From the Cornhill Magazine.

CANNING AND THE ANTI-JACOBIN.

Ir is difficult to account for the neglect into which the wit and wisdom of the AntiJacobin have fallen, unless by the reluctance with which men accord the palm of superority in varied pursuits to one and the same competitor. In Canning's lifetime his reputation as a writer of political jeux-d'esprit long stood in the way of his claim to be recognized as a parliamentary orator of the first rank. His after-career as a statesman seems in its turn to have obscured his literary fame. To show how his reputation as a wit was thrown in his teeth, it may be sufficient to quote the character given him by a contemporary political sati- Sydney Smith. Having compared him to the blue-bottle fly, "the bluest, grandest, merriest, most important animal in existence," he thus sums up his character:

rist

"I have listened to him long and often, with the greatest attention; I have used every exertion in my power to take a fair measure of him, and it appears to me impossible to hear him upon any arduous topic without perceiving that he is eminently deficient in those solid and serious qualities upon which, and upon which alone, the confidence of a great country can properly repose. He sweats, and labours, and works for sense, and Mr. Ellis always seems to think it is coming, but it does not come: the machine can't draw up what is not to be found in the spring. Providence has made him a light-jesting, paragraph-writing man, and that he will remain to his dying day.

"When he is jocular, he is strong; when he is serious, he is like Samson in a wig; any ordinary person is a match for him. A song, an ironical letter, a burlesque ode, an attack in the newspaper upon Nicholl's eyes, a smart speech of twenty minutes, full of gross misrepresentations and clever turns, excellent language, a spirited manner, lucky quotation, success in provoking dull men, some half-information picked up in Pall Mall in the morning, - these are your friend's natural weapons; all these things he can do; here I allow him to be truly great. Nay, I will be just, and go still farther - if he would confine himself to these things, and consider the facile and playful to be the basis of his character, he would, for that species of man, be universally allowed to be a person of a very good understanding: call him a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of the affairs of a

great nation, and it seems to me as absurd as if a butterfly were to teach bees to make honey. That he is an extraordinary writer of small poetry, and a diner-out of the highest order, I do most readily admit. After George Selwyn, and perhaps Tickell, there has been no such man for this halfcentury."

It is difficult to know whether more to admire the cleverness of a passage such as this, or to feel vexed at its injustice. Sydney Smith, himself the prince of diners-out, was not the man to discharge this shaft against a wit and man of genius.

Passing by, however, what can be said of Canning as a politician, let us consider him solely as a man of letters. In his younger days graceful and accurate scholarship constituted in itself a social and literary distinction of high value. The two leaders of our two great political parties of the present day still keep up the memory of this former time; but notwithstanding the brilliant examples of the Earl of Derby and Mr. Gladstone, it is to be feared that the circle within which such pursuits are understood and appreciated is daily becoming narrower. When Canning had scarcely emerged from boyhood we find that he was one of the principal contributors to the Microcosm, or, to quote its full title, The Microcosm: a Periodical Work, by Gregory Griffin, of the College of Eton. Inscribed to the Rev. Dr. Davies. It consisted of papers by various youthful authors, written in imitation of the Spectator, and published every Monday_from November 6, 1786, to July 30, 1787. From one of the papers written by Canning in imitation of Addison's commentary on the ballad of Chery Chase, we extract the following passage, commended to the attention of some learned but withal rather heavy commentators :

The Queen of Hearts,

She made some tarts All on a summer's day.

On this last line we have the following comment: "All on a summer's day.' I cannot leave this line without remarking that one of the Scribleri, a descendant of the famous Martinus, has expressed his suspicions of the text being corrupted here, and proposes, instead of All on,' reading Alone,' alleging, in favour of this alteration. the effect of solitude in raising the passions. But Hiccius Doctios, a High Dutch commentator one, nevertheless, well versed in British literature - in a note of his usual length and learning, has con

futed the arguments of Scriblerus. In support of the present reading, he quotes a passage from a poem, written about the same period with our author's, by the celebrated Johannes Pastor (most commonly known as Jack Sheppard), entitled An Elegiac Epistle to the Turnkey of Newgate, wherein the gentleman declares that rather indeed in compliance with an old custom than to gratify any particular wish of his own he is going

All hanged for to be, Upon that fatal Tyburn tree. Now, as nothing throws greater light on an author than the concurrence of a contemporary writer, I am inclined to be of Hiccius's opinion, and to consider the All' as an elegant expletive, or, as he more aptly phrases it, elegans expletivum.''

The publication, however, with which the name of Canning is most generally associated is the celebrated Anti-Jacobin, the object of which was to ridicule and refute the theories of religion, government, and social economy propounded by the revolutionary leaders in France, and their friends and admirers in England. Its first appearance was on November 7, 1797; its last on July 9, 1798. In 1799 the poetical portion of it was reprinted in one volume; and in 1854 it was again issued, under the editorship of Mr. Charles Edmonds, who fulfilled his task with industry and discrimination. He was at great pains to ascertain the authorship of the various contributions, but not in every case, apparently, with success. He appears to have relied on four principal authorities: viz., Canning's own copy of the poetry; the copy belonging to the Earl of Westmoreland, then Lord Burghersh, the publisher's copy, and information derived from W. Upcott, the authors' amanuensis. Appended to the table of contents is a curious account, derived, the editor tells us, from "the researches of E. Hawkins, Esq., of the British Museum:".

