The Anti-Jacobin Reaction against German Drama and Philosophy in Britain, 1798–1804

ABSTRACT George Canning and John Hookham Frere’s satire on German plays and their radical English readers, The Rovers; or, The Double Arrangement (1798), marked the beginning of a short period of intense engagement with German drama and philosophy in the conservative periodical press in Britain. The Rovers appeared in the Anti-Jacobin; or, Weekly Examiner, a magazine written largely by Foreign Office politicians. The Anti-Jacobin’s monthly successor, the Anti-Jacobin Review, mounted a more earnest attack on German philosophy, and its contributors introduced some of the ideas of Fichte, Kant, and Herder to a conservative Anglican and Scottish Episcopalian readership. This article shows that some contributions display signs of extreme paranoia and exaggeration inspired by Jacobin-Illuminati conspiracy theories, while others demonstrate a considerable knowledge of the German books and ideas that they are attacking.

The Anti-Jacobin; or, Weekly Examiner was a government-sponsored newspaper set up in November 1797 to counter what its contributors considered to be a prejudice against Britain and its culture and institutions in the liberal periodical press. By the late 1790s, the name Jacobin was being used by conservatives to describe anyone opposed to the established political order. The Jacobin Club had been the prominent political group directing the Revolution in France between 1789 and 1794, and the association was designed to tarnish the reputation of writers who were seen to be importing its radical principles into Britain. France and British friends of the French Revolution were the primary enemies of the Anti-Jacobin, but German drama soon came under suspicion as well. A parody of a German play, The Rovers; or, The Double Arrangement, was published across two issues on 4 and 11 June 1798. The aim of the parody was to connect the plays of Goethe, Schiller, and Kotzebue with the home-grown radicalism of William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and their Barruel and John Robison, some also demonstrate a considerable knowledge of the German books and ideas that they are attacking. The Anti-Jacobin project was a coordinated effort involving men with political and ecclesiastical ambition and a shared purpose of building a British national identity. George Canning, co-author of The Rovers, was a future foreign secretary and prime minister, and James Walker would be appointed Primus or presiding bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church in 1837. The Anti-Jacobins considered German drama and philosophy to be a threat to the moral and religious principles on which the union of Church and State was founded. *** The Anti-Jacobin; or, Weekly Examiner was founded by George Canning and edited by William Gifford in consultation with the prime minister, William Pitt. Published weekly on a Monday, the magazine lasted for less than a year from 20 November 1797 to 9 July 1798. The Anti-Jacobin was a mouthpiece for the government's foreign policies and aimed to discredit its political opponents by associating their principles with the revolutionary politics of republican France. When the Anti-Jacobin was launched in 1797, George Canning was undersecretary in the Foreign Office under Lord Grenville, who also contributed articles on political topics. The Anti-Jacobin can therefore be seen as a literary organ of the Foreign Office and its readers might not have fully realized this because the contributors remained anonymous. By using the 'anti' prefix, the political establishment could portray its conservative ideas as a countercultural movement.
Canning wrote the anonymous 'Prospectus' for the first issue where the aims and objectives of the new magazine are clearly laid out. Firstly, the Anti-Jacobin is unapologetically patriotic: We avow ourselves to be partial to the COUNTRY in which we live, notwithstanding the daily panegyricks which we read and hear on the superior virtues and endowments of its rival and hostile neighbours. We are prejudiced in favour of her Establishments, civil and religious; though without claiming for either that ideal perfection, which modern philosophy professes to discover in the more luminous systems which are arising on all sides of us. 5 The 'more luminous systems which are arising on all sides of us' probably alludes to German philosophy as well as French republican ideas. This line suited the argument that British culture and political stability were under threat from outside forces and was designed to increase the appeal of Toryism in the decade following the French Revolution. The government was worried that atheism would lead to the questioning of secular authorities 5 George Canning, 'Prospectus', The Anti-Jacobin; or, Weekly Examiner, 20 November 1797, pp. 1-10 (p. 4). The first edition of the 'Prospectus' was not paginated. Page references are from the 2-volume fourth edition (London 1799) digitized in British Periodicals (ProQuest) [accessed 29 April 2023]. and the principle of the divine right to rule on which the monarchical system was founded. All of these enemies were to be called Jacobins and their principles, 'political and moral, public and private', would be condemned and countered by the pens of the Anti-Jacobins (p. 7).
