jet black liquid, the which he hath put forth in comely stone bottles. But mark the invidious soul of this degraded age!2 They have jeered and backbitten and insulted his pure and poetic advertisements. All for what? For daring to make them simple and scientific in expression, and grafting thereon sweet and salutary commendations of his blacking. Had he sent his advertisements forth among courts and palaces, with portraitures by Westall3 or Woolnoth 4 affixed thereto, his musings had been more welcome,5 but because the man hath valued modesty and common household truth, therefore is he designated a quack. It is not for me (albeit a devout admirer), to attempt any first-rate advocation of his cause, but thus much I may be permitted to add, that before the fame of the man Warren shall expire, the "heartless Childe" 6 shall take unto himself the editorship of the Evangelical Magazine; his staves forgotten and forgiven of all, shall be ingulphed in / the aestuary of oblivion, and mine own immortal orations be sent to keep them company on the voyage. I could add divers pleasant things touching these last, which I dedicate, my G—, to you, but that the occupations of life are so many, and the first of April so ominous. Wherefore, in much haste, 1 'And he hath been rewarded with many new cogitations of nature and of nature's God; and he hath heard, in the stillness of his retreat, many new voices of his conscious spirit' (Oracles, p. 504). 2 'But mark the Epicurean soul of this degraded age! . . . they have spit on him; they have grossly abused him . . . All for what? For making Nature and his own bosom his h o m e ' (Oracles, p. 504). 3 Richard Westall (1765-1836), book illustrator and portrait-painter. Blackwood's commented in August 1823 that Irving 'furnishes gossip to the audience by rambling allusions to the poets, artists, and public m e n of the day'. 4

T h o m a s Woolnoth (1785—c. 1827), portrait-painter and printmaker.

5

' H a d he sent his Cottage Wanderer forth upon an excursion amongst courts and palaces . . . his musings would have been more welcome' (Orations, p. 504-5). 6

Byron (Oracles, p. 505).

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I am, My honored friend, Yours, in the bonds of fraternity,1 E— I— P. S. I have just room enough left in this sheet of paper to request that you will look well to yourself, and have mercy upon your own soul.

The following and last contribution is from the pen of the accomplished author of the "Knife Grinder," a parody which made its appearance some years since in the Anti-Jacobin. The metre, like its prototype, is sapphic, and consists of an imaginary / dialogue between a friend of science, and an apprentice of our illustrious manufacturer. The conversation is supposed to take place in the great hall of the Society of Arts at the Adelphi, by the philosopher's requesting to know the nature of a particular patent which the apprentice holds in his hand. On being told that it was for a new discovery in blacking, he enters into a minute catechism respecting its manufacturer, which induces a panegyric upon Warren, in the course of which his menial incidentally exclaims, addressing himself to the friend of science: We shall be glad to have your honor's custom, Sixpence per pot we charges for our best jet Blacking, but if you give us back the pot, we Makes an allowance. This touching appeal is naturally successful with the philosopher, who proffers his immediate patronage. Then follows a glorious, but ungrammatical burst of enthusiasm from the apprentice which is thus effectively wound up:

* Vide Preface to my Orations. 2 1

Echoes Oracles, p. xii.

2

'I have . . . nothing to beseech of men, but that they would look to themselves, and have mercy upon their own souls' (Oracles, p. x).

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Sing then, oh sing his praises; and may London, Hampstead, and Highgate echo back the ditty, While every night-wind whistles to the tune of "Buy Warren's Blacking." This "Sapphic dialogue" is, as the reader will not fail to remark, a mere skeleton, like the sermons of Mr. Simeon. l It will serve, however, to show the interest that is excited by "Warreniana," when even our first statesman, amid the combined toils of the cabinet and the gout, can afford time and inclination to befriend it. The editor has purposely omitted some parts, from the reasons stated at the commencement of his appendix, thinking it far better to be scanty but select, than superabundant but spurious in his contributions. He retires, however, from the field, to use the language of the Great Unknown, (on a far less important occasion,) conscious that there remains behind, not only a large harvest, but labourers capable of gathering it into the granary of "WARRENIANA."

1 Charles Simeon (1759-1836) Cambridge divine, published Horœ Homileticœ; or discourses digested into one continued series, and forming a commentary upon every book of the Old and Mew Testaments (1819-20), a collection of outline sermons in eleven volumes.

201

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Notes. By W. G)

Though W. G.'s 'Introduction' declares a truce with his political enemies, his 'Notes' have no such inhibitions, revealing many of Gifford's Tory prejudices in praising the divine right of kings and attacking eminent Whigs (Brougham and Parr), heterodox divines (Edward Irving), dangerous poetical innovators (Coleridge) and 'cockney' poets (Procter). The Quarterly's hobby horses are trotted out in attacks on the likes of Cobbett and Hazlitt, and Gifford's prejudices aired in his description of the American Washington Irving as a 'barbarian'. Deacon's comic 'Notes' ably parody Gifford's scholarly tone, offering a truly Giffordian mix of pedantry leavened with personal vitriol. In particular, the parody mimics the ill-tempered footnotes which furnish Gifford's various textual editions of English dramatists, notably his 1816 The Works of Ben Jonson . . . with Notes Critical and Explanatory (there are several clear echoes in Deacon's work of the scholarly apparatus to this edition). Gifford's notes attack the 'folly', 'malignity' and ignorance' of previous commentators, who are little more than 'obscure and hackney scribbler [s]'. Hence the parodie notes' references to W. G.'s 'wretched' rivals as 'blunderers' full of 'drivelling malignity'. Deacon echoes Gifford's splenetic and contemptuous attacks on the flaws of rival scholars and his forthright attacks on Bardolators who dare to speak evil of Jonson (W. G. fulminates against the same cast of antiquarian villains, most notably Chalmers, Malone and Shiells, traduced by Gifford). The ad hominem savagery of Gifford's satirical poetry is often evident in his editorial manner and Deacon's critical perspective here is similar to that of Blackwood's:

202

INTRODUCTORY NOTE M r Gifford is the most acute, learned, and judicious, of all the Commentators or Editors of our dramatic literature. But the temper of his mind is scornful and intolerant. He often treats the most venial errors - the slightest mistakes - the very semblance of ignorance in his predecessors, with unmitigatable ferocity 1

These sentiments resound in the parodie Gifford, who foams at the mouth with maledictions on his drivelling predecessors. Deacon also adds some fine comic moments of misplaced erudition such as the discussion of the 'origin of night-caps'. A particular highlight is the ornate display of specious scholarship which provides elaborate 'proof that the author of Waverley is none other than Sir William Curtis. NOTE 1 BEM, II (February 1818), p. 497.

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NOTES. BY

W. G.

(1) I was told by a Hottentot of his having been unfortunate in love. - Page 23.

The gentleman who volunteered this information appears, like other barbarians, to have been more poetical in his prose than the respect due to veracity would warrant. The whole circumstances of the amour I have discovered, after a long and laborious search, to be purely fictitious. What opinion, then, must such a brazen calumniator have formed of the capacity of his readers? But he was right. - For the personal description of "Warren," vide "Roscoe" in the Sketch Book, vol. i.l (2) Stokes indecent. - Page 27.

I object to the use of the word indecent in its present tortured acceptation of immorality. Ben Jonson, Massinger, and indeed most of our old dramatists, apply it in contra-distinction to the word ornament. Now it was without doubt inelegant in Stokes to sit beside Elizabeth Foy with his knee-strings laxatively pendulous, but by no means indecent, and though I venture not an apology for his conduct as ungraceful, I altogether dismiss it as indecent. For indecent, then, read (meo periculo)2 inelegant. / (3) My stars! how we improve. - Page 28.

There is something abhorrent to my mind in this profane and familiar use of the word "stars." To connect the crude improvements of mortality with the all-perfect works of the divine nature, is in itself defective as a simile; but to call upon the constellations to attest that improvement is a blasphemy so utterly unprincipled, that my mind 1

See introductory note to 'Warren' above.

2

At my own risk.

204

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staggers in an abortive attempt to express its adequate reprehension. The devout reader is referred to my note 1 on "my stars," in Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, Act 1. scene i. - For the catalogue of mountains, vide "Johanna" in W—'s poems. (4) 70m and Jerry. - Page 38.

This passage alludes, I presume, to a dramatic non-descript of the same name, which was performed for two successive seasons to the crowded (of course) and enlightened audiences of the Adelphi.2 I merely mention the thing as a curious specimen of the most singular and superlative stupidity, that the thrice-sodden brains of a hireling scribbler ever yet inflicted on the patience of the public. (5) Odzooks, Papa, Pm dying. - Page 48.

I have been long puzzled to ascertain the primitive meaning of this anomalous exclamation "odzooks." Tooke (vide Div Purl.)3 supposes it to have been a monkish epithet of wonder. Todd 4 takes fire at this "random," so he terms it, conjecture; and the wretched Malone, 5 in that farrago of drivelling malignity, the Commentary on Shakspeare, dismisses it with his usual felicitous / flippancy. But Todd and Tooke et vitulâ tu dignus et hic 6 - are alike mistaken in their opinions, for the phrase is simply interjectional, and as such was much used by the wetnurses of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. 1 'Not to defraud Jonson of his due praise, however, it is proper to observe, that in this, as in the preceding play, he has omitted or softened many of the profane ejaculations which deformed the first copies. To shock or nauseate the reader, by bringing back what the author, upon better consideration, flung out of his text, though unfortunately not without example, is yet a species of gratuitous mischief, for which simple stupidity scarcely forms an adequate excuse.' 2 A hugely successful burletta, Tom and Jerry; or, Life in London, adapted from Pierce Egan's original book by W. T. Moncrieff, ran at the Adelphi Theatre in the Strand for ninety-three successive performances from 26 November 1821. 3 The Diversions of Purley (1786-1805) by the radical and philologist J o h n H o m e Tooke (1736-1812). 4 Henry J o h n Todd (1763-1845), textual editor and lexicographer, produced an expanded version of Johnson's Dictionary in 1818. 5 E d m u n d Malone (1741-1812), Shakespearean editor, called Jonson an 'envious detractor' of Shakespeare. 6

'Both you and he are worthy of the heifer' (Virgil, Eclogues, III).

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VOLUME 4

(6) With sugar plums offull size, And lollipops and bull's-eyes. - Page 49. T h e ever active kindness of Mr. D'Israeli has succeeded in furnishing me with the loan of a lollipop; similar to the one mentioned in the text. It is oval in person, and from the saccharine lubricity of its flavor seems peculiarly adapted to the palate of a stripling. T h e poet has therefore happily associated it with the POCÛ7UÇ or Bull's eye of sweet and succulent notoriety. M y own opinion, which I conjecture to be right, from the simple circumstance of its differing from Mr. Malone's, is, that the lollipop was a species of stick liquorish, in which sense I find it respectfully mentioned by the authors of "Eastward H o e " and the "Merry Devil of E d m o n t o n . " (7) Apollo followed arter. - Page 50. T h e word arter or a'ter, as it is sometimes syncopated with a broad inflection of the first syllable, I find to be the Doric 1 dialect of Cockaigne; a dialect in frequent use a m o n g those enlightened members of society, the washerwomen. 2 In pronunciation it claims analogy with the broad 'ãpéxãv á7iô '7iãaãv 3 of Pindar. N.B. Since the above note was sent to the press, I accidently discovered, through the kindness of Mr. Farley, 4 the valuable M S . of an obsolete pantomime, the production / of one Shiels, a Scotchman, 5 in which I find the phrase "what are you at, what are you arter?" T h e expression, therefore, had an evident theatrical origin, and 1 a m proud

1

Broad. See note to p. 106.

2

Tory parodists and satirists made endless sport of Hunt's essay ' O n Washerwomen'.

3

'[Fjlower from all virtue' (Pindar, Olympian Ode, I. 1. 13)

4

See note to p. 15 above.

5 Robert Shiells (d. 1753), who compiled much of Theophilus Cibber's The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Lreland (1753), attributes the following description of Jonson to William D r u m m o n d : 'Surly, ill-natured, proud and disagreeable, as Shakspeare with ten times his merit was gentle, good-natured, easy and amiable'. In a note to his 'Biographical Memoir' of Jonson, Gilford writes 'not one syllable of this quotation is to be found in any part of D r u m m o n d . . . It is the fabrication of one Shiels, a S c o t c h m a n , . . . who, not finding his countryman's character of Jonson quite to his taste, interpolated, with kindred rancour, the abusive paragraph in question.'

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to find my opinion backed by the authority of Mr. George Soane/a dramatist of considerable ability. (8) Herfather dared to whip in, A monstrous earthen pip-kin. - Page 50.

The Poet is here mistaken, it was not a pip-kin that the old gentleman was stewed in, but a brass kettle, which, as Medea was a powerful enchantress, she probably manufactured from the face of her insolent and aspiring lover. Moreover, it was not ^Eson that was thus barbarously parboiled, but Pelias, and that by his own daughters. Assuredly cool impudence could go no further than this. (9) So now good night, my Johnny, Putyour night-cap on ye. - Page 5 1 .

The origin of night-caps is lost in the remoteness of antiquity. The classic writers of Greece and Rome are silent on this important topic, unless, indeed, the crowns of laurel with which their authors, sometimes even the humblest in intellect, were honored, may be considered as a metaphorical symbol. Certain it is, that as deep and efficient slumbers have been caused by the ancient fillet2 as the modern night cap. Wigs, too, are not wholly without blame, for a flowery pomp of frizz is frequently found to conceal an equal pomp of verbiage - Par nobile fratrum.3 - 1 have never ceased to lament that the messenger who drew Priam's curtains in the dead of night4 / and awoke him from his "curtained sleep,"5 left us no record of the old gentleman's head dress. The subject, at such a crisis, would have been deeply interesting.

1

George Soane (1790-1860), dramatist. Head-band. 3 'A noble pair of brothers' (Horace, Satires, II, iii. 1. 243). The italics stress the pun on, once again, Dr Parr's wig. 4 2 Henry IV,l.i. 72. 5 Macbeth, II. i. 51. 2

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(10) A digression on thefamily of Warren, &c. -Page 54.

A term used by Gibbon to distinguish an episode of his history. Mr. C— M—, the author of this digression, appears to have imbibed no inconsiderable share of the great Classic's vigor and splendid march of diction - Arcades ambo. - ] (11) For two straight liner can ne'er inclose a space. - Page 74.

An axiom in Euclid. As Cambridge is a mathematical university, this poetic allusion to its pursuits was received with much applause in the senate house. It evinces besides great alphabetical research. (12) Like Amphitrite the great Neptune's daughter- Page 83.

Amphitrite was the wife, not the daughter of Neptune but this mistake of course from the author of that elaborate absurdity "The Deluge"2 Majora Canamus. 3 (13) But he replied, no, blast me, if I woo 11. - Page 88.

Wooll, the JEOÜC4 dialect for will. (14) And thus she cried, will this here soul decay. - Page 89.

The phrase "here" possesses great expletive pathos, and appears synonimous with the "sui ipsius"5 of the most / approved Latin writers. In circumstances of urgent distress, I know no expression that appeals more simply yet touchingly to the heart, and the reader who can unmoved peruse the similar lament of the dying robber in Don Juan, "Oh, Jack! I'm floored by that ere bloody Frenchman," must be more or less than man. The language is truly Virgilian.

1

'Arcadians both' (Virgil, Eclogues, VII. 1. 4). Procter's The Flood of Thessaly. 3 'Let us sing of loftier things'. These words end Gifford's autobiographical sketch. 4 iEolic was a dialect of ancient Greek. Here it is applied to another vernacular, 'Greekish Cockney'. 5 An emphatic epithet. 2

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(15) Our beloved O'Doherty1 on the other. - Page 95.

This gentleman, together with Doctor Scott the Odontist, Mr. Tims, the Reverend Christopher North, and others mentioned in the same article, are contributors (fictitious or not) to that amusing Miscellany, Blackwood's Magazine. ( 16) We have every reason to believe that Sir William Curtis2 is the author of the Scotch novels. - Page 100.

I derive a proud satisfaction from being able to coincide with the conjectures of the Reverend Mr. North on this important literary topic. My reasons for such agreement, which have long engaged my earnest and undivided attention, I shall beg leave to class under the following heads, each of which contains some strong presumptive proof. I. The author of the Scotch novels is a zealous lover of good cheer, as his character of Dalgetty3 and his descriptions of the revelries in Quentin Durward and Kenilworth sufficiently betoken. - Sir William Curtis is notorious for his similar partialities, and has been often / heard to depict the festivals at Guildhall in language of at least equal beauty. II. The novelist is an evident partizan of Ministry. - Ditto Sir William Curtis. III. The novelist is in the frequent habit (particularly in the Introduction to Quentin Durward) of alluding to his property and influence, which proves him to be a man of wealth. - On this point of close resemblance, vide the Rent-roll of Sir W. Curtis. IV The novelist is fond of using the Scotch idiom, which he manifestly affects for the purpose of concealing his superficial acquaintance with English. The scenes of his earlier works are all laid in Scotland, and it is not, until by frequent practice he has habituated himself to the language, that he attempts to shift his subjects to 1 Seriatim, the personages referred to are William Maginn, James Scott, P. G. Patmore and John Wilson. 2 The final jest in WarreniancCs mockery of Curtis is the elaborate 'proof that the supposedly semi-literate MP wrote the novels of Sir Walter Scott. 3 In A Legend of Montrose (1819).

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England. - Sir William Curtis labors under similar grammatical deficiencies, and would naturally have recourse to the facile barbarisms of the Gaelic, under whose protecting mantle his defects might pass unnoticed. V In his Introduction to Peveril of the Peak, the novelist describes himself as "a stout elderly gentleman." - Sir W. Curtis answers to this description with an almost miraculous resemblance. VI. The novelist is singularly fond of analysing the character of royalty, as for instance, in his Elizabeth, King James, Queen Mary, Louis XL, Charles IL, Queen Caroline, Charles of Burgundy, Chevalier Saint George, Richard Cceur-de-lion. This faculty could only have been acquired by a long and extreme intimacy with / courts, and the warm friendship of our present gracious monarch for Sir William Curtis is proverbial in the fashionable world. VII. The language of the novelist is never so happy, as when descriptive of a sea voyage; his details, for instance, of the vessel which conveyed Morton from Scotland, and that which bore Queen Mary to the shores of England, are two of the most splendid passages in Old Mortality and the Abbot. - The romantic love of Sir W. Curtis for sea voyages, and his frequent excursions in his yacht to the Isle of Wight,1 closely correspond with the similar attachments of the novelist. VIII. The characters of the novelist, with few exceptions, are remarkable for their conversational tact, which prove that he must have passed his time in some great metropolis, where alone such tact can be acquired. - Sir W. Curtis for many years of his life has been resident in London and Ramsgate, places alike notorious for the number, variety, and conversational ability of their inhabitants. IX. The novelist is fond of enthusiastic allusions to the graces of the Highland dress. - Sir W. Curtis, during the late royal visit to Scotland, appeared at court in the full costume of a Highlander,2 thus practically proving that his own partialities corresponded with those of the novelist. 1

Curtis kept a lavishly fitted yacht and the king often cruised with him. Curtis accompanied George IV on his trip to Scotland, where he appeared in full Highland dress. 2

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X. The novelist seems peculiarly at home in drawing the characters of wealthy burgesses and citizens, as in the case of Pavilion, the burgess of Liege,1 and Nicol Jarvie, / the Baillie, or Alderman of Glasgow.2 This affords a fair presumption that he himself belongs to the body corporate of some great city, and the close connection of Sir W Curtis with the city institutions of London, strengthens his claim to the composition of the Scotch novels. To these convincing arguments I have yet one to add. The novelist, it seems, is every where desirous of showing himself an arrant Scotchman. Were he really one, he would be in no hurry to mention his misfortune; but it is evident by this very assertion, that he is some Englishman, desirous, from motives of emolument, of preserving an anonymous notoriety. The fact of his residence in London, being once authenticated, detection must ensue; he is well aware of this, so identifies his local interests with Edinburgh, and thus gets the start of conjecture by at least four hundred miles. That our illustrious city baronet should wish to prolong this strict anonimity I can well conceive, when I remember the unprecedented sums that his incognito procures him. Still the debateable land of conjecture is a common open to all, and despite his assertions to the contrary, I feel myself justified in pronouncing Sir W. Curtis to be the sole author of the Scotch novels. N. B. Since the above note was written, I have learned with great satisfaction that Sir W. Curtis is travelling in Italy for the purpose of collecting materials for a philosophical dissertation on the suppers of Lucullus.3 /

1

In Quentin Durward (1823).

2

In Rob Roy (1817).

3

Lucullus (c. 114-5 7 BC) was a Roman hedonist notable for luxurious gourmandizing.

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(17) Before I conclude, I think it but right to observe that the poem, with the exception of a few lines, &c. was written on the First of April, A.D. 7#/2.-Page 118.

Mr. C—e has chosen a most appropriate day for the composition of his "Psychological Curiosity." By a similar coincidence, his Christabel, I understand, was both conceived and executed on the Twenty-ninth of September, (Michaelmas day,)1 A.D. 1796. (18) Then shouted to Warren with fitful breath, Pm old Mother Mghtmare-life-in-death. - Page 120.

This old gentlewoman is the same who figures in Mr. C—e's "Rime of the Auncientte Marinere." She is there introduced as playing at Cribbage with a fiend or incubus. ( 19) His figure majestic, andformedfor braving, Battle or blood - and he wanted shaving. - Page 122.

A striking and instructive illustration of the bathos: for other equally choice specimens, the reader is referred to Martinus Scriblerus 7C£pi |ia9ooc;,2 or Hazlitt's Tabletalk, passim. (20) Oh, king of the cock-tailed incubif- Page 123.

It is perfectly nauseating to record the unprincipled plagiarisms of our modern witlings. Like the leaden-headed commentators on Shakspeare, one laborious blunderer follows another through the same eternal routine of dull and drivelling imitation. The present / delectable plagiarism is diluted from the "coctilibus muris"3 of Ovid; not, however, without sustaining some damage from clumsy distillation. (21) I have dandies who laud me at Paine's and Almack's. Page 123.

This is a gratuitous assumption; but Mr. C—e is always positive in proportion to his ignorance. Mr. Warren (however he may deserve it) is not the theme of commendation at Almack's. Who ever heard of

1 2 3

The day of St Michael and All Angels. In depth. 'Built of burned bricks' (Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV. 1. 58).

212

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genius being the object of admiration in a Ball-room? Had that inconceivably fatuitous Boeotian, Malone, whose no rank in literature entitles him to similar regard, made this stupid assertion, I should have passed it, as I do the pages of those twin-stars, Chalmers and Steevens,1 with befitting contempt, but the intellect of Mr. C—e entitles him to (at least) consideration. (22) Like little Puss with Belasco the Jew. - Page 124.

The Biography of "little Puss," like the four missing books of Tacitus, has been shrouded in the Lethe of time. I have consulted with my friend the Dean of W—r,2 in whose Chapter, I am told, he resided, with very inefficient success. The epithet "little," however, implies that like "lucus a non lucendo" 3 he must have been a pugilist of gigantic make, for I find a similar term applied to one John, a favourite page of Robin Hood. / (23) This desperate Mill. - Page 124.

I was for some months puzzled to ascertain the precise meaning of this ambiguous term. My mind first conjectured that it alluded simply to a windmill; and secondly, that it meant a treadmill. But here I found myself treading upon ticklish ground, so, as a last resource, I applied to Mr. John Randall, 4 who informed me with prompt politeness, that "Mill" was the generic denomination of a fight. For "Mill," then, read "fight." 1

George Chalmers ( 1742-1825), Scottish antiquarian and Shakespearean and George Steevens (1736-1800), Shakespearean commentator and editor. Both men were amongst the Shakespearian partisans and denigrators of Jonson who were so heartily despised by Gifford. 2 T h e Dean of Westminster, who was warmly commended by Gifford in the introduction to his translation of Persius. 3

Applied to an absurd derivation. Literally, 'A grove is so called because it excludes the

light'. 4 Jack Randall, lightweight boxer. Cf. Reynolds' note to 'Lines to Philip Samson, T h e B r u m m a g e m Youth' in The Fancy: ' O f all the great m e n of this age, in poetry, philosophy, or pugilism, there is no one of such transcendent talent as Randall; - no one who combines the finest natural powers with the most elegant and finished acquired ones.' In ' T h e Fight', Hazlitt describes his less than enthusiastic welcome at Randall's hostelry, ' T h e Hole in the Wall'.

213

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4

(24) And the bloodfrom his peepers went drip, drip, drip. Page 126.

Vide a well known parallel passage in the tragedy of Remorse, "drip, drip, drip, there's nothing here but dripping." I think it a justice due to Mr. C—, to state that it is not a cook who puts forth this pleasing remark, but a Moor: nor does it allude to the dripping pan, but to the lapsing flow of a fountain. Ben Jonson is its original owner. (25) And he dropped with a Lancashire Purr on his back. Page 126.

"Little Puss," according to the few scattered accounts I have been enabled to glean, was famous for his Lancashire Purr; which is nothing more than a North country fashion, by which the pugilist runs his head into the body of his antagonist. The shock from so leaden and thick a substance must be attended, one would conceive, like a cannon ball, with instant annihilation. / (26) All FooVs-Day. - Page 134. This is the oldest and most generally received feast-day in the annals of the world. All religions agree in holding it with equal enthusiasm. (27) Though the artist is of first-rate celebrity, and wears no cravat. - Page 135.

To wear no cravat is an indisputable sign of genius among our pastoral and poetic scribblers. A rope, me-thinks, would suit a choice few of them with more appropriateness than a neckerchief, and I see no reason why a man who perpetrates a publication (on the mere score of eccentricity) should escape, when the wretch who commits a forgery is hanged. To affront the sensibility of the pocket is surely less atrocious than to volunteer an assault on the understanding. (28) Reverend Edward Irving attempted an imitation of thefamous apostrophe of Demosthenes, &c. - Page 137.

Of this Dagon1 of the Philistines, it is impossible to speak in terms of praise. He is a dissenter, it seems, and of course unworthy the consideration of the orthodox. Still, notwithstanding his heresies,

1

The Philistine fish-god.

214

NOTES

[203/204]

Hatton Garden is eternally thronged, while our churches - but it is useless to say more, for who can sound the depths of human folly? (29) King of Spain restored to his throne. - Page 139.

The cause of kings is a divine cause. Those radical factions, misnamed "constitutional" may oppose it, but it is / the cause of justice, and as such must eventually triumph. Vide a Quarterly Review, passim. (30) A true statement discovered in Cobbett's register. - Page 140.

An impudent and unqualified falsehood. The character of this hoary anarchist, this Erostratus1 of the grand fabric of our constitution is too well established to excuse even a doubt. He may drivel his specious slaver over truth, but even truth turns to falsehood at his touch. "Hie Niger est, hune tu Romane, caveto."2 (31 ) Not content with a wholesome and sensible repast they must needs give them coffee, ham, eggs, chocolate, orange, marmalade, and gooseberry jam, &c. - Page 144.

The complaints of these unimportant extravagances, and of the gooseberry jam in particular, are truly ludicrous, and merit for their sole reply, the answer which a Roman statesman made to the questions of a meddlesome and mischievous financier. - "Ohe,7¿zm satis."3 (32) Did the House, let me ask, ever see the individualfor whose gains it is thus shamefully solicitous?- Page 148.

Vide Mr. B—m's sarcastic allusion to Cuchi the waiter of Trieste, in his speech on the memorable occasion of the Queen's trial. I need not point out to the reader's abhorrence this false and calumnious description of my friend. It speaks for itself.

1

Erostratus set fire to the Temple of Diana at Ephesus to immortalise his name.

2

' H e is black at heart, Roman, beware of him' (Horace, Satires, I. v. 1. 85).

3 Another of Deacon's schoolboy puns. 'Hold on, that's enough' (Horace, Satires, I. v. 11. 12-13).

215

[204/206]

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME 4

(33) Had Mr. Burke been still alive, he would have agreed with me, I am persuaded, in opinion, and by way of commencement / would have pulled off the Jack-boots of our Horse-Guards - with or without Bootjacks, as it may have suited the emergency of the case, if indeed any case was ever before reduced to so deplorable an emergency, an emergency proceeding from thefollies of Government, of a Government notorious for every species of gratuitous infamy. -Mr. Burke I repeat, &c. - Page 150.

This involution of sentence upon sentence is a favourite feature in Mr. B—m's oratory, as the following passage will attest. "Their lordships, for reasons best known to themselves - but for reasons, he doubted not, that were dictated by consummate wisdom, and which they had not proceeded on till fully enlightened by experience and a careful review of all the precedents that could bear upon the present case, - their lordships, he repeated, had prevented him, &c. &c." Vide the Report of Mr. B—m's speech on the subject of the Queen's trial. (34) A few years since, &c. a serious affray took place between those illustrious rivals Warren, and Day and Martin. - Page 163.

I am happy to say, that after much laborious investigation, I have ascertained the correct date of this battle. The generous friendship of Mr. D'Israeli has induced him to consult an old barrow-woman who lives at Brentford, on the subject; and from whom he learns that the skirmish took place a month previous to the demise of her first husband. Now her first husband, as I learn from Mr. Crabbe's Parish Register,1 died in the Autumn of 1818. To this date then the point in question must be referred. / (35) And many a beauteous Border maid. - Page 165.

So called from the circumstance of her residing in the neighbourhood. Palisade\ a somewhat distorted definition of a window. (36) He looked as scant as Ettrick witches. - Page 167.

Ettrick forest is a sort of boarding school for young witches, where they keep holiday on moonlight nights, "A truly respectable academy i'faith."

1

Crabbe's poem of that name was published in 1807.

216

NOTES

[206/207]

(37) And the red banners (formed by hap Of two old shirts stitched flap to flap). - Page 170.

The indefatigable researches of my friend Mr. Francis Douce, 1 have at last enabled him to procure me one of these celebrated banners. It is quartered according to the most received military practices, and in the midst appears a portrait which I at first mistook for the effigy of a goose and trimmings; but now find to compose the head and wig of my friend Robert Warren. On either side are blazoned two blacking brushes rampant, armed and langued gules, with a pair of top boots argent. The whole forms a striking heraldic curiosity, and is now deposited in the British Museum. (38) And shouted as his bands he led, To Pat O'Thwackum at their head. - Page 171.

"Of Patrick O'Thwackum," to use the language of Doctor Johnson, "thus presented to my mind, let me here indulge the remembrance." Though an Irishman he was constant in his attachments, and formed one of / our little school at A—n. In temper he was peculiarly irascible, and it was doubtless this latter accomplishment that engaged him in the wars of Day and Martin, under whose banners he lost a considerable quantity of teeth, together with no slight portion of nose. I have not crossed his path since we last parted at A—n, but even at this distance, I cherish his memory with more than fraternal fondness (39) The two 0'Noodles from Blackwall. - Page 173.

The O'Noodles, a flourishing family in Ireland, are notorious for the magnitude of their organs of combativeness.2 The two young men mentioned in the text form a part of this hopeful and prolific stock. They are, or rather were apprentices to Day and Martin, and were honoured with a crown of martyrdom on Brentford Green.

1

T h e antiquarian Francis Douce (1757-1834).

2

See the discussion of phrenology in the introductory note to 'A Letter to the Editor of Warreniana' above.

217

[207/208]

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME

4

(40) Stubbs too of Brentford Green the rose. - Page 173.

How this gentleman could be the rose of Brentford, when it was well known in the private circle of his acquaintance, that he was a Creole in complexion, transcends the comprehension of criticism. I profess not to unravel the paradox; it rests between the author and his conscience. With respect to his Biography, tradition records that Stubbs was hanged the morning previous to the battle; which, if true, affords a satisfactory reason for his absence. - Of the rest of the skirmishers, little remains to be told. Their names have either past down the stream of time, or moulder on the records of the marble; and all that is / now known of them is, that they once existed. - Sic transit gloria mundi. l (41) With Fanny of Timmol. - Page 192.

See a smart LITTLE 2 Bijou, entitled "Fanny of Timmol, a mail-coach adventure." The kindness of the proprietor of the Bull and Mouth Inn, 3 London, has furnished me with the following particulars respecting this young lady. A Miss Frances Timmol (as appears by his day-books of the time) took an inside place in the Union stage for Liverpool, A.D.I799. Her luggage consisted of two bandboxes, a poodle dog; and a basket. Mr. M.—, then a gentleman "in the flower of his youth," happened to be the only passenger besides herself in the coach, so that the innocent flirtations to which he alludes in the text, must have taken place on the road. I am far from being a friend to such amusements, for they not only give a character of levity to the vehicle in which they occur, but do infinite damage to the morals of the coachman. Miss Timmol, however, appears by tradition to have been a young gentlewoman of very respectable acquirements, and as such is entitled to the good opinion of the commentator. THE END.

1

'Thus passes the glory of the world'.

2

Punning on the title of Moore's The Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little Esq.

3 T h e Bull and Mouth in St-Martin's-Le-Grand was a large coaching office a n d inn which serviced passengers to a n d from all parts of Great Britain.

218

SILENT CORRECTIONS

The reading preceding the square brackets is the one given in the edition. Page 4 15 57 74 75 75 90 104 104 142 163 163 199

Maecenas] Mecaenas Mary-Axe] Mary Axe Bohemond] Bohamond Boeotian] Baeotian Maecenas] Maecaenas one.] one Boccaccio's] Boccacio's B.] B—. as blue] a blue parallel] parrallel T.] T W. S.] W - S Woolnoth] Wolnooth

In the 'Notes', 'Page.' and ' P ' have been regularised as 'Page.'.

219

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348310-3

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE

VOLUME 5.

Rgected Articles

PARODIES OF

THE ROMANTIC AGE

VOLUME 5

Edited by John Strachan

REJECTED ARTICLES

i~l~ Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 1999 by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Ltd Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OXI4 4RN

52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY IOOl7

Rout/edge is an imprint o/the Tay/or & Francis Group, an in/orma business

© Taylor & Francis 1999 © Introductions and notes John Strachan All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any

form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,

including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are

used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Parodies of the romantic age: the poetry of the Antijacobin and other parodic writings I. Parodies 2. Romanticism 3. English poetry - 18 1h century I. Stones, Graeme 11. Strachan,John. Ill. Antijacobin 827.7'08 ISBN 1851964754

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Parodies of the romantic age: the poetry of the Anti-Jacobin and other

parodic writings I edited by Graeme Stones and John Strachan.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Contents: v. I. The Antijacobin - v. 2. Collected verse parody - v. 3. Collected

prose parody - v. 4. Warreniana - v. 5. Rejected articles.

