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 'i;^'!!::"-'' 
 
 p; 
 
 
 
I 
 
THE 
 
 AUTHOKS OF ENGLAND, 
 
COMPANION VOLUME. 
 
 THE LANDSCAPE PAINTERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 AFTER TURNER, ROBERTS, STAJvFIELD, CRESWICK, CATTERMOLE, Sec, &c.. 
 With Descriptive Letterpress by W. M. THACKERAY. 
 
 I'olio, clotli gilt, Ws. 61/.; or 21j., beautifully coloured. 
 
*• 
 
THE 
 
 .AUTHORS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 A SERIES OF 
 
 MEDALLION POETRAITS 
 
 OF 
 
 MODEKN LITERAEY CHAEACTERS, 
 ENGEAVED FROM THE WORKS OE BEITISH AETISTS 
 
 BY 
 
 ACHILLE COLLAS. 
 
 WITH 
 
 ILLUSTEATIVE NOTICES 
 
 By 
 
 HENRY F. CHOHLEY. 
 
 NEW EDITION, KEVISED. 
 
 UNIVchJSITY 
 
 or 
 
 'fanhon : 
 
 GRIFFIN, BOHN, AND COMPANY, 
 
 stationers' hall court. 
 

 ^b 
 
 ENGL. LIB. FD. 
 
 LONDON : 
 PRINTED BY WOOUFALL ANU KINDKR, 
 ANOKL COURT, 8K1NNKR 8TRERT. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 On submitting a new work to the public, a few words of introduc- 
 tion are naturally required of its Editor. 
 
 It is easy for me to speak of the splendid series of Portraits 
 which form the principal feature of this volume. Few, I think, 
 will be disposed to dispute the interest of their subjects : few (save 
 those personally interested) will be inclined to deny the skill and 
 beauty of their execution. And while as works of art, produced 
 by a new and ingenious process, they must be valuable ; they 
 oiio-ht also to be welcome, as exhibitino; the union of the artists 
 
 ~ ■'CD 
 
 of two countries, for the purpose of doing honour to literature. 
 
 I am requested to acknowledge with sincere thanks the kind- 
 ness shown to the proprietor of this volume, by many of the 
 distinguished persons whose portraits appear in it, — and the skill 
 and assiduity of the English artists who have forwarded his views. 
 It is intended that the work shall be continued, so as to include 
 the portraits of all our modern authors of celebrity: it is needless 
 to point out, that nothing in the shape of classification in the 
 arrangement or selection of subjects has, been attempted, or could, 
 indeed, have been practicable. 
 
 I have now to speak of the less-important part of this work, — 
 its letter-press : this is not easy. Without undue profession, how- 
 ever, I may say, that by few, among either critics or readers, could 
 the responsibilities of the task with which I have been honoured 
 be felt more earnestly than by myself To avoid the language of 
 flattery, on the one hand, and of presumption on the other, is not 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 easy; and the difficulty is increased when a writer, comparatively 
 young and untried, has his contemporaries, and not his predeces- 
 sors, for his subjects. In the following slight notices I lay no 
 claim to any merit, save such as belongs to a genial and respectful 
 sympathy with all — whatever be their political creed or poetical 
 school — who have laboured well and honestly in the cause of 
 literature. If this be recoo-nized as a link connectinj]^ and aivinij 
 a certain unity of purpose to the following sketches, I shall be 
 abundantly satisfied, and feel that much kind confidence reposed 
 in me, and much kind assistance bestowed upon me, have not 
 been wholly given in vain. 
 
 H. F. C. 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 Since the First Edition of this work made its appearance, the 
 English public have had to deplore the loss of many of the 
 distinguished men whose portraits it contains. Hence it has 
 become necessary in this reprint to add a few lines to the 
 memoirs of those Authors who were livino; at the date of the 
 former publication. This has been done briefly, without modify- 
 ing the text of the original work, and, as much as possible, in 
 that spirit of genial and respectful sympathy which characterized 
 its pages. 
 
 G. B. 
 
 London, September, 1801. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 FELICIA HEMANS . 
 
 kSIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 LORD BYRON . . . , 
 
 DR. SOUTHEY . 
 
 COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 EDWARD LYTTON BULWER 
 
 LADY MORGAN 
 
 PERCY BYSSIIE SHELLEY 
 
 THOMAS MOORE . 
 
 CHARLES LAMB . 
 
 MARY RUSSELL MITFORD 
 
 THOMAS CAMPBELL 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 JE 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 
 
 AFTER A 
 
 BUST Br Angus Fletcher . . . E. W. WYON 
 
 BUST BY Sir F. Chantrey, R.A. . . H. WEEKES 
 
 bust by E. Bailey, R.A. . . . E. W. WYON 
 
 model E, W. WYON 
 
 bust by Bartolini H. WEEKES 
 
 BUST BY S. Arnaid . . . . E. W. WYON 
 
 model E. W. WYON 
 
 MODEL E. W. WYON 
 
 MODEL E. W. WYON 
 
 BUST BY Kirk E. W. WYON 
 
 MODEL H. WEEKES 
 
 MODEL E. W. WYON 
 
 BUST BY E. Bailey, R.A. . . . E. W. WYON 
 
 BUST BY Sir F. Cu.\ntkey, R.A. . . H. WEEKES 
 

THE 
 
 AUTHOIIS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 MRS. HEMANS. 
 
 Whether in recognition of the popularity which attended her poems in her own country 
 and America (they arc, as yet, too little known on the Continent), or in honour of the 
 earnest and generous devotion to her heart, which was the moving principle of her life, 
 Felicia Ilemans claims a place of honour among the modern Authors of England. 
 
 She was born in Duke Street, Liverpool, on the 25th of September, 1791: her father, 
 Mr. Browne, a merchant of that town, was related to the Sligo family. On her mother's 
 side she could claim the ancestry of a noble and distinguished Venetian house, whose high 
 name, Yeniero, had been of late generations corrrupted into Wagner. Felicia Dorothea 
 (the latter name was wholly dropped by her as she grew up) was the second daughter, and 
 the fourth child of a family of three sons and as many daughters. From her earliest 
 infancy she gave token of being possessed of many good gifts — of a temperament quick 
 and affectionate, a memory singularly retentive, and an imagination which instinctively 
 attached itself to and appropriated everything that was noble and beautiful. She had an 
 ear for music — an eye for drawing: nor was ])ersonal loveliness wanting to her ; her com- 
 plexion was remarkable for its delicacy and brilliance — her hair for its profusion and 2;olden 
 hue. Who can wonder that, thus endowed, she should be the object of more than ordinary 
 attachment and anticipation ? 
 
 The derangement of ]\Ir. Browne's affairs, which took place at a very early period of her 
 life, was followed by the removal of his family from Liverpool to a retr(!at in North Wales — 
 a circumstance likely, beyond all others, to devclope the peculiar natural gifts with which 
 she was endowed. She was thus entirely left under the care of her mother — herself an 
 elegant and accomplished woman ; and, at an age when other girls are for the most part 
 forced through the mechanical routine of boarding-school training, she was educating herself, 
 by becoming a diligent and passionate student of our old English poets — gathering up half 
 a dozen languages, no one knew how ; and, better still, unconsciously filling her mind with a 
 
 B 
 
2 MHS. IIEMANS. 
 
 thousand sights, and sounds, and associations connected with the scenery among which hev 
 youth was spent, ller residence, Grwych, near Abcrgeh', was a solitary house on the sea- 
 shore. It was affecting, in the last hours of her life, to perceive with what tenderness and 
 minute remembrance she spoke of this place, and of the vague, restless, yearnings, which 
 had there passed through her mind : had she lived, she would have embodied these in a 
 prose work, which was to be called " Recollections of a Poet's Childhood." Few better 
 than herself could have traced back the bewildering unfolding of powers, the unconscious 
 formation of habits, which, alien to, and apart from this world's wisdom, and prudence, too 
 often mark their possessor — more especially if she belong to the gentler sex — for a life in 
 which fame and sorrow have an equal share. 
 
 Another circumstance which tended to give its peculiar direction to her genius, was the 
 engagement of both of her brothers in the Peninsular campaign. In her earliest volume 
 of poems, published by subscription when she was only thirteen, we find little but sweet 
 birth-day verses, fairy songs, and the like ; but in the second, which followed shortly after, 
 are to be discerned strong traces of the kindling of that chivalresque and romantic spirit 
 which made " My Cid" one of her favourite heroes in after years, and a cross of the 
 Legion of Honour, a trophy from a Spanish battle-field, an ornament proudly worn and 
 reverently cherished. One of her early poems "England and Spain," was translated 
 into Spanish ; and though the volume in question bears the gentle title of " The Domestic 
 Affections," it contains a large share of verses on warlike and heroic themes. The same 
 instinct towards the picturesque made her early an enthusiastic admirer of works of art, 
 particularly of sculpture. " Her first works," to quote the IMemorials recently published, 
 ** are purely classical, or purely romantic; their poems may be compared to antique groups 
 of sculpture, or the mailed monumental figures of the ]\Iiddle Ages set in motion." 
 Besides the two volumes here mentioned, there are a few other single and fugitive poems 
 bearing this early date ; they are, however, remarkable for little save for that smoothness 
 of versification and selectness of language which she afterwards carried to such perfection. 
 
 It was when she was only eighteen, with a mind as full of the romance of youthful 
 poetry as it was untutored in worldly ex])erience, that ]\Iiss Browne married Captain 
 Hemans, of the Fourth llegiment. The result might have been easily foreseen. After 
 a few years spent together, in which each party, probably, became more and more alive 
 to the mistake of such an union, than to the mutual concessions which might have rendered 
 it as happy as fancy had promised, Captain Hemans went abroad, shortly before the birth 
 of his fifth son. It would be fruitless to dwell upon the details of this sei)aration, which, 
 however, it must be added, contributed largely to give their peculiar colour and tendency to 
 Mrs. Hemans' feelings and thoughts during the remainder of her career — to increase her 
 disposition to dwell upon the sacrifices and regrets of life in preference to its more cheerful 
 scenes. Many of her poems, indeed, arc little more than so many varied utterances of the 
 thought so beautifully j)ut by Cooper into the mouth of one of his Indian characters, " Let 
 not my child be a girl, for very sorrowful is the life of a woman." In all of them there 
 breathes an aspiration towards that future state of spiritual existence, where 
 
 there arc none that die, 
 And none that weep, and none that say " Fare well ; " 
 
 — where the yearnings of human affection will be satisfied, the dreams of imagination 
 fulfilled — which could hardly have been the pervading feeling of one who had enjoyed 
 domestic happiness and protection, who had been wisely and kindly taught that a cheerful 
 and healthy famiUarity with the small duties and self-denials of common life, exalts 
 
MRS. IIEMAXS. 3 
 
 rather than enfeebles the poet — enhirg-es his synipatliics, instead of, as some have morbidly 
 complained, wearing them down and ultimately destroying them. 
 
 After the departure of her husband, Mrs. Hemans still continued to reside under her 
 mother's roof, dividing her leisure between the study of all such authors as could minister 
 to her peculiar tastes and desires, and her own compositions, which were numerous and 
 progressively successful — each of them being less coldly classical, more individual than 
 its predecessor. Ey degrees, too, she attached to herself a small circle of literary friends, 
 among whom must be mentioned the names of Heber and Milman ; and it must not be 
 forgotten, that she was sought out in her retreat by Shelley, whom the fame of her talents 
 and beauty had reached, and who addressed a singular series of letters to her. It was 
 during these years that she successively published her prize poems, " Wallace," and 
 *' Dartmoor" (the latter gained its honour from the Royal Society of Literature in 1821), 
 the " Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy," " Modern Greece," " Tales and Historic 
 Scenes," and the " Sceptic." Besides these, many fragments of poems and plans of works 
 never completed, remain to attest the eagerness with which her mind was busying itself in 
 the reproduction of the thoughts and images of beauty, which she could not refrain from 
 storing up. It was by the advice of Bishop Ilcbcr, who was then occasionally resident in 
 St. Asaph, that she next engaged in a labour more arduous than any she had hitherto 
 undertaken, — the composition of a tragedy. This, "The Vespers of Palermo," after the 
 usual delays and difficulties, was brought forward at Covcnt Garden in the month of 
 December, 1823, but with partial success. The story was somewhat impracticable for 
 stage purposes; and the play was endangered, if not sacrificed, by the lady to whom the 
 part of the heroine was entrusted. In many letters, written while she was enduring a 
 suspense of two years' length with respect to the fate of her first drama, Mrs. Ilemans 
 showed a patience and good-humour which are not very common among authors in similar 
 circumstances; and there is something very sweet and feminine in her manner of contriving 
 to extract even comfort out of her disappointment. She says, in one letter, that she can 
 hardly regret the failure of the tragedy, as it was the means of arousing a near and dear 
 member of her family from the state of depression into which he had been plunged by a 
 recent domestic bereavement. 
 
 "The Siege of Valencia " was published in the course of the year 1825. Independently 
 of the power and passion displayed by its author in working out the fine chivalrous talc 
 upon which this di'amatic poem is founded, })artieularly in the management of its two 
 female characters, Elmina and Ximena, the volume which contained it was attractive, as 
 also including the glowing and picturesque "Songs of the Cid" and the " Voice of 
 Spring." The latter must be pointed out as one of the first of those fanciful lyrics, 
 which, in their form, at least, are peculiar to Mrs. Hemans; and which, yet more than 
 her elaborate poems, contributed to gain for her a wide and genial reputation. The "Welsh 
 Melodies" had already made her known as a song-writer; but it is from the a])pearing of 
 the volume in question, and the " Lays of Many Lands," at first singly published in the 
 " New Monthly Magazine," that her popularity is to be dated. She had already made 
 friendship with many of her sister writers ; the public now began to look to her as one of 
 the most gifted of the number. Every periodical of any respectability (and that was the 
 golden time of magazines and annuals) became eager to secure her services ; and while 
 " The Treasures of the Deep," and "The Cross in the Wilderness," and "The Sicilian 
 Captive," made her beloved and admired in England, as one who had more than fulfilled 
 the promise of her youth, her ballad of "The Pilgrim Fathers" had crossed the Atlantic, 
 and made her name a household word in America. A school of imitators immediately 
 
 B 2 
 
4 MRS. TIEMANS. 
 
 sprunc; up there; and of all tlic flatteries and offers of service which were showered and 
 pressed upon her, none were more hiirlily prized, because none were more genuine, than 
 the warm-hearted and universal sympathy which her works excited on the other side of the 
 Atlantic. A most liberal invitation indeed was sent to her, to induce her to take up her 
 residence in America, for the purpose of conducting a periodical there. This, it is almost 
 needless to add, she declined. 
 
 As beloniring to the freshest, if not the most active period of her mind's life, must be 
 mentioned the enthusiasm with which INIrs. Hemans threw herself upon the study of 
 German. A thousand traces and reflections of the pursuit will be found in all her poems, 
 published about this time. In her letters she speaks of it "as that rich and affectionate 
 lan"-ua"-c in which I delight," and she is never wearied of again and again referring to the 
 strenijth and comfort, and enlargement of her powers, which she found in making herself 
 acquainted with its literature. 
 
 "The Forest Sanctuary/' Mrs. Ilemans' longest poem, — it has been said, her own 
 favourite among her many works, — succeeded the "Siege of Valencia" after but a short 
 interval. Perhaps in her estimate of its merits she was nearer the truth than authors arc 
 generallv admitted to be. It is needless to remind the English reader that this talc turns 
 upon the fortunes and mental struggles of those embracing the Protestant faith in the dark 
 days of the Spanish Inquisition ; its hero being a young nobleman, converted after witness- 
 ing the martyrdom of a priest and his two sisters — imprisoned for his heresy — afterwards 
 escaping to the New World in company with his faithful and gentle wife ; who, with a true 
 woman's devotedness, shares his flight, though she shares not his faith ; and dies of the 
 struggle between her love and her conscience. The versification of this legend is varied 
 and musical ; some of the descriptions are written in " words that burn," and, themselves 
 the offspring of strong emotion, must excite corresponding feelings in those who read. 
 
 The health of J\Irs. Hemans, which self-neglect had already impaired, began to be seri- 
 ously affected by the earnestness with which she threw all her whole soul into her pursuits. 
 These, indeed, were only laid aside when sadder thoughts claimed entrance. She was too 
 >vholly absorbed in her art to be cither hapj)y or at ease in the world of general society. 
 To the few friends who could take part in her fancies, and to whom she "could show all 
 that was in her heart," she was a fascinating companion ; no less fascinating in the play 
 of a quaint and graceful humour, than in the eloquent utterance of the deeper thoughts 
 which breathe through her verse. Among her chief intimates one must not be forgotten 
 — herself a woman of extraordinary attainments and mental gifts. This was Miss Jews- 
 bury, afterwards Mrs. Fletcher, who, unfortunately for the world of female litcrsiturc, died 
 young : her best works, from being chiefly scattered about in different periodicals, have 
 never received anything beyond the notice or*])raise of the passing hour. AVith this lady 
 Mrs. Hemans maintained a confidential and frequent correspondence. " In her private 
 letters, as in her })ublishcd works, she shows herself high-minded, affectionate, grateful, 
 wayward in her self-neglect, delicate to fastidiousness in her tastes, in her religion fervent 
 without intolerance, eager to acquire knowledge, as eager to im])art it to others, earnestly 
 devoted to her art, and, in that art, to the service of all things beautiful and holy." 
 
 Such being the woman — and the woman and the poetess being one — the title of her 
 next work, " liecords of Woman," is an earnest of its success. It ^Yas, indeed, written 
 from the fulness of her heart ; and the execution of most of the sketches which it 
 contains admirably seconds the emotions under the strong influence of which it was 
 undertaken and comjfleted. This has been the most j)()|)ular of Mrs. Hen)ans' works. 
 The last written of its poems weie composed with the depressing j)rospect before her 
 
MRS. IlEMANS. 5 
 
 of a dispersion of tlic linmc-oirclc wherein she had always fonnd shelter, and leisnre to 
 ])ursuc her engrossing calHng nndisturbed — which was to send her forth into the world, 
 for the first time — alone, and as innocent of its ways and wisdom as a child. 
 
 In the summer of the year 1828, Mrs. llemans removed from llhyllon, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of St. Asaph, to the village of Wavertree, about three miles distant from 
 Liverpool. There, in a small house, " the third of a cluster or row close to a dusty 
 road," she began to make her acquaintance with the practical duties of life and society. 
 Her new residence was unfortunately chosen. She bore ill with a change from the 
 retirement of the country, to the civilities and constraints of a neighbourhood as unin- 
 tellectual as it was sociable. Here, too, the inconveniences of celebrity pressed on her 
 most heavily — the constant calls and claims upon her attention, the flatteries written, 
 spoken, and acted, which were intruded upon her, at once excited and annoyed her. 
 In short, during the three years she passed at Wavertree, her mind was more restless, 
 more subject to j)ainful alternations of mood than at any previous or subsequent period ; 
 and her lyrics written during this time, though as delicately sweet as her other poems, dwell 
 too exclusively upon the unquiet workings of a feverish and desponding spirit — utter too 
 constantly the melancholy exclamation, "Alone! alone!" of the mysterious guest of St. 
 Leon, ^yhile resident at Wavertree, however, she drew round her a small circle of attached 
 friends, and it was in the course of the summers of 1830 and 1831 tliat she paid those 
 visits to Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Wordsworth which arc so delightfully described in her 
 correspondence recently published. The last-named, poet she regarded, of later years, 
 almost in the light of a spiritual guide. The only work of any length written by her 
 whilst at Wavertree was the " Spirit^s Return," the principal poem in her next collection of 
 Lyrics, the " Songs of the Affections." This was based upon too shadowy and spiritual a 
 theme to become as genei-ally popular as any of the " Records " had been : it contains, 
 nevertheless, some of her loftiest thoughts and most dignified language. About this time, 
 too, she began to take great pleasure in writing expressly for music. The Spanish songs 
 she contributed to Colonel Hodges' "Peninsular Melodies" must not be forgotten; nor the 
 many spirited or melancholy canzoni and ballads, which, associated with her sister's music, 
 have been sung from one end of England to the other. 
 
 In the year 1831 Mrs. Hemans, being disappointed with Wavertree as a residence, and 
 tempted by the superior advantages which the Irish metropolis afforded in the education of 
 the three sons remaining under her care, removed to Dublin, in which city she continued 
 to reside, with little intermission, till her decease. As heretofore, she shrunk from general 
 society, and confined her intercourse to one or two intimate and attached friends; occupy- 
 ing her mind, more than her rapidly-waning health rendered prudent, in a thousand literary 
 plans and schemes; each year a little happier than she had been the last, from an increase 
 of calmness of spirit. It was only shortly before her death that a new feeling of the 
 responsibilities of her ai't seemed to possess her, that, to use her own words, "having 
 passed through the feverish, and somewhat visionary state of mind often connected with 
 the passionate study of art in early life," she began to conceive herself "bound to higher 
 and holier tasks," — to meditate, in short, the application of her rich and various stores of 
 thought and information to the service of the altar. Her wish was to enlarge the sphere 
 of sacred poetry; and in pursuance of this object, the " Scenes and Hymns of Life" were 
 written. These and her collected "National Lyrics and Songs for Music," and a charming 
 little volume of "Hymns for Childhood," appeared in the course of the year 1834; and 
 she was rapidly tracing out the plan of a further series of sacred poems, to be called the 
 " Christian Temple," when her purpose was arrested by rapidly-increasing illness. She 
 had been always liable to violent nervous affections, and iu addition to these, in the autumn 
 
MRS. IIEMANS. 
 
 of 1834, was attacked by the scarlet fever, from which, when but imperfectly^ recovered, an 
 act of personal carelessness broui^ht on a more lingering malady, the ague. Throughout 
 the following winter her mind seemed, as it were, battling with disease ; pouring out its 
 last thous;hts with a profusion and a fervour which gave no tokens of feebleness or decay. 
 Her last lyric, " Despondency and Aspiration " (published among her " Poetical llcmains "), 
 is assuredly her best, whether in its aim, or its imagery, or its versification. She was affec- 
 tionately tended by those who could do little more than witness her decay — the earlier part 
 of the year 1835 being spent at Kedesdale, a country seat belonging to the Archbishop of 
 Dublin. The exertion consequent upon the appointment of her fourth son to a place in a 
 government office increased her malady; in addition to which, serious dropsical symptoms 
 manifested themselves : and after passing through the various stages of disease and decline, 
 with a patience and a wilHngncss to depart, and an unobtrusive but fervent piety, which 
 were as soothing as they were beautiful to witness, she sunk to sleep on the evening of 
 Saturday the IGth of May, to awaken in "the better land," of which she had so often sung 
 with a yearning and prophetic fondness 1 
 
1 
 
1 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 [p in the case of any author of England the few illustrative words demanded from us could 
 )e reasonably dispensed with, it would be in Sir Walter Scott's. AVe should hardly set 
 )urselves to write of the sun that it shines, — of rivers as flowing water; in like manner, 
 vhen treating of one whose name and fume have filled the world as a household word, and 
 hat within the compass of our own memories — whose character offers us no difficulties to 
 loive — whose life contained few mysteries to be unriddled — our task would be sufficiently 
 )erformcd were we to content ourselves with writing down the dates of 
 
 His bh-th— August 15th, 1771. 
 His marriage— Dec. 2yth, 17 90. 
 His death— Sept. 21st, 1H32. 
 
 \s if to make any biograjdiical notice, any allusion to the life and progress of his author- 
 ship yet more superfluous, — after the delightful confessions given to the world in the 
 \uthor of Waverley's own prefaces, and after the mass of panegyric and criticism put on 
 )apcr by every witling who could hold a pen, and talked by every trifler capable of the 
 exertion of reading a novel, — the public are now receiving an extended biography of the 
 3oet and romancer, at the hands of one who, from the connection of a long and affectionate 
 ntimacy, no less than the possession of taste and scholarship, seemed the person best fitted 
 for the task. 
 
 And yet, on sitting down to fulfil a prescribed duty, it is impossible to avoid feeling with 
 rt'hat a freshness of interest we enter ujjon Scott's life and writings, as though they were a 
 tirgin ground, where no feet have anticipated our own. This is the miracle most eminently 
 svrought by Genius when it appears among men in company with the virtues so closely 
 illied to it, but with which, according to the fashion too common among near relations, it 
 shows such a constant tendency to quarrel ; when it speaks not merely in a voice that 
 jharms every ear and touches every heart, but that charms with holy and lawful spells, and 
 touches but to awaken noble and generous emotions. We are curious about Byron — we 
 ire strangely and mournfully interested in Shelley's fate, but we luve Scott, and are as far 
 from being weary of recalling the incidents of his life, of considering the strong healthy 
 lineaments of his mind's features, as we are from wearying of dwelling upon the history — 
 of recalling the well-known looks and gestures of some attached and valued friend, long- 
 since become a part of ourselves. Whether our children will consent to inherit the pre- 
 dilections of their fathers, or criticize and dismiss what we have loved and cherished, it is 
 not easy to foresee. The age we have elsewhere ventured to characterize as being one 
 whose spirit is change; but, to us, the author of "The Lay," and " Waverley," and 
 '' Ivanhoe," stands among the immortals, in the same mansion as Shakspeare, — though, 
 indeed, on a lower throne ! 
 
 The date of Sir Walter Scott's birth has already been recorded. The precious Abbotsford 
 manuscript with which ]\Ir. Lockhart opens his biography, furnishes us, from the poet's 
 own hand, with an engaging sketch of his ancient and honourable parentage — of his 
 warm-hearted grandfather, the most sanguine and imprudent of gentlemen farmers — of. 
 
8 SIR AVALTER SCOTT. 
 
 his father (the Saunders Fairford of " Kcdgauntlct "), a shrewd nnd upright lawyer; though 
 sonicwliat of a foniiahst in enforcing domestic discipHnc and in desjjising thi; ornaments of 
 life, not wlioUy devoid of that sweetness and geniality of temperament which made his sou 
 80 love-worthy, and which run likes a thread of sterling gold through every page and verse 
 he wrote. Those fond of eoiuparisous, who have been used to regard Scott and Byron 
 side by side, or in ojjposition, while they remember that both were in infancy marked by 
 the same natural blemish — the former the most seriously — cannot but also advert to the 
 different influences which their lameness exercised over the destinies of the two boys, and 
 contrast, with a sigh, the fortunes of Byron, foreshadowed in his mother's bitter taunts, 
 with those of Scott, sent out while an infant to Sandy Knowe, to be strengthened by the 
 free moorland air — to be nursed by ewe-milkers, and tended by the " Cow-Bailie." The 
 germ of " Childe Harold " and " Cain '' and " Don Juan " formed itself withni the former 
 during these years of infancy, not more surely and imperceptibly than the germ of " Guy 
 Mannering'' and " the Heart of Mid-Lothian'' was generated at a similar period within the 
 latter, who isstill talked of as " sweet-tempered bairn, gleg at the up take," and who, having 
 been forgotten during a thunder-storm, among the heathery knolls, was found lying on his 
 back, clappping his hands at the lightning, and crying " Bonny ! bonny !" at every Hash. 
 
 But if we com])are the circumstances of the boyhoods of Byron and Scott, that we may 
 not fail of the example supplied to us by the diligent, benevolent life of the latter as a man, 
 wc are bound also to compare their natural gifts, lest we lose hold of that charity which 
 makes us compassionate, while we point out the wanderings and heart-struggles of the 
 former. His genius, the strength of which was essentially the strength of passion, was 
 therefore certain early to force its way to the surface; Scott's, whose mission was to appeal 
 to the gentler sympathies of persons of every age and class, required to be ripened, — to be 
 fed by accumulation ere it floived abroad, rather than burst forth. Though he was remark- 
 able for his quickness as a child, and though the usual number of ready answers, and 
 capricious indications of talent, are recorded of him during his school days, — though he 
 carlv gave evidence of possessing an amazing memory, as well as tastes indisputably poetical, 
 though he early began to hoard relics, and to collect and recast ballads and faery tales, 
 there was little, — thanks to the equability of his temperament, and the unaffected liveliness 
 of his disposition, — to stamp him with the dangerous gift of admitted pre-eminence among 
 the well-born and well-educated young men with whom he consorted upon entering the 
 legal profession, which he did on the 17th of May, 1786. He was not one of those 
 fantastic and exacting beings, in whom their sensations must be excited by inequality in 
 companionship or licentiousness in adventure, — who must love or loatlie, and be "cradled 
 into poetry through wrong," if not of other persons' contriving, of their own. Gifted with 
 a light heart, and a remarkable unconsciousness of his own jjowers (for he writes of himself 
 as " not blessed with the talents of Burns or Chatterton, and haj)pily exempted from the 
 influence of their violent passions, exasperated by the struggle of feelings which rose up 
 against the decrees of fortune "), Scott took the world as he found it, equally contented, it 
 seems, whether he rode about in Liddersdale — Dandie Dinmont's country — by the side of 
 liis friend Shortreed, '' makin himsel" all the while, or whether he sat cracking jokes, or 
 eating oysters in the Covenant Close, among his clever mates of the Outer House. Some- 
 thing, too, of the excellent and cheerful common sense which distinguishes Scott among 
 his contemporaries, throughout the whole of his literary career, may be ascribed to the 
 influence of his father's example, which must have often made itself felt, even when it was 
 not confessed. It was at his instance that ^y alter Scott devoted himself to the studies of 
 the law, — it was to his prudence that he owed an exemption as a very young man from 
 those extreme trials of fortune, which, while they so often sting Genius into a feverish 
 
SIR AVAT.TER SCOTT. 9 
 
 activit}', drive its impatient possessor into that moral recklessness so fatal to its own 
 happiness, — so injurious to society, as holding up to its notice error far easier to pity than 
 to blame. 
 
 It needs not here once again to dwell upon the various preparations through which 
 "Walter Scott's mind passed, to detail the cautious and progressive steps by which he 
 entered authorship as a translator — a few German ballads, and the "Goetz vdu Ber- 
 lichingen," being the object of his first essay — and as a gatherer of the Minstrelsy of 
 the Border. We have indicated the dispositions and the circumstances which conspired 
 in an extraordinary degree to give his natural genius its fairest play : and the particulars of 
 his romance readings, — of his antiquarian tastes, how they grew, — of the judicious female 
 relations and friends (Mrs. Scott, of Harden, and ]\Iiss Cranstoun, afterwards Countess 
 Purgstall) who encouraged him to go on and prosper in original composition, — of his 
 Highland and Lowland forays, in the course of which he learned to know by heart the 
 picturesque scenery of his own land, — are already too well known to the world to require 
 repetition. For a like reason, having already given the date of his marriage with Miss 
 Charpentier, we need not allude to its sequel, including their subsequent residences at 
 Lasswade, Ashestiel, and Abbotsford, except it be for the sake of the beautiful trait recorded 
 by Mr. Lockhart of the poet, who, after he had become a great man, and a renowned 
 author, could not refrain from turning aside from the straight road, when upon a journey, 
 to look at the unpretending cottage, which had been his first country shelter during the 
 years of his married life : and to point out to his friend, ]\Ir. Morritt, the arch of willows 
 above the gate, which, at the time of its construction, he declared himself to have viewed 
 with as large a share of complacency and admiration as he had afterwards to bestow on the 
 romantic splendours of Abbotsford. 
 