On 4 June 1798 the first act of a play, The Rovers; or, The Double Arrangement, was published in the 'Poetry' section of the Anti-Jacobin. The Rovers is a parody inspired by English translations of German dramas; it was written by George Canning and John Hookham Frere, the Anti-Jacobin's chief poets and parodists. Canning's own copy of the Anti-Jacobin held in the George Canning Papers at the British Library includes the initials 'G. C. and J. H. F.', written in ink beneath the title of the play in both issues. 6 The Rovers begins with a Prologue in rhyme which gently lampoons the present enthusiasm for German drama: By breaking the 'pedantic rules' of classical drama, the German dramatists threaten to dismantle the political order as well. Schiller's Räuber alluded to here raises the question of the legitimacy of rebellion against corrupt authority. As well as defending the political establishment, the Anti-Jacobins claim to be protecting the classical tradition from the onslaught of barbarians. Canning and Frere were steeped in classical Latin literature and rhetoric from their education at Eton and Cambridge, and the prologue plays on the idea of the Germanic tribes as destroyers of Roman civilization.
In the prologue and throughout the play itself, Canning and Frere mock the complicated plots and frequent changes of scene in Schiller's early dramas (Die Räuber and Kabale und Liebe are specifically referenced in the footnotes). The incongruous appearance of two medieval Englishmen in an eighteenth-century lodging house at Weimar in the second instalment of The Rovers is probably 6 George Canning Papers: Canning's annotated copy of The Anti-Jacobin; or, Weekly Examiner (20 November 1797-9 July 1798), pp. 236, 243, London, British Library, Add MS 89143/3/8/2. 7 'The Rovers; or, the Double Arrangement', The Anti-Jacobin;or, Weekly Examiner, 4 June 1798, pp. 420-30 (pp. 420-21). also a jibe at Schiller, who was ordered to change the setting of Die Räuber from the eighteenth century to the middle ages by Heribert von Dalberg, the director of the Mannheim Theatre. 8 Distinctively eighteenth-century characters appear in medieval dress and settings in the revised stage version of Schiller's drama, known as the 'Trauerspiel'. This version, translated into English by Alexander Fraser Tytler, is the one which Canning and Frere would have been familiar with. 9 The overt target of The Rovers is the perceived immorality of German dramas. The reason this mattered so much to the politician-parodists of the Anti-Jacobin is that they feared a French-inspired political revolution might follow a collapse of sexual morality. While Goethe, Schiller, and Kotzebue are the recognizable targets of the play itself, the introduction which precedes each of the two instalments of the play mocks English friends of German drama, such as William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Coleridge. The spoof introduction takes the form of a letter from Mr Higgins of St Mary Axe, who composed The Rovers 'in imitation of the most popular pieces of that Country [Germany], which have already met with so general reception and admiration in this'. 10 Higgins does not profess to have read the plays in the original German and has 'taken his notion of German Plays wholly from the Translations which have appeared in our language'. 11 Any misunderstandings, we are told, must be the fault of the translators. The 'Song by Rogero', which appears at the end of the first Act, on the other hand, is Higgins's own translation of a poem by a young German friend, 'an Illuminé, of whom I bought the original for three and sixpence' (p. 419). Higgins is a caricature of the Jacobin poet, an anarchist who wants to overturn society and destroy its institutions.
Higgins sees the popularity of German plays on the British stage as an opportunity for seeding radical ideas in the minds of the people. The characters in German plays act 'without reference to any Law but their own Will, or to any consideration of how others may be affected by their conduct' (p. 417). Through the character of Higgins, Canning and Frere connect the personal behaviour of fictional characters on the German stage with the moral principles of English radicals, particularly the anarchist thought of William Godwin. German drama is associated with the destruction of government, morality, and community, and the authors ridicule the promise of a more perfect system resulting from 'Radical Reform'. Higgins' objective in writing the play is to extend the 'effect and popularity' of German theatre, while the real authors aim to expose its dangers to the public (p. 418). The Rovers is the third of a trilogy of parodies in which the Anti-Jacobins challenge the value of progresspolitical, scientific, and moraland promote the safety of maintaining the status quo. Higgins is a recurring character, first identified as the author of The Progress of Man, a parody of Richard Payne Knight's Progress of Civil Society, and introduced as an admirer of German drama in the introduction to its third instalment in February 1798. 12 The character of Higgins is further developed in a letter which accompanied the manuscript of Loves of the Triangles, a satire on Erasmus Darwin's botanical poem Loves of the Plants. Higgins is not only a friend of German drama, but an anarchist who wants to upturn the 'Social Order'. His philosophy is 'Whatever is, is WRONG'in opposition to Alexander Pope's 'Whatever is, is right'. 13 The authors mock the English Germanophile and his optimism regarding man's future perfectibility. By making Higgins a Godwinian as well as an enthusiastic consumer of English translations of German plays, the authors connect the cultural cosmopolitanism of English radical figures with the infiltration of dangerous philosophical ideas from abroad.
