One peculiar work, significant in the evolution of satire because of its undoubted influence on a succeeding generation, was the _New Bath Guide; or Memoirs of the B--r--d Family_ (1766), written by Christopher Anstey (1724–1805).[44] It consists of a series of letters, most of them in an easy anapestic measure with curious rhymes, purporting to be from different members of one family, and satirising life at the fashionable watering-place made famous only a few years before by Beau Nash. Anstey’s method of using letters for the purpose of satire was followed by other authors,[45] but never, until Moore’s _Two-penny Postbag_ and _Fudge Family_, with complete success. Other satires of the century also employed the anapestic metre in a clever way.[46] The Tory _Anti-Jacobin_, a weekly periodical which began on November 20, 1797, and printed its last number on July 9, 1798, appropriately closes the satire of the century, for it includes examples of most of the types of satiric verse which had been popular since the death of Pope. Founded by government journalists, possibly at Pitt’s instigation, it planned to “oppose papers devoted to the cause of sedition and irreligion, to the pay and interests of France.” At a critical period in English affairs, when the long struggle with France and Napoleon was just beginning and many Whigs were still undecided as to their allegiance, it was the purpose of the _Anti-Jacobin_, as representative of militant nationalism, to oppose foreign innovations and to uphold time-honored institutions. Each number of the paper contained several sections: an editorial, or leader; departments assigned to Finances, Lies, Misrepresentations, and Mistakes; and some pages of verse, with a prose introduction. Gifford, who had been chosen to superintend the publication, devoted himself entirely to editorial management, so that the responsibility for the verse devolved upon George Canning (1770–1827) and several assistants, among whom were Ellis, now an adherent of the Tories, and John Hookham Frere (1769–1846). The _Anti-Jacobin_, then, planned first to revive the traditions of English patriotism and to rally public opinion to the support of king and country. As a secondary but essential element of its design, it aimed, especially in its verse, to expose the falsity and fatuity of the doctrines of Holcroft, Paine, Godwin, and other radical philosophers and economists; to ridicule and parody the work of authors of the revolutionary school, particularly of the English Lake poets and the followers of the German romanticists; and incidentally to satirise some of the social and literary follies of the age.[47] Since the verse was submitted by many contributors, its tone was not always homogeneous, and it varied from playful jocularity to stern didacticism. On the whole, however, it had a definite ethical purpose, and avowedly championed sound morality and conservative principles.