 Here, then, however strongly tempted to advert to the personal history of the subsequent 
 years of Scott's life, — to dwell upon the hospitality extended by him to guests distin- 
 guished and obscure, when his appointment to the Sheriffship of Selkirkshire, and the 
 signal success of his first poems ''the Lay," and " ]\Lirmion,'' and "the Lady of the 
 Lake," for a while made his purse full, yet not so full as his heart was open — upon the 
 literary friendships which were the necessary consequence of his fast-growing celebrity, 
 and which were maintained with an enviable and self-postponing courtesy never to be 
 forgotten; upon the diligence, vigilance, and activity which he threw into his pursuits, 
 thereby converting the precarious vicissitudes of literature into professional certainties — 
 however much tempted, for example's sake, to dwell upon each or any of these points, they 
 must of necessity be passed by. A bald enumeration, or little more, of the numerous and 
 widely-varied compositions, which Scott continued to present to the public, from the time 
 when "the Ministrclsy of the Scottish Border" was published to the days of "Count 
 Eobert of Paris" will, of itself, overgrow the space yet left us. 
 
 The first of the works, by which, as Scott himself says, he " laid his claim to be considered 
 as an original writer," "the Lay of the Last Minstrel" — began, he tells us, to please the 
 young Countess of Buccleueh, and wrought out in a measure suggested by the "Christ- 
 abel" of Coleridge — made its appearance in the year 1805. The public had been, in some 
 measure, prepared for an outbreak of the spirit of old Romance in this its wildest form, by 
 the publication of the Border Minstrels}', and the ballads which Scott had contributed 
 to the IMiscellany collected by Monk Lewis ; and yet more by the treasury of quaint 
 legendai'y lore, annexed in the notes of the first-mentioned work, and told with that gusto 
 which distinguishes the poet from the antiquarian. But " the Lay " must have a thou- 
 sand-fold exceeded whatever expectations had been excited. Here and there, indeed, a 
 critic might be found protesting against the supernatural machinery introduced, or 
 
10 SIR ^\ ALTER srOTT. 
 
 counting on bis fingers the syllables of its wild but musical verses, or recommending 
 Mr. Scott to bestow time, pains, and talents on an epic. AVhat mattered their exceptions ? 
 " The public," as Allan Cunningham pleasantly says, in speaking of '' the Lady of the Lake," 
 ''took uj) the matter for themselves, regardless of the admonitions of the learned, and the 
 cautions of the critics." Scott had touched the right chord; and he who could do so, not 
 only once, but twice, and even a third time — who could make fair Melrose and Loch 
 Katrine and the Trosaehs a Mecca to pilgrims from every corner of Europe, and place 
 Floddcn Field before us, ])eopling it with all the life and motion of the olden struggle, 
 might well afford " to hear, and to sec, and to say nothing." But as he was temperate in 
 the estimate of his own powers, so also was Scott eminently candid in listening to counsel 
 and in considering his relations with the public. "Whilst he was conscious that elaborate 
 polish and formal construction, and constant reference to a calculated purpose, were im- 
 possible to him, and therefore bestowed less labour in change and correction than some 
 thought seemlv, no author was ever more rationally awake to every fluctuation in the ])ulse 
 of public favour, — or more respectfully unwilling to reserve the regard of his audience, by 
 exhibiting those fantastic tricks, by which others have endeavoured, with a short-sighted 
 tyranny, to extort a blind homage from their admirers. No one ever enjoyed fame more 
 honestly than Scott ; but when he found that " Rokeby," and '' the Lord of the Isles,'* 
 and his other minor poems " Don Roderick," and " Harold the Dauntless/-" and " the 
 Dridal of Triermain/' were each, in its degree, less successful than his first rhymed 
 romances, he gave up his celebrity as easily as he had acquired it — without vexation 
 or envy. Let us see in what unaffected language he discusses the decline of his popu- 
 larity. "The manner or style," he says, "which, by its novelty, attracted the public 
 in an unusual degree, had now, after having been so long before them, begun to lose 
 its charms. For this there was no remedy : the harmony became tiresome and ordinary, 
 and both the original inventor and his invention must have fallen into contempt, if he 
 had not found out another road to ])ublic favour." * * * * " Besides all this " 
 (Scott has been speaking of the most of his imitators) "a mighty and unexpected rival 
 was advancing on the stage — a rival not in poetical powers only, but in attracting popula- 
 rity, in ^vhich the present writer had preceded better men than himself." The reader will 
 see that Byron is here meant, who, after a little vatilation of no great promise, now 
 appeared as a serious candidate in the first canto of " Childe Harold." 
 
 The same excellent judgment and hopefulness of spirit, so evident in the foregoing 
 passage — which being applied to regulate a genius, versatile as it was rich, produced such 
 a splendid result of fame— may be traced throughout the whole of Scott's literary career. 
 They helped him pleasantly through the heavy labours of editorship, with which he pro- 
 ceeded steadily duiing all the period when his creative i)ovvers were the busiest at work. The 
 new editions of Dryden and Swift, of the " Somers' Tracts," and the " Sadler Papers," were 
 tasks long and heavy enough for the lifetime of an ordinary literary man : they were dis- 
 posed of by Scott, with no more apparent fatigue than if they had been ephemeral and 
 unimportant works. He found time, too, to lend a most efficient hand to the critical organ 
 of his jiarty, then just established— the " Quarterly Review"— to say nothing of the comple- 
 tion of many other and lighter literary undertakings, and of the private counsel and 
 assistance bestowed by him u])()n his less eminent brethren. 
 
 It was at the turning ])oint of Scott's literary career, when he was passing out of fashion 
 as a poet, and ere he had won his spurs as a romancer, that he took up his residence at 
 Abbotsford. In establishing himself upon his new purchase, and beautifying it, all his 
 healthy natural tastes were called into play. Here he indulged his picturesque fancy by 
 planting and buildvig a romance which he has somewhere or other playfully characterized 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 11 
 
 as the one of his works of which he was proudest. By the manner in which he distributed 
 his time, he was enabled to close at noon the literary day, which was begun when the rest of 
 the world are in bed, and thus to provide himself with aini)lc leisure to superintend his 
 young plantations, or to direct, viva voce, how and where this carved stone, or the other 
 morsel of ancient sculpture, was to be embedded in the walls of his new building, — or 
 to receive and enjoy the society of the myriad of strangers of every rank, and class, and 
 station, who poured across the border, all naturally most eager to gaze upon the master 
 spirit of Scotland. Hence it was, that upon the completion and ])ublication of " Waverley " 
 (in 1814), a work, be it remembered, which had been laid aside for some half-dozen years, 
 at the instigation of cautious advisci's, — though there were many who recognized in a 
 moment the "True Prince^' through his disguise, as certainly as if he had presented himself 
 before them in his own costume; — though Miss Edgeworth (no mean authority) attacked 
 him at once with her "Aut Scotiis aid Diabolus ;" a large number of matter-of-fact persons 
 refused to believe the evidence of their senses, and pronounced unhesitatingly that the 
 Novel could not be Scott's; every nook and corner of whose literary leisure was known to 
 be crowded with assigned occupations. Another company, again, formed of those who will 
 always be wiser than their neighbours, and "could speak an they would," chose to 
 rc])resent themselves as partakers in the mystery, and to throw out something more than 
 hints of ladies in the Highlands, of officers in Canada and the West Indies, to whom the 
 parentage of "the illustrious stranger'' and his followers was to be ascribed. 
 
 It is amusing now, to look back at the absurdities vented concerning the Waverley Novels 
 on their first appearing; it is curious to reflect how completely the sensation they excited is 
 a thing of past times. We doubt, whether any work or works, even as original in their 
 manner as they were, and addressing as large a class as they did, could in the present days, 
 when enthusiasm is gone to sleep, and one event is jostled out of sight by another ere it 
 has had time to produce any impression, excite a similar sensation. Well might Scott, after 
 a six weeks' absence from home, and seclusion from the world of rumours, be surprised and 
 pleased at the success which had already attended his new essay. Well might he gird 
 himself up, strong in the consciousness of his immense resources, to produce another, and 
 another, and another — a " Guy Mannering," a " Rob Roj^," an " Old Mortality," a " Bride 
 of Lammermoor," and an "Ivanhoe :" in each and all of these scattering about hints and 
 inventions, and incidental characters, which of themselves, if fully wrought out, were 
 enough to have made the fortune of any novelist ! And here, having been led by accident 
 to the remark, we cannot but insist upon Scott's fertility as one of his most remarkable 
 characteristics — the more strongly because it has been less emphatically dwelt upon, than, 
 in its proportion, it deserved. Almost every figure in his works, even if sketched but as an 
 accessary, is a character, whose untold exploits and endurances we can work out for our- 
 selves. Do we not see Mrs. Flockheart, the warm-hearted Scotch landlady', as clearly as 
 Fergus and Flora, or as the pedantic and courteous old Baron of Bradwardine, and the 
 faithful Evan Dhu Maccombich ? And are not jNIartha Trai)bois, and the scarlet-hosed 
 Gillian, whose coquettish desire to attract the male sex, was stronger than age and poverty, 
 as familiar to us as gentle King Jamie, or the constable of Chester, the more prominent 
 figures in each romance ? Our examples have been purposely selected at random, and from 
 the later as well as the earlier novels, to show that his affluence of creative power did not 
 forsake Scott till the last. He would himself speak of it with an almost disparaging 
 candour, pleading in excuse for the inartificial structure of many of his plots, the im- 
 possibility of restraining himself from finishing to a disproportionate importance his 
 secondary characters, whose forms, often determined by accident in the first instance, 
 chanced to please him, and, in the end, seduced him from the principal personage of his story. 
 
12 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Hitherto the world liacl only looked ujion Scott as sailing upon the stream of good 
 fortune; as winning golden opinions from all classes of men, and wearing in his heart the 
 blessed consciousness that, beyond all his contemporaries, he had ministered to the health v 
 enjoyment of his countrymen. The freedom of his works, not merely from thoughts, but 
 from words that are exceptionable, considering their vast extent, and the rapidity with 
 which they were composed, is extraordinaiy ; a thing which should never be lost sight of. 
 And his fame, as it deserved to be, was fed by love and not curiosity. ^Vho was there in all 
 Great Britain that did not feel when he was made a Baronet that the title had fallen on the 
 head which would do it honour; and yet what was his Baronetcy to the affection (the word 
 is not too strong) with which he was regarded by all classes, from the highest to the lowest ? 
 The anecdote of the Scots Grey opening a way for him down Abingdon Street, on the day 
 of the Coronation ; of the fishmonger toiling up from the City to Regent's Park, rather 
 than he should be disappointed, are more than merely amusing, if they are read as evidences 
 of the em})ire which the gifted may exercise over their fellow-men. On the other hand, wc 
 might string together a thousand traits of beneficence and consideration on the part of 
 Scott as a man, which are no less worthy of remembrance. We might speak of the large- 
 ness of his sympathies, which remained unspoiled to the last. The author who could come 
 forward so calmly and yet so nobly, to stem the tide of obloquy setting in with such unjust 
 vehemence against Byron, could also in Paris remember the little tastes and fancies of all 
 his retainers and servants, and " the bonnie Mull " which the Laird brought home for the 
 old quarryman, remains as striking a testimony to the amiability of his spirit, as his 
 generous and eloquent defence of the author of " Fax'e thee well." 
 
 But the tapestry was now to be turned ; the great change to be made known which 
 shadowed the later years of Scott's life. We can hardly call this misfortune, which called 
 forth in so eminent a degree all that was noble in his nature. " Sir Walter Scott," said 
 ]\lr. Cunningham, "owing to the failure of commercial speculations in which he was a 
 ])artuer, became responsible for the payment of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds ; 
 lie refused to become a bankrupt, considering, like the elder Osbaldistone of his own 
 immortal pages, commercial honour as dear as any other honour, and undertook within 
 the compass of ten years to pay capital and interest of the enormous sum. At that time 
 lie was hale and vigorous, and capable of wondrous exertions ; he gave up his house in 
 Edinburgh, now less necessary to him, on account of the death of Lady Scott, and singling 
 out various objects of interest, proceeded to retrieve his broken fortunes with a spirit at 
 once calm and unsubdued. The bankruptcy of his booksellers rendered longer conceal- 
 ment of the Waverley Novels impossible." Accordingly, at the annual dinner of the 
 Edinburgh Theatrical Fund, on the 24th of February, 1827, after thirteen years of such 
 conjuration as the world, we suspect, will not presently see again ; — "the wand was broken 
 and the rod buried;" and the Great Unknown (to use his own simile) was driven to the 
 perilous experiment of laying by his harlequin's mask, and endeavouring to maintain his 
 power over his audience in his own unassisted person. 
 
 There is still less occasion to sj)eak one by one of the works which he spurred himself to 
 execute during the last five years of his life, than of the jiroductions of his easier days. 
 If the children of his decline were not so vigorous as those of his rijie manhood, they had 
 still features which assured the world of their iiarentage. Tiiosc who had talked of Scott 
 writing himself out, when the " Antiquary " apjicared, might well feel rebuked when they 
 read his " Highland Widow," or traced the hand of the master as strongly in Harry 
 Wynd, and Coiioeliar, as in Meg Merrilies, and Edie Ochiltree. Even in the last but one 
 »)f his novels, ".Anne of Geicrsteiii," a work written when the body had begun to yield to 
 the unremitting exertion of mind, there are to be found a few pages (Rudolph Donncr- 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 13 
 
 huge?s Fairy Tale) thrown in by accident, worth the whole three volumes written by many 
 a renowned romancer in his ])rinic. And it must be remarked tliat till the very last, 
 whether in the tales above mentioned, or in the "Tales of a Grandfather" that king oi 
 child's books, or in the " Life of Napoleon," or in the " History of Scotland " (a task- 
 work) ; nay, even in the prefaces of the new edition of the Waverley Novels, when the 
 poet came before the public with his heart in his hand, not one trace of a depressed or 
 discontented spirit is to be found. The thewes and sinews might indeed wear out in the 
 lionourable struggle, but the master-mind continued to be calm and hopeful, till disease 
 laid its freezing hand there also. 
 
 We cannot dwell upon the last days of Scott's life, — upon the illness by which he was 
 stricken early in the year 1831, or his melancholy voyage to the South, through whose 
 beauties and wonders he dragged himself feebly, with the dull eye of a dying man. The 
 change was tried too late; the scenes which would, some five years earlier, have inspired 
 him with a thousand fresh and lovely ideas, and the air and sunshine, which would have 
 poured a new life into his veins, now but bewildered him, or restored him only to a fitful 
 and sickly consciousness. He seems, even while at Naples and Home, to have been haunted 
 with a longing to be at rest once more among his own people ; and the longing ivas 
 granted, though only in letter; for when he reached Abbotsford, in July, 1832, after his 
 second and fatal seizure while upon the Rhine, he w^as only permitted for a few days, and 
 feebly, to recognize the woods he had planted, and the friends and kinsmen he loved best. 
 The date of his death has already been given. He was buried at Dryburgh Abbey, on 
 Wednesday, the 25th of September. " The hills were covered, and the villages filled with 
 mourners ; he was borne from the hearse by his own domestics, and laid in the grave by 
 the hands of his children." 
 
11 
 
 LORD BYEON. 
 
 Since tlic time when, after the neglect of many years, all Europe began to write and to 
 inquire concerning Shakespeare, — to examine his many-coloured works, and to collect the 
 notices of bis personal history, so scantily bequeathed to us, criticism and curiosity have 
 found no subject so engaging as the life and writings of Lord Byron. It is strange to 
 look back and remember nnder how many aspects he has already been represented to us ; 
 — ])v a choir of enthusiastic admirers extolled above all modern poets; by a small but 
 resolute body of dissenters all but denied the right to bear the poet's honoured title : 
 followed out of England by popular opprobrium as an incarnation of evil — an outlaw 
 without the pale of humanity; and sought out in his exile by not a few homages of the 
 heart * precious enough to outbuy the most universal mob popularity. There is enough in 
 these vicissitudes of reputation and fortune, and the series of poems which so brilliantly 
 illustrate them, to make it more than probable, that so long as our literature shall endure, 
 the poems and career of Byron will remain to be an object of interest and speculation. 
 
 But some will say that we have fallen upon days whose very essence is change and 
 transiency ; that, with the olden time so fruitful of contrasts, when the lonely student 
 amassed his store of learning, and the poet girt himself for his altar-service in the midst 
 of an uninstructed and superstitious multitude, has also passed away that Spirit of reve- 
 rence, which hung, as it were, an ever-burning lamp before the effigies of the great ones of 
 the Past. They will tell us that periods of haste and preparation, Avhen the frame of 
 society is hourly receiving shocks — and none can foresee how, when destroyed, it is to be 
 reconstructed, — can only produce those whose names, however distinguished, are but as the 
 plume of some renowned chief, for one hour borne hither and thither through the smoke 
 and tumult of the battle-field — and the next struck down, soiled, forgotten in the hurry of 
 the struggle. If these be right — if our present is, indeed, never to become a past, then 
 should the name and the works of Byron, as the poet of his time, be raised to a higher 
 
 * " Ttincnna, July r>th, 1821. I liave liatl a curious letter to-day from a girl iii England (I never saw 
 her), who says she is given over of a decline, but could not go out of the world without tlianking me for 
 the delight wliich my poesy for several years, &c., &c., kc. It is signed simply N. N. A., and has not a 
 ■word of cant or preachment in it, on any opinions. She merely saj'S that she is dj-ing, and that as I 
 Imd contributed so highly to her existing pleasure, she thought she might sny so. bogging me to burn her 
 letter, wliich. by the way I ainnnt do, us I look upon such a letter, in such circumstances, as better than 
 a diploma from Gottingen. I had once a letter from Dronlhoim, in Xttnvay (but not from a dying woman), 
 in verse, on the same score of gratulation. These are the things which make one at times bchevc one's 
 self a poet. ***** In the same month I received an invitation into Holstein, from a Mr. Jacobsen 
 (I tliink of Hamburgh). ***** It was odd enough to receive an invitation to pass the Summer in 
 Jlohfnii, while in Italy, from people whom I never knew. The letter was addressed to Venice. ]\Ir. 
 Jacobsen talked to me of \the ^\'ild rosos growing in the Holstein Summer.' * * * * * What a strange 
 thing is life and man ! Were I to present myself at the door of the house where mj- daughter now is, 
 the door would be shut in my face, unless (as is not impossible) I had knocked down the porter ; and 
 if I had gone in that year (and perhaps now) to Drontheim (the furthest iovra in Noi-way), or into 
 Holstein, I should have been received, with open arms, into a mansion of strangers and foreigners 
 attached to me l)y no tie but that of mind and humour." * * * * 
 
 J.ord Byrnn's Letters and Journah, Moore's Life. 
 
■^l-*-' '(Jl!^(u-X'l 
 
 ^'X: '- ^^ 
 
LORD BYrxON. 15 
 
 eminence among us; for whereas some have wrought for ])ostcrity, and some /or ant'uiuity,* 
 he was, beyond all his compeers, admirable in catching and uttering the spirit of a period, 
 when Poetry was to walk the earth as a Mephistophcles — as a tempter, not a teacher ; for 
 who shall say that the destinies which bind her to the human race may not, at times of 
 necessity, subject her to wear the sullied wings and the seared front of a fallen angel ? 
 
 There are some objects whose features, however sublime, being few, can still be reduced, 
 with some show of clearness, within a small space. One of jNIichael Angclo's Sybils, for 
 instance, might be diminished to a scale on which it would be impossible to represent a 
 banquet-scene by Veronese. The life and genius of Byron belong to the number of 
 subjects which cannot be set locket-fashion. It would be impossible, within our narrow 
 bounds, to compress the rich material furnished by Moore's life, — to extract the few traits 
 of reality from Mr. Hunt's distorted yet lively caricature, — to harmonize sketches so 
 widely differing as those furnished by Mr. Dallas, Lady Blessington, good Dr. Kennedy, 
 and Mr. Parry; and yet this should be done, if a new portrait were to have any distin- 
 guishable character of its own, and still bear a resemblance to its original. Perhaps the 
 wisest course for us is to avail ourselves of the only satisfactory clue which has been given 
 to the progress of Byron's mind in connection with his fascinating personal history, and, 
 guided by it, briefly to advert to the leading events of the different periods into which his 
 life divides itself. This clue, we think, is to be found in the prefatory paragraphs to 
 Shelley's "Julian and Maddalo," where Lord Byron, under the name of the latter, is thus 
 described : — 
 
 y " He is a person of the most consummate energies, and capable, if he would direct his 
 energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his 
 weakness to be proud. He derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with 
 the dwarfish intellects which surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of 
 human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other 
 men, and instead of the latter having been emjAoyed in curbing the former, they have 
 mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself for Avant of other objects 
 which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can 
 find no other word to express the impatient and concentrated feelings that consume him; 
 hut it is on his own hopes U7id affections only that he seems to tramjile." * * * Thus far 
 Shelley. 
 
 Beginning with the day of Byron's birth, which took place in Holies Street, London, on 
 the 22nd of January, 1788, it is remarkable to observe how strangely nature and cir- 
 cumstance combined to make his passions 
 
 " Grow with liis groAA-tli, ami strcngtlicu with liis strength." 
 
 As an infant, he was remarkable for his " silent rages," though all around him have also 
 remembered in him "a mixture of affectionate sweetness and playfulness, by which it 
 was impossible not to be attached; and which rendered him then, as in later years, 
 easily managed by those who loved and understood him sufficiently to be at once gentle 
 and firm enough for the task." But the influences under which his early years were 
 passed, were those least likely to call forth the better parts of his nature, and, by 
 strengthening them, to enable him to become his own guide and moderator. His mother 
 was a woman of violent temper — without refinement ; without self-command : impove- 
 
 * When my sounet was rejected, I exclaimed '• Damn the age, / uill write for Ahiiquity ! " — Charles 
 Lamb's Letters. 
 
16 LORD BYRON. 
 
 vished by her husbaiicl's extravagances, compelled by evil trentment to part from bini, 
 yet driven to distraction by the news of his death. It was owiiig to her false delicacy, 
 at the time of her accouclicmont, that Eyron was lame for life ; it was owing to her coarse 
 bitterness, that he was led, while yet a child, to regret his lameness as a cnrse — a Cain's 
 mark. One day, stung by the consciousness of their narrow circumstances, she would 
 vent her wretchedness of heart upon her son, and on the next, feed a spirit no less 
 haughty and quick, though finer, than her own, with tales of his ancestry, not a few 
 of which were as darkly fascinating as any romance. Byron was, indeed, sent bv her 
 to school ; but, at least during their residence at Aberdeen, his masters a])pear to have 
 been wholly incompetent to manage a boy who was " always more ready to give a 
 blow than to take one," and more anxious to distinguish himself by prowess in all 
 sports and exercises, than by advancement in learning, and who further manifested the 
 precocity of his passions, at the age of eight years, by seriously (lie tells us) falling in 
 love with a little girl, Mary Duff. While he was busily making his court, her lesser 
 sister sat by " jjlayiny ?vith the doll." 
 
 It was in the yenv 1798, that the death of the last intermediate heir to Newstead placed 
 Byron in possession of a title and an estate. The self-consciousness already im])lanted 
 in him by a morbid sense of personal deformity, and the strange passion just mentioned, 
 was now to be increased by a further change in his position — a change, though sudden, 
 not unforeseen ; for his mother, we are told, had always cherished a strong persuasion 
 " that he was not only to be a lord, but a great man also." But his lot was made 
 up of contrasts; his new possessions descended to him encumbered with the heavy 
 drawbacks of debt and disorder. lie was to be a lord, the possessor of fair and ancient 
 domains, witliout the means of adequately maintaining his dignity. Here was a new 
 influence, perhaps the strongest to disturb and embitter, to which a boy^s mind can be 
 subjected ; and yet this was to gain an ascendancy over him, in addition to, not in 
 place of, those already pointed out. The torments to which he was subjected under 
 the hands of the Nottingham quack, Lavender, and the discipline he underwent when 
 subsequently placed under Dr. Glennie's care — and, yet more, the dreadful taunts of 
 his mother, forbade him to forget that he was 
 
 " not mado lilcc other crofitures. 
 To share their sports or pleasures ; — " 
 
 while his childish love-fancies \vere revived by his second passion for his cousin IMargaret 
 I'arker, the remembrance of which, be it noted, called forth the earliest display of his 
 ])octical powers; for it was upon her death that his first verses were written, unless we arc 
 to count his doggrel denunciation against the "curst old lady," who "lived at Swan 
 Green," among the poems of his boyhood. 
 
 The next step in the development of Byron's mind was made In' his removal to Harrow. 
 We must, in alluding to this, dwell upon the earnestness of his school friendships, which, 
 to use his own words, "with him were always passions." No one can forget the 
 numerous illustrative passages which give so much life and heart to Byron's letters; 
 his deep-felt sorrow at the death of his protege, Eddlestone, the chorister ; his re- 
 solution to make a collection of the portraits of his school and college-mates before he 
 went abroad ; and his burst of indignation at the lukewarm friend who refused to pass 
 a parting hour with him, because he was engaged to go upon a shopping expedition. 
 Tliis earnestness of Byron, alas ! tended only to make the experiences of time and 
 change, the losses and disappointment which every one must prove, doubly dreary and 
 blanking; and we find him, accordingly, early possessed with, or at least professirtfj the 
 
LOUD BYROy. 17 
 
 conviction that an evil fate was to attend all his hopes and friendships. This convictluu 
 was seriously riveted upon his mind, by the irrevocable termination of his Urst real 
 attachment. Who has not by heart the story of his unrequited love to Miss Chawortli, 
 the sequel to " those six short summer weeks spent in her company ?" — who, that has 
 ever dreamed or felt, has not, with " thoughts that lie too deep for tears,'' huutj over 
 that most sadly ini])rcssive of all confessions, "The Dream,'' a poem which has con- 
 nected the antique and mouldering hall of Annesley with far tenderer and more melan- 
 choly associations than tiic far-famed Paraclete or the rocks of Meillerie ! 
 
 Thus proud, poor, passionate — instinct with genius, of which, as yet, he felt rather than 
 had proved himself to be possessed, Byron was removed to Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 in October, 1805. Though he subsequently wrote of this change, as one which made 
 him heavy-hearted, '' to feel that he was no longer a boy," the live following years were 
 not the least happy, nor, though thriftlessly wasted, the most unprofitable ones of his life ; 
 for, in spite of the confession just quoted^' we cannot but feel that till Byron went abroad, 
 he enjoyed, and erred from, that tumultuous superabundance of animal spirits, which is 
 either wasted out or reasoned into subjection before the period of manhood may be rightly 
 said to commence. He read (not studied) with a boyish eagerness; with a boyish en- 
 thusiasm drew round him a circle of lively companions, to whom the whim of the moment 
 was their only law ; spending his vacations among the sociable and sensible inhabitants of 
 Southwell, where his mother was then residing, a fine, or frank-spoken, or petulant drawing- 
 room hero, as the mood seized him ; or revelling in the Fives Court and club-house life of 
 London; and writing of its delights and dissipations with the paraded indilference of one 
 with whom it was no new thing " to hear the chimes at midnight." That, in the course of 
 a youth so spent, Byron's genius was not wholly driven out, is, in itself, a proof of the 
 more than ordinary measure in which it had been vouchsafed to him. He seems at first to 
 have tried his hand at verse-making, without any peculiar vigour of purpose or interest, as 
 the " Hours of Idleness," which appeared in 1807, abundantly testify ; for though we 
 now read them by the light of his after-glories, we can but discern in them the germ of 
 future greatness, bv permitting our imagination to quicken our eyes ; and must admit that 
 there was nothing to excite attention to them, on their first appearance, beyond the title of 
 their author. This it was, at least, which attracted the notice and awakened the spleen of 
 the " Edinburgh Review." 
 
 The most flippant or malevolent of critics is rarely without his use to the really gifted, 
 whether as exciting in opposition the energies of the latter, or as laying bare faults which 
 self-love and flattering friends are too apt to hide. But few of the stale pleasantries ever 
 vented by wanton or malicious judges, ever produced efl'ects so disproportionate as the 
 sarcasms contained in that far-famed article. It is diflicult in these days of critical abusive- 
 ness and trickery, to sympathize with the indignation excited in the young and noble poet 
 by a cause so unworthy. There was something mock-heroic in his rage, and in the deli- 
 beration with which he distilled his resentment, for so many months, ere he poured it forth 
 — a stream of concentrated bile — on the astonished and recoiling herd of poets and their 
 patrons. But if his passion appeared causelessly violent in the eyes of others, it was to 
 himself righteous and cogent as a motive. Had the criticism in question never appeared, 
 Byron might have trifled on as a poetaster for some half a dozen years longer, might have 
 turned his energy into other channels more suited to his rank and fortunes. As it was, 
 having once spoken, it was impossible for him henceforward to be silent : the fountain being 
 once unsealed, was not to be closed again. The "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" 
 startled the town in the month of March, 1809; and in the same mouth Byron took his 
 seat in the House of Lords, a lonely and unwelcomed stranger; and at Midsummer, 
 
 D 
 
],S J.'''HD BYRON. 
 
 wearied if not worn out by self-iiululi^'cnce, excited by the sensation his satire had created^ 
 and harassed by his entangled fortunes, set forth on his travels. 
 
 The second of the three periods into which Byron's life divides itself was illustrated by 
 the appearing of the two first cantos of " Childe Harold/^ "the Bride of Abydos/' "the 
 Giaour" "the Corsair/' "Parisina," and "the Siege of Corinth," besides a host of minor 
 poems. During these years his passions and his powers had proceeded rapidly in their 
 simultaneous course. As the first grew more diseasedly active — more habitual and less 
 impulsive — the second, in proportion, became stronger. In his journey through Turkey 
 and Greece he had looked upon Nature in her fairest forms, but with a spirit already dis- 
 tempered, indisposed to be healed by the ministration of her 
 
 "soft influences. 
 Her sminv hues, fair fonns. and breatliing sweets, 
 Her inelodii;S of woods, and wiuds, and waters I " 
 
 He had mixed with men but as an actor — not an observer. And every day which had 
 enlarged his treasury of poetical imagery, had also added a line to that lesson of disap- 
 pointment, which even those least disposed to gloom and sadness 7niist get by heart ere they 
 know the world. Ilcnce it was that in place of a common traveller's journal, the two first 
 cantos of "Childe Harold" found themselves on paper: for that Byron regarded this poem 
 as little more than a private record of passing emotions, is proved by the small estimation 
 in which he held it, compared with his " Hints from Horace," and his indifference to its 
 publication. But, inasmuch as, even in diaries and journals, the imaginative are prone to 
 dramatize and to exaggerate their real sensations, we cannot but think that Byron, in the 
 two first cantos of "Childe Harold," in some measure antici])ated that dreary satiety 
 and bitterness of spirit, whose real coming gave birth to " IManfred," and " Cain," and 
 "Don Juan." The tales, too, which followed, so delicious in the flow and fire of their 
 verse, are more romantic in their sadness— less poignantly individual than the works which 
 were produced after his second and final departure from England. 
 
 But the life which Byron led in the years while bis fame was young, was sure to urge 
 him fast towards the springs of extremest bitterness. He awoke one morning, and found 
 liimself famous — seated on the throne which Scott had filled Avith so artless and generous 
 a manliness; beset with almost delirious admiration; circled in society by those whom a 
 comparison of his own mind with the divarfish intellects which surrounded him, bade him 
 scorn and despise, even while they crouched at his bidding, and he drunk in the sweet 
 breath of their flatteries. IHs personal beauty, his rank, the rumours of his adventures in 
 foreign lands, enhanced the fascinations of his new and seducing genius, and, for a while, 
 opened to him ojiportunities for indulgence and triumph, of which he avaded himself with 
 all the recklessness of his \incurbed nature : while each new intrigue, each new adventure, 
 added to the heap of distrust and sarcasm which was silently accumulating in his mind — 
 widened, imperceptibly, the gulf between himself and his fellow-men, of whom, in their 
 strength, and ])urity, and self-denial, he knew nothing. But he was too much of a poet to 
 dwindle down into a mere creature of the London world ; and hence, was always startling 
 his companions by some outbreak beyoiul the bounds of their curiously-framed code of 
 morals, or some flash of his generosity and aflection as sudden as it was unfashionable. 
 For a time these eccentricities were tolerated, nay, cherished as charming: but the sequel 
 was inevitable. Iconoclasm must always succeed to idol-worship. 
 