The fictional author explains that the plot of The Rovers 'is formed by the combination of the Plots of two of the most popular of these [German] Plays' ('Poetry', 4 June 1798, p. 419). The two plays are Goethe's Stella: Ein Schauspiel für Liebende (1776) and Kotzebue's Menschenhass und Reue (1789), translated as The Stranger (1798) and produced by Richard Brinsley Sheridan for the Drury Lane Theatre. Premiered on 24 March 1798, The Stranger was one of the most successful plays on the London stage in the year The Rovers appeared in the Anti-Jacobin. The focus of Kotzebue's drama is Mrs Haller's adultery and her reconciliation with a forgiving husband at the end of the play. It was not unusual for an unfaithful wife to be represented on the stage, but she was usually punished either by death or social ostracism. 14 In Stella a man finds himself in love with two women and the happy resolution to the play is that the three decide to live together in a ménage à trois. The same thing happens to the main characters in The Rovers, with the two women, Matilda and Cecelia, agreeing to live together with Casimere. Higgins explains that the meeting between Matilda and Cecelia at an Inn in Weimar in Act I 'is taken, almost word for word, from "STELLA,"', while 'the Dinner Scene is copied partly from the published Translation of the "STRANGER," and partly from the First Scene of "STELLA"' ('Poetry ', 11 June 1798, pp. 447-48). At least seven editions of The Stranger were published in London in 1798 and 1799, following the success of the stage play, which Hannah More called a 'first attempt at representing an adultress in an exemplary light'. 15 Although More was not a contributor to the Anti-Jacobin Review, she shared its aims, and its conservative principles are extolled in the affordable religious and moral tracts that she wrote for the literate poor. More continues in true Anti-Jacobin style to connect the character of Mrs Haller to 'the Female Werther', by which she means Mary Wollstonecraft (p. 48). William Godwin had likened Wollstonecraft to 'a female Werter' in his biography of his late wife, intending to elicit sympathy for her personal struggles including suicide attempts, but only adding fuel to the Anti-Jacobin attacks against her. 16 More thus links the personal situation of the English writer as an unmarried mother with the immoral influence of German literature and especially Goethe.
An English translation of Stella: Ein Schauspiel für Liebende was published in London in 1798, the same year as the play was parodied in The Rovers. 17 The translator, 'Miss T. Dalton', also purchased radical texts from the publishers Hookham and Carpenter, including titles by Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, Joel Barlow, and William Godwin. 18 The Anti-Jacobin's suspicion of a connection between the translation of Goethe's play and English and American radicalism was therefore not unfounded. Its judgement of German social mores as being so very different from English ones was misguided, however. The ending of the version of Goethe's play parodied in The Rovers had also been considered socially unacceptable in Germany. Goethe was forced to retract the play from the stage after its first few performances in Weimar and Hamburg in 1776. 19 The lovers Stella and Fernando commit suicide at the end of the 1806 version of the play, which Goethe renamed Stella: Ein Trauerspiel.
The main political concern of the Anti-Jacobin in June and July 1798 was the Irish Rebellion. In a letter to the editor of the Anti-Jacobin, published on 2 July, a reader refers to a 'dangerous Lodge or Encampment of Knight Templars in London' which appears to be 'the probable hiding place and focus of action of some Irish Delegates, or Chief Conspirators in England'. 20 Ireland was the subject of the leading articles of the two issues which contained The Rovers and the 'letter to the editor' is probably also a spoof. The weekly Anti-Jacobin introduced the idea of a connection between radical politics and German drama and may even have helped to increase the appeal of German plays to radical audiences. Theatre was particularly important to the Anti-Jacobins because of its perceived influence on public morality. Messages of social levelling and equality of the sexes in the plays of Kotzebue appealed to English radicals such as Anne Plumptre, who translated seven of his plays. While Kotzebue was regarded as a reactionary in Germany, his plays were seen as progressive in some respects in Britain. Audiences delighted in seeing the aristocracy, traditionally held up as models of virtue, facing criticism on the stage. The writers of the Anti-Jacobin feared that moral liberty on the stage could lead to calls for political liberty. Kotzebue's plays were adapted for the English stage by the removal of licentious scenes, but they still contained adultery plots and strong characters drawn from the lower classes. *** The last issue of the Anti-Jacobin; or, Weekly Examiner was published on 9 July 1798, when the fear of 'Jacobinism' was still at its height. It was succeeded by a new monthly review journal, the Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine. Neither Canning nor Frere contributed to the new journal. Although the monthly journal was written and edited by a different team of men from the weekly magazine, there was an obvious continuity of purpose. The Anti-Jacobin Review was to be the conservative answer to the leading liberal review journals. Where the Anti-Jacobin had set out to expose and correct 'lies', 'misrepresentations' and 'mistakes' in the daily press (Canning, 'Prospectus', p. 8), the Anti-Jacobin Review would 'review the Monthly, criticise the Critical, and analyse the Analytical Reviews' on the same principles as its weekly predecessor. 21 The Monthly Review and the Analytical Review in particular were regarded as mouthpieces for Dissenters and their demands for political reform. Even the formerly Tory Critical Review had completed its transformation into a liberal opponent of Pitt's government by the time the Anti-Jacobin Review came on the scene. 22 Of all the monthly review journals, only the British Critic was upholding a conservative position in 1798.
