_The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_ is not exclusively political. _The Loves of the Triangles_, a parody on DR. DARWIN’S _Loves of the Plants_, is, in the opinion of a celebrated critic (Lord Jeffrey) of the highest degree of merit; as is also _The Progress of Man_, a parody on PAYNE KNIGHT’S _Progress of Civil Society_; and _The Rovers_, a burlesque on the German dramas then in vogue, the extraordinary plots of which, as well as their language, alternately ultrasentimental and domestically bathotic, well marked them out for ridicule, is distinguished by sharp wit and broad humour of the happiest kind. CANNING and his coadjutors in this piece did a real service to literature, and assisted in a purification which GIFFORD, by his demolition of the Della Cruscan school of poetry, had so well begun. Of _The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-grinder_ it is unnecessary to speak; perhaps no lines in the English language have been more effective, or oftener quoted. But CANNING’S greatest power is shown in _New Morality_, which, being the last of the series, seems to have been reserved as a concentrating medium for his pent-up scorn and contempt of the Whigs and their adherents. So that their blows fall thick (for he was powerfully seconded by Frere, Gifford, and Ellis), they care little who suffer from them, and the modern reader is surprised to find CHARLES LAMB and other non-intruders into politics, figuring as congenial conspirators with TOM PAINE! It is somewhat difficult to regard PITT in the character of a Wit and a Poet, as from the narrative of most of his biographers, he might be considered as uniformly cold, stiff, and unbending; but his intimate friend WILBERFORCE, in his _Memoirs_, thus describes him: “PITT, when free from shyness, and amongst his intimate companions, was the very soul of merriment and conversation. He was the wittiest man I ever knew, and what was quite peculiar to himself, had at all times his wit under entire controul. Others appeared struck by the unwonted association of brilliant images; but every possible combination of ideas seemed always present to his mind, and he could at once produce whatever he desired. I was one of those who met to spend an evening in memory of Shakespeare, at the Boar’s Head, Eastcheap. Many professed wits were present, but PITT was the most amusing of the party, the readiest and most apt in the required allusions.” It is not, therefore, at all unlikely, that he now and then contributed witty verses to _The Anti-Jacobin_, in addition to those which the Editor has, on probable grounds, ascribed to him in the present volume.