ISBN 1-85196-475-4 (set: acid-free paper)

I. English literature - 19 1h century. 2. Humorous poetry, English. 3. English wit and humor. 4. Verse satire, English. 5. Satire, English. 6. Romanticism. 7. Parodies. I. Stones, Graeme. 11. Strachan,John. RRIIII .P38P37 1998 821'.70917-dc21 98-8844 CIP ISBN 978-1-13875-593-2 (hbk)

Typeset by Antony Gray, London

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348327

CONTENTS Volume 5

Introduction

page vii

Note on the text

xx

PrifGce ~~

3

Introductory note to An UnsentimentalJourney An Unsentimental Journey

5

7

Introductory note to Rich and Poor Rich and Poor

25

27

Introductory note to To-morrow; a Gaiety and Gravity

To-morrow; a Gaiery and Graviry

45

47

Introductory note to Review of Tremaine Review qf Tremaine

53

57

Introductory note to Letters on Shakespeare Letters on Shakespeare

77

81

Introductory note to Grimm's Ghost

97

Grimm's Ghost

99

Introductory note to The Spirit of the Age The Spirit qf the Age

113

Introductory note to London Letters to Country Cousins

141

143

London Letters to Country Cousins

v

115

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC AGE: VOLUME

5

Introductory note to Brother Jonathan Brother Jonathan

173

175

Introductory note to Boccaccio and Fiametta Boccaccio and Fiametta

203

205

Appendix to RfJccted Articles Introductory note to Appendix Demoniacals Dining Out

227

229

231

236

Silent Corrections

248

Index

249

VI

INTRODUCTION

Echoing in title and governing conceit Horace and James Smith's enormously successful collection of parodies Rdected Addresses: or the New Theatrum Poetarum (1812), P. G. Patmore's Rdected Articles, published anonymously by Henry Colburn in 1826, masquerades as a collection of contributions discarded from the most notable periodicals of the Romantic period (Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, the Edinburgh Review, the London Magazine, the New Monthly Magazine, Cobbett's Register). This device enables Patmore to imitate the style of some of the most notable essayists of the post-Napoleonic period; Cobbett, Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb, Jeffrey and Wilson amongst them. The laudatory review of the second edition of the Rdected Articles published in the Literary Chronicle in August 1826 sets out the bill of fare which is placed before the reader: He can dream with Elia in Dessin's Hotel, or wander with him to the market-place of Calais ... Or should he prefer Old England and politics, to Calais ... he may listen to an address from William Cobbett to the ploughboys and labourers of Hampshire, to the identity of which we should almost imagine that W. C. himself might safely swear ... Or Horatio Smith shall build up for him all the airy fabrics which eternally decorate 'To-morrow'; or we shall dine out with the same gentleman ... Or, (and was ever critic in such delicate and delightful embarrassment as to choice?) he may discuss the merits of Shakspeare's Romeo and Juliet with Professor Wilson, -lose all sense of critical dignity for a full month, in consequence of coming into contact with The Grimm's Ghost of James Smith, - bury himself under a heap of beautiful metaphors and amusing parodies, with the author of Table Talk, - criticise Brother Jonathan in company with FrancisJefTery [sic], or recline under the Greenwood Shade, and talk of Boccaccio and Fiametta with Leigh Hunt. I

vu

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC ACE: VOLUME

5

Patmore's adroit imitative methodology, which at first sight appears to have more in common with eighteenth-century techniques than much Romantic period parody, is acknowledged in the title which he uses from his third edition (1834) onwards, Imitations cif Celebrated Authors. However, this is not to say that Patmore's work lacks critical insight; here 'imitations' have much to say about their 'originals'. Though Patmore's imitations are not without their faults, several of them, especially those of his friends Lamb and Hazlitt, are subtle, well­ achieved and critically illuminating. Other pieces, notably two of the imitations of the brothers Smith, 'Grimm's Ghost' and the second edition's 'Dining Out', shed interesting light on early nineteenth­ century Horatian prose satire. Both of these, along with the 'London Letters to Country Cousins', are also socially revealing documents, preoccupied as they are with the minutiae of contemporary late Georgian London life. And in the highly successful Blackwood's imitation, the 'Review of Tremaine', Patmore demonstrates that he, too, can write acerbic, partisan parody. Not republished since it reached a fourth edition, in 1844, this is the first scholarly edition of the Rejected Articles. This introduction addresses Patmore's life and career in the years leading up to the publication of the book and explores the cultural context of the Articles in contemporary literary journalism. Peter George Patmore, who lived from 1786 to 1855, was an author, journalist and editor. He is generally mentioned in literary history by virtue of association, as the father of the Victorian poet Coventry Patmore and the friend of John Hamilton Reynolds, Charles Lamb and, most notably, William Haz1itt (most of the letters which were worked up into the latter's extraordinary confessional document Liber Amoris (1823) were originally addressed to Patmore). However, he was a journalist of some consequence from the late 1810s onwards and produced several books, two of which, Rejected Articles and My Friends and Acquaintance, offer useful critical and biographical accounts of some of the major prose stylists of the Romantic period. He was a Londoner, the son of a Ludgate Hill jeweller (Patmore's mercantile antecedents are put to good use in his 'London Letters to Country Cousins'). His mother was the daughter of the German painter Baeckermann. Patmore refused to follow his father into the family business and most Vlll

INTRODUCTION

of his working life was spent as a journalist in a career which saw him involved with many of the significant periodicals of the day: Blackwood's, the London, the New Monthly, the Retrospective Review and the Westminster Review. His most notable association was with the New Monthly, for which he wrote for over thirty years, eventually acting in an editorial capacity between 1841 and 1853. Nevertheless, Patmore's first significant experience as a literary journalist was with Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, to which he contributed poetry and reviews and acted as a defacto London dramatic critic. However, it was in his other capacity, as Secretary to the Surrey Institution, that Patmore first encountered the man who was to be such a presence in his life, William Hazlitt. Patmore met Hazlitt in late 1817 when the latter arrived to discuss the arrangements for his course of lectures on the English poets. Early in the following year, he visited the critic's home, asking to borrow the manuscripts of the lectures and to discuss what must have seemed to Hazlitt a most unlikely, and possibly threatening, request: My reception was not very inviting; and it struck me at once (what had not occurred to me before) that in asking facilities for criticizing William Hazlitt in Blackwood's Magazine I had taken a step open to the suspicion of either mischief or mystification, or both. However, I soon satisfied him that my object and design were anything but unfriendly. To be what he called 'puffed' in so unlooked-for a quarter was evidently deemed a god-send; it put him in excellent humour accordingly; and the 'Lake Poets' being mentioned, and finding me something of a novice in such matters ... he talked for a couple of hours, without intermission, on those 'personal themes,' which he evidently 'loved best,' and with which, in this instance, he mixed up that spice of malice which was never, or rarely, absent from his discourse about his quondam friends, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey.2

Patmore was allowed to contribute his first 'Notice of a Course of Lectures on English Poetry, now delivering at the Surrey Institution, London, by W. Hazlitt, Esq' to the February 1818 Blackwood'SJ and returned to the lectures in the issues for March and April. However, despite Patmore being allowed to 'puff' Hazlitt, the magazine as a whole had not changed its views on the essayist. In April 1818, Patmore's final respectful account of Hazlitt's lectures was immediately followed by a riposte by 'A. Z.' which repeated Blackwood's ix

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC ACE: VOLUivIE

5

jeer of 'pimpled Hazlitt'.4 Patmore protested to William Blackwood about the jibe; inevitably, his admiration for Hazlitt and acquaintance with Leigh Hunt did not augur well for a permanent connection with Blackwood's. It is probable that his link with Taylor and Hessey's London Magazine, a house magazine to the Cockneys to the minds of Maga's principal contributors, was the final influence in his conversion from favoured contributor to whipping-boy. By 1820, Patmore was assisting the editor John Scott and beginning to contribute to the London, and by the summer of that year he was firmly established as Blackwood's 'Tims', 5 the empty-headed Cockney youth, friend of 'pimpled Hazlitt' and 'Signor Le Hunto' (Patmore's remarks on nicknames in the R~jected Addresses' 'The Spirit of the Age. Mr Hazlitt', are heart-felt). 1821 saw Patmore contributing theatrical reviews to the London's January and February numbers with a view to becoming chief drama critic, a post previously held by Hazlitt. However, the latter month also saw perhaps the most significant event in his life, which itself originated in the controversies between Blackwood's and the London. On 16 February 1821, Patmore acted as second to John Scott in his duel 6 withJonathan Christie, the intimate friend of John Gibson Lockhart. Scott was seriously wounded, dying ten days later as a consequence of his wounds. Rightly fearing prosecution, Patmore fled to France (his French experiences were to provide the source material for the Rgected Addresses' imitations of Lamb andJames Smith). Returning to England for trial, he was eventually acquitted, but the incident seriously damaged his reputation. 7 His employment with the London ending abruptly and tragically, Patmore turned to the New Monthly, to which he contributed extensively during the 1820s, recycling his contributions in a series of books. The most impressive of his earliest books is his first, Letters on England by Victoire, Count de Soligny (1823). Heavily influenced by Robert Southey's Letters from England by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella (1807), Patmore's book ofTers a lively portrayal of English letters and society as seen through the eyes of a visiting foreign nobleman. His former employers at Blackwood's greeted the book with disdain, gleefully noting that 'Victoire' was actually a French woman's name and later labelling the book the work of a money-grubbing 'blockhead'. B Some x

INTRODUCTION

of the letters originally appeared in the New Monthly, as did Patmore's 'London Letters to Country Cousins', a series which concludes in the R~ected Articles itself. Drawing on his maternal cultural inheritance, Patmore also supplied a series of impressionistic critical essays about paintings housed in British collections to the New Monthly. These were worked up into British Galleries qf Art (1824) which contains accounts of works held at various palaces and stately homes (including Hampton Court, where some of his grandfather's portraits were held), Beckford's by then dispersed collection at Fonthill and Charles Mathew's collection of theatrical portraiture. Similarly, material originally published in the New Monthly informs Patmore's Mirror qf the Months (1826), 'a Calendar of the various events and appearances connected with a Country and a London life, during each successive Month of the Year'.9 1826 also saw the publication of the R~ectedArticles, shortly before Patmore first met Lamb: My first introduction to Charles Lamb took place accidentally, at the lodgings of William Hazlitt, in Down-street, Piccadilly, in 1824 [actually 1826] ... Mr. Colburn had published anonymously, only two or three days before, ajeu-d'esprit of mine ... [Hazlitt had] a book in his hand [and] I found, to my no small alarm, it was the book which occupied all my thoughts. This was an ominous commencement of my investigation; for the book contained a portrait of Hazlitt himself, drawn with a most unsparing hand, because professing to be his own, and to have been 'Rejected', for obvious reasons, from his own 'Spirit of the Age', then recently published. Hazlitt's looks, however, which were an infallible criterion of the temper of his mind at the moment of consulting them, were quite sufficient to satisfy me that he was not displeased with what he had been reading. 10

At this point Lamb and his sister appeared and Hazlitt, to Patmore's horror, informed Miss Lamb that 'There's something there about Charles and you. Have you seen it?'. Mary Lamb read the imitation of Elia and expressed 'feelings about what she had read, which indicated that her first impression was anything but a favourable or agreeable one'.ll It seems that Mary particularly objected to the notion of her brother being capable of describing women's clothes and Charles writes in the following year that 'An imitator of me, or rather pretender Xl

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC ACE: VOLUME

5

to be me, in his Rejected Articles, has made me minutely describe the dresses of the poissardes at Calais! - I could as soon resolve Euclid.'12 However, from this inauspicious beginning, Lamb and Patmore established an acquaintance which saw Lamb write some of his finest letters to the author of the Rgected Articles. 13 In Letters on England, Patmore dwells on the contemporary importance of the periodical press: 'the periodical works of the present day in England ... probably exhibit more talent and learning, and exercise a more decided and obvious influence on the existing taste and literature, than the same class of writings ever did before in any country,.14 This remark is highly pertinent to the Rgected Articles, a volume which draws on Patmore's experience as a literary journalist, purporting to include articles 'rejected' from the most 'celebrated' periodicals of the period. In Letters on England, he draws a distinction between 'Reviews' and 'Literary Magazines' and both are represented in the Rgected Articles. The reviews, exemplified by the Edinburgh and the Qj1arterly Review, 'are devoted to the notice and criticism of the original works that appear from time to time', whilst the literary magazines, Blackwood's and the New Monthly the most notable, are best characterised by their original writing: 'there has been opened to the reading part of the English community, within these few years, a vast fund of original writing, of every possible description, in the form of what are called Literary Magazines'. 15 The 'best among them', writes 'Victoire' in what is, in effect, a lengthy puff for Patmore's principal employer, is Colburn's New Monthly, which is 'scarcely ... susceptible of improvement' and contains 'the most various, agreeable, useful, and comprehensive miscellany that has ever been offered to the public'. 16 Similarly published by Colburn, a publisher whose cross-promotional techniques were legendary, if not notorious, during the period, 17 the Rgected Articles also salutes the New Monthly, given that several of the volume's articles (that by 'P. G. P.' and those ostensibly by Hazlitt, James Smith and Horace Smith) are modelled upon work originally published in the journal. The New Monthly replied in kind by praising the R~jected Articles highly: 'No one conversant with the style and character of the writers whose lucubrations are here so amusingly united for the benefit of their respective admirers, will fail to recognize Xli

INTRODUCTION

the original portraits, even without bestowing a glance at the indicatory page of contents. Indeed they appear drawn to the life; and it is less like perusing an imitation than the real authors themselves.'IB The magazine's 'original essays', writes Patmore, are 'for the most part light and gay in their character',19 characteristics which, though inapplicable to Hazlitt of course, clearly apply to the Smiths' work for the New Monthly. The Rqected Articles pay extensive tribute to the brothers. The whole book is in one sense an imitation of the duumvirate's most notable work, its title inviting comparison with the Rqected Addresses (the Literary Chronicle argued that Patmore's book 'is scarcely inferior to the work which suggested its title, and we would recommend all admirers of Rejected Addresses to possess themselves speedily of Rejected Articles,).20 Apart from the homage paid in Patmore's nomenclature, he also includes imitations of the Smith's prose work for the New Monthly. The first, 'To-morrow; A Gaiety and Gravity', is an imitation of Horace Smith's 'To-day', a whimsical meditation on temporality which was published in the New Monthly in January 1823. The second imitates the urbane social satire of the pretensions of bourgeois society evident inJames Smith's New Monthly series 'Grimm's Ghost'. The Smiths, writes Patmore in Letters on England, are writers 'who enjoy the most brilliant reputations of the day as writers of comic verse'.21 He also lauds their prose contributions to the New Monthly, the 'playful and elegant terseness' of Horace's prose and the 'irresistibly amusing' nature ofJames's, and his imitations aim to capture these qualities. The Rgected Articles were published by Henry Colburn in May 1826 with a second edition following by August of the same year. A third edition, retitled Imitations if Celebrated Authors; or, Imaginary Rqected Articles, followed in 1834 with a fourth appearing in 1844. It should be noted that there is a significant difference between the first and second editions of 1826. The first edition includes Patmore's parody of Blackwood's, the 'Review of Tremaine', where Patmore has Blackwood's fulminating against the Revd Robert Plumer Ward's 1825 novel Tremaine, or the Man if Rdinement, published anonymously by Colburn, as the work of the 'low-bred and ignorant cockney' Tims. The joke against Blackwood's is that its intemperate rage against the Cockneys xm

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has led it to misinterpret one of its own, an Anglican high Tory. However, in all subsequent editions this is omitted in favour of a second imitation of Horace Smith, 'Dining Out', and Patmore's slight imitations of Byron, 'Demoniacals. (Posthumous.) By Childe Harold' (these are included in an appendix to the present edition). Attentive readers of the third edition, for instance, will note that the volume has no pp. 107-10, due to the slight discrepancy in length between the original 'Review of Tremaine' and the replacement imitations. The edition is otherwise identical, apart from the omission of the spoof 'Preface', and appears to have been printed from the first edition's plates (the pagination is exactly the same and the running heads give the original title). The majority of the reviews of the Rgected Addresses are of the second edition and the first edition is very rare (only one of the English copyright libraries, the British Library, has a copy). These facts, and the short length of time between first and second editions in comparison to the eight years between second and third and the ten years between third and fourth, suggest that Patmore worked up the Smith and Byron efforts in some haste to replace the 'Review of Tremaine'. It is likely that the removal of the Blackwood's parody was the consequence of pressure from either Plumer Ward or Colburn (or conceivably both). The offence to the despised Blackwood's can have had little to do with the decision to cut the parody, but perhaps the author of Tremaine, Plumer Ward, who was acquainted with Patmore,22 failed to see the joke or its publisher, Colburn, also the publisher of the RgectedArticles, was concerned about the possible effect on its sales. The absence of the impressive 'Review of Tremaine', where Patmore settles scores with his former employers at Blackwood's, severely weakened the book in its later editions and and also inadvertently made 'Tims' seem a model of saintly restraint in his handling of Wilson in the 'Letters on Shakespeare', which from the second edition onwards became the only imitation of Blackwood's in the book. The absence of the 'Review of Tremaine' also deprived the R~jected Articles of its one foray into overt and acerbic parody. Patmore's general methodology is imitative. His own description of the work in his biographical collection A{y Friends and Acquaintance (1854), which addresses its difference from the generality of early nineteenth-century XIV

INTRODUCTION

parody, captures its manner well: 'ajeu-d'esprit of mine, which aimed at being, to the prose literature of the day, something like what the "Rejected Addresses" was to the poetry, - with this marked difference, however, that my imitations [sought] to re-produce ... rather than to ridicule, the respective qualities and styles of the writers imitated; merely ... pushing their peculiarities to the verge of what the truth permitted'.23 The New Monthly's review of the second edition of the Rgected Addresses praised Patmore's imitative skills highly: 'They certainly present us with a more difficult, yet withal a successful application of the idea of the "Rejected Addresses". The resemblance is never carried to a degree of extravagance; its humour consists less in mere burlesque or parody than in an exact imitation of the peculiarities, the turn of thought, and manner of the imitated ... That the author, indeed, is rather a Proteus than a parodist, metamorphozing himself into whose shape he pleases, is apparent, we think, in the UnsentimentalJourney, by Elia; in Brother Jonathan, and the Letter to the Plough boys of Hampshire.'24 Leaving aside the slighting remarks on parody, the New Monthly is right to stress Patmore's ventriloquism, but this is more than 'exact imitation'. Patmore uses imitation critically, adopting each writer's mannerisms in a fashion which often offers great insight into the characteristics of his work. It must be admitted that, despite the excellence of the imitations of Blackwood's, Lamb and Hazlitt and the skill of the Cobbett and Smith pieces, the Rgected Articles is not without its faults. Several of the imitations are perhaps too long. Patmore's prolixity offended the Monthly Review which in its antipathetic review compared the Rgected Addresses unfavourably to The Anti-Jacobin, declaring 'it to be almost as necessary that ajeu d'esprit should be short as that it should be witty. A joke of 60 pages (the average length of each of these Rejected Articles) becomes a very serious affair. Who would ever have read the "Loves of the Triangles", if that brilliant production had been as long as the Botanic Garden?'. 25 The Monthly's wilfully faulty mathematics apart, the contributor may have a point, though in fairness to Patmore his articles generally aim to imitate the length of their models. A particular offender is the Jeffrey imitation, 'Brother Jonathan', where the quotations from the novel under discussion seem decidedly overxv

PARODIES OF THE ROMANTIC ACE: VOLUME

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generous. However, this shows Patmore to be an honest imitator; the proportion of citation to criticism inJeffrey's reviews often strikes the modern reader as unnecessarily high. It should also be noted that the London's dismissal of the Articles in terms of their failure as overt comedy judges the book against a model not employed by its author. The imitative criticism of the Rrjected Articles is not intended to inculcate hilarity. Patmore's 'To-morrow' suffers from imitating a model, Horace Smith's whimsical meditative prose for the New Monthly, which has not aged well, and it must be acknowledged that the Hunt imitation, 'Boccaccio and Fiametta' is simply leaden. Even the Literary Chronicle, which warmly endorsed the rest of the Rrjected Articles, described it as an 'entire failure' in imitative terms: 'we could rarely trace the delicate ... tact and power which characterise the prose writing of Leigh Hunt'.26 And, whatever its merits, 'London Letters' is not an imitation in any sense of the term and one might also add that it is something of an impertinence on Patmore's part to devote so many pages of his book to what is, in effect, a piece of self-advertisement. Nonetheless, despite these reservations, the Rrjected Articles have considerable merits. The opening imitation, of the London's Elia essays, 'An Unsentimental Journey', however misguided it might be on the subject of Lamb's capacity to describe feminine apparel, is a penetrative and often subtle account, capturing what it calls Lamb's 'humours and oddities', but also addressing the underlying mournfulness and preoccupation with mortality evident in many of his essays. 'Rich and Poor', the second imitation, ably captures Cobbett's vein of tub-thumping satirical polemic against the land-owning aristocracy, though it perhaps suffers from being in competition with the brothers Smith's masterly 'Hampshire Farmer', from that other uneven parodic collection, the RrjectedAddresses. 27 Nonetheless, taken on its own merits, the piece offers insightful commentary on Cobbett's personal prejudices and stylistic mannerisms. The Wilson imitation, 'Letters on Shakespeare', ably captures what one might label the house-trained side of that savage critical wit and is a fine complement to 'Christopher North's' 'Review of Tremaine'. The Jeffrey imitation, 'Brother Jonathan', whilst perhaps not the equal of the Hazlitt, Lamb or Wilson efforts, offers an interesting XVI

INTRODUCTION

portrayal of a critical encounter between patrician British criticism and American experimental prose. 'London Letters to Country Cousins', with its attention to fashionable ephemera and consumerism, is a valuable social document. And, preoccupied as it is with commercial and architectural aspects of the metropolis, the essay offers a useful corrective to those of us whose Romantic vision of London is dominated by Blake's psychologically-charged topography or Wordsworth and Coleridge's antipathetic testimonies. 'The Spirit of the Age. William Hazlitt' sees Patmore imitating Hazlitt's manner whilst simultaneously offering an account of the critic's achievement. The portrait, 'drawn with a most unsparing hand, because professing to be his own' anticipates Patmore's later verdict that 'the only passion of his soul was a love of Truth'.28 Patmore's account of Hazlitt as self-willed and stubborn, but at the same time a prose writer of genius, 'shoot[ing] forth winged words like arrows' is one of the most insightful contemporary accounts of the essayist. Like much else in his book, Patmore's imitation warrants renewed attention. 29 Though the Rgected Articles is undeniably a flawed collection, it deserves to be rescued from the oblivion in which it has languished for over one hundred and fifty years. NOTES

Literary Chronicle and f1/eek[y Review, No. 379 (19 August 1826), p. 519. The review declares that 'this is a volume of extraordinary pretensions, and it is gratifying to find that it pretends to no more than it achieves'. 2 Quoted in P. P. Howe, The Lift qf William Hazlitt (London: Hamish Hamilton, revised edition, 1928), p. 229. Patmore captures Hazlitt's preoccupation with 'personal themes' in his imitation of Hazlitt. Howe, the great partisan of Hazlitt, faults, rightly, Patmore's accuracy with respect to dates and his general attitude is that Patmore's biography of Hazlitt stresses unduly the negative side of his personality (p. 316). He has little time for Patmore's imitation either, though his description of it as an imitation of Table Talk (p. 350) rather than The Spirit qf the Age suggests that his antipathy to Patmore may not have led him to consider the piece in great detail. 3 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 11 (February 1818), pp. 556-62. 4 Ibid., III (ApriI18l8), p. 75.

5 As early as September 1819 'Tims', 'the little exulting Cockney', appears in

XVll

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the special issue of Blackwood's, 'The Tent', (V (September 1819), p. 639). Patmore may at least have found his title during his ill-fated time with Blackwood's, which in its December 1819 number jocularly proposed to produce a volume of 'Rejected Articles' consisting of discarded letters from Whig correspondents (VI (December 1819), p. 290). 6 See Leonidas M. jones, The Life qf John Hamilton Reynolds (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1984), pp. 217-25 for a detailed account of the duel and the subsequent trials. Ironically, as in the Rqected Addresses, here Patmore was in the slipstream of the Smiths, given that Scott originally asked Horace Smith to act as his second. Smith refused. 7 For instance, see Thomas Hood's remark that Patmore 'apparently sacrificed Scott to the eclat of a duel' (The Letters qf Thomas Hood, ed. Peter F. Morgan, (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1973), p. 232). 8 In the Noctes Ambrosiarue, No. XXVII (Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, XX (July 1826), p. 105). In 'The Battle of the Blockheads. By Mr Secretary Mullion', a mock epic on the subject of Blackwood's triumph over the London, Westminster and the Edinburgh, Patmore is associated with the iniquitous likes of Bent ham, Hazlitt, Hunt and Hone: Let us think of Tims, who keeps Hand on hinderland, and weeps That no golden grain he reaps From Victoire! ­ Lean pates! to Whiggish pride Aye so faithful and so true, Who in pan of scorn were fried, With grey jerry the old shrew: The Westminster's fond wings o'er you wave! While loud is Hazlitt's growl, And Hunt and Hone condole, Singing sonnets to the soul Of each knave! (11.60-72) 9 P. G. Patmore, Mirror qf the Months (London: Geo. B. Whittaker, 1826), pp. vi-vii. lOP. G. Patmore, My Friends and Acquaintance: being Memorials, Mind-Portraits, and Personal Recollections qf Deceased Celebrities qf the Nineteenth Century: with Selections from their Unpublished Letters (referred to as MFA in the footnotes to this edition), 3 vols (London: Saunders and Otley, 1854), vol. I, pp. 3-5. Patmore, incidentally, travelled from Newbury with Hazlitt after the famous contest between Hickman and Neate described in Hazlitt's 'The Fight'. XVlll

INTRODUCTION

II Ibid., vol. I, p. 6. 12 The UiJrks qf Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas, 7 vols (London: Methuen, 1903-5), vol. 7 (1905), p. 757. Lucas labels ~n Unsentimental Journey' a 'superficial imitation of some of Lamb's mannerisms, as unlike him as could well be' (p. 758) and quotes the butter-women passage as evidence. This dismisses an imitation which to my mind goes beyond surface 'mannerisms' and offers a darker and more profound Lamb than is usually evident in contemporary criticism of Elia. Patmore's real crime is perhaps the essay in A{)I Friends and Acquaintance, which lacks sufficient reverence for Lucas's 'St. Charles', a personification which itself has done Lamb's reputation litde good. See also Bertram Dobell's views on Patmore in Sidelights on Charles Lamb (London: published by the author; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903). 13 Patmore was the first to publish the famous letter about the dog Dash (see A{)I Friends and Acquaintance, vol. I, pp. 29-40). 14 Patmore, Letters on England by Victoire, Count de Soligny (referred to as LoE in the footnotes to this edition), 2 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1823), vol. 11, p.221. 15 Ibid., vol. 11, pp. 228-9. 16 Ibid., vol. 11, p. 230. 17 Journals owned or part-owned by Colburn (the New Monthly and the Literary Gazette most notably) would print puffing reviews of books published by Colburn. The .New Monthly's review of the Rejected Articles is perhaps a case in point. See the discussion inJones, op. cit., pp. 253-6.

18 .New Monthly Magazine, XXI (April 1827), p. 143. 19 Patmore, Letters on England, vol. 11, p. 230. 20 Literary Chronicle and fVtiekly Review, No. 379 (19 August 1826), p. 520. 21 Patmore, Letters on England, vol. 11, p. 232. 22 He is one of the 'deceased celebrities' described in My Friends and Acquaintance. Patmore acted as editor for Tremaine 'during its passage through the press'. My Friends and Acquaintance sheds no light on the excision of the 'Review of Tremaine'. 23 Patmore, A{)I Friends and Acquaintance, vo!. I, pp. 3-4. 24 .New Monthly Magazine, XXI (April 1827), p. 143. Cr. the Literary Chronicle: '''But be these verities?" we too are inclined to ask with Alice in the old plqy, from which the author takes his motto; for really we have been more than once tempted to suspect that we were actually cogitating with Charles Lamb, or conversing with William Hazlitt. This is a book which a reviewer feels to be after his own heart. It affords him all sorts of facilities, sentimental or satirical, grave or lively.' (p. 519). XIX

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25 Monthly Review, N.S.II Guly 1826), p. 332.

26 Literary Chronicle and Jteekly Review, No. 379 (19 August 1826), p. 520.

27 The Monthly Review's antipathetic notice of the Articles makes this point: 'The

admirable imitation of Cobbett in the Rejected Addresses ought, we think, to have warned the author off these premises. He has only succeeded in catching the coarsest feature of that popular writer - his vein of abuse: when he attempts any thing beyond it, he sinks into a mere plagiarist.' (Monthly Review, N. S. 11 Guly 1826), p. 333). 28 Patmore, My Friends and Acquaintance, vo!. I, p. 97. 29 There is almost no twentieth-century criticism of the Rtdected Articles. David Kent and D. R Ewen in their Romantic Parodies, 1797-1831 (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1992) argue that the book is part of 'a large literature of undistinguished imitations, including Horace Smith's Horace in London (1813), the anonymous Posthumous Parodies and Other Pieces, P. G. Patmore's Rf!fected Articles (1826) and his later Imitations of Celebrated Authors (1834)' (p. 14). Given that the Rf!fected Articles and the Imitations of Celebrated Authors are the same book with different titles, it is possible that their reading in Patmore has not been enormously attentive. Their only other reference to Patmore is in the bibliography, which renders My Friends and Acquaintance as My Friends and Acquaintances.

NOTE ON THE TEXT The present edition is based upon the Edinburgh University Library copy of the first edition of the Rfjected Articles (1826). The text of the 'Appendix to the Rejected Articles' is taken from the third edition (1834). A small number of silent corrections are set out in the schedule on p. 248. Patmore's footnotes are flagged by asterisks and editorial footnotes by superscript numbers.

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PREFACE.

IT may be laid down as an axiom, in regard to Magazine writing, that it must not be too good. Who, that is gifted with 'a literary turn,' is not in the constant habit of finding, that those passages of his Papers which happen to be expunged by the remorseless pens of Periodical Editors, are invariably the best? Indeed the merest novice in these matters knows perfectly well, that it is only necessary to write an Article rather better than usual from beginning to end, to ensure its rejection altogether. When, therefore, the Editor of the present Volume states, that it is the joint production of several gentlemen who have long been distinguished for the piquancy of their I Periodical writings, and that every Article it contains has been 'Rejected' from at least one celebratedJournal of the day, he not only settles the pretensions of the Work he is appointed to usher into the world, but explains its nature in a way that must render any further remarks from him superfluous.

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[1]

CONTENTS

C. L.! [1]

5

RICH AND POOR. A letter from William Cobbett to the Ploughboys and Labourers of Hampshire. W C.2 [31]

25

To-MoRROW. A Gaiety and Gravity. By one of the H. S.3 [65] Authors of Rejected Addresses.

45

[77]

53

J. W 4 [Ill]

77

GRIMM'S GHOST. The Culpeppers on the Continent. By the other Author of Rejected Addresses. J. S. 5 [141]

97

W H.6 [165]

113

AN UNSENTIMENTALJOURNEY. By Elia.

TREMAINE. Rejected from Blackwood's Magazine. LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. Romeo andJuliet.

SPIRIT OF THE AGE. Portrait of William Hazlitt. LONDON LETTERS TO COUNTRY COUSINS. BROTHERJONATHAN. Rejected from the Edinburgh Review. BOCCACCIO AND FIAMETTA. A Tale of the Greenwood-Shade.

I 2

3 4

.I

Charles Lamb. William Cobbett. Horace Smith. John Wilson . James Smith.

6

7 8 9

P. G.

[209]

141

F. J. 8 [261]

173

L. H.g [313]

205

p'7

William Hazlitt. Peter George Patmore. FrancisJefTrey. Leigh Hunt.

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to An Unsentimental Journey)

This imitation of Charles Lamb sees Patmore profiting from his enforced sojourn in France, after the 1821 duel between Scott and Christie, in his description of Elia's impressions of a supposed trip to Calais. Elia, that devotee of old books, is here himself imitative, following the route of Sterne's Yorick. Imitating Lamb is no easy task. 'The style of Charles Lamb' , declares the Literary Chronicle in its review of the RejectedArticles, 'above that of any author of the day, seems to breathe defiance to the imitator' I. This is fair, though one might add that it might be easy enough to produce an ersatz version of Lamb which simply rehearses the mannerisms which are too often superficially seen as the quintessential Elian literary habits. This hypothetical imitator might ladle in puns, whimsicalities and the familiar cast of characters and places (cousin Bridget, the India House, Mackery End and so on) and label the stew 'Elian'. However, though Patmore does all of this, his penetrative and often subde account of Lamb does much more besides. It captures what the imitation calls Lamb's 'humours and oddities', but also the underlying mournfulness and preoccupation with mortality evident in many of his essays. Patmore comments in A{y Friends and Acquaintance that 'there was a constitutional sadness about Lamb's mind'2 and in ~ Unsentimental Journey' he writes of 'a serious joy, interfused with a still more serious melancholy', a concept which has a wide application in the essays of Elia. In a biographical sketch of Lamb which was written during the essayist's lifetime but not published until the l850s, Patmore offers a description which sheds light upon his intentions in 'An Unsentimental Journey': There is the profound melancholy of the poetic temperament, brooding

5

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fondly over the imagination of what it feels to be unattainable, - mixed into a 'chance medley' of all sorts of quips, quibbles, and quiddities of the brain. There is the gravity of the sage contending with the gaiety of the humorist; the pride and solemnity of the philosophic observer of human nature, melting into the innocent playfulness of the child, and the mad fun of the schoolboy. 3

Patmore's imitation offers a '''chance medley" of all sorts of quips, quibbles, and quiddities of the brain', but also engages with Lamb's elegiac qualities, his attention to dreams and reveries and his unsetding defamiliarisation of the supposedly familiar. In both the meditation on the English air and the pastoral set-piece description of the French butter-women\ the Elian yearning for lost prelapsarian states is beautifully captured. The Literary Chronicle argues that despite the difficulty of Patmore's self-imposed task he achieves his goal: 'How few could catch the expression of [Elia's] quaint originality, intense depth of thought, and amiability of feeling! This task the author of the Rejected Articles has essayed and overcome's.

NOTES I 2 3 4

literary Chronicle and Weekry Review, No. 379 (19 August 1826), p. 520.

MFA, I, p. 27.

Ibid., I, p. 13. The Chronicle thought particularly highly of this passage (' We are in love with the description') and quotes from it at length. 5 Literary Chronicle and Weekry Review, No. 379 (19 August 1826), p. 520.

6

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AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. BY EUA.

thou art haply one of those persons who feel themselves bound in honour to earn (in their own estimation) whatever tide it may please others to bestow upon them. If so, reading thyself every day addressed as 'reader,' (not to reckon the flattering additaments of 'gende,' 'generous,' 'tasteful,' 'learned,' 'critical,' and so forth,) thou hast doubdess felt thyself constrained in conscience to prove the validity of thy tide, by perusing every Work (so we puny moderns are minded to denominate our poor, pigmy productions) that comes before thee in a questionable shape: meaning thereby, every one that thou art in the least likely to be questioned about, as to whether it has been perused by thee, or not. In this case, thou hast perchance whiled away an odd half hour now and then, in turning over and tasting the leaves of / certain lucubrations, I erewhile distilled by driblets from the adust 2 brain of one Elia. I will suppose thou hast, at any rate. An author would drive a sorry trade indeed, if he were not privileged to suppose the case of his having readers. To nine out of ten it is the only means of securing any. And even to the tenth it is much the same. Thou hast read Elia, then, and art therefore not absolutely incognizant of the turn of his humours and oddities, and the character which habit and nature, uniting together, have succeeded (and failed) in impressing upon his mental and bodily man. I put it to thy candour, then, whether, being thus informed, if any but Elia himself were to come and make averment 3 before thee, that they had encountered his pale face, and attenuated form, beyond the confines of his own READER,

I

2 3

Elaborate nocturnal meditations.

Dusty.

I.e. a declaration.

7

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England, thou wouldest not have treated the tale as an ingenious, albeit an ill-conceived fiction, and greeted the teller with a glance chiefly compounded of the incredulus odi? I Perchance thou sufferest the equivocal happiness of being, like Elia himself, a pun-propounder:2 (for punster is 'a weak invention of the enemy'3 of puns, and not to be uttered by one who honours them:) in which case thou wilt doubtless exclaim, 'Elia incontinent! it cannot be;' and wilt add, - as Othello / did when a charge of being similarly situated was made against his gentle mistress, - 'I'll not believe it!,4 Thou art altogether in the right, and Elia himself hereby thanks thee for thy well-placed confidence in his consistency. And yet Elia himself is at the same time constrained to assure thee, that thou art altogether as wrong as thou art right: for nothing is more easy (and hard) than to be entirely both, in regard to one and the same matter. Look at the transparent tegument (mis-named paper) on which these uneven words are ecrivated. On turning it over, thou mayest, by following the fashion of the Hebrew, read them almost as well on the wrong side as on that which is not the right. Glance thine eye, too, towards the top of the page. It is dated 'Calais.' There is no gainsaying the fact. Elia is, like Bottom, 'translated'5 from his own modest, low­ roofed parlour, looking out upon the little Ever-Green (here they would think it a strip of baize) that stretches before the plain, uni-painted door of his quiet domicile, in the suburban village of 'Shackiewell,6 near Hackney, near London, England -' for such is the endless supererogation which he is obliged to inscribe upon the letter which he has just dispatched (what a word, when they tell me it will / not reach her these three days!) to his dear cousin Bridgee - he is translated, I say, from the above spot (apt title, spot, when compared with the 'I, disbelieving, hate' (Horacc, Ars Poetica, 188). Cf. MFA: Lamb 'would joke, or mystify, or pun, or play the buffoon; but he could not bring himself to prose, or preach, or play the philosopher'. 3 Colley Cibber, The Tragical History rif King Richard III (1700), Act V, sc. vii, I. 17. 4 Othello, Ill. iii. 279. 5 A Midsummer Night's Dream, Ill. i. 113-4. 6 Site of Elia's 'neat suburban retreat' (,The Old and the New Schoolmaster'). 7 Bridget Elia, cousin of our narrator. 1

2

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AN UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEr

'infinite space' of which at present he is denizen) to a magnificent Scene in the Play which seems to be continually acting here, called 'Des sin's Hotel.' Reader, if thou wilt accord me a more than ordinary share of thy patience, I will recount how this seeming inconsequentiality came about: for thy confidence in its unlikelihood merits my confidence in return. As I have begun supposing for thee, I may as well go on. I suppose, then, that thou art not ignorant of the signal change which, a brief while ago, (brief it is by the book, though to me it already seems an age - so crowded has it been with thoughts, feelings, fancies, imaginations, and what not), took place in my terrene condition, in virtue of my becoming a 'superannuated man.,2 Some of the consequences of this change I have elsewhere related; but the 'greatest is behind.'3 If thou hast perused, reader, the relation I have just alluded to, touching the first impressions of a man who just begins to feel his freedom press upon him, with a weight Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life. 4

/

thou wilt readily conceive * * * *. In short, something was evidently * * * *. Besides which * * * *.

And moreover, what so natural to expect from Elia, under extraordinary circumstances, as that which nobody who knew him would expect from him? Suffice it that I 'made up my mind' to go. (The phrase is singularly 'german to the matter,5 - that is to say, not within some hundreds of miles of expressing what it is meant to express: but let it pass.) So I clapped a shirt in my pocket; (it is hard that we cannot do the simplest of actions without incurring the suspicion of being imitatores servum Material. Lamb published his meditation on retirement, 'The Superannuated Man', in the London Magazine in May 1825. 3 Macbeth, I. iii. II 7. 4 Wordsworth, 'Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of early Childhood', I. 131. 5 A punlet adapted from Hamlet, V. ii. 155. I

2

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pecus: 1 people will say I borrowed the idea, of putting a clean shirt in my pocket, from Yorick: as if the abstract idea of a clean shirt did not instinctively become a part of every man's consciousness, the moment he thinks of leaving home!) I put a shirt into my pocket; hurried a kiss, with no very firm or florid lip, on the faded cheek of my cousin Bridget; (we have never been separated for twelve hours since we came together twice twelve years agone); got into the Shacklewell stage, as was my wont every morning for all those years; and as was my wont also, when it set me down at the Bank as usual, I proceeded towards my accustomed haunt / in Leadenhall Street, 2 and should assuredly have taken my accustomed seat on the accustomed stool, but that, just as I was stepping up, under the magnificent portico of that Palace of Commerce, I felt an unaccustomed weight - not upon my heart, reader: I declare to thee that that waxed lighter and lighter every step I approached towards the spot where its rest had so long been set up; but - bobbing against the calf of my sinister leg. It was the bundle that Bridget had squeezed into my pocket. This roused me from my reverie; and I turned back,just so as to reach in time the great monster that was to bear me on its back, (not more against my will than that of the water,) to the shores of France.

THE VOYAGE

I hate all Steam, and all that it can do, except when it comes singing its soft sweet tune, from out the mouth of a half bright, half black tea-kettle, on a December evening fire. But above all I hate it, when, as I have chanced to see it once or twice, it gets possession (like a bad demon) of some otherwise dead hull, and drives it scrambling, splashing, heaving, straining, and roaring along, up our noble river Thamisis, 3 belching ['0,] imitators, you slavish herd' (Horace, Epistles, I. xix. 19). Lamb worked at the East India House in Leadenhall Street for over thirty years. 'Thirty years have 1 served the Philistines', wrote Lamb to Wordsworth, 'and my neck is not subdued to the yoke.' 3 A poetical term for the Thames. C( 'The Old Margate Hoy': 'I would exchange these sea-gulls for swans, and scud a swallow for ever about the banks of Thamesis.' I

2

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forth / fire and smoke, and invading, terrifying, and polluting the sweet solitudes of Twickenham and Richmond, with its hideous brawl. I once watched one of these new 'infernal machines l ,' as it came towards me while I was wandering under those fine old trees near Brandenburg House 2; and I perceived that the poor victim of Steam was straining itself against the water, and lifting its breast partly out, at every stroke of its relentless task-master; just as a half-heart-broken stage-coach horse strains against the collar, up a steep hill, at the stroke of the whip. And yet the stroke came (as it does in the other case) as regular as clock-work. There was 'damnable iteration 3' in it; it sent me home sick; and I have hated Steam better than ever, ever since. And yet here did I find myself, at eleven of the clock on a sweet sunshiny day of September, in the actual clutches of this abhorred power; prepared, nay expecting to be borne by it - to the clouds, as likely as not, in a clap of thunder; and to come down from thence, scorched to a cinder, and hiss as I fell into the water, and sunk at once to the bottom like a bit of burnt coal! When I am in good health, (good, I mean, for me,) and have my wits about me, I feel but one care concerning / Death: it is that I may meet him not absolutely unlooked for, and in my own bed with the old dark crimson damask hangings; and with my cousin Bridget not beside me. And yet here was I, willingly, or rather wilfully, putting myself in the way of half a dozen of the most hideous of all deaths, (for the name of Steam is not one but Legionl without even having a choice in them. It was not to be thought of. So I seated myself at once on the first projection that came to hand - looked down towards my feet - and as I heard the bowels of the great creature begin to grumble within it, and felt its body move beneath me, luckily the thought came across me of Sinbad the sailor, when he was inveigled, by some unaccountable fascination, to trust himself on the back of the Old Man of the Sea. 5 I 2

3 4

5

An explosive device disguised as a familiar object.