The mission of the Anti-Jacobin Review was political, and its aim was to protect the established Church, monarchy, and political institutions from attack by conspicuous and hidden enemies alike. Unlike the weekly Anti-Jacobin, which only gave attention to German drama, the Anti-Jacobin Review launched an attack on philosophers such as Fichte, Kant, and Herder as well. According to the editor John Gifford, 'nearly all the presses on the continent of Europe are under the immediate influence either of FRENCH PRIN-CIPLES, or of FRENCH INTRIGUES' and this included the German language press ('Prospectus', p. 4). Writing in 1798, Gifford himself was clearly under the influence of Abbé Augustin Barruel, whose Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Jacobinisme was published in London in 1797 and translated into English in the same year. 23 Gifford translated counter-revolutionary pamphlets of French émigrés in London in the 1790s and may even have known Barruel during 21 John Gifford, 'Prospectus', Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine; or, Monthly Political, and Literary Censor, 1.1 (1798), 1-6 (p. 3). 22 Derek Roper, Reviewing before the 'Edinburgh ', 1788-1802(London: Methuen, 1978 his exile in the city. 24 The latter popularized a conspiracy theory concerning the connection between the Bavarian Illuminati and the Jacobins. The order of the Illuminati was founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830), professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria. According to Barruel's thesis, the Illuminati infiltrated masonic lodges in France where they instigated the French Revolution.
The conspiratorial rhetoric of the Anti-Jacobin Review was borrowed from Barruel and John Robison, whose equally influential Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati and Reading Societies was also published in 1797. According to Michael Taylor, 'this conspiracy theory obsessed conservatives between 1797 and 1802' and 'significantly affected the British reception of the works of Immanuel Kant'. 25 Taylor points to an 'ecclesiastical belief in the Illuminati theory', which may help to explain why it is so often cited by the Anti-Jacobin Review (p. 297). The Anti-Jacobin project was a union of English and Scottish conservatives with a common religious and political identity. In 1798 this identity was more under threat from home-grown radicalism and the Irish rebellion than French or German philosophy. The Anti-Jacobin reviewers nevertheless went out of their way to exploit Barruel's and Robison's theories to discredit foreign literature in general and German philosophy in particular. This was essential in order to present a patriotic defence of British culture, religion, and philosophy. The piece begins with France before moving 'to the countries which she has republicanized, revolutionized, pillaged, and organized'. 29 The German universities are seen to be advancing the twin causes of atheism and republicanism: 'In some of the Universities not a single professor is to be found who dares admit the existence of a God,' while August Ludwig von Schlözer, one of the leading historians at Göttingen, proves himself to be a republican rather than a loyal subject of the Hanoverians by condoning the murder of Charles I (p. 729). The author is also aware of the atheism controversy (Atheismusstreit) involving Fichte at the University of Jena. Fichte published the essay, 'Ueber den Grund unsers Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung' in the Philosophische Journal in 1798, 'in which atheism was openly recommended' (p. 730). Gifford must have been very well informed to be reporting this in December 1798, though Fichte is not named at this point. According to the author, the governments of German principalities tolerate irreligion and seditious newspapers because they are 'more afraid of giving displeasure to the Directory, than anxious to preserve the morals of their people' (p. 731). This is a picture of German princes under the control of Revolutionary France and it is supposed to frighten British subjects of George III who may be tempted to look to the Continent for models of government.
In a provocative 'Preface' to volume 4 in September 1799, Gifford bemoans the 'glaring depravity of taste, as displayed in the extreme eagerness for foreign productions' in Britain and 'a systematic design to extend such depravity by a regular importation of exotic poison from the envenomed crucibles of the literary and political alchymists of the new German school' ('Preface', vi-vii). Gifford compares German literature to 'the plague' which warranted a 'strict observance of quarantine by vessels which arrived from countries infected' (vii). This language of exaggerated metaphor played on the paranoia created by the Jacobin-Illuminati conspiracy theories. Radical ideas imported into Britain between the covers of books are now seen to be more dangerous than the threat of invasion. Gifford blames the failure of German princes to exert their power to counter the 'degrading tyranny of Philosophism' and the German universities for abandoning all other academic subjects in favour of 'the new philosophy' (vii-viii).
