son, thoughtless, ignorant, or malicious, | mere literary skit on Darwin and his likes, asked Ellis about "The Rolliad," where- and "The Rovers" has a false air of be upon Pitt promptly set any possible awk-ing pretty free from politics. Look a little wardness straight by the line: Immo age et a prima dic, hospes, origine

nobis.

deeper, and different conclusions will, I think, be reached. It was no doubt a godsend to the Anti-Jacobins that so much external folly of various kinds hapBut whatever the antecedents of any of pened to be associated with the maintethe three might be, they all thoroughly nance of the new opinions in politics and meant business in these attacks on the (horrid word, then not invented!) sociol. Jacobins, English and French, and the ogy. But Canning's inexhaustible wit, enemies of Pitt. The great opening poem Frere's audacious humor and whimsical on Mrs. Brownrigg, is most probably as- erudition (some of his prose notes are signed to all the three, the still greater unsurpassable), Ellis's eighteenth-century "Knifegrinder to Canning and Frere. polish and Voltairian elegance always In the third of these charming parodies drove straight at the principles of innova (which, oddly enough, Southey never tion generally, of fantastic sympathies seems to have had magnanimity enough and antipathies, of topsy-turvy theories, to forgive the weakest thing I know about him), the delightful dactylics about the "nice clever books by Tom Paine the philanthropist," Ellis may have shared. It must have been a little awkward for him when Canning in an early number gibed at those who

While with their learned brother sages three,
Fitzpatrick, Townshend, Sheridan, agree.
For his own name had been in the com-
mission with these very same learned
brethren a bare dozen years before, and
"The Rolliad" was the result of it. But
these little accidents will happen, and he
had been personally and in a rather un-
mannerly fashion ("by Ellis' sapient
prominence of nose") attacked in the
piece that Canning was ridiculing. At
any rate there was no mistake about him
now. He seems to have written by him-
self the capital parody of "Acme and
Septimius "Fox with Tooke to grace
his side," - with its refrain:

He spoke, and to the left and right,
Norfolk hiccupped with delight.

And he took part in nearly all the most
famous things of the collection: "The
Loves of the Triangles," "The Progress
of Man," "The Rovers," "New Moral-
ity," and the rest.

It is important to observe that all these pieces are in a more or less direct sense political, and much more so than is sometimes thought nowadays. Mr. Morley, perhaps to soothe his own or other persons' feelings, talks of "The Anti-Jacobin as chiefly an attack on false sentiment generally. "The Loves of the Triangles has often been regarded as a

which underlay the frippery of the outside. The great Mr Higgins, the eidolon. author of the two didactic poems and the drama (ah, when will researches in St. Mary Axe give us the "Catastrophe of Mr. and Mrs. Gingham and the episode of Hipponia," the "Conspiracy against the Ordinate," and the scene in "The Rovers

and mothers unknown," are "produced where "several children, fathers on all sides "?), constantly enunciates in those very confidential letters which he wrote to his treacherous editors, the exact sentiments which we know so well to-day. When he talks about privilege and prej. udice, about the vicious refinement of civilized society in regard to marriage, about the cumbrous establishments which the folly, pride, and self-interest of the worst part of our species have heaped up, about the certainty of man's perfectibility were he freed from kingcraft and priestcraft and other incidents of the present social system - all these things are perfectly unmistakable. We have them with us as fresh as ever. Substitute "The Doll's House " for "Stella," read Fabian Society for poor Mr. Higgins's clubs (but the works of the Fabian Society are not so amusing as Mr. Higgins's), and 1798 becomes 1890. The very names of "Sedition's evening host" are startling; and we can fill in the blanks of that great hymn with names "after the chances and changes of the times," according to the author's direction, without the slightest difficulty. There can be no manner of reasonable doubt that if it had not been for the maudlin socialism (they did not call it socialism then, but it was the same thing) of Southey's sapphics and dactylics, and the windy republicanism of his poem on Marten, his metrical freaks would have been left alone by the mockers. Payne