In Fulham. The building was demolished in 1822.

1 Henry IV, I. ii. 88.

See Mark 5:9.

The malevolent personage unwillingly carried by Sindbad the Sailor in the Arabian

Nights' Entertainments.

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This recollection, by virtue of the associations I had connected with it, partly restored me from myself; and I did not return till I was called back by an indescribable jargon of tongues, as if some foreign Bedlam or Bank Rotunda I had broke loose at midnight - from which I could gather nothing, but that I was actually arrived in the port of Calais. But this was more than enough; so I resigned myself into the hands of fate, under the form of a French waiter, and after a few ceremonies / which I did not seek to understand, found myself in a spacious sleeping apartment of

DESSIN'S HOTEL

I am not the person to go gadding after other men's fancies. I have enough to do to keep pace with my own. I was never fond of 'follow my leader,' even at school. I would not follow, and did not want to lead. And yet, reader, I am fain to confess to thee, that peradventure if it had not been for Hogarth 2 and Sterne, 'The gates of Calais'3 would never have shut upon Elia; and even if they had, the hundred harpies from its Hotels would in all probability have divided him amongst them, instead of one being permitted to spirit him away in the name of 'Dessin' in particular. To be sure there is, in regard to the latter point, something to be said for the determination which the before-named one had evidently formed, as to the necessity of my following him, and no one else. 'Sare - you shall go to Mister Dessin,' he repeated, close into my ear, twenty times at least. And when a man shall do a thing, he must. So I went.! I need scarcely tell the 'travelled' reader, that on this first moment of my setting foot in a foreign land, I was in no disposition to note very carefully the localities through which I was led by the absolute person into whose hands I fell. It must suffice to say, that I retired to my unrest, I.e. a madhouse or a trading floor. Lamb published 'The Genius and Character of Hogarth' in Hunt's Riflectorin 1811. 3 A reference to Hogarth's 1749 print 'Gate to Calais: 0 the Roast Beef of Old England'. I

2

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in the midst of indistinct and confused visions, of an immeasurable Gateway, an illimitable Court-yard, an incomprehensible Coach and Horses, an unitelligible Chambermaid, and an inaccessible Bed. My dreams on that night favoured me by being fantastical than I have known them for many a long year: for, as I think I have other­ where informed thee, reader, I am but a poor hand at dreaming. I My dreams put me out of conceit of mysel£ Arrybot:[y might dream them. But on that night, methought, among other matters, that I suddenly sank into the sea, and was (Jonas-like) swallowed by a whale; and that the passsage through his throat to his belly, where I lodged, was exactly like that between Lombard Street and Cornhill, where Mr. Myers2 the fishmonger lives, and that it smelt of fish much the same as that does; and that, when I had got through it, I found myself in a great paved court-yard, the extremities of which I could not see, which was partly lighted by what seemed to be the creature's 1 great lidless eye; and that, while I was passing across its dreary spaciousness, I heard a number of what the children call cracker; go off just outside, and then saw, by the glimmering light, a sort of carriage like Neptune's conch come clattering, drawn by three animals, (a-breast,) which seemed to be compounded of half Meux's4 dray-horses, half mermaids; and from the side of one of which I could see depending that enormous sign of a Boot and Spur, which has so long delighted the eyes of all the urchins who inhabit the Borough of Southwark. Methought, too, as I looked up towards the ceiling of my new apartment, it seemed to be intersected by enormous black beams, just like my cousin's great barn at Mackery End, 5 in Hertfordshire, where I used to sit upon the wheat-sheaves, and read Burton: 6 and yet I could see the stars shine through it.

J Lamb writes in 'Witches, and other Night-Fears' that 'The poverty of my dreams mortifies me'. 2 The noted purveyor of 'London fish'. 3 Exploding fireworks. 4 The brewer. 5 See 'Mackery End, in Hertfordshire' in Elia. 6 ef. Lamb's praise of 'old Burton' in 'Mackery End'.

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Then all of a sudden I heard an enormous explosion, and found myself flying through the air, seated astride upon a great piece of burning wood, rudely carved into the form of a rocking-horse; which I held by, exacdy as John Gilpin 1 in the prints does by the neck of his horse. And I remember very well fancying, as I shot through the air, and got glimpses of the flaming tail of my steed / flaring out behind me, how the philosophers of London would proclaim me a Comet, and call it by the name of Elia! Then, as suddenly, I found myself quiedy seated in a great unknown room, by the side of an unknown tent-like erection, beneath which was what bore some resemblance to a bed; and around were various objects, which I did not take the trouble to examine ­ especially as, in divesting myself of my nether garments, preparatory to trying whether the seeming bed was a bed was a bed or not, I found that they came away piece-meal, and were in fact scorched to a cinder. This seemed to disconcert me more than the nature of the accident warranted; and I got up hastily, to ring the bell, and call for another pair, just as I would have called for a pint of wine - (for I now seemed to recollect that I was at an inn) - when, taking hold of the great ring which hung to the bell-rope, I pulled it somewhat impatiendy - and lo! it seemed to produce as miraculous effects as the pull or cut of the Sultan, in the Arabian Nights, at the ring revealed to him by his faithful Vizier. Mr. Dessin's hotel seemed to stand before me for a moment, like a scene on the stage, and then, like that, sunk into the earth at / the sound of the bell I had pulled - the Gates of Calais (which formed part of the back scene) came clattering about the ears of their astonished keepers - the Sea in the distance was changed into the Strand, with its gas-lights and coaches just when the Play is over; - and the next moment I found myself seated beside my cousin Bridget, in our own quiet parlour, and Betty was just entering to ask whether it was the bed-candle that I had rung for.

I He of the runaway horse in Cowper's comic ballad 'The Diverting History of John Gilpin' (1782).

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My late friend Tobin I makes Juliana 2 say, (prettily enough, under the circumstances of the scene, I remember,) 'we cannot help our dreams. ,3 But what is a great deal worse, we cannot help telling them. If all the above incoherencies had actually and bona fide befallen me, I verily believe, reader, I should have had too much respect for thy time and patience (to say nothing of my taste) to think of relating them to thee; because there is nothing to be extracted from them in any way tending to thy moral instruction, or even to thy mental delectation. But because they have not happened to me, and could not, I have been tempted to record them. This is one of the most unpardonable impertinencies of which any of us are guilty. If I ever for a moment think that my cousin Bridget talks too much, or not wisely, it is when she / is telling me of some strange dream that she has had. Nobody should ever tell their dreams, but C-.4 Even de Q- should leave it ofT, now that he has left off that5 which made his dreams so marketable a commodity. Travelled reader, I would fain have thee believe, that in the midst of my humours and oddities, I am not an altogether unreasonable specimen of the human animal - I mean in respect of those of his intellectuals by which he carries on the daily business of his life. Thou opinest, perhaps, that because I have hitherto been content (howbeit, 'on compulsion,' yet not the less sincerely therefore) to pass my days within the atmosphere of the Great City, (for my retreat at Shacklewell is a retreat from her noise only, not a recession from beneath that noble canopy of congregated clouds which instantly hangs over her head, queen-like,) - therefore I do keck6 and reluct at the taste and odour of 1 The dramatist John Tobin (1770-1804). See Lamb's 'Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading'. 2 Juliana is the heroine of Tobin's The Honey Moon (performed and published posthumously in 1805). 3 Juliana's sentiments in The Honey Moon (Act V, sc. i. 1. 49). 4 Coleridge. See Lamb's envious descriptions of the poet's dreams in 'Witches, and other Night-Fears'. 5 Opium. In the CorifCssions rif an English Opium-Eater (1821), De Quincey claims, disingenuously, to have 'renounced' his habit. 6 Retch. Cr. 'Imperfect Sympathies': 'If they can sit with us at table, why do they keck at our cookery?'.

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any atmosphere which has the demerit of being more pure, and quarrel with every form that comes before me, not moulded on the accustomed model. In this thou deceivest thyself, and discreditest me. In respect of feelings, fancies, modes of belief, and the like, I do agnize I a certain degree of wilful predisposition. But in what relates / to form, to matter, to manner, to taste, to sound, to smell, in short all pertaining to our sensuous and animal nature, I do strenuously assert my entire freedom from prejudice and pre-occupation. What if I do cherish a somewhat inordinate passion for Roast Pig, 2 and am even prepared (peace-lover as I am) to place spear in rest to prove the pre-eminence of that dulcet refection, over every other in the whole circle of my mundus edibilis?3 Yet assuredly I speak but of 11!JI world. I am no made-brained Quixote in this matter. Far be it from me to believe, prima facie, much less to insist, that a sucking Kangaroo, treated in a similar manner, may not be as good. (Perhaps my friend B. F. 4 is able to speak to this point.) And if your Cannibal, who is 'your only emperor for diet, ,5 were to twit me with the superlative savoriness of a roasted Christian, assuredly I should not dispute the point with him. I am not in a condition to determine. I have never tasted one; and according to the calculable probabilities of the case, never may. Mter this open confession, reader, thou wilt not see cause to admire overmuch, when I assure thee, that my morning ablutions were no less refreshing than usual, albeit they were performed from a / pie-dish in place of that hemispherical receptacle which we employ for that

Recognise. Cr. 'Oxford in the Vacation'; 'Well, I do agnize something of the sort'. Elia includes 'A Dissertation upon Roast Pig'. In MFA, Patmore writes that Lamb's physique 'was pleasing and well-formed, but so slight and delicate as to bear the appearance of extreme spareness, as if of a man air-fed, instead of one rejoicing in a proverbial predilection for "roast pig"'. 3 Edible world. 4 Lamb's friend Barron Field (1786-1846), who lived in Australia from 1817 to 1824, published 'The Kangaroo' in First Fruits qf Australian Poetry (1819). Lamb reviewed the volume in The Examiner in January 1820. In 'Mackery End', Lamb envisages 'B. F. ... on the far distant shores where the Kangaroo haunts'. 5 Hamlet, IV. iii. 21. I

2

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purpose; that my tea tasted not the less fragrant for being sipped from a cup that a bee might have mistaken for a tulip; and that I did notfoncy myself in worse than my ordinary health when Iftlt myself in better, merely because my breakfast was brought to me in my bed-room. In truth, whether that the sea air of yesterday has braced up the bands of my spirits, or that the entire novelty of the scene which I find before my eyes on waking this morning has loosened and set them vibrating, (for I give thee thy choice, reader, between the material and the moral theory), certain it is, that they are in better than their usual trim. And as I have often given thee the proceeds of their peevishness and want of self-controul, it is but fair that though shouldst have thy share in their more 'blest condition.' I But look not for any regular narrative from me. A series of events, even when, as my friend W. hath it, they are 'linked each to each by natural piety,'2 is what I am altogether incapable of following, even in idea. My intellectuals have, at some period or other of their existence­ whether before they appertained to me, the man Elia, or / since, I guess not - undergone a sort of disjointment or dislocation, which has shut up some of those alleys or avenues by which the several apartments communicated with each other and formed a suite. And the consequence is, that though each room may be as well adapted to its appointed use as another's, and may be as fitly furnished, (though I say not that they be so), yet many of them can only be come at by out­ of-the-way means - such as climbing in at the window, or dropping down the chimney. Touching the sky of France, and the atmosphere that fills its blue breadth, I like them well, as a change. They seem to breathe into me a buoyancy, (why not write it brryancy?) that 1 have not lately felt, (I confess it), even in the greenest of the green places that neighbour my suburban home; or in the pleasant fields of Hertfordshire, or of more distant Devon. It is as if they were impregned with a vinous spirit, drawn forth by the glances of that 'hot amorist,'3 the Sun, from the I

2

3

Othello, n. i. 247-8.

Misquoted from Wordsworth, The Rainbow', l. 9.

Lamb, John Woodvil. A Tragedy (1798), Act n, l. 231.

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innumerous vine-clad'vallies on which he looks in his lightsome course. In England the open air, when it is open, never fails to still that restless stir 'which hangs upon the beatings of the heart.' [ It hushes it, as a nursing-mother / hushes her infant, 'while pap content is making.,2 (I speak of it at its best.) We can fall asleep in its arms; or fancy that we are sleeping - which is better. It is lulling sweet, and soft; balmy, as if distilled from the breath of flowers. It is dream-compelling - the mother of sweet meditations. When all wrapt about by it like a soft garment, we feel that If it were now to die,'t were now to be most happy:3

so full and sure is the bliss - so quiet, yet so consummate. But here - hey for old Ben's 'New Inn, or the light of heart!,4 No dreaming here - no meditations - no mild melancholy - no pleasant despondencies. And as for dying, it is a thing clean out of the question. It cannot be. Death himself seems dead and gone. He could not live upon such life-creating food. He is fairly starved out. Or if he comes at all, it must be 'like a thief in the night'.5 There can be no such thing as dying in the day­ time, here. I never could make out what it was which created that anomaly in morals and manners, the French character. But I have tasted their air, and my difficulties have melted away into it. I am a Frenchman myself! I go about on the / tips of my toes; and move my arms from my sides 'with an air;' and hum snatches of old French tunes; and step aside when I meet the blooming peasant woman in the market-place, ­ gracefully bowing the head of my imagination as they pass, and scattering flowers (of fancy) in their path. I must return incontinently;

I Adapted from Wordsworth, 'Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour,July [3, 1798',1. 55. 2 Sir Philip Sidney, Certain Sonnets, no. 6 ('Sleepe Babie mine, Desire, nurse Beautie Singeth'), 1. 8. Though he does not quote from this particular poem, Lamb writes warmly of Sydney's sonnets in The Last Essays if Elia's 'Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney'. 3 Dthello, n, i.189-90. 4 BenJonson's The New Inne: or the Light Heart was first performed in 1629. 5 I Thess. 5: 2.

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or there will be two Elias - which were too many; and yet not one ­ which were too few. Let me however, set down a few notes, as memorials of the danger I have run, of losing my identity, and becoming 'sophisticated.' And first, let me do justice to M. Dessin's Hotel. It is an inn for the Titans to have stopped at. Its courtyard is like one of the great Quadrangles at Oxford, in all but the stillness and the green. It is, to other inns, what the India-house is to other counting-houses. It seems built in mockery of us puny modems; and it were idle to inquire if it is ever full, - for if every room were occupied it would still be empty. - Sallying forth from its great gateway into the street, (of which a tenth part of the Hotel forms half,) you feel 'cabinned, cribbed, confined,'l - as when passing out of Lincoln's-inn-fields into Turnstile. 2 If M. Dessin could be prevailed on to build a Church in the centre of the court-yard, and turn one of the / rooms into a Theatre, it would be a complete thing.

THE MARKET-PLACE.

It is Saturday, and Market-day; and if, reader, thou art not susceptible of Market-day in a great country-town, thou art not for Elia's money; or rather he is not for thine. It is among the prettiest sights in nature: in the nature of art, I mean. Such nut-brown faces, with the red bloom breaking through them! Such clean clothes, and such fly caps! I have not, like de Q-, been a great frequenter of markets 3 - especially London ones, at night. But of all the markets that I have seen, commend me to this one of Calais. If all England can shew a dozen such sights, once a week throughout the year, it is a better place than I think it - which is much. And if every great town in France can shew I Macbeth, Ill. iv. 23. In MFA, Patmore uses this quotation to illustrate Lamb's unease in unfamiliar company. 2 Great and Little Turnstile were at the north of Lincoln's Inn Fields and led into Holborn. 3 Cr. De Quincey's Co1!fossions: 'I used often, on Saturday nights, after I had taken opium, to wander forth, without much regarding the direction or the distance, to all the markets, and other parts of London, to which the poor resort on a Saturday night.'

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such a one, it is a better place than aT!)ihody thinks it - which is much more. In passing from the Port last night, in custody of the commissioner (so the little ragged rogue calls himselfj whose will, or rather whose shall 1 it was that I should go to Mister Dessin's hotel in particular, I observed that we traversed a great open Square, shut in by high houses on every side, and empty of every living and dead thing - except the moon-light - which is neither. Today that Square is one unbroken mass of moving light and beauty, and of that without which they are not worth having. I never saw anything so brilliant; - not even the Dutch pictures of similar scenes. Indeed, I never greatly affected pictures of this kind of scene. In a picture they can neither be idealized nor realized: and the merit of pictures consists in their doing either one or other of these, in regard to the scene or object they profess to represent. The old Italians often did the first, and the old Flemings the second; and the moderns do neither. But this Market is a better thing, in its way, than any of them ever did. Come with me into it, reader, and let us see of what it consists. On first entering it, from the street where I sojourn, (yclept 'Royal,' on account, I suppose, of its containing the Prince of Hotels), it looks, to a general glance over it, something like what the great Tulip bed, in Mr. Smith's Nursery at Dalston, 1 must appear to the 'microscopic eye' of a fly2 - so intermingled are the colours of the 1 peasant's dresses, so various, so bright, so unbroken, and so ever-shifting about as the breeze of busy traffic passes over it. It is less dense and less lively than elsewhere, here, where we are entering; because here, you see, the grain is exposed; which asks for room, and does not go off so quickly as the more ready edibles. What a fine patriarchal look dwells in the sun­ burnt cheeks and snow-white forehead of that old peasant, who stands erect behind his open-mouthed sack, waiting his turn for a customer; for there is no noisy rivalry here - no bullying or cajoling you into

I 2

Dalston, like Shacklewell, is another 'suburban retreat northerly'.

Pope, An Essay on Man, I, 11. 193-4:

Why has not Man a microscopic eye?

For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly.

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buying, whether you will or not. Those younger ones, too, that stand beside and about him, each behind his sack; what noble heads some of them have! They might have been bred up with Guiderius and Arviragus.1 Nay, you might select enough from among them to stand for a Cartoon ofJoseph and his brethren - each with his sack. Turning to the right, here, on this raised spot; in front of the handsome old Town-hall, are spread out the few varieties of country crockery-ware which these primitive people need for their simple purposes; but on which the bronze busts of Guise 2 and Richelieu 3 seem to look down with infinite contempt. You may save yourself the trouble of telling that aged crone, there, who sits in thel little watch­ box, waiting to sell them, that there is not one object among them all of which the use could be conjectured in any state of society approaching to civilization; for if you do she will only return you a faint smile, of which both you and she would be equally puzzled to make out the meaning. But pass we on towards the heart of the busy scene. In the midst of all, and almost from end to end of the Square, stands a row of as fine specimens of the human animal as eye ever looked upon. Flesh and blood can go no farther than this. Set it down in thy tablets, reader, that these are your only symptoms of health and content. Whatever looks different from this, is not as it should be, however taking it may be to our effeminate tastes, and vulgarly refined associations. I never saw any thing like these people before. And yet the instant I look at them the truth comes upon me as if by instinct. This is the real thing. All else is sophisticate. Such clear and spacious brows - such brilliant yet innocent eyes - such apple cheeks, as hard, as red, and as round - such mouths, made up of the good temper which grows out of content - such ripe, unreluctant lips - such unconscious teeth - and withal, 1 such an air of happy independence, overflowing every now

The stolen sons of Cymbeline (cf. Cymbeline, Ill. iii. 79-107). Franc;:ois de Lorraine, 2e duc de Guise (1519-63), French statesman and warrior. 3 Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642), principal minister of Louis XIII. I

2

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and then into sparkling screams of mirth; - all this, I freely confess to thee, reader, I never witnessed before. I do not know how it may be with thee; but for me, it has fIlled me with a serious joy, interfused with a still more serious melancholy and misgiving, which I do not very well know how to entertain. We, in England, cannot shew such a sight as this for our lives. And if a state like this of France can shew it, at a stone's throw from our shores, and after all that she has suffered and performed, there must be 'something rotten,l in - but hold, hold, my gentle friend, Elia! if thou lovest me (or thysel~ hold! Let thy wild fancy intermeddle as it will with all things else; but let it leave Politics to patriots, parrots, and popular preachers. Shun it as thou wouldst a pestilence. Knowest thou not the wreck and ruin it has wrought among thy dearest friends? Has it not made * * * * * 2 but let us have done with it. These beautiful realities, from which we for a moment turned away so idly, are butter-women. Each is standing (not sitting) behind a milk­ white wooden receptacle, over which she bends gracefully, with a hand on each knee, and the cover of which she lifts up on the approach of a customer, / and discloses her little store. It may be worth, perhaps, altogether - including the basket of eggs which always accompanies it ­ as much as we (erewhile) clerks used to give for our daily mutton chop and pint of wine, at a paltry tavern in the city. And yet she who owns it reckons the mere profit on it - which she has already realized in imagination - a little possession. And that she gets more than 'a living' upon the interchange of it, is evident from the tasty trimness of her attire, its delicate cleanness and propriety, and above all from those great yellow gold ear-ornaments ('tops and drops,' I remember we used to call them, when they were in vogue among us) that hang down from her ears to her very shoulders, where they rest. Her attire is fashioned as follows: and it differs from all her tribe only in the relative arrangement of its colours. On the body a crimson jacket, of a thick, solid texture, and tight to the shape; but without any pretence at ornament. This is met at the waist (which is neither long, nor short, but exactly where nature

I

2

Hamlet, I. iv. 90.

The reference is presumably to Hazlitt.

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placed it) by a dark blue petticoat of a still thicker texture, so that it hangs in large plaits where it is gathered in behind. Over this, in front, is tied tightly round the waist, so as to keep all trim and compact, a dark apron, the 1 string of which passes over the little fulled skirt of the jacket behind, and makes it stick out smartly and tastily, while it clips the waist in. The head-gear consists of a sort of mob cap, I nothing of which but the edge round the face can be seen, on account of the kerchief (of flowered cotton) which is passed over it, hood fashion, and half tied under the chin. This head-kerchief is in place of the bonnet - a thing not to be seen among the whole five hundred females who make up this pleasant show. Indeed, varying the colours of the different articles, this description applies to every dress of the whole assembly; except that in some the fineness of the day has dispensed with the kerchief, and left the snow-white cap exposed; and in others, the whole figure (except the head) is coyishly covered and concealed by a large hooded cloak of black cloth, daintily lined with silk, and confined close up to the throat by an embossed silver clasp, but hanging loosely down to the heels, in thick, full folds. The petticoat is very short; the trim ancles are cased in close­ fit hose of dark, sober, slate colour; and the shoes, though thick and serviceable like all the rest of the costume, fit the foot as neatly as those which are not made to walk in. I declare these picturesque people (the epithet 1 belongs to them more than to any I ever saw, for they look as if they had just walked out of pictures) have made quite a delineator of me. I never was so descriptive before. How sayest thou, reader? This is the age of authors who write with the pencil instead of the pen. Shall I enlist myself among the number, and issue proposals for publishing by subscription a set (of all things in the world) of 'French Scenes and Costumes?' I, who do not pretend even to see, much less to make others see, any thing more of human life, and its results, than those little obliquities and excrescencies which start out from the strait line and dead level of it, and are overlooked by its other spectators? To me, those persons and things which are like other persons and things, are like nothing ­ I See Dickens's definition in DaviJ Copperfield, ch. xiii: 'a mob-cap; I mean a cap, much more common then than now, with side-pieces fastening under the chin'.

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or they are nothing, for I do not observe them long enough to see them. They slip off my sensorium I without making any impression upon it. No; I may, perhaps have given, above, an intelligible account of a common thing; because to me it was not common, and because, moreover, there is something in it which, if I mistake not, is essentially characteristic and peculiar. But I must stop in time, or I shall put in jeopardy any little credit I may have gained for seeing what others / do not, by putting down as strange and worthy of record what every body else regards in the light of a level common-place. I will therefore leave thee, reader, (and thou canst scarcely be on a spot better adapted to provide thee with a few hours, of innocent delectation), in the midst of the grand Place of Calais, on the Market-day of the first Saturday in September, eighteen hundred and twenty-five; - assuring thee, in all sincerity, that if thou lookest about thee with an observant eye, and a mind made soft by sympathy with the crowd of happy humans that surround thee, thou shalt carry away a throng of impressions that will stand thee in better stead, in thy passage through this valley of (not 'the shadow of death,' but) the sunshine of life, than will, though he should write till doomsday, all the crude thoughts, and dreamy fancies, and wild imaginations, and supersubtle distinctions - all the false truths, and the true falsehoods of thy sincere well-wisher, EUA.

I 'The seat of sensation in the brain' (DEn), but er. Sterne's address in A Sentimental Journey to 'Dear Sensibility! ... great SENSORIUM of the world!'

24

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Rich and Poor)

This is a sure-footed imitation of William Cobbett in rabble-rousing mode. Drawing on the Rural Rides essays which began in the Political Register in 1822, Patmore mines Cobbett's vein of tub-thumping satirical polemic against the land-owning aristocracy. Also hovering behind the imitation is Cottage Economy (1821-2), Cobbett's treatise on self-sufficiency (or the 'spirit of independence' as the imitation calls it). Patmore's Cobbett offers the customary eulogistic treatment of the sturdy English yeoman (and his wife) and engages in ritual assaults on paper money, high taxation and the establishment ('rich parsons and parliament-men'). The Register's betes noires are cudgelled (The Times, Turnpike Trusts and Jewish financiers) and 'WO C.' settles personal scores with journalistic rivals: James Perry and Cobbett's quondam friend William Clement. Cobbett's artfully artless conversational prose style is ably captured and Patmore catches the typographical manner of the Register with paragraph numbering allied to a jumble of small caps, exclamation points and emphatic italicisation. Here Cobbett is sometimes portrayed in a rather unflattering light; Patmore wields the Register's blunter weaponry, notably its brand of enthusiastic anti­ Semitism, self-congratulatory bombast and appeals to class enmity. The adjective applied to Clement in the imitation, 'bull-necked', characterises the Cobbett evident in 'Rich and Poor'.

25

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348327-5

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RICH AND POOR. A LETTER FROM WILLIAM COBBETT TO THE PWUGHBOYS AND LABOURERS OF HAMPSHIRE. MY HONEST FRIENDS AND FELWW COUNTRYMEN,

1. I happened to be down in your parts the other day, about a little Turnpike l business - (perhaps you've heard of the pretty game I've been playing up lately, among the rascally Jews 2 who have got all the London Turnpike Trusts 3 into their hands, and are filling their own pockets by picking those of other people) - I say, happening to be down in the neighbourhood of Botley, I took a little pains to find out whether you are as well off now as when I was living among you;4 and I was sorry to hear sad complaints about you from some of myoid farming friends. 2. Times are a little changed with the landlords and farmers since then, to be sure - / thanks to the Paper MoneyS and the Corn Bill 6; as I told them over and over again it would be. 7 And when times change A toll-gate. Anti-Semitism was one of the few consistent positions in the development of Cobbett's thought. 3 The Turnpike Trusts, vigorously opposed by Gobbett, administered toll-roads. 4 Cobbett owned a farm at Botley from 1804 to 1821. 5 The Bank of England's suspension of cash payments in 1797 had resulted in an increase in paper money and concomitant inflationary pressure. In Rural Rides, Cobbett declares that 'it has been by the instrumentality of a base and fraudulent paper-money, that loan-jobbers, stock-jobbers and Jews have got the estates into their hands. With what eagerness, in 1797, did the nobility, gentry and clergy, rush forward to give their sanction and their support to the system which then began, and which has finally produced what we now behold!' 6 The Corn Laws of 1804 and 1815 inflated the price of bread. 7 Gobbett had railed against the Gorn Laws, most famously in his 'Fifth Letter to Pitt', published in the Register in 1804, and wrote tirelessly against paper money (most notably in the articles collected in Paper against Gold and Glory against Prosperiry (1815) and in 'Gold For Ever' (1825)). I

2

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for the worse with them, they are not very likely to change for the better with you. When the head and body are cold, the hands and feet are seldom very warm. It is as I said it would be, years ago. There isn't work for half of you; and those that there is work for don't get half paid; and the old ones among you are obliged to take up with the workhouse; and the young ones to break stones to mend the roads, that the rich parsons and parliament-men may roll along smoothly, as they loll their lazy carcases back in their fine carriages - one of which, by the bye, and the cost of its keep, would provide twenty of you and your families with wholesome food, warm clothing, and a nice little snug cottage over your heads, for twenty years to come! 3. I hear too that some of you have actually the audacity (so the said parsons and parliament-men think and call it) not to be content with this amusing occupation of everlasting stone cracking; or even to be quite satisfied with holding the plough from morning till night for ten pence a-day; and have been trying to better yourselves by making your way up to / town to get places. Now this information, my good lads, is what has tempted me to put aside many other important matters that I had in hand, and address you the present letter. 4. And so, because matters are going a little hard with you, and your accustomed labour will not procure all that you would like to have, (and that, I admit, you ought to have,) you are getting tired of your present condition, and hankering after others that you ought to be proud of knowing nothing about. Because ploughboys and labourers don't get quite so much as they used to do, and as you hear is to be got by other occupations, you begin to think that ploughing and labouring are not the best kinds of work for those whose lot it is to work for their bread. 5. But I should be glad to know how you can change your condition for a better. What occupation is more honourable than husbandry? What is more manly, more healthful, more pleasant? I tell you what, my lads, I shrewdly suspect that some of your rantipole 1 Squires have been filling their houses with visiters from London for the sporting

I

Rakish.

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season, who have brought down with them a pack of grooms, valets, lacqueys, and other lazy hounds, and that these chaps have got among you at the Alehouse, while their masters / were getting drunk together at the Hall, and have instilled some of their cursed notions into your heads, about the pleasures of a London life, and the delights of having large wages and little work, and being dizened l out in flashy clothes, and riding behind their masters, or perhaps sitting cheek-by-jowl beside them, in some gimcrack gingerbread 2 gig, so that nobody but themselves can tell which is which! 6. But do you pretend to have English blood in your veins, and yet tell me that this is a life fit for an Englishman? Would you, who rise with the sun, and sally out into the sweet morning air, and having driven your team a-field, seize the smooth-rubbed handle of your glittering plough, and whistle at your work till breakfast time, while the blackbird is whistling back to you from the copse, the lark singing merrily in the sunshine above your head, and the wholesome steam of the new-turned earth is rising all about you, and mixing with the sweet breath of the hawthorn; wouldyou, 1say, who can live such a life as this, and have lived it, change it to be groom of the stable and hold the stirrup to some lubberly 3 lord, who is himself perhaps groom of the bedchamber and holds (I won't say what) to a king, who is himself lacquey / to all of us, for he receives our pay and wears our livery? Would you, who when your day's work is over, are as much your own masters as any lord in the land; and more; and are at no man's beck and call; (as no one who bears the name of man ought to be;) would you change your condition, to become the servant of a servant's servant, and not be able to call your soul your own; merely because you can get a few shillings in a year more wages by it? Would you, 1 say, do this? Then shame and short commons 4 be your portion! 7. But no; you would not do it. 1 know you would not. I have not

I

2 3 4

Arrayed with finery.

Showy and tawdry.

Loutish.

Scanty rations.

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lived in the midst of you all these years, and spent the greater part of them in trying to cultivate a spirit of independence among you, and all for nothing. You would not, I'm sure you would not, be content to be slaves to the rich, merely because you happen to be what they (the rich) call poor. 8. But, my good lads, I'm almost afraid you don't properly understand the meaning of those words 'Rich' and 'Poor.' And if you don't I'll be sworn the parson of the parish won't teach you. So I will. You must know, then, that the London Press - you've heard of the Press, I suppose; the base, beggarly, lying Press; the cowardly, skulking, scoundrel Press; the Newspaper / Press; you've heard of this thing' by means of which half a score cunning knaves contrive to gull, hood­ wink, and bamboozle half the nation, (and would do the whole if it was not for me,) and cram their pockets with pelf at the same time. I wish I had time to put you up to a few of their tricks. But I'll just give you a notion how some of them are paid for what they do; and then you may give a pretty good guess as to what it is that they do, to get paid after that fashion. It was but the other day that a fellow named Clement;2 a great fat bull-necked pot-bellied chap he is now; but I knew him when he was so thin and half starved that he could have crept in and out at a rat-hole. Well; this fellow set up a thing called a 'Sunday Paper;,3 in which he used to collect together all the lies that had been hatched in the course of the week, and add a lot more of his own invention, and then persuade the people, by his puffing advertisements, to buy all this trash, and read it to one another of a Sunday, and fancy that they were as much concerned in it as if it had all been gospel. 9. Well; this fellow, I say, after having carried on a roaring trade in these lies for some time, found the money tell in at such a rate, that he bethought himself, if he could but contrive to / bring his pigs to market seven times a week instead of once, his profits would be seven times as much as they were before: for he's one of those people who have just The printing press. Cr. Rural Rides' attacks on 'the base thing'. WiIliam Innell Clement (d.1852), newspaper proprietor and quondam friend of Cobbett. 3 Clement was joint owner of The Observer. 1

2

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sense enough to know that seven is seven times as much as one. Accordingly, the other day (that is a few months ago) another newspaper chap of the name of Perry; 1 a paltry, pitiful fellow, who used to kick his heels in the antichambers of lords and dukes, and was sometimes allowed to lick his fingers at the lower end of their dinner tables, on condition of puffing their parliament speeches next day; this last chap, I say, happened to die just pat, as if on purpose, for the other (Clement) to pop into his place. 10. But how was he to do this? for places that are worth having are not to be got by asking for. How was he to get into this place? Why by cash to be sure. He determined to buy it. Buy a newspaper! A thing, the success of which (putting merit and demerit out of the question) depends entirely on the person who conducts it! and the person who had hitherto conducted this was dead! But no matter: Clement determined to buy this place, left vacant by the death of Perry. (And what place, by the bye, is not to be bought in London, if you / know how to set about making the bargain?) In short, Clement bought this defunct daily paper, called the Morning Chronicle; for defunct it must be when Perry was so; since the Morning Chronicle meant neither more nor less than a sheet of paper, on which he (Perry) chose to print anything that he had to say on any topic that might be the talk of the hour. Clement bought it; however. And how much do you think he gave for it? for this is the point to which I wish to direct your attention. How much do you think he paid for it? 11. Why 'fools and their money are soon parted; perhaps a matter of a hundred pounds;' I hear some of you say. A hundred pounds! What do you say to FORTY THOUSAND?2 FORTY THOUSAND POUNDS!!! ­ This is what Clement paid, for the privilege of venting his lies six times a-week oftener than he had hitherto done, under the name of the Morning Chronicle. FORTY THOUSAND POUNDS!!! Enough to keep you and all your families from want, all through the county, if you were

I James Perry (1756-1821), the Whig proprietor of the Morning Chronicle from 1789 until his death. 2 Clement paid the unrealistic price of £42,000 for the Chronicle. He was forced to sell the paper for £16,500 in 1834.

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never to do another to do another day's work while you live! - You see lYing is the trade to get rich by, after all. It is better than farming, even when wheat is 90s. a quarter. / 12. But I must get back to the subject on which I began to address you. I was saying that I'm afraid you do not exactly see the true difference between what are called the Rich and the Poor. And I don't know how you should, when it has been, any time these thirty years, the sole business of this base Press to throw dust into your eyes to prevent you from seeing the truth, and dirt at all those who, like me, are able and willing to shew it you? 13. Ask, for instance, the Times newspaper; the hireling, hellish Times;1 the bloody Old Times 2; who calls me 'old Cobbett:' the brute beast! as if I wasn't young enough to be pretty sure of living to see him and all his base crew carted, and spit upon their graves! Ask, I say, this infamous 'Times' newspaper what's the difference between a 'rich' man and a 'poor' one, and the advantages or disadvantages of each; and it's ten to one but he tells you that the chief difference consists in the one being able, and the other not able, to buy his paper! 14. But the dolt forgets (or at least he would have you forget; for I'll take good care he shall never forget it) that there is such a writer as William Cobbett in the world; who glories, and ever will, in telling the truth to those who cannot / afford to purchase it, even if there were anyone else to offer it them; and who thus puts an end to the distinction between 'poor' and 'rich,' and places them both on a level in point of intellect and knowledge; which is the only real riches. The pay that pleases me is the good I'm doing. I don't deny that I like money well enough; especially when it comes out of the pockets of those who have plundered it from the people; for I know what to do with it better than they do: and what is more, I deserve it; which nobody will say of them. But of the poor I scorn to take a penny beyond what is just enough to pay me for the paper and print of what I write for them. As for the writing itself, they are welcome to that. My Register is a nice I

The Times and the Register were locked in mutual antagonism, most notably in the

181Os. 2

In contradistinction to Dr John Stoddart's New Times.