Gifford singles out the University of Jena, whose students he claims resist all forms of subordination and restraint. They wear 'Republican uniforms' and are 'formed into secret Clubs, which are the scenes of perpetual broils, riots, and disorders' (viii). This time he names Fichte, whom he calls, 'Furchte, professor of philosophy, or, rather of philosophism' (viii). Gifford borrows the term 'philosophism' from Barruel who defines it as: 'the error of every man who, judging of all things by the standard of his own reason, rejects in religious matters every authority that is not derived from the light of nature'. 30 Fichte's three principles as understood by the author are abhorrent to the Anti-Jacobin Review. Firstly, that there is no God; secondly, that we act only out of a sense of duty and 'that each individual man stands single and unconnected in the world'; and thirdly, that society is progressively improving until a time comes when people will be able to live without government, laws, or authority (ix). This is the philosophical anarchism professed by Higgins, the fictional author of The Rovers. Fichte has replaced Godwin as the worst enemy of the Anti-Jacobin Review. Gifford then reports in detail on Fichte's forced resignation from Jena and the failure of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar to act until Prussia got involved. There is little evidence for the accusation that Fichte was widely read and discussed by radicals in Britain before 1799. The German philosopher was not the subject of an article in the liberal Monthly Review until 1806 and was barely mentioned in the Analytical Review before its demise in early 1799. 31 *** One of the more informative accounts of German philosophy to appear in the Anti-Jacobin Review is an 'Exposition of the Philosophical System of Kant', which was sent to the editor on 30 January 1800 by George Gleig, a Scottish Episcopalian minister and editor of the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 32 Gleig explains that he received the article from an 'illustrious foreigner' for inclusion in the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia which he is editing. 33 By publishing it first in the Anti-Jacobin Review he hopes to receive comments from correspondents who 'are acquainted with the original writings of Kant'. Gleig's motivation for sending it to Gifford first was probably to attract readers for the forthcoming Supplement. Gleig thinks that Kant's principles are 'extremely dangerous', but he wants to give a 'fair view of a system so celebrated in Germany as that of the ingenious Professor at Koënigsberg [sic]'.
The article has been attributed to French politician Jean-Joseph Mounier in the office copy of the journal held at the British Library. 34 Mounier was the leader of a moderate royalist party in France and was elected president of the National Assembly in September 1789, but he soon turned against the Revolution and left France for Switzerland. After a short stay in England, Mounier moved to Weimar in 1795 where he published a refutation of Barruel's Illuminati theory, arguing that the causes of the French Revolution were embedded in French political history and not a conspiracy of philosophers, freemasons, and Illuminati. 35 The article is a rare attempt to understand and explain the work of a German philosopher in the Anti-Jacobin Review. It is free of the personal attacks and polemical style of some of the other articles about German philosophy.
The most worrying aspect of Kant's system for the Anti-Jacobin reviewer is that it does not accept that the existence of God can be proven. The author presents Kant's ideas in order to refute them. We have 'no certainty in our knowledge of God, because certainty cannot exist except where it is founded on an object of experience' (Mounier, 'Exposition', p. 344). Belief in God is 'a belief of reason which supplies the place of a knowledge which is impossible' and God is 'beyond the reach of our senses'. Kant rejects the argument of intelligent design while claiming that a belief in God is still rational and necessary. We can 'act morally on the supposition of the existence, although incomprehensible, of an intelligent Creator'. Kant argues that virtue 'may be taught without the idea of God' because the 'pure law of morality is a priori' (p. 344). The idea that morality could be taught without a role for the Church and the Christian religion was alarming and provocative to the writers of the Anti-Jacobin Review. Mounier compares Kant to the Stoics because he 'places the Sovereign good in the beauty of morality, in the accomplishment of our duty' (p. 346). The reviewer then concludes that Kant's doctrine 'contains nothing new' and he wonders why Kant has not found more proofs of the existence of God in natural theology (p. 345).