5

But

Beware the Badger's bloody pennant, And that dd invalid lieutenant! has an extraordinary charm. All the world is agreed as to the elegy or dirge on Jean Bon Saint-André, and I suppose there is not much more difference on the two didactic poems. Time may make us gouty and grey-haired, may bring disappointment at things that are not and disgust at things that are, but scarcely shall it deprive us of the faculty, nay, the irresistible need of laughter as the well-known words recur:—

Knight and Darwin had follies enough; | tributed to Lord Morpeth; but he never
but if the one had not been avowedly, and could have written it, and if the translation
the other in a sort of half-hearted way of pictis puppibus is not Frere's or, less
Jacobinical, they too might have disported probably, Canning's, I am no two-legged
themselves in safety. Even "The Rov- creature) is not, I believe, so great a fa-
ers" is full of politics. Does the reader vorite with some as it is with me.
think that "Crown and Anchor" in that surely the last couplet :-
exquisite jumble of Beefington's is mere
miscellaneous farce? Not in the least.
It was at the authentic Crown and Anchor
tavern that on Fox's birthday the Duke of
Norfolk gave "Our sovereign's health
the majesty of the people." The dignity,
chivalry, and courage of the immortal
waiter enforce the great doctrine that "the
conscience of a poor man ought to be
more valuable to him than that of a prince
in proportion as it is generally more pure."
The satirists may, according to the excel-
lent advice of their own troubadour, "by a
song conceal their purposes." But those
purposes are constantly what they are in
one place avowed to be to ridicule and
baffle the appetite for change, to enforce
the old proverb that "seldom comes a
better," to confound ideas of equality and
the like. "The Anti-Jacobin " is thus not
only more constantly but much more thor.
oughly political than the gibes of Brooks's,
because patronage and power were in the
hands of a thin man who did not like
women instead of in those of a fat man
who did, or the personal lampoons of
Wolcot on the foibles and favorites of a
king.

even

The fact of this unity and directness of purpose must, I think, be counted in for some of the merit of the book, as well as the fact that Ellis had incomparably stronger colleagues now than before, and that the crimes of the political and the follies of the social Jacobins gave a much better subject. At any rate the merit is certainly much greater. Of "The Rovers it is impossible to tire. I am told that it was once tried on the stage and failed. This does not surprise me, for "The Critic" is said not to be popular now, and "The Rovers requires much more literary, political, and miscellaneous_knowledge to appreciate it than "The Critic" does. But I believe that all boys of any brains, however little they may know of its antecedents, delight in "The Rovers; " and I am sure that all middle-aged and aged persons of any sense delight in it. Nobody can exceed me in respect for Southey; but if I had to choose between his whole works (except "The Doctor") and the three parodies, I should take the parodies. The "Address to the Gunboats (it has been at

The feathered race with pinions skim the air, Not so the mackerel, and still less the bear; or at

66

Each shepherd clasped with undisguised de-
light
His yielding fair one — in the captain's sight;
at that incomparable note of Frere's to
"blue-eyed wanton Hyperbola; not
figuratively speaking as in rhetoric, but
mathematically, and therefore blue-eyed;"
or that other on "Pons Asinorum," where
Mr. Higgins, with the combined fairness
of a man of science and an enlightened
politician, after observing that "having
frequently watched companies of asses
during their passage of a bridge he never
discovered in them any symptoms of
geometrical instinct," admits that "with
Spanish asses which are much larger (vide
Townsend's Travels through Spain) the
case may possibly be different." And the
whole is appropriately crowned with "The
New Morality," wherein the whole web of
connection between the different modes of
thought satirized is given.

Of course, it is impossible that political sympathy should not make one's enjoy. ment of such things rather keener. But as I have made no secret of the amusement with which I read "The Rolliad " and Peter Pindar, having in neither case any such sympathy with the writers, I do not think the difference here is likely to carry me very far to leeward of the truth in thinking that the superior excellence of "The Anti-Jacobin" lies not more in its greater literary polish than in the su perior sanity and largeness of its spirit. Though the personal satire is sometimes pretty sharp, it is never as in the other