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little book containing thirty-two pages; not a great, flapping, flyaway thing, containing only fourl pages; like the offspring of the vagabond Press. And yet the price of my THIRTY-TWO pages is sixpence, 2 and the price of their FOUR pages is sevenpence! ! 15. Now mark me, my friends. All that I desire is, that in London (the Metropolis, as it is nicknamed by scholars; the great WEN, 3 as I call it, who, thank God! am no scholar4) all I wish by way of remuneration for nry labours is, 1 that all the mechanics and artizans in this WEN would form themselves into little clubs or companies, of either six or twelve, as their circumstances will permit, and each lay down his penny or halfpenny (as the case may be) to buy my Register, and read it in turn, or to one another; - that in every market town throughout the kingdom of England, Scotland, and Ireland similar clubs be formed, and also that every tap-room be compelled (by its customers I mean) to take one copy, in order to have it at hand to refer to in case of need; - and lastly, that every village and hamlet in the United Kingdom be supplied with one or more copies, according to its size; the said copies to be paid for in any manner most convenient to the persons interested. The trifling profit that would be derived from this, is all I desire. As for the parlour people; the parsons, the squires, and all their gang; they may read the Register, or not, just as they please. 16. But to the point, as to who is 'Rich,' and who 'Poor,' in the real practical meaning of these words. My Lord Lackwit,5 who lives at the great 'Place,' as they call it; (I need not point him out more particularly, Broadsheet newspapers of this period generally contained four pages. From 1816, when he reduced the price of the Register to twopence, the much-vaunted cheapness of the 'Twopenny Trash' helped to ensure its wide circulation amongst the poorer sections of society. Cobbett was forced to raise the price to sixpence by the Six Acts of 1819, thus damaging circulation. However, he still maintained that his paper was available at a bargain price. 3 Cobbett's antipathetic label for London. Cf. Rural Rides: 'But what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster, called the metropolis of the empire?'. Patmore's'The Horse Bazaar', published in the New MonthlY in 1824, refers to the 'Wen, as Cobbett calls it'. 4 Cr. Rural Rides' condemnation 'of those frivolous idiots that are turned out from Winchester and Westminster School, or from any of those dens of dunces called Colleges and Universities'. 5 The radical novelist and dramatist Thomas Holcroft has a Lord Lackwit in his The Man qf Ten Thousand: A Come4J (1796). I

2

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for you know who I mean, well enough); this 'Lord' has an income of forty thousand pounds a year; or three thousand three hundred and thirty-three pounds a month; or eight hundred pounds a week; or a hundred and ten pounds a day!! This is, in round numbers, the amount of his income; of the money that he has to spend every day in his life throughout the year. There are several of these 'Lords,' elsewhere, who have twice or three times as much as this. But we will take him as an example, because you know something of him, and will therefore know whether what I shall have to say about him is true or not. 17. This 'Lord,' then, has a sum of money coming to him every dqy of his life, which amounts to as much as would keep four of your families in comfort for a wholeyear. Now, is this 'Lord' a 'Rich' man, or a 'Poor' one? You laugh at the question; and so would he if it were put to him. But if it were I who put it, and he had sense enough to understand and feel the reply which I should make to it, he would pretty soon begin to laugh on the wrong side of his mouth. But is he a 'rich' man? I mean rich in point of mere money; for the riches of comfort and content are not what we are now talking about. We shall come to that afterwards. Is this Lord 'rich' in point of money? 18. Let us see. But, in order that we may / understand each other clearly, let us start on this principle, that a man is 'rich' or 'poor,' in proportion as he has much left, or less than nothing, after providing himself and his family with the necessaries of life. 19. In the first place this 'Lord' has to provide food, lodging, and clothes for a whole army of lazy hounds, who stuff and gorge themselves all day long, and half the night, and waste as much again as they eat; and to pqy them once a quarter into the bargain, for letting themselves live at his expense and do nothing; pay them each as much as one of you can earn by working hard from sunrise to sunset. 20. Mind, he must do this. No matter what his inclination or disposition may be, he must keep up 'a proper establishment.' It is a 'necessary' of his life. He would no more dare to do otherwise, than he would dare to let the parliament-men who sit for his boroughs vote according to their consciences. He is stingy enough where he dares to be so, heaven knows! and so do you know too, I dare say, if you have ever had to go into his servants' hall. I'll answer for it, all the strong ale 34

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you ever got there would have gone into a nutshell, without drowning the maggot that lodged in it. And if the beggar never / goes away empty handed from his door, it is because he takes good care none shall ever get near it. And yet he must support this army of menials, because he would not be 'a Lord' without them. It is they that make him 'a nobleman,' by calling him one. If it were not for them, neither he nor anyone else would know that he was one. 21. A 'noble man,' it if means any thing, means something that is better than us, who are of the common run of men. And is he this in himself? Look at his poor crazy carcass, as it lolls back in its easy carriage to take the air; and then tell me - Is there any thing in that better than there is in yours, or in mine? Does it look better? Can it act better? Can he who owns it think better than we can, or talk better? Is he more healthful, more honest, more happy? What can he do (of himself I mean) that you or I cannot do as well, if not ten times better? In short, in what respect is he more of A MAN than we are? In what does he better, or a tenth part so well, fulfil the objects of our common existence? 22. 'But look at his houses - his carriages - his horses - his servants - his liveries' - you say. Ay, there it is. In these he is a 'Lord;' and / consequently it is these that make him a Lord; and without these he is none. These, therefore, he must have, if they cost him half his income. They are the 'necessaries of life' of 'a Lord'. 23. In this the next place, he must keep a pack of hounds and a stable of hunters; though he does not know a beagle from a bull-dog, or a fox from a ferret, and is as little at home in his seat in the saddle as he is in his seat in the House. He must do this. What would you say of him if he were to sell his dogs, and turn off his huntsmen and put his hunters into harness? What would hisjriends say of him, who are kind enough to come down from London every sporting season, to ride those horses and follow those dogs, and live through half the winter at his expense, to save living at their own? What would his servants and country neighbours, the 'gentry,' and substantial farmers (if there be any left) say of him? What would he say and think and feel of himself Why that he was no longer 'a Lord,' to be sure; no longer what his ancestors were before him, and what they made and left him. He must do it. He has no choice. 35

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24. Then this 'Lord' has a 'Lady;' and the 'Ladies' of 'Lords,' as every body knows, are not the persons to decrease their expenses; for 1 if they bring them much, they take good care to spend them more. I believe, for my own part, that this particular 'Lord' of whom we are speaking, would be glad enough to pass the rest of his days quietly in the country; for he has just sense enough to know that the racketings andjunketings of a London life have already left him with 'one foot in the grave;' and he has too lordly a fear of death to be in any hurry to help the other there. But the 'Ladies' of Lords (especially when they are getting old) are not to be influenced by any fear of this sort. To do them justice, they will have their swing, I if they die for it, and even while they are dying for it. So long as they can keep out their coffins, they will not keep out of their card-rooms, and ball-rooms. And card-rooms and ball­ rooms abroad beget card-rooms and ball-rooms at home. And for this there must be a home. And the 'Home' of the 'Lady' of a great 'Lord' means something rather different from what you and I understand by the word. In short (for we have no time to dwell upon it) it means much the same as the 'Home' of the 'Lord' himself means in the country; a place as big as a barrack; plastered over from top to bottom with paint and gilding; and beset at every step by another army of locusts, 1 in the shape of lacqueys, valets, butlers, footmen, coachmen, stablemen, housekeepers, lady's maids, housemaids, kitchen-maids, laundry­ maids, and the Lord knows how many more besides: (not the 'lord' of the house, by the bye; for I'll be sworn he knows no more about the matter than if he had nothing to do with it. If he has been withinside half the rooms in his own house, and knows the name of a fourth part of his servants, it is as much as he does!) 25. This, then, is another 'establishment' that is as much a 'necessary of life' to a great 'Lord,' as bread and meat are to you and I. And the few 'necessaries' that we have already seen go to the preserving of this 'Lord's' life, must have swallowed up a pretty good slice of his income. But we have not seen half of them yet. You must know (for I'm sure you don't know it yet) that 'people of fashion' - (and a 'Lord' is always a person of fashion, by birth; though in point of I

I.e. they will indulge themselves.

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manners and habits he may be more vulgar than the boor that blacks his shoes); I say, 'people of fashion' have decided among themselves, that it is altogether inconsistent with reason and common-sense, that they should live either in London or in the country, for more than about two-thirds of the year. 'But if they live neither / in London nor in the country, where are they to live?' you very naturally inquire. Ay; that's the question; and a pretty puzzling question it is to them. Quite as much so as it is to you. But I'll tell you how they manage. 26. This habit, of not being able to live at home during a certain portion of the year has long been prevalent among them; and they have at last contrived (or at least those who gain a base livelihood by administering to their idle, senseless, and unnatural wants have contrived for them) to establish certain spots, at a greater or less distance from the WEN, and chiefly on the sea-coast, but so situated in regard to soil, aspect, &c. that nothing in the shape of vegetation will flourish near them. Now, where there is no vegetation there can evidently be no 'Country.' Consequently these places ('watering­ places' they call them) bear no resemblance whatever to either London or the Country, and are therifore chosen as the residences of 'people of fashion,' during about a third part of every year. 27. But they do not build houses at these places. They hire them: hire them at an enormous expense, more than proportioned to that of their own houses; while their own houses, and all the 'establishments' belonging to them, (or / nearly all), are going on just the same as if they themselves were there. Add to all this the expenses of getting backwards and forwards from these 'watering-places,' (which are the more fashionable the more expensive they are to reach) and we shall have got at another pretty hungry outlet for our 'Lord's' income. 28. I fancy, if we calculate a little, we shall find that the forty thousand a year looks rather foolish by the time all these calls upon it have been answered. In fact, need I go any farther in my enumeration of the 'necessaries' of a 'Lord's' life? I think not. There are many 'Lords' who cannot contrive to get these few 'necessaries of life' which I have already named, with double the income of our lord. Not that they are therefore content to do without them. No - no - they continue to get them easily enough; but not with their income; not by paying for

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them honestly and fairly, as you and I are obliged to pay for whatever we get. They get them, it is true; but they get them 'by hook and by crook,' as the phrase goes; by means of a herd of rascally stewards, and attorneys, and money-lenders, andJews; by mortgages, and postobits, 1 and policies of insurance, and the devil of usury knows what / besides; and by involving in comparative ruin those who are to come after them, and who ought by rights to receive the family estate bettered instead of beggared; and who do so receive it in every case where the holder is an honest man. 29. Mind, I am not complaining of, or lamenting, this mode by which lords and people of fashion 'raise money,' as they call it. I should as soon I think of interfering, or feeling sorry, if I saw one thief trying to pick another's pocket in the streets of London. I am not complaining of it; I am only telling you that so it is; that this is what many 'Lords' are forced to do in order to keep up those 'establishments' which are necessary to their existence; and that among others my Lord Lackwit is forced to do it. And the consequence is that he does not enjoy a moment's real peace of his lordly life, and that he cannot honestly call the coat he wears his own. 30. And now comes the question with which we began our inquiry about him. Is he a 'RICH' man? Is this 'Lord' - with his forty thousand pounds a year, or three thousand three hundred pounds a month, or eight hundred pounds a week, or one hundred and ten pounds a day ­ is he a 'rich' man? Rich even in the mere / money of which alone we are now speaking? I will not insult your understandings by answering the question. 31. Now let us give a look back at the other part of the inquiry, as to who is properly to be called a 'poor' man; still confining the question of money alone, and still keeping in mind the principle on which we set out, that a man is 'rich', or 'poor,' in proportion as he has much, or less than nothing, left, after having supplied himself and his family with what are, to them, 'the necessaries of life.'

I A loan to be repaid on the death of a specified individual from whom the borrower expects to inherit money.

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32. When I lived at Botley, there was (and I hope still is) an honest labourer, named Will Grange, who rented the little cottage at the corner of the lane as you turn to the Holt. Every body at Botley knew Will Grange. He used to work for me; and I was proud to see him in my fields. He was a credit to any master: if indeed it is not a piece of impudent presumption for any man to call himself the 'master' of another, merely because that other chooses, of his own free will, to do certain things, for a certain price which is fixed upon beforehand. If a labourer, of no matter what description, does the work for me that I require and engage him to do, and that he agrees to do, I must pay him the price of his / labour. I have no choice in the matter. I must do it; for if I refuse to do it by fair means, he can make me do it. Thank heaven, we have still so much ofjustice left in our debased and degraded country. When he has done his day's work he can make me pay him the price of it, and need never do another for me while he lives, unless he likes. What impudence, then, for me to call myself the master of this man! And what abject baseness in him, to call and to consider himself as my slave/For the word 'master' is without a meaning, except when coupled with that other word, 'slave.' 33. But a return to honest Will Grange, who, if I remember rightly, never called any man 'master'; though he was as far from fancying himself above his station as he was from feeling himself below it. Will Grange, when I knew him, was a labourer; a day labourer. I need not tell you that this means, one who earns his livelihood, day by day, by the sweat of his brow. He had been this all his life; and at the time I am speaking of he had been this long enough to have enabled him to get togetherjust enough to purchase a cow and the furniture of the cottage in which he lived. He had, when I last saw him, a wife and four children. / 33. Now what would my Lord Lackwit, or any other 'Lord,' or any of the herds of 'nobility and gentry,' as they call themselves, who live upon the plunder that comes out of the pockets of the oppressed people of this degraded country; what would any of these 'gentry' say, if you were to ask them seriously whether a man like Will Grange, a day labourer, with a wife and four children to support out of the earnings of that labour, is a 'poor' man or a 'rich' one? What would 39

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they say? Why they would sqy nothing; but they would first laugh in your face, and then turn away their heads in token of their contempt for the person who could ask them such a silly question. And they would just the same if you were to ask them whether my Lord Lackwit is a 'rich' man. 35. But does this make or prove the Lord to be in reality 'rich' and the labourer 'poor?' Heaven forbid! If any thing that they could either think or say could alter the condition of their 'inferiors,' (as they are pleased to term us who do something for our bread,) we should all of us be rather worse off than we are at present: which, heaven knows, need not be. But is Will Grange a 'poor' man? for I will suppose that / he still is what he was when I knew him. Let us see. 36. I have said that he lives in a snug little cottage, large enough to afford a warm shelter to all his family in the winter weather: in the summer they want none. I have said also that he has a cow. This he keeps, partly by letting the youngest of his little ones lead it in a string about the green lanes; (for there is no common in his neighbourhood); but chiifly by the produce of the forty rods, 1 or thereabouts, of garden ground which is attached to his cottage. This ground he cultivates entirely with a view to the keep of his cow; because he has the good sense to know, that by so doing he contributes more towards the health and comfort of his wife and children, than if he could fill it ten times over with potatoes and 'garden stuff.' 37. The cabbages and turnips that will grow in this forty rods of land feed his cow well and plentifully during the whole winter, and all that part of the summer when she cannot pick up her living in the lanes and by the road side. And while she is well fed his children never want a bowl of good wholesome skimmed milk; and his wife can make as much butter with the cream / that comes from it, as will give an increase to their weekly earnings, at least equal to what two additional days' work in the week would do. 38. He is able to cultivate this bit of ground easily, by taking an hour now and then before and after his ordinary day's work, and by

I

er. Cottage Economy, para.

116. Forty rods is a quarter of an acre.

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the assistance of his eldest boy; to say nothing of his having all Sundqy to himself: and theirs must be an odd kind of religion who would object to his employing a portion of that day, 'holy' as it is, to such an end: for what work can be holier, 1 should be glad to know, than that which contributes to the health and comfort of the offspring which God has given him? 39. This cow, which, observe, is almost entirely kept by the labour of honest Will, and which must therefore be looked upon in the light of the actual consequence of that labour, is the only direct source of profit which he possesses, exclusive of his own daily earnings. So that he is not to be considered as any other than an ordinary day labourer. Mind this; because it is of consequence to my argument that you should not regard Will Grange, my example in this case, as any other than a common labourer, like one of yourselves. 40. But Will has a wife; a good, honest, comely, industrious, neat­ handed wife. And in / no station of life, and least of all in yours, can a man be all that he may be in that station, without such a wife; any more than he can be it with one of an opposite description; with a slattern, a scold, and a gossip: for these precious qualities always go together. 41. Now Will's wife, as every good wife ought, (I had almost said as every good wife does; but I'm afraid this would be going a little too far, considering that not more than about sixty thousand copies of my Cottage Economy1 have as yet been circulated), 1 say that Will's wife hates and abhors all manner of slops and messes about the cottage; and most of all she hates that worst, because most mischievous of all messes, tea. 2 42. As for the children, they do not know the taste of beer, 3 much less of any thing stronger. And what little of it Will himself may stand in need of, to enable him to get through his daily labour more cheerfully, they I

Cottage Economy, addressed 'To the labouring classes of this kingdom', was published in

1821-2.

2 Cf. Cottage Economy: 'I view the tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an engenderer of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth and a maker of misery for old age.' 3 Cr. Cottage Economy: 'Little children, that do not work, should not have beer. Broth, porridge, or something in that way, is the thing for them.'

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can afford to buy: that is if they can buy such a thing as beer at all now­ a-days, or get it any way without making it themselves. I'm afraid that, at the time we are speaking of, this excellent custom of brewing at home; this custom so indispensable to the English cottager's enjoying the greatest share of health and comfort of which his station is susceptible; was almost necessarily laid aside, in consequence of the monstrous weight of taxes I which had been laid on all the materials of brewing; and which custom, by the bye, I do not despair of seeing almost universally revived at no very distant day, when the cottagers shall have read and considered what I have written for them, on this most important subject, in my Cottage Economy. 2 But we will suppose that Will Grange did not, because under the then circumstances of the times he could not, brew their own beer. All that they needed they could well afford to buy, out of the earnings of their cow. 43. Then for bread, that of course Will's wife baked hersel£ If she had not, I should never have called her an 'industrious' wife; no, not even an 'honest' one; for a cottager's wife who chooses to feed her children upon the pernicious trash that she gets at the bakers for about half as much again as she can make good wholesome bread herself, has no more claim to be called 'honest,' than anyone has who defrauds others of what is their due. The married labourer's earnings are in part the due of his children; for if it were not for them he would not take the trouble of earning so much as he does. That mother, then, who squanders away those earnings unnecessarily / (to say nothing of mischievously) robs her children of their due. This is what Will's wife never did, or I should not now be offering him and his family as an example to illustrate the point of inquiry that we are presently coming to. 44. I must not dwell much longer on the details connected with this point; and I need not. It is sufficient to say that the inmates of Will Grange's cottage have seldom occasion to go elsewhere in search of any

I C£ Cottage Economy: 'In conclusion of these remarks on beer brewing, I once more express my most anxious desire to see abolished for ever the accursed tax on malt, which, I verily believe, has done more harm to the people of England than was ever done to any people by plague, pestilence, famine, and civil war.' 2 Paras 20-76 of Cottage Economy are devoted to brewing.

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thing that they may want to make their lives easy, and even cheerful and happy. They have a few pigs of course; which, with good management, not only give them bacon for every alternate day throughout the year, but, together with the cow, afford them plenty of manure for their litde garden; without an ample supply of which they could not get from it what I have said that they do get, namely, food for the cow during nine months out of the twelve. They have also half a dozen laying hens, which always afford them a hot dinner, when the cupboard happens to run bare. And they have a couple of hives of bees, which give them honey enough for the younger children always to have a scrape of it upon their hunch of bread, before they go to bed. / 45. This is all that Will Grange and his family have within themselves, to be sure. But then what an 'ALL' it is! I should like to see the 'LORD' who is half so independent of the rest of the world, as this honest labourer, and his industrious, healthy, and'happy family; who may almost be considered as the creators of all that is necessary to supply their daily wants, and who have nearly the whole of their earnings left, to buy themselves and their children decent and comfortable clothing, and to lay by for a rainy day. 46. It is true that, after supplying themselves with all the comforts which any of us require, they have not enough left to pay for their children going to school to the parson of the parish, to be taught to spurn at their station, and be ashamed of the father that fed, and the mother that bore them. It is true they have not surplus enough to let them sit at home idle half their time, and quarrel with one another to make it pass away the more quickly; or if they like that better, the husband to loll at the alehouse and get drunk three days in the week, while the wife leaves the children at home to 'mind' each other, and goes gadding about through the village, tea-drinking, trolloping, and tale­ bearing. 47. It is true they have not enough to tempt / them to do these things, and half a hundred more, equally proper and praiseworthy, which a superfluity might tempt even them to do, because it has before now tempted others, who, without that temptation, would have been as honest and as happy as they are. But, as we have just seen, they have enough and to spare for all the good purposes to which money can be 43

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applied in their station of life; a station which, if it were what it might be from its nature, and what it ought to be according to the claims of natural justice, would be the envy of all other stations, and the glory and delight of all who belong to it. 48. And now our question returns: Is Will Grange a 'poor' man? Again let me say, I will not insult your understandings by answering this question; because I am sure that you have already answered it for yourselves, and answered it in a way that will I hope make it quite needless for me to advise you to give up all those idle crotchets that I hear you have got into your heads, about leaving your beautiful, healthful, and sweet-scented fields, and coming up to 'seek your fortunes' in this detestable sink of all filth, folly, and iniquity; this standing and ever-increasing disease of our country; this WEN; this London. Shun / it, my honest friends, as you would shun a pest-house, 1 or a parish work-house. You may take my world for it, that all the 'fortune' you, with your habits, could ever find in London, would be poverty, contempt, and shame. By the bye, if you knew what London is, I need not have named the two last; for there poverty means them both. 49. But even if you were sure of earning, by coming here, three times as much as you can by remaining where you are, you would be still three times as badly off, because you would, in a month from the time you set foot in this want-creating city, have ten times as many to supply as you now have, besides losing the power of enjoying that supply even if you could get it. No, no, my good friends; stay where you are, and be as contented as you can till better times come. And come they must, one way or another; and that shortly. In the mean while you may believe me when I tell you, that the only 'rich' man is he who is healthy, honest, and contented with his lot; (neither of which anybody is in London); and that the only 'poor' man is he who has wants that he cannot supply. So says your sincere friend

And well-wisher,

WILLIAM COBBETT.

Kensington,2 Sep. 1825. / I 2

'A hospital for persons suffering from any infectious disease, esp. the plague' (QED). Cobbett opened a farm at Kensington in 1821.

44

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to To-morrow; a Gaie!J and Gravi!Y)

This is the first of Patmore's series of imitations of articles originally published in the New Monthly. The magazine, absorbed as it was with fashionable life and preoccupations, itself became voguish and successful in the l820s. As Patmore writes in Letters on England, 'Not to have read such or such an article in the last New Monthly ... is an imputation not to be thought of; you might almost as well admit that you had not read the last Scotch novel, or been to Paris.' 1 The magazine's 'Original Papers', which defined its tone, featured a great deal of comic writing, both in prose and verse, often dealing with ephemeral social preoccupations. Many of the original papers were contributed by James and Horace Smith in non-collaborative mode and 'To-morrow; A Gaiety and Gravity' is the first of the individual imitations of the brothers Smith in the RqectedArticles (though of course in one sense the whole volume is an imitation of the duumvirate's most notable work). After the publication of their immensely successful Rgected Addresses (1812), both of the Smiths made second literary careers in comic prose. Horace published a number of triple decker novels, the most successful being Bramble!Je House (1826) and, in the early 1820s, poured out comic poems and essays in the New Monthly (for which he was paid twenty guineas a sheet, significantly above the journal's standard rate of twelve guineas 2). Many of these were collected in Gaieties and Gravities: A Series qf Essqys, Comic Tales and Fugitive fagaries (1825), a title reflected in Patmore's own subtitle. In Letters on England, Patmore pays tribute to the Smiths as writers 'who enjoy the most brilliant reputations of the day as writers of comic verse'. 3 However, he goes on to laud their prose contributions to the New Monthly: 'Each of these latter also furnish the magazine with prose papers on various subjects, written in styles quite peculiar to themselves'·4 Patmore 45

DOI: 10.4324/9780429348327-7

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describes Horace's discursive prose as 'delightful from its playful and elegant terseness' and it is this quality which he captures in 'To­ morrow'. The formal model for the essay is Smith's 'To-day', a whimsical meditation on temporality which was published in the New Monthly inJanuary 1823: To-day is like a child's pocket-money, which he never thinks of keeping in his pocket. Considering it bestowed upon us for the sole purpose of being expended as fast as possible in dainties, toys, and knick-knacks, we should reproach ourselves for meanness of spirit were we to hoard it up, or appropriate it to any object of serious utility. It is the only part of life of which we are sure; yet we treat it as if it were the sole portion of existence beyond our control. We make sage reflections upon the past, and wise resolutions for the future, but no one ever forms an important determination for to-day. Whatever is urgent must be reserved for to­ morrow;5

To the modern eye, Smith's essays seem pale and lacking in depth when compared to those of Lamb. Nonetheless, 'To-morrow' is a faithful and well-achieved imitation. If Patmore's essay has not aged well, then the fault lies with its model. NOTES 1 liJE, II, p. 231. 2 See Lee Erickson, The Economy qf Literary Form: English Literature and the Industriali;zation qf Publishing, 1800-1850 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 83.

3 liJE, 11, p. 232.

4 Ibid.

5 NMM, VII (January 1823), p. 17.

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TO-MORROW; A GAIETY AND GRAVITY. BY ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF 'REJECTED ADDRESSES.'

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow. MACBETH 1

IT seems but yesterday that I took occasion to bestow a month's immortality upon 'To-day;' and I propose not to let To-day pass without doing as much for To-morrow. Perhaps I may devote To­ morrow to performing a similar office for Yesterday. But this latter is more than I can promise, since it is the very essence of To-morrow that no one can tell what it will bring forth. Of all the days in the year, there is none so pregnant of wise determinations, flattering promises, sage resolutions, and salutary reforms, as To-morrow. It is astonishing what projects are to be commenced To-morrow; and it is still more surprising / what a number are to be brought to a conclusion on the same day! Judging from the innumerable tradesmen's bills that are to be paid 'To-morrow,' one would suppose that some new source of wealth had been simultaneously discovered by every small debtor throughout the world of credit, and that to pay were as easy and agreeable as to run in debt. As for the intended 'calls' of To-morrow, if they should all be made they will all be to make over again; for every body will be out calling, on every body. Then again, the 'new leaves' that are to be 'turned over' To-morrow, are more numerous than those 'in Valombrosa's shade.'2 V.v. 19. Thomas Warton the younger, 'Ode XI. On the Approach of Summer', I. 235. Cr. also Paradise Lost, I. I. 303. I

2

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In short, To-morrow is to be the day more 'big with fate' I than any that the sun ever shone upon; and more is to be done in the course of it than has been done in any day since the world was made out of chaos. And, 'not to speak it profanely,,2 even on that day there was but form and entity given to what was before a confused mass of matter; whereas To-morrow, thoughts, intentions, fancies, feelings, and imaginations, are to be metamorphosed into actual tangible facts; and what is more, a thousand events are to take place that will never take place at all! What a world would this be, if all were accomplished / in it that assuredly will be accomplished to-morrow! To-morrow A. will ask a friend to dine with him; and B. will be as good as his word; and C. will commit no blunder; and D. will get a decision in the Court of Chancery; and E. will commence his new epic; and F. will finish his; and G. will begin to grow wise; and H. will begin to grow honest; and I. will begin to leave off writing nonsense; and K. will keep himself sober; and L. will not tell a single lie; and M. will try to make himself agreeable; and N. will not; and 0. will get over his own style; and P. will pay his long-standing tailor's bill; and Q will quarrel with a taller man than himself; and R. will begin to retrench his expences within his income; and S. will say a good thing; and T. will tell one without spoiling it; and V. will vote in opposition to his interest; and U. will read this essay a second time; and W. will leave off wondering who wrote it; and X. Y Z. will get a satisfactory answer to his advertisement for a wife. And why is it that all these good things, and a thousand more, which will certainly take place To-morrow, never take place at all? The secret is, that To-morrow, like 'good bye,' is easily said, / and that most of us are content to let our good deeds appear under the guise of good words. Besides which, though every body talks and thinks of To-morrow as of a day that must come, and though it is as familiar in our months 'as household words,'3 yet we all feel that it is only a word - that there is no I

2 3

cr. Addison, Calo, Act I, sc. i, I. 3. Hamlel, Ill. ii. 30-1. Henry V, IV. iii. 52.

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such thing as To-morrow - that it is a day which cannot happen - a dies non. Who can explain what To-morrow is? - or where it is? - or when it is? It is always coming, like a waiter at an inn; and yet it never comes. The little boys at school understand it best. They call it 'To-morrow come-never.' And probably this, after all, is the point of view in which most people secretly look at Tomorrow. And, accordingly, they are willing to do anything in the world to oblige you - 'To-morrow.' 'To-day' they really must be excused - they have so many things to attend to - but if you will but call To-morrow - . And then, when you fancy that 'To­ morrow' is come, and you take them at their word - Oh, they really can't find time To-day - but 'To-morrow.' And then when that To­ morrow comes - they are really very sorry - but 'circumstances have transpired,' &c. And thus it goes on for ever: / To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools (and wise men too) The way to - To-morrow! I

An ancient philosopher has said, that he is wise who has lived To­ day. And it was wisely said. And his commentator has added, no less wisely, that he is wiser still who lived Yesterday. 2 Let me, who am albeit neither philosopher nor commentator, not be accused of presumption, if I complete the trinity of wise saying, by adding, that he is wisest of the three who lives To-morrow; for To-morrow we may live as we please, whether it comes to us or not. In truth, we have hitherto been considering this subject with a degree of flippancy which is scarcely appropriate to it; for after all, what is To-morrow but that great Future to which we all look, and to which we are all hastening, on the swift pinions of Time, and must

Adapted from Macbeth, V. v. 19-23. Cr. 'To-day': 'He is wise, says an ancient philosopher, who lives to-day; he is wiser still, exclaims his commentator, who lived yesterday'. I

2

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inevitably reach, even though we should succeed in trifling away To­ day as we did Yesterday, and To-morrow as we have done To-day. The only truly wise man, is he who so passes To-day, that To-morrow may be / anticipated if it come not, and improved and enjoyed if it come. In the present frightfully artificial and diseased state of society ­ with its ever-increasing cities, and its ever more and more deserted and despised fields, and groves, and solitudes; - when all are rushing towards the plague-tainted spots, and crowding into them as if they were tired of health, and in love with disease and death; - when governments are going about, under the guise of holiness, seeking whom among the weak and disunited they may devour, and among the virtuous divide and destroy; - when rulers are raking in the dirt of ages for pleas and precedents, whereby they may debase the people they have been put over, and lay their liberty prostrate at the feet of power; - in short, when vice, luxury, and crime (to say nothing of cant, cajolery, and cunning) reign triumphant; and virtue, wisdom, and nature are laughed to scorn, and driven to seek refuge in the solitudes of woods and deserts - what should the truly wise man do, but live in that only world which is left him unpolluted, and of which he can make what use he pleases, by fashioning it after any form that his fancy feels inclined to - namely, the world of To-morrow - the / great Future - 'the all hailed hereafter?'J Let me ask those who doubt the wisdom of living with a view to To-morrow rather than To-day, - Of what avail were all the riches which Croesus 2 looked upon as the prime blessing of life - or the honour which was so honoured by Periander of Corinth 3 - or the strength which Milo the Crotonian4 boasted of - or the knowledge which Socrates worshipped - or the beauty which Orpheus adored - or the ideal world of Plato - or the prudence and forethought of Thales the Milesian 5 or even the

1 2

3 4

5

Adapted from Macbeth, I. v. 55.

The Lydian monarch famous for his wealth.

One of the seven wise men of ancient Greece.

The Greek warrior and Olympian. Many legends circulated about his strength.

Thales of Miletus (c.636--{:.546 BC), the natural philosopher.

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supreme virtue to which Aristotle referred all happiness, and the happiness itself which Epicurus alone thought worth living for - what were all these, unless with a view to To-morrow?l Would anyone consent even to live through To-day, if he were sure that no To-morrow would follow it? Alas! To-morrow is not a matter to be trifled either with or upon. It is the best part of our existence; since it is the only part of which we can be sure that it will be what we would have it be. Ophelia says that 'we all know what we are, but we know not what we may be.'2 But with all due deference to the wisdom of her simplicity, she was wrong in both clauses of her proposition. None of us know what we are; and we all know what we may be / - To-morrow; because To-morrow itself is but an imagination; and while we are imagining it, we can just as well imagine ourselves into what we please when it arrives. True, it arrives at last; and then we do not find either it or ourselves what We intended or expected them to be. But then it cannot be said that we have deceived ourselves; because we cannot find out our error till to-day; and then To-morrow is before us again, as fresh and promising as ever. In a word, those who would live to any good end in the present unnatural and over-excited state of society and manners, (to say nothing of the corruption in morals and the degradation in politics), must make up their minds to forget Yesterday, and take no note of To­ day, but live in the future of To-morrow: for in the wise man's calendar there are but these three days, which include all time, past, present, and to come. But can they so live? Can the unavailing Yesterday be forgotten, and the imaginary To-morrow be enjoyed, amidst the feverish turmoil and the insane noise and distraction of To-day, as it exists in the centre and heart of society and the world? Assuredly not. But 'there is

I Cr. 'To-day': 'But what is the best mode of life for the attainment of happiness? ... Crresus placed the chief good in riches; Periander of Corinth in honour; Socrates in knowledge; Plato in idea; Orpheus in beauty; Milo the Crotonian in bodily strength ... Aristotle in the practice and operation of virtue; and Epicurus affirms that happiness is the chief good, and virtue the only happiness.' 2 Hamlet, IV. v. 43-4.

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another and a better world'l - the world of woods, and fields, and gardens, and groves, and streams - each department / of which is a world of itself, and peopled with beings who live only to be happy, and who are happy only that they live. In that world the soul may find rest for its wearied wings, and refreshment for its exhausted powers; there it may contemplate the future with a quiet and undisturbed gaze, till at last it sinks softly into it, and becomes a part of what it looks upon. There are many other points of view in which To-morrow may be looked upon; but I fear the reader will be of opinion that I have said more than enough of it for To-day. At any rate, I have exhausted my limits, if not my subject; and the remaining considerations touching To-morrow, must be deferred till- To-morrow. H. /

I A. F. F. von Kotzebue, The Stranger, translated by George Papendick (1798), Act I, se. vi, 1. 24.

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Review if Tremaine)

The 'Review of Tremaine', one of the highlights of the Rgected Articles, sees Patmore, the hapless 'Tims', victim of much acerbic Blackwoodian drolleryl strike back in a successful parody of Blackwood's vituperative handling of the 'Cockney school'. From the October 181 7 relaunch of the failing magazine which included the vituperative 'On the Cockney School of Poetry. No.!', Maga poured forth a stream of mordantly amusing personal satire on the various members of the iniquitous 'Cockney crew'. The attacks spread from Hunt to Hazlitt, Keats and, eventually, the formerly favoured contributor P. G. Patmore. Here Patmore seeks his revenge; the generally respectful tone of the Rgected Articles is absent from the 'Review of Tremaine'. The tone of the piece is much closer to the partisan spirit of much Romantic period parody. And if not quite an executioner, Patmore manages to draw blood. The 'Review of Tremaine' sees Patmore choosing a weapon from Blackwood's parodic armoury, the spoof review which is dependent upon a fundamental and entirely intentional misreading of the book under discussion. This strategy had recently been used to great effect against the magazine by John Hamilton Reynolds in an attack in which Patmore was tangentially involved. InJune 1824 John Wilson had attributed an essay by Reynolds to Tims. In the following month, Reynolds responded in the Westminster by attributing Thomas Wilson's The Danciad toJohn Wilson. Maga was not pleased to receive a dose of its own satirical medicine and itself replied in August 1824, protesting that 'The Danciad, a silly poem, by a London dancing-master of the name of Wilson, is here attributed to Professor Wilson, as the ground­ work of a dull joke. The writer is evidently actuated by some low spite against that eminent man. '2 Patmore joins in the satirical exchange, 53

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portraying Blackwood's once again mistakenly attributing a new work to Tims. Here Patmore has Blackwood's fulminating against Robert Plumer Ward's 1825 novel Tremaine, or the Man qf Rifinement as the work of a 'low-bred and ignorant cockney'. The novel, it declares, manifests the Cockney faults of vulgarity, immorality and empty pretensions to classical culture. Eventually, the culprit behind this anonymously published novel is revealed as none other than P. G. Patmore: 'Wicount Wictoire himself is "the Man of Refinement," after all! Tims! - Our own Tims,3. The joke against Maga is that Tremaine is actually a worthy, if unspeakably dull, Christian tendenz-roman by a high Tory Anglican clergyman (when this fact is brought to its attention it is forced to 'reject' the article). Plumer Ward's idea of narrative suspense, for instance, is predicated on the heroine's unwillingness to marry a spiritual doubter. When the man of refinement finally quells his scepticism, matters are happily resolved. Patmore's parody characterises Blackwood's prose as bilious ranting which is based upon ignorance, a noxious obsession with the 'Cockneys' and an unhealthy preoccupation with their supposed immorality. Patmore ably catches the facetious vitriol of the Blackwoodian manner (most notably in the splendid fourth paragraph). Blackwood's unfair but compelling armoury is evoked: cheerfully spiteful snobbery, ad hominem personal abuse, line-by-line scornful repudiation of the source text~ wrenching passages out of context, comic repetition of selected passages to ludicrous effect, liberal use of exclamation marks and emphatic italicisation. Patmore labels Blackwood's a kind of authoritarian and egotistical literary soldiery ('what are WE but the Life Guards of the literature of our country?') and, at his most perceptive, implies that there is more than a little meretriciousness in the magazine's constant attention to the Cockneys (Their vagaries are meat and drink to us. They are worth as much to us as Hume and Brougham are to Canning in the House.') Blackwood's attack on the Cockneys, far from being principled, has an economic rationale and is driven by the need to repeat a commercially successful satirical formula. I speculate above that Patmore suppressed the review because of Plumer Ward's and/or Henry Colburn's antipathy. It must be

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admitted that, parodic though it is, the review effectively demolishes Plumer Ward's novel. The novel's resolution really does depend upon the ludicrous device of the overturning of a tea-urn and one can certainly imagine John Wilson describing the episode in the splendidly scornful manner adopted by Patmore. NOTES Patmore's relationship with Blackwood's is discussed at length introduction above and does not need to be rehearsed here. 2 BEM, XVI (August 1824), p. 226. 3 For discussion of these nicknames, see my introduction above.

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REVIEW OF TREMAINE.* BY CHRISTOPHER NORTH. I

Ecce iterum Crispinus/ 2 Here are these 'crisp'3 Cocknies 'at their dirty work again.' Shall we never be able to exterminate them? We have hitherto considered, and represented them to our / readers, as a parcel of puppies, scarcely worth the drowning, But we now begin to think that they must belong to the feline species, and have nine lives instead of the ninth part of one. Here have we, ever since the commencement of our sanguinary career, been killing them with as little mercy, and almost as fast, as Billy kills those infinitely less filthy and mischievous vermin the rats;4 and yet they seem, for anything we can see to the contrary, to be just as live as ever. Well - no matter - we must follow the advice of the

* It is perhaps almost superfluous to state, that this eloquent specimen of the art of criticism was written for Blackwood's Magazine. Indeed, it very narrowly escaped appearing there. But, fortunately for my work, no less than for their own, the conductors of that immaculate and amusing miscellany discovered, just in time, that the excellent subject of their correspondent's remarks is, in point of fact, the production, not of a cockney, or of any such person, (if such there be), but of a gentleman not only of rank, family, fortune, and political influence, but a Tory and a minister! The mingled dismay in imagination, and delight in fact, which no doubt ensued on this discovery, and on its being made just in time, must have been affecting to witness. I Though others (William Maginn most notably) had used the name in the past, by 1826 'Christopher North' was clearly established as Wilson's pseudonym. 2 'Behold, this Crispinus again!' (Juvenal, Satire IV. I). 3 To use Blackwood's terminology, one of Hunt's 'own dear words'. cr 'To John Hamilton Reynolds, on his lines upon the Story of Rimini' (1818), I. 2, and 'The Nymphs' (1818),11,1.193. 4 The famous ratticide Billy, a Manchester terrier, supposedly killed one hundred rats in just over six minutes.

