Introductory Note (to Issue no. XV)

Here the periodical’s finest creation is introduced, the portmanteau poet Mr Higgins (although this first poem is not ‘discovered’ to be his until Issue no. XXI). In time he will come to embody every subversive folly, secret vice, and warped ideal to which the anti-jacobins wish to call attention. Higgins features in eight issues in all, gathering complexity and conviction as the weeks pass. Each appearance is nominally particular, selecting one principal source to mimic, but parodies shade one into another, and in time the character of Higgins acquires its own momentum.