ABSTRACT
This poem has its origins in Sebastian Brant’s Das Narrenschiff of 1494, the original ‘Ship of Fools’ and inspiration behind the voyaging savants in this issue. Brant’s Fools were translated into Latin by Jacob Locher (1497); and from there into English by Alexander Barclay (1509), to whom the anti-jacobins refer. Brant’s purposes – humanist, enlightened but essentially conservative – are not dissimilar to those of Canning. Juvenalian in spirit, he wrote:
For the profit, and salutary instruction, admonition and pursuit of wisdom, common sense, and good manners; also for the condemnation and reproach of folly, blindness, error, and stupidity of all ranks and kinds of men ... 1
Brant collected one hundred and twelve generic examples. Among these, the Fools of Useless Books, Newfangled Ways, Trouble-Making, Speaking Against God, Much-Babbling, and others, find specific embodiments in the crew of the Capricorn. The setting is drawn from a poem by Beddoes: Alexander’s Expedition to the Indian Ocean. With Historical and Philosophical Observations (London, 1792). From this the anti-jacobins borrow exotic lists, grand historical gestures, and quasi-scientific clutter. They also wickedly mimic the square-wheeled rhythms: With telescopes, globes, and a quadrant, and sextant, And the works of all authors whose writings are extant Later the poem mocks Napoleon’s imperial ambitions, a theme expanded upon elsewhere in this issue in prose, in a lengthy, bombastic letter pretending to be ‘from General Buonaparte to the Governor of Zante’.