ABSTRACT
Higgins reappears to invoke another aspect of the radical Muse: her promiscuity. After violence, this is the Jacobinical vice most useful to Canning and colleagues, with which to exaggerate the dangers of liberal agitation. The poem opens with Payne Knight as the source again. He is vulnerable, with an unfair reputation for an interest in all things priapic in early societies. 1 The first sentence of the parody’s ‘Contents’ alludes to Book Three of Knight’s Progress, where he insists that the power of dissolution in marriage will confirm, rather than undermine, the contract: While mutual wishes form love’s only vows By mutual interests nursed, the union grows; Respectful fear its rising power maintains, And both preserve, when each may break, its chains. 2
