14 MAY 1887, Page 15

" ANTI-JACOBIN."

[To THE EDITOR OF THE ••SPECTSTOL"] Sts,—As in your recent review of Mr. Frank Hill's short Life of Canning you express a curiosity as to the authorship of the mock specimen of Erskine's egotistical rhetoric in the Anti- Jacobin, I suppose that it is less generally known than I should have imagined, that this brilliant bit of satire was from the pen of John Hookham Frere, Canning's intimate friend and collaborator, and the translator of Aristophanes, on whom he contributed a famous article in the Quarterly Review, in the palmy days of Lockhart's editorship. The Erskine jeu tresprit will be found in the two volumes of Hookham Frere's works, published some years ago by Piekering.—I am, Sr, Bre,

T. H. S. ESCOTT.