An expanded version of the same article, titled 'Critical Philosophy', appears in the Supplement to the Third Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in Edinburgh in 1803. 36 The ODNB attributes the encyclopaedia article to James Walker, a Scottish Episcopalian deacon and contributor to the Anti-Jacobin Review. 37 Walker was a chaplain at Mounier's academy at the Schloss Belvedere in Weimar around 1800, preaching in English on a Sunday. 38 Many of the students at this academy were young men from Scotland and England. Walker translated Mounier's De l'influence attribuée aux philosophes, aux francs-maçons et aux illuminés sur la Révolution de France into English. 39 It therefore seems likely that Walker was the translator rather than the author of the article on Kant, perhaps adding a few of his own thoughts before sending it to Gleig for inclusion in the second edition of the Supplement. While the Anti- *** From April 1800 Gifford handed over reporting on German literary matters to James Walker in Weimar. The latter's contributions are published as letters to the editor sent from 'upper Saxony'. Walker was at this time employed as tutor to Sir John Hope of Craighall (1781-1853) and was the young Baronet's travel companion. Walker appears to have been personally acquainted with Christoph Martin Wieland, whom he describes as 'an excellent friend', but he is shocked by the principles extolled in Wieland's works and thinks that Goethe 'possesses not a single grain of morality in his composition'. 42 Micheli proposes that Walker was Gifford's contact in Weimar as early as 1798 and probably provided the insider information about the literati of Weimar and Jena for the articles attributed to the editor discussed above (Micheli, p. 88). Walker's presence in Weimar allowed the Anti-Jacobin Review to report quickly on intellectual developments in the city and the conservative journal was ahead of its liberal rival, the Monthly Review, in this respect.
Walker's first letter titled, 'The Literati and Literature of Germany', was published in April 1800. The author describes himself as a man who has 'had the happiness to be born a British subject'. 43 The patriotic author is alarmed about the increasing popularity of German literature in Britain and detects 'a kind of systematic plan for corrupting the public taste and national morality of Englishmen by undistinguishing praise and introduction of foreign trash' (p. 568). He compares the followers of Kant to a secret cult who evade all requests to explain the system of philosophy to those like himself who ask for a clear explanation. Walker criticizes the Germans for having too high an opinion of their own literary productions, but the main target of his scorn is the 'Germanized Englishmen' who admire German literature (p. 569). He detests their 'vile affected, moderation, philanthropy, and cosmopolitanism' which 'tarnish the national character' (p. 570). By attacking the cosmopolitanism of English Germanophiles, the Scottish Episcopalian minister demonstrates his agreement with the Anti-Jacobin Review's mission to promote a British national identity to unite the people of Scotland, England, Wales, and (in 1801) Ireland against a common enemy in revolutionary and Napoleonic France. 44 Walker was also the author of an anonymous review of Schiller's Maria Stuart, which appeared in August 1800. Walker's objection to Schiller is that he has, 'in all his pieces, presented some vice, and especially the want of chastity in women, under attracting colours'. 45 The author regards Mary Stuart as 'an unfortunate strumpet' and by the end of the play, 'a monster unworthy even of pity' (pp. 497-98). Schiller's drama is proof of 'the licentiousness of the German Drama in general, and of that of the author in particular' (p. 498). The review repeats the same accusations about the immorality of German drama that we have seen before in The Rovers, giving examples from the characters of the two rival Queens. Maria Stuart was translated into English by Joseph Charles Mellish (1769-1823), whose residence in Weimar between 1797 and 1802 overlapped with Walker's stay. Mellish's translation from the prompter's copy was published in London in 1801 before the play was published in German. 46 Coleridge had likewise translated Schiller's Wallenstein in England from the prepublication manuscript. 47 These examples show how close the relationship was between the literati of Weimar, their correspondents in England and Scotland, and the small community of British visitors who lived in Weimar around 1800. Walker's review appeared in the Anti-Jacobin Review before the play was published in either language, suggesting that the disapproving deacon must have attended a performance of the play, which was premiered on 14 June 1800 in Weimar. It is extraordinary that the Anti-Jacobin Review had its own critic reporting directly from the scene, but disappointing that the review is little more than a diatribe against Schiller and German drama in general.
