The Humourous Poetry of the English Language

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that formed the fuel of the barbarians' bonfire at Alexandria would be
but a small book-stall by the side of the octavos, quartos, and
duodecimos he has pyramidized on our book-shelves. Look through any
catalogue you will, and you will find that a large proportion of the
works in it have been contributed by Anon. The only author who can in
the least compete with him in fecundity is Ibid."
ANTI-JACOBIN, THE---Perhaps the most famous collection of Political
Satires extant. Originated by Canning in 1797, it appeared in the form
of a weekly newspaper, interspersed with poetry, the avowed object of
which was to expose the vicious doctrines of the French Revolution, and
to hold up to ridicule and contempt the advocates of that event, and
the sticklers for peace and parliamentary reform. The editor was
William Gifford, the vigorous and unscrupulous critic and poetaster the
writers, Mr. John Hookham Frere, Mr. Jenkinson (afterward Earl of
Liverpool); Mr. George Ellis, Lord Clare, Lord Mornington (afterward
Marquis Wellesley), Lord Morpeth (afterward Earl of Carlisle), Baron
Macdonald, and others. These gentlemen spared no means, fair or foul,
in their attempts to blacken their adversaries. Their most
distinguished countrymen, if opposed to the Tory government of the time
being, were treated with no more respect than foreign adversaries, and
were held up to public execration as traitors, blasphemers, and
debauchees. The period was one of great political excitement, a fierce
war with republican France being in progress, the necessity for which
divided the public into two great parties; national credit being
affected, the Bank of England suspending cash payments, mutinies
breaking out in the fleets at Spithead and the Nore, and Ireland at the
verge of rebellion. Spain, also, had declared war against Britain,
which was thus left to contend singly against the power of France.
Party feeling running very high, the anti-Jacobins were by no means
discriminating in their attacks, associating men together who really
had nothing in common. Hence the reader is surprised to find Charles
Lamb and other non-intruders into politics, figuring as congenial
conspirators with Tom Paine. Fox, Sheridan, Erskine, and other eloquent
liberals of the day, with Tierney, Home Tooke, and Coleridge were at
the same tune writing and talking in the opposite extreme, and little
quarter was given--certainly none on the part of the Tory wits. The
poetry of the "Anti-Jacobin," however, was not exclusively political,
comprising also parodies and burlesques on the current literature of
the day, some being of the highest degree of merit, and distinguished
by sharp wit and broad humor of the happiest kind. In these, Canning