 A few short feverish years were soon sj)ent, when, satiated with praise and popularity, 
 weary of runni:ig the round of loves where love was not, Byron began to admit that some 
 
LORD BYRON. 19 
 
 remedy was ncccssai-y for liis disordered fortunes and jaded spirits. A female friend, more 
 sanguine than judicious, recommended marriage; and the poet, faithless alike of the 
 efficacy of any prescription, had no objection to try the nostrum recommended. Such, with, 
 perhaps, one lurking grain of fancy and curiosity in the back ground, generated by the 
 contrast between the lady upon whom the lot fell and his more brilliant female friends, 
 appears to have been the plain history of his proposal to Miss Milbanke. In an evil hour 
 this was accepted, and the two were married on the 2nd of January, 1815. Eor a month 
 or two Byron seems to have tried to play at domestic hap])iness, as if this could be put on 
 at a moment's warning, like the blue coat in which he had resolved that he would not go 
 through the ceremony ! The lady, too, had reckoned without her host, who united her 
 fortunes to his in the hopes of that serenity and mutual eonfidenec which attend nuptials 
 less distinguished; but she may have been dazzled, if not by the brightness of his fame, by 
 the smaller, but yet more delusive, glimmer of the fancy that she 
 
 "—knew tlie charm to make him meek and tame." 
 
 It required but a few months of increased despondency and fitfulness on the part of the 
 husband, — on the part of the wife of silent and unreproachful patience, — of executions at 
 home, and the Drury Lane Committee abroad, to break the knot so inauspiciously tied. 
 But absolutely nothing is still known of the real causes which led to the final separation; — 
 to Lady Byron's departure at a time when her lord's fortunes were at their lowest, — and to 
 her unbroken resolution of thenceforth uttering no word which should eontirm or absolve 
 him from charges which were ilung upon his name with all the violence of execration ; for 
 the public had become weary of being dragged at the poet's chariot wheels wherever he 
 pleased. Some had begun to awaken from the intoxication into which he had charmed 
 them, and they now chose in turn to compel and to sentence. Those too, in private, who 
 had ministered most largely to his follies and licences, if not by participation, by the in- 
 direct stimulus of surprise, or faint remonstrance, now shrunk back from him, as if he had 
 brought, rather than imbibed, a pestilence among them. His position was precisely 
 calculated to call forth all his energies ; he stood on it as upon a vantage ground ; his 
 pride rising to his assistance, and supporting him in the face of the storm, as strongly as if 
 he had been stainless — the sinned against and not the sinning : — and forbidding him for an 
 instant to own that his 
 
 " hopes sapp'cl, name blighted, life's lil'e lied away " 
 
 Avere the inevitable retribution which all must suffer, who not only err, but also revel in 
 error. He had made the world fear as much as love him — the false sympathy which his 
 ■works had excited, could not but he followed by reaction. But there was something 
 wonderful, almost admirable, in the manner in which the man called the poet to his aid, and 
 wrung unwilling homage from his detractors, even when their cry was loudest, by appeals 
 breathing a pathos, a passion, a deep wretchedness, which few could resist, even while 
 perceiving that the veiy publicity with which they were uttered, proved them to be in 
 some wise artificial and imaginative. He then left England, with the step and look of one 
 unjustly persecuted, to return to it no more ! 
 
 The poems which belong to the third period of Byron's life, and are included between the 
 25th of April, 1816, when he left Englrnd, and the month of July, 1823, when he withdrew 
 from Italy to Greece, illustrate, yet more vividly than their predecessors, the truth of 
 Shelley's character of the poet, who had now reached the summit of his powers — for he was 
 more undividcdlv under the dominion of his passions than at any earlier period. "The 
 
 D 2 
 
20 LOl^T) BYRO>-. 
 
 silent ragrcs " of his infancy, tlicn only occasionally excited, had eaten into his heart, and 
 coloured its every thought ; the desires of his youth had ceased to furnish delight, but had 
 woven a chain round him too strong to be laid aside. The sense of persecution and 
 injustice on the part of his countrymen, the constant wish to maintain his poetical empire, 
 in spite of their disapprobation and reproach, — more tlian all, the impassive silence of her 
 from whom he had so lately parted, furnished him with an untiring spring of energy, and 
 implanted in him the resolved purpose of piling 
 
 " on luiman heads the mountain of his ciu'se." 
 
 And though there were moments when, raised above, or charmed out of, himself by the 
 contemplation of Nature, or by the associations of by-gone days, he could paint other 
 feelings or features than his own, this spirit — how feverish and false in its strength ! — may 
 be traced through all Byron's subsequent poems; whether he muses with Childe Harold on 
 
 " the place of scnlls, 
 The p-avc of Franco, tlio deadly "Waterloo," 
 
 or stands "in Venice on the bridge of sighs," or closes his pilgrimage, moclcing at man's 
 nothingness, by the side of the "deep and dark blue ocean;" whether he kindles with the 
 wrongs of Marino Faliero — or gives a speech to the doubts and discontent of the first mur- 
 derer, or with Anah and Aholibamah, and their seraph lovers, beholds the approach of over- 
 whelming doom and destruction — there is a leaven of negation and bitterness, far more per- 
 vading than runs through the works of the poet's youth. At times, as in " ?ilanfred," a 
 withering voice of miserj', piercing enough to stir the ashes of the dead, will have way — 
 at times, as in " Sardanapalus," the poet would argue the question between passion and 
 reason, and prove the philosophy of the former to be the best. But it is remarkable to 
 observe throughout his course of passion, apparently so spontaneous and inevitable, how 
 stedfastly the eyes of the exile were fixed on England — how, when he most seemed to scorn 
 them, he was most eager in keeping alive his name in the hearts of his countrymen : 
 whether he girt himself for controversy with Mr. Bowles in defence of "the little nightin- 
 gale of Twickenham," or whether he met IMr. Southey's criticisms with philippics no less 
 severely unjust — or whether, in an hour of defiance, he steeped himself in the licences of 
 his A''enetian career — orgies of which it was necessary he should partake, ere his mind could 
 become cajiable of conceiving and executing his last and greatest work, the "Don Juan" — 
 y/cxc he could learn to regard every affection which ennobles, every desire which debases our 
 nature, with equal indifference — ere, out of habit, rather than purjiosc, he could trifle, with 
 eqiud levity, with the nobleness and the uncleanness of the human heart, and holding up 
 e.ich in turn with a master's hand to the gaze of mankind, turn round and exclaim, — not 
 sadly but laughingly, — "All is vanity !" 
 
 From these last excesses, too late, however, to call him back in his poetical career, 
 Byron was redeemed by his connection with Madame Guiccioli. We can trace its influence 
 in his works; in the "more love" which he found it necessary to infuse into his " Sardana- 
 j)alus," in the decent veil which he consented to throw over the latter cantos of "Don Juan." 
 It is questionable whether he could have been reclaimed to the use of his poetical powers at 
 the expense of his passions, by a sincere and holy affection : this was not of the number — 
 the chain, whether real or imagined, which bound him to England, was not yet broken : and 
 while "the stranger" did suit and service, par amours, to the "lady of the land," his mind 
 was still vexed by yearnings half-wistful, half self-reproachful, towards "Ada, sole daughter 
 of his house and heart;" and the silence of her for the sake of whose handwriting he could 
 treasure up a common hoiischold book, was a counter-influence as strong as, if not stronger 
 
LORD BYRON. 21 
 
 tliaii, the blue eyes and the flowing hair of the enchantress of Ravenna. For ourselves we 
 cannot imagine that the mind, the child of whose maturity was "Don Juan," could either 
 proceed further or retrace its steps : and we find that during its progress Byron began to 
 speak of poetry as not being his real vocation ; and that his latest productions, the " Island,'^ 
 and the " Deformed Transformed," (excepting in the latter the splendid Chorus of Spirits 
 above the walls of Rome,) exhibit something of the feebleness, if not the decrepitude of the 
 children of decay and old age. AYhile he still continued weaving the many-coloured web of 
 "Don Juan," other thoughts began to possess him. The same better angel as suggested 
 to him the creation of Aurora Raby in its last Canto, and as wakened him, by a touch of 
 natural feeling, to engage in that exquisite description of the home of his fathers, over 
 which he lingers like a lover, possessed him also with a scarcely understood wish to retrieve 
 himself — called into action the love of liberty which had always been a predominating trait 
 in his character, and turned to good account that capricious avarice whose growth he had 
 encouraged in his eagerness to prove a new sensation. He conversed with Carbonari, and 
 befriended the persecuted and unpopular; entered into correspondence with the Greek Com- 
 mittee, and placed himself and his fortune at their service. The day of his poetry we think 
 was done : but a better day was connnencing — of his exertions as a man in the cause of 
 truth and freedom. This was, alas ! cut short, as in the grey of the morning, by his me- 
 lancholy death, of a weary heart, and a shattered constitution, which took place at INIisso- 
 longhi on the 19th of April, 1824. 
 
ROBERT S U T H E y. 
 
 It happens but seldom that the fruits of scholarship and learning arc widely spread and 
 graciously accepted among the general public at first hand ; inasmuch as it requires no 
 small measure of the poet's fine taste, genial sympathy, and enchantments of style to select 
 from among the fruit of the student's and antiquarian's researches, what shall interest the 
 many; or to present such matter, when selected, in a form which shall be striking or ad- 
 mirable. And few of the sons of genius have possessed the inclination or attained to the 
 self-discipline of maturing their powers and widening their circle of knowledge, by diligent 
 and arduous study. As an instance of this rare union of poet and scholar Dr. Southey 
 stands pre-eminent among his contemporaries. Few have laboured in the cause of literature 
 more ceaselessly or with greater earnestness : few have laboured so well. He will as surely 
 be remembered in future days as the biographer of the period just past, as Sir Walter 
 Scott will be known for its prime minister of Fiction 1 
 
 Dr. Southey was born on the 12tli of August, 1774, in Wine Street, Bristol. That he 
 feels an honest pride in having raised himself by his talents to his present position, some of 
 his writings testify : but with what a manly and affectionate simplicity he looks back to 
 the days of his infancy, and speaks of his origin, may be seen in the following fragment of 
 a letter addressed to Doctor Adam Clarke. "Twelve months ago," says he, "I passed 
 three days at Bristol, where I bad not been for twenty years before. I went into my 
 father's shop, and requested leave to go into his house, and into the room where my cradle 
 had been rocked. I went also to Bedminster, where my mother was born, and where, in her 
 mothei-'s house, the happiest days of my childhood had been passed, and requested leave to 
 go in. The house had been re-modelled, and the gardens laid out in the manner of these 
 times. I recognized nothing as it had been, except a few trees which my uncles and my 
 grandfather had planted."* 
 
 A great part of Dr. Southey's childhood was passed at Bath, under the care of his 
 mother's half-sister. AVhen about six years of age, he was sent to school, being in the first 
 instance placed with Mr. Footc, a Baptist minister ; subsequently at a boarding-school at 
 Corston, near Newton, St. Loo, kept by a J\Ir. Flower; thence, to his great comfort, after 
 a year's residence, brought home again, and handed over to the tuition of Mr. William 
 Williams, a Welchman, from whom little scholarship was to be got; from him transferred 
 
 * The rest of the letter is so thorouglil}' cliaractcristic, that wc cannot forbear adding it in a note. 
 
 " At my good old friend, Joseph Cottle's, I saw an excellent likeness of Charles Fox, his sitting for 
 whicli I well remember. It oiifi;lit to be preserved as tlie remarkable countenance of a very amiable and 
 remarkable man. I liave profiles of himself and his wife, and of tlie parrot of whicli they were both so 
 fond ; the human likenesses taken by Cottle, and reduced by a pentagraph ; the bird sportivel}' cut by him 
 on the same evening. I have also a drawing of the bridge at Almaraz, over the Tagus, made by Fox, 
 from a sketch which I brought from the spot : and I have his card as bookseller at Falmouth. Upon the 
 feeling which induces one to preserve such things, what a superstructure have superstition and knavery 
 erected ! " 
 
rr^t ^'Hc iiu m Mi wrwcm tj^t '^^imi 
 
 
 
 *;^ 
 
 CSI 
 
ROBERT SOUTUF.Y. 23 
 
 to the care of a private tutor; and, lastly, removed by bis uncle, Mr. Hill, to Westminster, 
 in the spring of 1788, To this list of the places in which he received his education may 
 be added a brief notice of Dr. Southcy's early studies out of school, extracted from a 
 delightful letter recently published in the Autobiography of Sir Egerton Brydges. 
 
 " From very early boyhood, when I first read the 'Arcadia,^ in Mrs. Stanley's moderniza- 
 tion of it, Sydney took possession of my imagination. Not that I liked the book the better, 
 just in proportion as she had w^orsened it, for his own language would have presented 
 nothing strange or diflScult to me who had read Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, as 
 soon as I could understand enough of them to follow the story of their plays. * * * 
 Spenser afterwards increased my veneration for Sydney, and Penshurst, when I first saw it 
 (in 1791), was the holiest ground I had ever visited." 
 
 Late in the year 1792, Dr. Southey entered Baliol College, Oxford, where he remained 
 during the following twelvemonth, and part of the year 1794: but his peculiar opinions, 
 which at that time in politics were fiercely Jacobinical, and in religion more tban tended 
 towards Socinianism, made his entrance of the Church of England as a minister impossible ; 
 and for this he had been designed. Ilis academic career was accordingly closed by him ; 
 " the world was now^ all before him where to choose." In the winter of 1794, he put forth 
 his first poems; a small volume published in conjunction with j\Ir. Robert Lovell, under 
 the names of Moschus and Bion. Mr. LovcU, it will be remembered, sharing the 
 enthusiastic liberalism of his friend, was one of the band who, being resolved to emancipate 
 themselves from the intolerable and corrupted institutions of a worn-out country "nodding 
 to its fall," in the boyish fullness and folly of zeal without judgment, originated the short- 
 lived Pantisocracy scheme. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that ]\Ir. Coleridge 
 was another of those embarked in the enterprise, so often have the plan in question 
 and the names of those concerned in it been revived from the dust, and brought forward 
 as an engine of party ainioyance for the confusion of those whose opinions (following the 
 law of the pendulum) have since become as conservative as they were then democratic. Dr. 
 Southey shall himself speak of the spirit and purpose which actuated him during this 
 period, and which were uttered in his first published poems. 
 
 " In my youth," says he, writing to Mr. William Smith, " when my stock of knowledge 
 consisted of such an acquaintance with Greek and Roman history as is acquired in the 
 course of a scholastic education, when my heart was full of poetry and romance, and 
 Lucan and Akenside were at my tongue's end, I fell into the political opinions which the 
 French Revolution was then scattering throughout Europe; and, following those opinions with 
 ardour wherever they led, I soon perceived that inequalities of rank were a light evil 
 compared to the inequalities of property, and those more fearful distinctions which the 
 want of moral and intellectual culture occasions between man and man. At that time and 
 with those opinions or rather feelings (for their root was in the heart and not in the 
 understanding), I wrote ' Wat Tyler,' as one who was impatient of all the oppressions that 
 are done under the sun. The subject was injudiciously chosen, and it was treated as 
 might be expected by a youth of twentj'-, in such times, who regarded only one side of the 
 question. * * * Were I now to dramatize the same story there would be much to 
 add, but little to alter. * * * I should write as a man, not as a stripling ; with the 
 same heart and the same desires, but with a ripened understanding and competent stores of 
 knowledge." Dr. Southey further thus characterizes his own minor poems of the same date, 
 as expressing " an enthusiastic love of liberty, a detestation of tyranny wherever it exists 
 and in whatever form, an ardent abhorrence of all wicked ambition, and a sympathy, not less 
 ardent, with all those who were engaged in war for the defence of their country, and in a 
 righteous cause; feelings just as well as generous, in themselves." . His antagonists (in 
 
24 ROBERT SOUTH EY. 
 
 his early days his partizans), he adds, " inlglit have perceived also frcqueut indications, that 
 in the opinion of the youthful writer a far happier system of society was possible than any 
 under which mankind are at present existing, or have ever existed since the patriarchal ages, 
 and no equivocal aspirations after such a stage/' * * * " From building castles in the 
 air/' continues Dr. Southey in a subsequent paragraph, "to framing commonwealths, was 
 an easy transition ; and in the hope of accomplishing this I forsook the coarse of life for 
 which I had been designed, and the prosj)ects of advancement which, I may say without 
 ])resumptioD, were within my reach. J\ly purpose was to retire with a few friends into the 
 wilds of America, and there lay the foundations of a community upon what we believed to 
 be the political system of Christianity. It matters not in what manner this vision was 
 dissolved." To this passage there need only be added, in taking leave of the subject, that 
 the conijjlete change which Dr. Southey's opinions have undergone, between the publication 
 of " Joan of Arc" and the " Vision of Judgment," has not intiueneed in the least his man- 
 ner of expression. The same fervour of temperament which made him contemi)late an ex- 
 change of the banks of the Isis for those of the Susquehannah, has always guided his pen, 
 whether in answering Lord Byron's bitter verse with bitterer prose, — whether in fighting 
 for Church and State with visor up or visor down. He is, as he was then, too thoroughly 
 in earnest to be deliberate and smooth, or always even courteous in his antagonism. Let 
 this fact be allowed its full weight, as an evidence of sincerity, by those who, themselves 
 one-sided, regard all changes of opinion as being of necessity corrupt, and leading to cor- 
 ruption. 
 
 To return from this necessary digression to the few farther notices of Dr. Southey's life 
 permitted to us: — in November, 1795, the Pantisocracy scheme having been abandoned for 
 want of funds, the poet married Miss Frieker, the sister of the lady with whom Coleridge 
 united himself. Li the winter of the same year, while its author was on his way to Lisbon, 
 through Madrid, was published his "Joan of Arc." In the following summer he returned 
 to Bristol ; in the subsequent year he removed to London, and entered Gray's Inn : — paying 
 a second visit to Portugal in the year 1800, for the recovery of his health. In the year 1801 
 Dr. Southey returned to England ; and a biograjjhical notice before us, gives it as the date of 
 his also going to Ireland, as private secretary to j\Ir. Foster. In the year 1802, however, 
 he was again at Bristol; and upon the death of his first child, being urged to visit Mr. 
 Coleridge, who was then residing in the Lake country, he set up his rest at Keswick, where 
 he has since continued to reside, producing, with little intermission, that varied and exten- 
 sive series of works, an enumeration of which must be presently attempted, — year by year 
 adding to his friendships among the worthy and the gifted, and collecting a library, " more 
 anqjle perhaps," to (piote his own words, " than was ever before possessed by one whose 
 sole estate was in his inkstand." To the above notices, it may be added, that upon the 
 death of I've, in the year 1813, Dr. Southey was promoted to the vacant Laureateship, 
 which had been first so honoaral)ly declined by Scott, and that in the year 1821 he 
 received his Doctor's degree. We happen to know, too, that a seat in Parliament, and a 
 Baronetcy, have been both, at diflereut times, olfcred to his acceptance, and both of them 
 declined. 
 
 We have now to count up the poems of Dr. Southey, in addition to those already 
 mentioned, and the "Annual Antliology," of which he was editor and principal contributor. 
 The first of these is the " Thalaba" (published 1803); then follow a volume of Metrical 
 Tales (in 1804) — " Madoc," (1805) — "The Curse of Kehama," (1810)— " Carmen 
 Triumphale," as the Laureate Odes (1811.) — " Roderick, the Last of the CJoths" (1814), 
 and subsequently, the " Vision of Judgment," above mentioned — a difficult subject, and 
 made mure difficult by its writer having attempted to uuturalize a classical measure, the 
 
ROBERT SOUTllEY. 25 
 
 English language lending itself most unwillingly to the process. The list of Dr. Southey's 
 poems is, we believe, completed by the mention of "All for Love/' and the "Pilgrim of 
 Compostella/^ published not many years since; — of his fugitive and minor pieces it would 
 be vain to attempt a list. 
 
 Though the opinion has been already ventured, that the name of the Laureate will 
 live principally in connection with his prose works, the distinct and high excellences of 
 his poems are not to be passed over. Though in few and feeble words, we must 
 point to the simplicity and feeling of his domestic pieces ; there is a plain, searching, 
 but not vulgar truth in his eclogues, which places them by the side of Crabbers most 
 forcible and finished cabinet pictures, — a quaintness, a credulity, and a humour in 
 his- ballads, especially in those of witchcraft and monkery, which belong to one steeped 
 in the spirit of ancient tradition. Again, in his more elaborate works, how rich is 
 their diction, and how superior in its richness to the cumbrous and false pomp of some 
 of his predecessors, who have attempted the epic, — of some of his contemporaries, who 
 have tried to make the sui)ernatural and the mythological impressive, by smothering their 
 fancies in a confusion of "purple and gold language." But it must be remarked, 
 that this moderation and stateliness of manner, this chastcness of imagination, even 
 where it colours most gorgeously and soars highest — this brocade flow of the draperies 
 worn by his muse, which arrange themselves in broad and ample, rather than easy 
 and pliant folds, — characteristics superinduced, perhaps, by the fusion in his mind of 
 the riches of many literatures — give a certain heaviness to his epics as well as to his 
 more fancifully imagined legends. He is impressive and dignified; — though often 
 tender, rarely, if ever, passionate. 
 
 The same characteristics may be traced as pervading, though more lightly, many of 
 Dr. Southey's prose writings : but in these they are felt to be a beauty rather than 
 a blemish. The works in question are so voluminous and varied in subject, that a, 
 mere enumeration of each would occupy the space which must be allotted to an 
 attempt to characterize them generally. Dr. Southey^s range embraces histoi-y, biography, 
 essays critical, antiquarian, and philosoi)hical, to say nothing of his many labours as 
 a translator and an editor. In all of these he is entitled to respect ; in many he has 
 attained to high excellence. His writings, on the whole, may be said to gratify and 
 instruct, rather than command the reader. Their tone is equable in the main, the 
 effect being sought rather in the abundant variety of the matter, which a ripe learning 
 enables him to bestow on the illustration of his subject, than in bold transitions, or 
 views startlingly original. His eloquence (and he is eloquent when the theme demands 
 it) is stately and copious rather than rapid ; the utterance of feelings habitually 
 cherished, and not the offspring of sudden impulse. On polemical questions in 
 politics and theology he is, indeed, sufficiently vehement; but these form an exception 
 to the prevailing character of his writings. At other times they display a continual 
 vein of generous and amiable feeling, — of reflection, alternately quaint, ingenious, or 
 dignified; a reverence for whatever is august in the literature, traditions, or 
 institutions of ancient times ; and a familiar acquaintance, beyond all contemporary 
 attainment, with the whole compass of letters. While he is engaged in the calm 
 pursuits of literary speculation, in commemorating deceased excellence, in tracing the 
 legends of other times, or in displaying any worthy and elevated theme, he wins the 
 affections of his reader, whom he alternately amuses or excites. And on turning 
 from this class of works to those in which he appears as a party writer, the pain 
 with which we observe the totally different character they present, is increased by 
 the regard we have already learned to entertain. This is a subject upon which, as 
 
 £ 
 
26 ROBERT SOUTH EY. 
 
 admirers of the author, we do not willingly dwell ; but truth requires that it should 
 be distinctly noticed. 
 
 Of all Dr. Southcy's works, his biographies stand the foremost. He has enriched our 
 literature in a department where it was the poorest, with two works, at least, which have 
 already become classical — the Lives, namely, of Nelson and Wesley ; to which may be added 
 his latest work, the biography of Cowper. In these he leaves the reader nothing to desire. 
 His narrative is clear, and enhanced with details interesting and nicely proportioned; the 
 prominence of the main subject is well preserved, and the style warms into eloquence, or 
 flows on in unaffected ease, as the matter in hand may require. He is especially happy in 
 description and in the art of engaging the reader's sympathies on behalf of his subject ; 
 his reflections are gracefully introduced and apposite, and he is never flat or overstrained. 
 Indeed a combination of practised skill, genial feeling, and thorough preparation renders 
 Dr. Southcy's biographies the most delightful of his works, and equal, if not superior, to 
 any other in our literature. 
 
 Of his historical works, "The History of Brazil'' is, we believe, its author's own 
 favourite; and it is excellent for the earnest and engaging manner in which it is written, 
 and for the tokens it displays of learned research in a field rarely trodden. Though its 
 subject is not one of general interest, and the work, therefore, is one more likely to be 
 occasionally consulted than eagerly read, there arc ei)isodes and individual passages to 
 which we may return again and again for the mere pleasure of the moment. " The History 
 of the Peninsular War" must be classed among Dr. Southey's polemical works, in spite of 
 its style, and eloquence, and many scattered passages of exceeding beauty. 
 
 Passing the " Colloquies of Sir Thomas More," in which their author is exhibited under 
 all his various aspects — a work largely sown with passages of a most thoughtful and placid 
 beauty — passing, too, his " Omniana," in which delightful collection of scattered thoughts 
 and subjects for thought, he was assisted by his friend Coleridge, we must not omit to 
 notice, however briefly. Dr. Southey's attempts (born, perhaps, of his two Peninsular 
 journeys) to introduce to modern readers the romantic traditions of Spain and the chival- 
 rous prose epics of a former age. His prose paraphrases of the poems of the Cid, and of 
 the renowned Amadis, and Palmerin of England, will be always precious and delightful to 
 those who have an ear for the accents of old, while their illustrations contain a treasury of 
 valuable matter for the curious ; and it is impossible to praise too highly the success with 
 which the author has caught and transfused into his own language the very spirit of these 
 magniflcent fables. AVc an- bound, too, to insist upon the valuable service he has rendered 
 in his " Book of the Church," and other of his essays, in ])ointing to the much-ncglccted 
 riches of our elder divines, whom he has frequented with atfectionate reverence. And we 
 are indebted to the peculiar temper of his mind, which seems most powerfully attracted by 
 all that has the prescription of antiquity, for many other treasures, which he has disinterred 
 from the dust to which they have been too carelessly relinquished. It is impossible here 
 to do justice to the translations and revivals of other authors, or to the various literary and 
 critical essays which have ])roceed(d from the same source. It must not, however, be 
 forgotten, that the " Quarterly Review " was long indebted for many of its most prominent 
 articles to Dr. Southey, and it may be added, that his pen, while it is copious beyond all 
 precedence, is never careless. 
 
 More, much more, cotild be added ; we could descant, and not unprofitably, upon the 
 excellences of Dr. Southey's style, in which he combines the racincss of our ancient 
 mother English with the polish of later refinement and scholarship ; but ere the present 
 notice be closed, we are bound to advert with just regard to the manner in which 
 its subject has worn the title of a professed man of letters. Whatever be the feeling 
 
ROBERT SOUTHEY. 27 
 
 with respect to certaiu opinions and tendencies, all must contemplate with sincere respect 
 the tenor of a life wholly devoted to genial study and constant literary exertion, the 
 aim and end of which has been mainly the production of such works as should take their 
 permanent station in the higher walks of literature. We love him, too, for the sympathy 
 he has shown towards struggling poets — towards the early called and the uneducated ; 
 witness his "Life of Kii-ke White," and not a few other notices and prefaces, which he 
 has generously affixed to the works of others infinitely less worthy of public favour. 
 If some of those who have been brought forward under the protection of his name 
 may not possess genius enough to have merited such protection, and we are led to smile at 
 the unequal association, our smile is of kindliness and not of sarcasm. The condition on 
 which Benevolence and Charity walk the earth, is that they be occasionally led astray. 
 
 [Reluctantly do we raise the curtain npon the last scene in the life of Southey. Even 
 while the preceding lines were being written, the shadows of evening had begun to close around 
 the poet. Southey was through life a laborious scholar. Despite his great powers of invention, 
 it had become his habit to build all the creationsof his genius upon a foundation of recondite 
 learning. Instead of pouring the precious ore of wisdom and poetry, as he might have done, 
 spontaneously from his own rich fancy, he sought with harassing toil for precious thoughts 
 buried in the musty and forgotten pages of monkish divines, of old Dutch jurists, and 
 Spanish chroniclers. In such places he certainly did discover gems ; but gems which could 
 only be recognized as such when placed in the setting of the English poet, and worked into 
 sha])e by the labor Umce. But it was not for a poet, over whom old age was creeping, to 
 continue this life of solitary labour. The works of Southey became fewer, they lacked the 
 lustre of former days, and they necessarily proved unsuccessful. He had never pandered to 
 popular tastes. A laudator temporis acti, he had at all times denounced the utilitarian spirit 
 of his age, and waged a hopeless strife with that surging tide of progress, into which a 
 writer must plunge if he means to live by authorship. His mode of writing and his 
 opinions entailed upon him a perpetual struggle with poverty. When Sir Robert Peel 
 made Southey the offer of a baronetcy, referred to in the preceding memoir, he supposed 
 that the Laureate, like many of bis contemporaries, had made a fortune by literature. When 
 the true state of the case was explained, a correspondence ensued between the poet and 
 the statesman, which is alike honourable to both. It resulted in a pension of ,=£300 a year, 
 in lieu of the baronetcy. This augmentation of income relieved many pressing cares, 
 and Southey, looking forward to an old age of leisure and affluence, married a second time, 
 the alliance being contracted with Miss Bowles, an accomplished authoress, who had long 
 been one of his dearest friends. Domestic comfort seemed in store for him. But alas ! 
 how illusory are all human hopes ! the change had come too late, the stout worker had 
 toiled beyond his strength. The gnawing cares of poverty, the fatigue of solitary study, 
 had undermined his health, and he fell a prey to disease more terrible than death. His 
 bright eye was quenched, his frame shrank, his old flow of spirits dried up, his memory 
 became confused, he lost all power of connecting his ideas, and at last he sank into a 
 state of painless imbecility — never interrupted, during four long years, by one lucid 
 glance into the past. Well it was that he was spared the pain ! At length, with the 
 spring of 1843, death came, with relief from the thraldom of disease. 
 
 Southey was buried in the church of Crossthwaite, where a recumbent statue, one of 
 the masterpieces of a celebrated sculptor, fittingly records the admiration of the judicious 
 few for a great scholar, who, already recognized as one of the truest and purest spirits 
 of his age, will yet take a loftier place than has hitherto been conceded hini among the 
 prose writers and thinkers of England, when the passions he evoked shall have subsided, 
 and the popular creeds, against which he fought so manfully, shall have died away.] 
 
 E 2 
 
THE COUNTESS OF BEESSINGTON. 
 
