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

“... We can hardly say of Canning’s satire what was said of Sheridan’s, that—

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

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

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

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

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

The fair Trochais from the corner bends!

Her coal-black eyes upturned, incessant mark

The eddying smoke, quick flame, and volant spark;

Mark with quick ken, where flashing in between,

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

Mark, how his various parts together tend,

Point to one purpose,—in one object end;

The spiral grooves in smooth meanders flow,

Drags the long chain, the polished axles glow,

While slowly circumvolves the piece of beef below:’

“Canning took the pen and added—

“‘The conscious fire with bickering radiance burns,

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

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

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

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

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

And hid them in the coal-hole’.

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

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

Of youthful Canning guides the ranc’rous quill;

With powers mechanic far above his age,

Adapts the paragraph and fills the page;

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

Rejects THAT letter, and accepts of THIS;

Or Hammond, leaving his official toil,

O’er this great work consume the midnight oil—

Bills, passports, letters, for the Muses quit,

And change dull business for amusing wit.’

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

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

By Ellis’ sapient prominence of nose—

By Morpeth’s gait, important, proud and big—

By Leveson Gower’s crop-imitating wig,

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

Could that warm spirit animate my line,

Your glorious deeds which humbly I rehearse—

Your deeds should live immortal as my verse;

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The Answer opens thus:—

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

The shreds and remnants of each hackney’d song;

Whose verse thy friends in vain for wit explore,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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