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pretty innocents in the wood, to Waiter, and 'kill 'em again.'1 But joking apart, (if indeed we can manage to speak about such riff­ raff without a smile of contempt on our lips), it has really at last almost become a serious matter, to see the length to which this low rabble have contrived to stretch their tether; it is almost past bearing to witness the way in which they continue to insult the patience and pick the pockets of our dear Public, notwithstanding all the pains (or rather the pleasure) we have so often taken, in warning it against their impudent devices. To be sure, some of their exploits are not absolutely without fun in them; and we, therefore, would be the last persons in the world to discourage them altogether. Their vagaries are meat / and drink to us. They are worth as much to us as Hume 2 and Brougham 3 are to Canning4 in the House, or Dick Martin5 to the Morning Chronicle. So that, under ordinary circumstances, it would be as much to our pleasure as our profit to spare them, so far as letting them escape with their lives, (as Bill Baldwin6 does his favourite bear), that we may continue to bait them from time to time, when we have nothing better to do. What, for example, can be more ludicrous than to see a couple of cocknies, like Hazlitt and Tims, snivelling over the decline of the Fine Arts, as they would over a fish upon a hook; or dabbling in the dirty ditch water of the modern Drama, as their dawdling wives do in their washing tubs? That the cocknies should even attempt to transgress Tasso and Petrarch into their execrable patois, or poke their perked up noses into the mysteries of ancient mythology, and prate to us of Apollar and Dianar in the dialect of White Chaple, though it made us sick, did I In Thomas Morton's The Children in the »0od (1796), a play which substitutes a happy ending for the tragic outcome found in the old ballad, the assassin Waiter, struck by remorse, murders his colleague Oliver rather than the two 'pretty innocents'. The boy urges Waiter to 'Go kill him again, such a rascal as he cannot bel too dead.' 2 Joseph Hume (1777-1855), the Radical MP. 3 Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868), lawyer and Whig politician. 4 Once of the Anti-Jacobin and at this point in time Tory Foreign Secretary. 5 Richard Martin (1754-1834), the Irish MP known as 'Humanity Martin', was one of the founders of the RSPCA. His love of animals attracted much press derision. 6 Probably William Charles Baldwin, the hunter.

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not make us sorry, because none can expose a fool so effectually as himself. Nay - that these pestilent puppies should even have dared to crawl, upon the splay feet of their filthy verses, into the sacred paths of poetry itself, and pronounce panegyrics upon incest, / and libels upon wedlock, 1 in one and the same stinking breath - even this scarcely raised our bile, though we did take the trouble of tying them for it, like 'petty larceny rascals' as they are, to the tail of our vehicle, and lashing them within an inch of their worthless lives. All this, we repeat, has not hitherto been able to move us from the centre of our want-of-gravity, and make us treat them as any thing else than - than - in short, than COCKNIES: for where shall we find any other epithet so comprehensive in its contempt? But, dear reader, wilt thou credit us when we declare to thee - will our beloved Public believe us on our oaths, (taken on the gospel of our own Maga) when we state, that here is a fellow, more impudent and ignorant than all the rest of the bunch hung in a string, (like stinking hinguns 2 as they are, ) who actually has the face - if that thing of dough and dirt which surmounts the thread-paper body of a cockney can be called a face - to come forward from the inner shrine of Mister Colburn's 'offices' in New Burlington Street, and actually pretend to tell us a tale of fashionable life! to introduce us to the society of the real exclusives and ineffables of Almacks 3 / and the Albany4!! in short, to hand forward to our notice, in the character of his own intimate acquaintance, a class of persons on no one specimen of which he ever by any accident set his eyes, except as they may have chanced to be stepping out of their carriages at the door of Messrs. Rundell and Bridge's shop5 on Ludgate Hill!!! Why, this is carrying impudence to an imperial pitch. They say that I cr. Blackwood's 'Letter from Z. to Leigh Hunt' (January 1818) which charges Hunt with 'A partiality for indecent subjects, and an immoral manner of writing concerning the crime of incest' and labels him 'the apologist of adultery and incest'. A further letter of May 1818 accuses Hunt of 'sneer[ing] at that dull thing a wife'. 2 Onions. 3 The assembly rooms in King Street established by William Almack in 1765. 4 Fashionable gentleman's chambers in Piccadilly. 5 The prestigious and expensive jewellers. See 'London Letters to Country Cousins' below.

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the sublime treads on the heels of the ridiculous. But here we have the ridiculous actually treading on the heels of the sublime. Let us, without more ado, turn to the pages of this precious farrago, dominated 'the Man of Refinement,' and see how the puppy performs his antics: merely premising that the 'important new work' has just been ushered into the world with a flourish of Mister Colburn's trumpets,l no less astounding than that which erst preceded the entry of Tom Thumb. 2 In the first place, let us observe that this 'important new work' begins with a transparent fraud. The cockney is not content to be the 'author' of his own production, but he must be the 'editor' too! Accordingly, we have a preface at the hands of each of these personages. In order to prove that the two are one, and that that one is a cockney, and of the most sickening class, / namely, the sentimental, we need but quote a single line from the 'preface' of each. 'How sweet is the passion of love!' p. v. Does the reader observe? Here is prose and poetry, both in one! How sweet is the passion of love! Ti turn titurn turn titurn ti!3

This is from the 'author's preface.' Now hear his 'editor:' 'These are mixed up with history of a very sweet passion,' &c. A 'sweet passion,' indeed! What does the puppy mean by a sweet passion? A passion dipped in lavender water, perhaps. But no matter: we are merely stopping for a moment in his prefaces, to show the reader that his 'work' opens with an impudent fraud, and that he is as much of a knave as such a fool can be. Let us now take a look at the 'Man of Refinement' himself - who, by the bye, we would bet odds - (no less odds than a set of Blackwood's to a set of each of the other magazines extant, and to be extant between this and the year eighteen hundred and fifty - which is about the period at which we, Christopher North, intend to close our literary I

2 3

Colburn's advertising techniques were notorious in the 1820s.

In Fielding's burlesque drama Tom Thumb the Great (1730).

Patmore may have the Anti-Jacobin's 'The Soldier's Friend' in mind here.

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labours, and like Sylla,l lay down our dictatorship) ~ we would bet this tolerably long odds, / that the 'Man of Refinement' is intended to shadow forth neither more nor less than the author-editor himself of his egregious 'work!' Let us see how he introduces himself. The following is the first passage of the first page; so that we shall not be accused of choosing an unfavourable specimen of our author-editor's style. 'It was the middle of August; the great gates of Belmont were thrown open by the obsequious porter at the lodge; a barouche and four, well-appointed, drove in at a gallop, and rapidly neared the hall, the steps of which were lined with servants; and every thing denoted the arrival of a man of consequence, at his seat in the country. ~ It was TREMAINE.' p. 1. 'It was the middle of August!' what 'was the middle of August?' ~ 'The great gates of Belmont were thrown open by the obsequious porter.' Why, who but the porter should open the gates? And does he mean to indicate, by his 'obsequious,' that the said porter, instead of attending to the duty of opening and shutting the gates, was standing bowing and scraping with his hat in hand? ~ 'A barouche and four, well-appointed, DROVE IN AT AGALLOP.' What! does the fool think that there's anything extraordinary in an English gentleman's travelling carriage not / hanging about its owner's ears in rags and tatters like a German caleche?2 And, then, mark the precision with which he takes care to point out his ignorance, by indicating the exact pace - as if any gentleman ever drove up to his own door 'at a gallop!' - 'And rapidly neared the hall, the steps of which were lined with servants.' Why if it 'drove in at a gallop' it was pretty sure to 'near' the hall 'rapidly.' As for the steps being' lined,' this is a figure of speech that we must beg leave to refer, for explanation, to Mr. Place, 3 the reformer-tailor, of Charing Cross. 'And every thing denoted the arrival of a man if consequence at his

I I.e. Lucius Cornelius Sulla (c.138-78 BC), who relinquished the dictatorship of the Roman republic in 80 BC. 2 A light carriage with a removable hood. :1 Francis Place (1771-1854), the Radical reformer, owned a tailor's shop at 16, Charing Cross.

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seat in the country.' Indeed! And so, when a gentleman drives up to his door in a travelling-carriage, and that door is approached through an avenue inclosed by great gates, with a lodge beside them, it actually 'denotes' that the said gentleman has 'arrived' at his home 'in the country!' - 'IT WAS TREMAINE!!!' Marvellous! So his name is actually 'TREMAINE!' Incredible! He was in the habit, too, we suppose, of writing it in capital letters; for so our editor-author thinks proper to print it! Does the reader any longer doubt that this 'Man of Refinement' is any thing else but a low-bred and ignorant cockney? To put it out of all question, we will proceed a little farther with his fulsome and affected trash. There is no surer indication of low-breeding, than to be always affecting the genteel. Mrs. Simpkins of 'Sinjin Street,' 'can't abide Sadler's Wells - it is so wery ungenteel.' Nothing is so vulgar as to show a particular horror of vulgarity. Count Tims has left off going to the Cock in Fleet Street, because, he says, 'the company as frequents it begins to get rather wulgar.' If you want to prove that any given person is ignorant, you have only to prove that he or she is in the habit of quoting scraps of French and Latin, and talking about 'Greece' and 'the classics,' and 'taste.' Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt do it in every page; and Lady Morgan I does nothing else. Now, let us apply the above infallible test to the author-editor of 'TREMAINE;' or the 'Man of Refinement:' bearing in mind that the said author is all through depicting himself; for he almost confesses as much in one of his prefaces. 'There is one thing,' he says, 'and only one, which does puzzle the editor. He cannot make out whether the author sat himself for either of his two characters, Evelyn or Tremaine; or if he did,' &c. Now what is the object of this pitiful mystification, but to insinuate, as openly as he / dares, that he did sit for both of these 'characters?' for there is no end to your cockney's notions of the variety of characters that he is able to combine within the limits of his own

1 Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan (1776-1859), the Irish novelist and poet who was a bete noire of Maga. Cf. Maginn's assault on 'The filths of Lady Morgan' in Blackwood~l 'Don Juan Unread' (November 1819).

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proper person. In his office or his shop, he is a man of business. If he happens to pass through Bond Street, he straitway becomes a Lounger and an Exquisite. In the lobby of the Adelphi Theatre at half-price he is transformed into a Rake-hell and a roue. At Offiey's I or the Cider Cellar, 2 afterwards, he fancies himself 'a choice spirit.' And on Sunday, who so 'genteel' as he, as he canters up and down Rotten Row on his 'bit of blood,' (for it is 'his'3 till nine o'clock in the evening, ) and With left heel turned insidiously aside, Provokes the caper which he seems to hide. 4

But we are forgetting the particular cockney before us, in the general class to which he and all of them belong. The reader need not desire better tests of cockneyism than we have given above; and the 'Man of Refinement' answers to them in every page of his history. Here are a few of the instances: 'He was in truth a person of great polish, and refined taste.' p. 2. / 'I can retire into myself, and keep the designing, the treacherous, and the vulgar at an equal distance.' p.4. (You see he hates 'the vulgar' quite as much as he does 'the designing and treacherous'.) 'His temple recalled ancient Greece to his mind, and the groves qf Academus rose to his view. How different, he exclaimed, from a trifling or slippery world, where all is vulgarity, envy, or ennui.' p. 6. 'The world, said he, is so entirely a mere vulgar crowd, that,' &c. p. 7. 'Both mother and daughter, were, in mind and manner, far removed from vulgar life.' p. 31. 'He was frequently piqued at seeing a coarse, and even a vulgar orator succeed in arresting the attention,' &c. p. 52. Your cockney, though he pretends to be mighty amorous in his propensities, is an animal that affects a particular fastidiousness in regard to 'the female character.' Nothing will serve his turn but the most immaculate purity, no less in dress and deportment, than in

I

2 3 4

The tavern in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden.

The Cider Cellar was in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden.

I.e the vulgarian has a hired horse.

Adapted from Sheridan, Pi~arro (1799), Pr., 11. 19-20.

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moral feeling. If, in going to Hampstead by the stage, a handsome young woman should happen to get in, out of the wet, with a draggled petticoat, he would call the coachman to let him out on the other side. And 1 if a female acquaintance should chance to propose his making one of a party to the pit of Covent Garden, to see Congreve's Love for Love, he would faint away on the spot. We have some pleasant illustrations of this characteristic in the history of our 'Man of Refinement.' Ex. gr. 'This disposition at once to rifznement and sensibility, pushed as far as it would go, formed at length a peculiarity in his character, which never quitted him; nor was it at all diminished by his being, at the same time, not only peculiarly alive to the charms of fimale society, butJastidiously nice in his notion of thefimale character.' p. 11. 'His nice breeding and habits prevented his inclinations, for the most part, from going beyond a certain point.' (This is a pretty account truly.) 'It was said too (and in this there was some truth) that in his youth he had conceived a passion for the handsome daughter of the head of the college to which he belonged; that the inclination was even mutual, and that all expected a marriage; but that the whole affair was put an end to in a moment, by the unhappy accident of a windy walk up Headington Hill. I It was not that the fair one's leg was either thick or crooked; for it was even remarkably well-shaped.' (We'll 1 be sworn the puppy does not report this on his own knowledge. He would have walked with his 'fair one' on Headington or any other hill till doomsday, windy or not windy, without ever discovering whether she had a leg or not.) 'But the scandal went on say, that a garter, which happened to jail on the occasion, was considerably the worsefor wear. Certain it is that the affair was broken off immediately; nor could all the kind and graceful looks, nor the real merit of the lady, afterwards move him.' v.i. p. 19. The 'wind' was one which blew the lady some good, at any rate, even if she died an old maid after it; for even that must be better than the love of a jackanapes like this 'Man of refinement,' whose 'nice breeding and habits prevented him from going, for the most part, beyond a certain point.' - 'Another growing

1

In Oxford.

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passion was reported to have nipped in the bud, by the fair one not being sufficiently sentimental; a third by her being too much so; a fourth by his detecting her reading Tom Jones; a fifth by her having eaten her peas with a knift; and scandal added, that one of his predilections for a young lady of the very first quality in France, was sickened to death, by her telling him one day qU'elle avait pris medecine.! v.i. p. 29. Has the reader got a surfeit of this sickening trash? Does not his gorge rise at it, and is he not ready (if he could get at him) to spit in the face of the filthy and effeminate reptile who could not merely conceive and put it upon paper, but call upon the English public to pay for reading it? But we must not let either party off yet. As for the vermin itself, we have no 'compunctious visitings'2 about it. We have got it safe between our finger and thumb, and will take good care not to let it go till we have squeezed out its paltry life. But towards our readers, the public, we do feel some pity, at their being obliged any longer to witness the nasty, though necessary process. But it is their own fault, not ours. If they had listened to our advice, to exterminate and tread into the excrement from whence they rose, the whole race of cocknies seven years ago, the dirty work would not be now to do. At any rate, we will advise no longer; but act. And if, after this one example which we are now making, a single cockney is ever seen to hold up its pen again, why, we give the public leave to call us cocknies. We need not say more than this. Let it not be supposed, however, that we are going to proceed solemnly to 'break upon a / wheel,' not this 'butterfly,' heaven knows! but one of those other flies, the very nature of which is to blow upon and corrupt every thing they touch. No - we appreciate ourselves and our victim a little more justly than to adopt any such course with it. We shall finish our work as we have begun it; merely abolishing the puppy en passant, as it were: just as you may see one of those noble-looking fellows, the Life Guards, put out of the way into the kennel, without even looking down at it, any little troublesome urchin that may happen I

2

That she had taken medicine.

Macbeth, I. v. 45.

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to get between his legs, as he paces leisurely along the pave l of the Strand, with his undress 2 cane under his arm. We hope, by the bye, our dear Public will do us the justice to admit the aptness of the foregoing illustration: for what are WE but the Life Guards of the literature of our country? And what are the Cocknies but so many lousy reptiles that infest its otherwise pleasant paths? Let us now return to our duty - begging the reader to bear in mind, that all we desire is, to shew, to the entire dis-satisfaction of all whom it may concern, that this 'important new work' is written by a cockney. If we can only prove this, all further trouble, as to the due appreciation of it, &c. would (thanks to our former efforts in / connection with these worthies) be something more than superfluous. We need scarcely tell our readers that a cockney is never to be contemplated in perfection, till he has 'visited France.' Our 'Man of Refinement' of course takes the very first opportunity of doing this. And with what immediate intention, think you? Why, with no other than that of seeking him out a wife! He becomes a sort of cockney C~lebs, 3 and begins his interesting search 'in the province of Auvergne, in France.' We have just seen the reasons why he was not likely ever to satisfy the yearnings of his 'sensible thoughfastidious heart' in England; and therefore he determines to try (of all other places on the habitable globe) France!! Accordingly, behold him there, at once, as if by magic: - for how he got there is considerably more than he himself seems to have any notion of. 'It was on a May evening, in the province of Auvergne in France, that Tremainefound himself on the banks of the little river Allier. The sun had just set - the rippling of the stream, a wooded bank, a thousand flowers, a thousand birds - all seemed to speak to his heart.' How peculiarly interesting! and then how exact! 'a thousand flowers ­ a thousand birds' - / a bird for every flower! And what (for a ducat!) did all these two thousand and three pretty objects scry to his heart? A

2

Pavement.

Informal.

3

A reference to Hannah More's highly successful novel Coe/ebs in Search if a Wifo (1808).

1

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world of 'genial' and 'refreshing' things, no doubt; none of which, however, does he condescend to communicate to his readers, with the exception of those touching the 'sweet passion of love.' They, in fact, in conjunction with 'the softest air in the world,' made our 'Man of Refinement' grow somewhat amorous. And this feeling sent his thoughts into exactly that train which those who are acquainted with a cockney's propensities would have naturally anticipated. 'He seemed to think there might be more probability of finding it - ' (namely, that 'realftelingwhich constitutes the love he sighed to meet with') in the middling, perhaps even IN THE LOWER CLASSES OF SOCIETY!' Now, reader, we put it to thy patience, whether there ever was exhibited a more disgusting, though at the same time a more convincing proof of inveterate cockneyism, than this which we have just quoted? If this Mister Tremaine had been represented as merely a man of name, rank, talents, and extensive fortune, there would have been nothing ridiculously unnatural (however impertinent) in making him shew a disposition towards Ilow amours; because, in point of fact, such men have now and then shewn such a disposition. But here is a person pre-eminent among all his peers for fastidiousness; a person who, as we are told in the very page preceding that in which the above passage occurs, had broken off an intended alliance with three several ladies successively, simply because the first did not wear new garters every day - because the second read TomJones - and because the third ate her peas with a knife; a person, in short, who is, on account of his pre-eminence in this particular, actually called 'THE man of REFINEMENT.' And here is this very person seriously contemplating, not merely an amour, mind, but AN ALLIANCE, 'in the lower classes qf socie!y;' consequently with some 'lady' who would, instead of changing her 'garters' every day, wear none at all- would not only 'read TomJones,' but go to see it acted in the one-shilling gallery of the Surry Theatre - and would in all probability eat her peas (if she ever tasted so recherche a vegetable) not with her knife, but her fingers! Be it expressly observed too, that our 'Man of Refinement' contemplates an alliance in this rank, not in consequence of having met with some pretty girl belonging to it, and fallen in love with 1 her,

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or she with him, but purely as a matter of speculation, and as best calculated to give him a companion suitable to his taste and habits! Let our readers, then, take the above as an incontrovertible proof that this 'important new work' is the production of one of the lowest of the Cocknies - if, indeed, there can be gradations in any thing so low. They have already given us panegyrics on Servant-maids, I and pictures of Washerwomen;2 besides the 'Modern Pygmalion's' whole Lodging­ house Romance, 3 founded on his filthy amour with the girl4 that used to bring him up his tea of a morning, and dust out his room once a week. And all this was well enough in its way, because it merely illustrated the habits and manners of the persons it was intended to illustrate. To do them justice, Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt have never pretended to much gentility, or to be any better educated or better bred than they really are. On the contrary, the one glories in his ignorance of all elegant scholarship;5 and impudently confesses to his penchant for black worsted stockings and red elbows;6 and the other innocently avows the interest he is in the habit of taking in the periodical return of 'washing­ day!' But here is a fellow who holds himself up (or his hero, which is the same thing) as / the very pink of refinement; and after giving us numerous proofs of the validity of his pretensions, concludes with the additional one which we have quoted above! Reader, need we pursue him or his execrable trash any farther? But while we are about it, we may as well 'make thorough-stitch work' of it at once, (if we may be allowed to borrow a favourite metaphor from the 1 A glance at Hazlitt's essay, 'On Great and Little Things', which was published in the New Monthly in February 1822. 2 A reference to Hunt's essay 'On Washerwomen', published in The Examiner on 15 September 1816, which was the butt of much Blackwood's mockery. 3 I.e. Hazlitt's notorious Liber Amoris; or, the New JYgmalion (1823). 4 Sarah Walker. 5 C( Blackwood's 'Hazlitt Cross-Questioned' (August 1818): 'In an essay of yours on the Ignorance of the Learned, do not you congratulate yourself, and the rest of your Cockney crew, on never having received any education?'. 6 C( 'On Great and Little Things': 'I am for none of these bonnesfortunes; but for a list of humble beauties, servant-maids and shepherd-girls, with their red elbows, hard hands, black stockings and mob-caps, I could furnish out a gallery equal to Cowley's, and paint them half as well. Oh! might I but attempt a description of some of them in poetic prose.'

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'Modern Pygmalion,' and one which no doubt gained its favour with him in virtue of his having picked it up on the same spot which gave him that designation.) Did the reader ever see a cockney in his glory? If not, let him look on the following pretty bit of the picturesque; which we would be sworn is copied from one of Leigh Hunt's Sunday evening parties at Hampstead Heath. Be it known that the scene, to which this 'interesting situation' forms an episode, takes place on the same evening on which Mister Tremaine so suddenly 'found himself on the banks of the little river Allier;' and that the parties have never bifOre met! 'Eugenia gave a sigh when he motioned to go; and, as the moon shone bright, proposed to her mother to accompany their guest to the end of the lane that led from their house to his auberge. Mrs. Belson smiled; Tremaine was delighted; and / giving each lady an arm,ftlt more interested than he hadfor years.' Putting out of sight the extremely characteristic behaviour of our 'man of refinement,' in thus permitting two ladies TO ACCOMPANY HIM part if his wqy home, up a lane in the country at ten o'clock at night, -let us only imagine the impotent delight of the conceited cockney, at thus 'finding himself' with a lady hanging on each arm, and hearing himself (as he turns his 'perked-up'l face first towards one and then the other) utter 'original' remarks, on the 'genial' influence of moonlight, and the 'refreshing' sounds of 'the softest air in the world,' whispering among the 'over-arching leafiness'2 under which they were walking! One might really construct a manual of cockneyism out of this 'important new work' alone. If there is one test surer than anyone other, of low breeding and cockneyism, it is that paltry and impertinent egotism which makes its possessor somehow or another connect himself with every thing and every body he comes near, but

Another term from the Cockney concordance. Cr. 'On the Cockney School of Poetry. No. I.' (October 1817): 'Mr Hunt ... is the ideal of a Cockney Poet. He raves perpetually about "green fields," "jaunty streams," and "o'er-arching leafiness," exactly as a Cheapside shop-keeper does about the beauties of his box on the Camberwell road.' 1

2

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especially with every attractive woman. Accordingly, Mister Tremaine, after having let the ladies, whom we lately saw hanging so interestingly one on each arm, walk home by themselves, returns to / his inn, and muses on the events of the evening, after the following fashion: 'She is by far the most interesting young creature I ever met with. If nature ever yet spoke in person, she is here.' - 'Eugenia seemed all sensibility; had she ever loved, or was her heart virgin? It seemed made for love! But could she love HIM?' p.3l. The mode in which this prince of coxcombical cocknies terminates this adventure with Eugenia is no less characteristical than the above opening of it. As might be expected from what we have just seen, he falls desperately in love with her on the spot, and she with him; and a mutual and satisfactory explanation taking place, they appear to be in a fair way of 'making each other happy,' unless another unlucky 'windy walk' should intervene; which the reader cannot help fearing all along. But no - the obstacle is this time a something still less calculated, one should think, to break off a matrimonial engagement. Our elegantfastidieux discovers - what? that she prefers some one else to him? By no means; but that she prqers him to a young captain of dragoons, who had before been paying his devoirs to her, and who was now on the point of returning, with a great accession of fortune, to claim her / hand; but whom she is resolutely determined to refuse, and to take Tremaine even with the very limited means which he has (as a proof probably of his particular 'polish and refinement') folsefy represented himself to possess!! Was there ever such a cockney-coxcombical reason given for falling out of love with an elegant and accomplished young lady! Certain it is that, on the approach of his rgected rival, Tremaine quits the field incontinently, and never sees his adored Eugenia more. Her heart was not sufficiently 'virgin' to satisfy his elegant desires! To do him justice, our author-editor is consistent in the portrait he has presented to us, however unconscious and unintentional that consistency may be. The man who would reject the woman whom he loves, and who loves him, on a plea like the above, is exactly the person to express himself as follows concerning a male friend. The passages relate to a political intrigue for place and power, in which this 'Man of 70

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refinement' seems to have been engaged. 'And yet, so great had been his LOVE for this man, that he almost shed tears on discovering (as he did within a week of professions which went to the bottom of Tremaine's heart) that he had misrepresented him to the Regent, undervalued his weight and services,' &c. / 'Let not the reader misunderstand. These were not sordid feelings. Tremaine's grief was not occasioned by the loss of a prospect of office,' &c. 'But his heart LOVED the man who had deceived him.' 'But he was shocked to find that the man he had so LOVED,' &c. Now what shall we say to this? Shall we venture to characterize the above expressions of feeling, and to express in our turn the feelings which they must necessarily excite in the breast of every decent person who reads them? No - we will not venture to do this. The truth is, we have good reason to know that these vile Cocknies desire nothing better than that we would give them an opportunity of putting their hands into our respectable publisher's pocket, under the cloak of the law. I And we will not gratify them. We shall therefore sqy nothing in regard to the above expressions. But we shall take the liberty of thinking what we please about them; and our readers will be pretty sure to do the same! It will readily be supposed that, after the above passages, we have no inclination to proceed much farther in our examination of this 'important new work,' though we have, as yet, only disposed of the first fifty pages out of the three / thick octavo volumes of which it consists. In fact, we shall merely notice one or two more passages, and then have done with it, and its author-editor-hero, we hope for ever. We have not yet given a specimen of this tri-une person's taste in the affair of description. What follows may serve: though, as the reader will perceive, we do not extract it for its descriptive merits alone, but for the important secret which it seems to let out, touching the actual station of the writer.

I Hazlitt sued Blackwood's on account of the prolonged assault upon him in the August 1818 number. Cr. The Times, 21 September 1818: 'Mr. Hazlitt has directed a prosecution against the publishers of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, for an alleged libel upon him in the last number. It is a book filled with private slander.'

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'The house itself was of old brick, bordered with stone. It affected no sort of architecture, - consisting, in fact, of nothing but three similar divisions, each rising into a pediment, crowned by a BALL qfstone.' THREE BALLS!!! 1 Why then, our 'dukedom to a beggarly denier,'2 but Wicount Wictoire 3 himself is 'the Man of Refinement,' after all! Tims! - Our own Tims - whom we used, by way of a joke, to tolerate among us, and permit him to send us London articles; for which Ebonl used to pay him by writing him hoaxing letters in OUR name, calling him 'a gentleman and a scholar,' and God knows what besides; and which, taking it all for gospel, has turned his want of brain. And behold the fatal consequences! He fancies / himself all that Ebony called him; (who, by the bye, is a good hand at laying it on thick, when an 'article,' of any kind, is in the wind;) and now having 'visited Paris,' and returned a 'Man of Refinement' into the bargain, he is no longer content to vent himself in anything less than three volumes octavo! Tremaine, alias Tims! - Well, the English nation is come to a pretty pass at last, - when it is fain to learn its Political Economy from a Tailor, its Statesmanship from a retail Tobacconist, and its Fashionable manners (to say nothing of its Religion and Morality) from a Pawnbroker's apprentice! The reader will be good enough to understand that we do not pretend to know anything whatever, as to who is or is not the author of Tremaine; and that all we have just said is mere guess work, and founded on no better authority than the above short descriptive passage. This distinct avowal is no more than fair towards all parties; for we would not be too hard in our imputations, even on Tims himself. All that we have hitherto said, therefore, and still more, all that we have not said, must be considered as applicable to 'the author of Tremaine' alone, whoever he may be.

I Sign of a pawnbroker's shop and therefore home to Tims, the 'Pawnbroker's apprentice'. Patmore's enemies labelled his jeweller father a 'pawnbroker'. 2 Adapted from Richard Ill, I. ii. 256. 3 Patmore used the pseudonym 'Victoire' in Letters on England. 4 William Blackwood.

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With regard to the latter point, all we can vouch for is, that he is A To this, and to 1 this only, we will stand; and that not even the shadow of a doubt may remain on it, we will notice one more incident in the work, and then have done. The reader must understand that the plot of Tremaine consists in the endeavours of its hero to make himself acceptable to a pretty parson's daughter, who is his neighbour in the country; and that, with a few trifling exceptions, the whole work consists of scenes of conversations between these parties: all the extracts that we have hitherto made referring chiefly to a portion of the hero's life which took place before the opening of the work, and which are merely glanced at in some retrospective chapters. Now the incident to which we are about to refer, happens at near the end of the second volume, when the 'Man of Refinement' has been dangling and dilly-dallying after the object of his attachment during no less than six hundred and fifty closely printed pages, without ever having got nearer to anything in the shape of a declaration, or any signs of a disposition to make one, than if she were his grandmother. And there was no 'Tom Jones' in the way here - no 'eating peas with a knife' - no dilapidated 'garter' - not even a rejected rival. On the contrary, he had it all his own way, and everything was as refined as his 1 'fastidious heart' could fancy or desire. And what is more than all, the girl herself, who really does love him, (which Eugenia only fancied she did), does all she can, in reason, to bring him to the point. And yet, at near the end of the second volume, we find them tete-a-tete in a rural summer-house, without having got farther towards an eclaircissement l than is indicated by such passages as these: 'Tremaine looked at her countenance, and then at her hand, and then at her countenance again.' 'Looked at' them! The puppy! 'And am I only your father's friend?' said Tremaine, laying much stress upon the word. 'Oh! yes, you are too kind not to be the friend of all who belong to him.' 'You believe me then yours, Georgina?' And here he sticks fast, and to all appearance would have stuck to this day, but that the author bethought himself of contriving the desperate COCKNEY.

I

Here used for resolution.

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incident to which we are now to refer, and which, if it does not satisfy the reader that Tremaine and his historian are a couple of as arrant cocknies as ever took tea and hot rolls at White Conduit House' in the dog days, nothing else will. Now, the reader imagines that we are going to tell him of some 'hair­ breadth 'scape,2 from a / fall over a precipice; or a walk into a fish-pond; or a perpendicular descent by a window, instead of a winding one by a well-staircase: one, or perhaps all of which he thinks may have been prevented, by the personal prowess and presence of mind of our ardent lover; and that fright may have effected what affection could not. But no such thing. What does the reader say to the OVERSETTING OF A TEA-URN? In fact, 'the accident was neither more nor less, than that, in endeavouring to save her tea-cup, she entangled her reticule 3 in the foot of the urn, and in withdrawing the one the other was overset, and would have emptied its scalding contents, red hot iron and all, into her lap, had not Tremaine interposed his hands, arms, and almost his whole body, to save her from the danger. By consequence, he received all the damage himself, which was in fact not a little; for, exclusive of a good scalding through his cloaths, the iron seared the entire skin qff one qf his hands, in snatching it from her dress, with which it had already come in contact, and instantly set it on fire, though it was as instantly extinguished by her active protector. As this occasioned a real disaster to our hero, it became an event. The doctor was seriously distressed, and Georgina, exclusive of her gratitude / for being saved from a cruel and dangerous accident, was so affected at his evident suffering, as well as the proof it gave of his eager desire to save her, that after venting a little shriek, she sank into a chair, and burst into tears. Every one those tears was delicious to the heart of Tremaine. His pain was forgotten; he would have suffered it twenty times over, to have purchased the rich reward, the voluptuous pleasure of one of those tears.' (Vol. ii. p. 307, 8.) I The tavern and pleasure garden in Islington which was a well-known Cockney entertainment resort. 2 Adapted from Othello, I. iii. 136. 3 A small bag.

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Now, we put it to the most candid of readers, whether any being but a cockney, could have conceived the idea of bringing a long-standing love affair to a crisis, by means of such a catastrophe as this? And even, if anyone else could have conceived it, whether anyone else would have described it with the priggish particularity observable in the above extract? Only mark the puppy's precision! It is as if he was giving in his evidence about it on oath. He has evidently tried to make it picturesque, too. We wonder he did not get the scene 'illustrated' by an engraving, as he has the house in which it happens. What a pretty picture it would make, from the pencil of Sharpe!i Only conceive the scalded cockney dancing about the room, like a monkey on hot stones; with his legs parboiled, and 'the entire skin seared off one / of his hands;' while he is at the same time partaking of 'the voluptuous pleasure' produced by the sound of his mistress's delicate 'little shriek,' and the sight of her tears! Then, what a charming contrast would be afforded, by the weeping fair one, in the act of sinking into her chair, with a large hole still burning in the 'lap' of her dress, which her'delicious tears' are very opportunely helping to extinguish! If the public do not see two or three pictures on this subject in the next Exhibition at the Royal Academy, the author of Tremaine may consider himself hardly dealt by. So much for the 'Life and Adventures of a Cockney;' (such should by rights have been the title of this 'important new work;') so much for the 'true history' of this 'Man of Refinement;' for though it extends through several hundred pages more, we must beg leave to decline the task of pursuing the details of it further, no less on the reader's account than our own. Suffice it that at last Mister Tremaine musters up pluck enough to pop the question to the little parson's daughter; who, though a sensible girl enough in other respects, yet, having passed all her life in a remote county, and having, moreover, no disposition whatever to lead apes elsewhere, is fain to / undergo the office of leading one here. Understanding, however, from her papa, that her swain is

I Michael WiIliam Sharp (d.1840), the painter, was particularly noted for comic domestic scenes.

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somewhat free in his opinions on religious matters, she makes it a sine qua non of their union that he shall recant all his sceptical notions in regard to 'God and nature,' and think as she does. This, of course, he has little difficulty in doing, seeing that no cockney ever had an opinion, or even a glimpse of one, that he could properly call his own. Accordingly, at the close of this 'important new work,' we leave our 'Man of Refinement,' and his bride elect 'the gentle Georgina,' in the fairest way in the world of becoming a couple of as arrant methodistical cocknies as ever crossed Blackfriars Bridge on a Sunday evening, on their way to the Reverend Rowland Hill's Rotunda. 1 /

I Rowland Hill (1744-1833), the eccentric preacher. The 'Rotunda' is the Surrey Chapel in Blackfriars Road.

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In 1818, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine carried the first of a series, 'Letters on Shakspeare', penned by 'T. C." 'No. I. -On Hamlet' offers a high Romantic account of Shakespeare's play: 'when I single out the Tragedy of HAM-LET, I enter, as it were, into a wilderness of thought where I know my soul must soon be lost, but from which it cannot return to our every-day world, without bringing back with it some lofty and mysterious conceptions, and a deeper insight into some of the most inscrutible recesses of human nature.'2 'T. C.' 'entertain[s] a kind of religious faith in [Shakespeare's] poetry' and offers a Coleridgean account of the construction of Hamlet's character and Shakespeare's comprehensive vision: 'These springs rise from an unknown depth, and in that depth there seems to be a oneness of being.'3 Perhaps paradoxically for a Blackwood's article, 'T. C.' sets out an almost Hazlittian conceptualisation of his mind: 'how unlike the action of Shakspeare's mind [is] to our own, - how deep and unboundedly various his beholding of men's minds, ... how wonderful his celerity of thought, the dartings of his intellect, like the lightning-glimpse, to all parts of his whole range of known being. ,4 Though this is an exemplary piece of Romantic period Shakespearian criticism, it is entirely likely that Patmore was unusually familiar with the essay for rather more mundane reasons, given that one of his earliest published works, the imitative and eulogistic 'Sonnets to Mr Wordsworth'5 immediately followed it in the February 1818 number of Maga. Patmore's imitation, 'Letters on Shakespeare, No. 2. Romeo and Juliet', is rightly attributed to 'Professor W-', i.e. John Wilson (1785­ 1854), the poet,6 satirist 7 and critic, who in 1826 was Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and who was indeed the mind behind 'T. C.'. Wilson's best work as 'Christopher North' is 77

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characterised by an unsettling mixture of vivacity and savagery, a blend evident in Patmore's 'Review of Tremaine'. However, he could also assume an air of critical gravitas as the 'Letters on Shakspeare' and some of the essays collected in The Recreations qf Christopher North (1842) demonstrate. 'On Hamlet' is perhaps more the work of Professor Wilson than the 'Kit North' of the Noctes Ambrosiand!. Building on Wilson's arguments about the 'unity of [Shakespeare's] Imagination', 'Romeo andJuliet' describes the 'real unity of the imagination' evident in Shakespeare's 'divinely human work'. To Wilson, the 'sublime' Shakespeare did not yield 'in base subservience to the spirit of the age. He was above that, as Milton was above it.'8 Similarly, in Patmore's imitation, Romeo andJuliet are 'the type and representative' of the 'spirit of youth', part of Shakespare's examination of an unchanging human nature and the role of 'passion' within it. Here Patmore's rhetoric parallels its model: passion, which is one and indivisible, and which is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; - passion, which circumstances may repress, or keep out of sight, or even destroy; but which nothing can change; which is not in fact susceptible of change, in the very nature of things; because it is in our passions that our human being consists; and while that remains, they must remain too; and while they remain, their result must be universally and unchangeably the same. NOTES BEM, 11 (February 1818), pp. 504-12. Referred to as loS in the footnotes to the imitation. 2 Ibid., p. 505. 3 Ibid., p. 506. 4 Ibid., p. 506.

5 Ibid., pp. 512-3. These are lacklustre efforts. An extract from No. 11, 'Wordsworth, thy name is precious to mine ear!', gives the flavour: 0, for a poet's voice, that I might frame A lay of fitting thanks! I would not sing, Like the proud nightingale's, a song of flame; But, like the stock-dove's - ever murmuring

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Of quiet, inward bliss - ever the same; ­ Perpetual as my thanks - pure as their spring. (11.9-14)

London, 1817. P. G. P. 6 Patmore thought highly of Wilson's The Isle qf Palms (1812) as the enthusiastic account in his Lettersfrom England demonstrates: 'If it is the province of poetry to snatch for awhile the flesh-imprisoned spirit away from the realities of life, and cast it into a pleasant dream-like existence, which has all the vividness of reality, and yet all the ethereal brightness, combined with the floating and shifting indistinctness of a vision of sleep - the author of the "Isle of Palms" may claim a distinguished rank among English poets; for this is what his work does more than any other I have ever perused. It "takes the prisoned soul, and laps it in Elysium".' (LoE, 11, p. 86) 7 And one of Wilson's chief whipping boys was his imitator P. G. Patmore (see my introduction above). 8 BEM, 11 (February 1818), p. 508.

