ABSTRACT
‘La Sainte Guillotine’ is sharply sarcastic. The anti-jacobins were exasperated by English francophiles who would not confront the violence of the Revolution. William Roscoe (1753–1831), of whom Fox thought highly, was a perfect example. A belle-lettrist in gentrified liberal circles in Liverpool, Roscoe’s poetry (slavishly conventional in form), showed ‘a horror of throwing itself boldly upon the great realities of life’. 1 His songs were sung at meetings of the ‘friends of liberty’ in Liverpool, meetings first held in 1788 to celebrate the centenary of the English revolution. The source for ‘La Sainte Guillotine’ is one of Roscoe’s effusions: O’er the vine-cover’d hills and gay regions of France, See the day-star of Liberty rise; Through the clouds of detraction unsullied advance, And hold its new course through the skies! An effulgence so mild, with a lustre so bright, All Europe with wonder surveys; And, from deserts of darkness and dungeons of night, Contends for a share of the blaze.
