GIFT OF 
 MICHAEL REESE 
 
HISTORY 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE, 
 
 IN A SERIES OP 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM FRANCIS COLLIER, LL.D., 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN ; 
 AUTHOR OF " SCHOOL HISTORY OF THE BKITIS1I KMP1RE," "THE GRKAT 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW] 
 
 EDINBURGH ; AND NEW YORK. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THIS History of English . Literature is essentially bio- 
 graphical, for true criticism cannot separate the author 
 from his book. Leaving entirely out of sight what is no 
 light matter in a work written for the young, the 
 living interest thus given to a subject for which some 
 have little love, so much do the colour and the flavour 
 of that wonderful Mind-fruit, "called a Book, depend upon 
 the atmosphere in which it has ripened, and the soil 
 whence its sweet or sour juices have been drawn, that 
 these important influences cannot be overlooked in tracing, 
 however slightly, the growth of a Literature. It has, 
 accordingly, been my principal object to shew how the 
 books, which we prize among the brightest of our national 
 glories, have grown out of human lives rooted oftener, 
 perhaps, in sorrow than in joy; and how the scenery and 
 the society, amid which an author played out his fleeting 
 part, have left indelible hues upon the pages that he 
 wrote. 
 
 Instead of trying to compress the History of our 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 Books into the framework formed by the accession of oui 
 Sovereigns, I have adopted a purely literary division. 
 Selecting such great landmarks as the Birth of Chaucer, 
 and the Introduction of Printing, I find that Ten Eras, 
 each possessing a very distinct character, will embrace 
 every name of note, from the oldest Celtic bards to 
 Tennyson and Carlyle. The Pre-English Era takes a 
 rapid view of British books and book-makers before the 
 birth of Chaucer, about whose day the true English 
 Literature began to exist. In the nine remaining Eras 
 an entire chapter is devoted to each greatest name, 
 writers of less mark being grouped together in a closing 
 section. Short illustrative specimens, intended mainly to 
 form the basis of lessons on variety of style, are appended 
 to all the leading lives. Since names that cannot be passed 
 over grow very thick towards the end, the closing chapters 
 of the last two Eras have been arranged upon a plan 
 which prevents confusion, and, by the use of Supplement- 
 ary Lists, admits the mention of many authors who must 
 otherwise have been left out. 
 
 The method of the entire book aims at enabling a 
 student to perceive at a glance the relative importance 
 of certain authors, so that his reading may be either 
 confined to the lives of our great Classics, or extended 
 through the full range of our Literature, without much 
 risk of confusion or mistake as to proportionate great- 
 ness. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 And here, in passing, I may say that only those who 
 have tried it can estimate the difficulty of striking a 
 balance in the case of certain names, when space and 
 plan will admit of no choice but between a chapter and 
 a paragraph. With great regret, and not without some 
 misgivings, was I forced to assign to a secondary place 
 Defoe, Adam Smith (in spite of Buckle's praise), Lamb, 
 Wilson, De Quincey, Chalmers, Kingsley, Hugh Miller, 
 and many others. The same difficulty met me in the 
 formation of the Supplementary Lists, which, however, 
 will serve to give what, I hope, is a tolerably accurate 
 idea of those third-class writers, or rather first-class writers 
 of the third degree, who adorn the present century. 
 
 In the opening chapter of the various Eras I have 
 ventured to add to the simple history of our Literature 
 what I believe to be a novelty in a book of this kind. 
 Recognising the value of such pictures to the student of 
 national history, I have attempted to reproduce, with 
 some vividness, scenes of vanished author-life, and to 
 trace the chief steps by which a green leaf has become a 
 printed volume. For, to know something of the dress 
 our books have worn at various times, and the stuff of 
 which the older ones were made ; to see the minstrel 
 singing in the Castle hall, and the monk at work in the 
 still Scriptorium ; to peep at Caxton in the Almonry, and 
 watch the curtain rise on Shakspere at the Globe ; to 
 trace the lights and shadows flung upon English books from 
 
Vi PREFACE. 
 
 Cavalier satins and the more sober-coloured garments of 
 their opponents ; to see courtly poison withering Dryden's 
 wreath of bay, and men like Johnson starving their way 
 to fame : these are surely things of no slight interest and 
 value to the earnest student of English Literature. And 
 to such this book is offered. 
 
 W. F. C. 
 
 October 5, 1861, 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE FEE-ENGLISH ERA. 
 
 Chap. Page 
 
 I. First Steps in Book-making 9 
 
 II. Celtic Writers 16 
 
 Chap. Page 
 
 III. Anglo-Saxon Writers 18 
 
 IV. Anglo-Norman Writers 28 
 
 FIRST ERA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, 
 
 FROM THE BIKTH OP CHAUCER ABOUT 1328 A.I). TO THE INTRODUCTION OF 
 PRINTING BY CAXTON IN 1474 A.D. 
 
 I. The Minstrel and the Monk 35 
 
 II. Sir John de Mandevilltu 44 
 
 III. John de Wycliffe 46 
 
 IV. Geoffrey Chaucer 53 
 
 V. John Gower 61 
 
 VI. King James I. of Scotland 64 
 
 VII. Other Writers of the First Era... 67 
 
 SECOND ERA. 
 
 FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING IN 1474 A.D. TO THE 
 ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH IN 1558 A.D. 
 
 I. The Old Printers of Westmin- 
 ster 71 
 
 II. Sir Thomas More 78 
 
 III. William Tyndale 84 
 
 IV. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of 
 
 Canterbury 87 
 
 V. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey... 90 
 
 VL Other Writers of the Second Era.. 94 
 
 THIRD ERA. 
 
 FROM THE ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH IN 1558 A.D. TO THE SHUTTING! OF 
 THE THEATRES IN 1648 A.D. 
 
 I. The Plays and Playersof Old Eng- 
 land 4. 101 
 
 II. Roger Ascham 108 
 
 III. George Buchanan 112 
 
 IV. Sir Philip Sidney 116 
 
 V. Edmund Spenser 120 
 
 VI. Richard Hooker 129 
 
 VII. Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst 132 
 
 VIII. Our English Bible , 135 
 
 IX. William Shakspere 140 
 
 X. Sir Walter Raleigh 150 
 
 XI. Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Al- 
 
 l)<ins... ....,.... *** 155 
 
 XII. Benjamin Jonson 162 
 
 XIII. Other Writers of the Third Era... 166 
 
 FOURTH ERA. 
 
 FROM THE SHUTTING OF THE THEATRES IN 1648 A.D. TO THE 
 DEATH OF MILTON IN 1674 A.D. 
 
 I. Puritans and Cavaliers their in- 
 fluence upon English Literature 176 
 
 II. Thomas Fuller i....ii. 181 
 
 III. Jeremy Taylor ...,,; l ; k 185 
 
 IV. Edward Hyde, Earl of Claren- 
 don 190 
 
 -y. John Milton 194 
 
 VI. Other Writers Of the Fourth Era.. 212 
 
Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FIFTH ERA, 
 
 FROM THE DEATH OF MILTON IN 1674 A.D. TO TIIE FIRST PUBLICATION 
 THE TATLER IN 1709 A.D. 
 
 Chap. Page 
 
 I. The Court of Charles II 219 
 
 II. Samuel Butler 223 
 
 III. John Bunyan 227 
 
 IV. Richard Baxter 232 
 
 Chop. Tr.g 
 
 V. John Dryden 236 
 
 VI. John Locke 243 
 
 VII. Other Writers of the Fifth Era... 246 
 
 SIXTH ERA. 
 
 FROM THE FIRST PUBLICATION OF THB TATLER IN 1709 A.D. TO THE 
 PUBLICATION OF PAMELA IN 1740 A.D. 
 
 I. Newspapers and Serials 253 
 
 II. Joseph Addison 260 
 
 III. Sir Isaac Newton 266 
 
 IV. Sir Richard Stecle 269 
 
 V. Alexander Pope 274 
 
 VI. Jonathan Swift 23 
 
 VII. Other Writers of the Sixth Era... 289 
 
 SEVENTH ERA. 
 
 FROM THE PUBLICATION OF PAMELA IN 1740 A.D. TO THE DEATH OF JOHNSON 
 IN 1784 A.D. 
 
 I. Literary Life In the Eighteenth 
 
 Century 294 
 
 II. James Thomson 301 
 
 III. Samuel Richardson 306 
 
 IV. Henry Fielding 311 
 
 V. Tobias Smollett.... 316 
 
 VI. Thomas Gray 321 
 
 VII. David Hume 325 
 
 VIII. William Robertson 329 
 
 IX. Oliver Goldsmith 334 
 
 X. Samuel Johnson 343 
 
 XI. Other Writers of the Seventh Ei a 351 
 
 EIGHTH ERA. 
 
 FROM THE DEATH OF JOHNSON IN 1784 A.D. TO THE DEATH OF SCOTT IN 1832 A.D. 
 
 I. Some Notes on Poetry and Criti- 
 cism 3',8 
 
 II. Edward Gibbon 363 
 
 III. Robert Burns 369 
 
 IV. Edmund Burke .. 375 
 
 V. William Cowper 379 
 
 VI. George Gordon, Lord Byron 386 
 
 VII. George Crabbe 393 
 
 VIII. Sir Walter Scott 399 
 
 IX. Other Writers of the Eighth Era... 414 
 
 NINTH ERA. 
 
 FROM THE DEATH OF SCOTT IN 1832 A.D. TO THE PRESENT TIME. 
 
 I. Printing by Steam 434 
 
 II. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 441 
 
 III. Robert Southey 447 
 
 IV. William Wordsworth 453 
 
 V. Thomas Babington^Lord llac- 
 
 aulay 461 
 
 VI. Sheridan Knowles 468 ^- 
 
 VII. Alfred Tennyson 472 \r 
 
 VIII. Charles Dickens 480 
 
 IX. William Makepeace Thackeray... 487 
 
 - X. Thomas Carlyle 494 
 
 XI. Other Writers of the Ninth Era... 500 
 
 APPENDIX ON AMERICAN LITERATURE... 
 
HISTORY 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 THE FEE-ENGLISH ERA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FIRST STEPS IN BOOK-MAKING. 
 
 The first book. 
 The tree and the book. 
 Cairns and altars. 
 Knotted cords. 
 Leather books. 
 
 The papyrus. 
 
 An ancient book-room. 
 
 Picture-writing. 
 
 Reign of Acamapich. 
 
 Cortcz has come. 
 
 Hieroglyphics. 
 Sesostris on his throne. 
 Phonetics. 
 Conclusion. 
 
 WHEN in the depth of some Asiatic forest, shadowy with the 
 green fans and sword-blades of the palm tribe, and the giant 
 fronds of the purple-streaked banana, a sinewy savage stood, one 
 day long ago, etching with a thorn on some thick-fleshed leaf, 
 torn from the luxuriant shrubwood around him, rude images of 
 the beasts he hunted or the arrows he shot, the first step was 
 taken towards the making of a book. 
 
 Countless have been the onward steps since then ; but the old 
 fact that the tree is the parent of the book still survives in many 
 well-known words, which ever point us back to the green and per- 
 fumed woodland where sprang the earliest ancestor of those 
 wondrous and innumerable compounds of author's brain, printer's 
 
10 CAIRNS, GROVES, AND COEDS. 
 
 ink, and linen rag, now answering to the term book. For 
 example, take the Latin liber, and the English book and leaf. 
 Who does not know that liber means originally the inner bark 
 of a tree I Book is merely a disguised form of the word beech, 
 into which it easily changes when we tone down k to ch soft ; 
 and what could our Saxon forefathers have found, in the thick 
 forests of their native Germany, better fitted for their rude in- 
 scribings than the smooth and silvery bark of that lovely treel 
 The word leaf tells its own tale. The trim squares of paper, 
 sewed or glued together, which we call by that common name, 
 find their earliest types in those green tablets we have spoken of, 
 pulled fresh and sappy from the forest bough, and marked with the 
 point of a little thorn ; which, perhaps, by also pinning the pretty 
 sheets together, may have done the double work of pen and bind- 
 ing-needle. 
 
 But fading leaves were too perishable to do more than suggest 
 the notion of a book. Some more durable material was needed to 
 keep alive the memory of those events battles, huntings, changes 
 of encampment, death of chiefs which chequered the simple life 
 of the early world. Groves were planted, altars raised, cairns 
 heaped up, each to tell some tale of joy or grief; but a day soon 
 came when the descendants of the men who had raised these 
 memorials wondered what the decaying trees, and the grey, moss- 
 covered heaps of stones could mean for the story had perished 
 when the fathers of the tribe were gathered to their rest. 
 
 In some nations the earliest records were knotted cords. Strings 
 of different colours, with knots of various sizes and variously 
 arranged, contained the national history of the Peruvians. The 
 Chinese and some negro tribes made use of similar cords. 
 
 But it was not in man, endowed by his Creator with the glori- 
 ous faculties of reason and of speech, to remain contented with 
 these imperfect means of keeping alive the memory of great events, 
 The old book of green leaves was soon exchanged for a book of 
 tough bark, and this for tablets of thin wood. Records, which 
 men were very anxious to preserve, came to be engraven on slabs 
 of rock or cut into plates of metal. The skins of various animals, 
 
PARCHMENT AND PAPYRUS. 1 1 
 
 tanned into a smooth leather, afforded to the ancients a durable 
 substance for their documents and books. Out of this class of 
 writing materials came the parchment and the vellum, which 
 have not yet been superseded in the lawyer's office, for no 
 paper has been made to equal them in lasting power. Parch- 
 ment takes its name from the old city of Pergamos in Asia Minor, 
 whose king, when the literary jealousy of the Egyptians stopped 
 the supply of papyrus, caused his subjects to write on sheep-skins, 
 hence called Pergamena or parchment. Vellum, a finer material, 
 is prepared calf-skin. Besides these, a common form, of the book 
 in Greek and Roman days consisted in tablets of wood, ivory, 
 or metal, coated thinly with wax, on which the writer scratched 
 the symbols of his thoughts with a bronze or iron bodkin, (ypafaov 
 or stilus.) A cut reed, dipped in gum-water which was coloured 
 with powdered charcoal or the soot of resin, represented long ago 
 the pen and ink of modern days. With such appliances, Egyptian, 
 Greek, and Roman scholars penned their early works on rolls of 
 parchment or of papyrus, the famous rush-skin, which has given 
 us a name for that common but very beautiful material on which 
 we write our letters and print our books. 
 
 In swampy places by the Nile, where the retreating flood had 
 left pools, a yard or so deep, to stagnate under the copper sky, there 
 grew in old times vast forests of tall reeds, whose triangular 
 stems, some six or eight feet high, bore tufted plumes of hair-like 
 fibres. Wading in these shallows, where the ibis stalked, and the 
 mailed crocodile crashed through the canes to plunge like a log 
 in the deep current beyond, day after day bands of dark and 
 linen-robed Egyptians came to hew down the leafless woods with 
 knife or axe, and bear their heavy sheaves to the dry and sandy 
 bank. It was the famous papyrus they cut, whose skin vied with 
 parchment, as the writing material of the ancients. The several 
 wrappings of the papyrus stalk being stripped off, the lengths were 
 cemented either with the muddy water of the Nile, or more pro- 
 bably with the sugary juices of the plant itself. As skin after skin 
 peeled away, the more delicate tissues, of which the finest paper 
 was made, were found wrapping the heart of the stem. Pressing 
 
12 ANCIENT BOOK-BOOMS. 
 
 and drying completed the simple process of making this much- 
 used paper. It was then ready to receive the semi-liquid, gummy 
 soot, with which the Xenopbons and the Virgils of old Greece and 
 Rome traced their flowing histories or sparkling poems. 
 
 Such were the chief materials of which ancient books were 
 made, the hard and stiff substances being formed into angular 
 tablets, which opened either like the leaves of a European book or 
 like the folding compartments of a screen, the soft and pliable, 
 such as leather or linen, being rolled on ornamented, smoothly- 
 rounded sticks, as we roll up our maps and wall-diagrams. In- 
 stead of showing, like our modern libraries, trim rows of books 
 standing shoulder to shoulder with the evenness of well-drilled 
 soldiers on parade the juniors gleaming with magenta and gold, 
 the seniors hoary in ancient vellum or sombre with dingy calf 
 the book-room of a Plato or a Seneca would have displayed a few 
 circular cases, resembling our common bandbox, and filled with 
 papyrus or parchment rolls, which, standing on end, displayed 
 the bright yellow, polished vermilion, or deep jet of their smoothly- 
 cut edges. 
 
 Let us now see what the men, who wrought out the wonders of 
 ancient history, cut or painted on their granite slabs, their cloths 
 of cotton or linen, their sheep-skins, or their slips of bark 
 
 .Drawing and painting were, undoubtedly, the earliest methods 
 of conveying ideas in books. And still, pictures and sketches aid 
 many of our books and serials to convey a clearer meaning; else 
 why do we love to read the Illustrated News, or turn the first 
 thing in the Cornhill to the drawings of Millais and of Doyle 1 ? 
 The various gradations by which the first rude sketch changed into 
 that wonderful invention a word formed of alphabetic symbols 
 cannot here be traced. Take two specimens of the phases 
 which the growing art assumed. 
 
 A piece of cotton cloth is before us, brilliant with crimson and 
 yellow and pale blue, and oblong like our modern page. It is a 
 picture-writing of old Mexico, relating the reign and conquests of 
 King Acamapich. Down the left border runs a broad stripe of 
 blue, divided into thirteen parts by lines resembling the rounds of a 
 
MEXICAN PICTURE-WRITING. 13 
 
 ladder. This represents a reign of thirteen years. In each com- 
 partment a symbol expresses the story of the year. A flower, 
 denoting calamity, is found in two of them. But the chief story 
 is told by the coloured forms of the centre, where we have the 
 sovereign painted twice, as a stern-looking head, capped with a 
 serpent crest, with a dwarfish, white-robed body, and, separate 
 from the shoulder, a hand grasping a couple of arrows. Before 
 this grim warrior at the top of the scroll lie a shield and a bundle 
 of spears. Face and feet are painted a dull yellow. Before his 
 second effigy we have four smaller heads, with closed eyes and an 
 ominous, bloody mark upon lip and chin, denoting the capture and 
 beheading of four hostile chiefs. The four sacked and plundered 
 cities are depicted by roofs falling from ruined walls ; and beside 
 each stands a symbol representing some botanical or geographical 
 feature by which its site is characterized. Pictures of different 
 species of tree distinguish two of the cities ; the third stands 
 evidently by a lake, for a pan of water is drawn close to it, united 
 by a line to mark close connection. 
 
 By some such suggestive painting upon cotton cloth or aloe 
 leaves did the frightened Mexicans, who dwelt on the coast of the 
 great Gulf, convey to the inland towns the terrible news that Cortez 
 and his Spaniards had appeared. They painted the great ship^, 
 the pale, bearded men, the cannon breathing flames and smoke 
 and hurling distant trees in splinters to the earth ; and no 
 sadder picture was ever unrolled in the splendid palace of Monte- 
 zuma than the cotton cloth emblazoned with terrible meanings, 
 which had been borne, with galloping of swiftest mules, up, up 
 the rocky terraces of the plateau from the blue edge of the tepid 
 sea. 
 
 The link, which connects such picture-writing with that use of 
 alphabetic symbols so familiar to us that we do not realize its 
 wonder, lies in the hieroglyphic writing of the Egyptians. Figures 
 of natural objects abound in that system too, but they have now got 
 a deeper meaning the power of expressing abstractions, or qualities 
 considered alone. Thus the queen bee represents royalty; the bull, 
 strength ; an ostrich feather, from the evenness of its filaments, truth 
 
14 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS. 
 
 or justice. The figures are often, especially in later writings, re- 
 duced to their principal parts, or even to lines, the latter being the 
 first step toward the formation of an alphabet. For instance, a 
 combat is represented by two arms, one bearing a shield, the other a 
 pike ; Upper and Lower Egypt are denoted by single stems topped 
 with a blossom or a plume, representing respectively the lotus and 
 the papyrus. The colouring of the hieroglyphics is not in imitation 
 of nature, as is the case with the earlier picture-writing, but follows 
 a conventional system seldom departed from. The upper part of 
 a canopy in blue stood for the heavens j a thick waving line of 
 the same, or a greenish hue, represented the sea. The sun is 
 red with a yellow rim. Men's flesh is red; women's, yellow. 
 Parts of the body are painted deep red ; wooden instruments are 
 pale orange or buff; bronze utensils, green. The effect of a hiero- 
 glyphic writing as it strikes the eye is very brilliant, the primary 
 colours red, yellow, and blue being the prevailing hues. 
 
 A hieroglyphic painting taken from the wall of an excavated 
 temple in Nubia is before us. It represents the introduction of 
 ambassadors to the great Sesostris, whose figure, seated on a 
 throne, fills all the left side of the record. He bears as sceptre a 
 red wand with yellow top ; his white robe is embroidered with blue 
 and gold ; a square blue cap, rimmed with gold and adorned with 
 a symbolic bird, covers his head ; his arms, his face, and lower 
 legs are bare, and painted of a deep red. Two coloured ovals 
 above his head express by figures and signs the names of the king. 
 Four or five upright columns of hieroglyphic symbols tell the 
 story of the ambassadors; and, crossing two of these from the 
 right, there comes a red arm to announce the introduction to the 
 royal presence. To attempt a description of the symbols here 
 would be absurd. No fewer than twenty-three figures of birds 
 with spread or folded wings are there. The sign for water is fre- 
 quently repeated. Figures of men kneel and sit and stand. 
 There are fish, and arms and legs and eyes, crowns and flowers, 
 a crocodile and a horse, all in red, or blue, or yellow, or green. 
 No other colour appears in the painting, except the grey used to 
 shade the great figure of the king. 
 
ORIGIN OP OUR ALPHABET. 16 
 
 Then by slow, yet very sure degrees, the hieroglyphic system 
 altered until certain signs became phonetic ; that is, expressive of 
 sounds, not things. The Pho3nicians, who had much to do with 
 early Egypt, in adopting the art of writing probably abandoned 
 the pictorial part of the hieroglyphic system, and retaining only 
 the phonetics, formed out of these the first pure alphabet ; and 
 so from Phoenicia through Greece and Rome we, in all likelihood, 
 got the ground-work of those twenty-six letters of which our 
 thirty- eight thousand words are made. 
 
 Much of this opening chapter deals with countries far from 
 Britain, and an age anterior, in the Old World at least, to the birth 
 of British literature. But it is not a rash conjecture, that, among 
 the ancestors of those blue-limbed Celts who dashed so bravely 
 into the surf near Sandwich on that old September day, to meet 
 the brass-mailed legions of Caesar, there were some untutored 
 attempts at picture-writing on such materials as the country could 
 supply. For savage man must, in every age and clime, travel on to 
 civilization by much the same pathway. And, in any case, it is 
 well, when beginning to record the great victories of the British 
 pen, to trace a few of those faltering steps which were taken, 
 as the Avorld grew from morning into prime, towards the produc- 
 tion of that grand triumph of human thought and skill we call 
 a modern book. 
 
16 REMAINS OF CELTIC LITERATURE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 CELTIC WRITERS. 
 
 Ori<dn of the Ballad. 
 
 ffish manuscripts. 
 
 " The Psalter of Cashel.' 
 
 The "Annals." 
 Poems of Ossian. 
 Welsh bards. 
 
 " Triuda" 
 Latin writer* 
 Gildas. 
 
 AMONG every people the earliest form of literature is the Ballad. 
 The History and the Poetry of a nation are, in their infant forms, 
 identical When the old Greeks taught, in their mythology, that 
 Memory was the mother of the Muses, they embodied in a striking 
 personification the fact that the rude language, in which men 
 emerging from savagery used to chant the story of their deeds to 
 their children, was couched in rough metre, in order that the ring 
 of the lines might help the memory to retain the tale. 
 
 Oldest of all British literature, or, indeed, of all literature in 
 modern Europe, of which any specimens remain, are some scraps 
 of Irish verse, found in the Annalists and ascribed to the fifth 
 century. The Psalter of Cashel, the oldest existing manuscript of 
 the Irish literature, is a collection of metrical legends, sung by the 
 bards, which was compiled towards the end of the ninth century, 
 by a man who seems to have held the offices of Bishop of Cashel 
 and King of Munster. More important, however, as giving in 
 careful prose a calm account of early Irish history, are the Annals 
 of Tigernach and of tJie Four Masters of Ulster. 
 
 The very scanty remains of the Scottish Gaelic are of much 
 later date than the earliest Irish ballads. The poems of Ossian 
 Fingal-and. Temoravfhich were published in 17G2 and 17G3 by 
 James Macpherson, as translations from Gaelic manuscripts as old 
 as the fourth century, are now generally looked on as literary 
 forgeries, executed by their clever but not very scrupulous editor. 
 The ancient manuscripts, from which he professed to have trans- 
 lated these graphic pictures of old Celtic life, have never been 
 produced. A narrative in verse, called the Albanic Duan, is 
 thought to have been composed in the eleventh century. 
 
 '15) 
 
LATIN AUTHORS AMONG THE CELTS. 17 
 
 In Wales, which was the stronghold of Druidism, the profession 
 of the bard was held in high honour. The poems of Taliesin,^ 
 Merlin, and other bards of the sixth century, stiU remain. The 
 Welsh Triads, some of which are ascribed to writers of the thir- 
 teenth century, are sets of historical events and moral proverbs, 
 arranged in groups of three. Both in these and in the ballads of 
 the bards, one of the leading heroes is the great Prince Arthur, 
 whose prowess against the Saxons was so noted in those dim days. 
 
 Besides those who wrote and sang in their native Celtic tongue, 
 there were also among the ancient British people a few Latin 
 authors. Three may be named. First on the long and brilliant 
 roll of British historians stands Gildas, born at Alcluyd (Dum- 
 barton) about the beginning of the sixth century. He is known 
 to us as the author of a History of the Britons, and an Epistle to 
 his countrymen, both in Latin, and both containing fiery assaults 
 upon the Saxon invaders. Nennius, thought to have been a monk 
 of Bangor, is said also to have written a History of tJie Britons. 
 The Latin poems of St. Columbanus, an Irish missionary to the 
 Gauls, are Bpoken of by Moore as " shining out in this twilight 
 period of Latin literature with no ordinary distinction." 
 
 (is) 
 
18 
 
 SAXON GLEEMEN AND THEIR SONGS 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 
 
 ANGLO-SAXON WRITERS. 
 
 The Saxon glecman. 
 
 Saxon verse. 
 
 The Epic Beowulf. 
 
 Caedmon. 
 
 His "Paraphrase." 
 
 Kiri Alfred. 
 
 Alfric the Grammarian. 
 
 The " Saxon Chronicle." 
 
 Aldhelm. 
 
 Bedc. 
 
 Alcuin. 
 Erigena. 
 Dunstan. 
 Decay. 
 
 THE Gleeman or Minstrel of the Anglo-Saxons was a most impor- 
 tant person. When the evening shadows fell, and the " mead- 
 bench " was filled, his scene of triumph came. His touch on the 
 "wood of joy" had power alike to rouse the fiery passions of the 
 warriors or soothe their ruffled moods. He related the deeds of 
 dead heroes, or sung the praise of their living descendants ; stung 
 the coward with his sweet-voiced scorn, or exulted in his proudest 
 tones over the beaten foe. From earliest days his training was 
 directed to the storing of his memory with the poetic legends of 
 his country; and when, grown more skilful, he learned to string 
 into rude verses the story of his own day, it went, without his 
 name to mark it, into the common stock of his craft. Hence the 
 Anglo-Saxon poetry is anonymous. 
 
 The structure of the verse in which these gleemen sang is thus 
 described by Wright: "The poetry of the Anglo-Saxons was 
 neither modulated according to foot-measure, like that of the 
 Greeks and Romans, nor written with rhymes, like that of many 
 modern languages. Its chief and universal characteristic was a 
 very regular alliteration, so arranged that in every couplet there 
 should be two principal words in the first line beginning with the 
 same letter, which letter must also be the initial of the first word, 
 on which the stress of the voice falls in the second line. The only 
 approach to a metrical system yet discovered is, that two risings 
 and two fallings of the voice seem necessary to each perfect line. 
 Two distinct measures are met with, a shorter and a longer, both 
 commonly mixed together in the same poem ; the former being 
 used for the ordinary narrative, and the latter adopted when the 
 
CAEDMON, THE MONK OF WHITBY. 1 9 
 
 poet sought after greater dignity. In the manuscripts the Saxon 
 poetry is always written continuously, like prose ; but the division 
 of the lines is generally marked by a point." 
 
 The chief Anglo-Saxon poems that have come down to us are 
 the Romance of Beowulf, and Caedmoris Paraphrase. 
 
 Heowulf is a nameless poem of more than 6000 lines, thought 
 to be much older than, the manuscript of it which we possess. 
 Its hero, BEOWULF, is a Danish soldier, who, passing through many 
 dangers by land and sea, slays a monster, Grendel, but is himself 
 slain in an attack upon a huge dragon. It is a striking picture v 
 of dim old Gothic days, much heightened in its effect by the 
 minuteness of the descriptive lines. As we read, the gleaming of 
 mail flashes in our eyes, and we hear the clanging march of the 
 warriors, as the " bright ring-iron sings in its trappings." Meta- 
 phors are common in the language of Beowulf, and some are of 
 noble simplicity, such as, ''They lay aloft, put to sleep with 
 swords j" but in all this long poem there are only five similes. 
 This scarcity of similes is a characteristic of all Anglo-Saxon verse. 
 
 CAEDMON, the author of the Paraphrase, was originally a cow- 
 herd near Whitby in Northumbria. Bede tells the story of his 
 inspiration. It was the custom in those days for each to sing in 
 turn, as the harp was pushed round the hall at supper. This 
 Caedmon could never do; and when he saw his turn coming, he 
 used to slip out of the room, blushing for his want of skill and 
 eager to hide his shame. One night, having left the hall, he lay 
 down to sleep in the stable; and as he slept, he dreamed that a 
 stranger came to him, and said, " Caedmon, sing me something." 
 " I know nothing to sing," said the poor herd, " and so P had to 
 slink away out of the hall." "Nay," said the stranger, "but thou 
 hast something to sing." " What must I sing ? " " Sing the 
 Creation," replied the stranger ; upon which words of sweet music 
 began to flow from the lips that had been sealed so long. 
 Caedmon awoke, knew the words he had been reciting, and felt a 
 new-born power in his breast. The mantle of song had fallen on 
 him ; and when next day, before the Abbess Hilda and some of 
 the scholars of the place, he told what had occurred, they gave 
 
20 THE " PAEAPHEASE " OF CAEDMON. 
 
 him a passage of the Bible to test his new-found skill Within 
 a few hours he composed, on the given subject, a poem of surpass- 
 ing sweetness and power. Thenceforward this monk of Whitby 
 spent his life in the composition of religious poetry. 
 
 The " Paraphrase " of Caedmon contained, besides other portions 
 of the Bible, the story of the Creation and the Fall, the history of 
 Daniel, with many passages in the life and death of our Saviour. 
 From the similarity of subject, a likeness has been traced between 
 him and Milton, upon which a charge of plagiarism against our 
 great epic poet has been most foolishly grounded. 
 
 It is believed that Caedmon died about 680. Some think that 
 there were two poets of the name, the elder of whom composed 
 those lines on the Creation, which are acknowledged to be among 
 the oldest existing specimens of Anglo-Saxon, while the younger 
 was the author of the " Paraphrase." 
 
 The principal fragmentary Anglo-Saxon poems, which still 
 survive, are the Battle of Finsborough ; the Traveller's Song, which 
 contains a good many geographical names ; and the fragment of 
 Judith. In the Saxon Chronicle of 938 we find a poem called 
 Athehtarfs Song of Victory. 
 
 The following extract from Caedmon's " Paraphrase" part of the 
 Song of Azariah may be taken as a specimen of Anglo-Saxon 
 verse : 
 
 Thorpe's Translation. 
 
 Tha of roderum waes. Then from the firmament was 
 
 Engel selbeorht. An all-bright angel 
 
 Ufan onsended. Sent from above, 
 
 Wlite scyne wer. m > x A man of beauteous form, 
 
 On his wuldor-haman. In his garb of glory : 
 
 Se him cwom to frofre. ^^ Who to them came for comfort, 
 
 & to feorh-nere. And for their lives' salvation, 
 
 Mid lufan & mid lisse. With love and with grace ; 
 
 Se thone lig tosceaf. Who the flame scattered 
 
 Halig and heofon-beorht. (Holy and heaven-bright) 
 
 Hatan fyres. Of the hot fire, 
 
 Tosweop hine & toswende. Swept it and dashed away, 
 
 Thurh tha swithan miht. Through his great might, 
 
 Ligges leoma. The beams of flame '; 
 
 That hyra lice ne waes. So that their bodies were not 
 
 Owjht geegled. Injured aught. 
 
21 
 
 ANGLO-SAXON PKOSE. 
 
 ALFKED. King Alfred is the leading writer of Anglo-Saxon 
 prose, whose works remain. The Welshman Asser has preserved 
 for us an account of this royal scholar's life and works. 
 
 What Alfred did for England in those dark days, when Danish 
 pirates ravaged the land so sorely, every reader of our history 
 knows. Here it is not as the warrior, victorious at Ethandune 
 and on the banks of the Lea, that we must view this greatest of 
 the Anglo-Saxons; but as the peaceful man of letters, sitting 
 among his books and plying his patient pen, as his time-candle 
 burns down, ring after ring, through the hours allotted to literary toil. 
 Both sword and pen were familiar tools in that cunning right hand. 
 
 Alfred the Great was born in 848, at Wantage in Berkshire. 
 Tw*o visits to Home in his early days gave him a wider range of 
 observation and thought than Anglo-Saxon children commonly 
 enjoyed. When he had reached his twelfth year, he won as a 
 prize a beautiful book of Saxon poetry, which his mother had 
 promised to that one of lier sons who should first commit its 
 contents to memory. Already Alfred had been noted in the 
 family circle for the ease with which he remembered the songs 
 sung by the wandering gleemen. 
 
 When in 871 he ascended the throne of Wessex, his great 
 inind found its destined work. Through many perils and dis- 
 heartening changes he broke the power of the insolent Danes, 
 taming the pirates into tillers of the Danelagh. And then, his 
 warlike task for the present done, jj Jftirned to the elevation of his 
 people's mind. 
 
 There being few scholars in the troubled land, he invited 
 learned men from France to preside over the leading schools. 
 Much of his scanty leisure was spent^in literary work, chiefly 
 translations into Anglo-Saxon. His chief works were his versions 
 of BedJs History of the Anglo-Saxon Church, and Boethius on the 
 Consolation of Philosophy. Translations of Orosius, of Pope 
 Gregory's Pastorale, and an unfinished rendering of the Psalms, 
 arc also named among his contributions to literature. 
 
22 THE "SAXON CHRONICLE," 
 
 ALFKIC. There was an author in the latter days of the Anglo- 
 Saxon period, known as Alfric the Grammarian, about whom much 
 confusion exists among writers on the Anglo-Saxon literature. 
 Whoever this man was, whether, as is generally thought, that 
 monk of Abingdon who was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 
 995, or another man of York, or yet another of Malmesbury, 
 he contributed largely to the literature of his day. Most of his 
 writings are still extant. His name, the Grammarian, was taken 
 from a Latin Grammar, which he translated from Donatus and 
 Priscian. His Latin Glossary and Book of Latin Conversation 
 are works of merit. But his Eighty Homilies, written in the 
 simplest Anglo-Saxon, for the use of the common people, are 
 undoubtedly his greatest work. Among these is his famous 
 Paschal Sermon, which embodies the Anglo-Saxon belief on the 
 subject of the Lord's Supper. Alfric of Canterbury died in 
 November 1006. 
 
 The famous Saxon Chronicle was the work of centuries. An 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, named Plegraund, drawing largely 
 from Bede, is said to have compiled the work up to 891. It was 
 then carried on in various monasteries until 1154, when the 
 registers ceased to be kept. As a work of history, embracing the 
 events of many hundred years, and written for the most part by 
 men who lived in the midst of the scenes they described, it is 
 perhaps the most valuable inheritance we have received from the 
 native literature of our Saxon forefathers. 
 
 A romance founded on the story of Apollonius of Tyre, King 
 Alfred's "Will, some Laws and. Charters, some Homilies, and 
 a few works on Grammar, jpfccine, and Botany, are nearly all 
 the specimens of Anglo-Saxon prose that remain. 
 
 LATIN WORKS. 
 
 The learned tongue of Europe was then, as it long continued to 
 be, Latin, the writing of which was revived in England by Augustine 
 and his monks. In the stern soldiering days of the Roman period, 
 much Latin had been spoken and read, but little had been 
 written within British bound?. But the Anglo-Saxon monks, 
 
THE VENERABLE BEEE. 23 
 
 nay, the Anglo-Saxon ladies, wrote countless pages of Latin 
 prose and verse. The great subject of these Latin works was 
 theology, as was natural from the circumstance that they were 
 chiefly the productions of the cloister. 
 
 ALDHELM. Most ancient of the Anglo-Saxon writers in Latin 
 was Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury and Bishop of Sherborn. He 
 was born in Wessex about G56, of the best blood in the land. His 
 chief teacher was an Irish monk named Meildulf, who lived a hermit 
 life under the shade of the great oak trees in north-eastern Wilt- 
 shire. When the followers of Meildulf were formed into a mon- 
 astery bearing its founder's name (Meildulfesbyrig or Malmesbury), 
 Aldhelm was chosen to be their abbot. There he lived a peaceful 
 life, relieving his graver cares with the sweet solace of literature 
 and music. He died at Dilton in May 709. His chief works 
 are three; a prose treatise in praise of Virginity, a work in verse 
 on the same subject, and a book of Riddles. His Latin is impure, 
 filled with Greek words, and stuffed with those alliterations and 
 metaphors which are characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry. 
 
 BEDE. '-Second in time, but first in place, conies the name of the 
 Venerable Bede, or Beda. This illustrious man was born about 
 672 or 673, at Jarrow in Durham, near the mouth of the Tyne. 
 To the newly founded monastery of Wearmouth, not far distant, 
 the studious boy went at the age of seven, to profit by the teaching 
 of Benedict Biscop. Thenceforward until his death fifty-six years 
 later the cloisters of Wearmouth were his home; and within 
 their quiet seclusion he wrote the great work, on which his title 
 to the name Venerable is justly founded. In his fifty-ninth year 
 he brought to a close his famous History of the Anglo-Saxon 
 Church, written like nearly all his works in Latin. Its style 
 is simple and easy, unsullied by the far-fetched figures which are 
 such favourites with Aldhelm. From it we learn nearly all we 
 know of the early history of the Anglo-Saxons and their Church. 
 At the end of this book Bede gives a list of thirty-eight works, 
 which he had already written or compiled. These are chiefly 
 theological ; but there are, besides, among them, histories, poems, 
 works on physical science, and works on grammar. 
 
24 THE GREAT SCHOLAR ALCUIN. 
 
 Cuthbert, one of Bede's disciples, gives us a sketch of his dying 
 
 bed. From the beginning of April until the end of May 735, he 
 
 continued to sink under an attack of asthma, which had long been 
 
 sapping his strength. To the very last he worked hard, dictating 
 
 with his failing breath a translation into Anglo-Saxon of John's 
 
 Gospel. It was morning on the 27th of May. " Master," said 
 
 one of the young monks who wrote for him, " there is but one 
 
 chapter, but thou canst ill bear questioning." " Write 
 
 735 quickly on," said Bede. At noon he took a solemn fare- 
 
 A.D. well of his friends, distributing among them his treasured 
 
 spices and other 'gifts. By sunset there remained but one 
 
 sentence of the work to do, and scarcely had the concluding words 
 
 of the Gospel flowed from the pen of the writer, when the venerable 
 
 monk sighed out, " It is done." The thread was just about to 
 
 snap. Seated on that part of the floor where he had been wont to 
 
 kneel in prayer, he pronounced the " Gloria Patri," and died as 
 
 the last words of the sacred utterance were breathed from his lips. 
 