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LETTERS ON SHAKESPEARE. *



NO. 2.

ROMEO AND JULIET BY PROFESSOR W - .

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Mter a long protracted silence, I again venture to address you, on the subject of that divine mind whose productions have so often occupied and delighted our minds - not without occasionally overshadowing, and even overwhelming them, with a sense of its wondrous and superhuman power. And in truth, I am fain to confess my belief, that it is the perhaps half-unconscious presence of this sense, perpetually pressing upon me whenever I have turned my thoughts to this subject, which has so long deterred me from fulfIlling my promise, of communicating to you, / in something like a regular and tangible form, those views and feelings which we have so often discussed together, touching the true individual characters of Shakespeare's principal dramatic works. It is not that I have feared to approach the footstool of this mighty being - this god among men; or that I have felt abashed in his imaginary presence: for HEI too has said, in sentiment if not in words, 'Let little children come unto me, and I will not turn them away.' (To you, who know my heart, I need not disclaim, in this allusion, anything approaching to levity, or a disposition towards the undue mingling of sacred things with profane.) It is not, I say, that in entering the presence

• Continued from Blackwood's Magazine, vol2. p. 512. I

Christ.

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of this great representative of all the various powers of the divinely human intellect of man, I have experienced a more than ordinary sense of my own comparative nothingness, and have shrunk backward abashed at the contemplation: for it is one of the finest and most characteristical qualities of Shakespeare's mind, that, on feeling ourselves within the sphere of its action and influence, all egotism, whether it be of a vain-glorious and self-exalting, or of an equally vain­ glorious though self-abasing nature, 1 melts utterly away, and becomes merged and lost in an all absorbing sentiment of mingled admiration and love; an admiration, however, and a love, which have for their object nothing more, after all, than human attributes and qualities; and which therefore inspire us with anything rather than contempt for the form that we wear, and the mind that gives it life and motion. It is, in fact, only a man that we are listening to; and being men ourselves, we cannot chuse but listen with something like secret self-congratulations, on the possible greatness and beauty and power of our common nature. No - if I am ever disposed to sink into an undue despondency of heart, and to let my coward thoughts fly before the conquering spirit of doubt that will sometimes beset them, I have only to make my stand within the stronghold of Shakespeare, and I feel instantly revived and reinstated and re-assured; and the very spot that I had entered the moment before, cowering and crest-fallen, I am ready the next moment to quit, erect, stedfast, and heart-whole. No - of all those master-spirits upon whom we call, and bid them 'minister to a mind diseased,' 1 he is the only one who does not, in the end, refer 1 the patient back to himself; - he and he alone is able to Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Rase out the written troubles of the brain, And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart. 2

I

2

Macbeth, V. iii. 40.

Ibid., 41-5.

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In short, it is he alone who can make us feel- what we never should have felt without him - the full value and virtue of our own hearts, and minds, and affections, and passions, and powers - in a word, of our own mighty and mysterious nature. If I remember rightly, I remarked to you in my first letter,l that all the great works of Shakespeare have within them that oneness, that uniry of purpose, which is demanded by Aristotle as an essential quality of the highest species of drama: though, assuredly, I did not pretend to state that the quality I speak of is atchieved in the manner directed by Aristotle; namely, by making every part of the action grow out of that part immediately preceding it, and thus rendering each part at once a cause and an effect. 2 No - this was not Shakespeare's way, because / it was not Nature's.3 It might easily be demonstrated, that in every separate portion of actual life which includes a sufficient degree of passion to make it susceptible of a dramatic representation, there is, in effect, a perfect unity of character. But no one will pretend that that unity is produced, even once out of a hundred times, by the mere mechanical course and concatenation of the events which occupy the period in question. On the contrary, anything like such a mechanical linking together, and dependence upon, one event and another, would go nigh to destroy that real unity of the imagination, which is what Shakespeare aims at and atchieves. To make what I mean more clear, let us turn at once to the drama which I have chosen for the immediate subject of my present letter, and which, if I mistake not, is even more deeply imbued with this dramatic unity of imagination than any other of its wondrous author's productions. The unity which belongs to the play of Romeo andJuliet, consists in

I 'But of Aristotle's Tragedy, and of Shakspeare's, the essence is this, ~ a portion of human life ... having in itself oneness' (loS). 2 Cr. LoS: 'But Aristotle conceived this internal unity could only be effected by linking together the successive parts of the action, like a chain of causes and effects.' 3 Cr. LoS: 'Shakspeare knew better. Whatever in nature had unity to his Imagination, afforded subject-matter for a Tragedy.'

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that spirit cifyouth which everywhere penetrates and pervades it - even from the flow of its language and the music of its rhythm, to the very depths and innermost recesses / of that passion which is its nominal subject: I say its 'nominal' subject; for, paradoxical as the assertion may at first seem, love is not the real subject of this tragedy, but only the accidental, or rather the incidental one - incidental to it, simply because it is, in an incomparably greater degree than all other passions, incidental to that state of being which is the essential subject of the work. If Shakespeare had proposed to himself to illustrate and make manifest the various movements and qualities appertaining to and constituting the passion of love, would he have made it the first action of his lover to rise from the feet of one mistress, and, without a moment's pause, throw himself before another; forgetting from that time forth that the first had ever existed, much less held him in thrall? Is this the character of love? No: - but it is the character of youth, and therefore Shakespeare has made his youthful man exhibit it: for Romeo is not a lover, nor any other individual modification of the human character: he has, in fact, no individual and determinate character at all, but is a general specimen of MAN - a pure abstraction of our human nature - at that particular / period of its being which occurs exactly between boyhood and maturity, and which we call, by way of distinction, the period of Youth. Is it a characteristic of love - I mean of that profound mental passion of which I am now speaking - to start into life in an instant, at the mere lightning glance of beauty, and to reach its full perfect maturity even in the very hour of its birth? Oh, no! - but it is the characteristic of that other love, which constitutes so great and absorbing a portion of the 'beings end and aim' 1 of Youth. I am confident, my dear friend, that you will not mistake me, in what I am now saying. You will not suspect me of wishing - nay, of daring - to breathe the slightest suspicion of impurity over the

I

Pope, An Essay on Man, IV, I. I.

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enchanting passion and persons of the lovers in this drama, or to throw a doubt upon the right of that passion to be called love. It was a love 'pure as the thought of purity' 1 - pure as is that purely intellectual love of which I have just spoken, and which cannot co-exist with impurity. It was as pure as that; but it was not that. It is not my purpose to institute a comparative estimate of these two different kinds of love, but only to mark the distinction which exists between / them. And in order to this, let me say that they differ, as everything must differ, the sources of which are not the same. They differ, as the earth differs from the heavens - or rather as their productions differ; for one of these passions is the production of the heavenly within us, and the other of the earthly. But the latter is equally pure with the former, when it exists in the state in which they possessed it whose history we are examining; and it differs from its relative only as the flowers differ from the stars, or as physical beauty differs from intellectual. Is the rose impure because its roots are in the earth, and its nourishment springs from thence? Neither then is the love of Romeo andJuliet impure because its roots and its food are in the flesh, not in the spirit. But let us look a little more closely into the characteristic qualities of this most enchanting of all dramas - most enchanting to all of us, because it offers, to those who are still the happy denizens of that state of being which it represents, an echo of the rich music that is for ever ringing in their hearts; and to those who have passed through that state, it recalls and revives and recreates all that sanctified and made it sweet. At the opening of the play, we find the hero of / it as deeply in love (as the phrase is) as words, even the words of Shakespeare, can describe him to be. He is altogether a creature of passion; floating this way and that on the waves of it; blown hither and thither by its winds; now borne downwards into its darkest depths, and now rapt upward to its highest and brightest heavens; one moment revelling in its richest fields of hope and happiness, and the next bound hand and foot in the dungeons of its despair.

I

Wilson, The Isle qf Palms, 1. I. 422.

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Let it be observed, too, that we hear of all this passion, long before we hear of its object; and the reader who comes to the perusal of Romeo andJuliet for the first time, imagines, of course, that it isJuliet who inspires it all; or rather, he does not tax his imagination on the subject, or ever think of inquiring, but takes it for granted. And I am inclined to fear, too, that when he first comes to discover all these transports are felt for another, and not for Juliet, he is at least disappointed, if not displeased or indignant. And yet the above is, beyond comparison, that point in the character which shows its creator in the most extraordinary light - which most clearly evinces the subtlety of his conceptions, and his astonishing boldness in developing them. No poet that ever lived, except Shakespeare, would / have thought of proving the depth and sincerity of his hero's love for his present mistress, by representing him as feeling and expressing it for the first time, in the very presence of her who was his mistress half an hour ago and for whom he would then have professed and acted all that he now will for his new one. And yet, instead of feeling that Romeo's late professions of love for Rosaline throw any suspicion upon the sincerity of his present love for Juliet, there can be no doubt whatever that the effect is exactly the reverse. I say the 1fect; for I believe that those (even among female readers) who make it a question with themselves whether this fickleness, as they would call it, does or does not affect the value of Romeo's later passion, are at first inclined to determine, that at any rate Rosaline had hisfirst love. But let a Romeo of real life transfer his transports from another to them; and at the same time, let another adorer of equal pretensions, lay at their feet the premices of his heart; and see whether they will not incline to the first rather than the second. And this, not from any feeling of gratified vanity at the preference, but from an instinctive sense of the spontaneous nature of the love of youth, and its consequent incapacity of waiting for a particular object before it becomes developed. Every / woman believes, and is bound to believe, that she is the only object that could have fixed her lover. But she does not think him the less fIXed because his love was lent to another before it was given to her; nor does she covet it the less because she cannot look upon herself as its creator. It is for man, not woman, to cherish a feeling so nearly allied to selfishness.

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But another effect of representing Romeo as experienced in the ways of love, long before he meets with the true object of it, is, to aggrandise our sense of the power and weight of his passion, when it comes to be transferred to its ultimate destination. It was absolutely necessary to the conduct of the story, that we should see the commencement of the love of Romeo for Juliet. And it was equally necessary that we should attach a certain value and importance to that love. But we have no great faith in either the force or the stability of a passion which is conceived and born before our eyes. Accordingly, Romeo is placed before us, the very concentration or personification of passion. 'Passion!' Mercutio calls him; I as if it were his name. He is all made up of it. And when he sees what we all along feel to be the legitimate object of that passion, he has nothing to do but pour it all out / into her heart, and disburthen himself of what has hitherto been pressing upon him with a weight 'heavy as frost, and deep almost as life;,2 but heavy and oppressive only because it could not find the object that was destined to receive and share it: as the clouds go heavily and darkly along, while they are surcharged with the bright rain, but become bright and buoyant themselves the moment they come near enough to the earth to part with their fertilizing burthen. If Romeo's love had been the love of a moment, we should never have endured the train of consequences that flow from it, but should have regarded them in the anomalous light of effects without an adequate cause. But as it is, that weight of passion (the accumulation of years perhaps) which he pours forth at once into the heart ofJuliet the moment he beholds her, is cause enough for any effect that can flow from it. I will not scruple to confess, that the good effect which is produced by Romeo presenting himself beforeJuliet with a heart already filled to overflowing with passion, is not gained without some counter­ balancing evil. And if Rosaline, the first object of that passion, had been brought forward in the play, in a visible form, this evil would have been still more manifest. But, to say nothing of / her not returning his passion, she is but a name in our imagination, after all - not a person. And, to shew how entirely Shakespeare has gained his object in I

2

Romeo and Juliet, n. i. 7.

See note to p. 9 above.

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making Rosaline onry a name, it is but necessary to appeal to every ordinary reader and spectator of the play, who, on referring to their feelings on the point in question, will find that they scarcely remember that such a person is alluded to. If, indeed, Rosaline had been represented to us as the accepting and accepted mistress of Romeo, and his change of allegiance had come upon us in the light of a desertion, the case would have been widely different, and its effect on the whole after part of the drama would have been mischievous, and indeed intolerable. But why, you ask, contemplate a case which was never contemplated by Shakespeare? I accept the reproof, and at once return to him and his divine work; - for I shall have quite enough to do to explain to you my views of what this play is, without speculating on what it might have been. The love of Romeo and Juliet must be regarded, then, as the manifestation of that passion (call it by what name you will) which is the dominating spirit of that period of human life of which these lovers are the type and representative; / - a period when to live and to love are one, and the life of which and its love expire together; as we see mystically shadowed forth in the deaths of these two beings. It has every characteristic of that period: its headlong precipitancy; its heedless rashness; its total disregard of all worldly considerations or consequences; its enthusiastic ardour of aspiration, and force of will; its unhesitating confidence in the reality of all which does but seem, whether of good or of evil; its proneness to seize, without an instant's delay, on all that the hand of pleasure proffers, without asking the price, or calculating the comparative value; and above all, that boundless capacity for enjoyment and for suffering, which one moment lifts it to the highest empyrean of bliss, and the next sinks it to the lowest dungeons of despair. So true does it seem to me that Romeo and Juliet are mere abstractions, or rather that the two are an abstraction of human life at a particular period of it; or perhaps it were better to say, of the human being in its dual state, of man and woman; that if we examine our feelings in regard to their characters, (as we are accustomed to phrase it,) we shall find that we do not recognize anything in the shape of 88

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individuality, / or of duality, or of intellectual portraiture, in either of them: which I will venture to say is not the case with anyone other of the creations of Shakespeare's hand. Neither do we connect with the lovers any imaginary association whatever, appertaining to external form: which truth, if it be one, is equally with the above confined to them alone. If we were to descend from this general statement of the proposition, and examine every separate sentiment or sentence uttered by each of them throughout the play, it would probably lead to the same conclusion. And the reason is, that they utter, not the results of that complicated condition of being which we call character, and which consists of a thousand modifYing influences and impulses; but of passion - passion, which is one and indivisible, and which is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; - passion, which circumstances may repress, or keep out of sight or even destroy; but which nothing can change; which is in fact not susceptible of change, in the very nature of things; because it is in our passions that our human being consists; and while that remains, they must remain too; and while they remain, their result must be universally and unchangeably the same. / Such, my dear friend, are the conceptions which I have formed of the two principal persons of this divinely human work. Let me not quit them, however, without following them to their fragrant grave, and seeing them quietly inurned there: for, untimely as that grave is, it is still sweet, since each finds it in the arms of the other, and exhales over it the sweetest sighs that were ever breathed from the lips of loveliness. Let me approach it, too, without a thought of sorrow, nor shed over it one profaning tear; for they whom it encloses shed none, but laid themselves in it as if it had been their bridal bed: which in truth it was; for they had no other. No -let us utter no idle lamentations over the early death of these lovers, either on their account, or our own; for had they lived they would have ceased to be lovers, both for us and for themselves. If the flowers were not to die almost in the hour of their birth, they would be born in vain; and if the state of being which these lovers typify were not as fleeting as it is fair, its fairness would be forgotten or disregarded long before it was passed away.

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Doubtless Shakespeare intended that this should be the condition of our feelings in regard to the / deaths of Romeo andJuliet; for he has inflicted no positive pain upon them, either physical or intellectual; no 'longing, lingering looks' I are cast behind them as they pass away from our sight; but all is anticipation and hope; each being dead to the other, and each therefore hastening to join its other self. It is to each as if its soul had passed away beforehand, and there was nothing left for the deserted body to do, but melt meekly into the bosom of its parent earth, and mingle with the elements from whence it arose. The catastrophe of Romeo andJuliet is expressly contrived with a view to this avoidance of all painful impressions at our parting with this pair of 'star-crossed lovers;,2 and no other arrangement but that which has been adopted could have accomplished this view. As for Juliet, ­ 'the weaker vessel,3 - she is put gently to sleep the moment that adverse circumstances are at hand; and she only awakes to see her lord lying at her feet, and to pour forth her soul into his still warm bosom. While he, having been struck dead at once, in spirit, by the account of her death, has nothing to do, and never for an instant even thinks of doing anything, but seek himself out 'a triumphant grave,'4 and pass into it, drinking an almost jocund health to his love: for / that he feels to be immortal, even at the very moment when its object lies dead before his eyes. Let it be observed, too, that none of the ordinary concomitants of death are admitted into this closing scene of the lives of our lovers. As for Juliet, - her beauty is upon her, bright as ever. And though, from the supposed truth of his information as to her death, Romeo believes her to be dead, yet he evidently fiels that she is not dead, and dies himself in the half-voluptuous kiss that recalls her to life. Here's to my love!' * * * * * * * Thus with a kiss I die!s I 2 3 4

5

Echoes Gray, 'Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard', I. 88. Romeo andJuliet, Pr. 6. Ibid. I. i. 14-15. Ibid. V. iii. 83. Ibid. V. iii. 119-20.

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While she, so recalled to life, does but ask for her husband; and at once finding him, and finding him not, replies to his kiss by another, (thefirstand the last of each) and so dies too, with the 'warm'pressure of his lips upon hers. Thy lips are warm I

What is there of death here? what of the grave? It is but the spirit of youth, exhaling itself away in sweet sighs, to the music of meeting lips. And if you would not think me too fanciful, I would add, - with reference to what I / have before hinted, as to the nature of Romeo andJuliet's love, - that this scene is, perchance, merely intended to be typical of the natural and necessary death of that particular species of love which cannot survive fruition even for a moment, at least under its original form and character; but, when it does survive it, assumes a new form, and rises into that intellectual love which is immortal as the soul that is its seat. Each of the lovers seeks death - each dies willingly, and without a reverting look - and each expires instantly on pressing its lips to those of the other. And we may, if we please, fancy that each presently arises from its 'triumphant grave,' in another and a better world; assoiled from all its earthly weaknesses and woes, and living, and to live for ever. Perhaps I ought to apologize, even to you, for dwelling so long on this particular point in the drama, and still more for dwelling on it in terms which I fear you will at least not admire for their sobriety. But the truth is, I never can keep my feelings, in regard to this part of the drama, (and therefore not my expressions), within very strict bounds, when I think upon the base and senseless profanation which has been practised on it by some ignorant modern hand, and universally adopted by the still more ignorant players in their / representation of it. The catastrophe was not tragic enough, forsooth; and they must have the lovers meet face to face, and die in each others arms by lingering torments: the one torn to pieces in body by the physical effects of the poison, and in mind by the still more terrible poison of rage and despair at seeing his lady living

I

Romeo and Juliet, V. iii. 167.

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after he has killed himself to be with her; and the other, racked and riven still more fearfully at the sight of all these horrors, - till she has scarcely strength left in her tender body and exhausted mind, to let out that life which it would be madness to keep a moment longer, after witnessing the scene which they make her witness! But let us not be too angry with those who knew not what they did, and whose crime included its own punishment. We need not wish them worse than to want that which, having, they could not have perpetrated the profanation of which I speak. Though it is scarcely just to indulge towards them any feeling approaching to pity and forgiveness, when we recollect how many thousands of their betters they have deprived of that delight which they will now never experience, of witnessing the true and natural catastrophe of this drama, and of enjoying it as their natural sense of the true and beautiful would have led 1 them to do: for there can be little doubt that, even in this age of readers, scarcely one person in a thousand knows any thing of Shakespeare, but what they have seen on the stage. Let us now turn to a more general consideration of this divine drama. It is not in the two principal persons alone that that spirit of youth prevails, which I have spoken of as the predominating character of the work. All are alike embued with it; it renders all buoyant and full of life; it is an abiding presence which pervades and interpenetrates all, and in so doing creates that dramatic unity of effect which is so indispensable to the highest species of drama, and which is so rarely to be met with out of Shakespeare. A glance at the principal secondary characters will make manifest the truth of what I am stating. What is old Capulet, but a grey-headed youth? Age has had its inevitable effect upon his body, it is true; for physical things cannot resist it. But his mind has escaped its power, and is as young as when he was a hair-brained schoolboy. He is as eager and hot-hearted in the pursuit of an imaginary quarrel, as he was then; as delighted at the anticipation of a feast and revelry, and as animated and light-hearted when 1 it arrives; as precipitate in making up his mind on points of vital importance, and as headstrong in maintaining his hasty determinations; as free and generous in his expenditure; as happy at the sight of others happiness; - in short, he has no quality of 92

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age, but that one which half-translates age into youth, by recalling and recreating all that it then felt, and thought, and acted: I mean its gay­ hearted garrulousness. An old man who is perpetually talking over the exploits of his youth, and finds no lack of listeners, is happier than when he was acting them; and, in effect, he is younger; for he has already reached that period the anticipation of which is the only curse of youth: he is young, without the fear before him of growing old. The rest of the old people are scarcely less happily gifted than Capulet. Even Friar Lawrence is no exception. However he may deceive himself and others by having wise proverbs on his lips, his heart is as young as a romantic school-girl's; and he does not hesitate for a single instant (any more than she would) to assist his young friend and pupil in committing an insane marriage with the daughter of his direst foe. Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast; 1

he sqys. And then he goes immediately and marries / a couple, whose acquaintance is the growth of half an hour! He is a poet, too. Not a word he utters but what is steeped in the rich music of the imagination. And poets are ever young. Hark how he greets the first approach of the ladyJuliet to his lonely cell. It is the very spirit of youth and of poetry combined, that speaks: Here comes the lady. 0, so light a foot Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flints. A lover may bestride the gossamers That idle in the wanton summer air, And yet not fall: so light is vanity!2

And as for the delightful old Nurse - she is the youngest of all the party. Her tongue seems to have the power as well as the privilege of childhood; and whether it has anything or nothing to say, runs babbling on like a summer brook.

I

2

Romeo and Juliet, n. iii. 90.

Ibid., n. vi. 16-20.

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But if the old people are all young, what shall we say of the young ones? of Mercutio, Tybalt, County Paris, and the rest? - What - but that they are all more or less embued with the prevailing spirit of the drama; and that in none of them is that spirit blended with any other; ­ and that the first named - Mercutio - is the very quintessential extract - the spirit of that spirit. He is as young / as the rest of his companions, without like them having yet tasted of that bitter-sweet fruit of youth which is the first step towards age. He is like them in all other respects; but with this (to him at least) manifest advantage over them - that he can jest all day long at that which is the only serious thing in the world to them. And even when death comes upon him in the midst of his mad-brained joy, he will not yield to the summons, but struggles jestingly against it; as if it were nothing more than an impertinent creditor arresting him on his way to a feast. There is still one other person of this drama, whom you must not suppose that I have forgotten; still less must you imagine that I would intentionally overlook him, from any feeling that his introduction militates against that uniry of effect which, I have said, is so finely spread over the whole design, and wrought into the whole texture, of this perfect work. I mean the Apothecary. So far from wishing to do so, I conceive that he is no less essential to the due bringing-out of the effect (to use a painter's phrase), than anyone other person in the drama. And this alone is a sufficient reason for finding him here. But even putting aside this view of the matter, - if it were not for him, the impression received / from the whole work would be too buoyant, and full of the spirit of youth, to be a true echo of any impression which we can receive from the contemplation of any actual portion of our human life: which imitative impression is what every one of Shakespeare's dramas is intended to create, and in fact does create. The two extremes of our existence - Life and Death -like all other extremes, meet. They are necessary corollaries from each other; and we can no more contemplate one absent from the other, than we can the two extremes of a continuous line. Now, the idea of the Apothecary perpetually haunts our imagination when we are thinking of the play of Romeo andJuliet, just as the idea of Death haunts it when we are thinking even of the brightest and freshest portions of our Human Life. 94

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And the idea just as little disturbs the general impressions we receive in either case. It does not disturb, but only modifies them, by blending them with others, which, in taking away a little of their brightness, add to rather than diminish their moral beauty. The idea, in both cases, serves but as a gentle momento mori, - endearing the objects and images with which it blends; even as I have seen it do in the burial-places of a foreign land, when engraven on a 1 little cross of black wood, planted on an infant's grave, and almost hidden among the bright flowers that garland and grow around it. Permit me, my dear friend, before closing this inordinately long letter, to warn you (though I feel assured that the warning is superfluous) against judging of what I have said of this sweetest, gentlest, and most perfect of all Shakespeare's productions, in the presence of any of those impressions which you may have received from witnessing the acted play. And this warning is particularly necessary (if at all) in connection with the latter part of my remarks. I have there supposed that this drama requires some one idea or image, to balance that exuberant spirit of life which everywhere pervades it; and that, therefore, Shakespeare has introduced the one alluded to. Need I add, then, that I speak of Shakespeare's drama, not of that which has been polluted by the impudent interpolations of the players? Heaven knows, the general impression left by the catastrophe of this latter, when represented, as we have seen it, by consummate actors, is enough to embitter a whole after life, and half blight the recollections of the past, however bright they may have been! Assuredly, that is enough to counterbalance a thousand fold all the buoyancy that 1 has gone before it, even though the 'overwhelming brows,' I and haggard, and famine stricken visage of the poor Apothecary, were to be transformed, by the same kind of play-house magic, into the sparkling eyes and rubicund cheeks of the same fat and contented friar: which transformation, by the bye, would be quite as natural and necessary to the consistency of the work. No - never did I see an essential change made in any of Shakespeare's dramas, that was not infinitely for the worse; and this is

I

Romeo andJuliet, V. i. 39.

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infinitely the worst of all. So that you will not wonder if I am a little anxious that you should not inadvertently try anything I have said of Romeo andJuliet, by the impressions received from this version of it ­ which absolutely destroys the very essence of its character, and changes it, so far as regards the catastrophe, from a perfect drama of the very highest class, into a paltry melo-drama, of the very lowest. It was my intention to have said something on the poetry of this divine production, both as distinguished from, and as blended with, its passion; and also of the exquisite language in which both are conveyed. But I must reserve these remarks for another letter. Your affectionate friend,

T. C. /

96

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to Grimm's Ghost. The Culpeppers on the Continent.)

Here is ajovialjeu d'esprit in the light-hearted satirical prose manner of James Smith's 'Grimm's Ghost', a series of comic sketches which ran in the New Monthly in the 1820s. I Mter the publication of the Rdected Addresses, the elder Smith was not as prolific as his fearsomely productive brother.James confined himself to collaborations with the comic actor Charles Mathews on his English Opera House entertainments 2 and occasional comic essays and verses for the New Monthly, most notably - 'Grimm's Ghost' apart - his 'London Lyrics' on ephemeral metropolitan themes. The 'Grimm' series is vivacious social comedy of manners and proved to be another hit for Smith. Both in its amused but tolerant and urbane mockery of the pretensions of bourgeois society and in its occasional use of the epistolary mode, it resembles a prose version of the manner and Horatian tone pioneered by Christopher Anstey's New Bath Guide (1766) and used more recently to such effect in N. T. H. Bayley's Rough Sketches qf Bath (1817) and Thomas Moore's The Fudge Family in Paris (1818). Patmore's imitation takes the Culpepper family of Smith's imagination to the continent. Though the material sees Patmore drawing once more on his French sojourn, Moore's influence looms large here. Moore was inspired to create his Fudges by the 'groups of ridiculous English who were at that time swarming in all directions throughout France'3 and Patmore jumps on his bandwagon with the portrayal of the Culpeppers and Dixons's jaunt to Boulogne and Clara Culpepper's empty-headed descriptions of France to her correspondent Miss Belina Binks of Bucklersbury. He may also have Mathews and Smith's 'At Home' The Trip to Paris (1819) partially in mind here. Patmore thought highly ofJames Smith's prose for the New Monthly. In Letters on England, he describes it in terms which he tries to 97

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realise in his imitation: 'irresistibly amusing, from the fund of fun, frolic and extravagant drollery that it pours upon every thing it touches.,4 In his Autobiograplry, Leigh Hunt, who admired the Rgected Addresses greatly, faultedJames Smith's prose as 'too full of the ridicule of city pretensions. To be superior to anything, it should not always be running in one's head.'5 This rather misses the point of 'Grimm's Ghost', which is not Juvenalian satire and does not set out to be 'superior' to its subject matter. However, though his antipathetic stance is a matter for debate, Hunt's basic description of Smith's work is accurate and might also be applied to his imitator. 'Grimm's Ghost' is part of a common but neglected satirical subgenre of the time and Patmore's is a faithful imitation.

NOTES The articles ran in the New Monthly from March 1821 to December 1825 and are partially collected inJames Smith, Memoirs, Letters and Comic Miscellanies in Prose and ~rse, ed. Horace Smith, 2 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1840). 2 'A thousand pounds for nonsense!' as Smith gleefully put it. 3 Quoted in Chambers's CycloplEdia qf English Literature, ed. Robert Chambers, rev. Robert Carruthers, 2 vols (London and Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers, 1876) vol. n, p. 10 I. 4 LoE, n, p. 232. 5 The Autobiography qf Leigh Hunt, ed. J. E. Morpurgo (London: The Cresset Press, 1949), p. 189.

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GRIMM'S GHOST.* THE CULPEPPERS ON THE CONTINENT. BY

THE OTHER OF THE AUTHORS OF 'REJECTED ADDRESSES.'

THE Culpeppers and the Dixons have made numerous and noticeable advances in the ways of haut ton, I since I last had occasion to report progress on their proceedings. It is true they still 'hang out,' (as Ned Culpepper in his less refined moments phrases it), in Savage Gardens, - seeing that the leases of their respective residences have yet some years to run, and neither party has hitherto hit upon any effectual method of quickening the pace of those parchment ponies. But in default of being able to remove their domiciles to the desiderated purlieus of the Regent's Park, they have done what they jusdy deem the next best thing, in transferring, as much as may be, the air of the said Park to / Savage Gardens. Not being at present in a condition to go to the mountain, they have contrived to make the mountain come to them. In short, by the aid of Mr. Parker's patent cosmetic 2 for the cure of cracks in the complexions of decaying walls, (which, by the bye, like all other cosmetics, requires to be 'laid on with a trowel')3, they have struck off a century from the seeming age of their now 'modern antique' dwellings, and made them as pretty illustrations as need be of 'the Deformed Transformed.'4 Both parties, too, were determined 'not to stick at trifles,' as Ned reports, 'but do the thing handsome while they were about it.' And • See New Monthly Magazine passim. I

2 3 4

High fashion.

I.e. cement, of which Parker's were the most notable contemporary manufacturers.

As You Like It, I. ii. 98.

A reference to Byron's 1824 drama of that name.

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accordingly, this memorable change has been effected no less intus! than in cute;2 and now, Captain Augustus Thackery would no more recognise the dark, dingy drawing-room, with its grey wainscotted 3 walls, in which I have recorded his first hospitable reception by the Culpeppers, than he did his own face in the glass the other day, after having permitted it to be so pitilessly mulct of the major part of its mustachios. The said drawing-room has been forced, by the friendly intervention of a pair of folding doors, into a fashionable alliance with its late neighbour the back bed-room adjoining,.and the 1 latter has of course assumed the name and arms of the former; while the windows of each have been duly cut down to the floor and raised up to the ceiling, according to the newest mode in that case 'trade and provided for letting in the cold; and the antique mouldings of~he wainscot have been macadamized into a smooth plain of French tapisserie, 4 on which the whole heathen mythology are manifesting thems~lves under the most amiable attitudes. . The furniture has also undergone a no less radical\reform. The grim old Kidderminster is discarded in favour of a brillian\Brussels5 of a kaleidoscope pattern. The eight huge, stiff-legged \md high­ shouldered arm-chairs, each as big as a sofa-bedstead, ~ve been changed for a dozen of trim little rose-wood receptacles, wit~ legs as crooked as ram's horns, and backs that laugh lolling to scorn; ~esides a tastily-turned Grecian couch to match, - constructed (fo'I' the convenience of modern Routers)6 on the express principle of preventing people from going to sleep: - to say nothing of a settee in

Within.

In the skin, i.e. outside.

3 Wood-panelled.

4 Tapestry work.

5 Kidderminster and Brussels are kinds of carpets.

6 Revellers. er. Letters on England: 'your experienced routers frequently arrive at the

honour of having invites to two or three different parties in the same evening; and they make a point of going to them all, in order that they may have the opportunity of saying at each that they have been or are going to the others'. 1

2

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each window, the like of which, as Old Culpepper facetiously observes, was never seen in the Cittee 1 before. As for the rest of the furniture, it has undergone an entire 'French Revolution'. There is / a French Console in the pier;2 ('Consols 3 are deuced high!' said old C. when he saw the bill of it); a French clock and French china on the mantle-piece; a French glass over the fIreplace; French lamps on the French-fashioned card-tables; and French polish on everything in the room, except its inhabitants. Perhaps it was an amiably unconscious consciousness of this last­ named defIciency, which promoted the similar and simultaneous proposal of Mrs. Culpepper and Mrs. Dixon to their respective, respected, and respectable spouses, the results of which I am now to report: premising, however, that, whatever the censorious may insinuate to the contrary, the almost identical periods and idioms at and in which these two proposals were promulgated, do not by any means demon­ strate a previous concert on the part of these prudent consorts, touching the point in question. Not that I take upon me to deny, any more than to asseverate, 4 said concert between said consorts. I leave the point to be settled between the future commentators on these immortal epistles. 'Railly, {CDlixon , }' said Mrs. {DC } as the family quartett sat u pepper, . looking at each other just after dinner, opposite the four points of the / flowery compass impressed in centre of the newly calendered blue baize cover of the cushion-shaped dining-table - 'Railly, {Dixon, } I Culpepper, think the young people ought to see some'at of foreign parts now. Not but what Margate is monstrous genteel, and frequented by the rail tip­ toppers of Trinity Square and the Crescent - especially since the steamers have run so regular and cheap. But then, you know, one I This level of punstery did not appeal to the Monthly Review: 'We have read with pleasure some of Mr.James Smith's paranomasiac effusions, and are extremely sorry to find him here represented as perpetrating such puns as settee for ciry, Rind for Rhine, and other enormities of the same description.' 2 I.e. an ornamental figure carved high in the masonry. 3 A pun. Consols were government bonds. 4 Affirm.

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doesn't see any of the continent at Margate - and I'm sure it must be a fine sight, from what Captain Thackeryl said about it the other day - though I cou'dn't very well make out what it was like. I'm told, too, it's to be seen just as well at Bullen I as if you went all the way to Jamaica to look at it. Now what do you say, my love, to taking us all over for a week or ten days? I've heard it's only like crossing over the way, in a manner speaking. Now I think of it, too, I shou'dn't wonder a bit if our next door neighbours would like to jine us - and that would make it come quite easy, you know - for then we could all be together, and have our meals under one. Besides, - I railly do think the young folks ought to see some'at of foreign ways. Why there's !them Hincks's gals have been to Rome, and Italy, and the Rhine, and' ­ The elder Culpepper's patience, which was generally quite exemplary under the infliction of an apparently interminable harangue of this nature, would probably have stood him in stead some time longer. But his love of a joke (provided he himself was the ostensible projector of it) was not so easily to be kept under; and accordingly, this mention of the Rhine roused him from his chin-on­ elbow-supported attitude, in a moment. 'The Rind!' reiterated he with a good humoured chuckle - 'ha! ha! the Rind! they needn't go far to see that. They've only to step into our friend Dixon's shop in Fenchurch Street, and they may see plenty of Rind, and smell it too, for that matter. '* There are certain kinds of puns the mere odour of which, like that of 'the morning air'2 to the ghost of Hamlet's father, is potent enough to drive a disembodied spirit like myself out of the room in which they are engendered. And 1 this of Old Culpepper's was one of them. I am therefore not able to report by what more cogent arguments than those urged above, the ladies respectively of Messrs. Culpepper and Dixon prevailed upon their lords not only to allow of, but partake in, the projected excursion to 'Bullen.' But that they did so prevail will

* I hope I need not recall to the reader's recollection that Mr. Andrew Dixon is the senior partner in an eminent cheesemongering concern in Fenchurch-street. 1

2

Boulogne.

Hamlet, I. v. 58.

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scarcely be considered as problematical, when I aver that the Friday following saw the whole party of eight duly installed on the deck of the Superb, steaming away down the river, to their hearts' content. Having, in my present state of being, a mortal or rather an immortal antipathy to anything in the shape of smoke, the reader will not be surprised to learn that I declined accompanying our travellers any farther than to see them safe off from the Tower stairs. I must therefore consign to another pen the task of communicating the events consequent on the voyage. MISS CLARA CULPEPPER TO HER FRIEND

MISS BELINA BINKS OF BUCKLERSBURY.

Boulogne, Friday Evening, Sept. 1825. Well, my love! here we are in France, sure enough! but after such a voyage! - oh my dear, the ocean is a frightful beast to be tossed about / upon the back of, I do assure you. It was all very well at first. Just for all the world like going to Margate, only the company was far genteeler. But after we had made as nice a little pic-nic dinner as could be, off the contents of our hamper, and were just thinking of having a comfortable cup of tea - oh, my dear! the wind began to blow - (a 'breeze,' they called it - a pretty breeze it kicked up among all of us, sure enough!) - the sea began to swell up every here and there, just as it does in the last scene of Paul and Virginia, I only worse if anything - and all in a moment I began to be so sick, and so frightened, and Pa was so cross about having consented to come, and Ma was so angry with Ned and me for having persuaded her to persuade him, and Ned, (who didn't seem to mind it a bit,) was so provoking, and everything was so disagreeable, that I can't bear even to think of it now it's all over; so I shall only say that the nasty sea water has quite annihilated my sweet green spencer, 2 and turned Ma's crimson pelisse 3 all over as black as the

1 2

:J

Bernadin de Saint-Pierre's 1788 novel.

A close-fitting coat.

A fur-trimmed coat.

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chimney, and run away with Pa's hat, and what's most provoking of all, has got into the box that held all Ma's and my pretty lisse 1 caps and frills, and washed them all up into a little dirty bundle in one corner. 1 This is all I can tell you to-night, my love; for Ma is so cross about the caps and frills that she says I sha'nt sit up a minute longer. But to­ morrow I mean to take up my pen again, and then I've got such things to tell you! Oh, my dear Bel, you can't imagine what very odd things happened to us when we first got here. But Ma won't let me scribble, as she calls it, any longer - so good night.