 Our neighbours on the French side of the Channel have been used to phime themselves 
 something- immoderately upon their supremacy in that branch of authorship which sends 
 forth sparkling thoughts, sage experiences, characteristic anecdotes, in the dcshobUle of let- 
 ters, or memorials, or journals; or, if they be wrought up into more substantial forms, still 
 presents them graced with such wit and pleasantry as belong to the world of society, rather 
 than to the w^orld of books. To confine ourselves to the better half of creation, — if our 
 brethren (rivals no more) possess their Sevignes, Du Deffands, De Staals, is not ours the 
 shrewd, sparkling Montagu, the beloved and satirized of Pope, — equally graphic in her 
 chronicles of court intrigues and of modes of attire; — equally pleasant, whether she set 
 herself to describe the rebellious peeresses trying to force an entrance into the House of Lords, 
 or to discuss Turkish cymars and girdles, and ''the famous balm of INIecca," with the in- 
 quisitive and foolish Lady Rich ? Had we not Lady Suffolk and Lady Hervey, whose names, 
 as some one or other has fantastically said, "are casketed in the amber pages of Horace the 
 inimitable" ? And coming down to later days, — when Literature began to organize coteries 
 for the women as well as clubs for the men, — had we not the lively Thrale, as sweet-tempered 
 as she was lively, witness her delicious "0 the dear good man!" her sharpest recorded 
 reply to the tyrannical rudeness of Johnson ? And had we not a second Montagu, less 
 brilliant, indeed, than the Wortley, and Miss More, — Garrick's "Nine," and Walpole's 
 " lioly Hannah," — and the Lady of Lichfield, Anna Seward, each and all of whom could 
 sometimes "come out of their fine language," and come down from their stilts, and write 
 and talk with a winning and easy sprightliness ? And had we not Miss Burney, in society 
 the shyest of the shy, but on paper bold enough to hit off the humours of the Brangtons 
 and the fadaises of Lovel, or with a pen yet finer and freer, to describe in her artless letters 
 to Daddy Crisp, the peculiarities of the remarkable men and women by whom she was sur- 
 rounded? The list, here carelessly strung together, is sufficiently distinguished; and were 
 wc but to lengthen it by the names of contemporaries, and descant upon the thought em- 
 bellished by fancy — upon the grace, lively " scms taclumt d'etre vif," which gives, as it were, 
 much of its elegance and perfume to our modern English literature, wc could make it sparkle 
 yet brighter. Wc must, however, be contented with singling out one from among many ; 
 and that one shall be the Countess of Blessington. 
 
 In the mention of one, happily for us, yet living, too circumstantial an enumeration of 
 Nature's faii*y gifts, — especially when these have been already celebrated by the choicest 
 artists and most distinguished writers of the day — would become an indiscreet and super- 
 fluous personality. Thus, too, a few words may suffice to tell that Lady Blcssington is of 
 L'ish origin, being the eldest daughter of Edmund Power, Esq., late of Curragheen, county 
 Waterford; that, before she had com])letcd her fifteenth year, she was married to St. Legcr 
 Farmer, Esq., a captain in the 47th Uegiment; that in the year 1817, she became a widow, 
 and, on the IGth of Fd^ruary in the following year, contracted a second marriage with 
 
RICHARD GRirPIN&C9, LOND OIJ <fc OLA SO OW- 
 
THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON, 29 
 
 Charles John Gardiner, Earl of Blessington. After passing the first years of their married 
 life in London, and drawing round them a brilliant circle of the most distinguished statesmen, 
 poets, and wits of the day, Lord and Lady Blessington made an extended tour on the Continent, 
 which included a six years' residence in Italy, here again attracting to their table all who 
 were distinguished and gifted, whether strangei's or residents. It would be impossible not 
 to particularize among these Lord Byron, to a daily intercourse with whom at Genoa we owe 
 the " Conversations," — the last picture of the poet which has been given to the world, and 
 assuredly not the least true. In the year 1828, on their return from Italy, Lord and Lady 
 Blessington took up their residence in Paris, in the splendid Hotel of Marechal Ney, Rue 
 de Bourdon. In the May of the following year Lady Blessington became a second time a 
 widow, and after a melancholy sojourn in the French metropolis, returned to London, where 
 she has since continued to reside, the grace and ornament of the literary world. 
 
 With this second London residence. Lady Blessington entered the career of authorship 
 by publishing the "Conversations with Lord Byron." These have been rapidly succeeded 
 by "The Repealers," the "Two Friends," "The Confessions of an Elderly Gentleman," (a 
 book in which the finesse and polish of Marmontel are closely appi-oached,) " The Victims 
 of Society," besides a host of elegant and simple verses, contributed to the more ephemeral 
 illustrated publications edited by her. In the pages of this series of works no small simi- 
 larity may be traced between the peculiar fortunes and talents of their writer and those of 
 the gifted women mentioned awhile since, with whose names hers will be associated in future 
 days. Like Lady Mary Wortley Montague she enjoyed such opportunities of studying 
 continental society as are only attained under the passport of rank, and wealth, and beauty : 
 — witness the vivid and humorous picture of life as it was in the Faubourg Saint Germain 
 in the "Two Friends." Like the ladies commemorated by Walpole, she has lived in inti- 
 mate acquaintance with the leading political men of her day. But the spirit of the times 
 has changed — and whereas the Herveys and Suffolks were intriguers, dabblers in appoint- 
 ments and places, and never " drank their tea without a stratagem," our Countess of the 
 nineteenth century confines her politics to paper, and writes "The Repealers." Agnin, like 
 Mrs. Piozzi, Lady Blessington has recorded her experiences of the most distinguished man 
 of her time ; but, whereas the friend of Johnson has left us little more than a lively record 
 of personal habits and peremptory sayings; of appetites and antipathies — the friend of 
 Byron has given us a thoughtful and delicate analysis of character; a character, be it re- 
 membered, the reading of whose riddle was a task of no ordinary difficulty. With respect 
 to the members of the blue sisterhood. Lady Blessington, too, has thrown off her jeux 
 d'esp?'it, her tales of society, with enough (be it whispered) of epigram, and anecdote, and 
 thought stored up for future days, to entitle her to challenge the most renowned upon her 
 own ground. 
 
 In characterizing Lady Blessington's published works, however, it must be observed, that 
 they display little — too little, perhaps, of the authoress in their construction ; that they 
 ought to be regarded as the intimations, rather than the finished productions of a mind as 
 full of earnest and original thought as of gay and graceful pleasantry. Her works— in 
 opposition to the prevailing fashion and fault of the day — are underwritten. A life spent 
 in society, indeed, in which the stimulus is varied with the talent and capacity of each new 
 companion, and the success is immediate and unquestioned, is, perhaps, hardly compatible 
 with the mechanical development of literary powers : and it is not wonderful if one who 
 publishes brilliant things and thoughts by the score to every passing visitor, whose 
 
 " words are all peciiliar as tlie Faiiy's who si^oke pearls," 
 should find her pen too slow, and her stores of language hardly copious enough to enable 
 
30 THE rOlJNTESS OP BLESSTNOTON 
 
 her to do full justice to the workings of her mind and the creatures of hor fancy,— should 
 fall short in some of the mysteries of the craft, the tricks of imag-ery and sentiment, by which, 
 indeed, stale thoughts are too often bedizened so as to pass for fresh, and stolen goods dis- 
 guised and circulated as original manufactures. In each novel, however, that she has 
 published. Lady Blessington has shown an increase of mastery over the means of producing 
 effect. Iler last work, the " Victims of Society," combines a fearless and searching picture 
 of the manners of certain higher circles, (manners, be it remarked, so false and corrupt, as 
 hardly to be worth the painting,) with a story of adventure and retribution of great interest 
 and originality : the slight and not unpleasing formality given to the opening of the tale by 
 the epistolary form in which it is told, heightening the effect of the fearful scenes at its close. 
 Her style is always graceful in its total absence of affectation — she excels, too, in the con- 
 structiveuess, which we have sometimes fancied was peculiar to her sex, — in the power of 
 weaving a plot. It is needless further to dwell upon the characteristics of works which 
 have a])peared so recently, and travelled so widely, as the "Conversations" and novels of 
 Lady Blessington. 
 
 [A few words wdl suffice in tracing to its close the career of this brilliant and accom- 
 plished woman. For many years Seamore Place and Gore House, where she successively re- 
 sided, disputed the palm with Holland House as the resort of all the residents in the English 
 metrojiolis, most highly distinguished for wit and for learning. Admission to the coterie of 
 Lady Blessington was an honour keenly coveted as a mark of distinction by those who took 
 the foremost place in the world of fashion. Hard it was for a dowager countess, with a 
 jointure from heavily-burdened Irish estates, to meet the expenses which her hospitality 
 entailed. As the circle of her enthusiastic admirers extended, and literati and men of 
 fashion thronged her salons, she endeavoured to increase her income by literary toil. Her 
 works succeeded each other in rapid succession. In 1839 she piiblished one of her most 
 pleasant books, the " Idler in Italy," which was followed by the " Idler in France," and 
 other productions of a similar but more desultory character. She then edited Heath^s 
 " Book of l^cauty," the " Keepsake," and an annual entitled " Gems of Beauty." But her 
 efforts were unavailing. She found it impossible to meet her liabilities, and when the Irish 
 famine of 1848 so diminished the rents of the Blessington estates as to deprive her of her 
 jointure, she was obliged to give up her house at Kensington, to sell off her costly jiicturcs 
 and furniture, and to retire broken-hearted to Paris. There she died on the 4th of June, 
 1849, regretted by all who could appreciate her wit and accomplishments, and sympathize 
 with sorrows and misfortunes which no prudence or forethought on her part could have alto- 
 gether averted.] 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of "The Ancient ]\Iavhier/' and the translator of 
 " Wallcnstein," was born on the 20th of October, 1772, at Ottcry St. Mary in Devonshire : 
 the eleventh and youngest child of the Rev. John Coleridge, Vicar of that parish. His 
 father having procxu-ed a presentation to Christ^s Hospital for him, he was placed there in 
 1782, in the same year with his friend Charles Lamb, who was three years younger than him- 
 self. Here, under the care of the Rev. James Bowyer, head master of the grammar-school, 
 he was early distinguished for the scholarship, and, it may be added, for those peculiarities of 
 mind and personal habits that marked his after career. Mr. Bowyer, we are told in Mr. 
 Coleridge^s interesting and singular Biographia Literaria, was not only a zealous and clear- 
 sighted guide for him to the riches of the Greek and Roman poets, but a searching and 
 sarcastic critic of the metrical school exercises in which his pupil gave his first tokens of 
 possessing original genius. Thus it happened that young Coleridge's taste was cultivated 
 and rendered fastidious before his powers were at all developed : and, apart from the peculiar 
 physical organization which throughout after life operated on his mind as a burden and a 
 hindrance in the work of production and accomplishment, this very circumstance of his 
 education, at first sight seeming so advantageous, may have contributed to indispose him to 
 attempt any continuous effort, or to complete it if attempted. 
 
 Other studies, which even then exercised over him a master influence, were not less un- 
 favourable to his yielding wholly to poetical impulses. "At a very premature age," says 
 he, "even before my fifteenth year, T had bewildered myself in metaphysics, and in theo- 
 logical controversy. History, and particular facts, lost all interest in my mind. * * In my 
 friendless wanderings on our leave days (for I was an orphan, and had scarcely any connec- 
 tions in London), highly was I delighted if any passenger, especially if dressed in black, 
 would enter into conversation with me, for I soon found the means of directing it to my 
 favourite subjects — 
 
 " ' Of proAdcTcnce, fore-knowledge, ■ndll and fate — 
 Fixed fate, free-will, fore-lmowledgc absolute.'" 
 
 From the perplexities of these momentous topics, so disproportionate with his mental 
 strength at that period, the boy metaphysician was, for a time, diverted, by his making- 
 friendship with the sonnets of the Rev. Mr. Bowles. So ardently did he adopt these, that, 
 his funds not warranting pm'chases, " he made," he tells us, " within less than a year and a 
 half, no less than forty transcriptions, as the best presents I could offer to those who had 
 in any way won my regard." The freshness of their imagery, the healthy simplicity of 
 their language, not only enchanted their enthusiastic admirer, but invited him to attempt 
 something of his own, which should possess similar excellences. 
 
 It was not, however, till the year 1794, that he ventured into print. In the interim his 
 fortunes had undergone strange vicissitudes. He had remained at Christ's Hospital till he 
 was nineteen, when having as grecian, or captain of the school, won an exhibition to the 
 university, he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, on the 7th of September, 1791. But the 
 discipline of a college was no less uncongenial, whether to the man or to his mind, than 
 they subsequently proved to the gentle-hearted Shelley. From his cradle to his grave Mr. 
 Coleridge was marked by singularity of habits, amounting to the most entire non-conformity 
 
32 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 with the ways and calculations of men. In the common relations of life he was undecided, 
 and inconsiderate, — loving better to sit still and discuss some knotty point, than to rise up 
 and act. The same languor of spirit, which ])revented him from ever advancing his worldly 
 fortunes, and which, ere long, took the form of bodily disease, — the same perverseness which 
 made him, when travelling to solicit subscriptions for a periodical (the " Watchman'') which 
 he was about to establish, choose for the subject of an harangue, in the house of one whose 
 patronage in his undertaking he was seeking, the ntiprojilableness and unlawfulness of all 
 periodicals, — rendered him desultory and capricious in his college studies, allowed him to 
 fall into pecuniary difficulties, and finally contributed to his quitting college without having 
 taken his degree. Like some others of his friends, too, he had disqualified himself for a 
 university career, by having caught the Jacobinical spirit of the time, as " Robespierre," a 
 hastily-produced drama, which he wrote in conjunction with his friend Southey — as that 
 tremendous phili])i)ic, " Fire, Famine, and Slaughter," sufficiently attest. The history or 
 miud would contain few^ more curious chapters than that which should trace the changes in 
 opinion of these young authors, who entered the world together so fiercely resolved to stand 
 or fall under the banner of liberty and equality ! 
 
 On leaving Cambridge Mr. Coleridge was exposed to the severest privations, and after a 
 few days of distress and perplexity in London, took the desperate step of enlisting himself as 
 a private soldier, in the 15th Regiment, Elliot's Light Dragoons, under the assumed name of 
 *' Comberback," with the view of retrieving his fortunes. But he was as unapt and unready 
 in all bodily exercises, as he was rich in recondite learning. Though orderly and obedient, 
 he could not rub down his horse; and being detected by his commanding officer. Captain 
 Ogle, as the scrawl er of a Latin quotation upon the wall of the stables at Reading, where 
 the regiment w^as quartered, the circumstance led to his discharge. It may be added, on 
 the authority, and in the words of the Rev. W. L. Bowles, that " by far the most correct, 
 sublime, chaste, and beautiful of his poems, 'Religious Musings,' was wiitten non inter 
 sylvas Academi, but in the tap-room at Reading." 
 
 The date of Mr. Coleridge's first publication, which took place shortly after this period, 
 lias been given. The work was favourably received by a few, and cried down only by such 
 superficial and overweening critics as welcomed Mr. Wordsworth's first poetical essays with 
 a fatal " This will never do ! " In the winter of 1794-5, having joined the Pantisocratians 
 (to whom fuller allusion is made elsewhere), we find him lecturing at Bristol on the French 
 Revolution, but without much method or regularity, — and it was eminently characteristic 
 of the 7nan (who must always be considered separately from the poet and the metaphysician), 
 that he rushed into the scheme without any worldly substance, and even considered himself 
 as furthering its purposes by his early marriage with Miss Fricker, which took place in the 
 same year. 
 
 The scheme of Pantisocracy was soon found but a broken reed to lean uj)on, and the 
 poet, having settled himself at Nether Stowcy — where many of his most delicious verses 
 were written, — was obliged to endeavour to make his literary talents available for his main- 
 tenance. A periodical, devoted to the utterance of liberal opinions, was planned, " by 
 sundry philanthropists and auti-polemists." This was the " Watchman," whose ill success 
 might be augured from the anecdote mentioned awhile since ; and having lingered through 
 its short and sickly life, no one will wonder at finding it presently used as waste paper for 
 the lighting of fires in its editor's cottage. IMr. Coleridge also eked out his means, at this 
 time, by contributing occasional poems to a morning paper. 
 
 In the year 1797 his volume of poetry went to a t^ccond edition, and, at Sheridan's 
 request, he wrote his beautiful tragedy of " Remorse," which, however, was not performed 
 till the year 1813, and then with but moderate success. About this time Mr. Wordsworth 
 was resident at Nether Stowey; with this gentleman Mr. Coleridge contracted a close and 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 33 
 
 affectionate intimacy. Each of the two was anxious to do bis part in what they conceived 
 might prove the i-evival of true poetry, and between them the " Lyrical Ballads " were 
 planned. In the execution of this joint work, Mr. Coleridge was " to direct bis endeavours 
 to persons and characters su))crnatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our 
 inward nature a human interest, and a resemblance of truth sufficient to procure for these 
 shadows of imagination, that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which consti- 
 tutes poetic faith.^^ In fulfihnent of this intention the "Ancient Mariner" (that marvel 
 among modern legends), the "Genevieve," — in itself the most exquisite of love-tales, and 
 yet but tbrowTi off as the introduction to a story of mystery never completed; — and the first 
 part of "Christabel" were written. The second part of this fragment, whose fate it has 
 been to be first more scorned, next more quoted, lastly more admired, than most contem- 
 porary poems, was not added till after its author's return from Germany. It was while 
 Mr. Coleridge was residing at Nether Stowey, that he occasionally officiated as an Unita- 
 rian Minister at Taunton ; and he might probably have been promoted to the regular 
 charge of a congregation at Shrewsbury, had not the liberality of his friends, tlic IVIr. 
 Wedgwoods, offered him the alternative of the means wherewith he might proceed to Ger- 
 many, and complete his studies according to his own plan. The latter he was sure to 
 accept. Mr. Hazlitt has left a delightful record among his literary remains, — of Mr. 
 Coleridge's trial sermon at Shrewsbury, and of his fascinating powers of eloquence and 
 conversation ; this is followed by a no less interesting picture of the poet's manner of life 
 at Nether Stowey. Had it been possible, these should have been quoted here, together with 
 Mr. Coleridge's own anecdote from the " Biographia," telling how he was dogged by a 
 government spy for many weeks together, while he was wandering among the Quantock 
 hills, and dreaming of one of the thousand works, of which 
 
 " His eyes made pictiu'es, when tlicy were shut," 
 
 but which his hand never executed, — a contemplative and descriptive poem, to be called 
 "The Brook." 
 
 It was on the IGth of September, 1798, that Mr. Coleridge set sail for Hamburgh, from 
 Yarmouth. The details of this voyage, of his interview with Klopstock, of his subsequent 
 residences at Ratzeburg and Gottingcn, are journalized in his own delightful letters : it is 
 enough for us to say, that he returned to his own country in 1801, imbued with the 
 best spirit of German literature; his researches into its philosophy having wrought for him 
 the somewhat unforeseen result of a change from the Unitarian to the Trinitarian belief. 
 That he continued a staunch disciple of the latter faith for the remainder of his days, his 
 prose works and his will afford ample evidence. 
 
 On his return to England, Mr. Coleridge took up his residence at Keswick, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of his friends Wordsworth and Southey ; there he translated Schiller's " Wallen- 
 steiu," which was published immediately; and though, for its wonderful spirit and fidelit}^, 
 — the latter not a dry closeness of woi'ds, but a rendering of thoughts by thoughts, — it was, 
 on its appearing, felt to be a remarkable work — unique in our language, and raising the 
 translator to an equality with his original author — it was long and strangely neglected, a 
 second edition not being called for till the year 1828. Noiv, could we call up "the old 
 man eloquent," as Sir Walter Scott thi-eatened might be done, to compel him to complete 
 the half-told legend of " Christabel," we should be tempted (could only one wish be 
 granted) to demand of him a version of the untranslatable " Faust," secure that in his 
 hands that wonderful di'ama would be as admirably naturalized into our literature, as the 
 master-work of " Schiller." 
 
 Shortly after his return from Germany, Mr. Coleridge joined himself as a literary and 
 
 F 
 
34 SAMUEL lAYLOU COLKRIDGE. 
 
 political contributor to the " Morninir Post," stipulating in the first instance, " that the paper 
 should be conducted on certain fixed principles, these being anti- ministerial, and with 
 greater earnestness and zeal, both anti-jacobin and auti-gallican." He laments over the 
 time and talent expended in this compulsory toil, which would have been easily discharged, 
 nor felt burdensome, by any one more happily constituted, or self-trained for diligent efi"ort. 
 And, in afterwards speaking of literature as a profession, he would, like too many beside 
 him, do reason and justice wrong, by describing its drudgery in gloomier colours than arc 
 used with reference to the uninteresting labour necessaiy to every other profession. But 
 his mind was always teeming and pregnant, rather than active ; and it was enchained in a 
 feeble body, to the wants of which, perhaps, self-indulgence had given too much mastery. 
 jMr. Coleridge could move others by his inspired conversation, by a few words crowded into 
 the margin of a book, or let drop in conversation ; he could clear up a dark point in lite- 
 rature, or illustrate a principle in philosojjhy, or open an avenue for his disciples to advance 
 along in the pursuit of truth; but to woi'k himself, save in a fragmentary manner, he seems 
 to have been positively unable. We find him in 1804, at Malta, appointed as Secretary to 
 Sir Alexander Ball ; — with a superior whom he loved, as may be seen by the elaborate and 
 grave panegyric he has left in " The Friend,^' — and a liberal salary. But he was incapable 
 of performing the duties of office even under such favourable circumstances; and after 
 a ramble through Italy and Rome, he returned to England, again to prove the precarious- 
 ness of the life of those whose sole dependence is upon thoughts which they cannot, or will 
 not, take the labour and patience to work out in a complete and available form. 
 
 In writing Mr. Coleridge's life, this feature of his character should be fully displayed and 
 dwelt upon : even in this brief sketch it claims a distinct mention, though with reverence 
 and sympathy. On his return to England we find him lecturing on poetry and the fine 
 arts, at the Royal Institution, in the year 1808 : next sojourning at Grasmere, where he 
 planned and published " The Friend," a periodical which was dropped at the twenty-eighth 
 number. Nor is this wonderful : there was a want of variety in the topics embraced in this 
 miscellanv; and the metaphysical and philosophical subjects on which its contriver delighted 
 principally to dwell, were grave and involved ; nor by their manner of treatment likely to 
 be rendered acceptable to a public large enough to support a periodical, had he been regular 
 enough to have continued it. " The tendency of his mind," writes one who understood him 
 well, " to speculations of the most remote and subtle character, led him into regions where 
 to follow was no easy flight. To read his philosophical discourses is a mental exercise which 
 few are now willing to undertake ; and it is not surprising that many will describe him as 
 vague, intricate, and rhapsodical. For those, however, who study his writings as they 
 deserve and demand, they are highly suggestive, and full of no common instruction, as 
 excursions of a mind which in compass and elevation had certainly no peer among his English 
 contemporaries. Of the peculiar character of his philosophy, as applied to various branches 
 of knowledge, whether in ethics, criticism, history, or metaphysical science, it would be 
 impossible to afibrd even the most imperfect sketch in this place. He may be said to have 
 finally adopted an eclectic system of his own, strongly tinctured with the academic doctrines, 
 and enriched with ideas gathered from the eminent German teachers of philoso])hy, to which 
 he added a certain devout mysticism resting upon revealed religion. In the utterance of his 
 tenets, circumstance no less than choice directed him to the dogmatic nuthod; which, indeed, 
 to be fixed in the conviction of certain positive and supreme truths, he must in any case natu- 
 rally have followed. * * * His age was chiefly devoted to the verbal exposition of 
 his scheme of a Christian philosophy, in which his mind had found a calm and satisfied 
 refuge : his * Aids to lleflection ' can but be considered as prelusions to the longer dis- 
 course, the ' Muynum Opus/ in which he meant to unfold his system in all its fulness." 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 35 
 
 The above passage, as containing in some wise a general character of the prose works of 
 this extraordinary nian, has been permitted to break the fragile thread of our biographical 
 notice. But there is little more to be told. After living for a short time at Grasinerc, he 
 came again to London, and finally set up his rest at Ilighgate, in the house of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Gilman. With these faithful friends he continued to sojourn during the remainder of his 
 life. In 1816 (to complete the list of his works) '' Christabel " was published; then fol- 
 lowed his " Lay Sermons ; " next, in 1817, his Biugraphia Literaria, the aneedotical part of 
 which, in its w\ant of method and connection, is as eminently typical of the man, as its intro- 
 duced digressions are of the philosopher. Besides these, we must mention a volume of 
 poems entitled " Sybillinc Leaves,^^ containing the " Genevieve," the " Ilynni in the Valley 
 of Chamouni " (that noblest of modern sacred odes), and " Zapolya/' a drama imitating in 
 its form the peerless " \Yinter's Talc" of Shakspeare, which, though full of beauty, is, like 
 the " Remorse," at once too delicate in its language and imagery, and too devoid of one 
 master-interest, to be successful before our vitiated stage audiences. It might be the con- 
 sciousness of his failure, as much as the conviction of the viciousness of the nascent school 
 of poetry and fiction, that embittered his critique upon Maturin's " Bertram," appended to 
 the " Biographia," — a piece of savage labour thrown away. "Zapolya" was never repre- 
 sented. The list of Mr. Coleridge's works published in his lifetime, will, we believe, be 
 completed by a small volume published in 1830, "On the Constitution of the Church and 
 State," bearing on the Catholic Question. 
 
 There is no space here for an analysis of ]Mr. Coleridge's poems : among which, to in- 
 crease the impossibility of such an essay, there will be found a singular variety and difference 
 of manner. In some he is devout and enthusiastic, soaring to the most august themes, 
 with a steadhicss of wing and loftiness of harmony ])cculiar to himself; in others, tendei 
 and quaint, dallying among dainty images and conceits; and in his later verses, wrapping 
 up thoughts in a ga^b enigmatical and fantastic, after the manner of some of our elder 
 writers. In his ballads, again, he has caught the true spirit of the supernatural beyond all 
 his compeers ; his mind broods over the mysterious tale he is about to unfold, and liis words 
 fall from him uncousciousl}^, each verse, as it were, intimating a portent. In all he shows 
 himself to be perhaps the greatest modern master of versification : his poetry has a music 
 deeper than that of chime and cadence, the thoughts and images, not merely the words and 
 the measures, succeed each other in a rare harmony, besides being clothed in language 
 of a select and unborrowed richness. 
 
 For the last many years of his life Mr. Coleridge lived pleasantly among his friends, at 
 one time deriving a small pension from the Royal bounty, — dreaming of a thousand mighty 
 works to be achieved, committing the seeds of these, in the shape of notes and criticisms, 
 to the fly-leaves and margins of such books as fell in his way ; and haranguing with a 
 magical eloquence to those whom he drew round him to "love and learn." lie established, 
 it has been happily said, in excuse for the literary unproductiveness of his later years, a 
 Normal School of philosophy for those who should in turn disseminate his well-beloved doc- 
 trines to a wider circle of pu])ils. Few, even among the uninitiated, left his presence without 
 being a thought the richer; few books passed from under his hands without being graced by 
 some golden sentence of illustration or criticism. The latter are daily coming to light; 
 such as have been given to the world are precious evidences of the largeness of his mind, 
 of the extent of his accomplishments, and the keenness of his perception. As a master and 
 teacher among us, whose mind, dwelling apart from busy life, was devoted to the study and 
 oral diffusion of what was lofty, and noble, and worthy, we ought to love his memory 
 — though we may not forget that there is warning as well as authority associated with his 
 name. 
 
 F 2 
 
THE EIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 SIR ED. GEO. EARLE LYTTON BULWER-LYTTON, 
 
 BAEONET. 
 
 We have hithevto confined ourselves to the dead, or to such among our living authors as 
 have gained their fame — "come, seen^ and conquered/^ and who, no new triumphs being 
 expected from them, may be said already in some wise to belong to the past. We are now 
 to speak of a writer of to-day, who, though he has already "won his spurs,'^ has not half won 
 his renown ; and who, by the eagerness of his aspiration, no less than the versatility of his 
 ])Owers, bids fair to gain a fame far more precious and enduring than the present popularity, 
 wide and brilliant as it is, which his writings enjoy. The reader must be already prepared 
 for the name of Edward Lyttou Bulwer. 
 
 This gentleman is the third and youngest son of General Bulwer, of Heydon Hall, in the 
 county of Norfolk, by Elizabeth, daughter and sole heiress of Henry Warburton j^Lyttou, 
 Esq., of Knebworth Park, Herts. The registers of our English nobility and gentry will tell 
 those curious in pedigrees, with how many ancient and noble houses these families are con- 
 nected ; but it must suffice us to record the fact, that Mr. Bulwer's maternal grandfather 
 was a remarkable scholar, the intimate friend of Sir William Jones, the best Hebraist of his 
 time ; and in further confirmation of those who believe all intellectual superiority to be 
 derived from the mother, we may add, that the daughter of this gentleman inherited a turn 
 for elegant literature, and that i\Ir. Bulwer, deprived of his father at an early age, wrote his 
 first verses, when five or six years old, for her pleasure; some of these being imitations of 
 Percy's ballads, which was a favourite book of his infancy. We can but enlarge this scanty 
 notice, by pointing to the author's own charming and heart-felt picture of one residence of 
 his boyhood, in " Knebworth," one of the papers collected in the " Student." 
 
 Mr. ]Uilwcr was ])laced at several private schools (never, we believe, at a ])ublic one), 
 subsequently under two private tutors, and his education completed, as far as routine studies 
 are concerned, at Cambridge. But a mind so eager and so thoroughly awake learns to the 
 last hour of its life, and throws itself with equal interest ujion the objects and personages 
 encountered in its daily career, as uj)on tli(; great minds of the world s])eaking in books. 
 While j\Ir. Bulwer was at Cambridge, where he produced his ])rize poem on Sculpture, he 
 occui)ied the h^ig vacation by wandering over a large part of England and Scotland on foot ; 
 and it is more than probable that the humours and adventures of such a journey, and those 
 gathered and experitnccd during a subsequent ramble through France on horseback, first 
 gave rise to the idea of his ])rescnting himself to the public as a novelist, a painter of 
 many-coloured life as it is. But his first literary efforts were in verse. We may mention 
 "Weeds and Wild Flowers," a collection of fugitive poems, bearing the date of 182G. To 
 these, taking a memoir in the "New Monthly Magazine" as our authority, succeeded " O'Neil 
 
wm wj. ' f V ' 
 
 " ^n:S31S3-SSS33X^-S:2 
 
 
 ""W""^ 
 
 hlCHARD GHIFKINX;'^ lOjjnON A-. GIASOOW. 
 
SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER-LYTTON. 37 
 
 the Rebel ^^ (1827). In this year, too, "Falkland" was published anonymously, a dreary 
 and striking tale of crime and sorrow, containing the germ of many after-creations. This 
 work cost its author more trouble than any of his novels, and is the least known among 
 them. Such are the chances of literature ! In the year 1828 " Pelham'^ made its 
 appearance, and the busy career of authorship was commenced in good earnest. To estimate 
 its fruits rightly, it should be borne in mind, that they are not the only offspring of their 
 writer's youth ; that the practical duties of manhood and citizenship have not been sacrificed 
 to the studies and fancies they record. Mr. Bulvver has acted, as well as thought and 
 written : he has taken his part in society as a Member of Parliament, at first for St. Ives, 
 and, when that borough lost a member, for the ancient city of Lincoln. It must not be 
 forgotten how worthily he has linked his literary and parliamentary career, by bringing in 
 the bill for the protection of dramatic copyright, the forerunner of the present more 
 extensive effort to insure to the author the just reward of his labours, by which, in like 
 manner, Mr. Serjeant Talfourd is distinguishing himself as a member of the Republic of 
 Letters, and a legislator for its benefit. 
 
 Let us now glance at the series of works which have flo-wed in almost unprecedented 
 rapidity from Mr. Bulwer's pen, since he made his appearance in the lists of authorship, 
 ready, it may be added, to touch the shields of antagonists with the shaiy end of his spear. 
 We begin with " Pelham," as the first work which awakened the public to perceive that 
 a new spirit of power was abroad in the world. This novel appeared at an unlucky 
 moment, in the full summer of fashionable novels and of trade-puffery, when another 
 added to the list of stories of modern society (each of which was recommended with as 
 importunate a grandiloquence as its forerunner) was, however eloquent, exposed to the 
 chance of being merely skimmed by the indiscriminate frequenters of circulating libraries, 
 — and then dying forgotten. And for a short time after its appearance " Pelham " seemed 
 likely to share the common lot. But genius, like murder, "will out,'' and it began to be 
 whispered that these "Adventures of a Gentleman" contained shrewd thought as well as 
 lively painting — that their satire was not the frothy impertinence of one careless alike 
 of aim or means, so that he can make the world laugh. The book passed from the hands 
 of the thoughtless into those of the thinker ; it came to be sharply canvassed, and, of 
 course, liberally abused. There was an intolerable air of superiority in the hero, which 
 critics chose to extend to his creator, and, according to their usual justice, the identification 
 being once made, the cry "Anathema" was raised by a hundred voices. But more of this 
 presently. 
 
