He wrote much on the political topics of the day, always taking the liberal side, and attacking PITT with great virulence and eloquence. The principles of the French Revolution were at first advocated by him with the utmost enthusiasm, but he was soon disgusted by the excesses committed. He was a student of German literature, and much admired by Immanuel Kant. He was also an intimate friend of Darwin’s, whose political opinions he shared, and whose works were intrusted to his revision in manuscript. A few months after the publication of Darwin’s _Botanic Garden_, its magnificent imagery and harmonious versification inspired some admirers to say that the style of this work was a style _sui generis_, and that it defied imitation. Dr. Beddoes maintained an opposite opinion. Much as he admired the poem in question, he thought that the Darwinian structure of verse might be imitated by a writer possessed of inferior poetical powers, and in a few days he produced in the same circle part of the manuscript of _Alexander’s Expedition to the Indian Ocean_ as an unpublished work of the author of the _Botanic Garden_. The deception completely succeeded, and some enthusiastic admirers of the latter work pointed out with triumph “certain passages as proofs of the position that the author in his happier efforts defied imitation”. Beddoes’s success was the more extraordinary, as in the “Introduction” to a considerable extract from his poem which he printed in the _Annual Anthology_ for 1796, he states that he had never before written twice as many lines of verse as the composition under notice consisted of. As BEDDOES’S imitation of DARWIN is seldom met with, it may not be out of character in a work of the present nature to give a specimen of it. AN IMITATION OF DARWIN. “Now the new Lord of Persia’s wide domain, Down fierce Hydaspes seeks the Indian main; High on the leading prow the Conqueror stands, Eyes purer skies and marks diverging strands. A thousand sails attendant catch the wind, And yet a thousand press the wave behind; Two veteran hosts, outstretched on either hand, Wide wave their wings and sweep the trembling land. Each serried phalanx Terror stalks beside, And shakes o’er crested helms his blazing pride; While Victory, still companion of his way, Sounds her loud trump and flaunts her banners gay.” Further on, the Hero’s attention is attracted to the surrounding landscape, which he thus apostrophizes:—