Bids brandied cherries,* by infusion slow, 60 [The Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, John Gale Jones, and John Thelwall, mentioned in the following poem, were radical reformers and denouncers of the Government. The "Gagging Bills " passed in 1796 required notice to be given of any public meeting, and empowered magistrates to arrest immediately the makers of seditious speeches.] SIR, TO THE April 9. EDITOR OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN. I saw, with strong approbation, your Specimen of ancient Sapphic Measure in English, which I think far surpasses all that Abraham Fraunce, Richard Stanyhurst,† or Sir Philip Sidney himself, have produced in that style-I mean, of course, your sublime and beautiful Knife-Grinder, of which it is not too high an encomium to say, that it even rivals the efforts of the fine-ear'd 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. * 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. † [Fraunce, 1587-1633, the Corydon of Spenser's "Colin Clout's Come Home Again," published in hexameters "The Countess of Pembroke's Ivychurch." Stanyhurst, 1547–1618, translated Books I-IV of the Aeneid into English heroics.] THE JACOBIN. I AM a hearty Jacobin, Who own no God, and dread no sin, And when the Teachers of Chalk-Farm By Bedford's cut I've trimm'd my locks, Of thumpers ; My eye a noble fierceness boasts, 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. * This division of the word is in the true spirit of the English as well as the ancient Sapphic.-See the Counter-scuffle, Counterrat, and other Poems in this style. Wakefield I love adore Horne Tooke, But they deserve the worst of ills, Extinct since then each Speaker's fire, 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. NARES, W., [perhaps 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.] No. XXIII. [Erasmus Darwin, M.D. [1731-1802],** was a physician and scientific pioneer of note. He obtained a splendid but transient reputation by a poem published in 1792 entitled The Botanic Garden," which was divided into two parts; * There is a doubt whether this word should not have been written Liar. †These words, of conviction and hanging, have so ominous a sound, it is rather odd they were chosen. [** See also Appendix, page 191.] one treated of "The Economy of Vegetation," the other of The Loves of the Plants," a poem whose memory is kept fresh only by its parody" The Loves of the Triangles.” In literary history "The Botanic Garden" is interesting as a specimen of the last inanities of the school of didactic imitators of Pope. The Introduction is directed against Godwin's (Mr. Higgins's) Political Justice, in which he advocated a total upheaval of existing bases of society.] 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 new principles which are now afloat in the world; and which are, in our opinion, working to 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. Encyclopedias, 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 66 upon the same object. "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 inducing you to adopt my "Poem as your own. 66 "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, is right." We con"tend, 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. 66 "Our second principle is the "eternal and absolute |