ABSTRACT

Canning’s Introduction obliquely reiterates the task of The Anti-Jacobin: to offer a composite picture of the art and arts of subversive poetry. If inspiration is only available to dissenters, The Anti-Jacobin will print Jacobin poems and endeavour to learn ‘by dint of repeating after them’ how to manage (at best) pale imitation. Canning recovers ground he has ironically given up, by separating traditional poetic dissent from the modern Jacobinical perversion, casts round for an exemplary Jacobin, and lights on Robert Southey.