 "Pelham" was succeeded by "Tlie Disowned," a more hastily written work, with more 
 romance and less worldly wisdom than its predecessor, and, as a whole, less uniformly 
 sustained, though containing many scenes and episodes, brimful of the poetry and 
 passion which gush from the young writer, with a force and freshness he can never know 
 at that after-period when experience takes the place of impulse. The next tale was 
 " Devereux " (of these three first novels our own favourite) ; then came " Paul Clifford,'^ 
 a clever extravagance, written, we cannot but think, on a forced and false theory; but 
 in its darker scenes, — for instance, the interview between the judge and the prisoner, 
 the haughty self-avenged father, and his neglected son, — giving evidence on the part 
 of its author of an increasing mastery over the most terrible passions, the strongest and 
 most seci'ct workings of the mind, which was to be brought to perfection in his next novel, 
 "Eugene Aram." This work, meditated for two years before it was written, Mr. Bulwer 
 did well to regard as his best, — as the offering which he had a right to lay at the feet of 
 Scott. The subject was difiicult — to any one not possessed of a master-mind, impracticable; 
 and its difficulty for the uses of the romancer was increased by its catastrophe being already 
 
38 SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULAVER-LYTTOX. 
 
 familiar to the public. And yet so admirably was it handled, so intimately were our 
 sympathies stirred for the lonely student, in whom the love of knowledge was by circum- 
 stances penerted into the instigator of a terrible crime, to be atoned for by a life of 
 concealed agony and a death of ignominy, that some worthy souls raised the cry of " a false 
 moral " against the author, as if there were danger and poison in threading the mazes of 
 the human mind — the maze often the most entangled in the mind of the finest structure ! 
 
 Of the " Siamese Twins,^' a serio-comic poem, published before " Eugene Aram,'^ we 
 need only speak as evidencing the eagerness with which its author has tried to make every 
 field his own, sometimes without sufficiently weighing the worth or practicability of his 
 subject. There was a pause, then, in the Novelist's labours ; and Mr. Buhver next appeared 
 before the public as the Editor of the " New Monthly Magazine.'' If he was not wholly 
 successful in gathering together a body of contributors with one pervading aim and purpose 
 (such as alone can make any periodical efi'ective), he was earnest and various in the articles 
 furnished by himself — now breaking out into some bitter and indignant political essay, the 
 like whereof had never before startled the calm pages of the "New Monthly;" — now turning 
 his hand to criticism, which, if not always just, was always new and interesting, full of rich 
 and original thought ; now mingling the philosophical and the fantastic in tale or apologue, 
 or enforcing some truth with the polished humour of IMarmontel ; and in a series of papers, 
 " The Conversations of an Ambitious Student," giving utterance to those lofty, and calm, 
 and chastened contemplations, in which the mind, year by year, increasingly delights to fold 
 itself, and thus, by rising above the things of earth, to prepare itself for the slackening, by 
 age and decay, of the cords which bind us here below. The choicest of these essays have 
 been since published in a collected form, and will be found in " The Student." 
 
 All this time (while, also, be it remembered, Mr. Bulwer was zealously fulfilling his par- 
 liamentary duties), he was at work upon his "England and the English" — that too clever 
 and caustic anatomy of our national character, which John Bull will not soon forget and 
 forgive, and which may in some wise reasonably excite his ill-humour, inasmuch as it dwells 
 too largely upon foibles and short-comings, without sufficiently indicating the charities and 
 the virtues which grow up side by side with them. But it is a book which has done good — 
 which must do good — which must compel us into thinking less complacently of our loudly- 
 trumpeted perfections — into extending our sympathies towards "our born enemies" (so ran 
 the style of foreigners some thirty years since), which must dispose us, if not from love, out 
 of very shame, to look abroad, and see what there may be good, and great, and worthy of 
 imitation, in the institutions of our neighbours. Scarcely had this essay run the gauntlet 
 of abuse and popularity, when, the rod being laid down and the wand taken up again, the 
 *' Pilgrims of the Rhine" made their appearance; — a capriccio in which the poet, with the 
 freest-winged imagination, sports between elfin frolics and human sorrows, and carries us at 
 his will from the airy revels, " where too much May dew was drunk out of buttercups," to 
 the chamber of the dying girl, with her imjienetrablc father, and her eager, ])assionate lover. 
 This romance, perhaps because it appeared before the world with the disadvantage of splendid 
 illustrations, perhaps because we are grown too hard and too real to be willing to follow 
 fancy in her flights, quick and bright as the sunbeams, has never been valued as it deserved 
 to be in England. Abroad it is to be found in numbers sufficient almost to bridge the " blue 
 and castled " river on which its scene is laid. 
 
 His next work again showed Mr. Bulwer in a new light, — as a romancer of ancient days. 
 This was "The Last Days of Pompeii," the fruit of a hasty Italian journey, and, with the 
 yet nobler work which followed, " Rienzi," it has established Mr. Bulwer firmly in the 
 highest rank of our novelists. The tale was not one of mere glow and gorgeousness — of the 
 banquets and the triumphs, the festivals and the processions of old times. So strong 
 
SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWE!f:IrffTON. 39 
 
 a human interest, so vivid a display of character, was thrown into the restored ruins of the 
 " Silent City/' that wliile reading we felt as if mingling in its crowds, as if we knew Nydin, 
 the blind flower-girl, and Lydon, the stalwart, true-hearted gladiator ; as if we heard the 
 high-pitched voice of the woman, who cared for nothing but that " there should be one man 
 for the lion, and another for the tiger," and whose rhyme about " the merry show " mingles 
 like an omen with the small cloud arising from the sea, with the scarcely felt trembling of 
 the earthquake which announces to the city that — 
 
 " Fate hangs lilie a shadow o'er her feasts." 
 
 Nothing is neglected, nothing hurried, in the working up of this magnificent tale, which 
 fascinates us with as breathless an interest as if the end of the story were not proclaimed in 
 its title. But " Rienzi,'' the last novel of the author, has yet a higher merit. The strength 
 of the "Pompeii" lies in the management of incident, illustrated by beautiful and breath- 
 ing characters; the strength of "Ptienzi" lies in the mastery of character; that complete 
 mastery, which, in portraying a hero, dares to show the flaws and blemishes which mingle 
 with his noblest eS'orts enough of what is small, and unworthy, and personal, to prevent his 
 wielding omnipotence over the destinies of an inferior race, and which can still enchain our 
 sympathy for him to the last. Never was the rise and progress of a revolution more admi- 
 rably chronicled; never the balance more evenly held between a righteous cause and 
 unrighteous means ; — and this by fresh, vivid dialogue, and in scenes that thrill ns with 
 their interest. The characters, too, are bolder and brighter than in any previous work. 
 We need hardly instance Rienzi's high-hearted and haughty wife, and the Provengal Knight, 
 with his tender, romantic. Troubadour spirit breaking out from under his warrior's suit of 
 mail, and the crew of corrupt Roman nobles, and the citizens with Cecco del Vecchio, the 
 sturdy and selfish smith, at their head. What other fictions Mr. Buhver, with the busy 
 fertility of genius, may be preparing for our delight we do not know; he will find it hard 
 to produce a work higher in conception, or more exquisite in its artistic treatment, than 
 " Rienzi." 
 
 A further proof of the versatility and aspiration which we have noted as eminently 
 characteristic of Mr. Bulwer, was given by him early in the present year, in the production 
 of the play of " The Duchess de la Valliere," at Covent Garden. The failure of this drama 
 (as indiscreetly attacked, as it has been indiscreetly overpraised) may be ascribed to many 
 causes : the story was one in which it was difficult to enlist the sympathies of an English 
 audience, still too narrow and national ; it was therefore denounced as immoral by those who 
 never lifted up their voices to whisper an objection against "Jane Shore" or "The Orphan." 
 And, as if to destroy the chance of its success, the actors, one and all (with the glorious 
 exception of Mr. Macready), seemed to have studied how pathos might be exaggerated into 
 rant, and lively dialogue degraded into burlesque. The Duke de Lauzun was presented as 
 
 a Polonius, — La Marquise de Montespan but we ai'e not going to write 
 
 harsh things of a woman. The stage arrangements, too, were worthy of the acting. But, 
 making every allowance for these disadvantages in representation, "La Valliere" must be 
 owned to be unequally written ; the concentration eminently required for the stage — and 
 which may be attained without assuming the quips and quaintnesses of a bygone day — 
 was wanting to its dialogue, especially in the portions which connected its striking situations 
 with its great speeches. Most unjust, however, was it to pronounce a work which would 
 have made a reputation for a young writer, unworthy of Mr. Bulwer; as if it were possible 
 that a dramatist could start to life full-fledged, and as if we were not to look for inexperience 
 and feebleness in the second and third essay of one who, however gifted with vigorous con- 
 
40 SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER-LYTTON. 
 
 ception and rich imagery, must still, from position, lack that scenic experience in which most 
 of our successful writers of plays have been educated, if not cradled. A novelist may study 
 bis art at home ; and be it remembered, too, that he is judged more fairly, because more 
 deliberately, than the dramatist, who, while he must study his effects on the boards, is also 
 wholly subject to the caprice of an audience, whom a tyrant a trifle too tyrannical, or a lover 
 burning where he should only be warm, an ill-fancied dress, or a clumsily-changed scene, 
 may doom in a moment without warning or appeal. One disappointment, however, may be 
 the herald of twenty successes : it is with the author as with the actor ; and who can tell 
 how far the hisses of an ill-mannered Liverpool audience may have contributed to the after 
 triumphs of England's Tragic Muse on the boards at Covent Garden ? But there is little 
 encouragement now on the part of either audience, or of actors, for a generous and gifted 
 spirit to enter a second time the arena of the Drama, when his own desire for experiment is 
 once laid. 
 
 It is almost needless to remind the reader, so recently has " Athens " been published, 
 that the circle of Mr. Bulwer's labours has embraced history also. This last, his most 
 elaborate work, still only partly completed, was planned when he was at college, and has 
 been wrought upon at intervals for five years. Thus patiently must those labour who 
 would have their labours endure. The result in the present instance is well worth the 
 time and thought bestowed. The author has turned the full strength of a mind at once 
 shrewd, enthusiastic, and daring, upon his subject, and embellished it with all the graces 
 of a style ornamented without excess. He has produced a work (to quote one far better 
 able to decide upon its value than the writer) " which, if it be completed as it has been 
 beo-un, will, by its effect in correcting prejudices which have been most sedulously fostered, 
 and diffusing true notions on one of the most interesting of all parts of the world's history, 
 entitle its author to no humble meed of praise." 
 
 We have been somewhat more minute in our enumeration than may seem necessary 
 when speaking of works which are read wherever the English language penetrates, which 
 wall the booksellers' shops in Germany and America; but our reason for such minuteness 
 will be found in our conviction, that, in spite of this honour due rendered to him by the 
 world (not the one country) of readers, Mr. Bulwcr has hardly received fair treatment 
 from the hands of his critics, that he has been, for the most part, either insolently 
 flouted, or analyzed with a caution and severity scarcely less invidious. One reason of 
 this may be, that he appeals to the world under a twofold guise. He won his first fame 
 when he was little more than a boy, at an age when passion is usually presumed to be 
 the ruling inspiration ; and yet there was the thought, the worldly wisdom, the sarcasm of 
 maturity, even in his first work. One half of the world, calling itself critical, could under- 
 stand Pelham's finery, but not discern bis philosophy ; the other half refused to listen 
 to the latter because it came from one who presented himself before them chained, and 
 ringed, and essenced, and who would break off in some subtle digression, to " sigh like a 
 furnace," under the window of the Cynthia of the minute, or to discuss the fashions of the 
 toilette and the table. This mixture of the old man and the boy, of wisdom and petulance, 
 of expanded benevolence and lively coxcombry, of sound reason and overmastering passion, 
 was a puzzle to our literary censors, always slow to admit an excellence which obliges them 
 to quit their old formulas ; the author was passed over as not deep enough, by those who 
 did not perceive that in the presence of thought in one so young, there was bright promise, 
 — or he was stigmatized as exaggerated, because he gave free range to passion and fancy, 
 and sometimes to that earnest egotism, that desire to confess and be absolved, which it is so 
 difficult for one of an ardent and overflowing spirit to repress. We will not add to what 
 has been said an inquiiy into the motives which may have stayed the pens of some of his 
 
SIR EDWARD LYTTON BUI.WKR-LYTTON. 41 
 
 criticSj wliicli may have clipped otliers in gall, lest we should cease from it with tlie 
 saddening- conviction, that there have been few epochs of English literature wherein 
 criticism has been more largely a system of puppet-work, more deeply steeped in per- 
 sonality, than during late years. Mr. Bulwer may regard the fame he has already won 
 with the proud satisfaction that he owes it not to the crowd of interpreters who stand 
 between the man of genius and the ))ublic, and, like the claqneurs of the French stage, sell 
 themselves to him who bids the highest. He has, we sincerely hope, a long and still 
 brightening career before him. 
 
 [Tiie hopes expressed in the preceding notice have not been disappointed. Her Majesty, 
 on the occasion of her coronation, conferred upon him a baronetcy. Not many years 
 afterwards he re-entered Parliament as member for the county of Herts, accepting in 
 1858, under the Government of Lord Derby, the office of Secretary of State for the 
 Colonies. In the midst of his arduous parliamentary duties he found time to write 
 " The Caxton Family," " My Novel," and " What will he do with it ? "—a series of 
 works sufficient of themselves to place him among the greatest writers of Engli;^h fiction. 
 " To be at the head of the novelists of England," says an eloquent writer in the " London 
 Review," " is a proud station. Fitting the age in which they lived and the manners that 
 surrounded them, Richardson and Fielding held sovereign sway, and Smollett was 
 great in his line, and Scott, indeed, was the wizard of the North. And we can speak 
 of living writers whose fame will go down to posterity as the delight and honour of 
 the present day; but when we glance at the extraordinary extent and diversity of the 
 productions of a Bulwer, and reflect on the fact that they are but emanations floated, as 
 it were, from amidst labours and duties of the most onerous nature, we are lost in 
 astonishment. And the more, as nowhere is mediocrity or superficiality to be discovered. 
 Bulwer is far removed from the herd Faciant nee intehigendo ut nihil intelligant ; he is 
 sterling throughout, and never can be misunderstood, because he knows what he means, 
 and how to communicate it most intelligibly. His style is always plain, stiong, nervous, — 
 when requisite, eloquent, pathetic, passionate. The English language could not furnish 
 quotations more admirable than many we could point out in these Caxton novels."] 
 
LADY MORGAN. 
 
 A French writer has pleasant!}' said, tliat for the portraiture of a woman, the pen should 
 be made of a peacock's feather, and the ink dyed with the dust from a butterfly's wings. 
 But he has drawn out only half an inventory of requisites, when the brighter spirits among 
 "the sex" are concerned. To take the subject before us, for instance, for the decorating 
 and the finishing of its resemblance, the gay but fragile commodities aforesaid would, indeed, 
 be most acceptable; but the artist must first have brought to his task a keen eye, a firm 
 hand, and an implement vigorous and sharp-pointed enough to trace in bold Hues and 
 strongly-marked features. 
 
 The literary position of Lady Morgan is as singular as her works are original ; — the 
 offspring of a peculiar mind, developed under peculiar circumstances. It is no holiday feat 
 for a woman, self-educated, to have won by her own unassisted hand, in defiance of the 
 ceaseless out])Ouring of malice and evil report, an European reputation, — not the sickly and 
 ephemeral fame of a coterie. And there are few of the sex who, granting them the 
 l)Ossession of fervour and power to achieve as much, could stand upon such an eminence so 
 gained, without a change passing over them, — without their writings more largely showing 
 a mind soured by its struggle, or fantastic in the self-conceit of its prowess, — or without 
 
 their 
 
 " Wearing a swashing and martial outside, 
 As many ulhor manuisli cowards have." 
 
 But, whereas the mind of Lady Morgan has been richly and largely developed, it has 
 undergone little change in its aims, none in its temperament, during the course of its career 
 through shade and shine. In " The Princess,'^ as well as in her earliest novels, — a series 
 of works lying between the two, which in extent has been rarely equalled by any English 
 authoress, — we may trace; the same enthusiasm, the same buoyancy of aspiration, the same 
 fearless devotion to liberal ])rinci})k-s, tlie same nationality of character, wherein ])athos and 
 humour have each a part. And if, in her later essays, the authoress of " Italy " and " The 
 O'Briens" ranges more boldly between the grave and the gay, the philosophical and the 
 frivolous, "predestination and slea silk," than in the romances of her girlish days, when 
 "she wrote as well as she could, and got the hard words out of Johnson^s Dictionary," 
 it is only the inevitable consequence of that experience which comes with time and knowledge, 
 and which teaches us that truth is none the less authoritative, and deep feeling all the more 
 impressive, for being exhibited as they exist, largely mixed up and alternated with la 
 bu(jutelle. 
 
 Touching, as we do, but slightly upon the j)rivate history of such of our English authors 
 as, being yet alive, have not become the j)ro])erty of the biographer, a few words will suffi- 
 ciently tell that Lady Morgan's parentage almost insured to her the heritage of talent 
 which has placed her where she now stands. Iler father, INIr. Owenson (the " real ould" 
 name is ^lac Owen), was an actor of great excellence in his jjarticular walk — in Cumberland's 
 oj)inion, the " Irish fine geutlcniau " ^>ar excellence — and not merely thus distinguished in 
 
RICHARD GRIFFIN &CO, LONDON & GLASGOW. 
 
LADY iMOHGAN. 43 
 
 iiis own profession, but the author, we are told, "of some of the best Irish songs extant;" 
 enthusiastic in the legendary and musical antiquavianism of his count) y, and, for the sake 
 of these accomplishments, a popular guest in society. It was he, too, who cherished and 
 brought forward the "Irish Chatterton,^' as Dermody, the poet, has been so flatteringly 
 styled ; and that his daughter iidieritcd much of her peculiar talent from him, she herself 
 has been foremost to own in her dedication to the "Lay of the Irish Harp." 
 
 The history of Lady Morgan's authorship may be gleaned from her own writings. Li 
 these we learn, that she began to publish when little more than a child, impatient to give 
 vent to her genius (to the very young always a disturbing ])ossession), and yet more 
 delighted by its exercise to assist those dearest to her, than eager to advance herself. Her 
 first essays were poetical: — a little shabby volume lies before us, picked up at a book-stall, 
 its verses brimful of pleasant thoughts and warm affections, clothed in that gay but 
 borrowed language, in which the very young always "lisp their numbers." She afterwards 
 published " The Lay of the L-ish Harp,^^ and a selection of twelve Irish melodies, with 
 music. The latter suggested the idea of the larger and more popular work subsequently 
 undertaken by Mr. Moore and Sir John Stevenson. The curious in ballads will be glad 
 to liear, that " Kate Kearney,^' to this day a prime favourite with melodists, was written 
 and adapted to the air by Miss Owenson. AYe have purposely mentioned these, her 
 only metrical efforts, in conjunction. The composition of verse was early abandoned 
 by her for prose, in which she felt that her strength lay, and that her success was to bo 
 gained. 
 
 Miss Owenson's early novels, " St. Clair," " The Novice of St. Dominick," " The Wild 
 L-ish Girl," "Patriotic Sketches," "Ida," and "The Missionary," — though they may be 
 said to belong to a past dynasty of fiction, when the story was all in all, and the manner of 
 telling it but little heeded; when tears to any measure could be drawn by tenderly-wrought 
 love-scenes, and heroines and heroes were absolved from the necessity of possessing the 
 individualities of human character, so but they " protested enough," and acted up to their 
 protestations, — have still something of their own which distinguishes them among their 
 contemporaries. Their scenery, their passion, their enthusiasm, is eminently national ; and, 
 being dashed off with all the fervour and self-confidence of youth, it is not wonderful that 
 they speedily made their way to distinguished success. "The Wild Irish Girl" was at 
 onCe received, both in Dublin and London, into those aristocratic circles whose greatest 
 honour it is to open their doors to genius: alas! that so often they welcome it with the 
 childish and fantastic courtesies of lion-worship ! A thousand sketches and remembrances 
 of the time when ]\Iiss Owenson made her debut at Lady Cork's rout, " in the identical 
 frock and ilower in which, not many days before, she had danced a jig on an earthen floor 
 with an O'Rouke Prince of Brefney in the County of Leitrira ;" a thousand notices, too, of 
 the delightful friendships and homages which followed the transmission of what she calls 
 " her jjetlt bout of reputation " from England to France, will be found collected in that 
 pleasautest of all modern collections of Ana, the shrewd and sparkling "Book of the 
 Boudoir." 
 
 " O'Donncl," the novel which comes next in order to those just enumerated, is of a far 
 higher order of merit. Its authoress there began to record the fruits of her observation, as 
 well as the thick-coming dreams of her fancy, to relieve sentiment with banter, — in short, 
 having seen and thought, to dare more than in any former tale. A few among her after 
 sketches excel in vividness, in the farce of melancholy reality, her picture of the restless, 
 whimsical English fashionables, introduced in tawdry array, as a foil to her melancholy, 
 high-minded hero. " O'Donuel" has been followed at intervals by " Florence IMacarthy,^-" 
 {' The O'Briens and the O'Flaherties," and, lastly, " The Princess," a tale devoted to the 
 
 G 2 
 
44 LADY MORGAN. 
 
 workings of the recent Belgian revolution, tn each of these there is progress to be traced 
 in mind, as well as in hand (to use the painter's word). The strong national enthusiasm 
 of childhood, at once somewhat indiscriminate in its warmth, and limited in its scope, will 
 be seen to have ended in fearless and decided political partisanship, in the espousing of 
 ultra-liberal doctrines, abroad as well as at home. But let us quote Lady Morgan's own 
 words from the preface to the last edition of " O'Donnel." " After all, however,'' says she, 
 " if I became that reviled but now very fashionable personage, a female politician, it was 
 much in the same way as the Bourgeois Gentilhomrne spoke prose without knowing it ; a 
 circumstance, perhaps, not uncommon with Irish writers. * * * For myself, at least, 
 born and dwelling in Ireland, amidst my countrymen and their sufferings, I saw and I 
 described, I felt and I pleaded ; and if a political bias was ultimately taken, it originated 
 in the natural condition of things, and not in ' malice aforethought' of the writer." In 
 each successive novel, too, the characters will be found more and more boldly contrasted, 
 the scenes prepared and arranged with finer artifice. If we cannot but note the strong 
 family likeness which exists between all their plots, through every one of which a brilliant 
 and devoted woman flits in masquerade, now to win a lover, now to save a friend, now to 
 make a proselyte, we must also insist upon the living nature of many of their dramatis 
 persona, especially the broadly-comic ones, instancing The Crawleys (" Florence Macar- 
 thy") and Lieutenant O'Mealy {" The O'Briens"), and Laurence Fcgan and Sir Ignatius 
 Dogherty {" The Princess "), — and upon the thousand indications scattered here and there 
 with apparent artlessness, but real design, which prove, that though their writer loves to 
 float upon the surface of life and society, she can, at will, dive into their depths, and bring 
 up truths new and valuable. 
 
 Our remark applies with a yet closer pertinence to the next works, which we shall group 
 together, "France" and "Italy," the result of Lady Morgan's continental travels under- 
 taken shortly after her marriage (the latter, it will be remembered, praised by Lord Byron 
 as a fearh'ss and excellent work), and with them " France in 1830," and " The Life and 
 Times of Salvator Bosa." These are deservedly installed upon the shelves of our libraries, 
 in spite of the gross and unmanuered abuse so long showered upon them ; no insignilicant 
 proof, by the way, that Lady Morgan's antagonists could not confound her travels with 
 those ephemeral and unidea'd guide-books and tours, which are permitted to pass away with 
 the hour and be forgotten. And they deserve this standard position, not merely for the 
 liveliness, and colour, and poetry of their descriptions, but for the speculation they contain, 
 which, granted that it be often perverse, often .illiberal in its liberalism, is always sincere 
 and earnest. The second " France," however, must be read with an allowance for its 
 writer's predisposition to take up arms against that spirit of romanticism which has 
 replaced the literature of Voltaire and Beaumarchais with another more convulsed, more 
 inflated, more exaggerated, but still, we cannot but trust, more instinct with the spirit of 
 faith and poetry. To ourselves, the " Salvator Rosa" is the most delightful of Lady 
 Morgan's books ; it was written, she tells us, under the influence of Kossini's music, 
 and it reads like a strain by that gorgeous master of southern melody; — a fine whole, 
 all glow, and coloiir, and enthusiasm. 
 
 In addition to these works, we have yet to mention one or two of less pretension, 
 " Absenteeism " (a single volume), " The Book of the Boudoir," already quoted, besides 
 many happy contributions to the more select periodicals ; and the " Dramatic Scenes from 
 Beal Life," so gaily characterized by their writer, as "a thing that may be read running 
 or dancing, like a puff on a dead-wall, or a sentiment on a French fan," a thing, be it 
 added, far less unsubstantial than these words imply. It is understood that Lady Mor- 
 gan is preparing yet another work for publication, upon a subject so often touched upon 
 
LADY MORGAN. • 45 
 
 in her previous writings, as to prove that she has studied it long and earnestly — the 
 intluence and position of women. 
 
 And here our scanty notice of this brilliant woman must end, after our having added, 
 that, whether grave or gay, devoted to politics or the arts, her writings are but fair and 
 unflattering reflections of herself. Ere we conclude, however, we must once again advert 
 to the fate they have encountered, to their reception, not by the public of Europe, but by 
 the critical few. And we do this to record our protest against the dishonest and personal 
 acrimony with which for some twenty years they have been indiscriminately attacked, 
 and attacked by those, too, whose registered attachment to ancient institutions and prin- 
 ciples, ought, we think, for consistency's sake, to have enjoined upon them at least a slight 
 degree of courtesy and forbearance towards a writer of the gentler sex. If to have endured 
 "the pitiless pelting storm" of vituperation and misconstruction, in flghting the hard flglit 
 of unpopular against popular opinions ; if, in short, to be zealous and consistent in the sup- 
 port of an adopted creed, is a thing worthy of recognition, then never did honour fall upon 
 a fitter object than the recent pension, granted, at the instance of a Liberal minister, to the 
 authoress of " Italy." 
 
 [Since these lines were written Lady Morgan must aUo, sad to say, be numbered among 
 those who were. No sorrow or misfortune seems to have darkened the last years of her 
 life. Removing from Dublin to London in 1839, she published in the following year 
 " Woman and her Master," a work in which she reviews, with that acute and sprightly 
 tone peculiar to her, the position of the fair sex in all ages of the workFs history. It was 
 followed by a more thoughtful book on France, free from the occasional rhapsody of her 
 novels, yet marked by their freshness of feeling and their elaborate and ornate language. 
 "France" was succeeded by "Italy," a similar work — best known as containing a 
 statement which gave rise to a controversy with Cardinal Wiseman. Lady Morgan 
 asserted in her work that " the chair of St. Peter, at Rome, when examined during 
 Bonaparte's campaign in Italy, was found to bear the Arabic legend, 'There is but one God, 
 and Mahomet is his })ropliet,'" a fact leading to the inevitable conclusion that the alleged 
 relic had been brought to Italy in the time of the Crusades. Cardinal Wiseman 
 contradicted this statement. Lady Morgan replied in a spirited pamphlet : she stated 
 that she had the facts from Diuon and Champollion, the savans themselves who had 
 deciphered the inscrij)tion, — men whose honour could not be called in question ; and as 
 she herself could no more be doubted, the whole burden of proof was thrown upon her 
 assailant. The pamphlet called forth by this controversy v/as Lady Morgan's last eflbrt. 
 Receiving a pension from Government, in recognition of her literary eminence, she spent 
 the last years of her life in England, and died in the spring of 1859.] 
 
PERCY BYSSIIE SHELLEY. 
 
 It is a delicate, no less than a difficult task, to write the life of a dreamer and a doiibtcu-; if 
 the biographer feels a biographer's sympathy with his subject, he ruus the risk of being 
 himself disregarded as a visionary, a questioner of sound and wholesome matters of faith. 
 If, on the other hand, he cannot leave the beaten track of reason and belief, if he cannot 
 deal indulgently with the wanderings and struggles of a mind at once strong and 
 weak, liberal and credulous, he is unfit for his task, and stands in the position of a common 
 horseman passing judgment upon the winged steed Pegasus. The difficulties adverted to 
 have not been unfelt, even in meditating the brief sketch wliicli accompanies our portrait 
 of the child-like, melancholy features of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 He was born at Field Place, in the county of Sussex, on the 4th of August, 1792, the 
 son of Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart., of Castle Goring, in the same county. Till he reached 
 the age of seven or eight years. Captain iMedwin tells us that " he was brought up in 
 retirement with his sisters, receiving the same education as they, whence he never showed 
 the least taste for the amusements of boys." He was then sent to school at Sion House, 
 Brentford, where he remained for some years — years to him of exquisite misery. We are 
 told that his feminine education subjected him to much persecution and ridicule, in that 
 roughest of republics, a boys' play-ground. It may be, too, that some slight kindling of 
 that peculiar and unworldly spirit, which afterwards burned within him with so consuming 
 a fire, manifested itself even in this ungenial region ; for that his mind began early to work 
 we have proof in those lines of confession so often quoted : 
 
 " I do remcm1)or well the hour wliicli burst 
 
 My spirit's sloop — a fresh INIay dawn it was, 
 
 "When I walked forth upon tlu; glittering grass, 
 And wept, I luiew not wliy, luitil tliere rose, 
 
 From the near sschool-room, voices, that, alas ! 
 "NN'ere but one echo from a world of woes — 
 The harsli and grating strife of tyrajits and of foes. 
 And tlien I clasp'd my liands, and look'd around ; — 
 
 But none was near to muck my streaming eyes. 
 "Wliich pour'd their warm drops on the simny gi-ound. 
 
 So witliout shame I spoke — 'I will be wise, 
 
 And just, and free, and mild — if in me lies 
 Such power, for I grow weary to behold 
 
 Tlic sellish and the strong still tyrannize 
 ■\Vitliout reproach or chock.' I then controU'd 
 
 My toar.s — my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. 
 
 And from that hour did I. with earnest thought, 
 Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore." 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 47 
 
 While at school, Shelley's progress in learning appears to have been wayward and 
 unsatisfactory ; he was already, however, reading, thinking, analyzing for himself, — 
 devouring such books as he adopted, and embracing such opinions as were congenial to 
 him, with the prejudice of a young lover. In one place we read of his translating Pliny's 
 Natural History, pausing and puzzling his tutor over its books of astronomy ; in another, 
 of the eagerness with which he threw himself upon the study of German literature, feeding 
 with its mysticism and marvels, that mind whose tendency it was " implicitly to believe 
 every assertion, so that it was improbable and incredible ;" as a recreation, indulging his 
 propensity for chemical exj)eriment, by setting trees on fire with a bnrning-glass ; as a 
 duty, organizing a conspiracy against the hateful system of fagging. Every line of these 
 school-records makes us earnestly lament that one gifted with a mind so active, so noble, 
 but withal so incomplete as his, should have been early in life denied the guidance of some 
 friend oi- relation strong enough calmly and kindly to entertain his doubts without aversion, 
 and sufficiently wise to teach him the true name of the key to their solution, which he 
 carried to his grave without knowing it — who would have smiled at his eccentricities rather 
 than reproved them, being aware that all such as were of any importance to his real 
 happiness and usefulness, must of necessity fall away, as his mind became balanced by 
 time and experience. 
 
