page_title: Christopher Anstey
section_title: In English
hierarchical_section_title: Christopher Anstey / Poetry / In English
caption_attribution_description: English: An illustration to Christopher Anstey's An Election Ball (1776) by Copplestone Warre Bampfylde
context_page_description: Christopher Anstey was an English poet who also wrote in Latin. After a period managing his family's estates, he moved permanently to Bath and died after a long public life there. His poem, The New Bath Guide, brought him to fame and began an easy satirical fashion that was influential throughout the second half of the 18th century. Later he wrote An Electoral Ball, another burlesque of Bath society that allowed him to develop and update certain themes in his earlier work. Among his Latin writing were translations and summaries based on both these poems; he was also joint author of one of the earliest Latin translations of Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, which went through several editions both in England and abroad.
context_section_description: Anstey was principally known for his long epistolary poem, The New Bath Guide. He never quite recaptured the success of that work, which was continuously in print throughout his lifetime, although he returned to humorous depiction of the same Bath types in such works as An Election Ball and "The Decayed Macaroni". Finding little to admire in such sequels, Horace Walpole judged that Anstey "ought to have shot himself the moment he had finished the Bath Guide", but others since have seen more to respect.
  Gray described the Guide as having "a new and original kind of humour", although in terms of the Classical models of his time it could be described as satire on the good-natured Horatian model. The alternative sharp Juvenilian style of the recently deceased satirist Charles Churchill was not for him. Indeed, in an unfinished poem preserved by his son, he had declared himself 
  Unskill'd in flattery's softer arts,
  Unfit for satire's pointed darts,
  Else would my faithful muse reveal
  What wights bestride the commonweal.
  Instead he made his subject matter the familiar follies of the landed squirearchy in a poem that, "while it includes a number of particular and topical Bath references to give the flavour of the place and time, has sufficient scope and is written from enough of a detached viewpoint to make its critique of manners and morals of enduring application."
  Commenting on the appearance of the Guide, published far away in Cambridge on the other side of the country by an unknown author, his son later marvelled that "It was hardly possible that a work of this description...could have made its appearance under circumstances of greater disadvantage." The title was an added hindrance at first, since the third edition of the official city guide, now titled The New Bath Guide or useful pocket companion, had been published in 1765, the year before Anstey's work. Though it provided a useful point of reference to readers, repeated editions of the pocket companion, 'corrected and much enlarged', continued to sow confusion for as long as the two books continued to appear.
  The Guide relates the misadventures of the three naïve children of a Northern squire as reported by them in letters to friends and parents, and incidentally give a comic picture of life in the spa. In a far departure from the Augustan manner common until then, the style is colloquial and written in loose anapaestic tetrameters.
  'Tis this that provokes Mrs.SHENKIN Ap-LEEK
  To dine at the ord'nary twice in a week,
  Tho' at home she might get a good dinner in comfort,
  Nor pay such a cursed extravagant sum for't:
  But then her acquaintance would never have known
  Mrs.SHENKIN AP-LEEK had acquir'd a "bon ton";
  Ne'er shewn how in taste the AP-LEEKS can excel
  The Duchess of TRUFFLES, and Lady MORELL;
  Had ne'er been ador'd by Sir PYE MACARONI,
  And Count VERMICELLI, his intimate crony;
  Both men of such taste, their opinions are taken
  From an ortolan down to a rasher of bacon.
  The inventiveness of the rhymes and the puns on the ridiculous names given to the characters adds further humour here.
  Such naming, an aspect of the work which was widely admired, derives from theatrical practice at the time and gives a clue to the person's character, but in the case of the main protagonists there is added irony too. Their Blunderhead surname not only sums up the various meanings of the word 'blunder' in their behaviour but has the overtones of stupidity contained in the colloquial 'dunderhead' as well. This is further emphasised in the son's first name, Simkin, which is a dialect expression denoting a simpleton. The behaviour of his sister Prudence, on the other hand, is at variance with her name. She most imprudently allows herself to be seduced by a Methodist imposter with the expressive name of Roger, the slang meaning of which is sexual intercourse, while in dialect it refers to a tricky person.
  The broad 18th century humour of the Guide inevitably met with criticism in some quarters. While the parodies and allusions to Milton, Dryden and the Classical authors were well received, the 
caption: An illustration to Anstey's An Election Ball (1776) by Coplestone Warre Bampfylde
exif: {}