 ALCUIN. The year 735, which sealed the eyes of Bede in death, 
 is thought to have given life to the great scholar Alcuin. It is 
 doubtful whether Alcuin was born at York or in Scotland. He 
 won a prominent place in the great school presided over at York 
 by Archbishop Egbert, and when he was called to fill the chair 
 from which his master, Egbert, had taught so well he drew even 
 greater crowds of students to this capital of the north. Besides 
 his work as a teacher, he acted as keeper of the fine library col- 
 lected in the Cathedral of York. While returning from a visit to 
 Home, lie became acquainted at Parma with the Emperor Charle- 
 magne, who invited him to France. Going thither in 782, he 
 speedily became one of the most cherished friends of his imperial 
 patron, who was never happier than when he was chatting and 
 laughing unreservedly with men of thought. After a short visit 
 to England (790-792) in the character of Imperial Envoy, Alcuin 
 seems to have settled permanently in France. There his position 
 was a proud one, for he Mas recognised as chief among the dis- 
 tinguished group of wits and lettered men who encircled the 
 throne of Charlemagne. The name by which he was known in 
 
ERIGENA, THE LEARNED LAYMAN. 25 
 
 this brilliant circle was Flaccus Albinus, a title under which he 
 could converse more freely with his friend David (Charlemagne), 
 than if the monk and the emperor always retained their distinctive 
 names and titles. In his old age Alcuin desired earnestly to re- 
 tire from the glare and bustle of court life to that quiet monastery 
 round which his earliest associations were twined. He had all 
 ready for the journey, when news came of terrible massacres and 
 burnings in the north of England, such as had not before been suf- 
 fered, although the Raven's beak had left many a deep and bloody 
 gash upon the fair English shore. Frightened at such tales, he 
 asked from the emperor a post, in which he might calmly pass the 
 evening of his days. The Abbey of Tours, falling vacant just then, 
 became his place of retirement, where he spent his learned leisure 
 in training a new generation of scholars, and in writing most of 
 those books by which his name has come down to us. At Tours 
 he died in 804. 
 
 The Letters of Alcuin give a life-like picture of the great events 
 of his day. The wars of Charlemagne against the Saracens and 
 the Saxons are there described ; and there, too, we find a graphic 
 account of the inner life of the imperial court. A Life of Charle- 
 magne has been ascribed to the pen of Alcuin; but, if there was ever 
 such a work, it has long been lost. Of his poems, the best is 
 an Elegy on the Destruction of Lindisfarne by the Danes. He 
 wrote, besides, a long metrical narrative of the bishops and saints 
 of the Church at York ; which, on the whole, is not very elegant 
 Latin, and poor enough poetry. Theology, of course, was his prin- 
 cipal study; and on this theme he wrote much, pouring from his 
 pen a host of Scriptural commentaries and treatises on knotty 
 points of doctrine. As a teacher he ranks much higher than he 
 ranks as an author. His chief glory and the tiling of which 
 his countrymen were especially proud was the fact that he, & 
 Briton, had been chosen to give instruction to the great Emperor 
 of the West. 
 
 ERIGENA. John Scotus or Erigena, although not a Saxon, but, 
 as his name shows, an Irishman, claims our special notice here, 
 Little is known of this great man. He probably settled in France 
 
2G HOW DUNSTAN WON HIS SAINTSHI?. 
 
 about 845, and lived there, tinder the patronage of Charles the Bald, 
 for thirty years. He should be well remembered for two things : he 
 was a learned layman, and a well-read Greek scholar, both 
 characters being very rare in those benighted days. His chief 
 works are a treatise on Predestination, in which he argues 
 that God has fore- ordained only rewards for the good, and that 
 man has brought evil on himself by the exercise of his own per- 
 verted will ; a treatise on the Eucharist, denying the doctrine of 
 transubstantiation ; and more remarkable than either a book 
 On the Division of Nature, which embraces a wide range of scientific 
 knowledge, and is copiously enriched with extracts from Greek and 
 Latin writers. 
 
 The bold, fearless nature of the man, and the familiar tone of 
 the Frankish court life, are well illustrated by an anecdote told of 
 Erigena. One day tho king and he sat on opposite sides of the 
 table, with the courtiers ranged around. The scholar through for- 
 getfulriess or ignorance transgressed some of the rules of etiquette, 
 so as to offend the fastidious taste of those who sat by, upon which, 
 the king asked him what was the difference between a Scot* and a 
 sot. " Just the breadth of the table," said Erigena ; and it is more 
 than likely that the royal witling ventured on no more puns, for 
 that day at least, at the scholar's expense. Erigena is said to have 
 died in France some time previous to the year 877. 
 
 DUNSTAN. One of the foremost Saxons of his day, though more 
 noted for his learning than for his writings, was Dunstan, Abbot of 
 Glastonbury, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Born in 
 925, near Glastonbury in Somersetshire, and educated there in the 
 Irish school, he became a monk at an early age. His advances in 
 learning were surprisingly rapid, in spite of the convulsive fits to 
 which he was subject, and under the influence of which he thought 
 that he was hunted by devils. Arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, 
 and music were his favourite studies. While living at Win- 
 chester, he was persuaded by his uncle the Bishop to crush down 
 his early love for a girl of great beauty, and to devote himself 
 with might and main to the austerities of a monkish life. Be- 
 
 * A Scot then meant a native of Ireland. 
 
DECAY OF SAXON LITERATURE. 27 
 
 side the church, wall he built a cell, into which he shut himself 
 with his tools of carpentry and smith-work, his paints and brushes 
 for the illumination of manuscripts. Seldom venturing from this 
 retreat, he soon won a reputation for wonderful sanctity and 
 alliance with supernatural beings. King Edmund made him 
 Abbot of Glastonbury; and with Edred also the next king he 
 was in high favour. Banished by Edwy to Ghent, he was by 
 Edgar recalled to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Thencefor- 
 ward he was first man in the English realm, able not merely to re- 
 buke the king, but even to bestow the crown at his pleasure. He 
 died in 988. 
 
 His works are nearly all theological, the best known being 
 the Benedictine Rule, modified for English monks, and having 
 its Latin interlined with a Saxon translation. He wrote also a 
 Commentary or Set of Lectures on the Rule; which were pro- 
 bably read by him in the various schools with which he was con- 
 nected. 
 
 The latter days of the Anglo-Saxon literature were feeble 
 compared with the vigour of its youth. Even in the day of 
 Alfred, when it may be said to have reached its prime, decay was 
 at work, and the ravages of the Danes completed the blight of its 
 promise. Those were days when many kings made their mark at 
 the foot of charters, for want of skill to write their names. Alfred 
 could find no tutors able to teach the higher branches of education ; 
 and he was forced to state publicly, in his preface to " Gregory's 
 Pastorale," that he knew no men south of the Thames, and few south 
 of the Humber, who could follow the sense of the public prayers, 
 or construe a Latin sentence into English. Yet that an Anglo- 
 Saxon literature however scanty did flourish, is no slight won- 
 der, for during those ages clouds of thickest darkness hung over 
 all Europe with a seemingly impenetrable gloom. 
 
28 EFFECTS OF THE NOKMAN CONQUEST, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 ANGLO-NORMAN WRITERS. 
 
 Effects of the Conqnest. 
 John of Salisbury. 
 The Norman Romance. 
 Romance tongues of France. 
 Prevalence of Latin. 
 Latin poetry. 
 
 The Chronicles. 
 Ingnlphns. 
 Ordcricus Vitalis. 
 William of Malmesbury. 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth. 
 The " Gesta." 
 
 Nature of the Romance. 
 Stories of Arthur. 
 Master \Vacc. 
 Langton and Richard I. 
 Layamon's "Brut" 
 The " Ormulum." 
 
 THE Norman Conquest wrought great changes on both the learn- 
 ing and the literature of England. Saxon scholarship had been 
 growing rustier every day since the great Alfred died ; and those 
 Saxon prelates who held sees at the time of the Conquest were far 
 behind the age as men of letters. William therefore displaced many 
 of them, to make room for polished scholars from the Continent 
 such as Lanfranc and Anselrn, who held the see of Canterbury in 
 succession. The Conqueror, moreover, founded many fine abbeys 
 and convents, within whose quiet cells learned men could think and 
 write in safe and honoured leisure. Schools sprang up on every side. 
 The great seminaries at Oxford and Cambridge already distin- 
 guished as schools were elevated to.the rank of universities, des- 
 tined to be formidable rivals of the older institutions at Paris and 
 Bologna. Latin being the professional language of churchmen, 
 by whom in those days nearly all learning was monopolized, we 
 find a vast number of Latin works written during the centuries 
 which immediately followed the Norman Conquest. 
 
 At this time what is called the Scholastic Philosophy, founded 
 on Aristotle's method of argument, grew to a most extravagant 
 degree of favour. Hence imaginative writing of all kinds suffered 
 a great blight. It was only in the ballads of the people that fancy 
 found utterance at all. 
 
 John of Salisbury, who, going to Paris in 1136, spent several 
 years in attending the lectures of the best masters there, wrote 
 a book called Metalogicus, exposing the absurd and childish 
 
INTRODUCTION OF THE NORMAN ROMANCE. 29 
 
 wrangling which then bore the dignified name of Logic. Such} 
 questions as the following were seriously discussed in learned 1 
 assemblies : "If a man buy a cloak, does he also buy the hood 1 ?" 
 and, " If a hog be carried to market with a rope tied round its 
 neck and held at the other end by a man, is the animal carried 
 to market by the man or by the ropef ' John of Salisbury's chief 
 work was called Polycraticon, a pleasant and learned treatise 
 upon the " Frivolities of Courtiers, and the Footsteps of Philoso- 
 phers." This accomplished monk died in 1182, being then Bishop 
 of Chartres. 
 
 The great feature in the literary history of this time was the 
 introduction into England of the Norman Komance. With 
 Chivalry, from which it was inseparable, and from whose stirring 
 life it took all its colours, the Eomance rose and fell. 
 
 From the corrupted Latin a group of dialects arose, called the 
 Roman or Romance tongues ; which, owing to slight intermixture 
 with the barbarous languages, assumed somewhat different forms 
 in Italy, France, and Spain. In France two dialects of the Ro- 
 mance language were spoken, distinguished in name by the peculiar 
 words used for our " yes " oc, (hoc), and oyl, oy, or oui (probably 
 illud). The language of oc was spoken in the south, and the 
 language of oyl in the north of France. The Langue d'Oc, other- 
 wise known as the Proven gal which was sung by the famous Trouba- 
 dours, blazed out a brief day of glory, was then trampled down with 
 all its lovely garlands of song by Montfort and his crusaders, and 
 now exists merely as the rude patois of the province that bears its 
 name. The Langue d'Oyl, growing into the modern French, has 
 influenced our literature in more ways than one. The lays, sung by the 
 trouveres of northern France in praise of knights and knighthood, 
 were the delight of the Norman soldiers who fought at Hastings; 
 and when these soldiers had settled as conquerors on the English 
 soil, what was more natural than that they should stih 1 love the 
 old Norman lays, and that a new generation of poets should learn 
 in the Normanized island to sing in Norman too 1 
 
 It is no wonder that the list of Saxon writers, during the time 
 when the nation lay stunned by the Conqueror's sword, should be 
 
30 PRINCIPAL LATIN WRITERS. 
 
 short. The Saxons were then slaves; and slaves never have any 
 literature worth speaking of. Some romances and chronicles, 
 echoes of the lays sung by their Norman masters, were all that 
 remained to show that the Saxon tongue was living. Yet living 
 it was, with a wealth of life pent up in its hidden root, which was 
 destined at no very distant day to clothe the shorn stem with tho 
 brightest honours of leafage and bloom. 
 
 LATIN WRITERS. 
 
 Let us first glance at the Latin writers of the Norman times. 
 As has been already said, Latin was the language of churchmen, 
 the most honoured class in the nation ; and therefore the amount 
 of Latin writing, both in prose and verse, was very great. Sermons 
 were often preached in Latin. 
 
 JOSEPH OF EXETER. Josephus Iscanus, or Joseph of Exeter, 
 was the leading Latin poet of this day. His chief works were two 
 epic poems one on the Trojan War, remarkable for its pure and 
 harmonious Latin; the other, now almost altogether lost, called 
 Antiocheis, a story of the third Crusade. Walter Mapes, or Map, 
 Archdeacon of Oxford, also wrote Latin verses, but of quite a 
 different stamp. A drinking-song in rhyming Lathi is a well- 
 known part of his satirical work, called . the Confession of Golias, 
 which was directed chiefly against the Church and the clergy. 
 
 The chief use of Latin at this time was in the compilation of 
 the Chronicles or historical records. We owe much to the patient 
 monks, whose pens traced weary page after page of these old books. 
 There is, indeed, nothing like fine writing in any of these chronicles; 
 and in many of them fiction mixes inextricably with true history 
 like tares in the wheat-field Yet much good sound truth has been 
 extracted from the old chronicles ; and from such legends as Arthur, 
 Lear, and Cymbeline some of the finest blossoms of our literature 
 have sprung. 
 
 INGULPHUS. A history of the Abbey of Croyland, or Crowland, 
 in Lincolnshire, extending from 664 to 1091, is said to have been 
 written by Ingulphus, who was abbot there for thirty-four years 
 (1 07 5-1 1 09). But it is doubtful whether or not this was really the 
 
THE LEADING CHRONICLERS. 31 
 
 work of Ingulphus ; and certainly it must not be taken as a trust- 
 worthy record of passing events, for it is full of false and impro- 
 bable statements. 
 
 ORDERICUS VITALIS. This monk, who was born in 1075, at the 
 village of Atcham on the Severn, and spent all his life, after his 
 eleventh year, abroad, was the writer of an ecclesiastical history, 
 extending from the Creation to the year 1141. His account of the 
 Norman Conquest is minute ; and that part of his history nar- 
 rating the events of the first four years of the Conqueror's reign 
 (1066-1070), is much prized. 
 
 WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY. The name of William of Malmes- 
 bury, born probably about the date of the Conquest, is remarkable 
 among the many chroniclers of this period. His History of the Eng- 
 lish Kings, in five books, extends from the landing of the Saxons 
 to 1120; and then three other books, called Historia Novella, are 
 added, carrying the story down to 1142. As an historian, he ex- 
 cels in what is, comparatively speaking, careful writing, and a more 
 exact balancing of facts than was common with the cowled 
 chroniclers of the day. But his pages, too, abound in stories of 
 miracles and prodigies, reflecting the "all-digestive" superstition 
 of the time, from which the wisest heads were not free. 
 
 GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH. This learned Welsh monk, who died 
 in 1154, is noted for having preserved the fine antique legends of 
 the Celtic race in his History of the Britons, which he professed to 
 have translated from an old Welsh chronicle. Here we find the 
 story of Arthur and his Knights of the Bound Table, upon which 
 many noble works of our literature have been composed. The 
 charm of such a book must necessarily be fatal to its value as a 
 history j for the writer, letting his fancy play upon the adornment 
 of these dim legends, mixes fact with fiction in a confusion that 
 cannot be disentangled. 
 
 Gerald Barry (Giraldus Cambrensis), Henry of Huntingdon, 
 Roger of Hoveden, and Benedict, Abbot of Peterborough, may 
 also be named among the crowd of chroniclers who have written 
 on the early history of England. 
 
 A favourite kind of light reading, often conned by the refectory 
 
32 NATURE OF THE NORMAN ROMANCES. 
 
 fire in the long winter nights, was an olla podrida of interesting 
 stories, gathered from every possible source and done into Latin 
 by unknown hands. These books, called Gesta, were made up 
 of monkish legends, chivalric romances, ghost-stories, parables, 
 satirical flings at the foibles of women, and such stories from 
 the classics as the Skeleton of Pallas and the Leap of Curtius. 
 The chief reason why they are worthy of our notice here is, that 
 Shakspere, Scott, and other great wizards of the fancy, drawing 
 some of these dim old stories from their dusty sleep, have touched 
 them with the wand of genius and turned the lumps of dull lead 
 into jewels of the finest gold. 
 
 NORMAN-FRENCH WRITERS. 
 
 When the chase was over, and the Norman lords caroused 
 in their English halls around the oak board, flinging scraps 
 of the feast to their weary hounds, that couched on the rush- 
 strewn floor, the lays of the French trouveres were sung by wan- 
 dering minstrels, who were always warmly welcomed and often 
 richly paid. Many poets of English birth soon took up this 
 foreign strain, and wrote lays in Norman-French. The deeds 
 of Alexander, Charlemagne, Havelok the Dane, Guy of Warwick, 
 Cceur de Lion, and other such heroes, were celebrated in these 
 romances. In the earlier stories there is more probability; but 
 by degrees, what critics call the "machinery" of the poem, that 
 is, the introduction of supernatural beings as actors in the drama, 
 becomes wild and fanciful, borrowing largely from the weird 
 superstitions of the North and the East. As we read, knights 
 and ladies, grim giants dwelling in enchanted castles, misshapen 
 dwarfs, fairies kindly and malevolent, dragons and earthdrakes, 
 magicians with their potent wands, pass before us in a highly- 
 coloured, much-distorted panorama. 
 
 The romances relating to King Arthur possess a special interest 
 for us, since our Laureate and a brother bard have founded poems 
 on these old tales. The strange and profane legend of the Saint Greal 
 is mixed up throughout with the story of Arthur and Ids Knights. 
 The Greal was said to be the dish from which our Saviour ate the 
 
CHIEF WRITERS OF ROMANCE. 33 
 
 Last Supper. It was then taken, according to the legend, by 
 Joseph of Arimathea, who used it to catch the blood flowing from 
 the wounds of the Saviour. Too sacred for human gaze, it be- 
 came invisible, and only revealed itself in visions to the pure knight 
 Sir Galahad, who, having seen it, prayed for death. The names 
 of Merlin the enchanter, the false knight Lancelot, and others, 
 familiar to the thousands who have read the " Idylls of the King," 
 constantly occur in the romances of Arthur. As has been already 
 stated, the chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth, who drew his materi- 
 als from ancient Welsh and Breton songs, is the chief authority 
 that we find for the story of Arthur. 
 
 WAGE. The best known of the Norman-French poets is Master 
 Wace, as he calls himself, who was born probably at Jersey about 
 1112. He was educated at Caen, and there he spent nearly all his 
 life. His chief poems are two Brut* d' Angleterre, and Roman 
 de Ron. The former, a translation into eight-syllabled romance 
 verse of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of Britain, contains nearly 
 eighteen hundred lines ; the latter, the Eomance of Eollo, written 
 partly in the same verse, narrates the history of the Dukes of Nor- 
 mandy from Eollo to the sixteenth year of Henry II. The central 
 picture of this poem is the minute account of the battle of Has- 
 tings. Wace, who became Canon of Bayeux on the recommendation 
 of Henry II., is thought to have died in England about 1184. 
 
 There are two among the Anglo-Norman romancers who are 
 worthy to be named besides, not so much for the excellence of 
 their verse as for their prominence in English history Cardinal 
 Stephen Langton, and Eichard Cceur de Lion. In the British 
 Museum there is a manuscript sermon of Langton's, in the middle 
 of which he breaks into a pretty French song about " la bele Aliz," 
 the fair Alice, and then turns the story of this lady and the flowers 
 she has been plucking in a garden, so as to bear upon the praises 
 of the Virgin Mary. 
 
 Eichard I. is said to have composed several military poems 
 
 * The word Brut is said to be derived either from the name of Brutus, great-grandson 
 of <Eneas, whom tradition makes the first king of Britain, or from the old word brvd (a 
 rumour or history), from which has come our &r& 
 
 05) 3 
 
34 SEMI-SAXON WRITERS. 
 
 called Serventois, in addition to a complaint addressed from his 
 dungeon to the barons of France and England, bewailing his long 
 captivity. Of this latter poem Horace Walpole printed, in his 
 " Koyal and Noble Authors," a ProvenQal form, which he took 
 from a manuscript in the library of San Lorenzo at Florence. 
 
 SEMI-SAXON WRITERS. 
 
 As was natural from the miserable state of the Saxon nation 
 immediately after the Conquest her braver spirits forced, like 
 Hereward and Kobin Hood, to take to the greenwood and the 
 marshes, while her weaker souls were cowed into tame submission 
 and slavery the works written in English of the second stage 
 were very few. The Saxon Chronicle, already noticed, runs on to 
 the year 1154, when the registers come to an abrupt stop. 
 
 Two works are named as the chief remains of the Semi-Saxon 
 literature. One, a Translation of Wace's "Brut" by Layamon, a 
 priest of Ernleye (Areleye-Regis), near the Severn in Worcester- 
 shire, is placed by Hallam between the years 1155 and 1200. 
 It rises in many passages beyond a mere translation of Wace's 
 text, and runs to more than fourteen thousand long verses. Its 
 language is said to be a western dialect of the Semi-Saxon. The 
 Ormulum, so called from its writer, Orrnin or Orm, is a metri- 
 cal paraphrase of Scripture, which has been assigned to the second 
 stage of the language. Dr. Craik, however, suggests that it pro- 
 bably belongs to the end of the thirteenth century. The language 
 of the "Ormulum" is, beyond question, in a more advanced stage 
 than that of Layamon's "Brut" 
 
MINSTREL V 
 
 35 
 
 FIRST ERA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 PROM THE BIRTH OF CHAUCER ABOUT 1328 A,D. TO THE INTRO- 
 DUCTION OP PRINTING BY CAXTON IN 1474 A.D. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE MINSTREL AND THE MONK. 
 
 Minstrel v. Monk. 
 Honour to the minstrel. 
 Other names. 
 Picture of a castle hall 
 Classes of minstrels. 
 Their dress. 
 Decay of the craft. 
 
 Modern minstrels. 
 English metrical romance. 
 Robert of Gloucester. 
 Robert Mannyng. 
 Thomas the Rhymer. 
 Craik's summary. 
 
 The monk. 
 
 The Scriptorium. 
 
 The workmen. 
 
 Picture of a copyist. 
 
 Purple and gold. 
 
 Illuminations. 
 
 THE literature of England, as indeed of all Europe, lay during the 
 earlier and central periods of the Middle Ages in the hands of the 
 Minstrels and the Monks. The minstrel, roaming through the 
 land, sang ballads of love and war; the monk sat in his dim-lit 
 cell penning tomes of unreadable theology, very useless logic, or 
 dry but valuable history, and varying these sterner labours with 
 the graceful task of copying and illuminating the manuscripts, 
 which then held the place of our printed volumes. There was no 
 love lost between the brotherhoods of the Harp and the Missal ; 
 for the minstrel wielded a weapon in his song which often hit 
 monkery sly and terrible blows, and could, moreover, open wide 
 the purses of rich nobles, whose coins were doled out with niggard 
 hand to the Church. So it happened that the cloister doors were 
 too often shut in the faces of the wearied gleemen ; and grumbling 
 Brother Ambrose, having shot the bolt, betook himself in wrath to 
 his cell to write a Latin treatise, as ponderous as himself, against 
 the abominations of minstrelsy and minstrels. 
 
36 THE MINSTREL IN THE CASTLE HALL, 
 
 In very early days the Bards and Scalds of northern Europe sang 
 their own verses to the music of the harp, much as Homer used to 
 sing by the shore of the sounding ^Egean. The minstrels of later 
 days recited sometimes their own compositions, but oftener the 
 poems of others. And by no means ignoble was the occupation 
 of these musical wanderers. When Alfred donned the minstrel's 
 dress, he took a downward step, to be sure, but by no means so 
 great a downward step as the Emperor Napoleon would take, if he 
 laid aside the imperial purple for the robes of a first tenor in the 
 Italian Opera. And when Alfred walked among the tents of 
 Guthrum's camp, a servant bore his harp behind him a thing 
 which would have at once revealed the secret of the singer, if it 
 had not been a very usual occurrence. Gleeman and Jogeler (our 
 juggler; the French, jongleur; the Latin, joculator) were other 
 names for the minstrel craft in old English days.- 
 
 Nor was there any more honoured or more welcome guest than 
 this wanderer, whose time of triumph came when the rough sub- 
 stantial supper had vanished before the hungry hunters and their 
 dogs, and the cups of mead or wine began to circle round the hall. 
 Mimicry and action accompanied the music and the song. And 
 as the wine fumes mounted to the brain, and the wild torrent of 
 melody drove their pulses into madder flow, the battle-day seemed 
 to have come again. War-cries rang through the smoky hall ; and 
 in the ruddy light, which streamed from crackling logs or flaring 
 pine-knots, flushed brows grew a darker red ; and hands, veined as 
 if with whip-cord, clutched fiercely at knife or bill-hook, and 
 wheeled the weapon in flashing circles through the air. Love, too, 
 was the minstrel's theme ; and here the power of his song struck 
 even deeper to those simple hearts than when he sang of war, 
 although the eye gleamed with another light, and the stern war- 
 shout faded into gentler tones. 
 
 The minstrels in feudal times were probably divided into vari- 
 ous classes, which were distinguished as Squire minstrels, Yeoman 
 minstrels, <kc. Those attached to noble houses wore the arms of 
 their patron, hung round the neck by a silver chain. The distinc- 
 tive badge of the profession was the wrest or tuning-key. Many 
 
THE PICTURE OF A MINSTREL. 37 
 
 minstrels earned a tabor ; but some played on a viele, supposed to 
 have been like a guitar, in the top of which one hand turned a 
 handle, while the other touched the keys of the instrument. The 
 minstrel's dress, of which an idea may be gathered from the fol- 
 lowing passage, bore some resemblance to that of the monks. 
 
 An old letter, written by a man who was present at the grand 
 entertainment given at Kenilworth in 1575 to Queen Elizabeth, 
 describes the dress of a minstrel, who took a prominent part in 
 the pageant. He was dressed in a long gown of Kendal green, 
 with sleeves hanging down to the middle of the leg; a red belt 
 girt his waist ; his tonsure, like a monk's, was shaven round ; his 
 head was bare; a red ribbon hung round his neck; his shoes 
 were cleanly blacked with soot ; all his ruffs (this fashion belonged 
 to Elizabeth's own day) stuck stiffly out with the setting-sticks, 
 which then did the work of starch; and round his neck were 
 suspended the arms of Islington. Although this depicts the 
 minstrel at a later stage than that of which we write, when the 
 profession had fallen low in public esteem, it may yet serve to 
 give us an idea of the kind of men who wandered from hall to 
 hall, embalming in song those picturesque old histories of early 
 English days, whose very roughness of flow is a new charm, 
 and whose large admixture of highly-coloured fable, if detracting 
 from their historic worth, yet endeared them all the more to the 
 hearts of the simple people, whose delight il was to sing and 
 hear them by the winter fire or beneath the summer trees. 
 
 The application of the w r ord Minstrel changed a good deal dur- 
 ing the decay of chivalry. At first used to denote those wander- 
 ing historians of whom we have spoken, "abstracts and brief 
 chronicles of the time," who sang of love or war in lordly halls, 
 playing a musical accompaniment and gesturing with imitative 
 motions, it came to apply afterwards chiefly to the musician. The 
 song was dropped, and so were the gestures. The Poet took up 
 the song ; the Juggler and Tumbler took up the bodily movements ; 
 while the Minstrel remained a player of music only. Had Alfred 
 Tennyson lived six hundred years ago, in order to win the laurel- 
 crown which he worthily wears as first minstrel in the land, he 
 
?8 FALL OF THE MINSTREL CRAFT. 
 
 would have needed, in addition to his fine poetic genius, something 
 of the pliant muscle that bears Blondin along the perilous rope, and 
 the rapid finger with which Ernst draws the music of the spheres 
 from tightened cat-gut. 
 
 An Act of 1597, by which Elizabeth included wandering min- 
 strels among rogues, vagabonds, and beggars, gave a mortal wound 
 to the minstrel craft. Cromwell, too, denounced terrible penalties 
 against fiddlers or minstrels. So low had the brotherhood of old 
 Homer fallen ! 
 
 In more enlightened days the poet and the musician have found 
 once more something like their fitting station in society ; but the 
 tumbler, representing the mere physical element of the old min- 
 strel craft, still remains among the dregs of the middle classes 
 but a step or two above the point where Elizabeth and Cromwell 
 left the poor degraded minstrels. 
 
 MINSTRELSY. The poetry of the Saxons was distinguished 
 from their prose by a peculiar kind of alliteration. Metre or 
 rhyme they had none. These attributes of English verse were 
 imported from the Continent by the Normans, who copied both 
 from the decayed Latin. Even before the age of Constantine a 
 species of rhythmical poetry, in which the metrical quantity of 
 syllables was almost wholly disregarded, and the accent alone 
 attended to in pronunciation, became common, especially in the 
 mouths of the lowfer classes of those that spoke Latin. In this 
 rhythmical verse the number of syllables was irregular. That 
 rhyme was used in Latin poetry from the end of the fourth cen- 
 tury is a distinctly proved fact. 
 
 No work, in which rhyme or metre was used, can be traced in 
 our literature until after the Norman Conquest. A few lines in 
 the Saxon Chronicle on the death of the Conqueror, and a short 
 canticle, said by Matthew Paris to have been dictated by the 
 Virgin Mary to a hermit of Durham, are perhaps the earliest speci- 
 mens of rhyme in English verse. Through Layamon's poem, 
 written in the time of Henry II., numbers of short verses are 
 scattered which rhyme together pretty exactly. There are, besides, 
 come eight-syllable lines in imitation of Wace's metre. But, on 
 
BIRTH OF OUR METRICAL ROMANCE. 39 
 
 the whole, the Brut is, like old Saxon verse, without either metre 
 or rhyme. Then comes a gap of a century, during which no 
 maker of English rhymes appeared, at least so far as we know. 
 Metrical romances in Latin and French were plentiful enough, and 
 on them all the literary talent of the time was spent ; for the one 
 tongue was the speech of courtiers, and the other that of church- 
 men. The English, thoroughly out of fashion, was left in its fall 
 to the serfs and boors of the land. 
 
 But a day came, about the opening of the thirteenth centuiy, 
 when the enslaved speech began to raise its diminished head and 
 assert its native power, and then metrical romances were written 
 in an English form. These first faltering steps of an infant lite- 
 rature were nearly all translations from the French romances, some 
 of which have been already noticed. 
 
 Tyrwhitt says: "I am inclined to believe that we have no 
 English romance .prior to the age of Chaucer, which is not a 
 translation or imitation of some earlier French romance." 
 
 The story-books, called Gesta, whose anecdotes were the delight 
 of the cloister, and often lent a charm to the teachings of the 
 pulpit, were the grand store-houses, from which the romancers drew 
 the material of their tales. 
 
 A monk, named Robert of Gloucester, whose known life is 
 summed up in the single fact that he lived in the abbey of that 
 city, wrote, after 1278, a Rhyming Chronicle in English, narrating 
 British history to the end of Henry III.'s reign. The earlier 
 part of this work, which seems to be written in west country 
 English, and is printed in lines of fourteen syllables, is a free 
 translation from Geoffrey of Monmouth. Warton condemns it as 
 "totally destitute of art or imagination." 
 
 Robert Mannyng of Brunne in Lincolnshire, writing half a 
 century later, also produced a Rhyming Chronicle, translated 
 from the French of Wace and Langtoft. The latter of these was 
 a canon regular of St. Austin, at Bridlington in Yorkshire. An- 
 other name well known in the list of minstrels is that of Thomas 
 the Rhymer, who flourished during the thirteenth century in the 
 south of Scotland. His full name is thought to have been Thomas 
 
40 HISTORY OF ENGLISH METRICAL ROMANCE. 
 
 Learmount of Ercildoun (now Earlston near Melrose). He and 
 an unknown poet, Kendal, are mentioned by Robert of Brunne as 
 the authors of " Sir Tristrem," a romance which was little known 
 until it was published by Sir Walter Scott at the outset of his 
 literary career. 
 
 Dr. Craik thus sums up the leading facts in the history of 
 English metrical romance : 
 
 1. At least the first examples of it were translations from tho 
 French. 
 
 2. If any such were produced so early as before the close of the 
 twelfth century (of which we have no evidence), they were pro- 
 bably designed for the entertainment of the mere commonalty, to 
 whom alone the French language was unknown. 
 
 3. In the thirteenth century were composed the earliest of those 
 we now possess in their original form. 
 
 4. In the fourteenth century the English took the place of 
 the French metrical romance in all classes. This was its bright- 
 est era. 
 
 5. In the fifteenth it was supplanted by another species of 
 poetry, among the more educated classes, and had also to contend 
 with another rival in the prose romance ; but, nevertheless, it still 
 continued to be produced, although in less quantity and of an 
 inferior fabric. 
 
 6. It did not altogether cease to be read and written until after 
 the commencement of the sixteenth century. 
 
 7. From that time the taste for this earliest form of our poetical 
 literature lay asleep, until, after the lapse of three hundred years, 
 it was re-awakened in this century by Scott. 
 
 THE MONK. Let us now turn from the noisy brilliant scenes, in 
 which the old minstrel was most at home, to the quiet gloom of 
 monastic life, and see what literary work went on within those 
 thick oaken doors, studded with heavy nails, whose hinges creaked 
 out but a churlish welcome to the belated harpist, or often refused 
 to creak at all. 
 
 We pass through the arched gateway rounded if the building 
 be of the earlier Norman style, pointed if of the later Gothic and 
 
THE SCRIPTORIUM. 41 
 
 across the broad quadrangle, through a smaller door into the arched 
 and pillared cloister, where draughts are not unfrequent invaders 
 through the unglazed loop-holes, and the green damp has traced 
 its grotesque velvet-work upon the cold stone walls. A few 
 sombre figures glide silently through the shadowy stillness; but 
 we linger not here. Up a narrow stair of winding stone into 
 a higher room, arched and pillared too, but lighter, and dotted 
 with long-robed monks, all intent upon real and useful work 
 doing that service to our literature for which the mediaeval mon- 
 astery deserves our warmest gratitude. We have reached the 
 Scriptorium ; and its chilly bareness certainly presents a striking 
 contrast to the snug, carpeted, and thick-curtained libraries, in 
 which modern clergymen pen their weekly sermons, or their occa- 
 sional essays and reviews. Round the naked stone walls wooden 
 chests are ranged, heaped with the precious manuscripts, to multi- 
 ply and adorn which is the task of those cowled and dark-skirted 
 men who toil in that work-room of the Abbey. And over the rude 
 desks and tables of the time heads of many hues are bending choir- 
 boys with locks of curly flax ; grave-browed men, whose ring of 
 raven hair, surrounding the shaven crown, proclaims the noon 
 of life ; and the thinly silvered scalp of weak old age all intent 
 upon their work. Now and then a novice, to whom a common 
 work, or some much-used Service-book for the choir, has been 
 intrusted, crosses to the side of that keen-eyed, wrinkled monk, 
 who has power in his very glance, and humbly begs advice as to 
 the form of a letter or the colouring of a design. And ever and 
 anon the grave tone of this same instructor checks with a few 
 calm words the buzz that sometimes rises from the boyish monks 
 whom he guides. There are things in that Scriptorium which we 
 miss in our writing-desks and on our study-tables. Besides the 
 quills and coloured inks, there are reed-pens, pots of brilliant paint, 
 phials of gold and silver size, hair pencils of various shapes and 
 kinds : for the work of the copyist-monks is rather that of the 
 artist than of the mere penman ; and although the figures, which 
 adorn the brilliant illuminations of those Missals and Psalters 
 that preserve in the nineteenth century the arts of dead ages, have 
 
42 THE COPYIST AT WORK. 
 
 much of the stiffness of all mediaeval drawing, yet, for beauty of 
 design and richness of colouring, many productions of the quiet 
 Scriptorium remain unsurpassed by modern pencils. 
 
 Let us draw near to this cowled transcriber evidently a monk 
 of note from his solitary state who sits apart on his straight- 
 backed wooden chair, and note the progress of his work. He is 
 copying the Gospels upon vellum, and has just' put the finishing 
 touches to a painting, glowing with scarlet and gold and blue 
 lace-work, fantastically formed of intermingled flowers and birds, 
 which has occupied the hot noontide hours of a full week. The 
 brilliant tracery forms the initial letter of a chapter. This done, 
 he takes the pen, and rapidly, with practised hand, traces in black 
 ink the thick perpendicular strokes of that old English text-hand, 
 which has given their name to our black-letter manuscripts. 
 While the right hand guides the pen, the left holds a knife, whose 
 point, pressed upon the quickly blackening vellum, is ever ready 
 to shape a clumsy line or erase a wrong word. There are no 
 capitals except the brilliant and fanciful initials; nor any points 
 except a slight dash, occasionally used to divide the sentences. 
 When the book is finished, which may be the work of years if the 
 decorations are minute and profuse, the title will probably be 
 painted in red ink (hence the word Rubric) ; and the name of the 
 copyist, with date and place of completion, will also shine in bril- 
 liant scarlet or other coloured ink at the foot of the last page. 
 The headings of the various chapters are also written for the most 
 part in red ink. 
 
 . Perhaps the richest specimens of the ancient manuscript are 
 those copies of the Gospels on purple vellum, written in silver 
 letters with the sacred names in gold, which were favourite pro- 
 ductions of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. These, how- 
 ever, were not originally of English growth, but were the offspring 
 of Greek luxury. 
 
 It was upon the initial letters and the marginal ornaments, with 
 which the pages of these mediaeval manuscripts were adorned, that 
 the taste and labour of the illuminators were chiefly bestowed. 
 Angelic and human figures, birds, beasts, and fishes, flowers, sheila, 
 
SPLENDOUES OF ILLUMINATION. 43 
 
 and leaves, were all pressed into the service of the patient monks. 
 Hare and exquisite patterns grew under their unwearying pencils 
 in the still Scriptorium, until each page of the Missal or Service- 
 book presented an embroidery of gorgeous colouring, resembling 
 nothing so much as the many-hued splendours of a great cathedral 
 window, through which the rays of the setting sun stream in a 
 flood of rainbow glory. 
 
 It would be vain to attempt a description of these beautiful 
 works. Many pages of this book might be filled with a mere 
 enumeration of the various figures and colours combined in one 
 of the splendid designs. How hard and how long the monks must 
 have worked at their copying-desks can only be judged by those 
 who have turned over the leaves of an illuminated Missal, executed 
 in the Scriptorium of some old abbey. 
 
44 MANDEVILLE'S TRAVELS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SIR JOHN DE MANDEVILLE. 
 
 Born about 1300 A.D Died 1372 A.D. 
 
 First English prose. 
 Mandeville's birth. 
 His travels. 
 Hia return. 
 
 His book written. 
 His wild stories. 
 Value of his book. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 THE earliest writer of English prose, whose work survives, was 
 Sir John de Mandeville. 
 
 He was born at St. Albans in Hertfordshire about the year 
 1300. Educated for the medical profession, he had scarcely 
 finished his studies when, impelled by the irresistible desire of 
 change, or, perhaps, by some deeper motive of which we know 
 nothing, he set out at the age of twenty- two to travel in distant 
 lands. He joined a Mahometan army in Palestine. He saw 
 some service under the Sultan of Egypt. He penetrated even as 
 far as Cathay (China), where, we are told, he lived for three years 
 at Pekin. Turkey, Persia, Armenia, India, Ethiopia, Libya, and 
 many other places, were also visited by him. His knowledge of 
 medicine often stood his friend, no doubt, among the rude tribes 
 with whom he met. For thirty-four years Mandeville roved over 
 the wildest regions of the Old World, looked upon as lost and 
 dead by all his friends at home. And when he came back a 
 worn greybeard, he found, instead of the many fresh cheeks and 
 bright eyes of the friends from whom he had parted so long ago, 
 only the grave welcome of a few thin and withered men. 
 1356 In or about the year 1356, immediately after his return, 
 A.D. he wrote in Latin a Narrative of his Travels. This work 
 was afterwards translated by himself into French, and 
 thence into English. 
 
 Mandeville's great fault as a writer was, that he loaded his 
 pages with the wildest and most absurd stories, picked up by the 
 way, and admitted upon the shallowest testimony often, indeed, 
 upon none at alL The most extravagant offshoots of the chival- 
 
EXTRAVAGANT STORIES OF OLD TRAVEL. 45 
 
 rous Romance find a parallel in many passages of the oldest work 
 of English prose, in which monsters, giants, and demons are 
 found to swarm. Such stories as of men with tails, and of a bird 
 native to Madagascar that could carry an elephant in its talons, 
 are given with the greatest seriousness. Much, however, as we 
 may laugh at the extravagant tone of the work, it possesses for us 
 a deep interest, both as a remarkable monument of our noble old 
 speech in its infancy, and as a specimen of the style of thought 
 common in an unripe age. 
 