 Shelley was one of those impatient geniuses who rush early before the world. Captain 
 Mcdwin tells iis, that at the unripe age of fifteen he wrote part of a poem, called the 
 " Wandering Jew," published not many years since in " Fraser's IMagazine," and shortly 
 afterwards printed his wholly lost novels, " Zastrozzi " and "The llosicrucian ;" the former 
 was com])oscd under the fervent influence of his first love, the lady being his cousin, whom, 
 like the " Mary " of Byron's youth, he had the misery of seeing wedded to another. 
 
 From school, Shelley was removed to Oxford at an early age, — another unlucky 
 circumstance in his destiny. Without any superior mind at hand, upon which he might 
 anchor his own ; — ceaselessly stirred by doubts which the spirit of the times wherein he 
 lived was peculiarly tended to awaken — times, be it remembered, which had called forth the 
 masterly essays of Godwin, and had sent forth in life three of our afterwards most 
 orthodox poets as the promoters of a scheme of Pantisocracy ; — eccentric and unworldly 
 in his habits — gifted with a purity of mind which made him '^ offended, and indeed more 
 indignant than would appear to be consistent with the singular milducss of his nature, at a 
 coarse or awkward jest, especially if it were immodest or uncleanly" — animated with 
 a passion for truth (forgetful that, even in Truth's holy cause, passion is excess) — it is 
 not to be wondered that the whole structure and routine of university life was felt by him 
 to be an absurdity, a mockery, an oppression — that something of a martyr's feelings began 
 to possess him, confirming him in his secluded habits and unpopular speculations, and 
 leading him resolutely to despise that very world he was so enthusiastically bent upon 
 reforming. 
 
 Of Shelley's residence at Oxford, the hand of an intimate friend has given some most 
 interesting particulars. Nothing could have been less orderly or more harmless than his 
 habits — nothing more utterly at variance with his inclinations and feelings, than the severe 
 but limited course of study, and round of scarcely- veiled licence, which, between them, 
 divide college life. In his studies he w^as unmethodical, irregular, but most earnest. " lie 
 rejected with marvellous impatience," writes his friend, " every mathematical disciple that 
 "was offered ;— the method of demonstration had no charms for him, and when the dis- 
 coveries of modern analysts were presented, he was immediately distracted, and fell off into 
 endless musings." It may be noted, as illustrative of his ])eeuliar mind, that, devoted as 
 he was to the ancient literature and language of Greece, he manifested not merely an 
 
48 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 
 
 indifference, but a hostile aversion to the study of the Oriental tongues; that, eager as he 
 was in the pursuit of chemistry, he despised a science of no distant kindred, the science of 
 botany; that he who, on a future day, drew inspiration from the architectural splendours of 
 ruined Rome (the " Prometheus Unbound," he tells us, being " chiefly written upon the 
 mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla"), should have no eye for the stately and 
 picturesque buildings which make Oxford stand alone among the English cities. Yet we 
 are expressly told that such was the case. " Out of the four-and-twenty hours he frequently 
 read sixteen," the place of his study being often indicated by a circle of crumbs upon the 
 carpet; for his reasonings and researches had already led him to believe that, whereas crime 
 comes of evil, evil comes of bodily disease, and bodily disease is fostered by a sanguinary and 
 unnatural diet ; and he had begun rigorously to suit his practice to the theory, which he 
 shortly afterwards recommended to the world in a singular note to that strange poem, 
 " QuJen Mab." 
 
 All this time Shelley's mind was working with unhealthy activity ; he was writing 
 anonymous letters to provoke discussion on the momentous questions with which it was 
 occui)ied, or to inoculate others with his daring and unpopular opinions. He still found 
 his chief recreation in the performance of chemical experiments, though we are told that 
 he was so unskilful a manipulator, that he more than once narrowly escaped poisoning 
 himself or setting his rooms on fire. His college friend adds, " that he possessed a 
 singular taste for perilous recreations, and a thoughtlessness in pursuit of them, that 
 rendered his existence from one day to another miraculous." The Reviewer who deduced 
 his possession of a large organ of dcstructiveness from his experiments with the burning- 
 glass, would have found corroborative proof in the trait that he chose to equip himself 
 for his long country rambles with " ])istols and good store of powder and ball." No 
 less astounding and significant to such severe judges must be the frolics in which he 
 indulged. What could be expected from a youth of sixteen who could hardly pass by a 
 pond or piece of running water without loitering near it : — amusing himself by the 
 childish pastime of throwing stones in it, or sailing paper boats, to manufacture which, 
 when all other material was exhausted, he would even avail himself of the fly-leaves of his 
 books, his darling pocket companions ? It is true that in some of these rambles we find 
 traces of the sweet charity of his nature : in one place we read of his feeding a vagrant's child 
 with milk procured from a neighbouring farm-house ; in another, how he reasoned gravely 
 with a donkey-boy upon cruelty to animals ; then, again, we stumble upon some curious 
 outbreak of whim and eccentricity — as when, having been equipped in an admirable new 
 coat, the skirts of which were torn off in forcing his way through a thicket, he insisted 
 upon displaying them on a hedge, and leaving them there " a spectacle," he said, " for 
 men and gods;" — as when, on meeting with a poor woman with a baby in her arms, 
 lie suddenly snatched the latter, asking, in the piercing tones of his shrill and high-pitched 
 voice, whether the child could connnunicate anything concerning a state of j)re-existence. 
 And how characteristic Is the trait of his reasoning himself out of a fit of choler by 
 an attempt to define anger ! how quaintly engaging the home-picture of him lying asleep 
 on the rug before the fire, exposing liis little round head to the full force of the unscreened 
 blaze, and seeming to rejoice in the heat ! 
 
 'J'hc above passages have been dwelt u])on, perhaps, disproportionately, but 'they are 
 valuable as illustrating the thoughts and opinions which so long and sadly alienated him 
 from his fcllow-mcn. It will be divined, too, from them, that Shelley's residence at 
 Oxford could hardly be crowned by the usual termination of a scholar's career. No 
 one will be surprised at that outbreak of his republican spirit, which led him to put 
 forth a volume of tierce and fiery rhymes, under the title of " Margaret Nicholson's 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 49 
 
 Remains " {she, it will be recollected, being the maniac who attempted the assassina- 
 tion of George the Third), or at the subsequent avowal of his scepticism manifested 
 in the publication of a syllabus from Hume's essays, and his challenge of the con- 
 stituted authorities to discuss its truths in a public controversj', which led to his 
 expulsion from Oxford at the age of seventeen ; and this expulsion to a disunion from 
 his own family." Thus, while yet a boy, did he deliberately cast away all the worldly 
 advantages which he might have enjoyed ; deliberately break the ties of use and 
 custom, and, deeming himself a missionary and a reformer, throw himself upon life, 
 with little hoj)c or support, save such as he found in the earnestness and endurance 
 of his own spirit. The words with which he describes Lionel iu " ilosalind and Helen,^^ 
 are exactlv nnplicable to himself: — 
 
 " Men wonclor'd, aud some sneer'd to see 
 One sow what he couhl never reap : 
 For he is rich, tliey said, and young, 
 And might drink from the deptlis of luxiuy; 
 If he seeks fame, fame never crown'd 
 The champion of a ti'ampled creed : 
 If he seeks power, power is enthroned 
 'Mid ancient rights aud wrongs, to feed 
 Which himgiy wolves with praise and spoil, 
 Those who would sit near power must toil ; 
 And such, there sitting, all may see. 
 What seeks he ? AU that others seek 
 He casts away, like a vile weed 
 "Which the sea casts uni-eturningly." 
 
 From Oxford, Shelley made his way up to London. The strange irregular life which 
 he led in the metropolis tended still further to subject him to reproof and misconstruction. 
 llis mistaken enthusiasm in the cause to which his future prospects had been sacrificed 
 hurried him presently into the connnissiou of an act more daringly overt than the one 
 which had provoked his expulsion from the University, — the publication of " Queen 
 Mab.'" As some mitigation of the offence justly given by its undisguised atheism 
 (so strangely compounded of bitterness and gentleness) and the wild code of morals 
 promulgated in its notes, it should be remembered that this poem was printed only 
 for private circulation, being brought under the notice of the general public by a 
 piratical bookseller, and that in subsequent years its author spoke of its publication 
 with regret. Strangely characteristic of the audacious simplicity of the poet^s character 
 is the anecdote, if a true one, that he sent a copy of his confession of faith and code 
 of morals to each one of the bench of bishops. 
 
 About this time Shelley's first marriage took place : the lady being yet younger than 
 himself, a Miss Harriet Westbrooke. This connection was more than distasteful to his 
 family, who now utterly cast him off, and as long as it lasted his life was one of misery, 
 and restlessness, and privation. The details of hia residence in England and Wales — 
 the many anecdotes of his inconsiderate generosity, amounting to munificence, which 
 prove that his disordered fortunes and shattered health neither soured his temper nor 
 shut up his heart — cannot be included within our present limits. It must be mentioned, 
 however, that about this period he made the acquaintance of Leigh Hunt (whom he 
 was afterwards to befriend so signally) and of Lord Byron : the latter during a flight 
 to the Continent ; for, finding the union into which he had precipitated himself, or, as 
 some have it, been inveigled, a yoke no longer to be borne, he had separated from his 
 
 H 
 
50 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 
 
 wife, and endeavoured to find distraction and relief from his anxieties in a foreign tour. 
 During the comfortless years of his first married life, he had breathed out his doubts 
 and discontents in a few poems, which were published but to be disregarded or anathe- 
 matized. The preface to "Alastor, or the S])irit of Solitude," dated December, 1815, 
 contains a remarkable and saddening confession ; for all Shelley's poems and prefaces 
 may be read as confessions. 
 
 " The poem entitled ' Alastor' may be considered as allegorical of one of the most inter- 
 esting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and 
 adventurous genius led forth by an imagination intiamed and purified by all that is excellent 
 and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of 
 knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks 
 profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications a variety 
 not to be exhausted. So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus 
 infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, aud tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period 
 arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened, and 
 thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the 
 being whom he loves conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect 
 natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, 
 wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could depicture. The intel- 
 lectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions 
 on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The poet is represented 
 as uniting all these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain 
 for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointments, he descends to an 
 untimely grave." .... 
 
 During the interval which elapsed between the publication of "Alastor" and "The 
 Revolt of Islam," Shelley^s fortunes had undergone dark vicissitudes. His first marriage 
 had been closed by the melancholy death of his wife, which took place in the year 1817, 
 and was followed by a chancery decree, depriving the poet of the guardianship of his 
 children on the plea of immorality and atheism. These events produced their natural 
 consequences of bitter self-condemnation : unfortunately, however, there was sufficient 
 palpable injustice and harshness in Lord Eldon's sentence, to furnish a wrong to a spirit so 
 sensitive and questioning; and with this wrong, an opiate of self-excuse strong enough to 
 lull those upbraidings of conscience which might otherwise have ended in a clearer and more 
 relying faith in a Supreme Being. The wound, too, was in some measure healed by Shel- 
 ley's second marriage with Miss Godwin. For a short time after this he resided at Great 
 Marlow in Buckinghamshire, occupying six months of his retirement iu the eouiposition of 
 the " Revolt of Islam." In its exquisite dedicatory address to his wife, and in the whole 
 tone of its colouring and imagery, there is evidently an increase of hope and calmness on 
 the part of the poet. He still, however, shows himself unalterably vowed to the services of 
 his boyhood — to the preaching of a religion of Love and Intellectual Beauty, whose spirit 
 should be peace and liberty, and brotherly kindness — he still is filled to overflowing with 
 the vision of a world where should neither be sensual passion, nor hate, nor bigotry ; all 
 its inhabitants being equally divine in their strength and purity. — How different this from 
 the negative scepticism of the mocker, who pulls down without the power or the wish to 
 build up again 1 Parts of this long allegory are of a sur])assing beauty — instinct with 
 music and perfume, glistening with imagery of inexhaustible variety : as a whole, however, 
 it is wearying from its want of the life and breath of humanity, and it requires more than 
 a single effort to induce us to follow the fortunes of Laon and Cythna to their close; 
 " The Revolt of Islam " was written in friendly rivalry of Keats, who was writing his 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 51 
 
 "Endymion^^ at the same time, and with whom Shelley had recently made a friendship, too 
 soon, alas ! to be closed with that lament for his early death, which may be called the 
 " Lycidas" of our own day. 
 
 It was early in the year 1818, that Shelley quitted England never to return to it, taking 
 up his residence in different parts of the Continent, and pouring forth in rapid succession 
 that splendid series of poems which entitle him to one of the highest thrones among our 
 modern sons of song ; though they will always, from their manner yet more than their 
 mind, remain the delight of the few rather than of the many. We may trace the poet's 
 wanderings in his works, beginning with the exquisite " Lines written among the Euganean 
 Hills'' (October, 1818), the Eclogue, "Rosalind and Helen," a dreary tale of oppression 
 and agony, and the gentler and sadder " Stanzas written in Dejection," wherein 
 
 " despair itself is mild, 
 
 Even as the winds and waters are," 
 
 bear the date of Naples, December, 1818. The " Cenci," unquestionably the most powerful 
 of modern tragedies (the only work which we dare, at a distance, compare with Shakspeare's 
 " Lear, " and which, by its power, and passion, and concentration, makes us mourn its 
 author as the lost hope of modern ti'agedy), is dated from Rome in the following May : so 
 also is " Julian and Maddalo," that poem (published in 1820) so deeply interesting as 
 containing the portraits of its author and Lord Byron, independently of its gloomy and 
 forcible picture of an evening landscape, with that one grim object on its horizon, — 
 
 "A windowless, dcform'd, and ckeary pile, 
 And on the top an open tower, where hung 
 A bell which in the radiance sway'd and swung 
 In strong and black relief — ' What we behold 
 Shall be the niiidhouse, and its belfry-tower,' 
 Said j\Iaddalo, * and even at this hour 
 Those who may cross the water hear that beU 
 Which calls the maniacs, each one from liis cell. 
 To vesj)ers.' " 
 
 The "Ode to the West Wind," of all Shelley's Lyrics the most individual and passionate 
 (we write, not forgetting the odes to " Naples " and " Liberty," and the ode to the 
 " Skylark," in which, like the bird, its poet seems to sing " at heaven's gate "), " was 
 conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno near Florence, on a day when 
 that tempestuous wind, whose tem])crature is at once mild and animating, was collecting 
 the vapours from which pour down the autumnal rains ; " — the birth-place of the "Prome- 
 theus Unbound," which was completed in six weeks, has already been mentioned. The 
 winter of 1821 was spent in and near Pisa, where again Shelley for some months enjoyed 
 the society of Lord Byron, with that peculiar zest which is not tasted by those whose 
 popularity or the easiness of their requisitions makes them the sought and the seekers of 
 many friends. Betw^een the tw o poets the " Liberal " was planned, and the consequent 
 invitation of Mr. Hunt to Italy. This ill-considered publication, it will be remembered, 
 had but a short and disastrous life. In the course of this winter, too, the " Adonais " was 
 written, Mr. Keats having recently died at Rome under very painful and depressing 
 circumstances. That elegy, like the Requiem of Mozart, might almost be accepted as 
 prophetic of its singer's own untimely fate. 
 
 We are now near the close of Shelley's career ; for it would be superfluous to dwell upon 
 the well-known details of the melancholy shipwreck of the 8th of July, in which he 
 
 H 2 
 
52 PERCY BYSSnE SHELLEY. 
 
 porished, and of the singular and painful obsequies which attended his remains. Our 
 scanty sketch cannot be better brought to an end than by a passage from the eloquent 
 preface to his Posthumous Poems, which were edited and published shortly after his 
 decease by j\Irs. Shelley : — 
 
 "When he made his home under the Pisan Hills, their roofless recesses harboured him 
 as he composed ' The Witch of Atlas/ ' Adonais/ and ' Hellas/ In the wild but beautiful 
 bav of Spczia the winds and waves which he loved became his playmates. His days were 
 chiefly spent on the water; the management of his boat, its alterations and improvements, 
 were his principal occupation. At night, when the unclouded moon shone on the calm sea, 
 he often went alone in his little shallop to the rocky caves that bordered it, and, sitting 
 beneath their shelter, wrote 'The Triumph of Life,' the last of his productions. The 
 beauty and strangeness of this lonely place, the refined pleasure which he felt in the 
 companionship of a few selected friends, our entire seqxiestration from the rest of the world, 
 all contributed to render the period of his life one of continued enjoyment. I am 
 convinced that the two months we passed there were the happiest we had ever known : 
 his health even rapidly im])roved, and he was never better than when I last saw him, full of 
 spirits and joy, embark for Leghorn, that he might there welcome Leigh Hunt to Italy 
 
 He spent a week at Pisa, employed in kind offices towards his friend, and 
 
 enjoying with keen delight the renewal of their intercourse. He then embarked with INIr. 
 Williams, the chosen and beloved sharer of his pleasures and of his fate, to return to us. 
 We waited for them in vain ; the sea, by its restless moaning, seemed to desire to inform 
 
 us of what we would not learn : — but a veil may well be drawn over such misery 
 
 The truth at last was known — a truth that made our loved and lovely Italy appear a tomb, 
 its skv a pall. Every heart echoed the deep lament; and my only consolation was in the 
 praise and earnest love that each voice bestowed and each countenance demonstrated for 
 him we had lost — not, I fondly hope, for ever; for his unearthly and elevated nature is a 
 ])ledge of the continuation of his being, though in an altered form. Rome received his 
 ashes; they are deposited beneath its weed-grown wall, and the 'world's sole monument' is 
 enriched with his remains." 
 
K^"^ 
 
 HI GUARD 
 
 KIKKIN fcC--, LONDON * 0LA3J'JV/ 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 
 
 There are some writers who bear the same relation to those giants of literature whose 
 mighty works have moved the world's mind onward, that the gorgeous, artificial, fascinating 
 opera bears to the great and genuine drama. First and foremost among these stands 
 Thomas Moore : nor let it be counted as disrespect or disparagement, that we venture to 
 assign him such a position. It is well that, in the assembly of the poets, there should be 
 one who, though at times he breaks out like Tyrtseus into stirring hymns of truth and liberty, 
 should sing for the most part in the smooth measures and rich but choice language of the 
 court-minstrel : — it is well that there should be one who, in the harsh controversy of 
 conflicting opinions, should bear his part with sparkling wit for his weapon, rather than 
 impassioned eloquence. In pointing to Mr. Moore as the perfection of the man of the 
 world and the man of letters combined, we refer not only to the excellence of his works, in 
 which the refinement of the saloon and the scholarship of the closet are so gracefully 
 blended, but to that steadiness of principle and purpose on the part of their writer, which 
 place him so far above those who, tempted by the possession of popular talents, devote 
 themselves, unhonoured mercenaries, to no worthier object than the amusement or service 
 of the most munificent patron — or the most liberal flatterer. 
 
 Mr. Moore was born in Dublin, on the 28th of May, 1780 ; the only son of Mr. Garret 
 Moore, a respectable tradesman of that city. His early education was superintended by 
 Mr. Samuel Whyte, who had also been Sheridan's preceptor, and to whom he pays an 
 honourable tribute in his biography of that brilliant man. At the age of fourteen he was 
 entered as a student of Trinity College ; and here, we are told, he made himself as 
 remarkable for the eloquence wherewith he supported the peculiar opinions, — which, 
 throughout his life, he has never ceased to speak, and write, and sing, — as for his classical 
 attainments. He was loved, too, as being the best of boon companions, in a circle where 
 social qualities are eminently valued. At the close of the year 1799, he entered himself as 
 a member of the Inner Temple, and, in the year following, gained the surname which will, 
 perhaps, be graven on his tomb, by the publication of his translation of Anacrcon's Odes ; 
 this was dedicated to George the Fourth, then Prince of Wales. His first essay, meditated, 
 we are told by him, even in his schoolboy days, gave a sure token of the path which the poet 
 would choose ; an evidence, that in fulfilling his vocation as love-singer, he would be rather 
 sentimental and voluptuous than romantic ; but in a subsequent volume of poems, 
 published in 1801, under the assumed name of Little, we find him even yet more of a 
 sensualist and less of a beau Troubadour (that is, chivalrous as well as enamoured) than 
 might have been suspected from such an outset. But upon this work it is needless further 
 to dwell. 
 
 Mr. Moore's next essays — to follow a tolerably accurate list of his works — were political : 
 being two poems, " Corruption " and " Intolerance," in which he shows himself as warm a 
 patriot as he had before shown himself a warm votary of pleasui'e. " A Candid Appeal to 
 Public Confidence," another work devoted to the topics of the hour, bears the date of 
 
54 THOMAS MOORE. 
 
 1803; and it may have been abnut this time, or yet earlier, if \vc are to judge from two 
 j)leasant lines by Croker, that he essayed dramatic composition, the piece being " The 
 Gipsy Prince," which met with only a partial success. In the autumn of 1803, Mr. 
 Moore was aj)pointed Registrar to the Admiralty at JJcrmuda, and ])roceedcd thither; but 
 after a short residence, finding the place and the drudgery of office intolerable to him, he 
 decided on fultilling its duties by deputy; and, paying a flying visit to x\merica on his way 
 homeward, returned to England late in the year 1804. In ISOC he published his "Odes 
 and Epistles,^' suggested by this ramble, a series of travelling sketches and personal poems, 
 which established him in public estimation as one of the most skilful of modern writers, 
 possessed of a rich treasure of natural fancy and gathered allusion, and weaving them into 
 exquisitely-modulated verse, with an art which almost, if not altogether, fulfils the highest 
 condition of excellence, namely, that of concealing itself. 
 
 In the year 1807, ]\Ir. Moore presented himself to the public as the author of the " Irish 
 Melodies." By these his name will be known, so long as there are voices to sing and 
 hearts to feel. Few have ever applied themselves to any task so richly qualified as he was. 
 He possessed not merely the mechanical power over language and rhythm, the musical ear, 
 and, we may add, the musical knowledge, so eminently requisite for a song-writer, but he 
 entered thoroughly into the spirit of the national music which he had undertaken to " marry 
 with rhyme," and could, with enviable versatility, 
 
 " call up tho sunsliiuc, or bring down the showers," 
 
 by a strain careless or melancholy as the air under his hands (and in his heart) demanded. 
 If it must be admitted that some of his songs, in the elegance of their toitrnurc, and the 
 sentiment verging towards conceit which they embody, are too mannered, too artificial, for 
 the music wherewith they are mated, there are as many which, for their truth and intimate 
 appropriateness of feeling and character, can never again be dissevered from the airs to 
 which they have been joined. It is fortunate that to mention instances cannot by any 
 possibility be required of us, otherwise this sketch would never come to a close. 
 
 "While on the fascinating subject of song-writing, it may not be amiss to advert to the 
 other verses for music which I\Ir. Moore has poured forth, with a fertility almost unexam- 
 pled — a fertility, too, which, though it may lead at times to self-imitation, has never to 
 be pleaded in excuse for carelessness or puerility. Wc may enumerate the " National 
 Melodies," a charming series, to which Mr. Bishop, as adapter of the airs selected, has 
 done fullest justice, — the " Sacred Melodies," whose devotional fervour takes, perhaps, too 
 much of the form of earthly passion, — the " Evenings in Greece," and the " Summer Fete," 
 where the songs are strung together on a connecting thread of verse, slight indeed, but 
 always golden : to say nothing of other later collections, and a countless variety of single 
 songs, and duets, and glees. In many of these Mr. Moore, besides being their poet, a])pears 
 as nmsical composer also, with happy effect. Some of his melodies (we must particularize 
 " the Song of the Olden Time") arc most original and expressive : and those who remember 
 what were tlie best-api)roved ditties some forty years since, the " Sweet Kittys," and "Buy 
 my Posies," of our fathers, transported from the Rotunda of Vauxludl to do duty in " my 
 lady's chamber," cannot but feel how deeply we arc indebted to Mr. Moore for the delicious 
 words and graceful music introduced by him in happy exchange for such mean and vulgar 
 compositions. 
 
 In the year 1811, Mr. Moore made his second dramatic essay in an opera, "M.V., or 
 the Blue Stocking." This was produced at the Lyceum, then under Mr. Arnold's manage- 
 ment, witii but questionable success. During the six subsequent years he was principally 
 occupied with the publication of songs and political Jeua: d'espi'it, the doings of the Regent 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 55 
 
 and his household furnishing him abundant matter for his wit. ]\Iany of his sharpest- 
 pointed sallies (they are all as fine as poignant) appeared in the " Times " newspaper, with 
 which he was understood to have formed a regular connection. The "Twopenny Post-baa," 
 was published in 1813, During these years, too, he mixed largely in the fashionable and 
 brilliant society of the metropolis, of which such lively and tantalizing glimpses are to be 
 found in the correspondence of his friend and contemporary, Lord Byron. The poet of 
 " Cliilde Harold," and of the "Melodies," assumed the matrimonial yoke about the same 
 period, but with far different results of happiness. 
 
 It nnght have been thought that IMr. Moore's popularity was at its height before 
 " Lalla Rookh " made its a])pearancc ; but the enormous sum given for it by its T)ub- 
 lishers was an earnest that that Oriental Tale of Tales was to be spread abroad yet 
 more widely, to be read and got by heart with even a warmer enthusiasm than its author's 
 shorter metrical essays: and the event justified their anticipations. "Lalla Rookh" is 
 ])recisely the poem which was certain to work an immediate and universal enchantment 
 upon the English public, such as it was in the year 1817; — a public athirst for verse 
 and which had not yet disenthralled itself from the empire of the passionate school, to 
 follow in lessened numbers, and with a calmer but more intense affection, the footste])s 
 of those who may be said to have " gone out into the wilderness" for meditation and 
 prayer. The stories it contains excited a strong interest, the music of the verse in 
 which they w^ere poured out was of a seducing and luxurious harmony, and all the 
 gorgeous and picturesque shows of the East, among which the fancy has loved to revel 
 ever since the days when the "Thousand and One Nights" was a favourite cradle-book 
 were scattered through the poet's pages with a rich and graceful jjrofusion. Even 
 now, though we read it with the cooled enthusiasm which comes of time and change, 
 though we feel that it never reaches the poiut where j)oetry, in right of thought, and 
 Auding, and imagery, become sublime and immortal, we are still carried away, as we 
 read, by its glowing numbers and rich descri])tions, till we can forget that there is 
 enjoyment of a loftier and purer order to be derived from " tuneful and well-measured 
 song." 
 
 The poet's next work, " The Fudge Family," one of those brilliant trifles in right 
 of which he stands alone and unrivalled, owed its birth to a passing visit to Paris 
 whose humours, and the humours of its visitors, the sight-seeing English, were as yet 
 comparatively unexhausted. Very recently Mr. Moore, in his " Fudge Family in Eng- 
 land," has reproduced the actors who figured in that piquant satire ; but Miss Biddy, 
 in the full flow of her Gallo-mania, cannot but be felt to be far more lively and spirited 
 than the lady who has become controversial and anti-Popish (though a touch of her 
 old spirit breaks out in her alternate discussions of becoming millinery and Gospel 
 ministry), while brother Bob — gouty, a gourmand, a thick-and-tbin suj)porter of the 
 bench of Bishops, seems to us but vapid and spiritless when compared with the 
 pompous inanity of his father, — the flower of the Fudges ! 
 
 Passing by a host of brilliant pieces cVoccasioyi (of the compositions for music we 
 have already spoken collectively), we come to Mr. Moore's second and last long poem, 
 "The Loves of the Angels," which was published in 1823. The appearance of this 
 was hastened, its author tells us, by the announcement of Lord Byron's " Heaven 
 and Earth," which was understood to be founded on the same j)assage of Holy Writ. 
 Mr. Moore came to his task well prepared, by an intimate acquaintance with the 
 traditions of the ancient church (the fruits whereof were to be afterwards displayed, 
 not happily for their author's fame, in "The Travels of an Irish Gentleman"); but, 
 making little use of these, the subject of the intercourse between the sons of God 
 
56 THOMAS MOORE. 
 
 and the daughters of men, became in his hands nothing more exalted than a series 
 of love-stories, told in that honeyed verse so peculiarly his own. The "Loves of the 
 Angels" must be felt to occupy a very secondary position among its author's writings; 
 he speaks of it, indeed, in his preface, as having been originally but an episode in a 
 work of greater consequence, which was forestalled, and its completion prevented by the 
 announcement of Lord Byron's drama. 
 
 With this work we conclude our notice, slight as it is, of Mr. Moore's metrical 
 compositions. Blank verse, as far as we are aw^are, he has never attempted. But 
 besides being author of the poems specified, and a thousand more, which limited space 
 renders it impossible to enumerate, he has presented himself to the public as a volumi- 
 nous writer of prose, having entered the domain of fiction in the " Epicurean " — of 
 biography, in the Lives of Sheridan, and Lord Byron, and Lord Edward Fitzgerald — 
 of political and religious controversy, in the " Memoirs of Captain Bock," and " The 
 Travels of an Lish Gentleman" — and of history, in the recent volumes on Ireland, 
 contributed to Dr. Lardner^s Cyclopedia. None of these works, in right of their execu- 
 tion, can rank as high as Mr. Moore's poems. The "Epicurean" contains elaborate 
 descriptions, in which the antique knowledge mentioned a while since is turned carefully 
 to account; and the contrast between the gorgeous mysteries of Egyptian idolatry 
 and the simple, heart-influencing faith of the Christians, is happily sustained : but the 
 book, save to very young readers, is a cloying one. In the " Life of Sheridan " the 
 biographer had a subject of no ordinary impracticability ; to WTite the adventures of a 
 wit, is the next difficult task to painting a rainbow; and there is no small danger of 
 such a work, if confided to one who beai's in character and temperament a certain 
 similarity with his subject, coming from the hands of the latter overcharged and over- 
 laboured. Such, at least, seems the case with the " Life of Sheridan." Again, in the 
 Byron Memoirs, the author's difficulties were a hundred-fold greater. Having incurred 
 suspicion and misconstruction from the sacrifice of the autobiography committed to 
 his care by his friend, he placed himself in the position of one who knows more than 
 he will or ought to tell, and has still to justify and maintain his reader's interest in 
 a character which, by its inconsistencies, is placed upon the list of eccentric prodigies, 
 with whom the general w^orld can have little consistent sympathy. But, apart from all 
 this inherent difficulty, there were small defences and subtle distinctions attempted, 
 which were felt to be useless to the subject of the biography, and unworthy of his 
 biographer ; there was everywhere visible the disposition, born of personal affection, to 
 tamper w ith the faults of " the wandering Childe" — whereas, it would have been wiser, 
 with a judicious daring, to have stated them without apology, drawing out and dwelling 
 upon those brilliant lights which so largely redeemed the tremendous shadows of Byron's 
 character. In Lord Edward Fitzgerald Mr. Moore had his simplest subject ; and 
 the work is, accordingly, his best ; and it is written throughout with heart and feeling, 
 without either the effort at brilliancy, or the uneasy constraint and misgiving, discer- 
 nible in the other two biographies. We feel in every page that the author loved his 
 task, and that the tale of the fortunes of the amiable and highly-gifted and ill-starred 
 young nobleman, who was wrecked in the convulsions of a disastrous and terrible 
 time, could not have been better confided than to him who sang in the war-song of 
 "Brien the Brave," 
 
 " Forget not oiu- wounded companions who stood 
 
 In tlie day of distress b}- our side ; 
 Wliile the moss of the valley pi-ew rod with their blood 
 
 Tliey stirr'd not, but confjuerd and died ! " 
 
TPIOMAS MOORE. 57 
 
 Little more remains to be said, unless we were to record traits of character and 
 details of private life, — to rake up the old story of the duel with Mr. Jeffrey, and the 
 challeng:e to Lord Byron, which led to a fast friendship ; unless we coiild call up the 
 ghosts of banquets at Holland House, and call back the thousand bright flashes with 
 which his wit "has brightened the claret'^ of the social board; — the thousand charm- 
 ing songs (for the poet and composer is a singer too,) with which he has held the fair 
 and the courtly in mute attention. "We may add, however, that j\Ir. JMoorc was some 
 years ago placed on the pension list ; a fit place for one who has never falsified his 
 principles, by word or by silence, and who has passed through trying vicissitudes of 
 fortune, with his honour unstained and unquestioned. 
 