From The Cornhill Magazine.
A SLAVE-DEALER OF 1690.
AT a time when the continent of Africa

cases merely personal; and I think I can imagine (I am rather inclined to think that I know one or two) persons who, though by no means sympathizing with is attracting so much attention, owing to Toryism, appreciate to the full the un- the recent discoveries of that indefatigasparing and unerring fashion in which ble explorer, Mr. H. M. Stanley, some let"The Anti-Jacobin "lashes what may be ters written at the close of the seventeenth called the fool on the other side of poli- century by a European resident on the tics; the fool who believes in political Gold Coast, and descriptive of the only nostrums and political revolutions, the portion of central Africa then known, are fool who gushes over the inevitable and of more than ordinary interest, as showing ineradicable inequalities of the world, the the light in which the continent was refool who drops a tear over criminals, the garded at that time, and as affording fool who fails to see that, though certain means for judging how much progress, if social rules may pinch individuals now and then, the permission of general license any has been made by the negro races during the two hundred years which have would simply make the world unworkable. elapsed since that period. The writer of It is, I think, to this heightening and these letters, Bosman, was of Dutch exenlargement of the political aim that we traction and had peculiar facilities for must at any rate in part attribute the fact acquiring a knowledge of the native tribes that the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin of that part of Africa. He went out there remains unsurpassed as a collection of as clerk to a Dutch trading firm about the political verse-satire. We have had ex-year 1686, and lived on the coast for fourcellent practitioners of that art since the teen years. By his superior business century began. Moore, Praed, and Man- abilities he soon rose to be chief agent for sel produced, and there is at least one his company, in which position he had living writer who produces, work which opportunities of visiting all the principal Canning himself need not have refused places which were then in existence in the to sign. But all such writers have been Gulf of Guinea. Bosman was of observexposed to the inconvenience that the ant character, and describes all he saw, main dependence, in the old phrase, of the and his manner of life, in long and carepolitical quarrel has not altered much, has fully written letters to a friend in Holland. altered very little, since 1800. As I have In these he gives an account of each of said, the inimitable prefaces of Mr. Hig- the different places, such as Elmina, Cape gins reproduce themselves every day in Coast Castle, Accra, and Badagry our midst, and divine Nonsensia has found which he lived; but he devotes by far the little or nothing new, whatever new names most space to a description of Fida, the she may give it, to talk about since she modern Whydah, which he seems to have furnished subjects to "The Rovers" and preferred to any other place, and as its "The Knifegrinder." But as yet, what inhabitants, although, perhaps, a little in ever may be coming, neither the excite- advance of them in social customs and ment of popular imagination, nor the manners, are sufficiently characteristic of liberty of popular follies, nor the exag the others, an examination of this portion geration of popular crimes, has risen to of his letters will give a fair idea of the the level of 1793-1800. There has been peculiarities of all the tribes of which he no such death-grapple as there was then, writes. no such storm for the pilot to weather, no such topsy-turvifying of public sentiment as could bring men like Goethe and Coleridge and Southey (let it be remembered that each of them saw the error of his ways) to write the rubbish that kindled the "singing flames" of "The Anti-Jacobin's" correction. They were kindly flames after all, and a god did save the culprits - more happy than those referred to in Heine's famous warning. If the occasion comes again which Heaven forbid ! why, let the same god send us "such hounds, such hawks, and such a leman " - such Anti-Jacobins and such a pilot! GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

at

Bosman stayed at Fida on three different occasions, and received on each occasion a very favorable impression of it. The difficulty seems to have been to get to it. The surf was worse at Fida than at and from April to July the sea became so any other part of that surf-beaten coast, violent that any attempt to land was at the imminent risk of life. Bosman states that in one year five Europeans were drowned at this port, and declares that in his time alone it had cost his company several hundred pounds' worth of goods.

The Gold Coast still maintains an unenviable notoriety for danger in this respect. When the writer of

In addition to the surf there was an east- | sneezed, all those around him dropped on erly current which at times ran so strong to their knees, kissed the earth, clapped that it was impossible to propel a boat or their hands, and wished him every happicanoe against it, thus forming another ob- ness and prosperity. In a country where stacle in getting ashore. Once landed, the temperature varied so little, it is to be however, the adventurer was fully reward- presumed that colds were of comparatively ed for the dangers he had incurred, for he rare occurrence, or there must have enfound himself in a most beautiful country, sued grave interruption to state ceremoas remarkable for its natural advantages nies and palavers during an epidemic of as for the prosperity of its inhabitants. this common European malady.

