being dull: perhaps we are so; but let our Directory give us Peace, and we will laugh as loud as the liveliest of them.

We were highly pleased with the arrival of TREILHARD and BONNIER: we stared at them with much perseverance; we endeavoured to discover in their appearance some traces of their intentions; we stared at Lord MALMESBURY too; we compared the two Legations, and were rejoiced at finding no signs of national antipathy, except that the English washed their faces, and wore clean shirts, which the Republicans refused to do. We thought that BONNIER did not look pacific; but we were told he was a Poet and a man of Wit, though he did not look like a Poet or Man of Wit, and this consoled us.--We heard with great regret, that Lord MALMESBURY was sent away; but we were told that this was the best and newest mode of negotiating, and that he was used to it and liked it. Alas! this too was one of BONNIER'S poetical fictions. We have never laughed since.

I have heard that it is not easy to analyse a piece of wit, and I am not so presumptuous as to hope that I can estimate correctly the joint drollery of the Ex-Poet and the Ex-Bishop. In some parts, their allied efforts appear to be happy.

The most laborious artificer of Bon Mots could not have extracted more wit from the pedantic language of our Antagonist's full powers. But as the formal DogLatin of the Old Diplomacy has so often given Peace to Europe; as it conveys, by prescription at least, and to the ears of Politicians, a meaning which Grammarians and Etymologists might perhaps be puzzled to discover; it may plead its former services as some excuse; and if our Rivals were as witty as BONNIER and the Bishop, they

might possibly in their turn, make themselves merry at the expence of our Negotiators, who are forbidden to negotiate, who cannot stir a step without an Arêté of the Directory, and have no powers at all conveyed to them either in French or Latin. The contests between opposite sheets of white paper, and the war of blanks with which the Bishop diverts himself, and which he thinks so good a joke as to deserve a renewal in a Supplement, would be much more amusing to us, if we could forget that the only blank which was really left in the Project offered by England, was that of our Concessions; that by means of this blank we should have obtained the unconditional Restitution of all our Colonies; that such a blank would have been far more valuable to us than all the prizes we have gained in the Revolutionary Lottery, and that it would purchase, at any market in Europe, more reams of Assignats and Mandats than the Directory have yet ventured to issue.

To conclude-if we divest the Bishop of his scholastic jargon, and relieve him from his struggles after wit and pleasantry, we shall at last be able to collect from his facetious State-paper, only the same statement of facts which we obtain with less labour from the duller documents of our adversaries. He tells us that they have twice made overtures for Peace; that their first proposals were founded on the principle of mutual compensation; a principle which, after being admitted by us in theory, was found in practice to be unconstitutional and illegal, and was therefore rejected as affording proofs of English insincerity. That in their next proposals they offered to restore to us all those sources of commerce and industry which the annihilation of our Finances, and consequent loss of our Naval Power had thrown into their hands;

which they had preserved for us entire and unimpaired; and to restore these without an equivalent: but that the Directory, though always anxious to terminate the miseries of Europe, could not consent to Peace, because they were bound by our Laws to procure for us some terms which, however, they were unable to define, and were constrained by the spirit and letter of our Treaties to secure for our Allies what those Allies could not keep or recover; and do not want, and wish to give up. Nay, so anxious is the Bishop, even under the assumed Charac ter of an English Plenipotentiary, to vindicate his employers from the unjust imputation of having ever offered any terms of Peace, of having ever listened to any, except when they thought their own power in danger, or having condescended too far to consult the express wishes of their Allies, that he earnestly assures us they only "permitted "those Allies to make such proposals as they should

judge useful;" and that "the Batavians, sensibly af"fected by the loyalty of this conduct, shewed a disposi❝tion to surrender Cochin and their Factories on the "Coast of Coromandel, and refused the proffered com"pensation of Negapatnam." Now, I should wish to ask the Bishop, whether our Government did indeed carry their loyalty and their condescension even thus far? If so, why did TREILHARD and BONNIER think fit to claim in the name of the Dutch, what the Dutch had declared themselves disposed to abandon? Why was not this result of Batavian sensibility formally announced to our Enemies in the shape of a Counter-project? Such a measure would have afforded an ample field for the Bishop's pleasantry. He might have enjoyed the triumph of perplexing the plain sense of his adversaries by the juggle of his metaphysics, and of harrassing them by

the sarcasm of his epigrams, and his Countrymen might have joined him in his amusement; but when he jocosely unfolds to us the prospect of endless carnage, when he jests upon the renewal of a War without an object, or a motive, or even a pretence, we cannot but be revolted by such cool malevolence, and we lose, in our horror of the Statesman, the smile that might have been excited by the misplaced buffoonery of the Bishop.

Lisle, 6 Brumaire, 6th Year.

POETRY.

INTRODUCTION TO THE POETRY

OF THE

ANTI-JACOBIN.

In our anxiety to provide for the amusement as well as information of our Readers, We have not omitted to make all the enquiries in our power for ascertaining the means of procuring Poetical assistance. And it would give us no small satisfaction to be able to report, that We had succeeded in this point, precisely in the manner which would best have suited our own taste and feelings, as well, as those which We wish to cultivate in our Readers.

But whether it be that good Morals, and what We should call good Politics, are inconsistent with the spirit of true Poetry-whether "the Muses still with Freedom found" have an aversion to regular Governments, and

require

require a frame and system of protection less complicated than King, Lords, and Commons ;

"Whether primordial nonsense springs to life

"In the wild War of Democratic strife,"

and there only-or for whatever other reason it may be, whether physical, or moral, or philosophical (which last is understood to mean something more than the other two, though exactly what, it is difficult to say), We have not been able to find one good and true Poet, of sound principles and sober practice, upon whom we could rely for furnishing us with a handsome quantity of good and approved Verse-such Verse as our Readers might be expected to get by heart and to sing, as MONGE describes the little children of Sparta, and Athens singing the songs of Freedom, in expectation of the coming of the Great Nation.

In this difficulty, We have had no choice but either to provide no Poetry at all,-a shabby expedient, or to go to the only market where it is to be had good and ready made, that of the Jacobins-an expedient full of danger, and not to be used but with the utmost caution and delicacy.

To this latter expedient, hovever, after mature deliberation, we have determined to have recourse :-qualifying it at the same time with such precautions, as may conduce at once to the safety of our Readers principles, and to the improvement of our own Poetry.

For this double purpose, we shall select from time to time from among those effusions of the Jacobin Muse which happen to fall in our way, such pieces as may serve to illustrate some one of the principles on which the poetical as well as the political doctrine of the NEW SCHOOL

is