 [Subsequently to the date of the preceding memoirs, few incidents vary the life of 
 Thomas Moore. Handsomely provided for, by a pension secured for him by his political 
 friends, he lived quietly in his cottage near Devizes in Wiltshire, his greatest literary effort 
 being the republication, in 1841, of his collected works. His four children preceded him 
 to the grave. Their premature loss threw a gloom around his hearth which could uot be 
 spirited away by the kindness and attention of high-born friends. Like many authors who 
 overtask their invention and fancy, and at the same time devote themselves to laborious 
 research, Moore sank in his old age into a state of almost helpless idiocy. Lingering for 
 three years in this melancholy condition, he died on the 25th of February, 1852, and was 
 interred at Bromham near his Wiltshire cottage. His memoirs, letters, and correspondence 
 have since been published by his friend and executor Lord John Russell. They have shed 
 a new light on his career and character, and brought prominently into view all those 
 sociable and loveable qualities which endeared the great Irish song-writer to so many 
 friends.] 
 
CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 Of all our modern writers who have lived and laboured during a period each successive 
 event of which has tended to foster a cosmopolitan spirit, Charles Lamb (or rather call him 
 Elia) is, perhaps, the most indcfeasibly and genuinely English. The racy, golden humour 
 of his works, has, as yet, been sparingly tasted on the Continent; but shall we wonder at 
 this neglect, we, who have so lately begun to sympathise with the feelings and fantasies of 
 Jean Paul Richter, who are still so far from regarding with a catholic and tolerant spirit 
 the literature of la jeune France, in spite of all its extravagances, so full of vitality and 
 character ? Was not this delicious essayist, this clear-sighted and benevolent critic, 
 compelled by neglect endured among his own countrymen to exclaim, " Damn the age ! I 
 will write for antiquity ! " and has not the general public only begun rightly to appreciate 
 and love him, since the day when — his earnest, and whimsical, and heart-engaging tasks 
 laid by — 
 
 "Home lie lias gone, aud ta'cn liis wages?" 
 
 It was the compensating good fortune of Elia, however, to be surrounded throughout his 
 career by a circle of discriminating and gifted friends. From the Reminiscences * already 
 published by one of these, a kindred spirit, whether in richness of imagination or sweetness 
 of heart, we shall principally draw our present notice. 
 
 "Charles Lamb,^^ says the writer referred to, "was born about the year 1774. His 
 family were settled in Lincolnshire, as we learn by his reference to the family name in a 
 pretty sonnet. 
 
 " ' Perhaps some shepherd on Luicoliiiiiu plains. 
 In manners guileless as his own sweet llochs, 
 liecoivcd thee first, amid the merry mocks 
 Aud arch allusions of his fellow-swains.' 
 
 In 1782, being then about eight years of age, he was sent to Christ's Hospital, and 
 rcniained there till 1789. He has left us his 'Recollections' of this })laec in two 
 charming ])apcrs. These are evidently works of love ; yet, being written with sincerity as 
 well as regard, they communicate to the reader a veneration for the ancient school. One 
 wishes, whilst reading tlicm, to iiiusi! uiidi-r the mouldering cloisters of the old Grey Friars, 
 to gaze on the large ])ictures of Lely and Verrio, to hold colloquy with the 'Grecians;' 
 and, above all, there sjjrings up within us a liking, a sympathy (something between pity and 
 admiration) for the Blue-coat boy, toiling for College honours, or wandering homeless 
 through the London streets ; a result, perhaps, of more moment to the author, than that of 
 upholding the reputation of his favourite school. In his second paper, on this subject, and 
 where he apostrophizes some of his contemporaries, the following passage has just met our 
 
 =:= A series of papers whieh appeared in llic Athniaiim of 1S,'}5. which are understood to liave hccn 
 written bj- Mr. I'roctor, better known to the public as Bany Cornwall. 
 
) 
 
CHARf.ES LAMB. 59 
 
 eyes. ' Come back iuto memory, like as thou wert in the day-spving of thy fancies, with 
 hoj)e like a fiery column before thee, — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge, logician, metaphysician, and bard ! ' It it thus that he invoked the most famous 
 of his school companions ; one whom he always held in close friendship, and who died — 
 how short a time ! — before him. 
 
 " It was not long after he quitted Christ's Hospital that he obtained the situation of 
 clerk in the India House. Here he remained for many j^ears, rising gradually from a small 
 salary to a comfortable yearly stipend ; until in 1825, or thereabouts, he was pensioned oflf 
 liberally (with ' two-thirds of my accustomed salary,' he says) by the Directors. During 
 this period he dwelt in various places, sometimes in London, sometimes in the suburbs. He 
 had (among other residences) chambers in the Temple, lodgings in Russell Street, Covent 
 Garden, a house at Islington, on the border of the New River, lodgings at Dalston (or 
 Shacklewell), at Enfield Chase, and finally at Edmonton, where he died of erysipelas, on 
 Saturday the 27th of December 1831', in the sixty-first year of his age." 
 
 " Mr. Lamb/' (we are still literally following his friend Barry Cornwall,) "had one bi'other 
 whom he lost many years before his death, and one sister; but he had no other, certainly no 
 other near relations. His brother, Mr. John Lamb, of the South Sea House, was considerably 
 his senior. * You were figuring in the career of manhood,' he says, addressing his brother, 
 
 " ' When I was j-et a little loeevisli boy.' 
 
 The reader may remember that it was this brother (otherwise James Elia) who, upon seeing 
 some Eton boys at play, gave vent to his forebodings in that memorable sentence, ' What a 
 pity to think that these fine ingenious lads in a few years will be all changed into frivolous 
 members of Parliament.' His sister, between whom and our friend there existed a long, 
 deep, and untiring affection, and who is worthy in every respect to have been the sister of 
 such a man, survives him. They lived together (being both single), read together, thought 
 together, and crowned the natural tie that linked them to each other with the truest 
 friendship. He has written down her qualities, some of them, at least, in a pleasant essay 
 — she is the Bridget Elia of ' Mackery End.' And she is the person, also, to whom one 
 of his early sonnets is addressed, in which he reproaches himself for some little inequality 
 of temper towards her, — 
 
 •"If from my lips some angiy accents fell, 
 Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unldnd, 
 'Twas but the error of a sickly mind.' 
 
 " ' Thou didst ever show to me ' (he proceeds) '^kindest aff'ection ; 
 
 " ' Weeping my sorrows \vith me, who repay 
 But ill the nwjhtij debt of love I oive, 
 Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend ! ' " 
 
 There is a strange, tender wish in reference to INIiss Lamb (who was ten years older than 
 himself) in the paper entitled " Mackery End." "I wish," says he, "that I could throw 
 iuto a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might share them in equal 
 division ; but that is impossible !" These few notices of his family cannot so well be 
 closed, as by reminding the reader of that beautiful passage in the paper " Old China" 
 (one of the last essays of Elia), in which his faithful household companion, under the show 
 of complaining that increased riches have taken away from them the pleasure of self-denial 
 and anticipation, is represented as indulging herself in looking back over the years of 
 narrow circumstances, through which they had toiled in loving companionship ; — reminding 
 
 I 2 
 
60 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 Elia of the precious folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, whose purchase had cost them 
 many days of anxious doubt and deliberation, and had extended the date of a threadbare 
 corbcau suit for some weeks ; of those hearty by-gone playgoings to see the battle of 
 llexham and the Surrender of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in 
 the Wood, — when, says she, " we squeezed out our shillings a-piece to sit three or four 
 times in a season in the one-shilling gallery, where you felt all the time that you ought not 
 to have brought me, and more strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me ; 
 and the pleasure was the better for a little shame; and when the curtain drew up, what 
 cared we for our place in the house, or what mattered it where we were sitting, when our 
 thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria?" 
 
 It has been pleasantly and truly observed, that some live for the uses of the romancer, — 
 some for the gossip of the anecdote-monger. Charles Lamb belonged to the latter number. 
 Being all his life, as much from choice as necessity, an inhabitant of London, or its 
 immediate neighbourhood, and the possessor of liumours that kept proportion with, and 
 sharpened his intellectual powers, he was sure to draw round him all the choice spirits of 
 his time with whom he had aught in common. He speaks most characteristically, though 
 in somewhat an imaginative fashion, of his own tastes and habits in society, in his preface 
 to the last " Essays of Elia.'' 
 
 " ^ly late friend was in many respects a singular character. Those who did not like 
 him, hated him ; and some who once liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. 
 The truth is, he gave himself too little concern what he uttered and in whose presence. 
 He observed neither time nor ])lace, and would e'en out with what came uppermost. With 
 the severe religionist he would pass for a Freethinker ; while the other faction set him down 
 for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he belied his sentiments. Few understood him ; 
 and I am not certain that at all times he understood himself. He too much affected that 
 dangerous figure — irony. He sowed doubtful speeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal 
 hatred. He would interrupt the gravest discussion with some light jest ; and yet, perhaps, 
 not quite irrelevant in ears that could understand him. Your long and much talkers hated 
 him. The informal habit of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of speech, 
 forbade him to be an orator : and he seemed determined that no one else should play that 
 part when he was present. He was ^je/iV and ordinary in his person and appearance.* I 
 have seen him sometimes in what is called good company, but where he has been a stranger, 
 sit silent, and be suspected for an odd fellow ; till, some unlucky occasion provoking it, he 
 would stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether senseless, perhaps, if rightly taken), 
 which has stamped his character for the evening." 
 
 Let us complete this unflattering, yet withal engaging personal sketch, by a picture of 
 Elia among his intimates, draw^n by his friend's hand ; the scene being his lodgings in 
 B usscll Street, Covent Garden. " On certain evenings (Thursdays) one might reckon u])on 
 encountering at his rooms from six to a dozen unaflected people, including two or three 
 men of letters. A game at whist and a cold sui)i)er, followed by a cheerful glass (glasses !) 
 and ' good talk,' were the standing dishes on these occasions. If you came late you 
 encountered the perfume of 'The (Jreat Plant.' The pipe hid in smoke (the violet among 
 its leaves) — a squadron of tumblers, fuming with various odours, and a score of quick 
 
 * Not so precisely. Wordsworth wi'itcs of liim, as 
 
 " The wrapt ono of the God-like forehead," 
 
 and Barrj' Cornwall as, "a little spare man in l)liick, with a countenance pregnant with expression, 
 deep lines in liis forehead, quick, liuninous, restless eyes, and a suiile as sweet as ever tlucw 
 siiushinc upon a human face." 
 
J^ V. * «* ^ *• /? 7" 
 
 CHARLES LAilB?^''"" 61 
 
 intellectual glances saluted you. Here you might see Godwin^ Ilazlitt, Leigh Hunt, 
 Coleridge (though rarely), Mr. Robinson, Serjeant Talfourd (his friend till death), Mr. Ayrton, 
 Mr. Alsagcr, Mr. INIanning, — sometimes ]\Iiss Kelly or Liston, — Admiral Burney, Charles 
 Lloyd, Mr. Alsop, and various others ; and if Wordsworth was in town, you might stumble 
 upon him also. Our friend^s brother, John Lamb, was occasionally there ; and his sister, his 
 excellent sister, invariably presided. Questions of all kinds, with the exception of existing 
 politics, were started, and fairly argued here : metaphysics and theology — poetry and the 
 drama — and characters of all sorts. Lord Chatham and the fives's-player Cavanagh; 
 Lord Foppington and the Lord St. Albans ; Jack Bannister and Dickey Suett, were brought 
 forward and separately discussed. Nothing came amiss that was good.'^ 
 
 Among the thousand delightful anecdotes of bright things said and strange things done 
 by these merry men of Cockaigne, whether at such jovial town meetings, or when some one 
 among them, venturesome in his philanthropy, strayed out to visit Elia in his suburban 
 abode, it is impossible to trust ourselves : and there is no need that we should, so recently 
 have they been collected and laid before the world, by his highly-gifted and amiable 
 executor, Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, To no more fitting hands could the task have been 
 entrusted. We must now leave the man Elia, and say and steal a word or two concerning 
 his works. Of these the following list includes the principal in prose and verse : " Speci- 
 mens of the English Dramatic Poets," 1808; "The Works of Charles Lamb" (in two 
 volumes), 1818; "Elia," 1823; "The Last Essays of Elia," 1833; " The Adventures of 
 Ulysses and Tales from Shakspeare ; " besides which he made a second gleaning from the old 
 English dramatists, under the name of " The Garriek Papers " (published in Hone's " Every- 
 Day Book"), and collected his later poems in a little volume, " Album Verses," which also 
 contains "The Wife's Trial," a short drama, founded upon Crabbe's admirable tale of 
 " The Confidante : " this had previously been published in " Blackwood's Magazine." 
 
 Of Lamb's poetry little could be said likely to recommend it to those who love it not 
 already. He, with whom " the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat 
 fantastical and original-brained generous INlargaret Newcastle," was " a dear favourite," — 
 who was steeped to the heart's core in the spirit of Burton and Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, and 
 Sir Thomas Browne, — and who, besides sympathizing with Haywood, Ben Jonson, and 
 Ford, and Massinger, could only sympathize with Donne, and Quarlcs, and Cowley, — it was 
 natural that such an one should in his own poetical efforts cast himself back among " the 
 rai'e and curious ancients," not only in spirit, but in letter also ; — should not merely 
 emulate their originality and freshness of thought, but also clothe his thoughts in the quaint 
 costume of their obsolete phraseology : and it is not wonderful if his verses have obtained 
 nothing more than the limited popularity they deserved. 
 
 A far different fate awaits his essays — the lucubrations of the incomparable Elia. They 
 were written, says Barry Cornwall, " in his famous days. All that had been done before 
 that time had met with comparative neglect : his rights as a critic were not recognized ; his 
 pretensions as a poet had been disputed ; his wit, his fine observations, his consummate 
 pathos, had been shown in vain. He was in a fairway of cursing the age, when Mr. John 
 Scott, then editor of the ' London Magazine,' applied to him for support. His tasks at the 
 India House, which occupied without wearying him, had left him ripe and vigorous for any 
 mischief. He wanted excitement ; and he was not unwilling, probably, to show the world 
 what sort of man they had neglected. He was already the magician of a small circle ; but 
 he wished to enlarge it. The quick and sincere laugh of his hearers (that best and true 
 echo of a jest), the judicious praises of highly-gifted f.iends, and ^the god within him,' 
 prompted him to write. He wrote, and the 'Essays of Elia' were the result." 
 
 Like his poems these excellent and peculiar writings are imbued with the spirit of our 
 
G2 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 older times : filled too, — filled to overtlowing with the sympathies of the writer's heart and 
 the crotchets of his brain. Many of them, too, are not mei'ely exclusively English — but 
 townish — belonging to London — Hogarth's and Handel's, and Pope's London — the London 
 of coffee-houses and theatres, of the South Sea House and the bookstalls of Holborn — the 
 same city as that whose fascinations held Johnson in such powerful thrall. They are, in 
 short, whimsically, breathingly, kindly individual ; and should (may our wishes be pro- 
 phetic !) be always numbered amongst our selcctest classics, were it only for the sake of the 
 clear and nervous English in which they are written. 
 
 But Charles Lamb has, perhaps, a yet stronger claim to our notice as a critic. To speak 
 somewhat hastily, the chance words which fell from his ])en concerning our ancient writers, 
 are worth to us quires of disquisition and analysis which other hands have elaborated; 
 better reasoned and wrought out, it may be, but less intimately felt. Almost the last 
 paragraph which he published — a few lines of Table Talk given to the AthencEum in 1834, 
 — contains an analysis of the close of Lear, short as a tomb-stone inscription, but entire, 
 deep-thoughted, and sufficing. Once again, and for the last time, to borrow his friend's 
 etilogy, — "He had wit — human pathos (in a high degree) — a delicate apprehension — a deep 
 and curious vein of thought — a searching and, as it were, an attractive critical faculty, 
 bringing out the beauties of an author (seldom his defects) as the sun brings forth or 
 reproduces a flower. It has been said of him that in criticism he was ' a discoverer like 
 Vasco Nunez or IMagellan : ' and assuredly it was he who first brought the world acquainted 
 
 with the wonders of the old dramatists of England No one will love the 
 
 old English writers again as he did. Others may have a leaning towards them — a respect 
 — an admiration — a sort of yoimr/ man's love, but the true relishing is over; the close, 
 familiar friendship is dissolved. He who went back into dim antiquity, and sought them 
 out, and proclaimed their worth to the world — abandoning the gaudy rhetoric of popular 
 authors for their sake, is now translated into the shadowy regions of the friends he 
 worshi]iped. He who was once separated from them by a hundred lustres, hath surmounted 
 that great interval of time and space, and is now — their Contemporary ! " 
 
RICHARD GRlFUNJtCO, LONDOM * OLASOOW. 
 
i. 
 
MARY RUSSELL MITFORP. 
 
 There are few names whieh fall with a pleasanter sound upon the ears of those who 
 adopt authors as friends, in recognition of the moral purity and geniality of feeling 
 as much as of the original talent displayed in their works, than the name of Mary 
 Russell Mitford. Happy thoughts and fresh images rise up when it is spoken, and 
 yet we are a trifle too apt to think of it only as connected with all that is lovely in 
 the rural scenery, and characteristic in the rural society of Southern England, and to 
 forget that it also appertains to a dramatist of no common power, who has wrought in 
 a period when — if the theatres be deserted, and the popular-acted drama have degene- 
 rated into melodrame, burletta, and farce — the plays published exhibit far more signs 
 of strength and promise than were shown by those produced in the palmy days of 
 Garriek, or the yet more glorious after-summer of the Kembles. 
 
 It was at Christmas time, in the year 1789, that Miss Mitford was born, her birth- 
 place being the little town of Alresford, Hampshire. She is descended, on the father's 
 side, from an ancient family in Northumberland, not remotely connected with nobility ; 
 and there is a quaint rhyme current in the north country, which promises the name a 
 long duration : 
 
 " ]\Iidforcl was Midforcl when Morpeth was nane, 
 IMidford shall be Midford when Morpeth is gane; 
 So long as the sim sets or the moon runs her round, 
 A Midford in Midford shall always be found." 
 
 Her mother was the only daughter of Dr. Russell, of Ashe, in Hampshire ; this lady 
 was a singularly good classical scholar; and it would have been strange, if under such 
 auspices, the education of her daughter had not been liberally planned and carefully 
 completed. How delightfully Miss Mitford has chronicled her school pleasures and 
 school feelings, during the years between the ages of ten and fifteen, passed by her 
 at a London boarding school of high repute, no one who has read " Our Village " 
 can have forgotten. By her own showing she was as shy as she was clever, after a 
 somewhat original fashion — a keen lover of poetry and plays. And shortly after she 
 left school, she showed the next evidence of talent, the possession of creative as well 
 as appreciative power, by publishing a volume of miscellaneous poems, which were 
 favourably received ; for in those days poetry was read. This was shortly followed by 
 a metrical tale, in Scott's manner, founded on the story of the discovery of the 
 mutineers of the "Bounty," a subject afterwards taken up by Lord Byron in "The 
 Island;" and this second essay (''Christine, the Maid of the South Seas") by a series 
 of narrative poems on the female character. These works, now all but forgotten, 
 were, at the time of their appearing, successful ; but their young writer was herself 
 dissatisfied with them ; conscious, perhaps, that they wxre little more than imitations, 
 and forgetting that it is by imitation that genius has almost always in the first instance 
 
04 MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 
 
 manifested itself. She withdrew herself from composition — read much, though with- 
 out any decided aim or object, and would never {she thinks) have attempted author- 
 ship again, had not those vicissitudes of fortune, which try the metal of the sufferer 
 no less searchingly than the sincerity of his friends, compelled her to come forth from 
 her retreat, and honourably to exercise the talents with which she had been so largely 
 gifted. It would be raising the veil too high to dwell upon the sequel ; upon the rich 
 reward of love, and respect, and consideration, which have repaid so zealous and un- 
 selfish a devotion of time and talent as Miss Mitford's life has shown. AVe have but 
 to speak of the good which has come out of evil, in the shape of her writings. 
 
 j\Iiss Mitford's principal efforts have been a scries of tragedies, heralded by a volume 
 of dramatic scenes, which received favourable notice from Coleridge. " The Two Foscari" 
 — '^ Julian" — "Rienzi" — "Charles the First," have been all represented, and all well 
 received — the third with signal success. Besides these may be mentioned two other 
 tragedies, still in manuscript, " Inez de Castro " and " Otto of Wittelsbach," Miss 
 IMitford's last, finest work. In all these plays there is strong vigorous writing, — 
 masculine in the free unshackled use of language, but wholly womanly in its purity 
 from coarseness or license, and in the intermixture of those incidental touches of 
 softest feeling and finest observation, which are peculiar to the gentler sex. A rich air 
 of the south breathes over "Ricnzi;" and in the "Charles," though the character 
 of Cromwell will be felt to vibrate, it is, on the whole, conceived with a just and 
 acute discernment of its real and false greatness — of the thousand contradictions which, 
 in realitj'^, make the son of the Huntingdon brewer a character too difficult and mighty, 
 for any one beneath a Shakspearc to exhibit. As also in Joanna Baillic's fine tragedies, 
 the poetry of these plays is singularly fresh and unconventional ; equally clear of 
 Elizabethan quaintness and of the modern Della-cruscanisms, which, as some hold, in- 
 dicate an exhausted and artificial state of society, in which the drama — the hearty, bold, 
 natural drama — has no existence. At all events, it is now too much the fashion that 
 everything which is written for the stage shall be forgotten so soon as the actors em- 
 ployed in it have "fi'ctted their hour;" were it otherwise, we should not have need to 
 dwell, even thus briefly, upon the distinctive merits of Miss Mitford's tragedies. 
 
 In leaving them, however, we cannot but point attention to the happy choice of their 
 subjects, and in doing this, may venture a remark or two which will lead us on to the 
 works by which Miss IMitford is the most widely known — her sketches of country life and 
 scenery. Among the characteristics which eminently distinguish female authorship, it has 
 often struck us, that there is none more certain and striking than an instinctive quickness 
 of discovery and happiness in working out available subjects and fresh veins of fancy. At 
 least, if we travel through the domains of lighter literature during the last fifty years, we 
 shall find enough to prove our assertion. We shall find the supernatural romance growing 
 into eminence under the hands of Anne Radcliffe — the national tale introduced to the 
 public by Miss Edgeworth and Lady Morgan — the historical novel by Miss Lee and the 
 Miss Porters — the story of domestic life, with common-place persons for its actors, brought 
 to its last perfection by Miss Austen. We shall find "Kenilworth" anticipated by the 
 "Recess" (a tale strangely forgotten), and "Werner," owing not only its origin, but its 
 very dialogue, to " Kruitzner" — and the stories of " Foscari" and Rienzi," ere they fell 
 into the hands of Byron and Bulvvcr, fixed upon with a hupjiy boldness by the authoress 
 under notice. But the claims of Miss Mitford to swell the list of inventors, rest upon yet 
 firmer ground ; they rest upon those exquisite sketches, by which — their scenery all, and 
 their characters half real — she has created a school of writing, homely but not vulgar, 
 familiar but not breeding contempt (in this point alone not resembling the highly-finished 
 
MARY RUSSELL I^IITFORT). 65 
 
 pictures of the Dutch school), wherein the small events and the sini])le characters of 
 rural life are made interesting by the truth and sprightliness with which they are 
 represented. 
 
 Every one now kno\vs " Our Village/' and every one knows that the nooks and corners, 
 the haunts and the copses, so delightfully described in its pages, will be found in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of Reading, and more especially around " Three Mile Cross,'' a 
 cluster of cottages on the Basingstoke road, in one of which our authoress has now resided 
 for many years. But so little were the peculiar and original excellence of her descriptions 
 understood, in the first instance, that, after having gone the round of rejection through the 
 more important periodicals, they at last saw the light in no worthier publication than the 
 " Lady's Magazine." But the series of rural pictures grew — and the venture of collecting 
 them into a separate volume was tried. The public began to relish the style so fresh yet so 
 finished, to enjoy the delicate humour and the simple pathos of the tales ; and the end was, 
 that the po])ularity of these sketches somewhat outgrew that of tlie works of loftier order 
 proceeding from the same pen — that young writers, English and American, began to imitate 
 so artless and charming a manner of narration; and that an obscure Berkshire hamlet, by 
 the magic of talent and kindly feeling, was converted into a place of resort and interest for 
 not a few of the finest spirits of the age. 
 
 It should, perhaps, be owned, in speaking of these village sketches, that their writer 
 enamels too brightly — not the hedge-rows and the meadow-streams, the orchards and the 
 cottage gardens, for who could exceed Nature ? — but the figures which people the scene ; 
 that her country boys and village girls are too refined, too constantly turned "to favour and 
 to prettiness." But this flattery only show^s to us the health and benevolence of mind 
 belonging to the writer; nor would it be just to count it as a fault, unless we also were to 
 denounce Crabbe as an unfaithful painter of English life and scenery, because, with a 
 tendency diametrically opposite, he lingers like a lover in the workhouse and the hovel, and 
 dwells rather upon decay, and meanness, and misery, than the prosperity, and charity, and 
 comfort with which their gloom is so largely chequered. He may be called the Caravaggio, 
 Miss Mitford the Claude of village life in England; and the truth lies between them. 
 Both, however, are remarkable for the purity and selectness of their language; both paint 
 Avith words, in a manner as faithful as it is significant. Crabbe should be reserved for those 
 bright moments when the too-buoyant spirits require a chastener, a memento of the " days 
 of darkness," Miss Mitford resorted to in hours of depression and misgiving, when any 
 book bearing an olive-branch to tell us that there is fair weather abroad is a blessed 
 visitant. 
 
 After publishing five volumes of these charming sketches, a wider field for the same 
 descriptive powers was found in a small market-town, its peculiarities, and its inhabitants, 
 — and " Belford Regis" was written. But the family likeness between this work and "Our 
 Village" is so strong as to spare us the necessity of dwelling upon its features. Since its 
 publication, besides many other fugitive pieces. Miss Mitford has completed her last tragedy 
 the " Otto." And now our record may be closed, as it is not permitted to us to dwell 
 upon the private pleasures and cares of an uneventful life, spent for the most part " in a 
 labourer's cottage, with a Duchess's flower-garden." We should mention,^however, the 
 recent addition of Miss Mitford's name to the pension-list, as one among many gratifying 
 proofs, that literature is inci-easingly becoming an object of care and protection to our 
 statesmen, and in this much-stigmatized world, talent and self-sacrifice do not always pass 
 on their way unsympathized with or unrecognized. 
 
 [Subsequently to the date of the preceding narrative, no incident occurred to break the 
 even tenor of Miss Mitford's life. When the long nights of winter set in she busied 
 
 K 
 
GO >r\in' RUSSELL ?.nTFORD. 
 
 herself with authorship, and with returning summer she tended her shrubs and flowers. 
 Living within a" convenient distance of Windsor Castle, her garden became a place of 
 pilgrimage to some of the most august personages in Europe. jMany were the honours 
 heaped upon her, just as she reached the bourne dividing middle life from old age — a 
 bourne, alas ! which she was not destined to cross. In the autumn of 1855 she was seized 
 with a severe illness, and in the following January she breathed her last, in her hunibh; 
 cottage, deeply lamented by all whom she had honoured with her intimacy.] 
 
[CCll LL.LL^^ 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 
 
 In one of Sir Walter Scott's fresh and charming prefaces, he points to the writings 
 of glorious John Dryden, as ilhistrating a remark npoii the general volumiuousuess 
 of popular authors. Were we disposed, for contradiction's sake, to advance an observa- 
 tion of diametrically opposite tendency, we should lind a strong corroborative example 
 in the poems of Thomas Campbell, which, being included within the narrow compass 
 of a single volume, still number among them some of the most precious and sterling 
 gems of English song. 
 
 Thomas Campbell was born at Glasgow, on the 27th of Julj^, 1777; the youngest of 
 ten children. Mr. Alexander Campbell, his father, the youngest son of Campbell of 
 Kernan in Argylcshire, a Highland laird, was a retired merchant, who had traded 
 largely with America in his time. Our poet can be hardly said to have his authorship 
 by inheritance, though the eldest of his paternal uncles, Mr. Robert Cam])bell, having 
 been induced by embarrassed circumstances to go up to Loudon, in the hope of re- 
 trieving his fortunes, had been engaged in the literacure of political partizanship (if, 
 indeed, it deserves so to be named) under the auspices of Sir Robert Walpole : and 
 among many others of his works, a life of his " far awa cousin," John, Duke of Argyle, 
 may be specified : but the fall of his patrou involving him also in ruin, he died in 
 London, it is to be feared, in very narrow circumstances. Mr. Alexander Campbell 
 was himself an intelligent man, an intimate friend of Professor Reid, at whose hands 
 Thomas received his name : and though the latter, as the youngest son, the child of 
 advanced age (being born when Mr. Campbell was 67), was perhaps the favourite of 
 the flock, and as such received the best education — others of the family were distin- 
 guished for their intellectual superiority, and the poet speaks and writes with particular 
 affection and respect of his eldest brother, Mr. Archibald Campbell, who died some 
 years ago at Richmond in Virginia. 
 
 Thomas Campbell was sent, when thirteen, to Glasgow College. He remained there 
 for six sessions, going successively through the classes of Latin, Greek, Logic, Natural 
 and Moral Philosophy. He writes thus unaffectedly of his University achievements. 
 " Li some of the classes,'' says he, " I was idle, and bore off no prize at all, and being- 
 obliged by my circumstances to give elementary instruction to students still younger 
 than myself, my powers of attention were often exhausted in teaching when I ought to 
 have been learning. Nevertheless, I was not undistinguished at college; when but 
 thirteen I gained a bursary after a hard and fair competition, before the whole Faculty, 
 in construing aud writing Latin, where I was pitted against a student twice my age." 
 Nor must it be forgotten, in speaking of his college career, that Professor Young, in 
 awarding to Thomas Cam])bell a prize for the best translation of the Clouds of Aristo- 
 phanes, pronounced it to be the first exercise which had been ever given in by any 
 student belonging to the University. 
 
 K 2 
 
68 THOMAS CAMPBELL. 
 
 The law lectures of Professor Millar, to whose high merits Mr. Campbell has re- 
 peatedly and warmly testified, had the effect of interesting him deeply in the study 
 of jurisprudence ; and had well niu;h quenched the " divine ardour " within him, or 
 turned it into sterner channels. During a twelvemonth^s seclusion in the Highlands, 
 which followed the close of his University career, he buried himself deeply in the abstrac- 
 tions of moral science, earnestly desiring to make law his profession. But this was not 
 to be. Two poems composed during this, his nineteenth year, and still retained in some 
 editions of his Avorks — The Elegy on Miss Broderic, and the Dirge of Wallace — remain 
 to show that Nature will have way, in spite of o]iposing circumstances. The law project 
 was, of necessity, abandoned, and our poet removed from Argyleshire to Edinburgh. 
 Who is there but knows by heart his hauntingly beautiful "lines on revisiting" that 
 scene of his retirement ? In Edinburgh he maintained himself by private tuition ; for 
 a time being but little known, but gradually drawing round him some of the then 
 choice spirits of Modern Athens — James Grahame and Francis Jeffrey among their 
 number; and in the year 1799 introducing himself more widely to the world by the 
 publication of "The Pleasures of Hope." 
 