In a second letter on 'The Literati and Literature of Germany', published in the same issue as the review of Maria Stuart, Walker writes that 'there are opinions more dangerous and destructive than war, famine, or pestilence'. 48 These dangerous opinions are found in German philosophy and smuggled back to Britain by young men attending German universities. Walker warns the reader that 'a German University is in every possible respect the worst school for Englishmen ' (p. 574). Impressionable young men lose their religion, patriotism, and all sense of morality after studying at a university like Göttingen. The author explains his theological objections to 'German metaphysics' while contemplating the superiority of 'our English moralists, metaphysicians, and politicians' and the British constitution (p. 562). Small incremental changes created the superior British constitution, not individual genius or revolutionary new systems. German writers are hypocrites because they 'spout and publish democracy in all its naked deformity' while desiring nothing more than a title and the patronage of a prince (p. 567). According to Walker, many professors at German universities think God is an 'idle prejudice' and are 'almost all partizans of the incomprehensible system of Kant, and warmly attached to the doctrine of the unlimited improvement and perfection of human nature ' (p. 570). This belief in human perfectibility combined with atheism will eventually lead to the dissolution of government and all laws. Walker defends the 'confined notions of the clergy of the Church of England' for still believing in the Old Testament and 'the Mosaic History of the fall of man' (p. 571). German theologians and clergymen have lost their belief in the authority of the Old Testament. He compares the principles of Johann Gottfried Eichhorn at the University of Göttingen with those of Alexander Geddes, a Scottish Catholic theologian who wrote that the Fall was a mythic account of the painful human condition rather than a historical event. 49 Walker believes that the scientific enquiry undertaken by Eichhorn and Geddes undermines the sacred authority of the Bible and paves the way for the replacement of the Christian religion with the 'philosophical system of religion' taught at German universities (p. 572). Solid principles are replaced with 'elegant dissertations on the beauty of virtue, lofty declamations on humanity, and against the present war with France' (p. 571).
Walker describes a 'clergyman, whose character is highly respected', who claims that war, pestilence, and earthquakes are not providential warnings or punishments for sins but 'are the simple effects of a settled course of nature, which has been appointed ages before we were born, and will go on uninterruptedly without regard to us or our conduct' (p. 572). This view is too unorthodox for the conservative churchman, who believes that there is a connection between human conduct and natural disasters. The 'highly respected' clergyman may have been Herder, whom Walker does not name but must have encountered while he was in Weimar. Walker was an ordained deacon in the Scottish Episcopal Church, and it is likely that he used the liturgy of the Church of England when preaching at Mounier's academy in Weimar.
As a Scot, Walker was legally unable to hold a position within the Church of England even after studying at Cambridge. Like George Gleig who sent the letter on Kant to the Anti-Jacobin Review, Walker wanted to see a closer alliance between the Episcopal Church in Scotland and the Church of England. Walker's rejection of German literature and philosophy was grounded in his religious beliefs and theological education. German philosophy threatened to undermine his religion and political identity.
Herder would soon come under direct attack in the Anti-Jacobin Review in a series of lengthy reviews of two pioneering English translations of his work. An abridged and reordered English version of the first volume of Vom Geist der ebräischen Poesie (1782-83) was published as Oriental Dialogues by Cadell & Davis in 1801. 50 The author of a letter to the Anti-Jacobin Review in 1802 accuses the Monthly Review of engineering an 'insidious attack on the religion of the British empire' by giving the book a favourable review. 51 The author is particularly shocked by the Monthly's acceptance of Herder's 'wild and visionary interpretation of the fall' (p. 440). The author fears that Presbyterians are using Herder to justify and promote their own unorthodox theological views, including the rejection of 'the Christian doctrine of redemption' (p. 440). According to the author, Herder's interpretation of the Old Testament as poetry creates an equivalence between the sacred books of the Old Testament and the mythical-poetical writings of Homer, which debases the Christian religion.
The author of the letter has a few things in common with James Walker, who returned to Scotland with a good knowledge of German theology. The anonymous piece is signed by the initials E. O. J., however, and the address given is Fleet Street. Like Gifford and Walker, the author is fixated on the literati of Weimar and the University of Jena. He is troubled by 'that corps of literati patronized by the Duchess dowager of Weimar [Anna Amalia], which consists of German philosophers, German dramatists, and British Presbyterian preachers known at her court by the title of Barons' (p. 442). One of these preachers may have been the Scot James Macdonald who lived in Weimar in 1796-98, met Herder, and promoted Herder's works to the Presbyterian literati of Edinburgh on his return home (Gillies,. Might the letter, which was published in the 'Reviewers Reviewed' section of the Anti-Jacobin Review, have been fabricated by the editor himself using information supplied by the Episcopalian cleric Walker? It is certainly in keeping with Gifford's intentions as outlined in the first issue to hold the Monthly Review to account. He was particularly opposed to the Presbyterianism of the Monthly's editor Ralph Griffiths, whom he accuses of using German philosophy to promote the unorthodox theology of English Dissenting ministers. My article on the early reception of Herder in Britain has shown that Herder's work was warmly received by Presbyterian and Unitarian reviewers in the Monthly Review from 1784 onwards. 52 Thomas Churchill's English translation of Herder's Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91) was published by Joseph Johnson in 1800. 53 Johnson was a London-based bookseller and publisher of educational, religious, and political texts who is best known for publishing some of the important works of English political radicalism in the 1790s, including Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). He was also the official publisher of the Unitarian Essex Street Chapel, established in 1774, and one of its founding members. The first edition of Churchill's Herder translation was not noticed by the Anti-Jacobin Review, but a second edition published in 1803 received a surprising amount of attention between August and December 1804, in response to a favourable review in the Monthly Review from the previous August. 54 The author accuses the Monthly reviewer of failing to expose the 'impiety' of Herder's ideas. The Anti-Jacobin reviewer, on the other hand, studiously analyses the text in order to demonstrate Herder's atheism and opposition to monarchy and all forms of government.