 Mandeville, roving again from England, died and was buried at 
 Liege in 1372. 
 
 The following extract is from the seventh chapter of his Travels, 
 entitled, " Of the Pilgrimages in Jerusalem, and of the Holy 
 Places thereaboute :" 
 
 And zee schull undirstonde that whan men comen to Jerusalem her first 
 pilgrymage is to the chirche of the Holy Sepulcr wher oure Lord was buryed, 
 that is withoute the cytee on the north syde. But it is now enclosed in with the 
 ton wall. And there is a full fair chirche all rownd, and open above, and covered 
 with leed. And on the west syde is a fair tour and an high for belles strongly 
 made. And in the myddes of the chirche is a tabernacle as it wer a lytyll hows, 
 made with a low lityll dore ; and that tabernacle is made in maner of a ialf a 
 compas right curiousely and richely made of gold and azure and othere riche 
 coloures, full nobelyche made. And in the ryght side of that tabernacle is the 
 sepulcre of oure Lord. And the tabernacle is viij fote long and v fote wide, and 
 xj fote in heghte. And it is not longe sithe the sepulcre was all open, that 
 men myghte kisse it and touche it. But for pilgrymes that comen thider peyned 
 hem to breke the ston in peces, or in poudr ; therefore the Soudan [Sultan] 
 hath do make a wall aboute the sepulcr that no man may towche it. But in the 
 left syde of the wall of the tabernacle is well the heigh te of a man, is a gret ston, 
 to the quantytee of a mannes hed, that was of the holy sepulcr, and that ston 
 kissen the pilgrymes that comen thider. In that tabernacle ben no wyndowes, 
 but it is all made light with lampes that hangen befor the sepulcr. And there 
 is a lampe that hongeth befor the sepulcr that brenneth light, and on the Grode 
 ffryday it goth out be him self, at that hour that our Lord roos fro deth to lyve. 
 Also within the chirche at the right syde besyde the queer of the churche is 
 the Mount of Calvarye, wher our Lord was don on the cros. And it is a roche of 
 white coloure and a lytill medled with red. And the cros was set in a morteya 
 in the same roche, and on that roche dropped the wouudes of our Lord, whan lie 
 was pyned on the cros, and that is cleped [called] Golgatha. And men gon up 
 to that Golgatha be degrees [steps], And in the place of that morteys waa 
 Adames hed found after Noes flode, in tokene that the synnes of Adam scholde 
 oen bought in that same place- And upon that roche made Abraham sacrifise to 
 our Lord. 
 
46 THE STUDENTS OF OLD OXFORD. 
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 
 JOHN DE WYCLIFFE, 
 
 Born about 1324 A.D Died 1384 A.D. 
 
 Wycliffe's birth. 
 Enters Oxford. 
 His rapid rise. 
 The Mendicant Friars. 
 Begins to lecture. 
 Envoy at Bruges. 
 
 Wycliffe at St Paul's. 
 Synod of Lambeth. 
 His sickness. 
 The Poor Priests. 
 Life at Lutterworth. 
 
 His death. 
 His bones burned. 
 The English Bible. 
 Character of his prose. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 ON a rocky point, overhanging the Tees in Yorkshire, a manor- 
 house stood, in which once lived the Wycliffes of Wycliffe.* 
 There, probably in 1324, a boy was born, who has gilded tho 
 family name with undying lustre. Among the rich woodlands of 
 that fertile valley he grew up, taught, we know not certainly 
 where or by whom, until he reached his sixteenth year. Then a 
 new world opened upon the country squire's son. 
 
 Travelling to Oxford on horseback, and spending, no doubt, 
 many weeks upon the rough and perilous journey, young 
 1340 Wycliffe was entered as a Commoner upon the books of 
 A.D. Queen's College, a newly founded school. From Queen's 
 he soon removed to Merton. The students of Oxford in 
 that day were, as we learn from Chaucer's pictured page, as 
 strongly marked out into reading men and fast men as they are in 
 our own century. Among the motley company that rode out of the 
 Tabard gateway down the Canterbury road, there was " a clerk of 
 Oxenforde," lean and logical, who would rather have had twenty red 
 or black-bound books at his bed's head than wear the richest robes 
 or revel in the sweetest joys of music; and in violent contrast to 
 this good threadbare bookworm, the Miller in his tale gives a full- 
 length portrait of the dissolute "parish clerk Absolon," who, clad in 
 
 * The name Wycliffe means the "cliff by the water." The family took their surname 
 from their manor. 
 
THE DOCTOR OP DIVINITY. 47 
 
 hosen red and light-blue kirtle, with a snowy surplice flowing 
 around his dainty limbs, and the windows of St. Paul's carved upon 
 his shoes, minced through the service of the parish church. 
 Many such did John Wycliffe meet in the streets and schools of 
 Oxford ; but his place must have been, not among the fast men in 
 the brew-houses, ringing with the sounds of fiddle and dance, 
 but among the red-bound books in his quiet rooms, else how 
 could he have won a Fellowship in Merton, which was then con- 
 sidered the most learned college in Oxford? 
 
 His rise was rapid. In 1361 he was presented to the college 
 living of Fylingham ; and towards the close of the same year he 
 was elected Master of Balliol College. Four years later, the 
 Primate appointed him to the Wardenship of Canterbury Hall, in 
 the room of the deposed Wodehall. 
 
 Mendicant friars at that time swarmed all over England, who, 
 by the sale of relics and pardons " all hot from Rome," fleeced the 
 poor country folk of their hard-earned groats. Such a one was 
 the Pardoner of the " Canterbury Tales," who sold clouts and pigs' 
 bones as holy relics, for money/wool, cheese, and wheat, swindling 
 even the poorest widow out of her mite; and all the while, amid the 
 farrago of old stories, with which he pleased his gaping audience, 
 taking up the hypocritical cry, " Radix malorum est cupiditas." 
 Such canting and cheating kindled rage in the honest heart of 
 Wyclifle, who directed his sturdy eloquence against them. In 
 his treatise called Objections to Friars, he maintained that the 
 Gospel in its freedom, without error of man, is the sole rule of 
 religion. And thus he struck the key-note in the noble music of 
 his life. 
 
 In 1372 Wycliffe took the degree of D.D. at Oxford, and thus 
 became qualified to lecture as a Professor of Divinity. Armed 
 with this new power, the plain-speaking, true-hearted Englishman 
 gathered a band of pupils in a wooden hall, roughly plastered and 
 roofed with thatch, like all Oxford at that date, and there lifted 
 up his voice boldly against the corrupted doctrines and the 
 swollen avarice of the Church. 
 
 His fame led the rulers of England to send him, in 1374, as 
 
48 WYCLTFFE AT OLD ST. PAULAS. 
 
 envoy to Bruges, to protest against certain encroachments of the 
 papal power. A momentous journey it was to Wycliffe, for at 
 Bruges he seems to have become acquainted with John of Ghent, 
 Duke of Lancaster, who shielded the daring reformer in many a 
 perilous hour. 
 
 Already there was thunder in the air, gathering and blackening 
 round Wycliffe's path. A charge of heresy was laid 
 1377 against him, and he was summoned before the Houses of 
 A.D. Convocation. On the 19th of February, 1377, a vener- 
 able man, his face "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 
 thought," stood within old St. Paul's, a grey beard sweeping 
 his breast, a dark belted robe flowing to his feet, and a tall 
 white staff held firmly in his thin hand. But he did not stand 
 alone. The eldest living son of the King, and the Earl Marshal of 
 England stood by his side; for Lancaster and Percy loved and 
 honoured the brave Oxford Doctor. The storm passed harmless 
 by. A dispute which rose between Lancaster and Bishop Court- 
 ney as to whether the accused should sit or stand, Courtney in- 
 sisting on the latter, excited so fierce a tumult that the meeting 
 was dissolved. During all the evening shouting mobs ran riot 
 through the streets of London. 
 
 Then King Edward died, and his grandson Richard reigned. 
 So marked a man had Wycliffe become in this Reformation 
 struggle, that the first Parliament of Richard II. submitted to him 
 a question, " Was it lawful to keep back the treasure of the king- 
 dom for its own defence, instead of sending it away to the Pope ? " 
 Who can need to be told the reply 1 
 
 This could not go on without drawing forth thunder from the 
 banks of Tiber. Five bulls, couched in the fiercest words, were 
 launched against that " master in error," John Wycliffe, who was 
 forthwith to be committed to jail. Summoned before a synod at 
 Lambeth in April 1378, he replied to all charges manfully, and to 
 honest minds most convincingly. And yet, in spite of this 
 increased boldness, he was not seized and martyred; because 
 nearly all English laymen were on his side some from political 
 motives, others on religious grounds. The pope and his creatures, 
 
THE SHUTTING OF HIS DIVINITY CLASS. 49 
 
 though their hearts burned to smite him down, dared not do so, 
 for they feared the people. 
 
 It was then that a wasting sickness seized him at Oxford. Hia 
 health, worn out with study, gave way under the mental wear of 
 these troubled years. He lay, as it seemed, on the point of death, 
 when eight men four doctors to represent the mendicant friars, 
 and four aldermen of the town entered his chamber. They came 
 to talk the old man into an undoing of his life's work into a 
 penitent recantation of what they called his errors. He listened 
 until they had done, then " holding them with his glittering eye," 
 he signed to his servant to raise him in the bed, and in strong, 
 defiant tone he cried, " I shall not die, but live; and again declare 
 the evil deeds of the friars ! " What could they do but grow pale 
 and go 1 As he lay panting on the pillow, new life shot through 
 his tingling nerves ; and in no long time he rose again from that 
 bed to do glorious battle in the cause of truth. 
 
 His attack upon transubstantiation drew upon him the wrath 
 of his University. One day in 1381 the Chancellor entered his 
 class-room, and in the hearing of his scholars condemned his 
 teaching as heretical. This finally led to the shutting of his class. 
 But it was not in the power of Chancellors or Primates to stop the 
 spread of light in the land. Though proceedings were taken 
 against the disciples of Wycliffe and all the more bitterly when 
 that fiery adherent of the pope, Courtney, became Archbishop of 
 Canterbury yet their number constantly increased. Not one 
 voice, but many were now heard in the land. " Poor priests," as 
 they were called, trudged barefoot even into the remotest hamlets, 
 preaching, in defiance of the clergy, wherever they could gather a 
 crowd to hear them, in church, church-yard, market-place, or fair. 
 So the good seed was sown broad-cast over England ; and, though 
 often trampled fiercely down by the infuriated priesthood of a 
 later day, especially in London and the great towns, in many a 
 green far-off country nook it sprang and ripened and safely bore 
 its golden fruit. 
 
 Nearly five years before he was silenced at Oxford, Wycliffe 
 had become Rector of Lutterworth, a Leicestershire parish, watered 
 (is) 4 
 
60 THE PABSON OF LUTTEEWOETH. 
 
 by the little river Swift. Until 1381 his time was about equally 
 divided between his cottagers in Leicestershire and his students 
 at Oxford. But after that date he devoted himself with earnest 
 heart to the work of a country parson; and never does the great 
 Dr. WyclifFe, first scholar of his day and keenest logician of the 
 Oxford halls, seem so truly great as when we trace his footsteps 
 among the hovels of Lutterworth. A sorry place it would have 
 seemed to a townsman of smart modern Lutterworth, glowing 
 with red brick and gaslight. Two or three rows of thatched 
 cabins, built chiefly of lath and plaster, straggled along the sloping 
 banks of the Swift. From the uneven street one stepped in upon 
 a foul earthen floor. The rafters above hung thick with black 
 soot, for there were no chimneys, and the smoke found its way 
 out of door or window as it best could. There, in the meanest 
 hut, might the good rector be often seen, cheering with kind 
 words the sick peasant, who had then no better bed than a heap 
 of straw, and no softer pillow than a log of wood. The morning 
 he spent among his books, revising a Latin treatise, or adding 
 some sentences to the English Bible that was fast growing beneath 
 his patient pen. In the afternoon he girt his long dark robe about 
 him, took his white staff, and went out among his flock And on 
 Sundays, clad in a gorgeous vestment, adorned with golden 
 cherubs, of which some tarnished fragments are still shown, he 
 preached the truth in homely, nervous English words, from that 
 pulpit of carved oak which stands in Lutterworth Church a 
 sacred memorial of one who has worthily been called " The morning 
 star of our English Reformation." 
 
 So passed the last years of this great life. In his sixtieth 
 
 year, while he was engaged in sacred service within the chancel 
 
 of Lutterworth Church, paralysis, which had already 
 
 Dec. 31, shaken his frame severely, struck him down to die. A 
 
 1384 day or two later, in the last hours of the dying year, his 
 
 A.D. great intrepid spirit passed away from the clouds and 
 
 toils of earth. 
 
 More than forty years had swept by, when the pent-up vengeance 
 of his enemies, from which the living man had been mercifully 
 
THE WORKS OP JOHN WYCLJFFE. 51 
 
 shielded, burst in impotent fury upon his mouldered corpse. The 
 coffin was torn up, and carried to the little bridge over the Swift, 
 where his bones were burned to ashes and scattered on the waters 
 of the brook. " Thus," says worthy Thomas Fuller, " the brook 
 conveyed his ashes to Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the 
 narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of 
 Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed 
 all the world over." 
 
 As a writer, Wycliffe's great merit lies in his having given to 
 England the first English version of the whole Bible. There were 
 already existing a few English fragments, such as many of the 
 Psalms, certain portions of Mark and Luke, and some of the 
 Epistles. But to the mass of the people the Bible was a sealed 
 book, locked up in a dead and foreign tongue. Wycliffe soon saw 
 the incalculable value of an English Bible in the work of the 
 English Reformation, and set himself to the noble task of giving 
 a boon so precious to his native land. No doubt he sought the 
 aid of other pens, but to what extent we cannot now determine. 
 The greater part of the work perhaps the whole was done 
 during those quiet years at Lutterworth, between 1381 and his 
 death. It is nearly certain that he saw the work finished before 
 he died. A complete edition of Wycliffe's Bible, in five volumes, 
 was issued in 1850 from the Oxford Press. 
 
 His Latin works are very numerous. One of the principal was 
 called Trialogus, which embodies his opinions in a series of con- 
 versations carried on by Truth, Wisdom, and Falsehood. It 
 contains, no doubt, the essence of his class lectures. 
 
 From his country parsonage t by the Swift he poured forth an 
 incredible number of English tracts and treatises, addressed to 
 the people, and thoroughly leavened with his earnest love of truth. 
 The characteristic feature of his English is a manly ruggedness. 
 Content to know that his meaning is strongly and clearly put, he 
 often disdains all elegance of style, and sometimes lapses into 
 lame and slovenly language. We may compare him, as an opponent 
 of error, not to a gallant master of fence, glistening in well-cut 
 taffeta, who with keen glittering rapier lunges home to the heart, 
 
52 SPECIMEN OF WYCLIFFE'S PEOSE. 
 
 while lie never loses the elegance of posture and movement, the 
 poise of body and of blade, which his graceful art has taught 
 him; but rather to the sturdy leather-clad rustic, who wields 
 his oaken quarter-staff with such sweeping vigour, that in a 
 twinkling he beats down his opponent's guard, and with a rattling 
 shower of heavy blows lays the luckless fellow bleeding and sense- 
 less on the earth. 
 
 SPECIMEN OF WYCLIFFE'S PROSE. 
 PABT OF LUKE XXIV. 
 
 But in o day of the woke ful eerli thei camen to the graue, and broughten 
 Bwete smelling spices that thei hadden arayed. And thei founden the stoon 
 turnyd awey fro the graue. And thei geden in and foundun not the bodi of the 
 Lord Jhesus. And it was don, the while thei weren astonyed in thought of this 
 thing, lo twey men stodun bisidis hem in schynyng cloth. And whanne thei 
 dredden and bowiden her semblaunt into erthe, thei seiden to hem, what seeken 
 ye him that lyueth with deede men? He is not here ; but he is risun : haue ye 
 minde how he spak to you whanne he was yit in Golilee, and seide, for it 
 behoueth mannes sone to be bitakun into the hondis of synful men : and to be 
 crucifyed : and the thridde day to rise agen 1 And thei bithoughten on hise 
 wordis, and thei geden agen fro the graue : and teelden alle these thingis to the 
 ellevene and to alle othere. And there was Marye Maudeleyn and Jone and Marye 
 of James, and othere wymmen that weren with hem, that seiden to Apostlia 
 these thingia. 
 
EARLY LIFE OF CIIAUCEE. 
 
 
 or TTIE 
 
 
 NIVEESITY 
 
 CHAPTER IV\Ajjr 
 
 GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 
 
 Born about 1328 A.D Died 1400 A.D. 
 
 Chaucer's early life. 
 Royal patronage. 
 Visits Genoa. 
 Comptroller of Customs. 
 Sunshine. 
 
 Under Richard II. 
 
 Flight of the poet. 
 
 Abroad. 
 
 In the Tower. 
 
 Evening of life. 
 
 Character. 
 
 The " Canterbury Tales." 
 Manner of reading Chaucer. 
 Minor works. 
 Illustrative extracts. 
 
 CHAUCER is a star of the first magnitude. First great writer 
 of English verse, he proudly wears the honoured title, "Father of 
 English Poetry;" nor can the most brilliant of his successors 
 feel ashamed of such a lineage. 
 
 The accounts of his early life are very uncertain. He calls him- 
 self a Londoner ; and an inscription on his tomb, which signified 
 that in 1400 he died at the age of seventy-two, seems to fix his 
 birth in the year 1328. The words "Philogenet, of Cambridge, 
 Clerk," which occur in one of his earliest works in reference to 
 himself, have caused it to be inferred that he was educated at 
 Cambridge. But Warton and others claim him as an Oxford man 
 too; and, if he studied there, it is more than probable that he 
 sat at the feet of Wycliffe, and imbibed the doctrines of the great 
 reformer. An entry in some old register of the Inns of Court 
 is said to state, that " Geffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for 
 beating a Francis cane friar in Fleet Street ; " which ebullition of 
 young blood is the only recorded event of his supposed law-studies 
 in the Inner Temple. 
 
 The favour of John of Ghent, won we know not how, intro- 
 duced him to Court and the favour of King Edward III. The 
 handsome and accomplished poet, with his red lips and graceful 
 shape, was the very man to win his way in a courtly circle. He 
 went with the army to France, where in 1359 he was made 
 
54 SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. 
 
 prisoner at the siege of Betters. On his release and return home, 
 whenever that happened, we find his prospects grow brighter and 
 brighter. One grant following another, showed how dear the 
 man of letters, who could also wield a sword, was to the brave old 
 king. When in his thirty-ninth year (1367), the poet received a 
 pension of 20 marks ; which, as each silver mark weighed eight 
 ounces and was worth 10 of our money, was equivalent to 200 
 a year. Five years later, he was sent with two others to Genoa, 
 
 on an important commercial mission ; during which trip 
 
 1372 he is thought to have travelled in northern Italy, to 
 
 A.D. have visited Petrarch at Padua, and to have heard from 
 
 the very lips of that " old man eloquent," the story of 
 " Patient Grisilde," which he afterwards embodied in the Clerkes Talc. 
 Then came other royal grants, a pitcher of wine daily for life 
 the office of Comptroller of Customs of wool, wine, etc., in the 
 Port of London the wardship of a rich heir, for three years' 
 guardianship of whom he got 104. During this sunshine of 
 kingly favour he married a maid of honour, whose sister afterwards 
 became the wife of his patron, John of Ghent. By this union a 
 pension of 100 shillings, lately conferred on his wife, was added 
 to his income. Two more diplomatic missions, to Flanders and to 
 France, proved the confidence reposed in him by his royal master. 
 Thus rich, honoured, useful, and, we may conjecture, happy, Geof- 
 frey Chaucer saw in 1377 the grey head of the third Edward go 
 down with sorrow to the grave. 
 
 At first, under the new reign, all was bright, and continued so 
 for some seven years. In the first year of Richard II. his daily 
 gallon of wine was exchanged for a pension of 20 marks, and 
 other gifts were bestowed on the prosperous comptroller. But 
 soon his sun was darkly clouded. It was not likely that he could 
 avoid taking an active part in the difficulties that arose between 
 Bichard and Lancaster ; and, as his feelings were strongly enlisted 
 on the side of the duke, he fell into disfavour with the king. 
 Embroiled especially in a London riot, raised by John of North- 
 ampton, who was a friend of Lancaster, the poet was forced to 
 flee to the Continent, There, in Hainault, in France, and in Zee- 
 
OLD AGE AND DEATH. 55 
 
 land, lie lived with his wife and children for eighteen months, 
 becoming at last almost penniless through generosity to his 
 fellow-exiles, and the failure of supplies from home, where his 
 agents had treacherously appropriated his rents. Returning, he 
 was flung into the Tower, and lay there until he was forced 
 to sell hie two pensions to save his family from starva- 
 tion; nor was he freed until, indignant at the base ingratitude of 
 those in whose cause he was suffering, and pressed both by the 
 threats and the entreaties of the Court, he confessed his guilt and 
 denounced his accomplices. Then, Lancaster being once more in 
 the ascendant, royal favour smiled on the poet. He was made 
 Clerk of Works at Westminster and other places, receiving, in lieu 
 of the pensions he had been forced to sell, a pension of 20 and 
 an annual pipe of wine. 
 
 Wearied with public life, he retired about 1391 to his house 
 at Woodstock, where he sat down in sober age and country quiet 
 to write his great work The Canterbury Tales. His remaining 
 days were spent at Woodstock and Donnington Castle, both gifts 
 from the princely Lancaster ; and within these sheltering walls he 
 rested and wrote. The accession of Henry IV. brought good for- 
 tune to the poet, whose pension was doubled; but he did not 
 live long to enjoy this greater wealth. Within a house which 
 is said to have stood in a garden near the site of Henry the 
 Seventh's Chapel at Westminster, he died on the 25th of October, 
 1400. His body was buried close by in the Abbey, where the 
 dust of England's noblest dead is laid. 
 
 Chaucer's chequered life was such as to wear off all the little 
 roughnesses and conceits of his earlier character, and bring the fine 
 grain of the manly nature below into full view. He saw both 
 the lights and the shadows of human existence, at one time the 
 admired of a brilliant Court, at another a prisoner and an exile. 
 But through every change he seems to have borne a heart unsoured 
 by care ; and even in old age, when his locks hung in silver threads 
 beneath his buttoned bonnet, a joyous spirit shone in his wrinkled 
 face. A small, fair, round-trimmed beard fringed those lips, 
 whose red fulness was remarked as a special beauty in the hand- 
 
56 
 
 some face of the young poet. His common dress consisted of red 
 hose, horned shoes, and a loose frock of camlet, reaching to the 
 knee, with wide sleeves fastened at the wrist. 
 
 Chaucer's fame as a writer rests chiefly upon his Canterbury 
 Tales. The idea of the poems is, perhaps, borrowed from the 
 "Decameron" of Boccaccio, in which a hundred tales are supposed to 
 be told after dinner by the persons spending ten days in a country 
 house near Florence during a time of plague. Chaucer's plan is 
 this : A company of some twenty-nine or thirty pilgrims collect 
 at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, bound for the shrine of St. 
 Thomas a-Becket at Canterbury. The motley gathering contains 
 specimens of nearly every character then common in the streets 
 and homes of England. After the Prologue has described the 
 company and their start, a brave Knight, bronzed by the Syrian 
 sun, tells the first tale. Then follows the Miller, " dronken of 
 ale;" and so the tale goes round, often merrily, but sometimes of 
 a sadder tone, beguiling the miles of the weary road. As Chaucer 
 (sketches the plan of the work in his Prologue, each pilgrim ought 
 to tell two stories when going to Canterbury, and two more on 
 the homeward way ; and the whole proceedings were to be wound 
 up with a supper at the Tabard, where the teller of the best tales 
 was to be entertained by the rest of the band. The poet did not 
 live to complete his design. Twenty- four tales only are given ; 
 the arrival at Canterbury, the scenes at the shrine, the tales of 
 the return, the wind-up supper, are all untold. Two of the stories 
 'the Tale of Melibeus and the Persones Tale are in prose, and 
 afford a very favourable specimen of Chaucer's power in that kind 
 of writing. Nothing could surpass the " Canterbury Tales," as a 
 series of pictures of the middle-class English life during the four- 
 teenth century. Every character is a perfect study, drawn from 
 the life with a free yet careful hand, in effect broad, and brilliant 
 in colour, but painted with a minuteness of touch and a careful 
 finish that remind us strongly of the elaborate pencilling of our 
 Pre-Raphaelite artists, whose every ivy-leaf and straw is a perfect 
 picture. 
 
 This great work was written during the quiet sunset of 
 
CHAUCER'S MINOR WORKS. 57 
 
 the poet's life, when, after his sixtieth year, he rested from 
 the toils and troubles of a public career. It is composed in 
 pentameter couplets, a form of verse thoroughly suited to *the 
 spirit of our English tongue, and used by almost all the great 
 masters of our literature. The abundance of French words in the 
 language of Chaucer is easily accounted for by the fact that 
 French was not in the poet's day quite superseded as the speech 
 of the upper classes in England. Many of Chaucer's words 
 require a French accentuation; such as aventure, licfiur, cordge. 
 There has been much discussion about the true way of reading 
 Chaucer; some maintaining that the rhythm is to be preserved by 
 certain pauses, while others, following Tyrwhitt, sound as a separate 
 syllable the e, which is now silent at the end of so many words 
 Most prefer the latter method, which has the advantage of giving 
 to the language an antique air, suitable to the cast of the plot 
 and the period of the poem. The ed at the end of certain verbs, 
 and the es terminating nouns in the plural number or the posses- 
 sive case, are always to be made separate syllables. 
 
 Most of Chaucer's minor and earlier works are either in part or 
 altogether translated from French, Italian, and Latin. The Court 
 of Love, and a heavy tragic poem in five books, called Troilus and 
 Creseide, are thought to have been the work of his college days. 
 The Romaunt of the Rose is an allegory, in which the troubled 
 course of true love is painted in rich descriptive verse. The 
 House of Fame depicts a dream, in which the poet is borne by 
 a huge eagle to a temple of beryl, built on a rock of ice, where he 
 sees the Goddess of Fame dispensing her favours from a carbuncle 
 throne. The Legende of Goode Women narrates some passages 
 in the lives of Cleopatra, Dido, Ariadne, and other dames of old 
 classic renown. But most beautiful of all these is the allegory 
 called The Flour and the Lefe, of which the plot is thus given : 
 " A gentlewoman out of an arbour, in a grove, seeth a great com- 
 panie of knights and ladies in a daunce upon the greene grasse; 
 the which being ended, they all kneele down, and do honour to 
 the daisie, some to the flower, and some to the leafe. The mean- 
 ing hereof is this : They which honour the flower, a thing fading 
 
58 " THE KNIGHT AND THE SQUIBS." 
 
 with every blast, are such as looke after beautie and worldly 
 pleasure. But they that honour the leafe, which abideth with 
 the*root, notwithstanding the frosts and winter storms, are they 
 which follow vertue and during qualities without regard of worldly 
 respects." While a prisoner in the Tower, Chaucer wrote, in imita- 
 tion of Boethius, his longest prose work, called TJie Testament 
 of Love. 
 
 In closing our sketch of Geoffrey Chaucer, the recorded opinions 
 of a great poet and a great critic are well worthy of remembrance. 
 While Spenser says, 
 
 That renowned Poet 
 Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled, 
 On Fame's eternajl beadroll worthy to be fyled, 
 
 no less a literary judge than Hallam classes him with Dante and 
 Petrarch in the great poetic triumvirate of the Middle Ages. 
 The following are specimens of Chaucer's verse : 
 
 "THE KNIGHT AND THE SQUIER." 
 FROM THE PROLOGUE OF TH3 "CANTERBURY TALES." 
 
 A KNIGHT ther was, and that a worthy man, 
 That fro the time that he firste began 
 To riden out, he loved chevalrie, 
 Trouthe and honour, fredom and curtesie. 
 
 Ful worthy was he in his lordes wcrre, [war 
 
 And therto hadde he ridden, no Taanferrc, [further 
 
 As wel in Cristendom as in Hethenesse, 
 And ever honoured for his worthinesse. 
 
 This ilke worthy kuight hadde ben also [same 
 
 Somtime with the lord of Palatie, 
 Agen another hethen in Turkic: 
 
 And evermore he hadde a sovereine pris. [praiae 
 
 And though that he was worthy he was wise, 
 And (>f his port as meke as is a mayde. 
 He never yet no vilanie ne sayde 
 
 In alle his lif, unto no manere wight. [kind of person 
 
 He was a veray parfit gentil knight. 
 But for to tellen you of his araie, 
 His hors was good, but he ne was not gaie. 
 
" THE FLOUR AND THE LEFE.' 
 
 59 
 
 Of fustian lie wered a gipon, [a, short cassock 
 
 Alle besmotred with his habergeon. [smutted 
 
 For he was late ycome from his viage, {voyage 
 
 And wente for to don his pilgrimage. 
 
 With him ther was his sane a yonge SQUIER, 
 A lover, and a lusty bacheler, 
 
 With lockes crull as they were laide in presse. [curled 
 
 Of twenty yere of age he was I gesse. 
 Of his stature he was of even lengthe, 
 
 And wonderly deliver, and grete of strengthe. [nimble 
 
 And he hadde be somtime in chevachie, [an expedition 
 
 In Flaundres, in Artois, ami in Picardie, 
 And borne him wel, as of so litel space, 
 In hope to stonden in his ladies grace. 
 
 Embrouded was he, as it were a mede [embroidered 
 
 Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede. 
 
 Singing he was, or floyting alle the day, [playing on the flute 
 
 He was as fresshe as is the moneth of May. 
 Short was his goune, with sieves long and wide. 
 Wel coude he sitte on hors, and fayre ride. 
 
 He coude songes make, and wel endite, {relate 
 
 Juste and eke dance, and wel pourtraie and write. 
 So hote he loved, that by nightertale [the night-time 
 
 He slep no more than doth the nightingale. 
 Curteis he was, lowly, and servisable, 
 And carf before his fader at the table. carved. 
 
 STANZAS FROM "THE FLOUR AND THE LEFE" 
 
 And at the last I cast mine eye aside, 
 And was ware of a lusty company 
 That came roming out of the field wide, 
 Hond in hond a knight and a lady; 
 The ladies all in surcotes, that richely 
 Purfiled were with many a rich stone, 
 And every knight of green ware mantles on. 
 
 Embrouded well so as the surcotes were, 
 And everich had a chapelet on her hed, 
 Which did right well upon the shining here, 
 Made of goodly floures white and red, 
 The knightes eke, that they in honde led, 
 In sute of hem ware chapelets everichone, 
 And before hem went minstrels many one. 
 
 [kirtlct 
 [worked on the edge 
 
 [hair 
 [imitation them 
 
60 
 
 As harpes, pipes, lutes, and sautry [psaltcrg 
 
 Alle iu greene; and on their heades bare 
 
 Of divers floures made full craftely, 
 
 All in a sute goodly chapelets they ware ; 
 
 And so dauncing into the niede they/arc, [go 
 
 In mid the which they found a tuft that was 
 
 All oversprad with floures in compas. 
 
 Whereto they enclined everichone 
 
 With great reverence, and that full humbly : 
 
 And, at the last, there began, anone, 
 
 A lady for to sing right womanly, 
 
 A bargaret in praising the daisie ; [song 
 
 For as me thought among her notes swete, 
 
 She said "Si douce est la Margarctt" 
 
LIFE OF GOWER. 61 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 JOHN GOWER. 
 Bom aboutl325 A.D..'. Died 1408 A,D. 
 
 Gower's poetic rank. 
 His family and calling. 
 His patron. 
 
 His death. 
 
 Three chief works. 
 
 His French sonnets. 
 
 Confessio Amantis. 
 Opinion of Ellis. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 THOUGH ranking far below the great Father of English Poetry, 
 " the moral Gower," as his friend Chaucer calls him in the 
 " Troilus and Creseide," yet holds an honoured place among our 
 earlier bards. We know very little of his personal history. 
 
 He was, perhaps, born in 1325. One of the most illustrious 
 houses in the realm now bears his name ; and even in the far-off 
 days of the poet's birth the family was of noble blood. Supposed 
 to have been a scion of the gentle Gowers, resident in the twelfth 
 century at Stittenham in Yorkshire, he seems to have studied at 
 Merton College, Oxford, and to have adopted the law as his pro- 
 fession. Indeed there is a story to the effect that he was a judge 
 of the Common Pleas. But evidence is not forthcoming to prove 
 that Sir John Gower the judge and John Gower the poet were 
 one and the same man. 
 
 Like Chaucer, with whom he was long very intimate, although 
 it is said that their friendship cooled at last, Gower espoused the 
 cause of one of King Richard's uncles. His patron was the Duke 
 of Gloucester, whose mysterious murder at Calais is one of the 
 darkest spots in a miserable reign. Fired, no doubt, with the 
 strong suspicion, perhaps with the certain knowledge, that his 
 friend and patron was slain by a royal order, Gower seems to 
 have been right glad when the luxurious king was hurled from 
 his throne to die in Pontefract. 
 
 During the last nine years of his life, Gower was blind (1399- 
 1 408.) He died rich, leaving to his widow the then large sum of 
 100, along with the rents of two manors, one in Nottinghamshire 
 
62 GOWER'S THREE WORKS. 
 
 and one in Suffolk. His tomb in the Church of St. Saviour, 
 Southwark, which was called in the fourteenth century St. Mary 
 Overies, represents the poet pillowed upon three volumes, in 
 memento of his three great works. His grave face, framed with a 
 mass of long auburn hair, well befits his name of " Moral Gower." 
 
 Gower's three great works were .called, Speculum Meditantis, 
 Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis. Of these, the first, 
 said to have been in French, has been lost ; the second, in Latin, 
 is still preserved in manuscript, but has never been printed ; the 
 third is that work of the poet which has entitled him to an endur- 
 ing place in our literature, for it is nearly all in English. There 
 is, in the library of the Duke of Sutherland at Treutham in 
 Staffordshire, a volume, in which there are many French love 
 sonnets, written by Gower when young, so full of sweetness and 
 feeling as to have drawn the warmest praises from Warton. 
 
 The plot of the Confessio Amantis is rather odd. A lover 
 holds a dialogue with his confessor, Genius, who is a priest of 
 Venus. The priest, before he will grant absolution, probes the 
 heart of his penitent to the core, trying all its weak spots. He 
 plies him with moral tales in illustration of his teaching, giving 
 him, en passant, lessons in chemistry and the philosophy of Aris- 
 totle. After all the tedious shrift, when our hero seems to be so 
 arrayed in a panoply of purity and learning as to render his victory 
 a certain thing, we suddenly find that he is now too old to care 
 for the triumph suffered for and wished for so long. Ellis, in his 
 " Specimens of the Early English Poets," characterizes the narra- 
 tive of Gower as being often quite petrifying. And although this 
 poet's place, as second to Chaucer during the infancy of our 
 literature, cannot be disputed, still it must be confessed that old 
 John is often prosy, and sometimes <?ull. 
 
 FROM GOWER'S "CONFESSIO AMANTIS." 
 A ROMAN STORY. 
 
 In a Croniq I fynde thus, 
 
 How that Caius Fabricius 
 
 Wich whilome was consul of Rome, 
 
 By whome the lawes yede and come, [went 
 
Ci THE CONFESSIO AMANTIS." 63 
 
 Whan the Sampnitees to him brouht 
 
 A somme of golde, and hym by souht 
 
 To done hem fauoure in the lawe, 
 
 Towarde the golde he gan hym drawe: 
 
 Whereof in alle mennes Joke, 
 
 A part in to his honde he tooke, 
 
 Wich to his mouthe in alle haste 
 
 He put hit for to smelle and taste, 
 
 And to his ihe and to his ere, 
 
 Bot he ne fonde no comfort there : 
 
 And thanne he be gan it to despise, 
 
 And tolde vnto hem in this wise: 
 
 " I not what is with golde to thryve 
 
 Whan none of alle my wittes fyve 
 
 Fynt savour ne delite ther inne 
 
 So is it bot a nyce sinne 
 
 Of golde to ben to coveitous, 
 
 Bot he is riche an glorious 
 
 Wich hath in his subieccion 
 
 The men wich in possession 
 
 Ben riche of golde, and by this sktite, [reason 
 
 For he may alday whan he wille, 
 
 Or be him leef or be him loth, 
 
 Justice don vppon hem bothe." 
 
 Lo thus he seide and with that worde 
 
 He threwe to fore hem on the borde 
 
 The golde oute of his honde anon, 
 
 And seide hem that he wolde none, 
 
 So that he kepte his liberte 
 
 To do justice and equite. 
 
64 THE POET KINO. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 KING JAMES I. OP SCOTLAND. 
 Born 1394 A,D Died 1437 A.D, 
 
 Bound for France. i The'King's Quhalr. 
 
 A captive at Windsor. His minor poems. 
 
 Falls in love. Illustrative extract 
 
 THE romantic story of this royal poet is well known. His poor 
 father, Robert III., whose heart had been well-nigh broken by the 
 murder of his darling son Rothesay, put his only remaining son, 
 James, on board a ship bound for France, that the boy might be 
 safe from the wiles of Albany. The ship being seized off the Nor- 
 folk coast, the prince was led a captive to the English Court 
 an event which brought his father's grey head in sorrow to the 
 grave. This happened in 1405, when young James was only 
 eleven years of age. From that time, until his release in 1424, he 
 remained in England, living chiefly at Windsor and receiving an 
 education befitting his royal birth. He seems to have excelled in 
 every study and every sport ; but the music of the harp and the 
 making of verses were his chief delights. Chaucer's poetry and 
 Gower's were studied eagerly by the captive king, and " from ad- 
 miration to imitation there is but a step." But a power greater 
 than delight in Chaucer's verse was at work in the poet's breast. 
 He fell in love ; and, while all life was bright with the rosy hue 
 of a new-blown passion, he sang his sweetest song. 
 
 Early one morning, looking from a window in the Round Tower 
 of Windsor out upon a garden thick with May leaves, and musical 
 with the liquid song of nightingales, he saw walking below a lady, 
 young, lovely, richly dressed and jewelled. This was Joan Beau- 
 fort, daughter of the Duke ofNSomerset. His love for her, speedily 
 kindled, inspired his greatest work, The King's Quhair (quire or 
 book). The poem, written in one hundred and ninety-seven 
 
DEATH OF KING JAMES I. 65 
 
 stanzas of seven lines each, contains many particulars of the poet's 
 life, the most admired passage being that in which he describes 
 his first glimpse of his future wife walking in the leafy garden. 
 The polish of many stanzas is exquisite. 
 
 Although King James ranks so high as a pathetic and amatory 
 poet, he seems equally at home in a broad comic vein of descrip- 
 tion. Two poems of this class, Christis Kirk on tJie Grene 
 and Peblis to the Play, are ascribed to him rather than to 
 James V. The former is in the Aberdeenshire dialect, the latter 
 in that of Tweeddale, and both humorously describe certain old 
 Scottish country merry-makings. 
 
 Ruling nofr wisely (for himself at least), but too well, this 
 cleverest of the royal Stuarts was stabbed to death in the Monas- 
 tery of the Dominicans at Perth early in the year 1437. The 
 murderers, chief among them Sir Robert Grah'am, burst late at 
 night into his private room, found htm, where he had hidden, in a 
 vault below the flooring, and after a fearful struggle cut him 
 almost to pieces with their swords and knives. 
 
 VERSES SELECTED FROM " THE KING'S QUHAIR." 
 
 Cast I down mine eyes again, 
 Where as I saw, walking under the Tower, 
 Full secretly, new comen here to plain, 
 The fairest or the fresfiest young flower 
 That ever I saw, methought, before that hour, 
 For which sudden abate, anon astart, [went and came 
 
 The blood of all my body to my heart. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Of her array the form if I shall write, 
 Towards her golden hair and rich attire, 
 In fretwise couchit with pearlis white, [inlaid 
 
 And great balas learning as the fire, (gems of a certain 
 
 With mony ane emeraut and fair sapphire ; \ kind shining 
 And on her head a chaplet fresh of hue, 
 Of plumis parted red, and white, and blue. 
 
 Full of quaking spangis bright as gold, 
 
 Forged of shape like to the amorets, 
 
 So new, so fresh, so pleasant to behold, 
 
 The plumis eke like to the flower jonets, [lily 
 
 And other of shape, like to {he flower jonets ; 
 
"THE KING'S QUHAIR." 
 
