This very remarkable body of satirical verse, which extends from the _Rolliad_ and the early satires of Peter Pindar at the extreme beginning of our present time to the _Pursuits of Literature_ and the _Anti-Jacobin_ towards its close, was partly literary and partly political, diverging indeed into other subjects, but keeping chiefly to these two and intermixing them rather inextricably. The _Pursuits of Literature_, though mainly devoted to the subject of its title, is also to a great extent political; the _Rolliad_ and the _Probationary Odes_, intensely political, were also to no small extent literary. The chief examples were among the most popular literary productions of the time; and though few of them except the selected _Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_ are now read, almost all the major productions deserve reading. The great defect of contemporary satire--that it becomes by mere lapse of time unintelligible--is obviated to no small extent here by the crotchet (rather fortunate, though sometimes a little tedious) which these writers, almost without exception, had for elaborate annotation. Of the chief of them, already indicated more than once by reference or allusion, some account may be given. _The Rolliad_ is the name generally given for shortness to a collection of political satires originating in the great Westminster election of 1784, when Fox was the Whig candidate. It derived its name from a Devonshire squire, Mr. Rolle, who was a great supporter of Pitt; and, with the _Political Eclogues_, the mock _Probationary Odes_ for the laureateship (vacant by Whitehead's death), and the _Political Miscellanies_, which closed the series, was directed against the young Prime Minister and his adherents by a knot of members of Brooks' Club, who are identified rather by tradition and assertion than by positive evidence. Sheridan, Tierney, Burgoyne, Lord John Townshend, Burke's brother Richard, and other public men probably or certainly contributed, as did Ellis--afterwards to figure so conspicuously in the same way on the other side. But the chief writers were a certain Dr. Lawrence, a great friend of Burke, who was in a way the editor; Tickel, a descendant of Addison's friend and a connection of the Sheridans; and another Irishman named Fitzpatrick. The various "skits" of which the book or series is composed show considerable literary skill, and there is a non-political and extraneous interest in the fact that it contains some _rondeaux_ believed to be the only, or almost the only, examples of that form written in England between Cotton in the seventeenth century and the revival of it not very many years ago. The fun is often very good fun, and there is a lightness and brightness about the verse and phrasing which had been little seen in English since Prior. But the tone is purely personal; there are no principles at stake, and the book, besides being pretty coarse in tone, is a sort of object lesson in the