The anonymous reviewer compares Herder's ideas, which are 'enveloped in the sublime language of KANT', with those of the English Unitarian theologian and scientist Joseph Priestley. 55 If Priestley's Christianity is unorthodox, then Herder's is even more radical. According to the reviewer, 'even the doctrine of Priestley, when taken entire, is infinitely more comfortable than the ravings of this oracle of Weimar, of whose friendship some of our Presbyterian divines have been wont to boast of as of their greatest honor!' (p. 415). Priestley is under 'the moral government of God' because he still believes in the resurrection of the body. Herder, on the other hand, believes only in an 'eternal chain' of organic powers which may animate new organs but not the same body. This idea, the author says, precludes any 'moral restraint whatever' and removes the moral authority of God from Herder's philosophy (p. 415). The author of the review describes his own contented position, 'in the British empire, and in the bosom of the Church of England' (p. 416). James Walker signed his letters from Weimar with 'an honest Briton', and he identified closely with the Church of England, but further evidence is required before this series of articles can be attributed to Walker.
The same author may have been responsible for a multi-part review of Herbert Marsh's annotated English translation of Johann David Michaelis's Einleitung in die göttlichen Schriften des Neuen Bundes (1788) between May 1804 and January 1806. 56 Marsh, a future Anglican bishop, was drawn to the rationalism of the German Enlightenment while holding extremely conservative political views. The reviewer defends a position of religious orthodoxy which he believes is under threat from German theology, including the divine authority of the Scriptures and the doctrines of the Fall of Man and redemption. As Anglican/Episcopalian churchmen and political conservatives, Marsh and the Anti-Jacobin reviewer had much in common, but while Marsh saw a rich source of knowledge and new techniques in German biblical criticism, the reviewer regards the same methods and ideas as a threat to the beliefs of Christians in Britain. The reviewer mounts a calm defence of the divine inspiration of the New Testament scriptures against the rational historical explanations of Johann Salomo Semler and other German theologians. The Anti-Jacobin reviewer claims to have the British philosophical tradition of empiricism on his side, while the German biblical scholars are speculative philosophers with fanciful theories about original documents which cannot be proven. The reviewer's aim appears to be to point out the faults of the German theologian Michaelis that his English translator has overlooked. *** contributors who took German philosophy and theology seriously and even had a correspondent, James Walker, reporting directly from the scene in Weimar. Walker saw German philosophy as a threat to his Episcopalian religion and his initial impulse was to attack the character and personal lives of 'the German literati' and their British followers.
The Scottish Episcopalian contributors to the Anti-Jacobin Review, such as Gleig and Walker, thought that German philosophers trod too close to the path of theology and that German theologians were dangerously dabbling in scientific methods. The unchecked influence of both of these tendencies in Britain would lead to a questioning of the Christian religion and secular authority. Conservatives in England such as Gifford feared that German philosophical ideas were being used by Rational Dissenters to support their political aims. There was some truth in this accusation as evidenced by the Unitarian interest in Kant's political philosophy and Herder's theology and philosophy of history. 57 The conservative reviewers are more concerned about the political implications of Kant's religious thought than they are with his overtly political ideas, which receive little attention in the Anti-Jacobin Review.
The Anti-Jacobin reaction against German drama and philosophy appears to have run out of steam around 1806. German books were occasionally reviewed after this date, but we do not see the same level and frequency of engagement as during the Anti-Jacobin Review's earliest years. The moral philosophy of Kant, of interest to only a few in the radical camp, was no longer seen to be a threat on a national scale. Emily Lorraine de Montluzin has shown that Gifford handed over the Anti-Jacobin Review to a new editorial team after the November 1806 issue. 58 Although Gifford may not have written all of the articles about German drama and philosophy himself, the editor had overall control over which letters were published in the journal and which books were worthy of being reviewed. The reception of German literature and ideas under Gifford's editorship was largely hostile, but some of the articles also demonstrate their authors' closer reading of the German texts than those of the journal's liberal and radical rivals, and an awareness of the wider implications of German philosophical and theological developments.