[Footnote 2: We are indebted to several other correspondents for
similar replies to this Query; and one, A. C. W., remarks that the
epigram from which these lines are quoted, is thus translated by
Cowley:
"Now to himself, alas! does neither live,
But sees good suns, of which we are to give
A strict account, set and march thick away:
Knows a man how to live, and does he stay?"]
* * * * *
_Authors of the Anti-Jacobin Poetry_ (Vol. iii., p. 348.).--I knew _all_
the writers, some of them intimately; and I have no doubt of the general
accuracy of MR. HAWKIN'S communication. The items marked B are the least
to be relied on. I do not think Mr. Hammond, then Canning's colleague as
Under-Secretary of State, wrote a line, certainly not of verse, though
he no doubt assisted his friend in compiling, and perhaps correcting;
good offices, which obtained him an honourable _niche_ in the
counter-satire issued from Brooke's, and preserved from oblivion by
having been reprinted in the _Anti-Jacobin_ to give more poignancy to
Canning's reply, "Bard of the borrowed lyre," &c.
The Latin verses "Ipsa mali Hortatrix" were the _sole_ production of
Lord Wellesley, and he reprinted them a year or two before his death;
Mr. Frere had no share in them: but, on the other hand, Mr. Frere may
have been, and I think was, the author of the _translation_, "Parent of
countless crimes." Lord Wellesley certainly was not; for it was made
after he had sailed for India.
With regard to Mr. Wright's appropriation of particular passages of the
longer poems to different authors, it is obviously impossible that it
should be more than a vague conjecture. I _know_ that both Canning and
Gifford professed _not_ to be able to make any such distribution; but
both left on my mind the impression that Canning's share of the "New
Morality" was so very much the largest as to entitle him to be
considered its author. Ought not Canning's verses to be collected?