Saturdqy Morning. Well, my love - I feel quite recovered from the fatigues and disasters of yesterday - and I expect to pass the charmingest day, and I'm so delighted with France - at least I think I shall be - and - but I must tell you about our landing first, for I don't think we shall meet with anything so odd as that, if we stay here till Christmas. When we got opposite the Porte of Boulogne - (I'm sorry to say I can't tell you anything that happened till then, I was so shocking ill) ­ but when we got to the Porte - (By the bye, I wonder, my dear, what they can m~an calling it the Porte of Boulogne. Porte, you know, means door, in French - and there's not a bit of a door, or anything of the sort - it all lays as open as Blackheath 1 - but, now I think of it, captains of ships, and such kind of persons, can't be expected to understand French) - however, when, as I was saying, we got opposite Boulogne, what do you think the odious captain did? He made a dead stop at about a quarter of a mile from the town, and pretended he couldn't get in - that there wasn't room, or water enough, or some such non­ sensical excuse! Why, he must have thought us all fools, I suppose, or blind - for there was oceans of water - you could hardly see anything else - and as for room, there was enough for fifty ships as big as his to have gone in side by side. Ned said it was 'a regular take in' - but Pa said he didn't see how it could be a 'take in' - that if they would but take us in, it was all we wanted - but as far as he could see they seemed determined on keeping us out. However, when they found that we I

Silk-gauzed.

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would not get out into the nasty little ships that came from the town to fetch us, and that looked, as Mr. Dixon said, like great empty butter casks cut down the middle, and a scaffold pole stuck up in them with a dirty sheet tied to it, - they at last took us into the harbour. By the bye, calling this place the harbour was the first thing that set Ma off about the inferiorness of the French to us. She said if they 1 didn't know what a harbour was, better than that, it was a pity somebody didn't learn them - for it was no more like the one in which she had so often took tea at the bottom of Mr. Mince's garden in Camberwell Grove, than nothing at all. By this time you must suppose us got close up to the side of the water, just as it might be at Billingsgate, only nothing like it at all, but quite different. Here we were met by a string of people who had been following by the side of us for ever so far, and making such frightful and outlandish noises that I was actually afraid to look up and see what it was all about. But when we stopped close to the side, and I did look up - la! my love, it was really quite shocking, I do assure you, besides its being by no means what Ma calls proper. Do you know there was I dare say a dozen women, some dragging at the ropes that were tied to our ship, and others squabbling and squalling at each other, about who should be the first to lift into the ship a huge staircase, on which we were to climb up. And all this while there was a whole lot of big sailor­ looking men, lolling about doing nothing, and never offering to help them! But this was nothing, my love, to state of these poor women's dress, or rather their undress. 1 Do you know they had on neither bonnets, nor gowns, nor - in short, my dear, they did not seem to me to have anything on but their stays and under petticoats - and they actually reached up to their knees! I declare I did not know what to do, or which way to look, especially when I saw Ned and George Dixon whispering and smiling to each other, and then casting impudent leers at Miss Dixon and me. It was night, to be sure, though it was quite a fine moonlight. If it had been the day time I'm sure I don't know what I should have done. Though, I've been thinking since, that the reason of this very unpleasant circumstance was, that the poor creatures, not expecting 105

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our arrival, had gone to bed, and were called up in such a hurry that they had not time to put their things on. Well- after a deal of fuss and to do, we landed at last; and when we had got ourselves all together, two and two, under the directions of Pa and were going to march off towards the Inn which had been recommended to us by a very polite French gentleman in the crowd, as 'dee onlee good for genteelfolks,' and he was even so kind as to offer to shew us the way to it himself, which Pa said was doing the civil thing in a 1 way he didn't expect to meet with in a foreign country - I say, just as we were going to set ofT, what do you think? We found that some French fellows, with great cocked hats like the lord mayor's footmen, and great swords by their sides, had actually drawn an enormous chain all round us, to prevent our getting away - and they wouldn't let a soul of us pass! La! my love, you can't think how frightened I was - though I didn't say anything. And as for Ma - she was ready to drop. And well she might, for she told us afterwards she thought that a war had broke out between us and the French since the morning, and that they had let us come into their nasty town on purpose to make prisoners of war of all of us. But we soon found that they only did this out of civility, to keep us together till all were landed, that we might then go the Custom House and show our tickets - for do you know Pa was obliged to make interest with a great French lord in London before we came away, to get tickets for all of us - (passports they call them in French) - or else they would not have let us in. And I think this very proper - for you know if it was not for this anbody might come, and then how could one expect the company to be so select as it 1 is? Well- when everybody was out of the ship, they let down a bit of the great chain that kept us together, and away we all marched, two and two, to the Custom House, to give our tickets, and then to the Inn, attended all the way by the civil French gentleman I told you of before, who we heard afterwards was no less a person than a Commissioner - though Pa said he could not find out whether he was a Commissioner of the Customs, or the Excise. I think, by the bye, Pa might have asked him to dinner, for he was uncommon civil and attentive, to be sure. And he spoke very good English, too, considering he was only a Frenchman. 106

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And now good bye, my dear Bel, for a day or two; for I have neither time nor room to tell you any more at present. And I'm afraid this is so crossed and crossed that you will not be able to make it out. Adieu. Your devoted friend C.C. P.S. I must find a little corner to tell you that young Dixon (Dixon's a nasty name - isn't it? - not half so genteel as Culpepper) - but he has been vastly attentive. And if it wasn't for the recollections of the handsome and interesting / Captain Augustus Thackery (that zs something like a name!) - I - but I can't squeeze in a word more.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.

Boulogne, Saturdqy Evening. Oh! my dear Bel! Something so interesting has happened. It's quite like one of Miss What's-her-name's novels. You know I was telling you in my last letter that that foolish chap George Dixon had been pestering me with his 'attentions,' as he calls them; and I told you too, or at least I should, if I had had room, how I hate and detest his awkward attempts at what Ned calls 'doing the polite.' I believe too that a word or two escaped me, on that one soft secret of my susceptible heart, which has been confided to your sympathetic bosom alone. Well, my love, would you believe it? Who should we meet here, the very first person on going out this morning to look about us in the town, but the Captain himself! But I must begin where I left off, and tell it you all regular, or else I shall never overtake myself, for you know I promised to tell you all that happened to us. You may suppose we were all too tired and too ill on the night of our arrival, to make many / very particular observations on the manners and customs of the French people. But as soon as ever I got up in the morning I determined to begin - for I've often told you how it used to provoke me to sit and hear that conceited Miss Christie, of Crutched Friars, tell a parcel of things about France, and not be able to 107

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contradict anything she said. So as soon as ever I had written my letter to you, I began to put everything down in a nice little note-book I made Pa buy me before we came away - especially as I promised him I would do everything in the world to improve my mind, if he would but bring us here. Besides - the captain is so clever and accomplished, that if - but this is not what I was going to say. Sarah Dixon and I slept in the same room - for you know I should have been terrified out of my life to sleep in a room by myself in a foreign country. Well- about nine o'clock the Captain - no - I mean Ned knocked at our door, and bid us make haste down, for the Captain - no - I mean the breakfast was ready, and Pa was waiting ­ and that - la! my love - I really cannot stay to tell you all these uninteresting things, which happenedjust as they might have done at Margate or at home. 1 can tell you all these, you know, when we meet - especially as I'm sure / you must be dying to know how it all happened about the Captain, and how he looks, and what he said, and every thing. So I shall merely say that we had a nice breakfast of regular English tea and eggs, dry toast, and twists, and a nice little plate of beef -just as it might have been at Dandelion I - (I knew it was all stories that Miss Christie was telling, about the strangeness of the French customs, and about their eating dinners for breakfast) - and then we all went and dressed to go out. Sarah Dixon would put on that odious frock of her's, with the great staring crimson stripe on the green ground, which you know we both agreed she looks so very vulgar in. But I did not say anything to her about it, for she will have her own way. I'll tell you exactly how I was dressed - and 1 must say I thought I never looked neater. 1 had on a new morning frock that Pa bought me just before we came away. The sweetest thing! - so new, and so genteel, and so French - and made so pretty ala blouse as the French call it. I got Ma to let me have it made at the west end - in Sydney's Alley. It's the sweetest pattern you ever saw - a crimson and blue stripe shaded off somehow into nothing, just like a rainbow upon a primrose ground ­

I

The Cu!peppers's house.

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and then a sort of zig-zag / running all over it - for all the world like thunder and lightning. It comes high up at the throat - and has five broad tucks made the cross way - and I've got the sweetest scarlet leather cincture for it, with a steel buckle to buckle on the left side. I wore nothing over it but a green silk half handkerchief buckled into the band behind and before - for you know I told you the nasty sea water annihilated all our frills, and I didn't like to be beholden to Sarah Dixon for one - especially as her's are all so odiously ugly. I had on my head my pretty little pink silk cottage bonnet - that one, you know, that every body says I look so nice in - that only just comes even with my face, and shews my proftle - that everybody says - I mean that the Captain said yesterday - I mean -la! my dear - what do I mean? How very confused I do get. I was going to say that under the bonnet I wore that sweet little lace cap that I bought that morning at the Bazaar when you were with me - don't you remember? And under that I wore the sweetest pair of rose-buds stuck one just over each temple. And then, you know, all my nice corkskrew curls that I had kept in papers for two whole days on purpose. You know every body says what nice hair I have, and how nice / I do it - and as for the Captain - he says - but stay - I'm not come to him yet. Well, my dear, I've now told you exactly how I was dressed, except that I had on my nankeen I boots which lace up inside, and fit me so delightfully that I can hardly walk in them. As for Pa and Ma, and old Mr. and Mrs. Dixon, I can't stay to tell you how they were dressed, except that Pa will keep wearing those nasty gaiters that he bought in Cranbourne Alley, and that I believe he wears on purpose that he may have to tell everybody they are alley gaiters* - though why they laugh when he tells them so, I never could make out, or why, if it's such a laughing matter, he should be so fond of telling it. But la! my dear - I shall ftl1 my paper again, without getting to the dear Captain. As I was saying, we all got ready to go out immediately after breakfast, and at last out we sallied, two and two in a string - Pa

*

Qy. alligators. - Printer's Devil.

I

I.e. yellow.

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and Ma and Mr. and Mrs. Dixon walking together by themselves, and we young ones following ~ though N ed would not walk with me as I wanted him, but would make me take hold of that foolish George Dixon's arm, though he knows very well how I hate him, and how provoked I should be if the Captain ~ I / mean how provoked I was when the Captain ~ in short, my dear, we had hardly walked half the length of the street in which the inn is, and were all standing still in a row looking up at the beautifullest picture you ever saw, which is oddly enough stuck up outside the house instead of inside, and which Pa says he asked a gentleman that he met at the inn since, how it came to be hung outside the house, and what it was a picture of ~ and the gentleman said it was a sign ~ and Pa said a sign of what? and the gentleman smiled, and said it was a sign that the French artists are the best sign painters in the world, and ~ but where was I ~ oh ~ we were all standing still, looking up at this beautiful picture ~ when who should I see pass by us but Captain Augustus Thackery himself! I knew him in a moment ~ though he has had almost all his beautiful whiskers cut ofT, and had on only a common blue coat, and white pantaloons, and didn't look like a captain at all. La! my dear, you might have knocked me down with a feather. My heart did beat so, you can't think. Meeting him, you know, under such very romantic circumstances ~ in a foreign country ~ and so unexpectedly ~ and I hold of that nasty George Dixon's arm too ~ and every thing. I declare I didn't know what to do. However, / I had plenty of time to recover myself ~ for though the Captain looked full at us all as he passed ~ at least at me and Sarah Dixon ~ and turned round to look at us after he got by ~ yet he didn't know us a bit, no more than if he had never seen us. I think I told you he wears a beautiful quizzing glass! ~ which accounts for his not seeing us. Well ~ on he passed without ever seeing us, though he looked at us all the time. And to tell you the truth, I'm not sorry for it now ~ though I was monstrously disappointed at the time ~ for if he had seen us, and come up and spoke to us, I declare I do think I should have dropped. You see, my dear Bel, I have filled my I

Monocle.

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paper cram full again, without getting to the end - or rather hardly to the beginning - of our adventure with the Captain. But to-morrow I mean to devote a whole sheet to nothing else - about how we met him again the same evening when I was walking alone with George Dixon - and how he did see us then the moment he came near us - and how he came up to me and took hold of my hand - and how - in short, every thing about it. So adieu till to-morrow dear Bel. Ever your devoted friend, C.C. /

III

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to The Spirit of the Age) It is not easy to find dispassionate analysis of the work of William Hazlitt in the 1820s. The essayist was a controversial figure and comment is often deeply partisan: laudatory from the left (most notably in the journals associated with the Hunts) and antipathetic, often viciously so, from the right (the QyarterlY, Blackwood's). This was so much the case that Patmore's imitation of an essay from 'The Spirit of the Age' series, which began in the New MonthlY Magazine in January 1824, begins by asserting that 'We are going to perform a novel undertaking. It is, to speak the truth of William Hazlitt'. 'The Spirit of the Age. William Hazlitt' sees Patmore attempt the difficult trick of imitating Hazlitt's manner whilst simultaneously offering an account of the critic's achievement. Thus sonorous imitation of Hazlitt in full cry against Tory journalists, political apostates and the 'hag Legitimacy' becomes part of an assessment of Hazlitt's own political, journalistic and literary career. Imitation is here doubly critical; in the true Hazlittian manner, 'WO H.' is preoccupied with the nature of genius, but here Hazlitt's 'familiar style' is made to assume a self-analytical posture. Patmore presents a Hazlitt with an 'indestructible passion for abstract truth', a notion which is discussed, in a somewhat tactless fashion given Hazlitt's notorious marital problems, in an extended metaphor of marriage. Despite Patmore's friendship with Hazlitt l , W. H.'s devotion to the truth extends to a willingness to criticise Hazlitt adversely: for a certain meretriciousness of style, an overly idiomatic manner and a tendency for the aphorismic manner to lead to fragmented prose ('It is anything but long-winded. It seems to be written for persons affected with asthma'). Indeed, praise of Hazlitt is less common that animadversion. Patmore explains that this too is in the manner of his master, writing in A{y Friends and Acquaintance that his 113

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portrait of Hazlitt was 'drawn with a most unsparing hand, because professing to be his own2'. Thus Patmore's Hazlitt is self-willed, stubborn and occasionally perverse. However, he is simultaneously the only prose writer of genius of the day, 'shoot[ing] forth winged words like arrows'.

NOTES Hazlitt's relationship with Patmore and his positive reaction to the imitation are discussed in the introduction to the Rdected Articles above. 2 MFA, I, p. 4.

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THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE.* WILLIAM HAZLITT

WE are going to perform a novel undertaking. It is, to speak the truth of William Hazlitt. This writer has been praised more than he deserves; and yet not enough. And he has been abused more than he or than any man deserves; and yet his faults have never been pointed out. In short, 1 he has been praised and abused through thick and thin; but he has never yet been estimated. He shall be so now, as nearly as we are able to do it. We have had some doubts about placing Mr. Hazlitt's portrait among those whose intellects make up 'The Spirit of the Age;' because strictly speaking none are entitled to that rank who have not positively and directly contributed to create that spirit, or are pretty sure sooner or later to do so: and Mr. Hazlitt neither has nor ever will. But we could not persuade ourselves to exclude him from a company of which we have thoughtJeofTry Crayon, I and two or three others who shall be equally nameless, not unworthy to come among the number.

* This paper was for obvious reasons 'rejected' from a late publication, entitled The Spirit of the Age; and it was, I suppose for the same reasons, refused admission into the amusing periodical 2 in which a portion of that work had previously appeared, I feel peculiar satisfaction in being able to present this paper to the public; ~ first, because it is more than probable that, but for this particular medium, it would never have seen the light at all; and secondly, because there can be no doubt whatever, in regard to the person whose portrait is here drawn, that, as 'none but himself can be his parallel,'3 so none but himself either can or dare give a true account of him. ~ Editor. I 'Geoffrey Crayon' was a pseudonym of the American essayist Washington Irving, who was then resident in England. Hazlitt includes Irving in The Spirit if the Age. 2 The New Monthly Magazine. 3 Adapted from Lewis Theobald, The Double Falsehood (1728), Act rn, sc. i, I. 17. Hazlitt uses the original quotation in The Spirit if the Age's essay on Byron.

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If a better reason than the above is desired, all we have to give is, that if Mr. Hazlitt has not set his mark upon the Age in which he lives, it is his own fault. He might have done it if he would, and in signs and characters that those who run might read. It is a sufficient misfortune to his Age and to himself that he has not done so, and will not, without its being made an excuse for depriving our readers of a portrait that they will probably look for with some curiosity, if it is only in expectation of the abuse that they have so long / been accustomed to see connected with his name; Mr. Hazlitt being for the most part known only through the medium of the Quarterly Review and Blackwood's Magazine. And by the bye, that abuse itself, reaching us through the above-named mediums, may be offered as tolerably conclusive collateral evidence that we are not doing any great wrong in placing Mr. Hazlitt's name in our list; for the person whom those publications 'delight to dishonour,' may be safely pronounced to be no insignificant one at least. But let us 'leave this face-making, and begin.'1 No writer ever acquired marked distinction in his day, of whose writings something might not be said, either in relation to kind or to degree, which could not be said of any others whatever. And perhaps this is the best criterion that can be given, to determine who is and who is not entitled to rank among the Spirits of the Age in which he lives. In regard to Mr. Hazlitt's writings, this one distinguishing quality is the unrivalled power which they display of looking into the hidden truth of things. He pierces the depths of human life, and 'plucks out the heart of their mystery. ,2 His pen is like Ithuriel's spear;3 whatever it touches starts up before us in its naked truth. If you are / afraid to hear the truth you must not listen to him; for it will out, whatever may be the consequences. And this even when the truth in question is a personal one. But when it is an abstract truth that he happens to hit upon, away at once with love and jealousy!4 out it must come, even though it

I

2 3

4

Adapted from Hamlet Ill. ii. 247. One of Hazlitt's favourite Shakespearian tags.

Adapted from Hamlet, Ill. ii. 356-7.

Cr. Paradise Lost, IV, I. 810.

Othello, Ill. iii. 196.

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should blacken his dearest friend or brighten his bitterest foe; for the truth is to him - the truth. Perhaps it may be said that the leading feature of Mr. Hazlitt's mind ­ that which constitutes its great strength as well as its great weakness - is this passion which he cherishes, to the exclusion of all others, for abstract truth; for his other passion, for Liberty, is but a branch or off-set of this. He would not scruple, upon occasion, to tell a lie, out of pure love for the truth! just as he would assist in making himself and everybody else slaves in practice, out of his love for Liberty in the abstract. This may seem paradoxical, but it is capable of an easy explanation. He has a catholic zeal for the truth; and though he would not die a martyr to it in a bodily sense, (for we venture to guess that he is constitutionally timid in regard to bodily suffering), yet he would not scruple to sacrifice his principles to it, and his / sense of practical justice: just as a lover is always fonder of his passion than of his mistress, and would at any time sacrifice the latter to the former. A consequence of Mr. Hazlitt's indestructible passion for abstract truth is, the absolutely unchangeable nature of all his opinions. With him a thing either is, or is not; and there is no disputing about it. He would even interpret literally the old axiom, De gustibus non est disputandum, I and insist that a man either has a taste for truth and beauty, or he has it not; and that he who prefers falsehood and deformity, or even the lesser degree of beauty to the greater, does so not because he sees with another eye, but because he does not see at all; not because his faculties are different, but because they are defective. If you tell him, for example, that you prefer a picture of Correggio's to one of Raphael's, he will not let you off in virtue of the above maxim; thought he is too modest a man to be the first to dispute the point with you. But if you are imprudent enough to insist on 'giving a reason for the faith that is in you,' 2 then the chances are that he will not only prove but proclaim you a fool for your pains. / It has been said of Cobbett, that he has not one Mrs. Cobbett among all his opinions. It may in the same manner be said of Hazlitt, I 2

'There is no accounting for tastes' (Latin proverb).

Adapted from I Peter 3:15.

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that he has no one opinion which is not a Mrs. Hazlitt. He was wedded to every one of them in his youth, and he has stuck to them ever since, 'through good report and through evil report.'l Not but what we believe he would be very glad to be divorced from some of them a mensa et thoro; 2 for if we may judge from some parts of his writings, they lead him a sad life between them; particularly those of them that trouble their heads about Politics. But it is no easy matter to make up one's mind to part for ever from a wife that one loves, however ill she may treat us, or whatever we may be forced to suffer through her follies or extravagancies. And perhaps the more wives a man has, the less inducement he feels for getting rid of anyone that he may be suffering by. In Turkey, where a man may have as many as he pleases, the law of divorce is a dead letter. But besides these considerations, Mr. Hazlitt has a conscience, touching his intellectual ties, however he may feel himself too poor to afford to keep one in other matters. He took his opinions 'for better for worse;' and he cannot now persuade 1 himself to kick them out of doors merely because with their youth they may have lost some of their pristine freshness and beauty. One thing we will say in his favour on this head; (and it even makes up for all the faults that have been imputed to him, much more for those which he actually possesses): it is this - if some of the opinions to which he is wedded have long been 'the plague of his life,'3 and he would fain have been without them in an honest way, he has never yet been base enough to connive at their prostituting themselves, in order that he might make that an excuse for getting quit of them! To escape at once from this long-winded metaphor, - Mr. Hazlitt commenced his career as a thinker, (though not as an author), at that period which produced several more of the most distinguished writers of the day. He was, at the breaking out of the French Revolution, one of

I Adapted from 2 Cor. 6:8. MFA uses the phrase to describes Lamb's 'unshrinking' fidelity to Hazlitt. 2 A separation a mensa et thoro is a partial divorce. 3 A proverbial term for a scold derived from Burton's Anatomy qf MelancholY ('One was never married, and that's his hell; another is, and that's his plague').

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a band of youthful enthusiasts, who implicitly believed in all the moral truth and beauty which that event held forth the hopes of, and who were all acted upon by it in an equal degree, though all in a different manner. We allude, besides Mr. Hazlitt, to his then friends, Messrs. Wordsworth, / Coleridge, Southey, and Dr. Stoddart. 1 This associated band of intellectual brothers included a few more names; but these are the only ones which have since become distinguished. Upon Mr. Wordsworth this event acted but as a confirmation of his preconceived notions touching the nature and destiny of man. If Mr. Wordsworth is the most philosophical of poets, or the most poetical of philosophers, (which you will), he is even more a philosopher than a poet. This event, therefore, was for him only a natural and necessary corollary from the premises to which he had early made up his mind; and it moved him no jot from 'the even tenor of his way.,2 He wrote ballads, then, about Alice Fells and Idiot Boys, just as he writes them about Peter Bells and Waggoners, now, that all his bright hopes have blasted in the bud by the pestiferous breath of the hag Legitimacy, which he and his friends in their mistaken humanity helped to escape with her life, instead of, as they ought, treading her black blood and rotten bones into the soil which she had so long polluted, or burning them in a great auto daft on the altar of human liberty, and scattering their ashes to the four winds of heaven, amid shouts of holy exultation that the / angels themselves might have listened to on their thrones of light. But Mr. Wordsworth is a philanthropist as well as a philosopher; and we must not wonder, therefore, if he was willing to connive at sparing the lives of half a dozen kings; though his boasted philosophy might have taught him that it must be done at the cost of those of millions upon millions of their subjects; to say nothing of that of Liberty itself - which is worth them all! The personal consequences to Mr. Wordsworth have been exactly I The use of comic anticlimax apart, the journalist John Stoddart was Hazlitt's former brother-in-law. Stoddart, 'Dr Slop' in radical terminology, founded the reactionary The New Times in IS I 7. In the late I 790s, 'Citizen' Stoddart had been an enthusiastic Jacobin. 2 Adapted from Gray, 'Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard', I. 76.

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what they ought; - he is patronized by Lord Lonsdale,1 praised by Mr. Gifford, and paid out of the pockets of the people!2 On Mr. Coleridge the effects of French Revolution and its failure were as different as the different nature of the two minds on which they were to operate. Mr. Coleridge lives but in dreams of poetry, and mystic revelations from other worlds; and this event promised to be the parent of such dreams and revelations as had not till then visited the mind of man. What then could he do, when all these 'gorgeous palaces' of our intellectual pride, these 'solemn temples'3 of our human hopes and affections, were either levelled with the dust and their golden images broken in pieces / and trodden under foot, or (still worse) turned into marts for money-changers and dens for thieves; and when all the fairy fabric had melted away (as it soon afterwards did) 'like breath into the wind;' 4 what, we say, could Mr. Coleridge be expected to do under such circumstances, but 'wink, and shut his apprehension up,5 for a brief space, and then sink into that listless state, between sleeping and waking, in which he has remained ever since? And yet Coleridge was the wisest of the set, after all; or at any rate he was the happiest; which is much the same thing. Until the French Revolution came, he knew of nothing better in the world than his own talk about his own fancies; and when it ceased to exist it left him just where it found him. He had done nothing but talk before; (and how could he do better, considering what his talk is?) and he has done nothing else since. 6 And the only difference its failure has made to him is, that he has one more subject to talk about: which indeed he would if it had succeeded; so that to him it has made no difference at all.

I Lord Lonsdale had patronised Wordsworth from 1812. Byron's unincorporated 'Preface' to Don Juan sneers at the poet's 'self-degradation' before Lonsdale. 2 A glance at another common radical target, Wordsworth's position as Distributor of Stamps for Westmoreland. :J Both from The Tempest, IV. i. 152-3. 4 Macbeth, I. iii. 82. 5 Adapted fromJohn Marston, Antonio's Revenge (published 1602), Pr., 1. 17, a favourite quotation of Hazlitt's. 6 See 'Mr. Coleridge' in The Spirit if the Age.

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Alas! not so to Mr. Southey. The breaking out of the French Revolution found him 'a poet,' in the purest and loftiest sense of that pure and lofty title. And its failure has left him - a Poet-Iaureat! / III betide those who caused that failure, if for nothing but for this alone! The French Revolution came upon Mr. Southey like a flash of lightning breaking over a traveller in sight of a nobly extended prospect at midnight; not only revealing for a moment to his half benighted senses a thousand objects that he had not even hoped to see, but decking them all in a beauty not their own. Alas! where is that prospect now! 'Whither is fled the glory and the dream?') No wonder, when the sky closed again, and made all by the contrast seem ten times darker than it was before - no wonder that the author of Wat Tyler and Joan of Arc should wilfully shut his eyes upon the scene, and after wandering about for a while amidst the dreary darkness, find himself at last walking up the steps of Carlton Palace, 2 with a dress sword by his side, an opera hat under his arm, and a copy of the Quarterly Review and the Vision ofJudgment sticking out of each pocket of his cut velvet coat! Foul befal those (we repeat it) who brought about that bitter change! For all the other changes which that fatal blow to the hopes of human liberty brought with it, we could have found 'some drop of patience;,3 because all / the others, if they were not anticipated, might have been. But there, we had garnered up our hearts!4 To be discarded thence ­ Or keep it as a cistern for foul toryism 5 To knot and gender in! Patience, thou young and rose-lipped cherubim, Turn thy complexion there, ay, there look grim As hell!

But no more of this. I Adapted from Wordsworth, 'Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of early Childhood', 11. 56-7. 2 A glance at the Laureate's royal patronage. Carlton Palace was the home of George IV. 3 Cf. Othello, IV. ii. 53--4. 4 Adapted from Othello, IV. ii. 58-65. 5 Patmore's interpolation (for 'toads').

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It is not worth while to inquire what were the changes wrought on the then unknown, but since notorious Dr. Stoddart, by the great event we have alluded to; for it is true (though Mr. Croker 1 has said it) that 'once aJacobin always aJacobin;' and the Editor of the Old and New Times was never anything better. He took up the trade then because it gave him an opportunity of indulging his natural disposition to blacken his betters; and he has laid it by for that of Editor of a Tory newspaper, for the same reason. How this person contrives to live at all, now that he who was lately, even while bound to his barren rock, 'the foremost man of all this world,'2 is laid in his lowly grave, and no longer a butt for the / poisoned arrows of his filthy abuse, is more than we can imagine. Probably he consoles himself with the soothing reflection that he assisted in sending him there. So much for the effect of the French Revolution on the early associates of Mr. Hazlitt. On himself it worked a change less noticeable than on his friends, but more worthy of notice. It found him still a youth, and his youthful faculties, however prematurely developed in some respects, more than proportionately backward in others. He was a reasoner and a metaphysician even then; but he was not then what he soon afterwards became - a man of deep sensibility, of a most vigorous and profound if not an excursive imagination, and a fancy active and vivacious in the highest degree. The event in question promised to realize all the conclusions, in regard to the fitness of things, and their conformity with natural truth and justice, which Mr. Hazlitt's logical understanding had at the time enabled him to reach. And these promises so far exceeded any hopes that he could have previously entertained, (for his temperament is anything but sanguine,) that they must have produced an instantaneous and an almost miraculous effect, in developing those

I John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), the Irish Tory MP and essayist had been baited by Hazlitt from 1813, when, in his guise as a parliamentary reporter he mocked the , "mediocrity" of the Admiralty Croaker, onwards. The phrase 'once aJacobin always a Jacobin' is more properly Coleridge's, in his 'Once aJacobin Always aJacobin', published in the Morning Post on 21 October 1802. 2 Julius Caesar, IV. iii. 22. 'Wo H.' refers to Napoleon.

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other faculties which / we have ascribed to him, and which are usually so seldom allied to extraordinary powers of reasoning. But, however this may be, those other faculties were developed about this time; the early successes of the good cause urged them forward in their course, and impelled them to a pitch of almost diseased activity; and then, in the midst of all this tumult of irrepressible exultation at the re­ appearance of those hopes of human liberty which had for so many ages been hidden in the secret hearts of a few lone enthusiasts - in the midst of this came crime, and bloodshed, and shame; and then an instinctive combination of all the bad of the earth against all the good; and at last the consequent triumph of the former, as they always must triumph while the latter refuse to avail themselves of the same ways and the same weapons. If the people of the earth had felt no more remorse at shedding drops of blood than its kings did and do at shedding oceans, all would have been well, and that people would not have seen their own blood poured forth like water, and their miseries laughed to scorn. As it is, they have more than half deserved their fate. But what must have been the effect of all this on a mind like Mr. Hazlitt's? We must not dwell upon the picture. Suffice it to say, that / He, repulsed, (a short tale to make)' Fell into a sadness - then into a fast ­ Thence into a watch - then into a weakness ­ Thence to a lightness; and by this declension Into the madness wherein he (sometimes? raves And we all mourn for.

But let us not forget to mention one thing. To Mr. Hazlitt's eternal honour be it spoken, whatever else the failure of all his hopes and aspirations made of him, it did not make him an apostate. And which of his early friends, 'all honourable men'3 as they are, can say as much? Because those hopes were blasted in their bloom, and lost the odour of their sweetness, he did not turn round upon them with a

I

2 3

Adapted from Hamlet, 11. ii. 146-51.

Patmore's interpolation.

Julius Caesar, Ill. ii. 85.

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feigned contempt, and after 'casting them like loathsome weeds away,' 1 fling himself at the feet of the blasters. Because his arm was too weak to overthrow the car of the greatJuggernaut, Legitimacy, he did not basely cast himself beneath its blood-stained wheels - a willing sacrifice to the object of his execrations. Because he found from fatal experience that man was not made to be only 'a little lower than the angels, ,2 he did not lend a helping hand to put harness on his back, and sink him to a lower level than that of the brutes that perish. In short, because Liberty, the betrothed of his early hopes, the divinity of his youthful adoration, proved false and 'haggard,' he did / not 'cast her off to beggarly divorcement,'3 and thus prove that it was not her but he himself was loving all the while; but he clung to her more closely the more she was deserted by others; and fallen and polluted as she is, has worshipped her with a religious idolatry ever since. Let but this one truth be written on his tomb-stone, and with all his faults, (of which he has his full share), his name shall be repeated with respect when those of his ci-devant4 friends 'stink in the nostrils of posterity.' Those friends may say, perhaps, that he has not been tempted like them, or like them he would have fallen. But this is begging the question with a vengeance; or worse - it is stealing it. No sophistry can annul the vital difference that exists between them. It is a matter of bare fact, and it stands simply thus: they abandoned the principles on which they commenced their career, the moment it became dangerous and unprofitable to hold them; and he has held by them manfully to the last. In a word, they are apostates, and he is not. But 'something too much of this. ,5 It would not have been introduced at all here, if the circumstances immediately connected with it had not produced a marked effect on the intellectual/features of the person

I Adapted from Thomas Otway, The Orphan: Or The Unhappy-Marriage: A Trage4Y (1680), Act IV, sc. i, I. 302. 2 Psalms 8: 5. 3 er. Othello, IV. ii. 159-60. 4 Former. 5 Hamlet, Ill. ii. 74.

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whose portrait we are attempting to sketch. The French Revolution rose like a beautiful meteor, only to dazzle the eye for a moment, and then to set in blood; and with it set for ever the momentary hopes of our young searcher after truth. And as their last rays receded from his eyes upon the distant horizon, and he saw at the same time his early friends and companions - men to whom he had looked up with the most unfeigned reverence - falling down in ignoble worship before the idols that were rising from the earth in an opposite direction, a black and baleful melancholy seemed to be settling within his heart; a cherished distrust in his fellow men took possession of his imagination; an indignant scowl seated itself upon his magnificent brow, (like a demon unsurping the throne that was erected for a god); a pallid languor hung upon his cheeks and lips, and dragged them downwards; his shoulders became bowed and bent as if a world of disappointments were resting and pressing upon them; and he went wandering about among his fellow men, as he has done ever since, in loose attire, a shambling gait, and a sinister look, the very picture of a man possessed by a spirit of mingled hatred and contempt for all the world, and most of all for himself. / This is a sorry picture to be obliged to draw, of a man towards whom we feel as we do towards Mr. Hazlitt. But we promised our readers the truth, and it shall be told. And at any rate he will not be the person to complain of it; for, to say nothing of his being the most bold and reckless truth-teller of the day, he has still one love left: - his passion for truth is not yet extinguished, and he will bear to hear it with equanimity even of himself. If it should be said that we have dwelt too long on the merely personal part of our picture, we could not help it. It is a theme that will have its way, when it comes across us. We must endeavour to make up for our transgression in what follows. We have said that the most distinguishing feature of Mr. Hazlitt's mind, as displayed in his writings, is its unrivalled power of piercing into the truth. When there is nothing, either from without or from within, to affect the natural powers of his vision, perhaps, to use a vulgar phrase, he 'sees farther into the mill-stone' I than any man that I

Proverbial: 'I can see as far into a millstone as another man'.

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ever lived. But on the other hand, there is this to be said of him: he frequently sees farther into it than its proper thickness; he sees more than is to be seen. 1 We are willing to believe that this results, in most cases, from his determination to say striking things. He writes for his bread. (We need not scruple to say here what we learn from those writings themselves.) He writes for his bread; and therefore he must write what people will read. If the subject on which he happens to be writing is capable of a popular development consistently with truth, well and good; but it must have one at all events. If he determines that half a dozen brilliant things must be said on a given topic, and only three present themselves naturally, three more must be made. 'Be brilliant,' - is his business maxim in these matters; in conformity with reason and common-sense if you can; but - be brilliant. It is astonishing the mischievous effect this has produced upon his writings; and if nothing should hereafter occur to induce him to care more about his reputation than he at present seems to do, or look better after it while he lives, when he dies it will not be strong enough to take care of itself. If the profound and subtle truths, and the admirable illustrations and applications of them, scattered about at random through half a dozen of Mr. Hazlitt's volumes, had made their appearance in a well-concocted form in one, that lone would have gone down to posterity, a monument of human penetration and wisdom scarcely inferior in value to the Essays of Lord Bacon. But as it is, the false coin and the true are so completely intermixed, that common observers, not being able to distinguish which is which, refuse to take either: and after all, it is of common observers that the posterity of every age is composed. If Mr. Hazlitt says that all this is his own concern, and that if it pleases him to shew his contempt for his readers and his reputation at the same time, by pouring forth flashy falsehoods and profound truths in a mingled scream, reckless of the effect of either, no man has a right to say him nay; - we admit the proposition. But in return we require him to admit, without complaining, the consequences of such foolish, not to say wicked indifference. He would have us believe, and we do believe, that he loves Truth better than anything else in the world; 126

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indeed that he cares about nothing else. And yet he treats her with that cavalier indifference with which some men treat their wives and mistresses, who would yet be very indignant at having their love called in question. But we must tell Mr. Hazlitt that in nine cases out of ten, those who treat the objects / of their supposed love with indifference, actually Jeel it for them. And that even in the tenth case (which we admit to be his) they do not love them as they think they do, or as they would have us think. Besides which, it is a shrewd evidence of littleness of heart, not to treat the betrothed of our affections as if we considered her worthy of them. The chastity of Caesar's wife was not even to be suspected. And so it must be with the love of those who make Truth the object of their idolatry. She will not have it even suspected that they bestow upon her but half a heart; and still less can she bear to have it supposed that her only hated rival, Falsehood, enjoys the other half There is another thing which does great mischief to Mr. Hazlitt's writings in their own day, though it will not have much effect on them hereafter. He makes them the vehicles of his personal feelings in regard to living persons about whom his living readers care but little, and about whom posterity will neither know nor care one farthing; - he uses them as instruments of his revenge for supposed injuries, and gratitude for supposed favours, received not in his character of a writer, but a private man. If a person for / whom he feels but a slender portion of respect lends him a hundred pounds when he could have little expected it, he proclaims him in his next volume, 'the prince of critics and the king of men.' I And if another, whom he perhaps does respect, passes him in the street without seeing him, he writes him down 'a rascal' on the very flrst opportunity that offers. If Mr. Hazlitt says, as perhaps he may, that if self-preservation is the flrst law of nature, gratitude and revenge are the second and third, and that if you cannot have them in one way, you must in another - we shall not dispute it. All we say is, that such a mode of achieving them leads him into the most ridiculous dilemmas; besides taking away from his

I In 1822, Francis Jeffrey lent Hazlitt £100. In the Liber Amoris, published in the following year, Hazlitt describedJeffrey as 'the prince of critics and the king of men'.

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writings that 'broad and general air'l which should belong to them and making them - cabinned, cribbed, confined, Bound in to sau0' doubts andfiars. 2

Mr. Hazlitt is one of those rare writers who teach you what, butJor them, you never would have known: and this we take to be the true criterion of genius, in whatever department of human inquiry it may be found. Some of the moral truths / which he has stated and developed would have remained for ever among the hidden secrets of nature, if he had not lived to draw them forth. We do not of course mean to state that it required a degree of mental power never attained before, to enable him to produce certain portions of his writings. What we mean is, that it required precisely that degree which is possessed by him, added to his other qualities of sensibility, excitability, &c. and that these together amount to what we consent to call genius. Without anything like this degree of mental power, he might have been quite as lively, as brilliant, and as popular a writer as he is; and if we are obliged to add quite as useful, it is because he has chosen, not absolutely to misapply those powers, but to leave them unapplied. But still, without precisely that degree of capacity possessed by him, and unless that degree had amounted to genius, he could not have done certain things that he has done. This leads us to state what is perhaps the most distinguishing fact connected with Mr. Hazlitt as a prose writer of the nineteenth century. He is the only one of them all whose powers do amount to genius: we mean, those who have addicted themselves to prose exclusively; for we are not / aware that Mr. Hazlitt has ever written a line of poetry, except in his prose. By the bye, we take this to be a singular fact; though one that it would perhaps be not very difficult to account for. Mr. Hazlitt has displayed as enthusiastic a passion for poetry, and acute a judgment and delicate a sensibility in detecting its beauties, as anyone of his co­ I

er. Macbeth, Ill. iv. 22.