 And above all this, there was, well I wot, 
 Beauty enough to make a world to dote. 
 
 * * * * * 
 And for to walk that fresh May's morrow, 
 Ane hook she had upon her tissue white, 
 
 That goodlier had not been seen to-forow, [before 
 
 As I suppose; and girt she was alite, [slightly 
 
 Thus halflings loose for haste, to such delight 
 It was to see her youth in goodlihede, 
 That for rudeness to speak thereof I dread. 
 
 * * * * * 
 And when she walked had a little thraw 
 Under the sweete greene boughis bent, 
 Her fair fresh face, as white as any snaw, 
 She turned has, and furth her wayis went ; 
 But tho began mine aches and torment, 
 To see her part, and follow I na might; 
 Methought the day was turned into night. 
 
67 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 OTHER WRITERS OP THE FIRST ERA. 
 (1328-1474.) 
 
 Minot 
 
 Longlande. 
 
 Plot of Piers Plough- 
 
 Its versification. 
 Barbour. 
 Wyntoun. 
 Occleve. 
 
 Lydgale. 
 Blind Harry. 
 Trevisa. 
 Fortcscue. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 LAUEENCE MINOT. This writer, who flourished under Edward 
 [II., is called by Dr. Craik the earliest writer of English verse, who 
 deserves the name of a poet. We have his ten poems, describing 
 the martial achievements of Edward, such as the battles of Halidon 
 Hill, and NeviVs Cross, The Sieges of Tournay and Calais, and 
 The Taking of Guisnes ; written, no doubt, between the years 1333 
 and 1353, and thrown off under the fresh impression of the great 
 events they record. They have all the fine warlike ring of the 
 older, minstrelsy, combined with a polish to which the ballad- 
 singers of former days were strangers. 
 
 ROBERT or WILLIAM LONGLANDE. The author of the Vision 
 of Piers (Peter) Ploughman was born in Shropshire about 1300. 
 A secular priest and a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, he had 
 many opportunities of knowing thoroughly those abuses which 
 he lashes with an unsparing hand. The time was indeed a terrible 
 one, the nobles and the clergy were alike corrupt to the very 
 core. 
 
 The poet supposes himself to have fallen asleep after a long 
 ramble over the Malvern Hills on a May morning. As he sleeps, 
 he dreams a series of twenty dreams. The general subject of the 
 poem has been described as similar to that of "The Pilgrim's 
 Progress." The gaudy, changeful scenes of "Vanity Fair," are 
 much the same, in spirit at least, on the canvas of Longlande 
 as in the later picture,; of Bunyan and of Thackeray. Losing no 
 
68 
 
 opportunity of tearing the cloak from the ignorant and vicious 
 churchmen of his day, this old poet may be said to have struck 
 the first great blow in the battle of the English Reformation. 
 
 " Piers Ploughman " is unrhymed, having, as its distinctive 
 feature, a kind of alliteration; probably borrowed, as Dr. Percy 
 shows in his " Reliques," from the Icelandic. The following lines 
 will show the nature of this alliteration : 
 
 Ac on a May Morwening [and 
 
 On Malvern hills 
 Me beFel a Jerly, [wonder 
 
 Of Fairy me thought 
 1 was Weary for- wandered, 
 
 AndWenfmetorest 
 Under a Brood Bank, [broad 
 
 By a "Burn's side ; [stream's 
 
 And as I Lay and Leaned, 
 
 And Looked on the waters, 
 I Slombered into a Sleeping, 
 
 It Swayed so mury. [sounded pleasant 
 
 JOHN BARBOUE. Two dates, 1316 and 1330, are assigned 
 for the birth of Barbour, and Aberdeen is named as his native 
 place. He was made Archdeacon of Aberdeen in 1356. Next 
 year we find him acting as one of the commissioners that met at 
 Edinburgh to deliberate upon the ransom of the king, and also 
 receiving a passport from Edward III. that he might visit Oxford 
 for purposes of study. Three other passports were also granted 
 to him by the English king at various times. 
 
 Barbour's great poem is The Bruce, an epic, written pro- 
 bably about 1376, in that eight-syllabled verse which Scott 
 has made so famous. The work embraces the events of about 
 forty years, from the death of the Maid of Norway in 1290 to 
 the death of Lord James Douglas in 1330; and though styled by 
 the poet himself a Roinaunt, its main narrative has been accepted 
 as true history by all the leading writers upon Scottish affairs. 
 Another poem, called Tlie Stewart, is said to have been written by 
 Barbour ; but it has been lost. Two pensions, one of 10 Scots, 
 the other of 20 shillings, were granted to the poet, both pro- 
 
LYDGATE, THE MONK OF BURY. 69 
 
 bably by Robert II. The language in which Barbour wrote 
 does not differ much from the English of Chaucer, the chief dis- 
 tinction consisting in the broader vowel-sounds of the Scottish 
 poem. Barbour is thought to have died in 1395. 
 
 ANDREW WYNTOUN. This priest, supposed to have been born 
 about 1350, was Prior of St. Serf's at Lochleven, a house under 
 the rule of the great Priory of St. Andrews. In ruder strains 
 than Barbour, he wrote about 1420 an Orygynale Cronykil of 
 Scotland, extending from the creation to 1408. This work, part 
 of which was the composition of another poet, is, when we make 
 allowance for the fabulous legends interwoven with it, a clear, 
 trustworthy historical record. It is divided into nine books, and 
 written in eight-syllabled rhymes. 
 
 THOMAS OCCLEVE. This writer of verses, for poet we can 
 scarcely call him, is thought to have lived and written about 
 the beginning of the fifteenth century. We learn from his works 
 that he was a lawyer ; that he held a government situation under 
 the Privy Seal ; and that he led a wild, extravagant life. His 
 chief poem is founded on a Latin work, De Regimine Principum, 
 written by Egidius, an Italian monk of the thirteenth century. 
 On the whole, Occleve's verse must be judged rather by its quan- 
 tity than its quality. His admission into the ranks of our Eng- 
 lish writers of note is owing to the circumstance of his writing in 
 a barren age, when every versifier was a man of mark. 
 
 JOHN LYDGATE. Lydgate, the monk of Bury, flourished in the 
 reigns of Henry V. and Henry VI. Educated at Oxford, he 
 added to his college training a wider view of life by travelling in 
 France and Italy. On his return home he opened a school for 
 the instruction of the young in verse-making and polite composi- 
 tion. His ready pen, kept unceasingly busy, supplied verses of 
 every style and sentiment, producing ballads and hymns with 
 equal ease. He wrote for masks and mummings, coronations and 
 saints' days, for king, citizen, and monk ; and no doubt found the 
 fruit of his work multiplying in the solid shape of gold and silvei 
 coin. The chief works of Lydgate, whose forte lay in flowing 
 and diffuse description, were the History of Thebes, the Fall oj 
 
70 PROSE WRITERS OF THE FIRST ERA. 
 
 Princes, and the History of the Siege of Troy the last named 
 being borrowed from Colonna's prose. 
 
 BLIND HARRY. A poor man, so named, wandered about Scot- 
 land during the third quarter of the fifteenth century, reciting 
 poems for bread. This was the author of Tlie Wallace, a com- 
 panion work to Barbour's " Bruce," but rougher in the grain and 
 less trustworthy, owing to its being chiefly woven from the popular 
 legends afloat concerning the tall hero of Elderslie. " The 
 Wallace " contains about twelve thousand lines. 
 
 PROSE WRITERS. 
 
 JOHN DE TREVISA. A Latin work, the Poli/clironicon of Hig- 
 den, a monk of Chester, was translated into English prose about 
 1387 byTrevisa, who was vicar of Berkeley in Gloucestershire. 
 Many other translations were executed by the same pen. 
 
 SIR JOHN FORTESCUE. Born, it is supposed, in Devonshire, 
 this eminent lawyer became in 1442 the Chief -Justice of the 
 ICing's Bench. Remaining faithful to the Red Rose through 
 every change, he followed Queen Margaret into France, where he 
 lived in exile for some time. Out of evil came good. We owe 
 to this banishment one of the finest of our early English law- 
 books, De Laudibus Legum Angliae, written in the form of a 
 conversation between himself and his young pupil Prince Edward. 
 Much more interesting, however, to us is an English work from 
 his pen entitled, Of the Difference between an Absolute and a 
 Limited Monarchy, in which he compares the French and the 
 English in regard to liberty, much to the disadvantage of tha 
 former people. 
 
CAXTON'S PRINTING OFFICE. 71 
 
 SECOND ERA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING IN 1474 A.D. TO THE 
 ACCESSION OP ELIZABETH IN 1558 A.D. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE OLD PRINTERS OP WESTMINSTER, 
 
 Caxton's house. 
 His face. 
 Birth and boyhood. 
 On the Continent. 
 Invention of printing. 
 Trade in books. 
 Envoy at Bruges. 
 
 Serves the Duchess. 
 First literary work. 
 At Cologne. 
 History of Troy. 
 The Almonry. 
 Old printers at work. 
 Book-binding. 
 
 The Game of Chesse. 
 Publishing. 
 Caxton's death. 
 Wynkyn de Wordc. 
 Richard Pynson. 
 A contrast. 
 
 IN one of the most squalid recesses of Westminster there stood, 
 until 1845, a crazy building of wood and plaster, 'three stories 
 high. Its pointed roof and wooden balcony were seldom free 
 from poor fluttering rags of clothing, hung out to dry by the 
 wretched tenants. The very sunlight grew sickly when it fell 
 into the poverty-stricken street, where slipshod women, unshaven 
 lounging men, and pale stunted children slunk hopelessly about. 
 Foulness, gloom, and wretchedness were the prominent features 
 of the place around the frail timbers of the house in which 
 the first English printer is said to have lived and wrought. It 
 was almost a mercy when a new street was driven through the 
 poor old house and its tottering neighbours. Not far from this, 
 in the Almonry or Eleemosynary of the Abbey, where the monks 
 of "Westminster used to distribute alms to the poor, that London 
 merchant, whose name has grown to be a household word, set up, 
 most probably in 1474, the first printing-press whose types were 
 inked on English ground. 
 
72 EARLY LIFE OF CAXTON. 
 
 As we write the name of CAXTON, a grave and beardless face, 
 with an expression somewhat akin to sadness, rises from the past, 
 looking calmly out from the descending lappets of the hood, which 
 was the fashionable head-dress of his day. All honour to the 
 memory of the Father of the English Press ! , 
 
 Born about 1412 in some lonely farm-house, a few of which 
 were thinly scattered over the Weald or wooded part of Kent, 
 William Caxton grew to boyhood among the simple peasants of 
 that wild district. Probably about 1428 he assumed the flat 
 round cap, narrow falling bands, and long coat of coarse cloth, 
 which then formed the dress of the city apprentice ; and was soon, 
 no doubt, promoted to the honour of carrying lantern and cudgel at 
 night before the worshipful Master Robert Large, the rich mercer 
 to whom he was bound. A mercer then did not confine his trade 
 to silk : he dealt also in wool and woollen cloth ; and, no doubt, 
 in the parcels from the Continent there often came, for sale among 
 the rich English, a few copies of rare and costly manuscripts. 
 From such the apprentice probably obtained his first knowledge of 
 books in their old written shape. 
 
 Upon the death of his master, Caxton went abroad, and con- 
 tinued to reside chiefly in Holland and Flanders for fully thirty 
 years. What his exact position was cannot be determined ; but 
 it is supposed that he acted as travelling agent or factor for the 
 Company of London Mercers. While he was thus employed, the 
 great invention of printing began to attract the notice of the 
 world. Laurence Coster, in the woods of Haarlem, had shaped 
 his letters of beech-bark, and had looked with delight upon the 
 impression left by the sap upon the parchment in which he had 
 wrapped them. Gutenberg of Mentz, catching a sight of old 
 Coster's types, had shut himself up in the ruined monastery by 
 Strasbourg, to make the inks, the balls, the cases, and the press. 
 Faust and Schoeffer had joined with Gutenberg, and had betrayed 
 him when they knew his secret. Faust, by offering for sale as 
 many Bibles as were asked for, at one-eighth of the usual price, 
 had excited the wonder of the Paris world, and had evoked a cry 
 that he was in league with the Enemy of man. And those strange 
 
CAXTON AT BRUGES. 73 
 
 pages, written in the blood of the salesman, as the shuddering 
 gazers whispered to one another, pointing with trembling finger to 
 the letters of brilliant red, had spread their fascinations, too, across 
 the English Channel. A sharp business man like Caxton would 
 not waste much time in sending these novelties to the English 
 market. So printed books began to find their way to England 
 among the silks and perfumes, which crossed the sea from Flan- 
 ders. 
 
 A shrewd and clever man this mercer must have been in mat- 
 ters relating to his trade, for we find him in 1464 nominated one 
 of the envoys to the Court of Burgundy, to negotiate a treaty of 
 commerce between the King of England and Duke Philip. It 
 must not be forgotten that the duchy of Burgundy then included 
 nearly all of modern Belgium. And when, four years later, 
 Philip's son, lately made Duke Charles by his father's death, 
 married Margaret Plantagenet, the sister of the English 
 king, William Caxton, who was already a resident in 1468 
 Bruges, where the rich and luxurious Court of Burgundy A.D. 
 had its seat, entered the service of this English princess, 
 who had changed her country and her name. He had probably 
 already laid down the ell-wand, and had ceased to be seen among 
 the mercers' stalls; but in what capacity he served the duchess 
 we cannot say. His own words tell us that he received from her 
 a yearly fee, for which he rendered honest service. It was when 
 his active mercer's life was over that he took up the pen, and 
 began to work with types and ink-balls. 
 
 Our printer's entrance on literary work happened thus : Some 
 months before the gorgeous ceremonies with which Duke Charles 
 brought his English bride to her home in Bruges, Caxton, feeling 
 himself to have no great occupation, sat down in some quiet tur- 
 ret chamber to translate a French book into English. This work 
 was Recudl des Histoires de Troye, written by Duke Philip's 
 chaplain, Eaoul le Fevre. When five or six quires were written, 
 he grew dissatisfied with his English and doubtful of his French ; 
 and so the unfinished translation lay aside for two years, tossed 
 among his old invoices and scattered papers. One day " my Lady 
 
7 '4 THE ALMON&Y OP WESTMINSTER. 
 
 Margaret," talking to her trusty servant about many things, 
 chanced to hear of this literary pastime, and asked to see tho 
 sheets of manuscript. When she had read them, pointing out 
 some faults in the English, she encouraged Caxton to proceed 
 with the translation, which he did with renewed hope and vigour. 
 
 From Bruges he removed to Cologne, where it probably was 
 that he first appeared as a printer, having learned the art, as he 
 tells us, at considerable expense. His instructor, from w T hom he, 
 no doubt, bought his first set of types, may have been one of 
 Faust's workmen, who had been driven from Mentz in 1462, 
 when the sack of the city by Adolphus of Nassau scattered the 
 printers over the land.- At Cologne in 1471 Caxton finished 
 the "History of Troy;" and it was printed most probably in 
 the same year the first English book that came from any press. 
 For this, the first great work of his own pen, and the first English 
 production of his press, he was bountifully rewarded by the 
 " dreadful duchess," who had encouraged him to resume his task. 
 
 When or how the happy idea occurred to Caxton of carrying 
 press and types to England we do not know ; but, soon 
 14 74 after his sojourn in Cologne, we find him in the Almonry of 
 A.D. Westminster, surrounded by the materials of his adopted 
 craft, and directing the operations of his workmen. He 
 united in himself nearly all the occupations connected with the 
 production and sale of books ; for in the infancy of printing there 
 was no division of labour. Author, inkmaker, compositor, press- 
 man, corrector, binder, publisher, bookseller, Caxton was all 
 these. 
 
 Let us pass into his workshop, and see the early printers at 
 their toil. Two huge frames of wood support the thick screws 
 which work the pressing slabs. There sits the grave compositor 
 before the cases full of type, the copy set up before him, and the 
 grooved stick in his hand, which gradually fills with type to form 
 a line. There is about his work nothing of that quick, unerring 
 nip which marks the fingers of a modern compositor, as they fly 
 among the type, and seize the very letter wanted in a trice. With 
 quiet and steady pace, and many a thoughtful pause, his fingers 
 
THE OLD PRINTERS AT WOKK. 75 
 
 travel through their task. The master printer in his furred gown 
 moves through the room, directs the wedging of a page or sheet, 
 and then resumes his high stool, to complete the reading of a proof 
 pulled freshly from the press. The worker of the press has found 
 the balls or dabbers, with which the form of types is inked, 
 unfit for use. He must make fresh ones; so down he sits with 
 raw sheep-skin and carded wool, to stuff the ball and tie it round 
 the handle of the dab. Till this is done, the press-work is at a 
 stand. But there is no hurry in the Almonry; and all the better 
 this, for the imperfection of the machinery makes great care necessary 
 on the part of the workmen. Then, suppose the proofs corrected, 
 and the sheets, or pages rather, printed off, the binder's work 
 begins. Strong and solid work was this old binding. When the 
 leaves were sewed together in a frame a rude original of that still 
 used they were hammered well to make them fiat, and the back 
 was thickly overlaid with paste and glue. Then came the enclos- 
 ing of the paper in boards veritable boards thick pieces of 
 wood like the panel of a door, covered outside with embossed 
 and gilded leather, and thickly studded with brass nails, whose 
 ornamental heads shone in manifold rows. Thick brass corners 
 and solid clasps completed the fortification of the book, which 
 was made to last for centuries. Half a dozen such volumes used 
 then to form an extensive arid valuable library. 
 
 The book which is considered to have been the earliest work 
 from the "Westminster press, is that entitled The Game 
 and Playe of the Chesse, translated out of the French, 1474 
 fynysshid the last day of MarcJie, 1474. A second edition A.D. 
 of this work was the first English book illustrated with 
 wood-cuts. A fable about the origin of chess ; an account of the 
 offices, or powers, of the various pieces ; and a prayer for the pros- 
 perity of Edward and England, make up the four treatises into 
 which the " Game of Chesse" is divided. 
 
 Sixty-five works, translated and original, are assigned to the 
 pen and the press of Caxton, who seems to have supplied nearly 
 all the copy that was set up in the side-chapel, or disused Scrip- 
 torium, where his printing was done. His old business tact stood 
 
76 THE DEATH OF CAXTON. 
 
 well to him in his publishing and bookselling transactions. Wo 
 have still a hand-bill in his largest type, calling on all who wanted 
 cheap books to come and buy at the Almonry. We find him, 
 when undertaking the publication of the Golden Legend a 
 large, double-columned work of nearly five hundred pages, pro- 
 fusely illustrated with wood-cuts securing the promise of Lord 
 Arundel to take a reasonable number of copies, and, moreover, 
 to reward the printer with a yearly gift of venison a buck in 
 summer, and a doe in winter. 
 
 So, for some seventeen years, Caxton laboured on at his English 
 printing. The man who, at fifty-nine, had gone to Cologne to learn 
 a new trade when his life's work seemed nearly done, still inked 
 the types and worked the lever of the press, when the weight of 
 nearly fourscore years hung upon his frame. 
 
 But there came a day when the door of the printing-office was 
 
 ^ shut, and the clank of the press was unheard within. 
 
 1491 William Caxton was dead. The rude school-boy of the 
 
 A.D. Kentish Weald the blithe apprentice of Cheapside the 
 
 keen mercer, well known in every Flemish stall the 
 
 trusted retainer of the house of Burgundy the grey-haired learner 
 
 at Cologne the old printer of Westminster had played out M.-J 
 
 many parts, and had entered into his rest. Another sorrowful 
 
 time came for his faithful little band of printers, when, with the 
 
 glare of torches and the deep tolling of a bell, they laid their hoary 
 
 chief in the grave at St. Margaret's Church, not far from the scene 
 
 of his daily toils and triumphs. 
 
 WYNKYN DE WORDE, a foreigner who had long assisted Caxton 
 at his press, kept up the good work, and probably at first in the old 
 place. There is something touching in the devotion to his dead 
 master which he displays, in uniting the monogram of Caxton 
 with the blazing suns and clustering grapes that adorn his own 
 trade-device. Four hundred and eight works are assigned to 
 Wynkyn's press. 
 
 Another of Caxton's assistants one RICHARD PYNSON, a native 
 of Normandy set up after a time in business for himself, and 
 throve so well, that he received the somewhat valuable appoint- 
 
THE ARCHED ROOM IN WESTMINSTER. 77 
 
 ment of King's Printer, being first on the long list of those who 
 have borne the title. Two hundred and twelve works are said to 
 have been printed by Pynson. 
 
 These were the men who printed our earliest English books. 
 Their types have been multiplied by millions, and their presses 
 by hundreds. A little silver coin can now buy the book for 
 which Caxton charged a piece of gold. The British cottage is 
 indeed a poor one which cannot show some volumes as well printed 
 and as finely bound as his finest works. Eejoicing, as we do, in 
 the countless blessings which the Press has given to Britain, let us 
 not forget that arched room in old Westminster, where our earliest 
 printer bent his silvered head over the first proof-sheets of the 
 " Game of Chesse." 
 
78 THOMAS MOKE AT OXFORD. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SIR THOMAS MORE. 
 
 Born 1480 A.D Beheaded 1535 A.D. 
 
 Boyhood of More. 
 His Oxford life. 
 Career as a lawyer. 
 His home at Chelsea. 
 Chancellor. 
 
 Reverses. 
 
 Last glimpse of home. 
 
 Imprisonment 
 
 His trial. 
 
 His execution. 
 
 History of Edward V. 
 The Utopia. 
 Parliamentary fame. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 THOMAS MORE, who takes rank as the leading writer during this 
 second era of our literature, was born in Milk Street, London, in 
 1480. Having learned some Latin in Threadneedle Street from 
 Nicholas Hart, he became in his fifteenth year a page in the house- 
 hold of Cardinal Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Here 
 his sharp and ready wit attracted so much notice that the arch- 
 bishop prophesied great things for him and a dean of St Paul's, 
 one of the most noted scholars of the day, used to say that there 
 was but one wit in England, and that was young Thomas More. 
 Devoted to the law by his good father, who was a justice in 
 the King's Bench, More went to Oxford at seventeen ; and here, 
 in spite of the frowns of old Sir John, who dreaded lest the seduc- 
 tions of Homer and Plato might cast the grave sages of the law 
 too much into the shade, he studied Greek under Grocyn. And 
 not only did he study it con amore, but he wrote to the University 
 a powerful letter in defence of this new branch of learning, 
 inveighing strongly against the Trojans, as the opponents of Greek 
 had begun to call themselves. The leading Anti-Grecians were 
 the senior clergy, who were too old or too lazy to sit down to the 
 Greek alphabet and grammar; and who, besides, feared that if 
 Greek and Hebrew were studied, the authority of the Latin Vul- 
 gate might be shaken. At Oxford, More won the friendship of 
 the eminent Erasmus ; and though the Dutchman was thirty and 
 the English boy only seventeen, the attachment was mutual, 
 
THE PLEASANT HOME AT CHELSEA. 79 
 
 and so strong, that it was only severed by death. Here, too, he 
 wrote many English poems of considerable merit. These snow- 
 drops of our literature, flowerets of a day hovering between winter 
 and spring, might pass unnoticed among the gay blooms of a sum- 
 mer garden, but rising in pale beauty from the frozen ground, they 
 are loved and welcomed as the harbingers of brighter days. 
 
 A few notes of his rapid rise must suffice here. Appointed reader, 
 that is, lecturer, at Furnival's Inn,* he soon became a popular 
 lawyer ; and we find him expounding not only the English law, 
 but the works of St. Augustine. This mixture of theology and 
 law was common in those days, when churchmen alone were 
 chancellors. Eunning down occasionally into Essex from his 
 chambers near the Charter House, for a breath of country air, he 
 fell in love with a lady named Jane Colt, whom he soon married. 
 Under Henry VII. he became Under-Sheriff of London ; and when 
 miser Henry's spendthrift son wore the crown, he still rose in 
 favour and in fortune. Employed on many continental missions, 
 he became a Privy Councillor, Treasurer of the Exchequer, and in 
 1523 Speaker of the Commons. While filling the Speaker's chair 
 he incurred the anger of Wolsey, who strove to injure him with 
 the king. But the magnificent cardinal's own feet were then on 
 quaking, slippery ground, and when in 1529 he fell with a great 
 ruin, More stepped on to the chancellor's bench. 
 
 We have pleasant domestic pictures of the home at Chelsea, 
 embosomed among flowers and apple-trees, where the great lawyer 
 lived in tranquil happiness with his wife and children. Thither 
 often on a summer afternoon, after his day at court was done, he 
 used to carry his friend Erasmus in his eight- oared barge. Gravely 
 sweet was the talk at the six o'clock supper, and during the 
 twilight stroll by the river. The king, too, often came out to dine 
 with the Mores, sometimes uninvited, when the good but fussy 
 lady of the house (not Jane Colt, but a second wife, Alice, seven 
 years older than her husband) was in a desperate state until she 
 had got her best scarlet gown put trimly on, to do honour to his 
 
 * The law-schools, such as Furnival's Inn and Lincoln's Inn, were so called because they 
 tvere once used as the inns or town-houses of noblemen. Compare the French use of " hotel" 
 
80 RESIGNATION OF THE CHANCELLOR. 
 
 highness. So familiar were the king and his chancellor, that, as 
 they walked in the garden, the royal arm often lay round More's neck. 
 Yet, a few years later, that neck bled on the block by a royal order. 
 For more than two years More held the office of chancellor, dis- 
 charging its high duties with singular purity. While it has been 
 said of his predecessor, Wolsey, that no suitor need apply to him 
 whose fingers were not tipped with gold, we read of More refusing 
 heavy bribes, and sitting in an open hall to hear in person the 
 petitions of the poor. The rock on which Wolsey had gone down 
 lay ahead of More, who saw it with an anxious but undaunted 
 heart. His mind was quite made up to steer an honest, straight- 
 forward course. The king, who was bent upon marrying Anne 
 Boleyn, pressed the chancellor urgently for an opinion on the case, 
 expecting, no doubt, that a man who owed his commanding posi- 
 tion to royal favour would not dare to thwart the royal will. But 
 Henry was mistaken in his man. Rather than give an opinion 
 which must have been against the king, More laid down the seals 
 of his high office. A reverse of fortune so great seemed 
 1532 to cast no shadow upon his joyous spirit Quietly reduc- 
 A.D. ing his style of living, he brightened his humble home 
 with the same gentle, gleaming wit, which had given 
 lustre to his splendid days. Poor Mistress Alice, who had loved the 
 grandeur of being a chancellor's lady, did not take so kindly to 
 the change. But worse was yet to come. To thwart Henry the 
 Eighth was a capital offence. More must yield or die. An attempt, 
 soon abandoned however, was made to involve him in the doom 
 of the girl called " The Holy Maid of Kent." Summoned to Lam- 
 beth in April 1534, he left for the last time his well-loved Chelsea 
 home. Turning, as he hurried to his boat, he caught the last 
 glimpse of its dear flower-beds through the wicket, beyond which 
 lie would not suffer his family to pass. His refusal to take an 
 oath, which acknowledged the king's marriage with Anne Boleyn 
 to be lawful, so enraged Henry that he was cast into the Tower, 
 where he lay for a year. His letters to his daughter Margaret, 
 written from that prison with a coal, are touching memorials of a 
 great and loving heart 
 
EXECUTION OF MORE. 81 
 
 At last he was placed at the bar at Westminster, on a charge, 
 of which the leading points were his opposition to the royal 
 marriage, and his refusal to acknowledge Henry as the head of the 
 Church. He was found guilty and hurried back to prison. As 
 he landed at the Tower wharf, his daughter, Margaret Roper, rush- 
 ing forward in spite of the bristling halberds that shut him in, 
 flung her arms round him, and, mingling her bright hair with his 
 grizzled beard, kissed him over and over again amid the sobs and 
 tears of all around. 
 
 "Without endorsing the opinions of this man, we may freely and 
 honestly admire his excelling genius, his noble courage, and his 
 gentle heart. The wit that sparkled from Cardinal Morton's rosy 
 page, that in bachelor days lit the gloomy chambers in Lincoln's 
 Inn, and added new lustre to the hospitalities of Chelsea, shone 
 bright as ever on the scaffold, undimmed even by the cruel glint- 
 ing of the headsman's axe. As he climbed the crazy timbers 
 where he was to die, he said gaily to the lieutenant, " I pray you 
 see me safe up ; and for my coming down let me shift for myself." 
 His head was fixed on the spikes of London Bridge ; but his brave 
 daughter Margaret caused it to be taken down, and when she died, 
 many years after, it was buried in her grave. And so mouldered 
 together into common dust as great a brain and as true a heart 
 as ever England held. 
 
 More's fame as a writer rests on two works, written during that 
 happy period of his life, when, as Under-Sheriff of London and a 
 busy lawyer, he enjoyed the sunshine of royal favour and the 
 solid advantage of an income amounting to .4000 or X5000 a 
 year. His Life and Reign of Edward F., written about 1513, is 
 not only the first English work deserving the name of history, but 
 is further remarkable as being our earliest specimen of classical 
 English prose. The character of Richard III. is here painted in 
 the darkest colours. But More's Utopia has had a wider fame. 
 In flowing Latin he describes the happy state of an island, which 
 is discovered by one Raphael Hythloday (learner of trifles), a sup- 
 posed companion of Amerigo Vespucci. The place is called Utopia. 
 which simply means " Nowhere," from ov TOTTOS. A republic, of 
 
 (15) G 
 
82 MOKE'S " UTOPIA." 
 
 which the foundation idea is borrowed from Fiato, although the 
 details are More's, has its seat in this favoured land. The Utopian 
 ships lie safe within the horns of the crescent-shaped island ; for 
 no enemy can steer through the rocks that guard the harbour's 
 mouth. Every house in the fifty-four walled cities has a large 
 garden; and these houses are exchanged by lot every ten years. 
 All the islanders learn agriculture ; but all have, besides, a certain 
 trade, at which six hours' work, and no more, must be done every 
 day. There are in Utopia no taverns, no fashions ever changing, few 
 laws, and no lawyers. There, war is considered a brutal thing ; 
 hunting, a degrading thing, fit only for butchers ; and finery, a 
 foolish thing, for who that could see sun or star would care 
 for jewels. This work was composed shortly after More's return 
 from the Continent, whither he was sent on a mission to Bruges 
 in the summer of 1514. His other works are chiefly theological 
 treatises, written against the Lutheran doctrines, and Latin 
 epigrams, modelled after those of his sarcastic friend, Erasmus. 
 He stands first, too, in the glorious roll of our parliamentary 
 orators. But, unfortunately, of his speeches we know next to 
 nothing ; for an orator's fame is perishable, too often fading into 
 oblivion almost as soon as death has quenched his eye of flame 
 and stilled the magical music of his voice. 
 
 A LETTER FROM SIR THOMAS MORE TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 (1528.) 
 
 Maistres Alyce, in my most barty wise I recommend me to you ; and whereas 
 I am enfourraed by my son Heron of the losse of our barnes and of our neigh- 
 bours also, with all the corn that was therein, albeit (saving God's pleasure) it is 
 gret pitie of so much good corne lost, yet sith it hath liked hym to sende us 
 such a chaunce, we must and are bounden, not only to be content, but also to be 
 glad of his visitacion. He sente us all that we have loste : and sith he hath by 
 such a chaunce taken it away againe, his pleasure be fulfilled. Let us never 
 grudge ther at, but take it in good worth, and hartely thank him, as well for ad- 
 versitie as for prosperitie. And peradventure we have more cause to thank him 
 for our losse, then for our winning ; for his wisdome better seeth what is good for 
 vs then we do our selves. Therfore I pray you be of good chere, and take ail 
 the howsold with you to church, and there thanke God, both for that he hath 
 given us, and for that he hath taken from us, and for that he hath left us, which 
 if it please hym he can encrease when he will. And if it please hym to leave ua 
 yet lesse, at his pleasure be it. 
 
SPECIMEN OP MOKE'S PEOSE. 83 
 
 I pray you to make some good ensearche what my poore neighbours have loste, 
 and bid them take no thought therfore : for and I shold not leave myself a spone, 
 there shal no pore neighbour of mine bere no losse by any chaunce happened in 
 my house. I pray you be with my children and your household Kerry in God. 
 And devise some what with your frendes, what waye wer best to take, for pro- 
 vision to be made for corne for our .household, and for sede thys yere comming, 
 if ye thinke it good that we kepe the ground stil in our handes. And whether ye 
 think it good that we so shall do or not, yet I think it were not best sodenlye 
 thus to leave it all up, and to put away our folk of our farme till we have som- 
 what advised us thereon. How beit if we have more nowe then ye shall nede, 
 and which can get them other maisters, ye may then discharge us of them. But 
 I would not that any man were sodenly sent away he wote nere wether. 
 
 At my comming hither I perceived none other but that I shold tary still with 
 the Kinges Grace. But now I shal (I think) because of this chance, get leave 
 this next weke to come home and se you : and then shall we further devyse 
 together uppon all thinges, what order shal be best to take. And thus as 
 hartely fare you well with all our children as ye can wishe. At Woodestok the 
 thirde daye of Septembre by the hand of 
 
 your louing husbande, 
 
 THOMA$ MORE Knight. 
 
84 TYNDALE'S EARLY LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 
 WILLIAM TYNDALE. 
 
 Born about 1477 A.D Strangled 1536 A.D, 
 
 Biith and boyhood. 
 Tutor to Sir John Welsh. 
 In London. 
 Humphrey Monmouth. 
 
 Settled at Antwerp. 
 The New Testament. 
 Sir Thomas More. 
 Other works. 
 
 The stake. 
 Literary character. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 WILLIAM TYNDALE is celebrated among our writers as a translator 
 of the New Testament into English. What Wycliffe had done 
 for his countrymen in the fourteenth century, Tyndale undertook 
 during the troubled reign of the eighth Henry. 
 
 Of Tyndale's birth and boyhood we know positively nothing be- 
 yond the statement of Fox, that he was born on the borders of 
 Wales, and brought up from childhood at Oxford. Graduating at 
 that university, he went to spend some time at Cambridge. His 
 powers as a linguist and his great love for the Scriptures are 
 specially noted by his early biographer. The next scene of his life 
 was the house of Sir John Welsh, a knight of Gloucestershire, who 
 employed him as tutor to his children. This honourable but 
 troublesome office was most creditably filled by the Oxford man, 
 who met at the hospitable board of the good knight most of the lead- 
 ing country clergymen. The talk naturally turned very often upon 
 the religious opinions of such men as Luther and Erasmus ; and 
 in these conversations Tyndale took a most conspicuous part, freely 
 declaring his sympathy with the Reformers, and his desire nay, 
 his purpose that every English ploughboy should soon know the 
 Scriptures well. Resigning his tutorship to seek a safer place, he 
 preached for some time at Bristol and through the surrounding 
 country, and then went to London, his big brain bursting with a 
 glorious thought. He would translate the New Testament from 
 the original Greek, and thus feed the hungering English people 
 with the bread of life. 
 
TYNDALE'S NEW TESTAMENT. 85 
 
 Wycliffe's Bible had become, in the changes which more than 
 one hundred stirring years had brought upon the English lan- 
 guage, a book unreadable but by a learned few. Disappointed in 
 his attempt to secure the protection of Tonstal, the learned Bishop 
 of London, Tyndale found a refuge in the house of Alderman 
 Humphrey Monmouth, a rich London merchant, whose heart was 
 in the good work. This honest man, keeping the poor scholar in 
 his house for six months, would gladly have seen his friend fare 
 better than on sodden meat and small single beer. But Tyndale 
 would, if given his own way, take nothing else. The kindness of 
 Monmouth did not stop here, for he made Tyndale an allowance 
 of 10 a year, which enabled him to set in earnest about his grand 
 design. Travelling into Germany, Tyndale saw and talked with 
 Luther, and settled finally at Antwerp. There he finished his 
 Translation of the New Testament. The first edition, printed 
 probably at Wittenberg, was published in 1525 or 1526. An 
 improved and altered version appeared in 1534. The run upon 
 the book, both on the Continent and in England, was very great. 
 Copies poured by hundreds from the foreign presses into England. 
 In vain the terrors of the Church were threatened and inflicted 
 upon the sellers and owners of Tyndale's Testament. The trans- 
 lator's brother and two others were sentenced, for distributing 
 copies, to pay a fine of 18,840, Os. lOd. ; and, moreover, had to 
 ride, facing the horse's tail, with many copies of the condemned 
 volume tacked to their clothes, as far as Cheapside, where a fire 
 blazed to burn the books. Conscious how utterly feeble such 
 exhibitions were as a means of checking the new doctrines, Tonstal 
 applied to Sir Thomas More for help ; and More, a devoted 
 member of the Romish Church, dipping his pen in gall, with 
 which, however, the honey of his better nature often mingled, 
 wrote many fierce and bitter things of Tyndale and Tyndale's works. 
 
 The Five Books of Moses, translated from the Hebrew partly by 
 Tyndale, were printed at Hamburg in 1530; and in the following 
 year the same industrious pen produced an English version of the 
 Book of Jonah. Such work, added to the composition of many 
 English tracts for sale in England, written in defence of his re- 
 
86 MARTYRDOM OF TYNDALE. 
 
 ligious opinions, filled the days, and many of the nights too, of this 
 good man. Nor was the wear and tear of body and brain by night 
 and day all that Tyndale gave to the service of his Master. With- 
 out straining the figure far, we can truly say that his Bible was 
 written with his blood. One Henry Philips, English student at 
 Lou vain, by the basest treachery betrayed him in 1534 into the 
 hands of the Emperor's officers at Brussels ; near which city, in 
 
 the Castle of Vilvoord, he was kept a close prisoner for 
 
 A .D. eighteen months. Then, tried and condemned for heresy, 
 
 1536 he was strangled at the stake, and hia dead body was 
 
 burned to ashes. His dying words were, " Lord, open 
 the King of England's eyes ! " 
 
 Tyndale's English is considered, by the best authorities, to be 
 remarkably pure and forcible. His New Testament ranks 
 among our best classics. Tyndale also possessed such a know- 
 ledge of the Greek and Hebrew tongues as was rare in his day ; 
 and this, securing the fidelity of the translation, stamps his books 
 with no common value. 
 
 FROM TYNDALE'S NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 Jesus answered and sayde : A certayne man descended from Jerusalem Into 
 Jericho. And fell into the hondes off theves whych robbed hym off his payment 
 and wonded hym and departed levynge him halfe deed. And yt chaunsed that 
 there cam a certayne preste that same waye and saw hym and passed by. And 
 lyke wyse a levite when he was come neye to the place went and loked on hym 
 and passed by. Then a certayne Samaritane as he iornyed cam neye vnto him 
 and behelde hym and had compassion on hym and cam to hym and bounde vppe 
 hys wondes and poured in wyne and oyle and layed hym on his beaste and 
 brought hym to a common hostry, and drest him. And on the morowe when he 
 departed he toke out two pence and gave them to the host and said unto him, 
 Take care of him and whatsoever thou spendest above this when I come agayne 
 I will recompence the. Which nowe of these thre thynkest thou was neighbour 
 unto him that fell into the theves hondes 1 And he answered: He that shewed 
 taercy on hym. Then sayd Jesus vnto hym, Goo and do thou lyke wyse. 
 
THE SUPPEE AT CRESSY's. 87 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THOMAS CRANMER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 
 Born 1489 A,D Burned 1556 A.D. 
 
 Fellow of Cambridge. 
 Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 His glory and his death. 
 
 Book of Common Prayer. 
 The Twelve Homilies. 
 Cranmer's Bible. 
 
 A FTER some years of study, sporting, and teaching at Cambridge, 
 Thomas Cranmer, a Fellow of Jesus College, born in 1489, at 
 Aslacton in Nottinghamshire, went on a visit to Waltham Abbey 
 in Essex, where lived a Mr. Cressy, the father of some of his 
 college pupils. It happened that King Henry VIII., returning 
 from a royal progress, stayed a night at Waltham ; and, according 
 to the custom of the day, his suite were lodged in the various 
 houses of the place. Cranmer met Fox, the royal almoner, and 
 Gardiner, the royal secretary, at supper in his friend Cressy's ; 
 and when the table-talk turned upon the king's divorce, which was 
 then the great topic of the time, he suggested that the ques- 
 tion should be referred to the Universities of Europe. "The 
 man has got the right sow by the ear," said Henry, next day, 
 when he heard of the remark. And from that day Cranmer was 
 a made man. 
 