The country of Fida had ten miles The Fidasians were a very industrious Dutch miles, presumably of sea front, people, every one being engaged in work, and ran inland to an average distance of the men in trade and the women in the seven miles. This small area was ex-plantations. Several handicrafts, such as ceedingly fertile, and so populous that the spinning, weaving, and metal-work, were villages in many places were contiguous. known to them, but by far the larger porThe huts were made of bamboo with round tion of them were employed in trading for thatched roofs, and enclosed with fencing, slaves. Their chief failing appears to while magnificent tropical trees planted [have been an inability to conceive the eswith design enhanced the beauty of the sential difference existing between " meum prospect: "to render which," says Bos- and tuum in respect of every kind of man, "the more charming and perfectly property. Bosman relates that in his first agreeable, not so much as one mountain interview with the king, his Majesty asor hillock interposeth to interrupt the sured him that he would never have any view" a criticism very characteristic of reason to be alarmed for his personal safety a Dutchman whose earliest ideas of beauty among the people of Fida; but with rein natural scenery were drawn_from_the gard to the safety of his goods, that was level expanses of Holland. The land another matter, and he would have to rose, it appears, from the seashore in an guard them carefully, for he frankly conascent so gradual as to be almost imper- fessed that his subjects were great thieves, ceptible till after three or four hours' and could keep their hands from nothing journey, when, turning round, a magnifi- which was left within their reach. cent view of the country could be obtained; so enchanting, indeed, that Bosman declares his conviction that no other country in the world could show the like.

With regard to the inhabitants of the
country, they are described as being,
without exception, civil and obliging to
white men, in which they had an excellent
example set them by their king. Their
bearing, too, towards each other was
marked with courtesy, distinctions of rank
being observed, and the inferior showing
respect to the superior. Deference was
paid by the wife to her husband, by the
son to his father, and even by the younger
brother to his elder brother. If a person
of inferior rank met one of a higher rank
in the street he would prostrate himself
till his superior had passed by. With this
regard of ceremony was mixed a certain
amount of superstition. When any one

this article visited, in the April of 1889, a small place
called Grand Bassams on the same coast, and about
three hundred miles west of Whydah, he was informed
that, within only the three previous months, no less
than eight natives had, on different occasions, lost their
lives through the upsetting of the surf-boats. Some
three or four years ago, the chief justice of the Gold
Coast was drowned whilst attempting to land at Accra,
and fatal accidents of this character are still of but too
frequent occurrence at that place.

For this warning the Dutch trader soon found that there was only too much occasion. The distance from the beach, where the goods were landed, to the king's village, where they had to be stored, was three miles. They were packed in sepa rate bundles and carried that distance by the natives. Although a package often weighed as much as a hundred pounds, the carriers would put them on their heads and run the whole way with them, without any apparent inconvenience. Over such a long route, however, it was impossible to maintain a strict watch, and, at the end of the day, a large percentage of the property would be missing. When Bosman taxed them, during his first visit, with this misappropriation, they did not deny the fact, but quietly asked if the white man thought they would work so hard all day for such small wages - only a few pence – if they did not have the liberty to help themselves as well. To such an extent was this

vice a primary instinct of their character, that on the death of their king, taking advantage of the temporary suspension of authority, they would all openly set about stealing from each other, without considering that in a community where all are thieves no one is likely to be much the

gainer. Bosman was robbed consistently | cordingly, he attempts a half-hearted apolthe whole of the time he was with them, and says in despair that the only way he could think of to put a stop to it would be to leave the country altogether.

For the facilitating of these transactions, a regular slave-market was held, to which the slaves who were mostly prisoners of war — were brought out in chains from the barracoons in which they were confined. Here they were examined by the ship's surgeon, and all that were defective in sight or limb were set aside, and the rest were bidden for at a certain rate per head, the women being a fourth or fifth part cheaper than the men. When For the king of Fida Bosman enterthe bargain was satisfactorily concluded tained a very high opinion. He was about they were branded with a red-hot iron with | fifty years of age at the time that the the arms or name of the company by trader knew him, but in appearance he which they had been bought, and were taken off to the ship at once.