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, He spoke, and to the left and right, And he took part in nearly all the most 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 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- 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. 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 this article visited, in the April of 1889, a small 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. With regard to its supply of the article of commerce in which he dealt, Bosman has nothing to say of Fida, now Whydah, but unqualified praise. He declares that whereas at Little Popo-which he calls a "wretched place," probably on account of the absence of this class of merchandise - he could only get three slaves in as many days, at Fida he could soon procure a couple of thousand, and fill four ships in five or six weeks. Some of the conditions by which the trade was governed are worth noting. Before a single slave changed masters, the king demanded four hundred pounds down for each ship for the privilege of being allowed to trade with his subjects at all. Considering that fifty ships, on an average, called at Fida in the year, the king must have received no small revenue from this tribute alone, and it fully corroborates the accounts of his great riches and prosperity. The next stipulation imposed on the white slavedealer was that, before trading with any one else, he should buy all the slaves which the king himself happened to have in stock, for which his Majesty used to charge about one-fourth more than the market value. When the king had replenished his exchequer by these two methods of extortion, the trader was at length free to bargain with the other slave-owners at any terms he could arrange. ogy for some of the little details which he thought might appear in any way revolting. "I doubt not," he says, "but that this trade seems very barbarous to you, but since it is followed by mere necessity, it must go on;" though what the necessity was, beyond the love of making money, does not sufficiently appear. He then puts in a special plea for the humanity of his own firm: "Yet we take all possible care that they are not burned too hard, especially the women, who are more tender than the men." Dismissing the cruel practice of branding with this wholly satisfactory statement, he proceeds in a light-hearted way to give a description of life on board a slave-ship. "You would really wonder,” he exclaims to his ingenuous correspondent, "to see how these men live on board!" As many as six or seven hundred were put on each ship—a number which, when the small size of the trading vessels of those days is taken into consideration, gives one some idea of the shocking overcrowding which must have been practised. They were stowed between decks, the men separate from the women, but all in chains, and as close together as it was possible to pack them. Yet everything, he declares, at any rate on the Dutch ships, was clean and orderly, and the slaves well taken care of, being fed as often as three times a day. Under this generous treatment Bosman was at a loss to understand how it was that every now and then revolts occurred amongst them. The only reason he could give was that "these silly fellows" had got an idea that they had been brought down to the coast to be fattened and eaten by the white men, a belief which would of course sufficiently account for their conduct. He mentions that the Portuguese, who, even at that early date, had acquired a name for mismanagement on the coast, had lost four ships in one year, owing to the rising of the slaves on board of them. 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. In this description the inveterate slavedealer, hardened though he must have been by long association with its barbarities, seems to have had some misgivings as to the view which would be taken of the trade by his friend at home in Holland, to whom his letters were addressed. Ac was as young and sprightly as a man of thirty-five. In character, Bosman declares that he was the most civil and generous negro that he had ever met, and was never better pleased than when a white man desired a favor of him. "It would be easy," the Dutchman continues, "to obtain whatever we ask of him, if a parcel of rascally flatterers did not continually |