 It is not our purpose here to trace the great career of Cranmer 
 as a politician and a churchman. His literary character and 
 works alone claim our notice. The part which he played in the 
 shifting scenes of the English ^Reformation may be read in the 
 annals of our Tudor Sovereigns. In March 1533 he was consecrated 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, qualifying his oath of obedience to 
 the pope with the statement, " that he did not intend by this oath 
 to restrain himself from anything that he was bound to either by 
 his duty to God or the king or the country." 
 
 After escaping, in the reign of Henry VIII., the double danger 
 
88 THE BOOK OF COMMON PEAYER. 
 
 arising from the king's capricious ferocity and the insidious hatred 
 
 of the anti-reform party, Cranmer became, during the reign of 
 
 Henry's gentle son Edward, a leader of the English Reformation 
 
 and a founder of the English Church. A few years later, under 
 
 poor, ill-tempered, misguided Mary, having been induced 
 
 1556 in the gloom of a prison cell to sign a denial of his Protes- 
 
 A.D. tant belief, a deed which he afterwards utterly repealed 
 
 he underwent at Oxford that baptism of fire which has 
 
 purified his memory from every stain. Cramner's great fault was 
 
 a want of decision and firmness. 
 
 There is a book, which ranks with our Bible and the Pilgrim's 
 Progress, as containing some of the finest specimens of unadulte- 
 rated English to be found in the whole range of our literature. It 
 is The Book of Common Prayer, used by the Episcopal Churches of 
 Great Britain and Ireland. To Cranmer the merit of compiling 
 this beautiful service-book is chiefly due. The old Latin Missal, 
 used in various forms all over England, was taken to pieces ; many 
 parts of it were discarded, especially the legends and the prayers 
 to saints, and what remained was re-cast in an English mould. 
 The Litany, differing only in a single petition from that now read, 
 was added as a new feature of the service. By an Act of Parlia- 
 ment, passed in 1548, all ministers were ordered to use the Book 
 of Common Prayer in the celebration of Divine service. And 
 ever since, that sweet and solemn music of King Edward's Liturgy 
 has been heard in our lands, rising through the sacred silence of 
 many churches when the Sabbath bells have ceased to chime. 
 
 A book of Twelve Homilies, or sermons, was also prepared under 
 the superintendence of Cranmer, for the use of those clergymen 
 who were not able to write sermons for themselves. The need of 
 such a work shows us how far behind the lower clergy then were, 
 even in the knowledge and use of their own tongue. Four of these 
 Homilies are ascribed to the pen of Cranmer. 
 
 His third great literary work was his superintendence of a re- 
 vised translation of the Bible, which is commonly called either 
 Cranmer's Bible from his share in its publication, or the 
 Great Bible from its comparative size. This edition, which 
 
THE GREAT BIBLE. 89 
 
 came out in ] 540, appears to have been founded on Tyndale'a 
 version. The Hebrew and Greek originals were carefully con- 
 sulted, and the English was compared with them, many of the 
 proof-sheets perhaps all of them passing under Cranmer's pen. 
 Cranmer's extant original works are very many, and possess 
 considerable merit ; but his literary reputation will always rest 
 mainly on the fact that he was what we may call editor-in-chief 
 of those three great works of the English Reformation already 
 noticed, the Book of Common Prayer, the Twelve Homilies, and 
 the Great Bible. 
 
90 KAfcLY LIFE OF SURREY. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY. 
 Born about 151 6 A.D Beheaded 1547 A.D. 
 
 Snrrcy's fame. 
 Early life. 
 Troubles. 
 Trial and death. 
 
 English metre. 
 
 Geraldine, 
 
 jEneid in blank verso. 
 
 Illustrative extracts 
 
 FOR two reasons the brillicant but unhappy Surrey holds a fore- 
 most place in the annals of our English literature. He was, so 
 far as we know, the earliest writer of English blank verse, and 
 he gave to English poetry a refinement and polish for which we 
 search in vain among his predecessors. 
 
 His father was the third Duke of Norfolk; and his mother, 
 Elizabeth, was a daughter of the great house of Buckingham. But 
 Surrey had more from Heaven than noble birth could give, for the 
 sacred fire of poetiy burned in his breast. Of his boyhood we 
 know nothing certain. Nursed in the lap of luxury, and the 
 darling of a splendid Court, he yet won a soldier's laurels both 
 in Scotland and in France. But his fame was not to be carved 
 out only with a sword. Travelling into Italy, he "tasted the 
 sweet and stately measures and stile of the Italian poesie," and 
 returned home to re-cast in the elegant mould of his accomplished 
 mind the metres of his native land. 
 
 At home, however, he became involved in many troubles. Some 
 of these resulted from the escapades of his own youthful folly. 
 He was once imprisoned for rioting in the streets at night and 
 breaking windows with a cross-bow. But other and graver evils 
 came. In the latter days of the reign, when "Bluff King Hal" 
 had become " Bloated King Hal," and iJl the courtly circle saw 
 that the huge heap of wickedness was sinking into the grave, 
 there arose a keen contest between the noble houses of Howard 
 
EXECUTION OP SURREY. 91 
 
 and Seymour. The element of religious strife added to the bitter- 
 ness of the feeling which grew up between these two rival families ; 
 for the Howards were Koman Catholics, and the Earl of Hertford, 
 the head of the Seymours, was a secret friend of the Reformation. 
 The grand aim of Hertford was to secure the protectorship of his 
 young nephew Prince Edward when the old king was dead. Surrey 
 and his father Norfolk, standing in the way, must perish. The thing 
 was easy to do; the name of Howard was poison to the king, 
 who had already soiled their proud escutcheon with an ugly 
 smear of blood, drawn, four years earlier, from the fair neck of 
 his fifth wife. Arrested for treason, the father and the 
 son, each ignorant of the other's capture, were hurried Dec. 12, 
 by different ways to the Tower. Surrey was tried at 1546 
 Guildhall on a flimsy charge of treason, supported chiefly A.D. 
 by the fact that he had quartered the arms of Edward 
 the Confessor on his shield with those of his own family. This 
 was tortured into a proof that he aimed at the throne. He had 
 long worn these arms, he said, even in the king's own sight; and 
 the heralds had allowed him to do so in virtue of his royal 
 descent. In spite of these simple truths, and the noble eloquence 
 of his defence, the poet was doomed to die; and on the 19th of 
 January 1547 his bright hair, all dabbled in blood, swept the 
 dust of the scaffold. Eight days later, the blood-stained Henry 
 died, just in time to save from the block the head of Norfolk, 
 whose execution had been arranged for the following morn- 
 ing, 
 
 Surrey's literary merits have been already noticed. Dr. Nott, 
 who edited Surrey's works, claims for the poet the honour of 
 having revolutionized English poetry, by substituting lines of fixed 
 length, where the accents fall evenly, for the rhythmical lines of 
 earlier poets, in which the number of syllables is irregular, and 
 the equality of the lines requires to be kept up by certain pauses 
 or cadences of the voice. But recent writers have shown that this 
 theory cannot be maintained. In the words of Dr. Craik, " The 
 true merit of Surrey is, that he restored to our poetry a correctness, 
 polish, and general spirit of refinement, such as it had not known 
 
9:2 THE EARLIEST ENGLISH BLANK- VERSE. 
 
 since Chaucer's time ; and of which, therefore, in the language aa 
 now spoken, there was no previous example whatever." Like 
 Chaucer, he caught his inspiration from the great bards of Italy, 
 and sat especially at the feet of Petrarch. In his purification 
 of English verse, he did good service by casting out those clumsy 
 Latin words, with which the lines of even D unbar are heavily 
 clogged. 
 
 The poems of Petrarch ring the changes in exquisite music on 
 his love for Laura. So the love-verses of Surrey are filled with 
 the praises of the fair Geraldine, whom Horace Walpole has tried 
 to identify with Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a daughter of the 
 Earl of Kildare. If this be so, Geraldine was only a girl of 
 thirteen when the poet, already married to Frances Vere for six 
 years, sang of her beauty and her virtue. It is no unlikely thing 
 that Surrey, an instinctive lover of the beautiful, was smitten with 
 a deep admiration of the fresh, young, girlish face of one 
 
 " Standing with reluctant feet, 
 Where the brook and river meet, 
 Womanhood and childhood fleet" 
 
 Such a feeling could exist it often has existed in the poet's 
 breast, free from all mingling of sin, and casting no shadow of 
 reproach upon a husband's loyalty. 
 
 Surrey's chief work was the translation into English blank- 
 verse of tlie Second and Fourth books of Virgil's " jEneid." Some 
 think that he borrowed this verse from Italy ; Dr. Nott supposes 
 that he got the hint from Gavin Douglas, the Scottish translator 
 of Virgil. Wherever the gem was found, Surrey has given it to 
 English literature ; a rough gem, indeed, at first, and shining with a 
 dim, uncertain gleam, but soon, beneath Shakspere's magic hand, 
 leaping forth to the sight of men, a diamond of the first water, 
 flashing with a thousand coloured lights. 
 
 Surrey is said to have written also the first English Sonnets* 
 
 * The Sonnet is borrowed from the Italian. It is a poem of fourteen lines, two of its four 
 stanzas having four lines each, and the others three lines. The rhymes are arranged ac- 
 cording to a particular rule. 
 
SPECIMENS OF SUREEY's VERS 
 
 FROM SURREY'S TRANSLATION OF VI 
 (FOURTH BOOK.) 
 
 But now the wounded quene with heavie care 
 Throwgh out the vaines doth nourishe ay the plage, 
 Surprised with blind flame, and to her minde 
 Gan to resort the prowes of the man 
 And honor of his race, whiles on her brest 
 Imprinted stake his wordes and forme of face, 
 Ne to her lymmes care graunteth quiet rest. 
 The next morowe with Phoebus lampe the erthe 
 Alightned clere, and eke the dawninge daye 
 The shadowe danke gan from the pole remove. 
 
 SONNET ON SPRING. 
 (MODERN SPELLING.) 
 
 The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings, [sweet 
 
 With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale. [also 
 
 The nightingale with feathers new she sings ; 
 
 The turtle to her make hath told her tale. [mate 
 
 Summer is come, for every spray now springs ; 
 
 The hart hath hung his old head on the pale, 
 
 The buck in brake his winter coat he flings ; 
 
 The fishes flete with new repaired scale ; [float 
 
 The adder all her slough away she flings ; 
 
 The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale ; [small 
 
 The busy bee her honey now she mings ; [mixes 
 
 Winter is worn that was the flowers bale. [evil 
 
 And thus I see among these pleasant things 
 
 Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs. 
 
94 WILLIAM DTJNBAE. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OTHER WRITERS OF THE SECOND ERA, 
 (1474-1558.) 
 
 POETS. 
 Robert Henryson. 
 William Dunbar. 
 Gavin Douglas. 
 Alexander Barclay. 
 Stephen Hawes. 
 John Skelton. 
 John Heywood. 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt. 
 
 Sir David Lyndsay. 
 Nicholas UdalL 
 
 PROSE WRITE us. 
 Robert Fabian. 
 Edward HalL 
 Lord Berners. 
 John Fisher. 
 Sir Thomas ElyoL 
 
 John Bcllenden. 
 John Leland. 
 Hugh Latimer. 
 Miles Coverdale. 
 John Bale. 
 John Knox. 
 George Cavendish. 
 Sir John Cheke. 
 John Fox. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 ROBERT HENRYSON was chief schoolmaster at Dunfermline about 
 the end of the fifteenth century. His longest poem is the Tes- 
 tament of Fair Creseide, in which Chaucer's tale of " Troilus and 
 Creseide" is continued. The fine ballad of Robin and Makyne, 
 which may be found in Percy's " Reliques," is ascribed to this ac- 
 complished man. The Moral Fables of jEsop, and The Garment 
 of Gude Ladyes, are his chief remaining works. He is said to 
 have died some time before 1508. 
 
 WILLIAM DUNBAR, placed by Sir Walter Scott at the head of 
 Scottish poets, and perhaps, therefore, deserving more prominence 
 than he receives here, is thought to have been a native of East 
 Lothian, and to have been closely allied to the noble house of 
 March. This Chaucer of the North graduated at St. Andrews as 
 M.A. in 1479. Then, assuming the grey robe of the Franciscans, 
 he travelled for some years in Britain and France, preaching and 
 begging, according to the custom of the friars ; and he afterwards 
 visited the English and some of the Continental courts, as an 
 attache to certain Scottish embassies. The many-coloured life he 
 thus spent is clearly reflected in his works, which show remark- 
 able knowledge of human nature and society. Pensions, rising 
 
95 
 
 at last to 80, rewarded the public services of the poet. Spend- 
 ing his last days in the irksome bondage of a court life, and 
 pining for a chance of escape from his gilded cage, he died about 
 1520, having reached the age of sixty years. 
 
 Dunbar's leading poems are three The Thistle and the Rose; 
 The Golden Terge; and, finest of all, The Dance of the Seven Deadly 
 Sins. 
 
 The first-named commemorates the marriage of King James 
 IV. with the English princess Margaret in 1503, an historical 
 event which paved the way for the close union of two sister 
 lands. 
 
 In the poem of "The Golden Terge," the sleeping bard is 
 attacked by Venus and her train. Reason, holding over him 
 a golden shield, repels all assailants, until blinded by a powder 
 which Presence flings in his eyes. The poor poet then becomes 
 the captive of Lady Beauty, and is much tormented until the 
 scene vanishes with a clap of thunder, and he awakes amid the 
 song of birds and the perfume of bright May flowers. 
 
 "The Dance" describes a vision, beheld during a trance into which 
 the poet fell on a winter night. In presence of Mahoun (that is, 
 Mahomet, or the Devil, for these were often interchangeable terms 
 about the days of the Crusades) Pride leads on the other deadly 
 sins in a fearful dance. Each sin is represented by a distinct 
 personification, painted in horror's darkest hues, and lighted in 
 the dance by the lurid flames through which he leaps. 
 
 GAVIN DOUGLAS was a younger son of the fifth Earl of Angus, 
 well known in Scottish story as Archibald Bell-the-Cat. He was 
 born about 1474. Having finished his education at Paris, he 
 rose by many minor steps to be Abbot of Aberbrothock, and was 
 afterwards consecrated Bishop of Dunkeld. But for the Pope's 
 refusal to sanction his appointment, he would have become Arch- 
 bishop of St. Andrews. 
 
 The work for which Douglas is most celebrated, is his poetical 
 translation of Virgil's " ^Eneid" into the Scottish dialect; remark- 
 able as being the first rendering of a Latin classic into our native 
 tongue. Two long allegories King Hart, and The Palace of 
 
96 POETRY OF GAVIN DOUGLAS. j 
 
 Honour were also written by this poet-priest. The distinctive 
 ' feature of his language is the abundant use of words iroio. the 
 Latin, an innovation by which the foreign-bred scholar strove to 
 lift the diction of his poems above the homely level of Dunbar 
 and other earlier bards. Original prologues stand before each 
 book, bright with pictures of nature ; to which, no doubt, the lovely 
 wooded hills, among which the Tay winds at Dunkel^, contributed 
 not a little of their exquisite colouring. 
 
 Flodden was a fatal day for the house of Douglas. The Master 
 of Angus and his brother William wet the Cheviot heather with 
 their life-blood. The old earl, whose wise caution had been rudely 
 repelled by the wilful king before the dark day of battle, retired 
 to Galloway to die. And the gentler scholar, Gavin, had soon to 
 flee to the English Court, and in 1521 or 1522 died in London of 
 the plague. 
 
 ALEXANDER BARCLAY, who died in 1522, flourished in the 
 reigns of Henry VII. and his son. He is remembered as the 
 writer of a poem, Tlie Ship of Fools, of which the name shows it 
 to be a satirical allegory. It was founded on the German of 
 Brandt. 
 
 STEPHEN HAWES, writer of the Pastime of Pleasure, and groom 
 of the chamber to Henry VII, was a Suffolkman. His skill in 
 versifying, combined with his knowledge of French and Italian, 
 made him a great favourite at court. 
 
 JOHN SKELTON, a coarse, bold satirist, was in his prime in the 
 latter days of Henry VII., and the earlier days of Henry VIII. 
 In a short-lined poem, called Colin Clout, he belabours the 
 clergy unmercifully with cudgel-words, making no choice of 
 weapons, but striking with the first that came to hand. He is 
 one of that useful band of satirists, among whom we reckon also 
 Longlande and Heywood, whose trenchant lines cut deep into the 
 foul growths of monkish ignorance and lust. So vigorous was the 
 assault of Skelton, that even the magnificent Wolsey found it 
 necessary to turn on the strong-voiced poet, who was forced to 
 shelter himself in the sanctuary of Westminster. There he died 
 in 1529. 
 
THE FIRST ENGLISH COMEDY. 97 
 
 JOHN HEYWOOD, styled the Epigrammatist, who flourished dur- 
 ing the reign of Henry VIII., was remarkable for his Interludes, 
 or short satirical plays, in which, as in " Colin Clout," the clergy 
 suffer tremendously. 
 
 SIR THOMAS WYATT was born in 1503 in Kent, and was educated 
 at Cambridge. His elegant scholarship and quick wit, added to a 
 fine person and remarkable skill with lance and rapier, speedily 
 won for him a brilliant reputation. But his life was not all sun- 
 shine : he was named as one of the lovers of Anne Boleyn, whose 
 praise he had sung in his verses ; and for this and other reasons he 
 was cast into prison. He was afterwards restored to royal favour, 
 and being employed on some mission by the king, he overheated 
 himself in riding on a summer day, took fever, and died at Sher- 
 bourne in Dorsetshire in 1541. He aided his friend Surrey in 
 raising the tone of English poetry. 
 
 SIR DAVID LYNDSAY of the Mount, born about 1490, was page 
 of honour to young James V., by whom he was knighted. He was 
 employed as envoy to Holland and Denmark, and was for two 
 years member of Parliament for his native shire of Fife. He died 
 in that county in 1557 at his seat, the Mount. His chief work 
 is the Play of tJie Three Estates, a dramatic satire on the king, 
 lords, and commons, which was acted in 1535 at Cupar-Fife and 
 Edinburgh. His Squire Meldrum, last of the metrical romances, 
 is lively but licentious. The Monarchie, opening with the 
 Creation and closing with the Day of Judgment, is valuable for 
 its spirited account of Scotland. A smaller piece, full of pungent 
 satire upon the court, is called the Complaynt of the King's 
 Papingo (peacock or parrot). 
 
 NICHOLAS UDALL, author of the earliest existing English comedy, 
 was born in Hampshire about 1506, and was educated at Oxford. 
 Udall was master of Eton, where his cruel floggings won for him 
 a more dubious kind of renown than his learning or his wit. His 
 comedy of Ralph Royster Doyster, in five acts, is thought to have 
 been written some time before 1551, for the Christmas perform- 
 ance at Eton. Udall died in 1557. 
 
 (15) 
 
98 PROSE WRITERS OF THE SECOND ERA. 
 
 PROSE WRITERS. 
 
 ROBERT FABIAN and EDWARD HALL are the earliest writers of 
 history in English prose. The former, a London alderman, who 
 died in 1512, wrote a chronicle of English history, called the 
 Concordance of Stories; in which fact and fiction are industri- 
 ously heaped together with honest, well-meaning dullness. The 
 latter, a lawyer, who died in 1547, gives us a more valuable book 
 in his History of the Houses of York and Lancaster. 
 
 LORD BERNERS, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Governor of 
 Calais under Hemy VIII., translated into vigorous English prose 
 Jean Froissarfs brilliant pictures of Chivalry. 
 
 JOHN FISHER. Let us not forget the English sermons- of the 
 Bishop of Rochester who bore this name. Leaving out of sight 
 higher results, the good done to our language by its weekly grow- 
 ing hosts of sermons, has been incalculable. Fisher, born in 1459, 
 lived a long life in steady adherence to the Church of Rome. In 
 the bloody year 1535 he was tried and convicted on a charge of 
 denying that Henry VIII. could be the head of the Church. As 
 the poor old bishop lay in the Tower, the pope sent him a 
 cardinal's hat " Ha!" said the royal wild beast, "Paul may send 
 him a hat, but I will leave him never a head to wear it!" The 
 savage threat was executed on the 22d of June, fourteen days 
 before his friend More met the same fate on the same charge. 
 
 SIR THOMAS ELYOT, the friend of Leland and of More, was emi- 
 nent as a medical man during the reign of Henry VIII. He wrote 
 a work called The Castle of Health, which contains much good 
 advice about food and such matters. Of more importance, how- 
 ever, was his educational work, TJie Governor, published in 1531, 
 in which he recommends that children should be taught to speak 
 Latin from their infancy, and that music, drawing, and carving 
 (that is sculpture), should have place in a scheme of enlightened 
 education. 
 
 JOHN BELLENDEN, Archdeacon of Moray and a Lord of Session 
 under Queen Mary, produced in 1536, by order of James V., a 
 translation of Hector Boece's History of Scotland. This is con- 
 
PROSE WRITERS OF THE SECOND ERA. 99 
 
 sidered the earliest existing specimen of Scottish prose literature. 
 An anonymous work, called The Complaynt of Scotland, pub- 
 lished at St. Andrews in 1548, was the first original work in 
 Scottish prose. Bellenden also translated the first Five Books of 
 Livy, writing, besides, Poems, Epistles to James V. } and a Sketch of 
 Scottish Topography. 
 
 JOHN LELAND, the father of our archaeological literature, was 
 born in London. Passing from St. Paul's school, he studied at 
 Cambridge, Oxford, and Paris, and then became a chaplain to Henry 
 VIII. His powers as a linguist were remarkable. His great 
 work is the Itinerary, in which he gives the results of his many 
 antiquarian tours. Insane during his last two years, he died in 
 his native city in 1552. 
 
 HUGH LATIMER, famous as a leader of the English Reformation, 
 was born in Leicestershire about 1472, received his education at 
 Cambridge, and became Bishop of Worcester in 1535. When the 
 Act of the Six Articles was passed, he resigned in disgust, and 
 spent the last six years of the reign of Henry VIII. in prison, 
 liberated by Edward VI., he devoted himself earnestly to the 
 work of preaching. His style many of his Sermons and Letters 
 remain is remarkable for its homeliness and its wealth of droll 
 anecdotes and illustrations. He was too great a champion of the 
 truth to escape the flames that Mary lit. Ridley and he burned 
 together at Oxford in 1555. His were the glorious, ever-memor- 
 able words, spoken ere the lips of the aged prophet were shrivelled 
 into ashes, "We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, 
 in England, as I trust shall never be put out." 
 
 MILES COVERDALE, Bishop of Exeter, was born in Yorkshire in 
 1487. His changeful life extended far into the succeeding cen- 
 tury (1568). His name is imperishably associated with the story 
 of the English Bible; for in 1535 he published, with a dedication 
 to the king, the first printed translation of the whole Bible. He 
 was also much engaged in the preparation of the Great, or Cran- 
 mer's Bible (1540); and when exiled in the time of Mary, he took 
 part in the Geneva translation, printed there in 1557 and 1560, 
 He is supposed to have died in London in 1568. 
 
100 PROSE WRITERS OF THE SECOND ERA. 
 
 JOHN BALE, Bishop of Ossory in Ireland, was born in Suffolk 
 in 1495. He is chiefly remarkable for a Latin work, Lives of 
 Eminent Writers of Great Britain, the list beginning with Japheth ! 
 Many interludes and scriptural dramas were also written by him, 
 besides a Chronicle of Lord Cobham's Trial and Death. He 
 died at Canterbury in 1563. 
 
 JOHN KNOX, the great reformer of Scotland, cannot be forgotten 
 here, although his literary works were few. A History of the 
 Scottish Reformation was the chief of these. Born at or near 
 Haddington in 1505, he received his education at St. 'Andrews, 
 became the leader of the Scottish Reformation, and died at Edin- 
 burgh in 1572. 
 
 GEORGE CAVENDISH is remarkable as the writer of a very truth- 
 ful and unaffected Life of Cardinal Wolsey, whose gentleman- 
 usher he was, and whom he served to the last with devoted fidelity. 
 This work, from which Shakspere has largely drawn in his play 
 of Henry VIII., was not printed until 1641. Cavendish, who was 
 also a member of the royal household, died in 1557. 
 
 SIR JOHN CHEKE, who was bora in 1514, is more worthy of 
 remembrance for his success in fostering the study of Greek at 
 Cambridge, when the hated novelty was in danger of being 
 trampled to death by an opposing party, than for his contributions 
 to English literature. A pamphlet called The Hurt of Sedition 
 is his only original English work. He left also some manuscript 
 translations from the Greek. He died in 1557. 
 
 JOHN Fox, born at Boston in 1517, is distinguished as the author 
 of the Acts and Monuments of the Church, which is familiarly 
 known as Fox's Book of Martyrs. His education was received at 
 Oxford, whence he was expelled for heresy in 1545. At one 
 time he was all but starving in London ; at another he had to 
 flee for his life to the Continent from the persecutions of Mary's 
 reign. His great work occupied him for eleven years, and was 
 published in 1563. Under Elizabeth he became a prebend of 
 Salisbury, after declining many other offers of promotion in the 
 Church. He died in 1587. 
 
THE MIRACLE PLAYS. 101 
 
 THIRD ERA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 FROM THE ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH IN 1558 A,D. TO THE 
 SHUTTING OF THE THEATRES IN 1648 A.D, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE PLAYS AND PLAYERS OF OLD ENGLAND. 
 
 Miracle plays. 
 Moralities. 
 Interludes. 
 The Four Ps. 
 Comedy and Tragedy. 
 
 The old stage. 
 Early scenery. 
 Wall and Moonshine. 
 At the play. 
 Standing of the players. 
 
 THE Miracle Play or Mystery, acted in churches and convents, either 
 by the clergy themselves or under their immediate direction, was 
 the earliest form of the English drama. The only knowledge 
 of Bible history possessed by the rude and ignorant masses cf 
 the people, during the later centuries of the Middle Ages, was 
 got from these plays. The subjects chosen were the most strik- 
 ing stories in the Book such as the Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, 
 Abraham's Trial, the Crucifixion ; and these were dramatized with 
 little regard to the sacred and awful nature of the themes. Pro- 
 fane and terrible, indeed, were these mistaken teachings. Three plat- 
 forms rose, one above another, forming a triple stage. The top- 
 most, representing the heaven of heavens, was occupied by a group 
 of actors, who personated the Almighty and his angels. Below stood 
 those who played the parts of the redeemed. Upon the lowest, 
 which imitated the world, the deeds of men were represented ; 
 and not far from the side of this lowest stage there smoked a fiery 
 gulf, which stood for hell. All this is bad enough, but worse 
 remains behind. The comic element must not be forgotten ; for 
 the poor yokels, who gather to be taught and amused, would 
 
102 THE MOEALITIES. 
 
 yawn and sleep, if there were no broad jokes and boisterous fun 
 to relieve the solemnities of the performance. And of all beings, 
 whom should these priests of the Church choose to be their first 
 comedian, but the Prince of Darkness ! He it was who, equipped 
 according to the vulgar notion with hoofs and horns and tail, 
 created the fun by which the congregation was kept awake and in 
 good temper. This trifling with awful subjects shows us how low 
 the religion both of priests and people was in tone and feeling. 
 It took a week to act some of these Mysteries; and there are 
 instances in which the whole circle of religious doctrine and his- 
 tory was traversed in this barbarous fashion. All the countries of 
 western and south-western Europe, as well as Britain, have some 
 remains of the old Mystery literature. 
 
 Gradually these Miracle Plays changed into the Moralities, 
 which formed the second stage in the development of the English 
 drama. Here, instead of Scripture characters, we find abstract 
 qualities personified and strutting in varied garments on the 
 stage. Noah and Abraham have given place to Justice, Mercy, 
 Gluttony, and Vice. The amount of morality, learned by the 
 audiences who gathered round such actors, cannot have been great; 
 but we must respect to some extent the intention of the authors 
 who produced these plays, and meant them to do good. Students 
 in the universities, boys at the public schools, town councillors, 
 or brethren of the various trade guilds, acted these Moralities on 
 certain great days and state occasions. An open scaffold knocked 
 up in the market-place, or a platform of planks drawn upon 
 wheels, served as a stage, on which such pieces as Hit tlie Nail 
 on the Head, or, Tlie Hog hath Lost his Pearl, were acted by these 
 dramatic amateurs. The Devil of the Miracle Plays was still 
 retained, to aid the Vice in doing the comic business of the 
 Moralities. The fun, most relished by such audiences as Old 
 England could then produce, consisted in calling bad names and 
 hitting hard blows. Such contests of tongue and fist went on con- 
 tinually between the Devil and the Vice; but in many cases the 
 former carried off his victim in triumph at the close of the per- 
 formance. 
 
EARLIEST ENGLISH COMEDY AND TEAGEDY. 103 
 
 Thus the two branches of our drama sprang from one and the 
 same root. A Morality, broken in two, supplies the elements of 
 both. Its serious portions form the groundwork of English 
 tragedy; its lighter scenes, of English comedy. But, between 
 the Moralities and the appearance of our earliest Comedy, came the 
 Interludes, which strongly resembled our modern Farce. Of these 
 John Heywood was the most noted writer. He lived in the reign 
 of Henry VIII., whose idle hours he often amused with his music 
 and his wit. The controversial spirit of the Reformation a,ge 
 deeply penetrated the nascent drama. Moralities and Interludes 
 abound, which are just so many rockets, charged with jest and 
 sneer and railing, that the opposing sides launched fiercely at each 
 other in the heat of the religious war. 
 
 An idea of the Interludes may be formed from a single speci- 
 men. The four Ps describes in doggerel verse a contest carried 
 on by a Pedlar, a Palmer, a Pardoner, and a 'Poticary, in which 
 each character tries to tell the greatest lie. On they go, heaping 
 up the most outrageous falsehoods they can frame, until the 
 chance hit of the Pardoner, who says that he never saw a woman 
 out of temper, strikes the others dumb. This tremendous bouncer 
 nobody can beat, so the Pardoner wins the prize. 
 
 The Greek and Latin drama, with the refined productions of 
 Italy and Spain, had much to do with the moulding of our English 
 plays into a perfect shape. 
 
 Ralph Royster Doyster, a dramatic picture of London life, writ- 
 ten before 1551, by Nicholas Udall, is so far as we know the 
 first English comedy. And the old British story of Ferrex and 
 Porrex, dramatized by Sackville and Norton, which was acted in 
 15G1 by the students of the Inner Temple, is considered the 
 earliest tragedy in the language. The introduction of human 
 characters, instead of the walking allegories that trod the Moral 
 stage, is the grand distinctive feature which marks the rise of the 
 true English drama. There is something in the very words 
 abstraction and allegory to make men yawn; and few were 
 deeply moved at the sufferings or triumphs of Justice and Peace. 
 But when real life was put upon the stage, when crim.es were per- 
 
104 FIRST ENGLISH THEATRES. 
 
 petrated, marriages managed, sufferings endured, difficulties over- 
 come by actors who bore the names and did the deeds of human 
 flesh and blood, a new interest was given to our plays, and the 
 audience wept and laughed not at the performance, but with the 
 performers. 
 
 By a sudden and enormous stride, the English drama reached 
 the magnificent creations of Shakspere in a few years after the 
 production of its earliest perfect specimens. Not half a century 
 after the court of Henry VIII. had been amused with the grotesque 
 drolleries of John Heywood, Elizabeth and her maids of honour 
 assembled to laugh at the fortunes and misfortunes of old Jack 
 Falstaff, and to tremble in the shadow of the finest tragedies 
 the English stage has ever seen. 
 
 We must not suppose, however, that the Theatres kept pace with 
 the wonderful improvement of the Drama. To form a true idea of 
 the stage on which the Elizabethan plays were acted, we 
 must carry our recollection back to those yellow-painted wooden 
 caravans, that travel round the country fairs, and supply the de- 
 lighted rustics, in exchange for their pennies, with a tragedy full 
 of ghosts and murder, and thrilling with single combats between 
 valiant warriors in tin armour, who fight with broadswords made 
 of old iron hoops. The travelling stage was often set up in 
 the court-yard of an inn. A wooden erection little better than 
 what we call a shed there sheltered the company and their 
 audience. When in 157G the first licensed theatre was opened 
 at Blackfriars in London, it was merely a round wooden wall 
 or building, enclosing a space open to the sky. The stage, 
 indeed, was covered with a roof of thatch ; but upon the greater 
 part of the house as in modern days we call the spectators the 
 sun shone and the rain fell without let or hindrance. 
 
 The rude attempts at scenery in such theatres as the Rose and 
 the Globe, which were among the leading London houses, make us 
 smile, who have witnessed the gorgeous scenic triumphs of Kean 
 and his brother managers. Some faded tapestry, or poorly daubed 
 canvas hung round the timbers of the stage, at the back of which 
 ran a gallery eight or ten feet high to hold those actors who 
 
SCENERY IN SHAKSPERE's DAY. 105 
 
 might be supposed to speak from castle walls, windows, high 
 rocks, or other lofty places. A change of scene was denoted by 
 hanging out in view of the spectators a placard with the name of 
 the place Padua, Athens, or Paris painted on it. A further 
 stretch of imagination was required from the assembly, when the 
 removal of a dingy throne, and the setting down of a rough table 
 with drinking vessels, were supposed to turn a palace into a 
 tavern ; or the exchange of a pasteboard rock for a thorn branch 
 was expected to delude all into the belief that they saw no longer 
 a pebbly shore, but a leafy forest. An exquisitely comical illus- 
 tration of this ecenic poverty may be found in "Midsummer Night's 
 Dream," where the Athenian tradesmen rehearse a play, and act 
 it before Duke Theseus. Funny as it seems, the picture was drawn 
 from the realities of the author's day. The play of " Pyramus and 
 Thisbe" requires the introduction of a wall upon the stage, that the 
 lovers may whisper their vows through a chink in its masonry. So 
 Snout the tinker is daubed with plaster, and coming on the stage, 
 announces to the audience that he is to be considered the Wall ; 
 and for a chink, he forms a circle with thumb and fingers, through 
 which the appointment to meet at Ninny's tomb is made by the 
 ardent lovers. Then in comes one with a lantern, a thorn bush, 
 and a dog, who calls himself the Man in the moon, and proceeds 
 to light the midnight scene. An unbelieving critic, who sits 
 among the onlookers, suggests that the man, the bush, and the 
 dog should get into the lantern, since the appearance of the Man 
 in the moon, carrying the moon in which he lived, was likely to 
 cause some confusion of ideas. The notion of Wall and Moon 
 shine announcing their respective characters to the audience, is, no 
 doubt, a bit of Shakspere's native humour; but every day that our 
 great dramatist acted in the Globe he saw as sorry makeshifts for 
 scenery as the lime-daubed tinker who acted Wall, and the dim 
 tallow candle, in sore need of snuffing, that sputtered in the lantern 
 of Moonshine. 
 
 At one o'clock on Sundays especially, but also on other days 
 the play-house flag was hoisted on the roof, announcing that 
 the performance was going to begin; and there it fluttered till the 
 
106 SCENE IN THE PLAY-HOUSE. 
 
 play was over. Placards had already told tlie public what was to 
 be the performance of the day. The audience consisted of two 
 classes ; the groundlings, or lower orders, who paid a trifle for ad- 
 mission to the pit ; and the gallants, who paid sixpence apiece 
 for stools upon the rush-strewn stage, where they sat in two rows 
 smoking, and showing off their ruffs and doublets, while the actors 
 played between them. The circle of the pit resounded with oaths 
 and quarrelling, mingled with the clatter of ale- pots and the noise 
 of card-playing. Nor did the occupants of the full-dress stools 
 show better breeding than the unwashed groundlings. Noise, 
 tobacco smoke, and the heavy fumes of ale, formed the main parts 
 of the atmosphere, in which our noblest plays were ushered into 
 fame. When the trumpets had sounded, a figure in a long black 
 velvet cloak came forward to recite the prologue. Then the play 
 began; and, if its early scenes did not suit the taste of the 
 audience, a storm of noises arose; hisses, yells, cat-calls, cock- 
 crowing, whistling drowned the actors' voices, and stopped the 
 progress of the play. In short, Elizabeth's loyal subjects used 
 or abused their lungs just as vigorously as those of Queen Victoria 
 can do in Parliament, and out of it as welL The actors attired 
 in the costume of their own day played in masks and wigs ; and 
 the female parts the Violas, the Portias, the Rosalinds were 
 rilled by boys, or smooth-faced young men, in women's dress. All 
 was over by three or four o'clock, and then th audience went home 
 to an early supper. 
 
 The players of whom Shakspere was one held no very ex- 
 alted place in the society of the day. The very familiar way in 
 which their Christian names have come down to us as Will and 
 Ben shows that they were lightly esteemed by the courtiers 
 and nobles ; looked upon, if not exactly as menial servants in 
 livery, yet as something not far above the jester who shook his 
 cap and bells at the supper tables of the great. They were formed 
 into companies generally under the patronage of some nobleman, 
 at whose parties they acted in presence of the guests. Neither 
 their acting nor their play-writing they nearly all held the 
 dramatist's pen did so much for the more prosperous players as 
 
HOW SHAKSPERE GREW HIGH. 107 
 
 tlieir shares in the Globe, or some other of the London theatres. 
 The sum which managers paid before 1600 for a new play, never 
 exceeded 8 or 10; when, a little later, the number of theatres 
 increased, the price rose to 20 or 25, and the receipts of the 
 second day became the author's perquisite. A few stray shillings 
 might be also made by writing prologues to new pieces. It was 
 the pennies of the groundlings, and the sixpences of the gallants, 
 not the sale of his splendid dramas, that enabled Shakspere to buy 
 his house at Stratford, and retire a rich man to die in his native 
 town. Many a university man, however, like Jonson and Chapman, 
 earned his manchets and his sack, his steaks and ale, by acting 
 and writing for the stage. The two occupations were nearly al- 
 ways united ; and the wiser brethren of the buskin and the sock 
 added, as Shakspere did, a third and more fruitful source of in- 
 come, by investing their early gains in theatre shares. Shakspere 
 acted at the Globe, wrote for the Globe, and pockete'd so much of 
 the money taken at the doors of the Globe. A sensible and pru- 
 dent man was this glorious dramatist, utterly unsympathizing with 
 the ridiculous notion, hardly yet extinct, that a real poet must of 
 necessity be a reckless, improvident fool. 
 
108 ASCHAM AT CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ROGER ASCHAM. 
 
 Born 1515 A.D Died 1568 A.D. 
 
 Ascham's fame. 
 Birth and education. 
 Toxophilus. 
 Elisabeth's tutor. 
 
 In Germany. 
 Mary's reign. 
 The pupil-queen. 
 Ascham's death. 
 
 Titles of his bookn 
 Plan of the Toxophilus. 
 The School-master. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 ROGER ASCHAM, an eminent teacher as well as a great writer, has 
 thus won double fame as a man of letters. He acted as classical 
 tutor to Queen Elizabeth, whose fondness for him was very great ; 
 and he left behind him two works, which rank high among our 
 English classics. 
 
 At Kirby Wiske, near Northallerton in Yorkshire, he was born 
 in 1515, the son of an honest yeoman who acted as steward to the 
 Scroopes. A certain Sir Anthony "Wingfield, noticing the studious 
 boy, took him among his own sons, gave him a good education, 
 and in 1530 sent him to St. John's at Cambridge. To the 
 study of Greek which was just then taking root in our universi- 
 ties the young student applied himself with such ardour, that he 
 was soon qualified to read Greek lectures to his younger associates. 
 In 1534 he took B.A., and M.A in 1536. And then he en- 
 tered on the life of a teacher, for which he was remarkably well 
 qualified. When Cheke resigned in 1544, he was chosen to fill 
 the honourable office of University Orator. 
 
 One year later, his first great book, Toxopkilus, was published. 
 
 This work won for him the kind wishes and cordial sup- 
 
 1545 port of troops of friends, besides the notice of King 
 
 A.D. Henry, who granted the writer a pension of 10 a 
 
 year. 
 