 This poem calls for no analysis at our hands. What musician would expend him- 
 self in dissecting melodies which have become street music ; — what critic would not 
 feel it superfluous, to descant upon a work which has been said and sung from Johnny 
 Groat's house to the Land's End, which has been taught in school-books, and wrought 
 on samplers — become one of the cottager's scanty library, as well as taken its place upon 
 more aristocratic shelves, as a British classic ; and whose crowning excellence lies in its 
 equal freedom from mannerism or obscurity on the one hand, or familiarity and bald- 
 ness of diction on the other? The appearance of so admirable a work, led, as was in- 
 evitable, to its author's society being eagerly souglit by the most distinguished among 
 every class and profession. Though his reward was rather in celebrity than in adequate 
 ])rofit, Campbell was enabled by the publication and success of his poem to "put money 
 in his purse," and to indulge his desire of seeing foreign parts. 
 
 Crossing over from Leith to Hamburgh, he proceeded into the interior of Germany. 
 The war between France and Austria was at that time raging ; and he made two 
 attempts to cross the district where it was carried on; once in his way toward Vienna 
 being stopped at Landshut, from the walls of which town he witnessed an engagement 
 between the French and Im])erial armies; and retiring thence to Ratisbon, which nar- 
 rowly esea])ed bombardment, — a second time only relinquishing his design of passing 
 over into Italy, via the Tyrol, on finding it impossible to proceed. In the spring of 
 1801 he returned to Hamburgh, and was there thrown among some of the banished 
 leaders of the Irish Pebellion, a chance, which, joined with his fearless wanderings 
 in the midst of encountering armies, being laid hold upon, by a spy, subjected him to 
 some momentary sus|)icion on the part of the government authorities on his return to 
 Scotland. But it was worth while to be suspected, for the sake of an association which 
 had suggested a poem so exquisite as the "Exile of Erin;" and this was written at 
 Haml)urgh. Tliiity years afterwards the poet was again suspected — this second time 
 not of disaffection, but of reaping where he had not sown : an impudent claim to the 
 authorship of this song being advanced by the editor of an Irish newspaper on the 
 ])art of one George Nugent, who had died many years before, a'nd was known as 
 luiving written poetry. Strange to say, Mr. Campbell found a temporary difficulty in 
 bringing forward that iudisi)utablc j)roof of its paternity — which might, indeed, have 
 been required by law, but by neither equity nor common sense. 
 
 It was at Hamburgh, t 'o, that "Ye Mariners of England" was called from the poet 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 60 
 
 (already registered as a disloyal subject in the pages of the book of espionage) by the 
 prospect of a Danish war. How nobly — availing himself of the measure and burden of a 
 popular song, — he poured forth that pride and that confidence which is the fit heritage of 
 those who feel themselves masters of the seas, and which then were stirring every heart to 
 noble deeds as with the voice of a trumpet, no Englishman can have forgotten — God forbid 
 that any Englishman should ever forget ! Though the years to come, we trust, will be years 
 of the ploughshare and the reaping-hook, rather than of the sword and the spear, — till we 
 wholly lose our nationality in a citizenship of the world, this lofty lyric will never cease to 
 warm us : and even should such a golden millenium of universal toleration and prosperity 
 ever arrive, it must still be reverently treasured by our children's children as a piece of 
 old armour or a faded banner — a proud memorial that in the times when were " wars and 
 fightings,'^ we knew how to hold our own sans peur et sans 7'eproche ! 
 
 After a sojourn of some weeks at Hamburgh, Mr. Campbell took his passage for Leith : 
 but the vessel being chased by a Danish privateer, was driven into Yarmouth ; and the poet, 
 so near London, could not resist the temptations it held out. After a short stay in the 
 metropolis, he returned to Edinburgh, where he was subjected to the ridiculous examination 
 to which his Hamburgh residence had furnished occasion, and where during his subsequent 
 residence of a twelvemonth he wrote " Lochiel " and some other of his poems. But the 
 attractions of London were so pleasantly remembered that he was again drawn thither in 
 the year 1803, with the intention of making it his home. In the autumn of the same 
 year he married his second cousin, Miss Matilda Sinclair, a lady endowed with every good 
 gift save those of fortune. A series of vicissitudes of cu'cumstance on the part of Mr. 
 Campbell's family, added to the usual responsibilities of a love-marriage, compelled him for 
 some subsequent years to coin his talent as diligently as he could ; to become a literary 
 labourer for the market. We are told of a History of England (most probably a con- 
 tinuation to Hume and Smollett's work) executed by him during this period; and of a 
 large variety of anonymous labours for the periodical and daily press. But it is impossible 
 to specify works which their author has no desire to reclaim from oblivion : and it is painful 
 to dwell upon a time of ceaseless anxiety, and compelled task-work, and seriously-iuipaired 
 health. Enough to say, that during this period he was introduced, among other new 
 friends and connections, to Charles Fox ; at whose instance, in recognition of his literary 
 successes, he aftervvai'ds was placed on the pension list. 
 
 In the year 1809, however, brighter days began to dawn. ]\Ir. Campbell's health was re- 
 established ; he wrote his " Battle of the Baltic " (perhaps the most spirited of his lyrics), 
 " Lord UlUn's Daughter," and " Gertrude of Wyoming." They were published in the sauie 
 year, with a success which has rather increased than diminished, many editions having been 
 rapidly called for, to one of which a new interest was given by the addition of ''O'Connor's 
 Child." To point out the characteristics in right of which these poems stand alone among 
 the works of the present day, — to parallel the shorter (and stronger) compositions with the 
 odes of Gray, and the longer works, wherein there is room for description and episodical 
 incident and digressions, with the musical and true-hearted compositions of Goldsmith, 
 never cold where their author is the calmest, — would lead us too far astray. The 
 " Gertrude," the most popular of the series at the time of its ajjpearing, is, perhaps, the 
 least likely to live : whereas, owing to their happy exemption from conceit and mannerism, 
 to the simplicity and strength of their language, and the perfect finish of then* versification, 
 we cannot picture to ourselves any possible state of English literature in which the shorter 
 odes, and songs, and ballads, can be rejected as antique and obsolete, or be forgotten as 
 having contained merely words, which are ephemeral, in place of thoughts, which are 
 immortal thinsrs. 
 
70 THOMAS ca:\ipbell. 
 
 Shortly after the publication of this volume, Mr. Campbell was invited to deliver a course 
 of lectures on poetry at the Royal Institution. So highly were these esteemed, that their 
 author was immediately engaged by Mr. ^lurray, of Albemarle Street, to undeitake his 
 selections from criticisms upon the British I'oets. This work involved more research and 
 labour than would seem at first sight requisite, especially in the i)ortions referring to 
 remote periods, when much of that antiquarian knowledge is required for elucidation and 
 illustration, which sits stiffly uj)on the poetical critic, and which, therefore, should be felt 
 rather than seen in his writings. While this work was in preparation, the author took 
 advantage of the treaty of I'aris, to visit the French metropolis. He has given us, in his 
 "Life of Mrs. Siddons,'' the transcript of his impressions on beholding some of the 
 treasures of art in the Louvre, which he chanced to visit in company with that distinguished 
 lady. 
 
 Each subsequent year, about this time, was marked for the poet by a further turn of the 
 wheel on its golden side — his fame had spread far and wide, and his fortunes were 
 reinstated by the successful issue of his literary exertions, and a liberal legacy bequeathed 
 to him by a kinsman. We can only mention with a passing word his delivering a course of 
 lectures on poetry at Liverpool, in the winter of the year 1818; and his second visit to 
 Germany, during which he applied himself assiduously and somewhat whimsically to the 
 study of Hebrew, and was inspired, by the rich and picturesque scenery of the Rhine, to 
 write some of his best minor poems, " The brave Roland '' among the number. On his 
 return to England, in 1820, he accepted the editorship of the " New Monthly Magazine," 
 which he retained for ten years. These were, perhaps, the brightest periods of his life. 
 He enriched the periodical under his care with some of his finest works; he drew around 
 him the first spirits of the day. It was during this time, in the year 1821, that 
 "Theodrie" was published, the last long poem Mr. Camjibell has given to the world — a 
 work less vivid and attractive than its predecessors, from the choice of its subject (which is 
 of a domestic nature), and therefore less prized by the public. During this period, too, he 
 occupied himself in projecting the London University; and while busy with this liberal and 
 extensive plan of furnishing additional collegiate education for the youth of England, he 
 received from his own Alma Mater the highest honours she can bestow ; being elected 
 Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. In this election Mr. Canning had been 
 nominated as the opposing candidate ; and it must not be forgotten that so eminently did 
 Mr. Cami)bell, in his official capacity, engage the respect and good-will of the students of 
 his native university, that they elected him, at the conclusion of two years, — the usual 
 j)eriod of office, — for a third and additional year. 
 
 In 1830, having previously suffered a severe domestic bereavement in the death of Mrs. 
 Campbell, the poet closed his labours as editor of the " New Monthly Magazine." Since then 
 he has been less stationary than formerly— now, living for a year at St. Leonard's, Hastings, 
 during which time he gave his name and occasional contributions to the "Metropolitan 
 Magazine," then just established— now, lending his heart, and hand, and purse, with 
 untiring energy, to the assistance of the refugees whom the Polish insurrection and its 
 consequences have thrown upon the sympathy of the English public— now, finishing the 
 " Life of Mrs. Siddons," which he had undertaken at her own express wish— now, rambling 
 across the Continent to Algiers, finding there abuiulaut store of new and gay subjects for 
 his pen, as his lively letters, recently published, suflieiently testify. Mr. Campbell, we are 
 told, is at present preparing a splendid illustrated edition of his poems : is it vain to wish 
 that he would add to their number, in place of polishing and decorating those already 
 written, and already known and beloved, wherever poetry is heard? That these are dark 
 days for liuglish song we know ; but rarely has the example of one who pours forth 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 71 
 
 iiol)le thoughts in rich and chaste language, unshackled by anj'' theory, uudisfigured by any 
 conceit in his mode of delivery, been more urgently required for the imitation and warning 
 of rising aspirants, than at the present moment, when Genius, instead of taking up the 
 lyre and studying its lofty modes, for the expression of her divinely-prompted imaginings, 
 is far too apt to content herself with the fantastic and pleasant, but childish chime of the 
 coral and bells ! 
 
 [The preceding memoir leaves Mr. Campbell at the zenith of his reputation. Ilis Lives of 
 "Petrarch'^ and "Frederick the Great," and his "Pilgrim of Glencoe," whatever merit they 
 may possess, cannot be said to add a fresh laurel to the brow of the poet. Anacreon only 
 wrote a few lines, but these lines, it has well been said, will float for ever on the abyss of time. 
 So it was with Campbell : his poems, brief as they are, will live with the English language, 
 and never can be associated with the productions of his latter life ; thrown hastily from his 
 pen, not for fame, but for bread. Sad it is that a man of so much genius should not have 
 found it possible to bestow upon these writings of his maturcr years, the care and 
 elaboration necessary to work them into shapes of enduring beauty. In 1813, Mr. 
 Campbell, for the benefit of his shattered health, took up his abode at Boulogne, — and at 
 this place he died in the following year, watched over in his last moments by an affectionate 
 niece, and by friends who tenderly loved him for his private worth. The last years of his 
 life were embittered by pecuniary embarrassment and domestic sorrows — they were 
 embittered, moreover, by the harsh and ungenerous words of political foes, who touched 
 the self-love of the poet to the quick, by ignoring alike his upright and generous qualities 
 as a citizen, and his transcendent merits as a writer of verse. Little could the unhappy 
 object of their calumnies have anticipated the national tribute bestowed upon his memory, 
 when the Prime Minister of England, Sir Robert Peel, standing on one side of his bier, 
 and the Chief of his family, the Duke of Argyle, on the other, his remains were entered 
 near those of Addison, with pomp and reverence, in the Poets' Corner, of Westmhister 
 Abl)ey.] 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 TriE history of party spirit as pci-vading the worhl of literature, could not be better illus- 
 trated than by a retrospect of the fate which the poetry of Mr. Wordsworth lias proved. 
 The days ivere, when, among the million, his name was a word of reproach and derision ; 
 when the few who ventured to admire his works, to point to their spirit, as that true and 
 heaven-descended light, which should survive and finally overcome the coarser fii'es by 
 which it was for a moment out-glared, were silenced as dreamers by a sneer, and trium- 
 |)hantly put to confusion by strange words quoted from the lips of their own oracle. But 
 " the whirligig of Time brings about his revenges." It is now the fashion to decry the 
 popular poets of the last twenty years, as if it were just or possible that all the darker and 
 sterner passions of humanity should be denied a voice and an echo — and not merely to 
 extol, beyond all his predecessors, the apostle of contemplation, " who has worshipped na- 
 ture in the stillness of the woods'' — but to speak of him as the one only true prophet, 
 whose rod has swallowed up all the rods of the false magicians. And hence our younger 
 poets, fixing their reverential eyes upon him, as the regenerator of our literature, are some- 
 thing too apt to endeavour to strain their thoughts into his mould — to w^alk exclusively in 
 the paths he hath chosen, to substitute, in short, in the place of a faith, earnest but rea- 
 sonable, and permitting reservations and differences, an idol-worship, extreme and trenching 
 upon superstition ! Why should this be ? " What," to quote one of the most eloquent 
 and calhulic of modern critics,* "should hinder the same mind from being elevated by de- 
 light in the study of one and all of the great masters ? Nor is admiration of all incon- 
 sistent with preference of one, according to the mysterious constitution of each individual 
 soul, which, though the senses are nearly the same in all men, gives a different shape and 
 seeming to all objects, so that the same rose is a different rose to evei*y pair of eyes in the 
 world, and so also is the rainbow. At the bottom of many such prejudices and bigotries 
 lies pride. By exclusive worship, men imagine they elevate the character of its object, and 
 likewise their own, or rather their own reputation. There is an idol ! — you think it mean ; 
 but we tell you it is magnificent ! and that what you think clay and iron, is gold and ivory. 
 Were you as wise as we, you, too, would fall down and worship it as we do, in spirit and 
 in truth. Converts are made, and the sect, as it is enlarged, becomes more and more into- 
 lerant of any other faith and any other good works." 
 
 After these few words of preface, not wholly uncalled for, let us speak with all love and 
 reverence, of one of the most remarkable men of modern Europe. So retired has been his 
 life, and so sedulously withdrawn from the observation and the gossip of the anecdote- 
 mongers, that the notices of Mr. Wordsworth permitted to us may be comprised in a very 
 brief space ; they consist merely of a few widely-scattered dates. He was born at Cockcr- 
 
 * Professor "Wilson. 
 

 U" 
 
 RICHAKli GkJKJ-'IN at C°, LONDON A. GLASUOW. 
 

 -:^> 
 
 Or 
 
 s/rv 
 
 ftZfORNlA 
 
AVIIXIAM "WOimSWORTlT. 73 
 
 mouth, in Cumberland, on the 7th of April, 1770. When he was eight years of age he 
 was sent to the grammar-school of Hawkshead, in Lancashire, with his brother, afterwards 
 Dr. Christopher AVordsworth. Plere, under the care of jNIr. Taylor, then head-master, he 
 became a good classical scholar ; but he prophetically distinguished himself for his English 
 composition, and a copy of verses on a vacation procured him high praise. How early the 
 prevailing bent of his mind began to show itself, may be gathered from the anecdote, that 
 " before the morning hour of repairing to school, he has been overheard repeating beautiful 
 passages from Thomson's ' Seasons,' as he walked alone." " Having laid in a good store of 
 grammar-learning," continues the notice to which we are indebted, '' Mr. Wordsworth was 
 removed in October, 1787, to the University of Cambridge, and entered at St. John's. 
 During the long vacations, he indulged himself with travelling: one of his pedestrian ex- 
 cursions upon the Continent, in which he was accomi)anied by a college associate, was com- 
 memorated in a series of ' Descriptive Sketches, in Verse,' which were given to the public 
 in 1793; in the same year also he published ^An Evening Walk,' a metrical epistle from 
 the Lakes, addressed to a young lady." 
 
 " The child is father of the man," and the man of contemplation rather than the man of 
 action or passion, had been predicated by the boy who loved, when 
 
 " creeping like snail, imwillingly to school," 
 
 to nnu'mur to himself some favourite passage from the " Seasons." In strict consistency 
 with these early indications, we find Mr. Wordsworth, after leaving college — not applying 
 himself, with a young man's ambition, to the needful drudgery of professional life, but 
 wandering over England, making, in his wanderings, that minute and intimate acquaintance 
 with nature, which, on a future day, was to furnish him with such a treasury of description, 
 and allusion, and simile. Ere long, however, we find the poet bringing himself to an anchor 
 in the hamlet of Alfoxden, Somersetshire : here, enjoying the society of Coleridge, and 
 sharing his political opinions; for Mr. Wordsworth, like his other brethren of the Lakes, 
 entered into life a zealous and immoderate upholder of the French revolutionists. The 
 same enthusiasm for the cause of reform — for the substitution of nature and freedom in 
 place of artifice and tyrann}^, as made him partaker in certain fierce poems of the hour, long 
 since forgotten or disavowed, made him also, in the fulness of youthful confidence, meditate 
 an experiment, the result of which was to be a new poetical system, and build up a theory 
 which he was prepared to advocate with a martyr-like endurance. Thus it was that the 
 " Lyrical Ballads " were planned. How the poet fell away from his political opinions, pro- 
 fessing at the same time to abide with unshaken pertinacity by his poetical creed, his sub- 
 sequent life and writings sufficiently demonstrate. The "Lyrical Ballads" made their 
 appearance in the year 1798, including, it will be remembered, a few compositions by Mr. 
 Coleridge. On their recejjtion, in which discriminating admiration bore no reasonable pro- 
 portion with virulent mockery and abuse, it is needless to dwell. In the same year Mr. 
 Wordsworth visited Germany ; in 1800 settled in Westmoreland : and finally established 
 himself at Rydal INlount; a sweeter or more peaceful hermitage was never dreamed of or 
 attained to by poet. In the year 1803, he married Miss Mary Hutchinson, of Penrith. 
 Of the five children resulting from this union, two sons and a daughter (the joy of his fire- 
 side) are still living. His being nominated, about this time, to the office of distributor of 
 stamps for the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland by his friend Lord Lonsdale, 
 placed him in easy circumstances, thereby rendering him happily independent in his 
 poetical career of the praise and profit of the hour. Without indiscreet personality, it may 
 be added, that " the daily beauty of his life," as a father, a friend, and a neighbour, has 
 
 L 
 
74 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 not been flattered in his poems. 'We know that tbc constant allusion to domestic com- 
 panionship and affection, such as we find in his memorials of different tours at home and 
 abroad, or in the " Poems on the Naming of Places," — or such as are linked with innu- 
 merable references to the natural beauty by which he has lived surrounded, — or such as 
 make his picture of the three graces in the " Triad " one of the most fascinating portraits 
 of woman ever executed — we know that these are the habitual and involuntary reflections of 
 habits and sympathies which have been too sparingly allowed to shed their gracious in- 
 fluence upon the lives of the sons of song. 
 
 The list of Mr. Wordsworth's works must now be completed. First come his " Miscel- 
 laneous Poems." It must be noted that the first edition of these, pv;blished in 1807, was 
 reviewed bv Lord Byron in the " Monthly Literary Recreations," in the flat critical com- 
 mon-place of the day — that the second edition, which appeared in 1815, was accompanied 
 bv that prefatory essay, containing his poetical confession of faith, so judiciously and 
 kindly dissected and illustrated by Mr. Coleridge in his "Biographia." In 1809 he pub- 
 lished an earnest political pamphlet, "concerning the relations of Great Britain, Spain, 
 and Portugal." By this time he, too, had undergone that change from Jacobinism to 
 Toryism, which was shared by his brother-poets and neighbours of the Lake country. 
 This change of opinion, in addition to the peculiarities of style and subject enforced upon 
 him by his theory, in the prosecution of his literary career, and the quiet self-consciousness 
 with which these were advanced, furnished a favourite handle of attack to wits, and critics, 
 and rival poets for many a long year. It is curious, now that the heat of the controversy 
 has subsided, to observe the subtlety and acrimony with which this attack was carried on : 
 to read, for instance, with what an ingenuity of paradox and sincerity of partisanship 
 IJazlitt, in his ''Political Essays," contrives to reconcile the unpopularity of the poet with 
 the worldlincss of the politician; and then to remark, that it has been reserved for these 
 days, in which, as some say, we are inevitably verging towards anarchy and unbelief, to 
 place the Bard of Rydal even higher than most of his predecessors ! 
 
 It appears that Mr. Wordsworth had been for some years meditating, and diligently 
 employed in preparing, a philosophical and descriptive poem, to be entitled " The Re- 
 cluse," "having for its ])rinci])al object," says the writer, "the sensations and opinions 
 of a poet living in retirement." Of this work it will be remembered that "The Ex- 
 cursion" (first pul)lished in 1811,) forms bnt a third, and is to be considered as an 
 episodical or intermediate part; and the author adds in his preface, that "his minor 
 pieces, which have been long before the public, when they shall be properly arranged, will 
 be found by the attentive reader to have such connexion with the main work as may give 
 them claim to be likened to the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses ordinarily in- 
 cluded in those edifices." To this fancy he has adhered throughout his life, as may be 
 seen by the thoughtful and systcnuitic arrangement of his poems, in the conii)lete edition 
 recently ])ublished. 
 
 "The White Doe of Rylstonc" bears the date of 1815. A fairer ojiportunity for com- 
 parison could hardly be afforded, than by placing its dedication at the side of Shelley's 
 introductory lines to the "Revolt of Islam," — each being addressed to the poet's "Mary," 
 each containing a confession of faith, as well as of ])ersonal affection. Nor can we, in 
 reading this poem, forbear to remark, how characteristically, as, indeed, in every line he has 
 written, its author has thrown the serene light of his own spirit, over a story of broil, and 
 conflict, and adventure. Scott would have plunged heart and soul into "The Rising of 
 the North," and told the tale with the zeal and breathlessness of an eye-witness and an 
 actor. ^Ir. Wordsworth reviews the scene from above and at a distance; and the solitary 
 and faithful animal tliat haunts the graves of the Nortons, comes, we cannot but think. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 75 
 
 closer to liis sympathies, than either the rash father and his eight staunch sons, or the one, 
 who from conscience, keeps himself aloof from the fray, and from duty shares the fate of 
 his family. At least the loveliest part of the legend of Rylstone lies in its prologue, and in 
 the moonlight scene at the opening of the Fourth Canto. In such descriptive passages as 
 these Mr. Wordswortli is unrivalled. 
 
 "The Thanksgiving Ode," with other poems, appeared in the following year. In 1819, 
 their author gave the world a new proof that " the ancient s])irit was not dead " in him : 
 that he still clung to his theory of deeming the lowliest themes worthy subjects for verse, 
 by the publication of "Peter Bell" and the "Waggoner," which were dedicated to 
 Southey and Lamb, as works by which their author set some store ; he expressly tells us, 
 indeed, that they had been laid by many years for such reconsideration and polish as might 
 fit them to hold a permanent place among the poems of England. 
 
 The announcement of the first of these led to one of the most successful and whimsical 
 literary pleasantries ever executed. A lively young Iiondon genius, ripe for mischief, and 
 aware that the title of the promised ballad was, at best, unpromising, anticipated the 
 poem, by publishing a false " Peter Bell," in which the peculiarities which he felt to be 
 an excrescence upon rather than a pai-t of Mr. Wordsworth's genius, were caricatured most 
 unmercifully. The appearance of this counterfeit gave occasion to some earnest and cha- 
 racteristic letters from i\Ir. Coleridge to its publishers, in which the former accounts for the 
 egotism to be implied from the choice of such unpalatable subjects, by pointing to the 
 obstinacy engendered by the persecution and satire to which the poet had been so long ex- 
 posed, and which he (Coleridge) had been among the first to denounce. There is reason in 
 the explanation ; — but still, — when we see the richest powers of description (see the open- 
 ing of the " Waggoner," a Claude-like companion to the night-piece recently mentioned) 
 and imagination the most affluent, and thought 
 
 *" Tliat somotiiues lies too deep for tears," 
 
 lavished upon stories, as incapable in the excess of their native homeliness of bearing such 
 rich clothing, as a peasant would be to become a suit of cloth of gold, — the dispassionate 
 reader cannot but feel that the excuse was eminently required. "The Waggoner" was 
 shown off as a foil against some of those Sonnets, in which the poet, more worthily em- 
 ployed, alternately treats the most majestic and delicate themes with such a calm and con- 
 summate mastery of his art, as has never been reached since Milton strung "the small 
 lute" to "his dear espoused saint," or to denounce the massacre of the faithful in Pied- 
 mont. 
 
 The space to which this entire notice must be confined could be well devoted to an 
 examination of the excellence displayed by Mr. Wordsworth, in his exquisite and gem-like 
 class of composition. Conciseness without formality, thought never tending towards con- 
 ceit, art concealing itself in the perfection of language and versification — these are only 
 a few of the distinguishing features of his sonnets, whether we turn to the series on 
 "Duddon River" (published in 1820), in which was executed a plan not dissimilar to that 
 merely sketched by Mr. Coleridge in his meditated poem of the "Brook," — or to the 
 " Sonnets of Liberty," — or to the " Ecclesiastical Sketches," or to the " iMemorials of a 
 Tour on the Continent" (published in 1822), or to the specimens included in the poet's 
 last volume given to the world in 1835. But it must be borne in mind, that though pre- 
 eminent in these cabinet compositions, in which he is strictly fettered, his success in other 
 freer modes of verse, will neither be found to have been cramped or tamed thereby; wit- 
 
70 ^VIL]JA^I Wordsworth. 
 
 ness liis noble lyrics, among which the " Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle," and his 
 " Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," and his " Ode on the Power of Sound," must 
 be mentioned. Whether in pastoral or in elegy, whether he take up the common and 
 seducing ballad metre, or, throwing himself loose of rhyme, pour forth his thoughts in the 
 most resonant and variously-cadenced of modern blank verse, he is always fluent, rarely 
 feeble, in his versification. 
 
 Besides his poems, we must mention Mr. Wordsworth's prose description of the 
 " Lakes," published in 1820. If the choice of his residence gave occasion to an epithet 
 applied with an unmeaning and indiscriminate contempt to all such as did not pamper the 
 taste of the hour in which they wrote, it has also given one of their greatest charms to the 
 ])oems of Mr. "Wordsworth. How completely his whole soul is imbued with the spirit of 
 mountain scenery this little prose volume testifies yet more abundantly than his verses ; — 
 a mere guide-book in form and pretension, but filled with such a series of wu-itten ])ictures 
 as bring the crags, and the holms, and the waters of the north before the eye in the fulness 
 of their beauty — a book acting like a spell jipon the fevered inhabitant of a town, who, as 
 he reads, see (like the Susan of the Poet's own ballad) — 
 
 " A moimtain asceudiiig, a vision of trees, 
 Bright volumes of vapoiu* tliroiigh Lotlilniiy glide, 
 Aucl a liver flows ou tlu'ough the vale of Clieapside." 
 
 It is rumoured, that besides what has been published, Mr. Wordsworth has yet large 
 manuscript stores in his possession ; among them a tragedy, of which tantalizing glimpses, 
 and no more, have been permitted to appear. Severally to anatomize his works, to descant 
 upon his theory and the manner in which his genius has risen superior to its self-imposed 
 trammels, is here impossible; but we must point out his distinctive excellences, and to do 
 this we shall quote the summary drawn up with as much acuteness as verbal felicity by Mr. 
 Coleridge in his essay in the " Biographia," already referred to. "First, An austere 
 j)urity of language both grammatically and logically : in short, a perfect appropriateness of 
 the words to the meaning. Secondly, A correspondent weight and sanity of the thoughts 
 and sentiments won, not from books, — but from the poet's own meditations. They are 
 fresh, and have the dew upon them. * * * Even throughout his smaller poems, there 
 is not one which is not rendered valuable by some just and original reflection. Tldrdly, 
 The sinewy strength and originality of single lines and paragraphs ; the frequent curiusa 
 fcUcitas of his diction. Fourthly, The perfect truth of nature in his images and de- 
 scriptions, as taken immediately from nature, and proving a long and genial intimacy with 
 the very spirit which gives a physiognomic expression to all the works of nature. Fifthly, 
 A meditative pathos, an union of deep and subtle thought with sensibility : a sympathy 
 with man as man ; the sympathy, indeed, of a contemplator, rather than a fellow-sufferer 
 and co-mate {spectator, hand particeps), but of a contemplator, from whose view no differ- 
 ence of rank conceals the sameness of the nature; no injuries of wind or weather, or toil, 
 or even of ignorance, wholly disguise the human face divine." " Last and pre-eminently," 
 concludes Mr. Coleridge, " I challenge for this poet the gift of imagination, in the highest 
 and strictest sense of the word. In the play of fancy, Wordsworth, to my feelings, is al- 
 ways graceful, ami sometimes recondite. The likeness is occasionally too strange, or de- 
 mands too peculiar a point of view, or is such as appears the creature of pre-determiued 
 research, rather than spontaneous presentation. Indeed, his fancy seldom displays itself, 
 as mere and unmodified fancy. But in imaginative power he stands nearest of all modern 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 11 
 
 writers to Shakspeare and Milton ; and yet in a mind perfectly unborrowed, and his own. 
 To employ his own woi'ds, which are at once an instance and an illustration, he does indeed, 
 to all thoughts and to all objects, — 
 
 add the gleam, 
 
 The light that never was ou sea or land, 
 The consecration, and the poet's cU-eam ! ' " 
 
 With a name worthier than his who has so largely influenced the literature of his country, 
 and with a purifying, rather than a corrupting influence, we could not close this first series 
 of the "Authors of England." 
 
 [The old age of Wordsworth aflbrds a pleasing contrast to that of Southcy. No longer 
 judged as a writer by standards, whereby it was impossible to mctc the subtle spirit of his 
 poetry, and no longer eclipsed by the fame of Scott and Byron ; he stood forth in the latter 
 ])art of his life confessedly the greatest poet of his age. Honours gathered around him. 
 From Oxford, in 1839, he received the title of Doctor of Laws. From the government of 
 Sir Robert Peel he received still more substantial tokens of regard. Not only was he al- 
 lowed to transfer his office of distributor of stamps to his second son, but he at the same 
 time received for himself one of the few and scanty pensions awarded in this country to 
 literary merit. On the death of Southey, he was appointed Laureate. On this occasion 
 he cauie to London, where his handsome and dignified appearance, the promptitude of his 
 repartees, and the mingled shrewdness and geniality of his conversation, left an impression 
 not to be effaced on those who met hitn, — and gained for him a respectful homage from the 
 best and noblest in British society, which might have been denied to him in his mere capa- 
 city of author. But amid these tributes to his genius and worth, shadows crossed his 
 path. His sole surviving daughter, Dora, married j\Ir. Edward Quillinan, a learned and 
 accomplished scholar. Never robust in health, she did not long enjoy her married life : 
 after visiting southern Europe she sunk into premature decline, and died in 1847. It was 
 a grief never to be eff"aced from the heart of her father. He did not long survive the pang 
 which smote him. In the eightieth year of his age, he died peacefully, the name of his 
 cherished daughter being the last word he spoke, and a few days afterwards he was buried 
 beside the children he had loved so well, in the quiet church-yard of Grasmerc. In few 
 men have a kind and gentle heart, the generous instincts, the lovely sensibility, and the 
 bright wit of the poet been so happily blended as in William Wordsworth, with good sense 
 and prudence, with wisdom, and an unswerving love of truth.] 
 
 WoodfiiU imd Kinder, Printers, Angel Couit, Skinutr Street, Loudon. 
 
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