of England's Indian Empire, and in doing so had incurred responsibility for actions that called for the intervention of the English Parliament. Charles Fox, having formed a political coalition with Lord North, introduced a Bill for the government of India which, if it had passed into an Act, would have brought the Crown into subjection to the Whig Party, by absorbing all the patronage of the East India Company. Perceiving the object of the measure, the King used his influence to have it rejected by the House of Lords, and almost immediately afterwards exercised his constitutional right of dismissing his Ministers. In their place he summoned Pitt to form a Ministry, and the latter, after accomplishing this task, contrived, by splendid strategy, in the face of an infuriated Opposition commanding a majority of the House of Commons, to carry on the Government till the fitting moment arrived for a Dissolution of Parliament. In the new Parliament he was made by the electorate master of the situation; and all that was left to the Whigs was to avenge themselves in one of the most entertaining political satires in the English language.

It is not too much to say that any reader, who will take the trouble to master the details of The Rolliad, will be able to obtain for himself a more vivid conception of the actual life and feeling of English political warfare in the decade preceding the outbreak of the French Revolution than he could get from the narrative of the most accurate historian or the most brilliant essayist. The satire was the work of a confederacy of Whig wits of whom the chief were Fox's most intimate friend the able Richard Fitzpatrick (1747-1813), Sheridan's protégé Richard Tickell, author of Anticipation, a descendant of Addison's eulogist and Pope's rival translator (1751-1793), and Joseph Richardson, M.P. for Newport (1755-1803), another friend of Sheridan. The contributions to the satire were made after the model of the Scriblerus Club, and the unity of the general design was most artistically preserved. Criticisms on the Rolliad began to appear in The Morning Post in the latter part of 1784, and when this vein was exhausted, the satire was continued

in Political Eclogues and Probationary Odes, etc., through 1785.

The Rolliad makes no pretence to those motives of ethical indignation which are professed in the satires of Churchill; it goes far beyond the latter in the minuteness of its scandalous chronicle and the virulence of its party and personal allusions. On the other hand, it furnishes an artistic justification for the pettiness of its details in the excellence of its form. This was evidently suggested by the ironical commentary of Martinus Scriblerus on The Dunciad, but is adapted to suit the new fashion of periodical criticism to which the public had become accustomed in The Monthly and The Critical Reviews. An epic poem called The Rolliad is supposed to exist, the beauties of which are set forth in a succession of papers, after the manner of Addison's essays in The Spectator on Paradise Lost. While the nominal hero of the epic is Rollo, Duke of Normandy, the Criticisms are for the most part concentrated on a single episode, in which Merlin reveals to the hero the future feats and fame of his descendant, John Rolle, member for Devonshire-notorious for his interruptions of Burke when speaking- and of his allies on the Ministerial side of the House of Commons. Extracts from the non-existent poem are made in the successive papers, whenever the critic desires to satirise a leading supporter of Pitt. The pleasantry of the attacks is admirable, and on the whole, considering the heated state of the atmosphere,1 the limits of decency and good breeding are fairly observed. But no personal weakness in the victims, no damaging insinuation, is passed over by these relentless partisans. The actions, characters, and even the appearance of the leading combatants, are brought before us in vivid verse from the very opening of the

1 Horace Walpole says in a letter to Sir Horace Mann, dated 12th March 1784: "Politics have engrossed all conversation, and stifled other events, if any have happened. . . . Indeed our ladies, who used to contribute to enliven conversation are become politicians, and, as Lady Townley says, 'squeeze a little too much lemon into conversation.' They have been called back a little to their own profession-dress, by a magnificent ball which the Prince of Wales gave two nights ago to near six hundred persons, to which the amazons of both parties were invited; and not a scratch was given or received!"

conflict. We see Lord Temple claiming his right as Privy Councillor to advise his Majesty in private audience, before the introduction of Fox's India Bill into the House of Lords :—

On the great day when Buckingham by pairs

Ascended, Heaven-impelled, the K's back stairs;
And panting, breathless, strained his lungs to show
From Fox's Bill what mighty ills would flow;
That soon, its source corrupt, Opinion's thread
On India deleterious streams would shed;1
That Hastings, Munny Begum, Scott, must fall,
And Pitt, and Jenkinson, and Leadenhall :
Still as with stammering tongue he told his tale,
Unusual terrors Brunswick's heart assail;
Wide starts his white wig from his royal ear,
And each particular hair stands stiff with fear.

We see the burly form of William Grenville-Joint Pay-
master of the Forces with Lord Mulgrave in the new
Government-and Sydney the Lord Chamberlain :-
Sydney whom all the powers of rhetoric grace,
Consistent Sydney, fills Fitzwilliam's place.
O had by Nature but proportioned been
His strength of genius to his length of chin,
His mighty mind in some prodigious plan

At once with ease had reached to Indostan.