 Ascham was shortly afterwards chosen to act as private tutor 
 to the Princess Elizabeth. It was a fortunate choice for both the 
 royal girl and the Cambridge man. Fortunate for her, because 
 
A ROYAL SCHOLAR. 109 
 
 her fine intellect was intrusted to the culture of one who knew 
 his profession and loved it well ; fortunate for him, because during 
 two happy years (1548-50) he enjoyed the delight of teaching 
 one who loved to learn, and in after days he found, in his sub- 
 missive and hard-working pupil, a royal mistress, who loved and 
 honoured her Greek master to the last. 
 
 The last three years of King Edward's reign (1550-53) Ascham 
 spent in Germany, acting as secretary to Sir Richard Morysine, 
 who was English ambassador at the Imperial Court. His ex- 
 periences of German life are embodied in a work on that country 
 and court. During these three years of absence his friends at 
 home were endeavouring to do him good. His pension, which 
 had ceased at the death of Henry VIII., was restored, and he re- 
 ceived in addition the important office of Latin Secretary to the 
 king. 
 
 Upon the accession of Queen Mary a cloud seemed to hang 
 over the fortunes of the scholar, who was a keen Protestant. But 
 the shadows passed. Bishop Gardiner was induced to look kindly 
 on him, and on the strength of his book " Toxophilus," his pension 
 was doubled, and his appointment as Latin Secretary was renewed. 
 Nor was his college standing altered, for he still held his fellow- 
 ship, and still wore the honours of Public Orator. 
 
 Under the sceptre of Elizabeth his life was a smooth and quiet 
 stream. But it was fast gliding to its rest. Her majesty read 
 Greek and Latin with her honoured tutor for some hours almost 
 every morning, and in the evening they often played at tables or 
 shovel-board together. At last the studies, that he loved so well, 
 proved too much for the scholar's weakened frame. A feverish- 
 ness, which prevented him from afternoon study and broke his 
 night's rest, had long hung about him. Anxious to finish by New 
 Year's day 1569 a poem, which he was writing in honour of his 
 royal pupil, he began to work at night. Ague seized him, and in 
 a week laid him on his death-bed (December 30, 1568). So old Roger 
 Ascham died, as many of his life's best hours had been spent, in 
 the service of his pupil-queen. When she heard that the kind 
 heart was still in death, whose warmest pulses had throbbed for 
 
110 WORKS OF ROGER ASCHAM. 
 
 her, she cried out, " I would rather have thrown ten thousand 
 pounds into the sea than have lost my Ascham." 
 
 The titles of Ascham's three chief books are here given in full, 
 as a specimen of the way in which the writers of this time named 
 their works. We have, 1. "Toxophilus, the Schole or Partitions 
 of Shootinge, contayned in II. Bookes. Written by Roger Ascham, 
 1544, and now newly perused. Pleasaunt for all Gentlemen and 
 Yeomen of Englande, for theyr pastime to reade, and profitable 
 for theyr use to followe both in Warre and Peace." 2. " A Report 
 and Discourse, written by Roger Ascham, of the Affaires and 
 State of Germany, and of the Emperor Charles his Court, during 
 certain years while the sayd Roger was there." 3. " The Schole- 
 Master ; or Plain and Perfite Way of teaching Children to Under- 
 stand, Write, and Speake the Latin Tongue, but specially purposed 
 for the private bringing up of Youth in Jentlemen and Noblemen's 
 Houses." 
 
 The Toxophilus is, in many things, a sensible and pleasant 
 book on archery, cast into the form of a dialogue, between a lover 
 of study (Philologus), and a lover of archery (Toxophilus). But, 
 while it very properly insists on the use of out-door recreation to 
 the studious man, it gives an undue prominence to the pastime 
 whose name it bears, and needlessly undervalues some fine old 
 English athletic sports. The language of the book in the pre- 
 face he half apologizes for not writing it in Latin is good honest 
 English prose, pretending to no great elegance, but full of idio- 
 matic strength. 
 
 Ascham's greatest work is The Schoolmaster, which was not 
 published until after the author's death. It is noted as being the 
 first important work on Education in our literature. The idea of the 
 book sprang from a discussion at Cecil's dinner-table at Windsor. 
 Some of the Eton boys having run away from school to escape a 
 flogging, the conversation turned upon this bit of local news ; and 
 Ascham spoke out his mind. On the encouragement of Sackville, 
 who sat by, he committed his thoughts to paper, and so the book 
 began. The first section of the work condemns severity in the 
 treatment of the young, while the second develops a new way of 
 
SPECIMEN OP ASCHAM'S STYLE. Ill 
 
 teaching Latin, without putting the pupils through the prepara- 
 tory drudgery of mastering the details of the grammar. 
 
 Ascham's work on Germany gives, besides much political in- 
 formation, some curious pictures of the Emperor and his court, 
 which are valuable as being sketched by an eye-witness. 
 
 EXTRACT FROM "THE SCHOOLMASTER" OF ASCHAM. 
 
 Before I went into Germany, I came to Broadgate in Leicestershire, to take 
 my leave of that noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding much beholden. 
 Her parents, the duke and duchess, with all the household, gentlemen and 
 gentlewomen, were hunting in the park. I found her in her chamber reading 
 Phcedon Platonis in Greek, and that with as much delight as some gentle- 
 men would read a merry tale in Bocace. After salutation and duty done, 
 with some other talk, I asked her why she would lose such pastime in the park] 
 Smiling, she answered me : "I wiss, all their sport in the park is but a shadow 
 to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas ! good folk, they never felt what 
 true pleasure meant." " And how came you, madam," quoth I, "to this deep 
 knowledge of pleasure 1 And what did chiefly allure you unto it, seeing not 
 many women, but very few men, have attained thereunto ?" "I will tell you," 
 quoth she, " and tell you a truth which, perchance, ye will marvel at. One of the 
 greatest benefits that ever God gave me, is, that he sent me so sharp and severe 
 parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of 
 father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be 
 merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it, 
 as it were in such weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly as God made 
 the world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea, presently, 
 sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs, and other ways which I will not name 
 for the honour I bear them, so without measure misordered, that I think myself 
 in hell, till time come that I must go to Mr. Elmer; who teacheth me so 
 gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all 
 the time nothing, whiles I am with him." 
 
112 EARLY LIFE OF BUCHANAN. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 GEORGE BUCHANAN. 
 
 Bora 1506 A.D Died 1582 A.D. 
 
 The Scottish VirgiL 
 His education. 
 Offends the monks. 
 Bordeaux. 
 
 Coimbra. 
 
 Translates the Psalms. 
 Tutor to Mary and James 
 the Sixth. 
 
 Last days and death. 
 History of Scotland. 
 The Psalms. 
 Arthur Johnston. 
 
 GEORGE BUCHANAN has been styled the Scottish Virgil from the 
 elegance of his Latin verse, in which among moderns he stands 
 unrivalled, at least by any writer of British birth. Nor is his 
 Latin prose much inferior in vigour and in flow. 
 
 Born in Dumbartonshire in 1506, he passed, after a poor and 
 struggling boyhood, to the University of Paris, where he was sup- 
 ported by the kindness of his uncle, James Heriot. But in less than 
 two years the death of this good friend flung him upon the world, 
 sick and poor. Pteturning to Scotland, he joined a Scottish army 
 that was marching into England ; but the hardships of a soldier's 
 life once more laid him on a sick-bed. When restored to health, 
 he went to college at St. Andrews, graduated there, and went 
 again to France, where he completed his academic course at Paris. 
 About the age of twenty-three he was chosen professor in the 
 College of St. Barbe, and then began his teaching life. 
 
 Having acted for five years as tutor to the young Earl of 
 Cassilis, who lodged near St. Barbe, Buchanan returned with his 
 pupil to his native land. His growing reputation as a teacher 
 won for him the notice of James V. who intrusted one of his 
 own natural sous to his care. This office he continued to fill 
 until his poetic satires upon the vices of the friars, especially the 
 poem called Franciscanus, drew upon him the fiery wrath of the 
 clergy. Charged with holding the Lutheran heresy he really 
 Jiad caught the flame in Paris he was arrested; and but for 
 
TRANSLATING THE PSALMS INTO LATIN. 113 
 
 his lucky escape through a window, while his keepers 
 were asleep, the name of Buchanan might now be read 1539 
 with those of Hamilton and Wishart upon the sand- A.D. 
 stone obelisk at St. Andrews. 
 
 Before the year closed, we find him teaching Latin in the Col- 
 lege of Guienne at Bordeaux. While there he made the acquaint- 
 ance of the Scaligers, father and son, who lived at Agen. Here, 
 too, he wrote four tragedies. After some changes of fortune in 
 France, Buchanan went to fill a chair in the newly established 
 College of Coimbra in Portugal, on the invitation of his friend 
 Govea, who had been appointed Principal. Here he was assailed, 
 after a short interval of peace, by the revengeful monks, who had 
 never forgiven the poems, in which he had heaped ridicule on their 
 order. The fearful machinery of the Inquisition was now in full work, 
 and Buchanan was in considerable danger of his life. But after the 
 delay of a year and a half, he was sentenced to confinement in a 
 monastery, where he was to be schooled by the monks into better 
 behaviour and sounder views. It is said, but without a shadow 
 of evidence, that these monks gave George, as a punishment, the 
 task of translating the Psalms into Latin verse. He certainly 
 began in that quiet Portuguese cloister the version of the Psalms 
 which has made his name so great ; and what more natural than 
 that he should thus beguile the lagging hours of a captive's life 1 
 We can fancy the keen pleasure with which his eye would brighten, 
 when the dull homilies of the monks were done for the day, and 
 he found himself among his well-thumbed books in some seques- 
 tered nook, where, with the vine leaves tapping at the open grat- 
 ing, and a glimpse of the deep azure sky seen beyond their tender 
 green, he loved to sit writing his great work. Upon his release, 
 finding his chances of promotion in Portugal very doubtful, he 
 sailed to England, whence after some time he passed to France. 
 We find him soon in Italy, teaching the son of Marshal de Brissac, 
 a great French soldier, by whom he was treated with respectful 
 kindness. The termination of this engagement, which lasted for 
 five years, marks the close of Buchanan's Continental life. 
 
 The return of Buchanan to his native land, which was then 
 
 (15) 8 
 
114 TUTOR TO JAMES THE SIXTH. 
 
 convulsed with the throes of the Reformation, took place shortly 
 before the year 1562. His fame as a teacher had crossed the 
 Straits of Dover before him ; and he was honoured, in spite of his 
 Protestant principles, with the office of classical tutor to Queen 
 Mary, who read a passage of Livy with him every day after 
 dinner. In 1564 he received from his royal mistress and pupil, in 
 recognition of his literary merit, the temporalities of Crossraguel 
 Abbey, which were worth 500 a year in Scottish money. The 
 Earl of Murray, who was then the leading man in Scotland, took 
 special notice of this great scholar, and made him, about 1566, 
 Principal of St. Leonard's College at St. Andrews. The terrible 
 murder of Darnley, and the infamous marriage of Mary with 
 Bothwell, soon split Scotland into rival factions. Buchanan, sid- 
 ing with the Regent Murray, undertook the tuition of 
 1570 the young king, James VI; into whom, according to the 
 A.D. fashion of those days and later days, too, not far from 
 our own he whipped so much Greek and Latin, that the 
 thick-speaking, shambling, unwashed pedant acquired the name of 
 the " British Solomon." There is more than a spice of irony in 
 the appellation ; though, doubtless, many a servile courtier, with 
 a fat living or an easy place in his eye, used it in another sense. 
 Bitter and stern words flowed from Buchanan's pen against the 
 royal girl, once his pupil, who had so fearfully sullied the crown 
 she wore, and so recklessly outraged her people's love. The Latin 
 work, Detectio Marios Regince, is a fierce exposure of her guilt and 
 shame. Eight years later, in 1579, followed a masterly political 
 work, De Jure Regni, maintaining the right of the people to 
 control their rulers. 
 
 The last days of this great Scotsman were passed quietly, 
 although his pupil James did not look so kindly on him after the 
 publication of his republican book in 1579. He wrote a yearly 
 letter, transmitted by the wine-ships that traded from Leith to 
 Bordeaux, to his old friend and colleague, Vinetus. He penned a 
 modest account of his own life; and he completed his second 
 great work, TJie History of Scotland on which he had been engaged 
 for twenty years. 
 
115 
 
 In his seventy-seventh year he breathed his last, so poor that 
 his body was buried at the expense of the city of Edinburgh. 
 His " History of Scotland " was then passing through the press. 
 It is written in Latin, which many writers prefer to that of Livy, 
 and consider equal to that of Sallust. The record of events is 
 brought down to the year 1572, and occupies twenty books, into 
 which the whole work is divided. Buchanan adopts that prac- 
 tice of the ancient historians, by which they put fictitious speeches 
 into the mouths of their leading characters. This, however well 
 adapted for displaying the historian's skill in composition, takes 
 from the truthfulness, which should be the pervading and govern- 
 ing quality of all history. 
 
 In his magnificent Latin version of the Psalms he has used 
 twenty-nine different metres. The translation is freely executed, 
 BO that it frequently becomes a paraphrase rather than an exact 
 rendering. The 104th and 137th Psalms are considered the gems 
 of this master-piece of elegant scholarship and poetic fire. 
 
 Among the miscellaneous works of Buchanan, it may suffice 
 to name two, the Epithalamium, which he wrote in honour of 
 Queen Mary's first marriage; and a poem composed on the occasion 
 of James the Sixth's birth. Both are in Latin, and both contain 
 passages of excelling sweetness. A tract, called The Chamceleon, 
 satirizing Secretary Maitland, affords a scanty specimen, but quite 
 enough too, of the rugged Scotch, in which this Scottish Virgil 
 transacted his daily business. 
 
 A physician to Charles I., born in 1587 at Aberdeen, by name 
 Arthur Johnston, much of whose life was also spent abroad, wrote 
 a complete Latin version of the Psalms in elegiacs, which Hallara 
 values almost as highly as the version of Buchanan. 
 
11C WHAT PHILIP SIDNKY WAS L1KS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 
 
 Born 1554 A.D Died 158C A.D. 
 
 The boy Philip. 
 
 On the Continent 
 
 Appearance and character. 
 
 The Arcadia. 
 
 The Defense of Poesie. 
 
 Tiies for Flushing. 
 Skirmish near Zuti'hen. 
 His death. 
 Other works. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 WHILE Elizabeth in the first year of her glorious reign was 
 receiving the congratulations of a rejoicing land, a boy, not yet 
 five years old, was plucking daisies and chasing butterflies on the 
 green lawns of Penshurst in Kentshire. It was Philip Sidney, 
 son of Sir Henry Sidney and Mary Dudley, who was sister to the 
 magnificent Leicester, soon to be prime favourite of the Queen. 
 
 Philip, born in 1554, went to school at Shrewsbury, and passed 
 thence to Oxford and Cambridge, where he won a scholar's name. 
 Having spent three years in Continental travel, during which he 
 saw Paris drenched in the blood of Huguenots, and himself nar- 
 rowly escaped death on the fearful day of St. Bartholomew, he 
 returned in his twenty-first year to England, a polished and 
 accomplished man. 
 
 Hi a debut at court was an instant and decided success. No 
 doubt his uncle, Leicester, then in the full blaze of royal favour, 
 had much to do with this; but Sidney had personal qualities 
 which won for him the smiles of all. His finely-cut Anglo-Nor- 
 man face, his faint moustache, his soft blue eyes, and flowing amber 
 hair, were enough to make him the darling of the women; while his 
 skill in horsemanship, fencing, and manly games, gained the respect 
 and admiration of the men. Higher than these outward and acci- 
 dental graces must we rank the intellect and scholarship which 
 stamped him as one of England's greatest sons ; and higher still, 
 that gentle heart, whose pulses, always human, never throbbed 
 
THE "ARCADIA." 117 
 
 more kindly than when, on the field of his death, he turned the 
 cooling draught from his own blackened lips to slake the dying 
 thirst of a bleeding soldier, past whom he was carried. 
 
 Yet this brilliance was not without its clouds. At tennis one 
 day he quarrelled with the Earl of Oxford, who ordered him to 
 leave the playing-ground. This Sidney refused to do; -upon which 
 Oxford, losing temper, called him a puppy. Voices rose high, 
 and a duel was impending, when Elizabeth interfered and took Sid- 
 ney to task for not paying due respect to his superiors. Philip's 
 haughty spirit could not bear the rebuke, and he withdrew from 
 court. Far from the glittering whirl, sheltered amid the oaks of 
 Wilton, the seat of his brother-in-law, Pembroke, he wrote a roman- 
 tic fiction, which he called The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. 
 Written merely to amuse his leisure hours, it was never finished, 
 and was not given to the world till its gifted young writer had been 
 four years dead. The censures, which Horace Walpole and others 
 have passed upon this work, are quite unmerited. No book has 
 been more knocked about by certain critics ; but its popularity in 
 the days of Shakspere and the later times of the Cavaliers, with 
 whom it was all the fashion, affords sufficient proof that it is a 
 work of remarkable merit. We, who read Scott and Dickens and 
 Thackeray, cannot, certainly, relish the " Arcadia " as Elizabeth's 
 maids of honour relished it ; but all who look into its pages must 
 be struck with its rich fancy and its glowing pictures. It is not 
 a pastoral, as the misnomer " Arcadia," borrowed from Sannaz- 
 zaro, seems to imply. There are indeed in this book shepherds, 
 who dance and sing occasionally; but the life of a knight and 
 courtier such as Sidney's own has clearly supplied the thoughts 
 and scenery of the work. 
 
 But the book on which Sidney's reputation as an English classic 
 writer rests, is rather his Defense of Poesie, a short treatise, 
 written in 1581, to combat certain opinions of the Elizabethan 
 Puritans, who would fain, in their well-meant but mistaken zeal, 
 have swept away the brightest blossoms of our literature, along with 
 pictures, statues, holidays, wedding-rings, and other pleasant things. 
 
 A favourite of Elizabeth, who called him the "jewel of hei 
 
118 SIDNEY'S DEATH NEAR ZUTPHEN. 
 
 dominions," he was looked coldly on by the Cecils, whose policy 
 it was to keep down men of rising talent. He had to struggle 
 long against this aversion before he gained the governorship of 
 Flushing. When this dear wish of his heart was at first refused, 
 he was so angry that he resolved to join Sir Francis Drake's expe- 
 dition, just then equipping for the West Indian seas. Nothing 
 but a determined message from the Queen, whose messages were 
 not lightly to be disregarded, could turn him from this step. It 
 is said that about the same time he became a candidate for the 
 crown of Poland, but here again Elizabeth interfered. 
 
 The bright life had a sad and speedy close. Holland, then 
 bleeding at every pore in defence of her freedom and her faith, had 
 sought the help of England, ceding in return certain towns, of 
 which Flushing was one. Of this seaport Sidney became governor 
 in 1585. In the following year his uncle, Leicester, laid siege to 
 Zutphen (Southfen), a city on the Yssel, one of the mouths of the 
 Rhine. A store of food, under the escort of some thousand troops, 
 being despatched by Parma, the Spanish general, for the relief of 
 the place, Leicester resolved to intercept the supply; and rashly 
 judging one English spear to be worth a dozen Spanish, he sent 
 only a few hundred men on this perilous service. It was one of 
 those glorious blunders, of which our military history is full. 
 Sidney was a volunteer, and as they rode on a chilly October 
 morning to the fatal field, about a mile from Zutphen, the gallant 
 fellow, meeting an old general too lightly equipped for battle, 
 gave him all his armour except the breastplate. Thus his kind- 
 ness killed him; for in the last charge a musket-ball smashed 
 his left thigh-bone to pieces, three inches above the knee. As he 
 
 passed along to the rear, the incident occurred which 
 
 1586 has been already noticed. Carried to Aruheim, he lay a 
 
 A.D. few days, when mortification set in, and he died. His 
 
 last hours were spent in serious conversation upon the im- 
 mortality of the soul, in sending kind wishes and keepsakes to his 
 friends, and in the enjoyment of music. 
 
 Besides the "Arcadia" and the "Defense of Poesie," Sidney 
 wrote many beautiful sonnets, and in 1584 replied, with perhaps 
 
SPECIMEN OF SIDNEY'S PROSE. 119 
 
 more vigour than prudence, to a work called " Leicester's Com- 
 monwealth," impugning the character of his uncle. 
 
 A STAG HUNT. 
 
 (FROM THE "ARCADIA.") 
 
 They came to tlie side of the wood, where the hounds were iu couples, staying 
 their coming, but with a whining accent craving liberty ; many of them in colour 
 and marks so resembling, that it shewed they were of one kind. The huntsmen 
 handsomely attired in their green liveries, as though they were children of sum- 
 mer, with staves in their hands to beat the guiltless earth, when the hounds were 
 at a fault; and with horns about their necks, to sound an alarm upon a silly 
 fugitive : the hounds were straight uncoupled, and ere long the stag thought it 
 better to trust to the nimbleness of his feet than to the slender fortification of his 
 lodging; but even his feet betrayed him; for, howsoever they went, they them- 
 selves uttered themselves to the scent of their enemies, who, one taking it of 
 another, and sometimes believing the wind's advertisements, sometimes the view 
 of their faithful counsellors the huntsmen, with open mouths, then denounced 
 war, when the war was already begun. Their cry being composed of so well-sorted 
 mouths that any man would perceive therein some kind of proportion, but the 
 skilful woodmen did find a music. Then delight and variety of opinion drew the 
 horsemen sundry ways, yet cheering their hounds with voice and horn, kept 
 still as it were together. The wood seemed to conspire with them against his own 
 citizens, dispersing their noise through all his quarters; and even the nymph. 
 Echo left to bewail the loss of Narcissus, and became a hunter. But the stag 
 was in the end so hotly pursued, that, leaving his flight, he was driven to make 
 courage of despair; and so turning his head, made the hounds, with change of 
 speech, to testify that he was at a bay : as if from hot pursuit of their enemy, 
 they were suddenly come to a parley. 
 
120 EDMUND SPENSER AT CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EDMUND SPENSER. 
 
 Born 1553 A.D Died 1 599 A.D. 
 
 Dirth and education. 
 In the north. 
 
 The Shepheard's Calender. 
 The loss of a friend. 
 Goes to Ireland. 
 Kilcolman Castle. 
 
 Raleigh's visit. 
 The Faerie Queene. 
 Return to Ireland. 
 Public offices. 
 Marriage. 
 Misery and death. 
 
 Chief works. 
 
 Plan of the Faerie Queei 
 
 Its style and stanza. 
 
 Pastorals. 
 
 Prose work. 
 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 WHEN Chaucer died, the lamp of English poetry grew dim, shin- 
 ing for many years only with faint, uncertain gleams. A haze of 
 civil blood rose from the trodden battle-fields of the Roses and 
 the dust of old, decaying systems, the clamour of whose fall 
 resounded through the shaking land, obscured the light "and 
 blotted out the stars of heaven." But only for a while. Truth 
 came with the Bible in her hand. The red mist rolled away. 
 The dust was sprinkled with drops from the everlasting well 
 Men breathed a purer air and drank a fresher life into their spirit, 
 and a time came of which it may well be said, " There were giants 
 on the earth in those days." 
 
 Edmund Spenser was, in point of time, the second of the four 
 grand old masters of our poetical literature. He was born in 
 1553, in East Smithfield, by the Tower of London. It is said 
 that he was of a noble race, but we know little or nothing of his 
 parents. Nor can we tell where he went to school. At the age 
 of sixteen (1569) he entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, as a sizar, 
 and there in 157G he took his degree of M.A. So meagre is our 
 knowledge of his early life. 
 
 A friendship, formed at Cambridge with Gabriel Harvey of 
 Trinity Hall, had considerable influence upon the poet's fortunes. 
 When Spenser left college, having disagreed, it is thought, with 
 the master of his hall, he went to live in the north of England, 
 perhaps to act as tutor to some young friend. He had, no doubt, 
 
THE QKANT OF KILCOLMAN. ] 21 
 
 long been wooing the Muses by the classic banks of Cam, but 
 now the time had come when his genius was to shine out in fuller 
 lustre. His fame, as often happens, had its root in a deep sorrow. 
 A lady, whom he calls Rosalind, made a plaything of his heart, 
 and, when tired of her sport, cast it from her. She little knew 
 the worth of the jewel she had flung away. " The sad mechanic 
 exercise" of verse was balm to the wounded poet, who poured 
 forth his tender soul in The Shepheard's Calender, begun in the 
 north but completed under the oak-trees of Penshurst, where 
 dwelt "Maister Philip Sidney." 
 
 Spenser owed this brilliant friend to the kindness of Harvey, 
 who had induced him to come to London. Thus he was naturally 
 brought under the notice of Leicester, Sidney's uncle, by 
 whose interest he became secretary to Lord Grey of 1580 
 Wilton, the newly-appointed Lord -Lieutenant of Ireland. A.D. 
 The next two years were therefore spent in that country. 
 Grey owed much to the gifted pen of his grateful secretary, who 
 zealously defended his policy and reputation. The poet's services 
 were rewarded in 1586 by a grant from Elizabeth of more than 
 3000 acres in the county of Cork. These acres the estate of Kil- 
 colman formed a part of the forfeited lands of the rebel Desmonds, 
 of which Raleigh had already received a large share. This seem- 
 ing generosity which, however, cost Elizabeth nothing is ascribed 
 to the good offices of Grey and Leicester ; but there are not want- 
 ing hints that the cool and cautious Burleigh, anxious to thin 
 the ranks of his magnificent rival, managed thus to consign to an 
 honourable exile an adherent of Leicester, whose genius made him 
 a formidable foe. The life of Spenser, all but the last sad scene, 
 is henceforth chiefly associated with the Irish soil. 
 
 Smitten in the autumn of 158G with a great grief the bloody 
 death of Sidney near Zutphen Spenser hurried across to 
 his estate, of which he was called the Undertaker, and 1586 
 which he was compelled to cultivate, in terms of the A.D. 
 grant. It was a lovely scene, and we cannot quarrel with 
 the causes, friendly or the reverse, which led the author of The Faeru 
 Queene to take up his dwelling among " the green alders by the 
 
122 PUBLICATION OF " THE FAERIE QUEENE." 
 
 Mulla's shore." Tlie castle of Kilcolman, from which the Des- 
 monds had been lately driven, stood by a beautiful lake in the 
 midst of an extensive plain, girdled with mountain ranges. Soft 
 woodland and savage hill, shadowy river-glade and rolling plough- 
 land were all there to gladden the poet's heart with their changeful 
 beauty, and tinge his verse with their glowing colours. Dearly 
 he loved the wooded banks of the gentle Mulla, which ran by his 
 home, and by whose wave, doubtless, many sweet lines of his great 
 poem were composed. Hither there came to visit him the brilliant 
 Ealeigh, then a captain in the Queen's Guard, who seems to have 
 quarrelled with Essex, and to have been " chased from court " by 
 that hot-headed favourite. The result of this remarkable meeting 
 was Spenser's resolve to publish the first three books of " The 
 Faerie Queene," with which Raleigh was greatly delighted. 
 
 The two friends for Raleigh now filled in the poet's heart tho 
 place which poor Sidney had once held crossed the sea together 
 with the precious cantos. The voyage is poetically described in 
 the Pastoral of Colin Clouts come Iwme againe, published in 1591, 
 where Raleigh figures as the " Shepherd of the Ocean." Intro- 
 duced by his friend to the Queen, and honoured with her 
 1590 approval of what he modestly calls his " simple song," the 
 A.D. poet lost no time in giving to the world that part of " The 
 Faerie Queene " which was ready for the press. The suc- 
 cess of the poem was so decided, that in the following year the 
 publisher issued a collection of smaller pieces from the same pen. 
 A pension of 50 from Elizabeth no small sum three centuries 
 ago rewarded the genius and the flattery of Spenser, who then 
 went back to Ireland to till his beautiful barren acres, and 
 "pipe his oaten quilL" He had, besides his farming and his 
 poetry, a public work to do, and that of no easy or pleasant 
 kind. As Clerk of the Council for Munster, and afterwards as 
 Sheriff of Cork, he came much into collision with the Irish people, 
 whom it was his policy to keep down with an iron hand. 
 
 The chief events of his later life were his marriage, and the 
 publication of the second three books of " The Faerie Queene." In 
 the fair city of Cork, not far from his castle^ he was united, pro- 
 
t>EA.tn OF SPENSER. 123 
 
 bably in 1594, to a lady named Elizabeth, in whose honour he 
 sang the sweetest marriage song our language boasts. In 1596 
 he crossed to England and published the fourth, fifth, and sixth 
 books of his great work. 
 
 So, laurelled and rejoicing, he returned to his Irish castle. To 
 all appearance a long vista of happy years, bright with the love of 
 a tender wife and blooming children, lay stretching out before the 
 poet. But in that clay life in Ireland resembled the perilous life 
 of those who dress their vines and gather bursting clusters on the 
 sides of Etna or Vesuvius. Scarcely was he settled in his home, 
 when a torrent of rebellion swept the land. Hordes of 
 long-coated peasants gathered round Kilcolman. Spenser Oct. 
 and his wife had scarcely time to flee. In their haste and 1598 
 confusion their new-born child was left behind, and, when A.D. 
 the rebels had sacked the castle, the infant perished in 
 the flames. It was only three months later that Spenser breathed 
 his last at an inn in King Street, Westminster. A common tale 
 in human life. Bright hopes a crushing blow a broken heart 
 and death ! 
 
 41 Alas for man, if this were all, 
 And nought beyond the earth." 
 
 In Westminster Abbey, near the dust of Chaucer, the body of this 
 great brother minstrel was laid. 
 
 The grandest work of Spenser is his Faerie Queene. Among his 
 numerous other writings the Shepheard's Calender, Colin Clouts 
 come home againe, JZpithalamion, and his View of the State of 
 Ireland are worthy of special notice. 
 
 In a letter to Sir Walter Ealeigh, prefixed to the first three 
 books of "The Faerie Queene," which were published in 1590, the 
 poet himself tells us his object and his plan. His object was, 
 following the example of Homer, Virgil, Ariosto, and Tasso, to 
 write a book, coloured with an historical fiction, which should 
 " fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle dis- 
 cipline." The original plan provided for twelve books, " fashion- 
 ing XII. morall vertues." Of these twelve books we have only six. 
 The old story of the six remaining books being finished in Ireland, 
 
124 PLAN OF "THE FAERIE QUEENE." 
 
 and lost by a careless servant, or during the poet's voyage to Eng- 
 land, is very improbable. Spenser had only time between 1596 
 and his death to write two cantos and a fragment of a third. 
 Hallam justly says, " The short interval before the death of this 
 great poet was filled up by calamities sufficient to wither the fer- 
 tility of any mind." Prince Arthur, who is chosen as the hero of 
 the poem, falls in love with the Faerie Queene, and, armed by 
 Merlin, sets out to seek her in Faery Land. She is supposed to 
 hold her annual feast for twelve days, during which twelve adven- 
 tures are achieved by twelve knights, who represent, allegorically, 
 certain virtues. 
 
 The Red-Crosse Knight, or Holiness, achieves the adventure of 
 the first and finest book. In spite of the plots of the wizard 
 Archimago (Hypocrisy) and the wiles of the witch Duessa (False- 
 hood), he slays the dragon that ravaged the kingdom of Una's 
 father, and thus wins the hand of that fair princess, (Truth.) Sir 
 Guyon, or Temperance, is the hero of the second adventure ; Brito- 
 martis, or Chastity a Lady-Knight of the third ; Cambel and 
 Triamond, typifying Friendship, of the fourth ; Artegall, or Justice, 
 of the fifth; Sir Calidore, or Courtesy, of the sixth. The six 
 books form a descending scale of merit. The first two have the 
 fresh bloom of genius upon them ; the third contains some exqui- 
 site pictures of womanhood, coloured with the light of poetic 
 fancy; but in the last three the divine fire is seen only in fitful 
 and uncertain flashes. It was not that the poet had written him- 
 self out, but he had been tempted to aim at achieving too much. 
 Not content with giving us the most exquisite pictures of chival- 
 rous life that have ever been limned in English words, and at the 
 same time enforcing with some success lessons of true morality 
 and virtue, he attempted to interweave with his bright allegories 
 the history of his own day. Thus Gloriana the Faerie Queene, 
 and Belphoebe the huntress, represent Elizabeth; Artegall is Lord 
 Grey ; Envy is intended for poor Mary Stuart. Spenser's flattery 
 of Queen Bess, whose red wig becomes in his melodious verse 
 " yellow locks, crisped like golden wire," is outrageous. It was a 
 fashion of the day, to be sure ; and, after all, poets are only human. 
 
THE LANGUAGE AND STANZA OF SPENSER. 125 
 
 It is almost needless to say that the politics dull and warp the 
 beauty of the poetry, a fact nowhere more manifest than in the 
 fifth book, whose real hero is Lord Grey of Wilton. 
 
 The language of Spenser was purposely cast in an antique 
 mould, of which one example is the frequent use of y before the 
 past participle. The expletives do and did occur in his pages 
 to a ridiculous extent. The stanza in which this great poem is 
 written, and which bears the poet's name, is the Italian ottava 
 rima, with a ninth line an Alexandrine added to close the 
 cadence. It may well be compared to the swelling wave of a 
 summer sea ? which sweeps on a green transparent wall until it 
 breaks upon the pebbly shore in long and measured flow. Thom- 
 son, Campbell, and Byron have proved the power of the grand 
 Spenserian stanza. 
 
 In his Pastorals the "Shepheard's Calender " and "Colin Clout" 
 Spenser cast aside much of the stereotyped classic form. Instead 
 of Tityrus and Cory don breathing their joys and sorrows in highly 
 polished strains, we find Hobbinoll and Diggon, Cuddie and Piers, 
 chatting away in good old-fashioned English about the Church 
 and its pastors, poets and their woes, and similar themes. The 
 Calender contains twelve eclogues one for every month in the year. 
 
 That Spenser could write capital prose, as well as exquisite 
 verse, is clearly proved by his " View of the State of Ireland," a 
 dialogue in which that land and the habits of its natives are finely 
 described. The views of Spenser as to the government of the 
 Irish people seem to have harmonized with those of relentless 
 Strafford, whose plan was aptly named "Thorough," from its 
 sweeping cruelty. This prose work of Spenser, though presented 
 to Elizabeth in 1596, was not printed until 1633. 
 
 THE OPENING STANZAS OF THE FIRST CANTO OF "THE 
 FAERIE QUEENE." 
 
 A gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine, [riding 
 
 Ycladd in mightie arraes and silver shielde, 
 Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine, 
 The cruel markes of many a bloody fielde ; 
 
126 STANZAS FROM "THE PAEEIE QUEENK," 
 
 Yet armes till that time did he never wield : 
 His angry steede did chide his foming bitt, 
 As much disdayning to the curbe to yield : 
 Full iolly knight he seemed, and faire did sitt, 
 As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt. 
 
 And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore, 
 The deare remembrance of his dying Lord, 
 For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore, 
 And dead, as living ever, him ador'd : 
 Upon his shield the like was also scor'd, 
 For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had. 
 Right, faithfull, true he was in deede and word ; 
 But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad ; 
 Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad. \ feared 
 
 Upon a great adventure he was bond, 
 That greatest Gloriana to him gave, 
 (That greatest glorious queene of Faery lond,) 
 To winne him worshippe, and her grace to have, 
 Which of all earthly thinges he most did crave : 
 And ever, as he rode, his hart did earne 
 To prove his puissance in battell brave 
 Upon his foe, and his new force to learne ; 
 Upon his foe, a Dragon horrible and stearue. 
 
 A lovely Ladie rode him faire beside, 
 Upon a lowly asse more white than snow ; 
 Yet she much whiter ; but the same did hide 
 Under a vele, that wimpled was full low ; 
 And over all a blacke stole shee did throw : 
 As one that inly mournd, so was she sad, 
 And heavie sate upon her palfrey slow ; 
 Seemed in heart some hidden care she had ; 
 And by her in a line a milke-white lambe she lad. 
 
 So pure and innocent, as that same lambe, 
 She was in life and every vertuous lore ; 
 And by descent from royall lynage came 
 Of ancient kinges and queenea, that had of yore 
 Their scepters stretcht from east to westerne shore, 
 And all the world in their subjection held ; 
 Till that infernal Feend with foule uprore 
 Forwasted all their land, and them expeld ; 
 Whom to avenge, she had this Knight from far compeld. 
 
STANZAS FROM " THE FAERIE QUEENE." 127 
 
 Behind her farre away a Dwarfe did lag, 
 That lasie seemd, in being ever last, 
 Or wearied with bearing of her bag 
 Of needments at his backe. Thus as they past, 
 The day with cloudes was suddeine overcast, 
 And angry love an hideous storme of raine 
 Did poure into his lemans lap so fast, 
 That everie wight to shrowd it did constrain ; 
 And this faire couple eke to shroud themselves were fain. 
 
 Enforst to seeke some covert nigh at hand, 
 A shadie grove not farr away they spide, 
 That promist ayde the tempest to withstand; 
 Whose loftie trees, yclad with sommer's pride, 
 Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide, 
 Not perceable with power of any starr : 
 And all within were pathes and alleies wide, 
 With footing worne, and leading inward farr : 
 Faire harbour that them seems ; so in they entred ar. 
 
 And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led, 
 loying to heare the birdes sweete harmony, 
 Which, the rein shrouded from the tempest dred, 
 Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky. 
 Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy, 
 The say ling pine ; the cedar proud and tall ; 
 The vine-propp elme ; the poplar never dry ; 
 The builder oake, sole king of forrests all ; 
 The aspine good for staves ; the cypresse funerall; 
 
 The laurell, meed of mightie conquerours 
 And poets sage ; the firre that weepeth still ; 
 The willow, worne of forlorne paramours ; 
 The eugh, obedient to the benders will ; 
 The birch for shaftes ; the sallow for the mill ; 
 The mirrhe sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound ; 
 The warlike beech, ; the ash for nothing ill ; 
 The fruitfull olive ; and the platane round ; 
 The carver holme ; the maple seeldom inward sound, 
 
 Led with delight, they thus beguile the way, 
 Untill the blustring storme is overblowne ; 
 When, weening to returne whence they did stray, 
 They cannot finde that path, which first was showne, 
 But wander too and fro in waies unknowne, 
 Furthest from end then, when they neerest weene, 
 
128 STANZAS FROM "THE FAERIE QUEENE." 
 
 That makes them doubt their wits be not their owne : 
 So many pathes, so many turnings seene, 
 That, which of them to take, in diverse doubt they been. 
 
 At last resolving forward still to fare, 
 Till that some end they finde, or in or out, 
 That path they take, that beaten seemd most bare, 
 And like to lead the labyrinth about ; 
 Which when by tract they hunted had throughout, 
 At length it brought them to a hollow cave, 
 Amid the thickest woods. The Champion stout 
 Eftsoones dismounted from his courser brave, 
 And to the Dwarf* a while his needlesse spere he gave. 
 
EARLY LIFK OF HOOKER. 
 
 E LIB 
 
 UNH 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 RICHARD HOOKER. 
 
 Born about 1553 A,D Died 1600 A.D. 
 
 Contemporaries. 
 
 Early days. 
 
 Marriage. 
 
 First living. 
 
 Master of the Temple. 
 
 Boscomb. 
 
 Bishop's-Bourne. 
 
 Death. 
 
 His great work. 
 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 WHEN Richard Hooker gave to the world his splendid work on 
 the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, English prose literature acquired a 
 dignity it had not known before. The last decade of Elizabeth 
 was indeed a glorious time in the annals of British authorship. 
 The genius of Shakspere was then bursting into the full bloom, 
 whose bright colours can never fade; Spenser was penning the 
 Faerie Queene on the sweet banks of Mulla; Bacon, a rising young 
 barrister, was sketching out the ground-plan of the great Novum 
 Organum; and in the quietude of a country parsonage, a meek 
 and hen-pecked clergyman was composing, with loving carefulness, 
 a work which, for force of reasoning and gracefulness of style, is 
 justly regarded as one of the master-pieces of our literature. 
 Richard Hooker was writing his great treatise. 
 
 Born at Heavytree near Exeter, in 1553 or 1554, Hooker was 
 indebted to the kindness of Bishop Jewell for a university educa- 
 tion. The modest young student, who was enrolled on the books 
 of Corpus Christi at Oxford, did not disappoint the hopes of his 
 patron : his college career was marked with steady application 
 and closed with honour. His eminence as a student of Oriental 
 tongues led to his appointment in 1579 as lecturer on Hebrew. 
 Two years later he entered the Church. 
 