"Wright, the publisher of the Anti-Jacobin, lived at 169, Piccadilly, and his shop was the general morning resort of the friends of the Ministry, as Debrett's was of the Oppositionists. About the time when the An-Jacobin was contemplated, Owen, who had been the publisher of Burke's pamphlets, failed. The editors of the Anti-Jacobin took his house, paying the rent, taxes, &c.,

A writer in the Edinburgh Review (July, 1858), speaking of this copy, says, "After the fullest inquiries amongst his surviving relatives and friends with the exception of the Governor-General of India), we cannot discover a trace of its existence st any period."

and gave it up to Wright, reserving to themselves the first floor, to which a communication was opened through Wright's house. Being thus enabled to pass to their own rooms through Wright's shop, where their frequent visits did not excite any remarks, they contrived to escape particular observation. Their meetings were most regular on Sundays, but they not unfrequently met on other days of the week, and in their rooms were chiefly written the political portions of the work. What was written was generally left open upon the table, and as others of the party dropped in, hints or suggestions were made; sometimes whole passages were contributed by some of the parties present, and afterwards altered by others, so that it is almost impossible to ascertain the names of the authors. Gifford was the working editor, and wrote most of the refutations and corrections of the Lies,' Mistakes,' and Misrepresentations.' The papers on finance were chiefly by Pitt; the first column was frequently reserved for what he might send; but his contributions were uncertain, and generally very late, so that the space set apart for him was sometimes filled up by other matter. He only once met the editors at Wright's. Upcott, who was at the time assistant in Wright's shop, was employed as amanuensis, to copy out for the printer the various contributions, that the authors' handwriting might not be detected."

6

The account here given of the authorship of these pieces seems to be very improbable. Good writing is seldom wrought out in the hap-hazard manner here described. The more highly polished any composition is, the greater the ease with which it flows, in such proportion does it tell of quiet thought and patient elaboration.

Among Canning's contributions, the best known are the " Inscription for the Door of the Cell in Newgate where Mrs. Brownrigg the Prenticide was Confined, previous to her Execution," and the "Friend of Humanity and the Knife-grinder."

In the year 1796, Mr. Payne Knight published The Progress of Civil Society, a didactic poem in six books. This production, which evinced a decided preference for man in a savage state, when uncorrupted by the unnatural customs of civilization, offered a fair mark for the ridicule of Canning. In the Progress of Man, a parody of Mr. Knight's poem, his description of love-passions as warming the whale on Zembla's frozen shore" is well satirized, though with but little exaggeration, in the following

lines:

Then forth he fares. Around in careless play Kids, pigs, and lambkins unsuspecting stray; With grim delight he views the sportive band, Intent on blood, and lifts his murderous hand; Twangs the bent bow, resounds the fateful dart, Swift-winged, and trembles in a porker's heart.

In the concluding part, marriage is treated of. Taking up Mr. Knight's rather free notions on the subject, Canning opens this part with an invocation to the South Sea Islands, tells us of the happy absence of form and ceremony which there characterize all nuptial rites, and thus proceeds : —

Learn hence, each nymph, whose free aspiring

mind

Europe's cold laws and colder customs bind, Oh! learn what Nature's genial laws decree, What Otaheite is, let Britain be!

Of whist or cribbage mark the amusing game,
The partners changing, but the sport the same:
Else would the gamester's anxious ardour cool,
Dull every deal, and stagnant every pool.
Yet must one man, with one unceasing wife,
Play the long rubber of connubial life.

The Loves of the Triangles is another piece in which we can discern the airy grace of Canning's genius. The first part of this poem was written by J. H. Frere; but as Addison borrowed and improved upon Steele's Sir Roger de Coverley, so did Can ning with the original conception of Frere. This poem Jeffrey pronounced to be the perfection of parody. It far excels, however, the production it aims at ridiculing, viz. Darwin's Loves of the Plants, and it may be questioned whether at times it does not awaken more elevated associations than could possibly have been suggested by the original. The contest between Parabola, Hyperbola, and Ellipsis for the love of "the Phoenician cone" is exceedingly humorous.

the mathematical Goddesses, the following Respecting this object of the affections of under this shape that Venus was worshipped information is given us in a note:— "It was Venus Urania, or Celestial Venus; in alluin Phoenicia. Mr. Higgins thinks it was the sion to which the Phoenician grocers first introduced the practice of preserving sugar-loaves in blue or sky-coloured paper; be also believes that the conical form of the original grenadier's cap was typical of the loves of Mars and Venus." Two lines of this poem are well known, through the application made of them by the late Daniel O'Connell to the present Earl of Derby —

So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourn, glides The Derby dilly, carrying Three Insides;

For his share in this drama of "The Rovers," the vials of Niebuhr's wrath were emptied upon poor Canning's head. It is amusing to see the great German historian, the reconstructor of Roman history, exhibiting so curious a misapprehension of contemporary English history, and of the characters of contemporary English statesmen, as the following passage evinces:

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 his 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 the 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.

66

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 younger 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 man