The Marquis of Graham, son of the Duke of Montrose, said in the House in answer to the speech of some Opposition member, that, "if his honourable friend were justly called a goose, he supposed he must be a gosling." The satirist at once seized the opportunity :

If right the Bard whose numbers sweetly flow,
That all our knowledge is ourselves to know,
A sage like Graham can the world produce,
Who in full senate called himself a goose?

Th' admiring Commons from the high-born youth
With wonder heard this undisputed truth;
Exulting Glasgow claimed him for her own,

And placed the prodigy on Learning's throne.

And in the later Political Eclogues he returned to the subject:

1 The mixture of metaphors in Hastings' Despatches is a fruitful source of satire for the authors of The Rolliad.

His friend, the heir apparent of Montrose,

Feels for his beak, and starts to find a nose.1

Sometimes the satire is more severe. The Duke of Richmond, Master General of the Ordnance, whose stinginess was a by-word, having introduced a measure for the land fortification of the country, was saluted as follows:

Hail! thou, for either talent justly known,

To spend the nation's cash, or keep thy own;
Expert alike to save or be profuse,

As money goes for thine, or England's use;
In whose esteem of equal worth are thought

A public million and a private groat,

Hail and etc.

It was more difficult to select the weak point for attack in the Prime Minister. The satirist's strokes were mainly directed against his youth, his recognised virtue, and his finance, especially his reduction of the duty on tea. The following may be taken as a sample of the Criticisms on him both in verse and prose :—

We shall conclude this number, as the poet concludes the subject, with some animated verses on Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt :

Crown the froth'd Porter, slay the fatted Ox,
And give the British meal to British Fox.
But, for an Indian Minister more fit,

Ten cups of purest Padrac pour for Pitt,
Pure as himself; add sugar too and cream,
Sweet as his temper, bland as flows the stream
Of his smooth eloquence; then crisply nice
The muffin toast, or bread and butter slice,
Thin as his arguments that mock the mind,
Gone ere you taste, no relish left behind.
Where beauteous Brighton overlooks the sea,

These be his joys, and Steele shall make the Tea.3

1 Political Eclogues: Charles Jenkinson, 93-94.

2 No doubt alluding to Sheridan's retort about the "Angry Boy," when Pitt, with bad taste, sneered at him for his connection with the stage.

3 Thomas Steele was Joint Secretary to the Treasury with George Rose in Pitt's first Ministry. Pitt was in the habit of going with him to Brighton when the House was not sitting.

VOL. V

R

How neat! how delicate! and how unexpected is the allusion in the last couplet! These two lines alone include the substance of whole columns, in the ministerial papers of last summer, on the sober, the chaste, the virtuous, the edifying manner in which the Immaculate Young Man passed the recess from public business. Not in riot and debauchery, not in gaming, not in attendance on ladies, either modest or immodest, but in drinking Tea with Mr. Steele at the castle in Brighthelmstone. Let future ages read and admire.

With the East India Company itself The Rolliad keeps no measure, as the following extract will show :

The poet then hints at a most ingenious proposal for the embellishment of the India bench1 according to the new plan of Parliamentary Reform; not by fitting it up like the Treasury bench with velvet cushions, but by erecting, for the accommodation of the Leadenhall worthies, the ivory bed which was lately presented to her Majesty by Mrs. Hastings

O that for you, in Oriental State,

At ease reclined to watch the long debate,

Beneath the gallery's pillared height were spread

(With the Queen's leave) your Warren's ivory bed!

The pannels of the gallery too, over the canopy of the bed, are to be ornamented with suitable paintings—

Above, in colours warm with mimic life,

The German husband of your Warren's wife
His rival's deed should blazon; and display
In his blest rule the glories of your sway.

What singular propriety, what striking beauty must the reader of taste immediately perceive in this choice of a painter to execute the author's design! It cannot be doubted but Mrs. Hastings would exert all her own private and all Major Scott's public influence with every branch of the Legislature, to obtain so illustrious a job for the man to whose affection, or to whose want of affection, she owes her present fortunes. The name of this artist is Imhoff; but though he was once honoured with the Royal Patronage, he is now best remembered from the circumstance, by which our author has distinguished him, of his former relation to Mrs. Hastings.2

1 The members who represented the interests of the Company in the House were called the Bengal Squad, and sat behind Ministers.

2 i.e. he was husband to Marian Imhoff, afterwards Mrs. Hastings. There was a certain amount of mystery about the way in which the divorce from Imhoff was obtained.