 And then a great misfortune befell Master Richard Hooker. 
 Appointed to preach at St. Paul's Cross, he left his college, a per- 
 fect simpleton in the world's ways, and journeyed up to Lon- 
 a$> 9 
 
130 THE RECTOR OF BISftOP'S-BOURNE. 
 
 don. There he had lodgings in the house of one John Church- 
 man, whose wife so won by her officious attentions upon the 
 drenched and jaded traveller, that he thought he could not do 
 better than follow her advice and marry her daughter Joan, whom 
 she strongly recommended as a suitable wife and skilful nurse for 
 a man so delicate as he appeared to be. Accordingly in the fol- 
 lowing year Eichard and Joan were married ; and not till it was 
 too late did the poor fellow find that he had bound himself for life 
 to a downright shrew. 
 
 The first year or so of his married life was spent in Bucks, 
 where he was rector of Drayton-Beauchamp. But the affection 
 of an old pupil, Sandys, son of the Archbishop of York, obtained 
 for hjin in 1585 the post of Master of the Temple. It was his 
 duty here to preach in the forenoon, while the afternoon lecture 
 was delivered by Travers, a zealous Calvinist. The views of the two 
 preachers were so diametrically opposed to each other, that it was 
 said " the forenoon sermons spoke Canterbury, and the afternoon 
 Geneva." Travers was forbidden to preach by Archbishop Whit- 
 gift ; and a paper war began between the rivals, which so vexed 
 the gentle Hooker, that he begged to be restored to a quiet par- 
 sonage, where he might labour in peace upon the great work ho 
 had begun. 
 
 In 1591 his wish was granted. He received the living of Bos- 
 cornb in Wiltshire ; and, gathering his darling books and papers 
 round him, he sat down to his desk, no doubt, with a deep sense 
 of relief. There he wrote the first four books of the Eccle- 
 1594 siastical Polity, which were published in 1594. In re- 
 A.D. cognition, probably, of this great service to the Church 
 of England, the Queen made him in the following year 
 rector of Bishop's-Bourne in Kent. The important duties of his 
 sacred office and the completion of his eight books filled tip the 
 few remaining years of his life. Never very strong, and weak- 
 ened, perhaps, by ardent study, he caught a heavy cold, which, 
 settling on his lungs, proved fatal on the 2d of November 1GOO. 
 The fifth book of the " Ecclesiastical Polity" was printed in 1597 \ 
 the remaining three did not appear until 1647. 
 
THE "ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY." 131 
 
 " The first book of the ' Ecclesiastical Polity,' " says Hallam, " ia 
 at this day one of the master- pieces of English eloquence." The 
 moderate tone of the work, which was written against the Puri- 
 tans, is worthy of all praise. The author is somewhat censured 
 for the great length of his sentences ; but the best critics agree in 
 admiring the beauty and dignity of his style, which, woven of 
 honest English words chosen by no vulgar hand, is yet embroidered 
 with some of the fairest and loftiest figures 6f poetry. This 
 charm the ornament of figures English prose had probably 
 never possessed till Hooker wrote. 
 
 ON CHURCH MUSIC 
 (PROM THE " ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY.") 
 
 Touching musical harmony, whether by instrument or by voice, it being but 
 of high and Jow in sounds a due proportionable disposition, such notwithstand- 
 ing is the force thereof, and so pleasing effects it hath in that very part of man 
 which IB most divine, that some have been thereby induced to think that the 
 soul itself by nature is, or hath in it, harmony; a thing which delighteth all 
 ages, and beseemeth all states ; a thing as seasonable in grief as in joy; as decent 
 being added unto actions of greatest weight and solemnity, as being used when 
 men most sequester themselves from action. The reason hereof is an admirable 
 facility which music hath to express and represent to the mind, more inwardly 
 than any other sensible mean, the very standing, rising and falling, the very 
 steps and inflections every way, the turns and varieties of all passions where- 
 unto the mind is subject ; yea, so to imitate them, that, whether it resemble unto 
 us the same state wherein our minds already are, or a clean contrary, we are 
 not more contentedly by the one confirmed, than changed and led away by 
 the other. In harmony, the very image and character even of virtue and vice is 
 perceived, the mind delighted with their resemblances, and brought by having 
 them often iterated into a love of the things themselves. For which cause there 
 is nothing more contagious and pestilent than some kinds of harmony; than 
 some, nothing more strong and potent unto good. 
 
132 LORD HIGH TREASURER OF ENGLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THOMAS SACKVILLE, LOED BUCKHURST. 
 Born 1536 A.D Died 1608 A.D. 
 
 Birth. 
 Education. 
 The law- student. 
 Political career. 
 Lord High Treasurer. 
 
 Gorboduc. 
 Its plan and story. 
 Mirrour of Magistrates. 
 The Induction. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 SACKVILLE was the herald of that splendour in which Elizabeth's 
 glorious reign was destined to close. He was born in 1536, at 
 Buckhurst in Sussex, the seat of his ancestors. His father, Richard 
 Sackville, had held high office in the Exchequer. Some home 
 teaching, a few terms at Oxford, and a continuation of his course 
 at Cambridge, where he graduated as M.A., prepared the way for 
 his entrance upon the profession of the law and a statesman's life. 
 While at college, his skill in verse-making gained him some little 
 fame; and when entered at the Inner Temple, and regularly set 
 down to the study of dry and dusty law books, he did not forget 
 those flowery paths in which he had spent so many glad hours, but 
 often stole from his graver studies to weave his darling stanzas. 
 
 With his political career we have here little to do, and a few 
 notes of it must therefore suffice. Created Lord Buckhurst in 
 15G6 by Elizabeth, he laid aside his literary pursuits and gave 
 himself up to the toils of statesmanship. Twice he crossed the 
 seas as ambassador. He was selected, on account of his gentle 
 manner and address, to tell her doom to the wretched woman 
 who once was Queen of Scotland. And, in a later year, he sat 
 as Lord Steward, presiding over those brother peers who were 
 appointed to try the unhappy Essex. The dislike of Leicester 
 clouded his fortunes, and cast him into prison; but when in 1588 
 death freed him from this foe, he regained the royal favour. He 
 reached the pinnacle of his greatness in 1598, upon the death of 
 Lord Burleigh, when he became Lord High Treasurer of England 
 
THE POETRY OP SACKVILLE. 133 
 
 This great office he continued to hold until he died in 1608, at a good 
 old age. Elizabeth and James, unlike in almost everything else, 
 agreed in appreciating the services of this great and gifted man. 
 
 While still a student in the Temple, he had joined Thomas Norton 
 in writing a play then called Gforboduc, which was acted before 
 Elizabeth at Whitehall by a company of his fellow-students of the 
 Inner Temple, as a part of the Christmas revels of 1561. This 
 was the first English tragedy, so far as is known. It resembles 
 the later tragedies in having five acts, of which probably Norton 
 wrote three, and Sackville the last two ; but it differs from them in 
 the use of that very prosy and unnatural excrescence of the ancient 
 plays, called the Chorus. Every act of Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex 
 as the authors called it in the revised edition of 1571, is closed 
 with an ode in long-lined stanzas, filled, as was the old Greek 
 chorus, with moral reflections on the various scenes. The plot of this 
 play was founded on a bloody story of ancient British history. 
 
 But a greater work than Gorboduc adorns the memory of Sack- 
 ville. During the last years of Mary, which might well be called 
 gloomy, were it not for the fiery glare that tinges them red as if 
 with martyrs' blood, he sketched out the design of a great poem, 
 which was to be entitled The Mirrour of Magistrates, and was to em- 
 brace poetic histories of all the great Englishmen who had suffered 
 remarkable disasters. The bulk of this work, which 
 first appeared in 1559, was done by minor writers of the 1559 
 time ; but the Induction and the Story of the Duke of A.D. 
 Buckingham, contributed to the second edition in 1563, 
 are from the powerful pen of Sackville. The " Induction" is a 
 grand pictured allegory, which describes " within the porch and 
 jaws of hell " Kemorse, Dread, Kevenge, and other terrible things, 
 that are ever gnawing away at the root of our human life. It 
 contains only a few hundred lines, and yet these are enough to 
 place Sackville high on the list of British poets. As already 
 hinted, these poems were the fruit of Sackville's early summer; 
 the ripe luxuriance of his life was devoted to cares of the state, 
 whose ample honours crowned his head when frosted with the 
 touch of winter. 
 
134 
 
 OLD AGE. 
 
 (FROM "THE INDUCTION.") 
 
 And, next in order, sad Old Age we found, 
 Ilis beard all hoar, his eyes hollow and blind, 
 With drooping cheer still poring on the ground, 
 As on the place where nature him assigned 
 To rest, when that the Sisters had untwined 
 His vital thread, and ended with their knife 
 The fleeting course of fast-declining life. 
 
 There heard we him, with broke and hollow plaint, 
 
 Hue with himself his end approaching fast, 
 
 And all for nought his wretched mind torment 
 
 With sweet remembrance of his pleasures past, 
 
 And fresh delights of lusty youth forewaste; [utterly 
 
 Recounting which, how would he sob and shriek, 
 
 And to be young again of Jove beseek ! 
 
 But, an the cruel fates so fixed be ft/ 
 
 That time forepast cannot return again, 
 
 This one request of Jove yet prayed he 
 
 That, in such withered plight and wretched pain 
 
 As Eld, accompanied with her loathsome train, 
 
 Had brought on him, all were it woe and grief, 
 
 He might awhile yet linger forth his life, 
 
 And not so soon descend into the pit, 
 
 Where Death, when he the mortal corpse hath slain, 
 
 With reckless hand in grave doth cover it, 
 
 Thereafter never to enjoy again 
 
 The gladsome light, but, in the ground ylain, [laid 
 
 In depth of darkness waste and wear to nought, 
 
 As he had ne'er into the world been brought. 
 
 But who had seen him sobbing how he stood 
 
 Unto himself, and how he would bemoan 
 
 His youth forepast, as though it wrought him good 
 
 To talk of youth, all were his youth foregone 
 
 He would have mused, and marvelled much, whereon 
 
 This wretched Age should life desire so fain, 
 
 And knows full well life doth but length his pain. 
 
 Crook-backed he was, tooth-shaken, and blear-eyed, 
 
 Went on three feet, and sometime crept on four; 
 
 With old lame bones, that rattled by his side ; 
 
 His scalp &\l piled, and he with eld forelore ; [peeled 
 
 His withered fist still knocking at Death's door ; 
 
 Fumbling and drivelling as he draws his breath ; 
 
 For brief, the shape and messenger of Death. 
 
THE BURNING OF TYNDALE's TRANSLATION. 135 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 OUK ENGLISH BIBL& 
 
 Earliest translations. 
 The life of Truth. 
 Bible-burning. 
 Crypt of St. Paul's. 
 Geneva and Bishop's Bible. 
 
 Hampton Court. 
 Translation of 1611. 
 Proposed change. 
 Hallam's criticism. 
 English of the Bible, 
 
 WE have already seen how the first English Bible grew, sentence 
 by sentence, in the quiet study of Lutterworth Kectory, where 
 John Wycliffe sat among his books ; how William Tyndale dated 
 death and found it in a foreign land, that he might spread God's 
 word freely among his awakening nation; how Miles Coverdale 
 published in 1535 a version of the whole Bible, translated from 
 the Hebrew and the Greek; and how in 1540 Cranmer, Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, superintended the issue of a new translation, 
 which was called Cranmer's, or the Great Bible. 
 
 The reign of the eighth Henry was a strange era in the history 
 of the Book, evidencing perhaps above all other modern days the 
 everlasting life of Truth. If the Bible were not immortal, it would 
 surely have perished then. 
 
 One Sunday in February 1526, the great Wolsey sat in old St. 
 Paul's under a canopy of cloth of gold. His robe was purple ; 
 scarlet gloves blazed on his hands ; and golden shoes glittered on 
 his feet. A magnificent array of satin and damask-gowned priests 
 encircled his throne ; and the grey head of old Bishop Fisher 
 soon to roll bloody on a scaffold appeared in the pulpit of the 
 place. Below that pulpit stood rows of baskets, piled high with 
 books, the plunder of London and the university towns. These 
 were Tyndale' s Testaments, ferreted out by the emis- 
 saries of the cardinal, who had swept every cranny in 1526 
 search of the hated thing. None there fresh from the A.D. 
 printer's hand all well-thumbed volumes, scored with 
 
136 THE CRYPT OF OLD ST. PAUL'S. 
 
 many a loving mark, and parted from with many bitter tears 
 Outside the gate before the great cross there burned a fire, 
 hungering and leaping for its prey like a red wild beast. On that 
 day no blood slaked its ceaseless thirst, no crackling flesh fed its 
 ravenous maw this was to be but a prelude to the grand per- 
 formance of later days. Bibles only were to burn; not Bible 
 readers. When the sermon was over, men, who loved to read 
 these books, were forced, with a refinement of cruelty, to throw the 
 precious volumes into the flames, while the cardinal and his prelates 
 stood looking at the pleasant show, until the last sparks died out 
 in the great heaps of tinder; and then the gorgeous crowd went 
 home to supper, rejoicing in their work of destruction. Poor mis- 
 guided men ! to think that the burning of a few shreds of paper 
 and scraps of leather could destroy the words of eternal Truth ! 
 
 Scenes like this occurred more than once at St. Paul's Cross ; 
 yet the Bible lived was revised and translated with more untiring 
 industry than ever. 
 
 Fifteen years after the burning thus described, and five years 
 after the body of Tyndale had perished like his books in the 
 flames, a royal order was issued, commanding a copy of the Bible 
 to be placed in every church, where the people might read or hear 
 it freely. Gladly was the boon welcomed ; young and old flocked 
 in crowds to drink of the now unsealed fountain of life. 
 1 54 1 Then was often beheld, within the grey crypt of St. Paul's, 
 A.D. a scene which a distinguished living artist* has made 
 the subject of a noble picture. The Great Bible, chained 
 to one of the solid pillars which upheld the arches of the massive 
 roof, lay open upon a desk. Before it stood a reader, chosen 
 for his clear voice and fluent elocution ; and, as leaf after leaf was 
 turned, the breathless hush of the listening crowd grew deeper. 
 Grey-headed old men and beautiful women, mothers with their 
 children beside them and maidens in the young dawn of woman- 
 hood, merchants from their stalls and courtiers from the palace, 
 beggary and disease crawling from the fetid alleys, stood still to 
 hear; while, in the dim back-ground, men who, if they had dared, 
 
 * George Harvey, Esq., of the Royal Scottish Academy. 
 
THE CONFERENCE AT HAMPTON COUHT. 137 
 
 would have torn the sacred Book to tatters and trampled it in the 
 dust, looked sourly on. 
 
 This dear privilege of hearing the Bible at church, or reading it at 
 home, so much prized by the English people then, was snatched from 
 them again by their cruel and fickle king. But in 1547 the tyrant 
 died, and during the reign of the gentle boy Edward Bible-reading 
 was restored. Under Elizabeth the Bible was finally established 
 as the great standard of our national faith. Two editions, 
 appearing before that translation which we use, may be noted, 
 the Geneva Bible, so dear to the Puritans, finished in 1560 by 
 Miles Coverdale and other exiles who were driven from England 
 by the flames of persecution ; and the Bishop's Bible of 15G8, a 
 translation superintended by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, who was aided by the first scholars of that learned 
 age. 
 
 Then came the translation which we still use, and to which 
 most of us cling with unchanging love, in spite of the occasional 
 little flaws which the light of modern learning has discovered. How 
 tame and cold the words of that Book, entwined as they are with 
 the memory of earliest childhood, would fall upon our ear if 
 rendered into the English in which we speak our common words 
 and read our common books ! 
 
 Within an oak-panelled and tapestried room of that splendid 
 palace which Wolsey built at Hampton by the Thames, King James 
 the First, most pedantic of our English monarchs, sat enthroned 
 among an assembly of divines, who were met in conference upon 
 the religious affairs of the kingdom. It was then little more than 
 nine months after his accession to the English throne, and 
 he took his seat, resolved to teach the Puritan doctors Jan. 14 
 that in him they had to deal with a prince of logicians 1604 
 and a master in theology. There were present, to back A.D. 
 the wisdom of the British Solomon and applaud his 
 eloquence, some twenty bishops and high clergy of the Church of 
 England, the lords of the Privy Council, and many courtiers; 
 while, to speak in the cause of needed change there were only 
 four two doctors from Oxford, and two from Cambridge. It 
 
1 38 PUBLICATION OF KING JAMES'S BIBLE. 
 
 would be out of place here to describe how, during the three days 
 of conference, amid the titters of the courtiers and the gratified 
 smiles of the clergy, the conceited king called the Puritan doctors 
 " dunces fit to be whipped," and indulged in other similar nights 
 of his peculiar, knock-down style of oratory. The scene, ridiculous 
 in most respects, is memorable to us, because it led to the publication 
 of our English Bible. During one of the pauses of the fusilade, 
 when the royal orator was out of breath, Dr. Reynolds proposed a 
 new version of the Scriptures ; and James saw fit, by-and-by, to 
 yield his gracious consent. 
 
 Fifty-four scholars were appointed to the great work, but only 
 forty- seven of these actually engaged in the translation. Taking 
 the Bishop's Bible as the basis of the new version, they set to 
 their task in divisions, Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster being 
 the centres of their labour; and, often meeting to compare notes 
 and correct one another's manuscripts, they completed their transla- 
 tion in about three years. Our Bible was therefore pub- 
 1611 lished, with a dedication to King James, in the year 1611. 
 A.D. Of late years there has been some talk of a new trans- 
 
 lation. No doubt, a revisal, by which manifest mis- 
 prints or inaccuracies in translation might be remedied, would bo 
 a good thing ; but a completely new translation would so utterly 
 destroy those solemn associations which, rooted in every heart, are 
 twined, closer than the ivy around its elm-tree, round the antique 
 English of our Bibles, that to attempt it would be dangerous and 
 wrong. During the ascendency of the Puritans in Cromwell's day, 
 the same scheme was mooted, for the Puritans long preferred the 
 Geneva Bible to that of King James ; but on the proposal bei?ig 
 laid before the leading scholars of that time, they pronounced tho 
 translation of 1611 " best of any in the world;" and so the matter 
 dropped. 
 
 Hallam reminds us that, even in the days of King James, the 
 language of this translation was older than the prevailing speech. 
 " It may," this great critic says, " in the eyes of many, be a better 
 English, but it is not the English of Daniel, or Raleigh, or Bacon, 
 as any one may easily perceive. It abounds, in fact, especially in 
 
THE ENGLISH OF THE BIBLE. 139 
 
 the Old Testament, with obsolete phraseology, and with single 
 words long since abandoned, or retained only in provincial use." 
 
 This may all be true; yet, in the face of Hallam's implied 
 disparagement, we hold, with scores of better judges, that the 
 English of the Bible is unequalled in the full range of our litera- 
 ture. Whether we take the subtile argument of Paul's Epistles, 
 the sublime poetry of Job and the Psalms, the beautiful imagery 
 of the Parables, the simple narrative of the Gospels, the magnifi- 
 cent eloquence of Isaiah, or the clear plain histories of Moses and 
 Samuel, but one impression deepens as we read, and remains as 
 we close the volume, that, without regard to its infinite greatness 
 as the written word of God, taken simply as a literary work, there 
 is no English book like our English Bible. 
 
110 SHAKSPEKE'S TOMB. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKSPERE, 
 
 Born 1564 A.D Died 1616 A.D. 
 
 Shakspere's tomb. 
 Birth-place. 
 His father and mother. 
 Youthful life. 
 Stories of his 'teens. 
 Goes to London. 
 
 Rich and famous. 
 Character as an actor. 
 Returns to Stratford. 
 Speedy death. 
 The First Folia 
 Chief plays. 
 
 Study of Shakspera 
 His grand quality. 
 Shakspere . History. 
 Faults of his style. 
 Minor poems. 
 Illustrative extracts. 
 
 CLOSE by the river Avon in Warwickshire, a tall grey spire, springing 
 from arnid embowering elms and lime-trees, marks the position of 
 the parish church of Stratford, in the chancel of which sleeps the 
 body of our greatest poet. The proud roof of Westminster has 
 been deemed by England the fitting vault for her illustrious dead; 
 but Shakspere's dust rests in a humbler tomb. By his own loved 
 river, whose gentle music fell sweet upon his childish ear, he dropped 
 into his last long sleep; and still its melancholy murmur, as it 
 sweeps between its willowy banks, seems to sing the poet's dirge. 
 Four lines, carved upon the flat stone which lies over his grave, 
 are ascribed to his own pen. Whoever wrote them, they have 
 served their purpose well, for a religious horror of disturbing the 
 honoured dust has ever since hung about the place : 
 
 Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbeare, 
 To dlgg the dust encloased heare. 
 Blest be y e man y l spares these stones, 
 And curst be he y* mores my bones. 
 
 A niche in the wall above holds a bust of the poet, whose high 
 arcliing brow, and sweet oval face, fringed with a peaked beard 
 and small moustache, are so familiar to us all How well we know 
 his face and his spirit ; and yet, how little of the man's real life 
 has descended to our day ! 
 
 Not very far from Shakspere's tomb part of the house in 
 which he was born still stands. Sun and rain and air have 
 
BIRTH AND PAEENTAGE OF SHAKSPERE. 141 
 
 gradually reduced the plastered timber of its old neighbours into 
 powder ; but its wood and lime still hold together, and the room 
 is still shown in which baby Shakspere's voice uttered its first 
 feeble wail. The dingy walls of the little chamber are scribbled 
 all over with the names of visitors, known and unknown to fame. 
 It is pleasant to think that this shrine, sacred to the memory of 
 the greatest English writer, has been lately purchased by the 
 English nation; so that lovers of Shakspere have now the 
 satisfaction of feeling that the relics, which tell so picturesque 
 a story of the poet's earliest days, are in safe and careful keeping. 
 
 Here, then, was born in April 1564 William, son of John 
 Shakspere and Mary Arden, his wife. The gossiping 
 Aubrey,, no great authority, certainly, who came into the 1564 
 world about ten years after Shakspere's death, says that A.D. 
 the poet's father was a butcher; others make out the 
 honest man to have been a wool-comber or a glover, while an 
 ingenious writer strives to reconcile all accounts by supposing that 
 since good John held some land in the neighbourhood of Stratford, 
 whenever he killed a sheep, he sold the mutton, the wool, and the 
 skin, adding to his other occupations the occasional dressing of 
 leather and fashioning of gloves. Perhaps John Shakspere's chief 
 occupation was dealing in wool. At any rate, whatever may have 
 been his calling, he ranked high enough among the burgesses of 
 Stratford to sit on the bench as High Bailiff or Mayor of the 
 town. Mary Arden, who should perhaps interest us more, if the 
 commonly received rule be true, that men more strongly resemble 
 their mothers in nature and genius, seems to have belonged 
 to an old county family, and to have possessed what was then 
 a considerable fortune. 
 
 The beautiful woodland scenery amid which the boy grew to 
 eaj-ly manhood made a deep impression on his soul. The beds of 
 violets and banks of wild thyme, whose fragrance seems to mingle 
 with the music of the lines that paint their beauty, blossomed 
 richly by the Avon. The leafy glades, from which were pictured 
 those through whose cool green light the melancholy Jacques 
 wandered, and under whose arching boughs Bully Bottom and his 
 
142 THE POET'S SCHOOL DAYS. 
 
 friends rehearsed their "very tragical mirth," were not in the 
 dales of Middlesex or Surrey, but in the Warwickshire Valley of 
 the Eed Horse. But of all men or boys, Shakspere was no mere 
 dreamer, fit only 
 
 " To pore upon the brook that babbles by." 
 
 We have no doubt that, when the daily tasks were done in the 
 Free Grammar School of Stratford, where Will probably got all the 
 regular instruction he ever had, the said Will might often have 
 been spied on Avon banks, rod in hand, thinking more of trout 
 and dace than of violets or wild thyme. And, as we shall shortly 
 see, there is a strong suspicion, not far removed from certainty, 
 that more than once he saw the moon rise over the dark oak 
 woods of Charlecote Park, while he lurked in the shadow, waiting 
 for the deer, with more of the poacher than the poet in his guise. 
 
 And, while he was receiving from Hunt and Jenkins, then the 
 masters of the school, that education which his friend Jonson 
 characterizes as consisting of " little Latin and less Greek," an 
 occasional visit to scenes of a different kind, not far away, may 
 have mingled the colouring of town life and courtly pageants 
 with those pictures of woodland sweetness which his mind caught 
 from the home landscape. Warwick and Coventry Godiva's 
 town were near ; and in the grand castle of Kenilworth in the 
 year 1575, when the princely Leicester feasted the Queen for 
 nineteen days, why may we not suppose that Alderman or Ex- 
 Bailiff Shakspere, his wife Dame Mary, and his little son Will, 
 then aged eleven, were among the crowd of people who had tra- 
 velled from all the country round to see the Queen, the masquers, 
 and the fire-works 1 Strolling players, too, sometimes knocked up 
 their crazy stage, hung with faded curtains, in the market-place of 
 Stratford, and there flourished their wooden swords, and raved 
 through their parts to the immense delight of the gaping rustics. 
 Such visits, dear to all the boys of a country town, were, no doubt, 
 longed for and intensely enjoyed by young Shakspere. 
 
 How he spent his life after he had left school, and before he 
 went to London, we know as dimly as we know the calling of his 
 
TEADITIONS OF HIS YOUTH. 143 
 
 father. Aubrey says lie helped his father the butcher, and that 
 he acted also as a teacher. It is thought, from the constant re- 
 currence of law terms in his writings, that he spent some of these 
 years in an attorney's office. All stories may be true, for every- 
 thing we know of the poet during this period goes to show that 
 he was by no means a steady or settled character. He may have 
 lolled an odd calf or sheep, have taught an occasional class for his 
 former master, and have driven the quill over many yards of yellow 
 parchment. The very existence of three different stories about his 
 early occupation implies that his life at Stratford was changeful 
 and undecided. Nor was he free from youthful faults. To tell 
 the truth, he appears to have engaged in many wild pranks, of 
 which two stories have floated down to our day. One relates to an 
 ale-drinking bout at the neighbouring village of Bidford, by which 
 he was so overcome that, with his companions, he was obliged to 
 spend the night by the road-side under the sheltering boughs of a 
 large crab- tree. The other story is that of the poaching affair 
 already alluded to. It seems that the wild youths of Stratford 
 could not resist the temptation of hunting deer and rabbits in the 
 park of Sir Thomas Lucy, who lived at Charlecote, about three miles 
 off. Shakspere got into the poaching set, was detected one night, 
 and locked up in the keeper's lodge till morning. His examination 
 before the offended justice, and whatever punishment followed it, 
 awoke the anger of the boyish poet, who in revenge wrote some 
 doggerel, punning rhymes upon Sir Thomas, and stuck them on the 
 park gate. This was throwing oil upon flame ; and the knight's 
 rage grew so violent that Shakspere had to flee from Stratford. 
 We have thought it right to notice these traditions, though modern 
 authorities discard them with scorn. With much fictitious colouring 
 they have, perhaps, a ground-work of truth sufficient to afford a 
 strong presumption that Shakspere's opening manhood 
 was wild and riotous. His early marriage, too, contracted 1582 
 when he was but a raw boy of eighteen, with Anne A.D. 
 Hathaway of Shottery, a yeoman's daughter, some eight 
 years older than himself, affords additional evidence of youthful 
 indiscretion. 
 
144 PROSPEROUS LONDON LIFE. 
 
 So, driven either by the fear of Sir Thomas Lucy's vengeance, 
 or, more probably, by the need of providing daily bread for his 
 wife and children, Shakspere went up to London in 1586 or 1587; 
 and then began that wonderful theatrical life of six and twenty 
 years, whose great creations form the chief glory of our dramatic 
 literature. The brightest day at noon is that whose dawn is wrapped 
 in heavy mists ; and so upon the opening of this brilliant time^ 
 the midsummer of English poetry thick clouds of darkness rest. 
 
 How Shakspere lived when first he arrived in London, we do not 
 certainly know. Three Warwickshire men, one a native of his own 
 town, then held a prominent place among the metropolitan players, 
 and this, no doubt, coupled with his poetical tastes, led him to the 
 theatre. Here, too, there are vague traditions of his life. Accord- 
 ing to one, he was call-boy or depu ty- prompter ; according to 
 another, he held horses at the theatre door. However he may 
 have earned his first shillings in London, it is certain that he soon 
 became prosperous, and even wealthy. In the year 1589 
 1589 he held a share in the Blackfriars Theatre, having 
 A.D. previously, by his acting, by the adaptation of old 
 plays, and the production of new ones, proved himself 
 worthy to be much more than a mere sleeping partner in the con- 
 cern. As his fame brightened, his purse filled. He became also 
 a part-owner of the Globe Theatre; and at one time drew from all 
 sources a yearly income fully equivalent to 1500 of our money. 
 
 " Respectable " is, perhaps, the best word by which Shakspere's 
 acting may be characterized : the Ghost in " Hamlet," and Adam 
 in " As You Like It," are named among his favourite parts. But 
 his magic pen has taught us almost to forget that he ever was an 
 actor ; nor can we, without a violent stretch of fancy, realize our 
 greatest poet stalking slowly with whitened cheeks across the boards, 
 or tottering in old-fashioned livery through a rudely painted forest 
 of Arden. Thus acting, writing, and managing, he lived among 
 the fine London folks, honoured with the special notice of his 
 Queen, and associating every day with the noblest and wittiest 
 Englishmen of that brilliant time, yet never snapping the link which 
 bound him to the sweet banks of Avon. Every year he ran down 
 
THE DEATH OF SHAKSPERE. 145 
 
 to Stratford, where liis family continued to reside ; and there he 
 bought a house and land for the rest and solace of his waning life. 
 
 The year 1612 is given as the date of the poet's final retire- 
 ment from London life. He was then only forty-eight, and might 
 reasonably hope for a full score of years, in which to grow his 
 flowers, his mulberries, and his apple-trees, to treat his friends to 
 sack and claret under the hospitable roof of New Place, and to 
 continue that series of Roman plays which had so noble a beginning 
 in " Julius Caesar " and " Coriolanus." But four years 
 more brought this great life to an untimely close. He 1616 
 died on the 23d of April 1616, of what disease we have A.D. 
 no certain knowledge. In a "Diary" by John Ward, a 
 vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, written between 1648 and 1679, it is 
 stated that the poet drank too much at a merry meeting with 
 Drayton and Jonson, and took a fever in consequence, of which he 
 died ; but this story is considered an exaggeration. His wife 
 survived him seven years ; his only son had gone to the grave 
 before him ; and long before the close of the century that saw this 
 great poet die, all the descendants of William Shakspere had 
 perished from the face of the earth. From the dim, uncertain story 
 of his life, and the speedy blighting of his family-tree, withered in 
 its third generation, let us turn to the magnificent works, which 
 have won for this London actor the fame of being, certainly 
 England's perhaps the world's greatest poet. 
 
 Seven years after the poet's death, a volume, known to students 
 of Shakspere as the "'First Folio," was published by his two 
 professional friends, John Heminge and Henrie Condell. 1623 
 This book contained thirty-six plays ; seven more were A.D. 
 added in the Third Folio ; but of these seven, only the 
 play of Pericles is received as genuine. The plays of Shakspere, 
 therefore, so far as the battling of critics has agreed upon their 
 number, are thirty-seven. And these have been corrected and re- 
 corrected, altered and revised, mended and re-mended, until we 
 must have a very true and pure text of the poet in this century of 
 ours, unless, indeed, something may have happened to certain pas- 
 sages, like that which the fable tells us happened to Jason's ship, 
 
 (15) 10 
 
146 THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 the Argo, in which he sought the Golden Fleece. So carefully did 
 a grateful and reverent nation patch up the decaying timbers of 
 the old craft, as she lay high and dry on the Greek shore, that in 
 process of time it became a serious question among learned men 
 whether much of the old ship was left together after all. The 
 books written about Shakspere and his works would of themselves 
 fill a respectable library. 
 
 The thirty-seven plays are classed as Tragedies, Comedies, and 
 Histories. The great Tragedies are five Macbeth, King Lear, 
 Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Othello. The Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, As You Like It, and the Mercliant of Venice, are perhaps 
 the finest Comedies ; while Richard III., Coriolanus, and Julius 
 C&sar, stand prominently out among the noble series of Histories. 
 The student who knows these eleven plays, knows Shakspere in 
 his finest vein. Yet fat and vinous old Jack FalstafF, whose por- 
 traiture is the happiest hit in all the varied range of English 
 comedy, must be sought for in other scenes. Indeed, to know 
 Shakspere as he ought to be known, we must read him right 
 through from first to last ; and in days when our most brilliant 
 essayists draw gems of illustration from this exhaustless mine, 
 when every newspaper and magazine studs its leaders with 
 witty allusions to Shallow or Dogberry, Malvolio or Mercutio, 
 and every orator borrows the lightning of some Shaksperian line 
 to gild his meaner language with its flash, not to have studied 
 the prince of poets thoroughly, proves not merely the absence of a 
 fine literary taste, but the total lack of that common sense which 
 leads men to aim at knowing well and clearly every subject that 
 may help them in their daily life. 
 
 The grand, surpassing quality of Shakspere's genius, was its 
 creative power. Coleridge, who saw, perhaps, deeper into the un- 
 fathomed depths of the poet's spirit than any man has done, 
 calls him the thousand-souled Shakspere, and speaks of his 
 oceanic mind. And well the dramatist deserves such magnificent 
 epithets, for no writer has ever created a host of characters, so 
 numerous, so varied, and yet so completely distinct from one 
 another. The door of his fancy opened, as if of its own accord, 
 
SHAKSPEEE VERSUS HISTORY. 147 
 
 and out trooped such a procession as the world had never seen. 
 The bloodiest crimes and the broadest fun were represented there ; 
 the fresh silvery laughter of girls and the maniac shriekings of a 
 wretched old man, the stern music of war and the roar of tavern 
 rioters, mingled with a thousand other various sounds, yet no 
 discordant note was heard in the manifold chorus. So true 
 and subtile an interpreter of the human soul, in its myriad moods, 
 has never written novel, play, or poem j yet he drew but little 
 from the life around him. The revels with Raleigh and 
 Jonson at the Mermaid and the Falcon, may have suggested 
 some hints for the pictures of life in the Boar's Head Tavern, 
 Eastcheap. The court of Elizabeth, and the greenwood that 
 embowered Stratford, doubtless supplied material for many bril- 
 liant and lovely scenes. But those characters which were not 
 drawn from the page of history, are chiefly the creations of his 
 own inexhaustible imagination ; and often, when he does adopt a 
 historic portraiture, the colouring is nearly all his own. Many of us 
 read Shakspere before we read history, and take our ideas of his- 
 torical heroes rather from his masterly idealizations than from the 
 soberer painting of the historian's pencil. So deeply rooted, for 
 example, are our early-caught notions of Macbeth' s villany, and 
 Richard Crookback's appalling guilt, that it is with somewhat of 
 a startle and recoil we come in our later reading upon other and 
 milder views of these Shaksperian criminals. And, read as we 
 may, we can never get wholly rid of the magic spell with which 
 the poet's genius has enchained us. 
 
 The language of Shakspere has been justly censured for its ob- 
 scurity. "It is full of new words in new senses." There are 
 lines and passages, upon whose impenetrable granite the brains of 
 critics and commentators have been well-nigh dashed out ; and yet 
 their meaning is still uncertain. Another fault is the frequent 
 use of puns and verbal quibbles, where, quite out of place and 
 keeping, they jar harshly upon the feelings of the reader. Yet 
 these are spots upon the sun, forgotten while we rejoice in his 
 cheerful beams and drink his light into our souls discoverable only 
 by the cold eyes of those critics who read for business, not delight 
 
1 48 SPECIMENS OF SHAKSPERE'S STYLE. 
 
 Besides his plays, Shakspere gave to the world various poems : 
 Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, The Passionate Pilgrim, A Lover's 
 Complaint, and one hundred and fifty-four Sonnets. The " Venus 
 and Adonis," which formed the first fruits of his ripening powers, 
 was published in 1593, with a dedication to Lord Southampton. 
 
 Dr. Johnson says, in his Preface to Shakspere's Works, "He 
 that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like 
 the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, 
 carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen." The comparison is 
 witty and just ; yet, in pursuance of our plan, we must select 
 specimens of Shakspere's style. The first extract illustrates the 
 poet's tragic power ; the second shows him in a light and playful 
 mood : 
 
 MACBETH.-ACT II., SCENE 1. 
 
 Macbeth. Is this a dagger, which I see before me, 
 The handle toward ray hand ] Come, let me clutch thee : 
 I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. 
 Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible 
 To feeling, as to sight 1 or art thou but 
 A dagger of the mind ; a false creation, 
 Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ? 
 I see thee yet, in form as palpable 
 As this which now I draw. 
 Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going ; 
 And such an instrument I was to use. 
 Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, 
 Or else worth all the rest : I see thee still ; 
 And on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood, 
 Which was not so before. There's no such thing : 
 It is the bloody business, which informs 
 Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half world 
 Nature seems dead ; and wicked dreams abuse 
 The curtain 'd sleep ; now witchcraft celebrates 
 Pale Hecate's offerings ; and withered murder, 
 Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, 
 Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, 
 With Tarquin's ravishing strides, toward his design 
 Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, 
 Hear not my steps, which way they walk, fcr fear 
 Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, 
 And take the present horror from the time, 
 Which now suits with it, Whiles I threat, lie lives : 
 
SPECIMENS OF SHAKSPERE's STYLE. 149 
 
 Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. 
 
 I go, and it is done ; the "bell invites-me. \A Icll rings. 
 
 Hear it not, Duncan ; for it is a knell 
 
 That summons thee to heaven, or to hell. 
 
 ROMEO AND JULIET. ACT I., SCENE 4. 
 
 Mercutio. Oh, then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you. 
 She is the fairies' midwife ', and she comes 
 In shape no bigger than an agate- stone 
 On the fore-finger of an alderman, 
 Drawn with a team of little atomies 
 Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep : 
 Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs ; 
 The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers ; 
 The traces, of the smallest spider's web ; 
 The collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams : 
 Her whip, of cricket's bone ; the lash, of film : 
 Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat, 
 Not half so big as a round little worm 
 Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid : 
 Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut, 
 Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub, 
 Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers. 
 And in this state she gallops night by night 
 Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love : 
 On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight : 
 O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees : 
 O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream, 
 Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, 
 Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. 
 Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, 
 And then dreams he of smelling out a suit : 
 And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail, 
 Tickling a parson's nose, as 'a lies asleep, 
 Then dreams he of another benefice : 
 Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, 
 And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, 
 Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, 
 Of healths five fathom deep ; and then anon 
 Drums in his ear ; at which he starts, and wakey ; 
 And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two, 
 And sleeps again. 
 
160 RALEIGH AT SEA. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SIE WALTER RALEIGH. 
 
 Born 1552 A.D Beheaded 1618 A.D. 
 
 Early adventures. 
 Court life. 
 Virginia colonized. 
 Fall of Raleigh. 
 
 His trial. 
 In prison. 
 
 History of the World. 
 His release. 
 
 Burning of St. Thomas. 
 His execution. 
 Minor works. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 No English writer Las lived a more romantic life than Raleigh. 
 Born in 1552, at Hayes Farm in Devonshire, and educated at 
 Oriel College, Oxford, he entered at the age of seventeen upon his 
 brilliant and adventurous career as a volunteer in the cause of the 
 French Protestants. For more than five years he fought in Con- 
 tinental wars; but in 157G a new field of action was opened to 
 his daring spirit. It was the time when Britain began to take 
 her first steps towards winning that ocean-crown which she now 
 so proudly wears. And among the dauntless sailors, who braved 
 the blistering calms of the tropics and the icy breath of the 
 frigid seas in search of new dominions, Raleigh was one of the 
 foremost. With his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who 
 perished at sea in a later voyage, he sailed to North America ; but 
 after two years of toil he returned home, richer in nothing but 
 hard-won experience. We then find young Captain Raleigh en- 
 gaged in Ireland on active service against the rebel Desmonds, 
 winning high honours by his bravery and military talent, and re- 
 warded by being chosen to bear despatches from the Lord Lieu- 
 tenant to the Queen. 
 