2

Ibid., 23-4.

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temporaries. There is a maxim, too, which is pretty generally admitted, that 'none but a poet can criticise a poet.' And yet Mr. Hazlitt h~ never attempted a line of poetry himsel£ The reason is this: he has ~ver written poetry, because he is able to think it, and.feel it, just as wen without writing it: for as to his writing poetry, or any thing else, with a direct view to anyone's benefit but his own - that is entirely out of the question with him; partly from a selfish indifference to the good of others, which has been superinduced on his natural disposition by the events of his early life; but chiefly, we verily believe, from a shrewd suspicion, that if 'a great book is a great evil,' 1 a small one is only so much the less evil. But however this may be, perhaps, no poem was ever yet written that it might be read. Poets write because their faculties require the stimulus of composition, before they can reach / that state of excitement in which their being, as poets, consists; - they sit down to write, not because they are poets at the moment, but in order that they may become such. If it were not for this, heaven knows, those who are not poets would have little chance of enjoying any of those feelings which poetry excites; at least, so long as the market price of poetry remains, generally speaking, infinitely below that of prose, in proportion to the time required for its production. We conceive Mr. Hazlitt's imagination to be so intense, his fancy so active, and his sensibility so acute, that he sees poetry in everything, and feels it at all times; and therifOre, he never writes it. Let any bookseller pay him fifty guineas (beforehand!) for five hundred lines of poetry, and see if he will not produce them. But otherwise, why should he, when he can get four times the sum for as many pages of prose that would hardly cost him more timet /

* We would wish our readers to take this speculation cum grano salis, 2 so far as regards those who have written poetry in the present day. We will not pretend to state it as our belief that all the vast mass of our contemporary poetry was written purely for the immediate pleasure of writing it; and assuredly, very little of it was written for the money that was to be made by it. No doubt, the motive which produced the greater part of it was triple - present pleasure, profit, and reputation. So far / as relates to Mr. Hazlitt himself our speculation I Proverbial, derived from Callimachus, Fragments, 465 (though Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets attributes it to Voltaire). 2 I.e. with a pinch of salt.

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It is not generally known that Mr. Haz1itt studied Painting for several years, and practised as an artist; and that he has executed some copies from Titian which are looked upon by pretty good judges as among the best that have ever been done after that master­ whom it is almost as difficult to copy as to rival. But though no one else was dis-satisfied with the progress he made in Painting, he himself was. He did not see why he should be inferior to any man; and when he found that he was so, he threw up his pencil in disgust, and has never touched it since. He then came to London, and was engaged as Parliamentary reporter for some of the daily /papers. From this laborious but useful drudgery he was promoted to purveyor of theatrical critiques, 1 and other occasional paragraphs; in which his power of thought and style soon shone out in a manner not a little marvellous in the eyes of those who had hitherto looked to the Morning Post for their beau-ideal of such matters. There can be little doubt that we owe almost entirely to him the present tone of our theatrical criticism, - which is not absolutely contemptible; whereas, at the time we speak of it, it was infinitely below contempt. About the same time, too, or shortly after, he began writing under the form of essays, in weekly papers; (chiefly, we believe, the Examiner); and envinced a boldness and originality of thought, and a spirit and

rests on the express understanding that his motive to write is profit alone.* Not that he is careless about reputation. No man of fine genius ever was. He is even greedy of it, and would enjoy no small share if it could be had merely for the trouble of wishing for. But he is utterly incapable of acting with a direct and immediate view to its acquirement. *If the reader should detect some litde inconsistency between this passage and another at p. 190, 2 where the writer says that the subject of his notice does not write poetry 'because he is able to think it andfiel it just as well without writing it', he must not complain of me, at least. I am not editor enough to pretend to make these articles better than I find them. Still less do I offer a selection of 'beauties' of our popular prose writers. I give the matter just as it comes to hand-adhering with strictness even to the punctuation. - Editor. I Hazlitt worked as a parliamentary reporter on the Morning Chronicle between 1812 and 1813 before being 'promoted' to drama critic. 2 p. 129 in the current edition.

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vigour of style, that excited considerable attention among a certain class of readers, but much less than they deserved generally, on account of an evidently careless, not to say insolent disregard of the commonly received opinions of the day, which accompanied almost all he put forth. When an important truth occurred to him, he did not, any more than he does now, tender it politely for your examination, finicallyl folded up in a genteel wrapper of gentle phrases, as if he was/ afraid it might contaminate your touch; but he flung it in its simple nakedness, right in the face of the most deep-rooted prejudice of the day, or the most wide-spread interest; and if those whom it concerned did not like to pick it up, they might leave it. When he was determined to make war upon a well-bred lie, or a fashionably attired sophistry, he did not send a friend to call upon it, provided with a politely penned challenge, written on hot-pressed and gilt-edged paper, and sealed with his coat of arms; but he flung his mailed glove smack down before it wherever he happened to meet it, and dared it once 'to the outrance.'2 Soon after this, Mr. Hazlitt was engaged to give Lectures on English poetry, at the Surry Institution, which were afterwards published in a collected form. This brought him much more into public notice than he had hitherto been; though in the literary world he had for some time past been pretty generally looked upon as a person of first-rate ability. But while it gained him many admirers that he would not otherwise have met with, by presenting his opinions in a tangible and cognizable form, it placed him at the mercy of those who have no mercy, much less justice, when / the paltry interests of their employers are threatened from the remotest distance with invasion, or even with examination. What followed is too well known to need repetition here. Mr. Hazlitt has ever since been the butt and byeword of all the base hirelings of the day; from the editor of the Quarterly Review, downwards, or upwards ­ which you will, - for there is not a pin to choose between them, in literary rank any more than in moral respectability. On every successive publication he has been assailed by the mingled hootings and execrations of those who have no other honours to bestow. I

2

Fussily.

I.e. to fight to the bitter end. Macbeth, Ill. i. 71.

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Let it not be supposed that we refer to this fact under any affected feelings of pity or depreciation. Mr. Hazlitt is among the last persons in the world to claim exemption, when the lex talionis 1 is the order of the day - as it is at present; for no one ever stood less nice than he does about taking the exact measurement of personal merit in a political adversary, or of awarding precisely the deserved number of blows to any unfortunate delinquent of this sort who may happen to fall into his hands. So far from it, he seems to think all fair in politics, whatever he may in love; and when he is in the mood for it, would as soon as call Mr. Wordsworth a knave as he would Mr. Theodore Hook. 2 / We merely refer to the unmeasured abuse that has been heaped on Mr. Hazlitt, as a striking sign of the Spirit of Age. We firmly believe, indeed, that he would have fallen into this error in regard to others, in whatever age he had lived: because it is a vice of his blood, and he can no more help it than he can help dashing his racket or his head against the wall when he makes a bad stroke at the Fives Court, or in fact than any of us can help losing our temper when we do lose it. In him, therefore, we can in some sort excuse it; though we would on no account seek to exempt him from the consequence which such a weakness entails. But perhaps he is the only reckless abuser of his day for whom this excuse (such as it is) can be made. He vituperates the objects of his political hatred in terms that they do not always deserve, because, when that hatred is stirred up to its height, he neither knows nor cares for the precise value of the terms he uses. But with the systematic maligners of the day it is a very different matter. They do not even murder reputation with 'malice prepense;'3 for they have not heart or gall enough to be 'haters' at all, much less such a 'good hater,4 as he piques himself on being. They commit their moral assassinations as the Italian bravos do, - for hire; and have no / more enmity to the I Law of retaliation. Hazlitt published an article on the lex talionis in the Morning Chronicle on 26 February 1814. 2 The Tory satirist Theodore Hook (1788-1841) was editor of the scurrilous weekly newspaper John Bull which had, to Hazlitt's fury and humiliation, gleefully published one of Hazlitt's letters to Sarah Walker at the height of the Liber Amoris scandal inJune 1823. 3 Malice aforethought. 4 Haz1itt describes himself as a good hater several times in his work.

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person they seek to destroy, than they have love to the cause or the party they serve. With them it is an affair of pure calculation, and they sit down to consider of it as coolly as they would to a sum in arithmetic. Will it pay to poison the public mind against such or such a person? Is he of sufficient importance to make it prudent to do so? Will the reprisals he is likely to make leave a balance in favour of our party? These are the kind of questions they ask themselves - or when not authorised to act on their own judgment, their employers. And if the answers are in the affirmative, they next proceed to enquire into the actual character, both mental and moral, of the person to be put down; and whatever that may be, regulate their attack accordingly. For example, if the peculiar characteristics of his mind happen to be subtlety and acuteness, they swear that he is an ass; if he is particularly remarkable for modesty and diffidence of deportment, they write him up a bully and Bobadil; 1 if they should happen to learn (by means of their spies) that he never drinks any thing but water, they instantly offer to prove that he gets drunk every morning upon gin and bitters, and every night upon brandy-punch; and so of the rest. Nay, it is not without example, when nothing else seemed / likely to do, for them to throw out pretty broad insinuations, the nature of which cannot even be insinuated here! But they have another method, which is a still greater favourite with them than any of the preceding, and not without reason, for it is in some cases more effective than any other. It consists in the artillery of nick-names. 2 A nick-name is at once irresistible and unanswerable. It is a dab of moral mud thrown at a man. If thrown skilfully it is sure to stick, and if it sticks it is sure to make the bearer of it look ridiculous. If the first nobleman or the finest gentleman in the land were to walk along London streets with a great dab of mud upon his cheek, the very chimney-sweepers would laugh and 'point the finger' at him as he .passed. And precisely so it is with a nick-name. There is no gainsaying it. It is worse than an 'ill-name;' and those who give it might as well

I

2

Captain Bobadill is the cowardly braggart inJonson's Every Man in his Humour (1598). Blackwood's 'pimpled Hazlitt' the most notable.

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swear away a man's life at once, and have him hanged outright. And so they would if they dared. But these gentry are leading us farther from our subject than it is either worth while or decent to follow them. What we were about to say was, that this kind of warfare is one of those signs which mark the Spirit of the Age. Extremes meet; I and we are now arrived at that extreme pitch of refinement which merges into barbarism. In no other age would the kind of warfare we have alluded to have been tolerated; and it is tolerated now, only because We have given our hearts away - a sordid boon; I

and are pretty much in that moral condition in which men are before they have hearts to give. Oh, it was not so once! Alas! whither are ye fled, white years of youth! Beautiful hopes of opening life, why are ye changed to blank misgivings, and base suspicions, and coward fears, and constant uncontrollable perturbations, that prey upon the pierced spirit like canker-worms, and will not let it rest! It is but a little while, and that spirit was wandering like a bird beside the ever-sounding sea; as pure as the air that seemed to lift it from the earth; as clear as the waters over which it floated at will, or plunged into their green depths in search of unimagined wonders; as free and unconfined as the space in which it expatiated, or turned by a thought into the temple of its triumphant worship! What and where is it now? A denizen of that world which it loathes, yet dares not leave; - a declaimer in favour of that virtue it has forfeited and that sincerity lit has flung away; - a sophisticator with that truth which it still professes to idolize; - and (oh shame of shames!) ready to truckle at the footstool of that power which it would fain see sunk into the central fires of the earth that it outrages and pollutes! We shall not detain our readers by any lengthened details in regard to works so well known as the characters of Shakespeare's Plays, the Lectures on the English Poets, and the Table Talk. They are each 'of a mingled yarn - good and ill'2 - as what book is not? each contains I 2

Wordsworth, 'The world is too much with us; late and soon', I. 4.

AWr Well That Ends Well, IV iii. 68-9.

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numerous examples of all the faults that we have attributed to this writer, and all his good qualities; and all are what they were perhaps intended to be more than any thing else, - infinitely entertaining; and the last named - the two volumes of Table Talk - are perhaps more so than any other volumes of the day. For our own parts we would even go the length of making no exception whatever to this remark. We do not of course mean to assert that people hurry through them with that eager interest with which they devour the Scotch Novels; or that a tenth part so many persons look into them at all. But those who do read them turn to them ten times after the first perusal, for once that they turn to the others. And to say nothing of their 1 readers being of the only class worthy that name, they are nearly all buyers of them; which very few are indeed of the novels, compared with the enormous number that is sold. The chief consumers of the latter are the circulating libraries, and those numerous little lending shops which they have created in every large town throughout the kingdom. There are circulating libraries in London that are obliged to have from fifty to seventy copies of each novel when it comes out. And those who actually buy them on their first appearance, merely to read, are chiefly those who have plenty of money and little patience, and therefore chuse to pay a guinea and a half for an early perusal. And this includes the additional advantage of being able to lend them to friend after friend, till they are fairly lost, and you are exempted from the task of taking them up again! for delightful as it is the first time, it is felt to be a task afterwards. But with the Table Talk it is different. The real readers of the day are comparatively very few. And of these every one is a buyer, to a certain extent. There are few books - one or two in a season or so ­ that they must have. Now if the little libraries of these real lovers 1 of books were searched, with a view to ascertain the comparative popularity of any given prose writer of the day, we would venture odds that Mr. Hazlitt would carry it hollow against them all. And we would take odds that the Table Talk would, like Roderick Random (was it not?) in the ten Carlton-house lists of books supposed to be the most entertaining in the English language, be included in them all! The reader will perceive that, according to this calculation, (or speculation, if he pleases) the popularity of a book is in an inverse ratio 135

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to its sale! But though as a general proposition this would be ridiculously untrue, it is nothing less in the particular instance in question. Nay - it may be added - (and the rationale of the proposition may be found in what has been said above) - that if the Scotch Novels were read ten times as often as they are by the same persons who read them, there would not be half so many of them sold. So that the author of them must take care what he is about, and not write them too well, lest he should get more of the 'empty praise' of admiration in part payment of his demands, and less of that 'solid pudding'l which is evidently so much more palatable to him. Not 1 that he needs any hint of this kind from us. Indeed he seems to have been acting on this feeling of late, to a somewhat ominous extreme! We have but little more to say of Mr. Hazlitt, and his works. The most remarkable feature of his style is, that there is no remarkable feature belonging to it. He studiously avoids the use of uncommon and obsolete words; and never uses a common word in an uncommon sense. But perhaps it would be impossible to give a just account of what his style would seem to aim at being, without repeating, almost in so many words, what he has himself said in describing his notion of 'The Familiar Style.'2 We must therefore refer the reader to that essay, in the second volume of Table Talk. How far it is conformable with that notion, is another question. In some particular instances, and where he has taken pains to make it so, (as for example in the Essay itself just referred to), we take it to be the very best specimen of that style extant; and we agree with him in thinking that style the best. But generally speaking it falls short of what it aims at being; or rather it goes beyond. It is frequently so idiomatical as to be quite enigmatical, to all but those who are up to the slang of the last quarter / of a century. It is sometimes so very 'familiar' that it 'breeds contempt.' Its plainness often borders on ugliness. In avoiding anything like an I

er. Pope,

The Dunciad, I, 11. 52-4:

Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale,

Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,

And solid pudding against empty praise.

2

In 'On Familiar Style' (1821).

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oratorical construction, it is frequently broken into bits. Its periods have no more words than some writers have clauses. It is anything but long-winded. It seems to be written for persons affiicted with asthma. You may read it aloud while smoking your cigar; puff and paragraph, alternately. Not that we would recommend this practice: for though not professors of it ourselves, we should conceive that smoking, like painting, requires the whole man. We should venture to judge that if Mr. Hazlitt's choice of the familiar style in the first instance was the result of his naturally pure taste, he has adhered to it so long on account of the facilities it has afforded him; for, as we before hinted, he does not pretend to keep a conscience in so purely a matter of business as authorship now is with him. On the contrary, whatever serves the turn of the moment is welcome. Forced conceits and hacknied quotations; paltry points, staring paradoxes, and petty plays on words; scraps of Latin and French picked up nobody or everybody knows where; antitheses, 1 alliterations, and any other helps and make-weights, however unmeaning and meretricious, (including the whole family of the Cingles)! - all are laid under contribution whenever they present themselves. He is far from particular: if 'my lady' is not to be had, he is content with Joan. '2 In short, in this respect, 'nought is for him too high, and nought too low. ,3 Again - when he sets himself to make out a case, if he cannot do it by fair means he will do it by foul; or he will frequently do whichever is easiest, or whichever will tell best. And why not? He writes that you may 'read;' but not that you may 'mark, learn, and inwardly digest.' Or, putting it in another point of view, - he cannot afford to give you more than a little of the 'leaven' of wisdom to each 'lump'4 ('abortions'5 he I.e. jingles, in the sense of placing priority upon sound rather than sense. A common distinction. CC Fielding's 'Town-bred ladies' and 'blowsy Joan' (in The wttery, 1732). 3 Adapted from Kane Q'Hara, Tom Thumb, A Burletta ... Altered from Henry Fielding (1805), I, I. 234. 4 CC I Cor. 5: 6 (~ little leaven leaveneth the whole lump'). 5 A reference to Hazlitt's 'The IndianJugglers', published in Table Talk (182 1-2): 'I can write a book: so can many others who have not even learned to spell. What abortions are these Essays! What errors, what ill-pieced transitions, what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions! How little is made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best 1 can do.' I

2

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has himself called them) that he periodically lays before you; otherwise what is to become of all those which he must produce during the next twenty years? But this does not belong to style. Mr. Hazlitt's metaphors, figures, and what are usually considered as the higher parts of style, frequently 'come as tardy off' 1 as his language and construction. They are very seldom inapt; but they run upon one, two, three, or four feet, 1 as it may happen. And no wonder, considering the distance from which some of them are fetched. So much for the defects of Mr. Hazlitt's style. Its merits must not be dwelt upon so long in proportion, or the rest of the Spirit of the Age 'must halt for it. ,2 We will only say that when he is in earnest in his endeavour to develop a truth, or anxious in his attempt to disentangle a difficulty, or unaffectedly impelled to pour forth a burst of passion, or sincerely eager to impress an opinion, or deeply interested in establishing a theory or illustrating a theme, - there is no one like him. Then his power of style is equal to his power of thought and penetration, - which are unrivalled. Then he can shoot forth winged words like arrows; each following each to its destination, and no one impeding another. Then he can link simile to simile, and place figure beside figure, and pile metaphor upon metaphor, till each illustrates each, and all melt into one mellow whole, like the parts of a beautiful picture. Then he can make fancy beget fancy, and draw imagination from imagination, and support truth against truth, and multiply argument into argument, and distil sentiment out of sentiment, - till there is neither power nor will left in the reader to gainsay or resist him. In short, then, and then only, he 1 is that really admirable expounder of truth, and detector and destroyer of falsehood, which he might always be if he pleased. As we have mentioned the conversational powers of some other subjects of our remarks, it would scarcely be fair towards Mr. Hazlitt entirely to pass over his. Perhaps if Mr. Coleridge is, among professedly literary men, the best talker of the day, Mr. Hazlitt is upon the whole the

I

2

Adapted from Hamlet, Ill. ii. 25.

Adapted from Hamlet, 11. ii. 324.

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best converser; which is better - for it is calculated to give more immediate pleasure to his fellow conversers than ever Mr. C.'s can to his hearers, while it is pretty sure to be of more after benefit to them. We will venture to say of Mr. Hazlitt's conversation, that it includes every one of the good qualities of his writings, and not one of their faults. And the reasons are simply these: he is fond of talking, whereas he hates writing; and in talking, he is not called upon to say more than he has to say, whereas in writing he frequently is - having engaged to fill a certain space on a certain topic. In short, he talks with perfect sincerity and good faith; thinking whatever he says, and saying whatever he thinks. But he writes, as it may happen: what he thinks, if he thinks that will do; if not, anything that will. We must now take leave of Mr. Hazlitt, and 1 abruptly, for we have long passed our limits. We shall do so by saying, that whenever he pleases to take the trouble, he may approve himself to all the world, what two of the best judges in it have already pronounced him - the best prose writer of his day, and one of the finest spirits of his age and country.* 1

* Hear (if you can) Lord Holland's conversation; 1 and see a Letter of Mr. Charles Lamb to Mr. Southey, printed some time ago in the London Magazine. 2 1 Henry Richard Vassal Fox, 3rd Baron Holland (1773-1840), the Whig grandee. We only have Patmore's word for this claim (see P. P. Howe's The lift qf William Hazlitt (revised edition, 1928), ch. xiii). 2 I.e. the 'Letter of Elia to Robert Southey, Esq.', published in the London Magazine in October 1823, where Lamb describes Hazlitt as 'one of the wisest and finest spirits breathing'. C£ MFA: 'Lamb never did a more noble or beautiful or characteristic thing than the writing of that memorable letter; and Hazlitt never experienced a higher or purer intellectual pleasure than in reading it: and though at the period of its publication Hazlitt had for a long time absented himself from Lamb's house and society, on account of some strange and gratuitous crotchet of his brain, respecting some imagined offence on the part of Lamb ... the letter instantly brought them together again; and there was no division of their friendship till Hazlitt's death, fifteen years afterwards.'

139

INTRODUCTORY NOTE (to London Letters to Country Cousins)

'London Letters to Country Cousins.' is an account of 'The Streets of London by Gas-light' which offers an 'evening tour in search of the London picturesque'. Himself the son of a London shopkeeper, Patmore offers a vade mecum to the mercantile life of the metropolis in the 1820s, from Cheapside in the City to Piccadilly in the West End, from the vividly described fashionable emporia of Ludgate Hill to the panorama of the Regency quadrant in the midst of John Nash's improvements. London description is well-worn territory for Patmore and is found in the metropolitan aspects of the Mirror qf the Months and in Letters on England (indeed, Letters LIV and LV of the latter describe 'A Walk through London'). However, this is his finest variation on the theme. Whatever the piece's merits, it should be said, nonetheless, that it is not an imitation in the strict sense of the term. Never one to give up an opportunity for self-promotion, here Patmore (or 'P. G. P.' as he styles himself in the contents page to the Articles) shamelessly associates his own work with those of the most noted essayists of the day. For 'London Letters to Country Cousins. No.5' simply continues a series which he contributed to the New Monthly Magazine in the years before the publication of the Rrjected Articles. The series, in four parts, ran in the New Monthly in 1824 and 1825. It contains the letters of one 'Terence Templeton' to his cousin Frank, who lives in the Yorkshire town of Doncaster. Frank has urged Terence, who is resident in London, to record his impressions of the metropolis for the edification and amusement of his 'country cousins'. In the first letter, Templeton agrees, in a passage which captures the nature of the series well: There's no resisting your flatteries, my dear Frank; so that I shall at once

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agree to comply with your wishes, and that of the circle of which you are the eloquent mouth-piece, and employ some of my idle mornings, and my wandering, desultory, and (as you are pleased to term it) 'agreeable pen', in describing some of the peculiar external features of London town, in the year eighteen hundred and twenty-four; I

This structural conceit grants Patmore the opportunity to range through the city offering commentary on whatever aspects of London life he sees fit. The results are generally happy and 'The Streets of London by Gas-light' is an entertaining and socially revealing document. Preoccupied as it is with commercial and architectural aspects of the metropolis, the essay offers a useful corrective to those of us whose vision of Romantic period London is dominated by Blake's psychologically-charged topography or Wordsworth and Coleridge's antipathetic testimonies.

NOTE byNMM, XI (October 1824), p. 360.

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LONDON LETTERS

TO

COUNTRY COUSINS.

No.5.*

THE STREETS OF LONDON BY GAS-LIGHT

I intended, my dear Frank, (or rather, my dear cousins conjointly - for this epistle is addressed to all of you, ) to have delayed offering you any general sketches of London in 1825, till I had prepared you for their due appreciation, by placing before you a few more of its particular features. But as I hear from authentic sources, that certain evil disposed persons are, at this present writing, engaged in laying a deep hatched and deadly plot, against the very existence of what I had intended should form one of the most characteristic and attractive of my themes, I must pounce upon it / at once, before it passes into a thing that was; ­ seeing that it is the very essence of these agreeable missives, to make you acquainted with nothing but what actually is; leaving what has been to those who have been and what is to be, to those who are not. You must know, that it has been the laudable practice of the principal London linen-drapers, and a few other retail tradesmen, time immemorial, (that is to say for these ten years past,) to keep open their shops till twelve o'clock at night, - for the patriotic purpose, I suppose, of providing at once a useful light for the footsteps of the passengers through our evening streets, and a pleasing delassement 1 for their optics: not to mention the advantages of which these attractive exhibitions offer to the interests of another very numerous class of traders, whose primitive notions induce them to carry on their

* Continued from New Monthly Magazine I

p. 132 of the Number for August, 1825.

Relaxation.

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operations in the open air: I dare say as many pockets have been picked outside the lighted shops of London, as inside them. There is also another highly useful and agreeable result of this practice. I mean the keeping at home till bed-time innumerable nuisances - parallels to the critical calicots' of Paris - who would otherwise infest our minor theatres, and give a too classical tone to their performances: 1 for there is no one so fastidious in his tastes as your fashionable shop-man. But to the plot itself; - for with this anticipated effect of it, I have at present little to do; though it may become a matter for serious speculation when I make you acquainted with our theatres and places of public amusement. You are to understand, then, that it is in contemplation to call a meeting of all the London Linen-drapers, to take into consideration the propriety of shutting up their shops at what they are pleased to regard as a reasonable hour. As a ground for which measure it is alleged, firstly, that good housewives do not make a practice of coming out to buy linen-drapery, long after they are gone to bed, and consequently, that the last two or three hours involve a wasteful expenditure of gas and good looks; and secondly, that linen-drapers' shop-men are men as well as their masters, (more shame for the said masters! they ought to be women,) and that, 'as such,' they should be allowed to partake in those needful recreations, both of body and mind, which the arduous nature of their occupations so obviously demand; in other words, that being employed all day long in the labour of lounging over counters, setting forth the merits of mull muslins, and expatiating on the 1 pre-eminence of new patterns, they ought to be let loose at night to recruit their exhausted powers, both physical and intellectual, in those hospitals for invalid health and morals, the Royal Saloon, the Cyder Cellar, 2 and the half-price pits of the Adelphi, Coburg, and Surry theatres. 3 I shall not venture to co~ecture how far the plot in question may Foppish Parisian shop-walkers.

See note to p. 63 above.

3 Significantly, these are burletta theatres notable for comic operas, musical farces,

pantomimes and the like: the Adelphi in the Strand, the Surrey in Blackfriars Road and the Royal Coburg (later the Old Vie) in Waterloo Road. I

2

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prove successful with reference to the above object; but this I will say, that, even if it gains all it seeks, the price paid for it will be 'a penny all too dear,' - seeing that it will go nigh to cost our metropolis that one peculiar feature which distinguishes it favourably above all other great cities whatever. If an inhabitant of any other capital in the world, great or small, were to be driven through the principal streets of London for the first time, at nine o'clock at night, even in the depth of winter, he would enquire what grand fete was going on; and when you told him this was the every night aspect of the place, he would give you credit, or perchance dzScredit, for practising upon him that only form ofjoke with which he thinks we solemn English are acquainted - namely, the hoax. And this sole redeeming peculiarity in the internal economy of our Capital, we are to be deprived of at one blow - this single 'Gaiety' in our 1 huge volume of metropolitan 'Gravities'l we are to see cut out before our faces - in order that certain slim apprentices and simpering shop-men may have time to sip their tea at sixpenny coffee-shops, and then proceed to recreate themselves after the intellectual labours of the day, by uttering enlightened critiques on the merits of the last new monkey-piece 2 at the Surry or espousing the cause of some victim of managerial tyranny at the Tottenham Court Road, or pronouncing profound untruisms on the delicate distinctions which exist between the tragedy of Mr. Huntly3 and Mr. Cobham 4 at the Coburg! The truth is, I suspect that the managers of these major of the minors are the bottom of this worse than gunpowder plot; and as there is no knowledge what their influence may bring about, when aided by all the eloquence of all the junior Waithmans, 5 (who are said to be at the top of it,) I have determined to lose no time in chaperoning you

I

A reference to Horace Smith's IS25 collection Gaieties and Grauities: A Series qf Essqys,

Comic Tales and Fugitive Vagaries. I.e. piece of tomfoolery. Francis Huntley (c.l7S7~ IS31) was particularly associated with the Coburg Theatre. 4 Thomas Cobham (17S6~IS42), the actor. Hazlitt's A View qf the English Stage (ISIS) describes his performance as Richard III as 'vile'. 5 Robert Waithman (1764~ IS33), quondam Radical MP and Lord Mayor of London (IS23~4), owned a successfullinendraper's shop on Fleet Street. 2 3

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through the gas-lighted' streets of London, while we can still find something in them to distinguish one from another: for pleasant as they are when their shops are opened, and give to each of them a distinct and noticeable character, - when they are shut up, their total want of architectural 1 merit makes it merely like walking through interminable lines of gas-lighted brick-kilns. We will, if you please, commence our perambulation at a point which it is the more necessary you should see now in imagination, inasmuch as it is one which, I suspect, your somewhat exclusive notions touching the limits of visitable localities will lead you to avoid when you come among us. Lady M-h alleges, - as an excuse for not visiting her stately friend, the M-ue, who dares to live in Bedford Square, - that nothing can prevail upon her horses to pass to the north of Oxford Street. And I'm inclined to think your horses will very soon acquire a similar distaste towards certain quarters. This at least I am sure of, that two or three of the families with whom you will be most intimate, will do their possible to persuade you of the absolute impracticability of Ludgate Hill, beyond that precise point occupied by the far-famed emporium of Messrs Rundell and Bridge, 2 and will assure you that no instance ever came within their experience of any known person having penetrated farther. 3 The spot from whence we are to start, on our evening tour in search of the London picturesque, shall be that where the Poultry abuts upon Cornhill; 1 for even I, who am by no means fastidious as to the particular latitude in which I let myself be seen, will not pretend to have penetrated farther towards the East Pole than the immediate purlieus of this point, where the Prince of the City gives his annual dinners. 4 Not but I believe the passage to be practicable; and indeed I have some thoughts of exploring it myself, as far as certain points which have been discovered by Grimm's Ghost, (of course you read the New Monthly,) and by him

I Gas-lamps had been introduced as street lighting in 1810 and were now common in the major London thoroughfares. 2 The London jewellers. Cf. W. T. Moncrieff's 'Chaunt' (1850): 'Rundell and Bridge, who could (so we're told/ Pave half London (if they liked it) with silver and gold'. 3 I.e. into the less fashionable City of London itself. 4 I.e. Mansion House, where the Lord Mayor of London's banquets are held.

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denominated Crutched Friars and Saint Mary Axe. I And if I do so, I shall certainly imitate the example of our equally adventurous northern explorers, and affix new names to certain noticeable spots, Indeed, I do not know that I can do better than adopt the identical ones chosen by those modern Columbuses. If not quite so flattering, they will be to the full as appropriate. What, for instance, can be better than to call the little narrow defile which flanks the great monument and mausoleum of our national wealth, the Bank, Baring's Straits;2 that spot about the 'Change where innumerable apple-women congregate, Barrow's Point;3 and that other, where the losing gamesters of the Alley first issue forth to utter their angry bewailings, Croaker's Sound?4 But this, by the bye. 1 You are to understand, then, that we begin our walk at the Mansion House; - turning our eyes eastward before we set off, and casting up a glance, first, on our right, at that gloomy monument of city grandeur, which has been smoked till it looks as black upon all around it as the pots in its own far-famed kitchen; but is, nevertheless, not without a certain air of dingy dignity, which would be less exceptionable than it is, if the building were not perched up above its natural position, by means of certain mysterious arches, which run beneath it like the vaults of a church, and the darkness of which is made visible, all day long even, by a single sepulchral lamp hanging at the extreme end. In a line with the face of this really fine building runs that principal vein in the mine of our London wealth, Lombard Street 5 so denominated, in courtesy, I suppose, to Sir William Curtis;6 that most

I

Strets in the City. Saint Mary Axe had been beloved of comic writers since the Anti­

Jacobin. 2 Punning on the Bering Straits betwecn Alaska and eastern Siberia (Baring's is the once powerful merchant bank). 3 Punning on Point Barrow in northern Alaska which is named after the Admiralty official Sir John Barrow (1764-1848), who encouraged such 'advcnturous northern explorers' as Sir William Parry. 4 Punning on the non-existent 'Croker Mountains' in North America, mistakenly identified by John Ross in 1818 and named after J. W. Croker. .\ Then, as now, home to several banks. 6 Sir William Curtis (1752-1829) was a wealthy Tory MP, friend of the King and former Lord Mayor of London. He is the butt of endless mockery in contemporary satirical prints and poetry.

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lumbering of all the Lombards: I - for anywhere else it would be called a lane. It is, in fact, at present, not wide enough to admit two ordinary aldermen abreast; and I understand that Sir William himself has it in serious contemplation to move next Session for leave to bring in a bill for widening it; as he alleges that at present he cannot pass it up, in his way to his banking house of a morning, without the eminent danger of crushing some of his own clerks against the walls. I am told, too, that considering the buildings of Lombard Street are of brick, and not of wood, he intends to throw out a hint, for the better judgment of the House, as to whether it might not be an improvement on the usual method, if they were to grant him leave to bring a pickaxe instead of a bill. The other creeks that pour their ever-running streams westward at this point, and form a confluence into the rapid river of Cheapside, 2 are, to the left of Lombard Street, Cornhill, the resort of Lucky Lottery office keepers, 3 Stationers, and Stage-coaches; - to the left of that, the space behind Bank Buildings, 4 which is used chiefly by Mr. Soane, 5 as a sort of public exhibition-room for the display of his taste in manufacturing pillars of that particular order which are intended to support only themselves, and have capitals 6 that are anything but capital; - and finally, to the left of this, with the chef-d'reuvre of the above named tomb-builder between, is the little street, or rather strait, which I have alluded to before, and which has an unaccountable air of melancholy about it, that even the endless jokes of the endless Paddington-stage-coachmen who have lately been quartered upon it, are unable to dispel. / The whole of this purlieu, on which, in virtue of our politeness, we are now about so unpolitely to turn our backs, would, unless I am greatly misinformed by a city friend who is not ashamed to own a familiarity with it, afford food for a very instructive epistle; and it is by I A Lombard is a banker; here used for a City dignitary. Curtis was a hon vivant whose obesity was legendary. 2 Then, as now, the main shopping street in the City of London. 3 Thomas Bish's Lottery Office was at Cornhill. 4 I.e. the Bank of England itself, the right aspect of which faces Bank Buildings. 5 SirJohn Soane (1753-1837) began his reconstruction of the Bank in 1788. 6 I.e. the heads of the columns.

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no means impossible that I may hereafter fulfil my already-hinted-at intention of exploring it with this view. But at present we must follow the example of the love-sick lady in Burns's song, and 'keep looking to the west' 1 all the rest of the evening; especially as it is only by day-light, and at a particular hour, that the district we are leaving behind us can be seen to proper disadvantage. If we shall, in the course of our evening pilgrimage, pass through several scenes more striking than this of Cheapside, or more picturesque from their scite 2 and style of building, or more brilliant from the boundless expense bestowed on the embellishment of particular portions of them - we shall meet with none that is upon the whole so gay, spirit-stirring, and full to overflowing of variety and life. In almost all the principal streets except Cheapside, if we meet with here and there are a shop whose splendours put to shame even its splendid neighbours, we shall also meet with here and there one whose comparative poverty / makes us wonder how it can possibly afford to keep such company. But in Cheapside there is no such disagreeable dissimilarity. Each seems determined to shine equally with its neighbours, and none is ambitious of out-shining them. In fact, the housewives east of the Mansion House repair to Cheapside, as to a sort of general mart for whatever they may want under ordinary circumstances, - without determining beforehand at what particular shop they intend to make their purchase. Whereas, the inhabitants of all other districts of the metropolis go direct to so-and-so house, or to such-a-one's shop; and they find themselves on Ludgate Hill, or in Piccadilly, or Oxford Street, because the favourite emporium happens to be situated there. Which practice is the wiser of the two, is a mystery into which it is not my present pleasure to penetrate. It is quite sufficient for me that the former has made Cheapside the most lively, various, and amusing street in all London, taking length for length; unless, indeed, you should say that I am putting the effect for the cause, and that it is the street which has made the practice, not the practice the street. This point I promise to argue with you when we meet, and to prove, to the 1

Burns, 'Out over the Forth', I. 5.

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entire 1 dis-satisfaction of each of you, that you are each wrong, whichever side of the argument you may espouse. In the mean time, let us proceed in our walk; or rather let us begin it; - for to my want of shame be it spoken - (and I fear to the said discomfiture of the worthy governor's patience,) I have not yet led you a single step on your way. Passing on, then, to the western extremity of Cornhill, where Cheapside nominally begins, we shall find that the coup-d'ceitI of this latter is by no means striking, even now by gas-light; for though it is brighter than almost any other part of London, the private lights are so intermixed with the public ones, that all regularity of appearance is destroyed, and with it all distinct and uniform effect. Not but what the converging lines of parish gas, with the fourfold one which terminates them in the centre of the street, may easily be traced by an eye practised in this terrestrial astronomy; just as an accomplished star-gazer can trace the constellations amidst the seeming confusion of the heavens. The light from the shops, too, at this early hour, when they are all open, eclipses all the diffusedlight of the lamps, and you see them by their form merely, - just as you see the planets and other larger stars, when there is a bright 1 moon in the sky. This uniform confusion of lights is also scarcely at all varied, as it is in most other streets, by remarkably conspicuous points, on which the eye is as it were compelled to rest, whether it will or no. It is not the fashion here, as it is elsewhere, to insist on being known as the proprietor of a lamp as big as a light-house. Neither can I, as before hinted, introduce you to many very conspicuous shops in the street, either for the surpassing splendour of their embellishments, or the richness of their wares, There is one, however, which cannot be passed by without notice; since it is perhaps the handsomest house of retail business in all London. This is Mr. Tegg's2 The view at a glance. Thomas Tegg, the Cheapside bookseller. Cf. Moore's 'New Hospital for Sick Literati', 11.15-20: 'Twill please the public, we repeat, To learn that Tegg, who works this feat, And, therefore, knows what care it needs To keep alive Fame's invalids, Has oped an Hospital, in town, For cases of knock'd-up renown ­ 1

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new emporium for everything connected with writing and reading, ­ from the New London Encyclop