 His court life now began. Hitherto, we picture him keeping 
 watch upon the icy deck in the starry light of a frosty night at 
 sea, or, in dusty and blood-stained doublet, sleeping off the ex- 
 haustion of a hard battle-day. A scene of courtly splendour now 
 opens to our view; and, prominent among the plumed and jewelled 
 circle gathered round the throne, stands Sir Walter Raleigh, high 
 
A PLUSH CLOAK IN THE MtTXt/ -< 151 
 
 rJL 
 
 in the favour of his Queen, the associate or rival of the proudcnt 
 noble there. The legend of his first introduction to Elizabeth is 
 too romantic to be omitted, although we must not forget that 
 it rests only on tradition. When the Queen in walking one day 
 came to a muddy place, these were very common on English 
 roads and pathways then, she stopped and hesitated. Raleigh, 
 seeing her pause, with ready tact flung down his rich plush cloak 
 for her to step on. The graceful act, which was just the kind of 
 flattering attention that Elizabeth liked best, showed that Raleigh 
 was cut out for a courtier. A capital investment it was that the 
 young soldier made. He lost his cloak, but he gained the favour 
 of a Queen, who well knew how to honour and reward those she 
 loved. Within a few years he became a knight, Captain of the 
 Guard, and Seneschal of Cornwall, besides receiving a grant of 
 12,000 acres of Irish land, and the sole right of licensing wine- 
 sellers in England. 
 
 His attempts to colonize North America, for which a patent had 
 been granted to him, went far to exhaust his fortune. Twice he 
 sent out expeditions, supplied with ah 1 necessary stores; but the red 
 men, who swarmed in the woods along the shore, would not 
 suffer the colonies to take root. The first settlers escaped with their 
 lives on board Drake's ships ; the second band perished under the 
 deadly tomahawk. Tobacco and the potato wero brought to 
 Europe, as the only fruits of these unhappy enterprises. The 
 name Virginia, given to the colony in honour of the unmarried 
 Elizabeth, and the name Raleigh, applied to the capital of North 
 Carolina, still remind our transatlantic kindred of the ancient ties 
 that bind them to the mother-land. 
 
 A leader of English ships in the great conflict with the Armada 
 the courted and prosperous owner of the broad acres of Sherborne 
 in Dorsetshire the disgraced husband of Elizabeth Throgmorton 
 the gallant explorer of the Orinoco and its neighbouring shores 
 the hero of the siege of Cadiz and the capture of Fayal ; such 
 were the various characters filled by this English Proteus during 
 the last years of Elizabeth's reign. 
 
 Scarcely was James I. seated on the throne when a change came 
 
152 THE " HISTORY OF THE WORLD." 
 
 Raleigh's former associate, Cecil, poisoned the King's mind so much 
 against him, that he was stripped of nearly all his honours and 
 rewards. A worse blow was then aimed at him. Charged with hav- 
 ing joined in a plot to seize the King and set Lady Arabella 
 1603 Stuart on the throne, he was brought to trial at Winches- 
 A.D. ter Castle. From eight in the morning till nearly midnight 
 he fronted his enemies with unshaken courage. The 
 bluster of Attorney-General Coke roared around him without effect. 
 " I want words," stormed the great prosecutor, " to express thy 
 viperous treasons ! " " True," said Raleigh, " for you have spoken 
 the same thing half a dozen times over already." But rare wit 
 and eloquence did not save Raleigh from the Tower, where he was 
 left to lie for nearly thirteen weary years. Much of his time 
 within these dark walls was devoted to chemical experiments, in 
 course of which he sought eagerly for the philosopher's stone, and 
 believed at one time that he had discovered an elixir, which would 
 cure all diseases. But what made his imprisonment a memorable 
 era in the annals of English literature, was the composition in his 
 cell of his great History of tlw World. This work, in the prepara- 
 tion of which he was aided by other able hands, is chiefly valu- 
 able for its spirited histories of Greece and Rome. A fine antique 
 eloquence flows from his pen, enriched with a deep learning, which 
 excites wonder when displayed by Raleigh. The soldier, the sailor, 
 or the courtier is hardly the man from whom we expect profound 
 philosophy or deep research ; yet Raleigh showed by this achieve- 
 ment a power of wielding the pen, at least not inferior to his skill 
 with sword or compass. That part of the History which he was 
 able to complete, opening with the Creation, closes with the second 
 Macedonian war, about one hundred and sixty-eight years before 
 Christ. A deep tinge of melancholy, caught from the sombre 
 walls that were ever frowning on his task, pervades the pages of 
 the great book. 
 
 A penniless king, dazzled by the story of an unwrought gold 
 mine, discovered years ago during a cruise up the Orinoco, at 
 length set the prisoner free, and sent him with fourteen ships 
 to make sure of this far-off treasure. The capture of St. Thomas, 
 
THE SCAFFOLD AT WESTMINSTER. 153 
 
 a Spanish settlement on the banks of the great river, produced 
 only two bars of gold ; and with " brains broken," as he told hia 
 wife in a letter, Raleigh was forced to sail away, a baffled man, 
 leaving in a foreign grave the body of his eldest son, Walter, who 
 had been killed in the assault. The rage of the Spaniards, who 
 considered all these rich regions their own by right of prior dis- 
 covery, kindled into flame when the news of this daring move 
 reached Europe. With a cry of " Pirates ! pirates ! " the Spanish 
 ambassador at London rushed into the presence-chamber of King 
 James to demand vengeance on the slayer of his kinsman, who had 
 been governor of St. Thomas, and reparation for the insult offered 
 to his country's flag. James had good reasons just then for desir- 
 ing to please the Spanish court, since one of his dearest wishes was 
 to marry his son Charles to the Infanta. So Raleigh was arrested 
 upon his landing at Plymouth, and, after more than a 
 week's delay, was carried to London. A few months later, Oct. 29, 
 he was executed at Westminster upon the old charge of 1618 
 treason, for which he had already suffered so many years A.D. 
 of imprisonment. Almost his last words, as he lifted 
 the axe and ran his fingers along its keen edge, show with what 
 feelings he fronted death. Smiling, he said, " This is a sharp 
 medicine, but it will cure all diseases." Two blows severed the 
 neck of the old man, who had seen so many phases of human 
 life, and had played with brilliant success so many varied parts. 
 
 Besides his great work, a Narrative of his Cruise to Guiana, which 
 proceeded from his pen in 1596, is worthy of being named. He 
 wrote many other prose works, and cultivated poetry with such 
 success that Edmund Spenser calls him the " Summer's Night- 
 ingale." 
 
 THE CONCLUSION OF RALEIGH'S HISTORY. 
 
 If we seek a reason of the succession and continuance of this boundless ambi- 
 tion in mortal men, we may add to that which hath been already said, that the 
 kings and princes of the world have always laid before them the actions, but not 
 the ends of those great ones which preceded them. They are always transported 
 with the glory of the one, but they never mind the misery of the other, till they 
 find the experience in themselves. They neglect the advice of God, while they 
 enjoy life or hope it; but they follow the counsel of Death upon his first approach. 
 
154 SPECIMEN OF RALEIGH'S PROSE. 
 
 It is he that puts into man all the wisdom of the world, without speaking a word, 
 which God, with all the words of His law, promises, or threats, doth not infuse. 
 Death, which hateth and destroyeth man, is believed ; God, which hath made 
 
 him and loves him, is always deferred It is Death alone that can sud- 
 
 donly make man to know himself. He tells the proud and insolent, that they 
 are but abjects, and humbles them at the instant, makes them cry, complain, 
 and repent, yea, even to hate their forepast happiness. He takes the account of 
 the rich, and proves him a beggar, a naked beggar, which hath interest in no- 
 thing but the gravel that fills his mouth. He holds a glass before the eyes of the 
 most beautiful, and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness, and 
 they acknowledge it. 
 
 Oh, eloquent, just, and mighty Death ! whom none could advise, thon hast 
 persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom all the world hath 
 flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world, and despised ; thou hast drawn 
 together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of 
 man, and covered it over with these two narrow words Hio JACKT. 
 
THE LITTLE LORD KEEPER. 155 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 FRANCIS BACON, VISCOUNT ST, ALBANS, 
 Born 1561 A.D.... ...Died 1626 A.D. 
 
 Bacon's fame. 
 Birth and education. 
 In France. 
 Studies law. 
 Enters the House. 
 Early struggles. 
 
 Conduct toward Essex 
 His ten Essays. 
 Marriage. 
 Lord Chancellor. 
 Novum Organum. 
 Impeachment. 
 
 Degradation. 
 Latest works. 
 Death. 
 Plan of the Instauratlo. 
 Style of his Essays. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 " MY name and memory I leave to foreign nations, and to mine 
 own country after some time is passed over," wrote Bacon in 
 his will. There is no greater name among the many writers of 
 English prose, no prouder memory among the host of grave-eyed 
 philosophers, who have spent their best years and ripest powers in 
 exploring the secrets and tracing the laws of the universe ; but 
 many blots lie dark upon the reputation of the man. Of late, 
 however, much has been done, especially by Mr. Hepworth Dixon 
 of the Athenaeum, to efface these stains from the fame of one of 
 our leading English philosophers and writers. 
 
 At York House in the Strand, London, Francis, youngest son 
 of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, 
 was born on the 22d of January, 1561. As the boy 
 grew, he was noted for a quick wit and precocious gravity, 1561 
 which led the Queen, a frequent visitor at his father's A.D. 
 house, to call him her little Lord Keeper. At thirteen 
 he went to Cambridge, where he studied for three years, and 
 where the deepest impression he received was a dislike to the 
 philosophy of Aristotle. 
 
 Then, in accordance with the custom of the time, he joined the 
 suite" of Sir Amias Paulett, who was going on an embassy to France. 
 A worse school for a young man of rank could scarcely be found than 
 was the brilliantly voluptuous court of France in that unhappy 
 day. Yet Bacon seems to have been proof against its worst seduc- 
 
156 A KISING YOUNG LAWYER. 
 
 tions, imbibing, however, during his residence abroad, that taste 
 for magnificence and display which kept him through all his life 
 a needy man, and proved a source of much misery and sin. Some- 
 thing of a woman's nature appears to have mingled with the qualities 
 of his early manhood; his love of beauty displayed itself in a 
 prssion for rich dress and furniture, birds, flowers, perfumes, and 
 fine scenery. It might, certainly, have taken a less innocent and 
 more destructive shape. During his stay in France he spent much 
 time at Poictiers, employed chiefly in collecting materials for his 
 maiden work, entitled Of tlie State of Europe. 
 
 Recalled to England in 1579 by his father's sudden death, he 
 settled down to study law, with little money but a great 
 1582 mind, in Gray's Inn. In 1582 he was called to the bar; 
 A.D. and in 1585 he obtained a seat in the Commons for Mel- 
 combe. When the dapper, richly-dressed youth of 
 twenty-four, whose round rosy face was new to the House, first rose 
 to speak, indifference speedily changed to curiosity, and curiosity 
 to deep attention. It was felt by all that the young lawyer, already 
 well known in the courts, was a man of no common powers. 
 Even then the mam idea of his life, so nobly carried out in his 
 great system of philosophy, began to develop itself in every speech. 
 " Reform" was his motto ; and for this he fought hard in the earlier 
 years of his public life. 
 
 At the opening of his career he made a great mistake, fatal to 
 his happiness and fatal to his fame. He lived beyond his means, 
 and thus became hampered with debt, from which he never quite 
 got free. In conjunction with his brother he set up a coach; for 
 which some excuse may be found in the fact, that even at this early 
 age he suffered severely from gout and ague. He was forced to 
 borrow from the Jews; and it might often have gone hard with 
 the young men in their city lodging, had not their kind mother, 
 Lady Anne, sent frequent supplies of ale and poultry in from 
 Gorhambury. 
 
 Looked coldly on by his relatives the Cecils, he became a parti- 
 Ban of Essex, who tried hard to get him made Solicitor-General 
 But Burleigh and his clan were too strong for the Earl, and Bacon 
 
BACON AND ESSEX. 157 
 
 ir&s defeated. To console him for this reverse, Essex gave him the 
 beautiful estate of Twickenham Park. The value of the gift was 
 great some 1800; and there, under the spreading cedars, the 
 hard- worked lawyer, dried up for many a week in the hot and dusty 
 courts, used gladly to enjoy his leisure by the gentle Thames. 
 
 But Bacon soon saw that Essex was a dangerous friend, and, after 
 earnest remonstrances from the lawyer, which the Earl appears to 
 have despised, the connection between them was dissolved. Through 
 the remaining years of Elizabeth's reign, Bacon, who had already 
 become member for Middlesex and a Queen's Counsel, continued to 
 rise in the House. All that he could do to save Essex, he did ; at 
 the risk of offending the touchy old Queen he pleaded the cause of his 
 former friend and patron. But every effort was rendered useless by 
 the mad folly of the Earl, who had been spoiled by the doting Eliza- 
 beth. Forgiven again and again, this madman persisted in trying 
 to kindle a rebellion ; and after his failure in London he died on 
 the scaffold. Bacon has been charged with base ingratitude and 
 treachery in this case of Essex. But he could not save a man 
 who rushed so blindly on to death. "What he could do, he seems 
 to have done. His public office of Queen's Counsel enabled him 
 to deal more gently with the foolish Earl than a stranger might 
 have dealt. And when at the Queen's command he drew up a paper 
 declaring the treasons of Essex, its lenient tone made the angry 
 Elizabeth cry out, " I see old love is not easily forgotten." 
 
 Through these changeful years Bacon had been writing some of 
 the celebrated Essays, which form his chief English work, 
 and entitle him to the fame of holding a first rank among 1597 
 the grand old masters of English prose. When first A.D. 
 published in 1597, the " Essays " were only ten in number; 
 but others were added in 1612, and after his fall he spent much 
 time in expanding and retouching them. 
 
 These years were also marked by a disappointment in love. 
 A rich young widow, named Lady Hatton, was the object of his 
 hopes; but his great rival at the bar proved also a formidable 
 rival in the court of love. Attorney-General Coke stepped in and 
 bore away the golden prize, 
 
158 BACON LOED CHANCELLOR. 
 
 However the wound soon healed; for in 1606 an elderly bride- 
 groom of forty-five, richly clad in purple Genoa velvet, stood at 
 the altar beside a fair young bride in cloth of silver. The lady 
 was the daughter of a Cheapside merchant, Alice Barnham, who 
 on that day changed her name to Lady Bacon. Sir Francis had 
 been lately knighted by King James. 
 
 From the Solicitor-Generalship, won in 1607, he stepped on in 
 
 1613 to the rank of Attorney-General: in 1617 he received the 
 
 Great Seal ; and in the following year he reached the sum- 
 
 1618 mit of his profession, being made Lord High Chancellor 
 
 A.D. of England with the title of Baron Verulam. Thus, at 
 
 last, had Bacon beaten Coke, his rival in love, in law, and 
 
 in ambition. 
 
 For three years he held the seals as Chancellor, and great was 
 the splendour of his life. Baron Verulam soon became Viscount 
 St. Albans. But the glitter of costly lace and the sheen of gilded 
 coaches, of which these years were full, grow dim and tarnished 
 before a splendour that cannot fade. The Lord Chancellor, with 
 his titles of honour, is almost forgotten when the author of the 
 Novum Organum rises in our view. This celebrated work, 
 
 1620 of which more will soon be said, appeared in 1620; and 
 A.D. the pains which Bacon took to make it worthy of his 
 
 fame may be judged from the fact, that he copied and 
 corrected it twelve times before he gave it to the world. 
 
 The greatest of Bacon's works was yet fresh from the press 
 when dark clouds began to gather round its author. Coke, his 
 bitter foe, and others whom the poison of envy had also tainted, 
 raised a clamour against the Chancellor for taking bribes. Un- 
 doubtedly Bacon was guilty of the crime, for his extravagance and 
 love of show drained his purse continually, and a needy man is 
 often mean. But it may be said, in extenuation of his fault, that 
 
 it was the common practice in that day for judges to 
 
 1621 receive fees and gifts; indeed, the greater part of their 
 A.D. income was derived from such sources. A case, containing 
 
 at least twenty-two distinct charges of bribery and cor- 
 ruption, being prepared by the House of Commons, the Lords 
 
DISGRACE AND DEATH OF BACON. 159 
 
 proceeded to sit in judgment upon the highest lawyer in the land. 
 Humbled by the disgrace of his impeachment, and broken down 
 by a fierce attack of his old enemy the gout, the great philo- 
 sopher, but weak and erring man, sent to the Lords a f ull confession 
 of his faults. " It is," said he to some of his brother peers who 
 came to ask if this was his own voluntary act, " it is my act my 
 hand my heart. my lords, spare a broken reed!" So fell 
 the Yiscount St. Albans from his lofty place, sentenced to pay a 
 fine of 40,000, and to lie in the Tower during the pleasure of the 
 King. James was magnanimous enough to remit the fine, and to 
 set the fallen lawyer free in two days. 
 
 The evening of this chequered life was spent chiefly in country 
 retirement at Gorhambury. Books, experiments, and a quiet game 
 at bowls were the chief recreations of the degraded statesman. 
 His busy hours were spent in the revisal and enlargement of his 
 Essays, the composition of his History of King Henry VII. , a phi- 
 losophical fiction called The New Atlantis, and that part of his great 
 work which relates to Natural History. Heavy debts still hung 
 upon him. He applied for the Provostship of Eton, but failed. 
 The story of his death is curious. Driving in his car- 
 riage one snowy day, the thought struck him that flesh 1626 
 might be preserved as well by snow as by salt. At once A.D. 
 he stopped, went into a cottage by the road, bought a 
 fowl, and with his own hands stuffed it full of snow. Feeling 
 chilly and too unwell to go home, he went to the house of the 
 Earl of Arundel, which was near. There he was put into a damp 
 bed ; fever ensued ; and in a few days he was no more. 
 
 The scale upon which the ground-plan of Bacon's great work ia 
 drawn is very magnificent ; but no single human mind, working 
 within the compass of a human life, could hope to accomplish the 
 grand design. Yet even to have grasped the idea of such a giant 
 plan is enough to prove a mighty genius. While fagging at his 
 law books and briefs in old Gray's Inn, the thought had dawned 
 upon his mind; and through thirty years of up-hill labour at the 
 bar and fierce political struggles in the House he was steadily 
 collecting materials to fill in the outlines of his colossal sketch. AD 
 
ICO 
 
 English treatise on the Advancement of Learning, published in 
 1 G05, was the herald of the greater work, which appeared in his 
 brightest days to gild them with a lustre brighter still a lustre, 
 too, which even his sad disgrace and doubtful character could not 
 wholly dim. The plan of the work, which was written in Latin 
 and was styled Instauratio Magna, may be understood from tlio 
 following view : 
 
 I. De Augmentis Scientiarum. This treatise, in which the Eng- 
 lish work on the Advancement of Learning is embodied, 
 gives a general summary of human knowledge, taking spe- 
 cial notice of gaps and imperfections in science. 
 II. Novum Organum. This work explains the new logic, or 
 inductive method of reasoning, upon which his philo- 
 sophy is founded. Out of nine sections, into which he 
 divides the subject, the first only is handled with any ful- 
 ness, the other eight being merely named. 
 
 III. Sylva Sylvarum. This part was designed to give a complete 
 
 view of what we call Natural Philosophy and Natural His- 
 tory. The subjects he has touched on under this head are 
 four the History of Winds, of Life and Death, of Density 
 and Rarity, of Sound and Hearing. 
 
 IV. Scala Intellecttis. Of this we have only a few of the opening 
 
 pages. 
 
 V. Prodromi. A few fragments only were written. 
 VI. Philosophia Secunda. Never executed. 
 
 TJie Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral, of which ten were 
 published in 1597, were afterwards greatly increased in number 
 and extent, being especially enriched with the brighter blossoms of 
 their great author's matured fancy. In this respect that his 
 fancy was more vivid in age than in youth the mind of Bacon 
 formed an exception to the common rule; for, in general, the fancy 
 of a young man grows less bright as his reason grows strong, just 
 as the coloured petals of a flower fade and drop to make room for 
 the solid substance of the fruit. Though often stiff and grave, 
 
SPECIMEN OF BACON'S PROSE. 161 
 
 even where a lighter style would better suit his theme, as in treating 
 of Gardens and Buildings, the "Essays" stand, and have always 
 stood, among the finest works of our prose literature. What 
 Hallam says of this classic book should not be forgotten : " It 
 would be derogatory to a man of the slightest claim to polite 
 letters, were he unacquainted with the ' Essays' of Bacon." 
 
 ON LEARNING. 
 
 Learning taketh away the wildness, and barbarism, and fierceness of men's 
 minds : though a little superficial learning doth rather work a contrary effect. 
 It taketh away all levity, temerity, and insolency, by copious suggestion of all 
 doubts and difiiculties, and acquainting the mind to balance reasons on both 
 sides, and to turn back the first offers and conceits of the kind, and to accept of 
 nothing but examined and tried. It taketh away vain admiration of anything, 
 which is the root of all weakness : for all things are admired, either because they 
 are new, or because they are great. For novelty, no man wadeth in learning or 
 contemplation thoroughly, but with that printed in his heart, " I know nothing." 
 Neither can any man marvel at the play of puppets, that goeth behind the cur- 
 tain, and adviseth well of the motion. And as for magnitude, as Alexander the 
 Great, after that he was used to great armies, and the great conquests of the 
 spacious provinces in Asia, when he received letters out of Greece, of some fights 
 and services there, which were commonly for a passage or fort or some walled 
 town at the most, he said, ' ' It seemed to him that he was advertised of the battle 
 of the frogs and the mice, that the old tales went of ; "so certainly, if a mail 
 meditate upon the universal frame of nature, the earth with men upon it, the 
 divuieness of souls excepted, will not seem much other than an ant-hill, where 
 some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, and some go empty, and 
 all to and fro a little heap of dust. It taketh away or mitigateth fear of death, 
 or adverse fortune; which is one of the greatest impediments of virtue, and 
 imperfections of manners. For if a man's mind be deeply seasoned with the 
 consideration of the mortality and corruptible nature of things, he will easily 
 concur with Epictetus, who went forth one day, and saw a woman weeping for 
 her pitcher of earth that was broken ; and went forth the next day, and saw a 
 woman weeping for her son that was dead ; and thereupon said, ' ' Yesterday I 
 saw a fragile thing broken, to-day I have seen a mortal thing die." And there- 
 fore Virgil did excellently and profoundly couple the knowledge of causes and 
 the conquest of all fears together. 
 
 11 
 
162 BRICKLAYER, SOLDIER, AND STUDENT, 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 BENJAMIN JONSON. 
 Born 1574 A.D Died 1 637 A.D. 
 
 Early clays. 
 Trowel and pike. 
 On the stage. 
 The fatal duel 
 
 The great hit 
 Tavern life. 
 Eastward Hoe. 
 Brilliant days. 
 
 Dying gloom. 
 Death. 
 Chief works. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 A SQUARE time-worn stone, bearing the words, " O rare Ben 
 Jonson," marks the spot where the remains of a great English 
 dramatist, second only to his friend Shakspere, lie buried in 
 Westminster. Not far from this simple but suggestive monument 
 the poet was born in 1574, a few days after the death of his 
 father, who was a clergyman, A hard and rugged life lay before 
 the fatherless boy, and his sorrows soon began. His mother 
 having married a bricklayer not so great a descent from her former 
 marriage as might at first sight seem to us, for the lower clergy 
 were then the equals only of servants and tradesmen young Ben 
 was taken from his studies at "Westminster School, and forced to 
 carry a hod among his father's workmen. The sturdy boy, who 
 had a soul above brick and mortar, rebelled at this, and in no 
 long time was shouldering a pike on the battle-grounds of the 
 Low Countries. The rough life that he saw, during this phase of 
 his changeful story, had a powerful influence upon his character 
 and habits. When in later times he mingled among the silken 
 courtiers of Elizabeth and James, he never lost a certain bearish - 
 ness of temper and braggart loudness of tone, which he had caught 
 in early days in the revels of the bivouac and the guard-room. 
 His short soldier-life over, he appears to have entered St. John's 
 at Cambridge, where he stayed some little time. 
 
 And then, driven perhaps by poverty, perhaps by natural tastes 
 and the desire to shine, he went on the stage, making his first 
 appearance on the boards of a theatre near Clerkcmvcll. Thin 
 
" EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUE." 163 
 
 plunge into the troubled waters of an actor's life might have cured 
 Mm of his passion for the stage, for it was a miserable failure. 
 But he clung to the vocation he had embraced; and to his poor 
 earnings as a third or fourth rate actor he began to add the still 
 more precarious gains of a theatrical author. And all this when 
 he was only twenty years of age. 
 
 So early did he find his life's work. Some men, whose names 
 hold an honourable place among our chief English writers, scarcely 
 taking pen in hand, except to write a common letter, until the 
 snow of age began to fall upon their heads, have produced their 
 great works in the winter of their days. Ben Jonson was not of 
 these ; almost before the down of manhood had darkened on his 
 Up, the hand, that had already held the trowel and the pike, took 
 up the pen. 
 
 A duel with a brother actor, whom unhappily he killed, ex- 
 posed him to the charge of murder, and he lay for some time in 
 jail Soon after his release he sprang at once into fame by the 
 production of his well-known and still-acted play, Every Man in 
 his Humour. How strange it seems to us, who reverence the 
 name so deeply, to read that William Shakspere was one 
 of the company who acted this comedy at the Globe in 1598 
 1598. We can hardly realize the fact that the writer of A.D. 
 "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" was only a third-rate player. 
 Jonson followed up this successful hit with eager industry, and for 
 some time every year produced its play. The greatest men of 
 the day became the intimates of the roistering author. At the 
 Mermaid Club, founded by Ealeigh, and adorned by the member- 
 ship of Shakspere and other great brothers of the dramatic craft, 
 Jonson was a leading wit. Like his burly namesake of the 
 eighteenth century, he was a man of solid learning and great 
 conversational powers ; and his social qualities, kindled by the old 
 sack, which he loved too well, made him a most attractive com- 
 panion. The Falcon at Southwark and the Old Devil at Temple 
 Bar were the favourite tavern-haunts of Ben and his brilliant friends. 
 
 This rough and roaring life was chequered by several note 
 worthy events. The publication of a comedy called Eastward 7/o<?, 
 
1G4 THE DEATH OF JONSON. 
 
 which in 1 605 proceeded from the pens of a literary partnership of 
 three Jonson, Chapman, and Marston, excited the anger of King 
 James by some hits at the unwelcome presence of the Scotch in 
 England. For his share in this work Jonson went to prison with 
 his friends, and for some time our poet's nose and ears were in 
 considerable danger. But the storm blowing over, he regained 
 his freedom. In 1G19, after receiving the appointment of poet- 
 laureate, he travelled on foot to Scotland, whence his family had 
 come, and there he paid a three weeks' visit to Drummond of 
 Hawthornden. 
 
 The composition of court masques and lighter poems filled up 
 some easy years of Jonson's life, which was agreeably varied by 
 visits to his distinguished friends, correspondence with learned men 
 at home and abroad, and the collection of rare books a pursuit 
 in which he took especial pleasure. But debt and the ravages of 
 paralysis upon a frame he had never spared, cast a gloom over his 
 last years. The malice of a former friend, Inigo Jones, the archi- 
 tect, shut the golden doors of court life against the poor sick 
 laureate. His salary, never well paid, came dribbling in so slowly 
 that he was compelled to write begging letters to some of his 
 noble friends ; who, to their honour be it said, did not refuse their 
 aid. So the bright life dimmed, and flickered, and went out. On 
 the 6th of August 1637 he died ; and three days after was buried 
 in an upright posture in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey. 
 A workman, hired for eighteen pence by the charity of a passer-by, 
 cut upon the grave-stone covering the poet's clay the four short 
 words which form his only epitaph. 
 
 The works of Jonson, numbering in all about fifty, may be 
 classed under four heads : his Tragedies, stately, cold, and classical ; 
 his Comedies, full of the coloured fire of real life, and abounding in 
 varieties of character, which are rendered the more striking by a 
 very decided tinge of exaggeration;* his Masques and Interludes, 
 forming the bulk of his writings, and nearly all produced during 
 his brilliant days at court ; and his finely written Prose notes, 
 
 * He has hence been styled the " humorous poet ; " not in our modern sense of that word, 
 but as a skilful painter of those subtile shades of temper which are called " humour*" 
 
THE CHIEF WORKS OF JONSON. 165 
 
 containing some good sound criticism upon Bacon and other men of 
 literary renown. Studding his dramatic works, like gems of the 
 purest water and the finest cutting, are numerous songs, which 
 have not been surpassed by any of our English lyrists. His prin- 
 cipal tragedies are Catiline and Sejanus, founded upon two of the 
 darkest pages of Roman history. Every Man in his Humour, 
 The Alchemist, and Volpone are his finest comedies ; and an unfin- 
 ished pastoral, The Sad Shepherd, touched with the gloom of his 
 dying days, may well stand beside these works, if we can judge of 
 the half-done picture, when the colours are dry upon the palette, 
 and the brush has fallen for ever from the painter's hand. His 
 prose notes bore the odd title, Timber ; or, Discoveries made upon 
 Men and Matter. 
 
 CAPTAIN BOBADIL AND THE ARMY. 
 (FROM "EVERY MAN IN nis HUMOUR.") 
 
 Bobadil. I will tell you, sir, by the way of private, and under seal, I am a 
 gentleman, and live here obscure, and to myself; but were I known to her Ma- 
 jesty and the lords (observe me), I would undertake, upon this poor head and 
 life, for the public benefit of the state, not only to spare the entire lives of her 
 subjects in general, but to save the one-half, nay, three parts of her yearly charge 
 
 in holding war, and against what enemy soever I would select nineteen 
 
 more, to myself, throughout the land ; gentlemen they should be of good spirit, 
 strong and able constitution ; I would choose them by an instinct, a character 
 that I have : and I would teach these nineteen the special rules, as your punto, 
 your reverso, your stoccata, your imbroccato, your passado, your montanto, till 
 they could all play very near, or altogether as well as myself. This done, say 
 the enemy were forty thousand strong, we twenty would come into the field the 
 tenth of March, or thereabouts, and we would challenge twenty of the enemy; 
 they could not in their honour refuse us ; well, we would kill them ; challenge 
 twenty more, kill them ; twenty more, kill them ; twenty more, kill them too ; 
 and thus would we kill every man his twenty a day, that's twenty score ; twenty 
 score, that's two hundred ; two hundred a day five days, a thousand ; forty 
 thousand; forty times five, five times forty, two hundred days kills them all up 
 by computation. And this will I venture my poor gentleman-like carcass to 
 perform, provided there be no treason practised on us, by fair and discreet mau- 
 hocd ; that is, civilly by the sword. 
 
166 
 
 ROBERT GREENE THE DRAMATIST. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 OTHER WRITERS OF THE THIRD ERA. 
 
 TOKT3. 
 
 
 
 Thomas Tusser. 
 
 John Ford. 
 
 William Camden. 
 
 Robert Greene. 
 
 Thomas Carew. 
 
 Hakluyt and Purclms. 
 
 Robert Southwell. 
 
 William Browne. 
 
 King James I. 
 
 Samuel Daniel. 
 
 Robert Herrick. 
 
 Joseph Hall. 
 
 Michael Drayton. 
 
 Francis Quarles. 
 
 Robert Burton. 
 
 Christopher Marlowe. 
 
 George Herbert. 
 
 Thomas Dekker. 
 
 Sir Henry Wotton. 
 
 James Shirley. 
 
 Lord Herbert. 
 
 John Donne. 
 
 Richard Crashaw. f 
 
 James Ussher. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 
 8tc3SB Sucklings **. 9 
 
 John Selden. 
 
 G. and P. Fletcher. 
 
 
 Thomas Hobbes. 
 
 Philip Massinger. 
 
 PROSE WR1TKR3. 
 
 Izaak Walton.- 
 
 William Drummoncl. 
 
 Thomas Wilson. 
 
 James HowelL 
 
 POETS. 
 
 THOMAS TUSSER, born in Essex about 1523, wrote an agricultural 
 poem, called the Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, which 
 in simple verse gives a good picture of English peasant life at that 
 day. He died about 1580. 
 
 ROBERT GREENE, one of Shakspere's predecessors in the 
 dramatic art, was born at Norwich or Ipswich about 1560. Hav- 
 ing received his education at Cambridge, he travelled in Italy and 
 Spain, and on his return to London plunged deep into the lowest 
 debauchery. From about 1584 his pen was busied in the produc- 
 tion of plays and love-pamphlets, which soon made him very 
 popular. A surfeit of pickled herrings and Rhenish wine threw 
 him into a mortal sickness, during which he was supported by a 
 poor shoemaker. His miserable and premature death took place 
 in 1592. More than forty works are ascribed to his pen. He 
 takes rank among our early English dramatists, next below the 
 vigorous Marlowe. 
 
 ROBERT SOUTHWELL, whose short and suffering life began in 1 560, 
 was a native of St. Faiths in Norfolk. Educated at the English 
 college of Douay, he entered the Society of Jesuits at sixteen. 
 In 1584 he returned to England as a missionary, and there he 
 
DANIEL AND DRAYTON. 167 
 
 laboured for eight years in secret, penal laws being then extreme. 
 Arrested at last, he lay in prison for three years, and in 1595 was 
 hanged at Tyburn tree. His poems, of which the longest are St. 
 Peter's Complaint and Mary Magdalene's Funeral Tears, being 
 chiefly written in prison, have a tone of deep melancholy resigna- 
 tion. 
 
 SAMUEL DANIEL, born in 1562 near Taunton in Somersetshire, 
 was a contemporary of Shakspere and Jonson. His principal 
 poems are, A History of the Wars between the Houses of York and 
 Lancaster, and a dialogue in defence of learning, styled Musophilus. 
 His education was received at Oxford; he was afterwards tutor to 
 Anne Clifford, who became Countess of Pembroke ; and with other 
 court preferments he held a post somewhat like that of our poet- 
 laureate. His death took place in 1619 on a farm in his native 
 shire. Shut in his garden-house in Old Street, St. Luke's, he gave 
 up the best part of a quiet, studious life, to the composition of 
 those graceful and pensive works, whose style obtained for him 
 the name of " The well-languaged Daniel." 
 
 MICHAEL DKAYTON, author of the Polyolbion, is thought to 
 have been born in Warwickshire about 1563, and to have begun 
 life as a page. This threw him into the society of noble patrons, 
 by whom his talents were soon recognised. The " Polyolbion," 
 finished in 1622, takes a poetical ramble over England, collect- 
 ing together, in thirty ponderous books, descriptions of scenery, 
 wild country legends, antiquarian notes, and various other glean- 
 ings from the land. In spite of an unhappy subject, the genius 
 of a true poet shines out in many passages of this work. Among 
 Drayton's other works are historical poems entitled the Haron's 
 Wars and England's Heroical Epistles, and an exquisitely comical 
 fairy piece called Nymphidia. Dying in 1631, he found a tomb 
 in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. 
 
 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE merits somewhat longer notice than any 
 other of our earliest dramatists, for it was he who prepared the 
 way for the mighty creations of Shakspere, by establishing the use 
 of a lofty and polished blank-verse in our English plays. Born 
 at Canterbury in 1563-4, he passed to Cambridge, where he 
 
1 68 THE PLAYS OF MARLOWE. 
 
 graduated as M.A. in 1587. Like some other wild-living college 
 men of that day, he took to the stage as a means of earning his 
 daily bread, and, what perhaps he valued more, of paying his daily 
 tavern-bill. The riotous, licentious life of this gifted man, came to 
 a sad and speedy end. He had barely reached the age of thirty 
 when he died, the victim of a low pot-house scuffle. A serving- 
 man, whom he was struggling to stab, seizing his wrist, turned 
 the point of his own dagger upon himself. It pierced through 
 his eye to the brain, and he died of the wound not long after- 
 wards. 
 
 Marlowe's first great play. Tamburlaine tJie Great, is thought to 
 have been brought out while the author's name was still on the 
 Cambridge books. Then followed the Life and Death of Dr. 
 Faiistus, in which noble justice is done to the weird story that 
 haunts the memory of the great printer of Mayence. The Jew of 
 Malta, and Edioard //., an historical drama, are the chief remain- 
 ing works of Marlowe. The first of these probably suggested 
 Shakspere's Shylock, while the second may have turned the pen of 
 our greatest dramatist into the field of English history. Though 
 much disfigured with bombastic rant, the style of Marlowe, when 
 uplifted by a great theme, often reaches a grandeur and a power 
 to which few poets attain. 
 
 SIR HENRY WOTTON, a gentleman of Kent, born there at Bocton 
 Hall in 1568, may be named among the poets of his time. He 
 was ambassador at Venice, and afterwards Provost of Eton the 
 friend of Izaak Walton, and an early discoverer of Milton's tran- 
 scendent merit. The Reliquiae Wottoniance were published in 
 1651, twelve years after the author's death. 
 
 JOHN DONNE, Dean of St. Paul's, was born in London in 1573. 
 He deserves remembrance as a very learned man, who began the list 
 of what critics call the Metaphysical poets. Beneath the artificial 
 incrustations which characterize this school, Donne displays a fine 
 vein of poetic feeling. He is also noted in our literary history as 
 the first writer of satire in rhyming couplets. Upon his death in 
 1631 Ms body was buried in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 FRANCIS BEAUMONT and JOHN FLETCHER united their high 
 
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 109 
 
 talents in the production of fifty-two plays. In tins dramatic 
 partnership Beaumont probably followed the bent of his mind by 
 writing chiefly tragedy. Fletcher, a lighter and more sunny spirit, 
 was fonder of the comic muse. Beaumont, the son of a judge, 
 was born in Leicestershire in 1586; he studied at Oxford and 
 the Inner Temple, but was cut off in the bloom of manhood 
 in 1615. Fletcher, a bishop's son, was born in 1576, and died 
 of the plague in 1625. The works of these men were very popular 
 in their own day, even more so than those of Shakspere and Jon- 
 son. They have about them an elegance, a spirit, and a light 
 amusing wit, reflecting the gay sprightliness of the upper classes to 
 which their authors belonged ; but they are also deeply stained 
 with that viciousness of thought and speech which then prevailed 
 in even the highest circles of English society. 
 
 GILES and PHINEAS FLETCHEE were cousins of the dramatist. 
 Phineas, who was Rector of Hilgay in Norfolk, lived from 1584 
 to 1650. Giles, who was Eector of Alderton in Suffolk, was the 
 younger ; but the dates of his birth and death are uncertain. 
 Tlie Purple Island of Phineas is a poem descriptive of the human 
 body with its rivers of blood, and the human mind, of which 
 Intellect is prince. From the pen of Giles came Christ's Victory 
 and Triumph, a sacred poem a work of much higher merit as a 
 whole. 
 
 PHILIP MASSINGEE, a great dramatist of his day, was born 
 about 1584. Of his life we know absolutely nothing, but that he 
 spent a year or two at Oxford ; wrote plays for the London theatres 
 after 1604; like many of his theatrical brethren found his money 
 sometimes running low; and one morning in 1640 was found dead 
 in his bed at Southwark. Eighteen of his plays have lived; 
 but only one, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, is now brought upon 
 the stage. Sir Giles Overreach, a greedy, crafty money-getter, is 
 the great character of this powerful drama. A calm and dignified 
 style, with little passionate fire, characterizes the pen of Massinger. 
 
 WILLIAM DKUMMOND of Hawthornden, near Edinburgh, born 
 in 1585, was the finest Scottish poet of his day. Living by the 
 romantic Esk, he caught a deeper inspiration from its beauty. 
 
170 DRUMMOND OF HAWTHOENDEN. 
 
 Though not a poet-laureate by appointment, he had all the feelings 
 of one, and lavishly poured forth his sweet verses in praise of 
 royalty. The Flowers of Zion, Tears on the Death of Moeliadts 
 (Prince Henry), The River of Forth Feasting, and his Sonnets, are 
 his chief poetical works. Ben Jonson paid him a visit at Haw- 
 thornden, and the Scottish poet has been blamed for making 
 notes, not always complimentary, of his rough guest's habits and 
 character. These notes, however, he did not publish himself. 
 Drummond died in 1649. 
 
 JOHN FOED, a Devonshire man, born in 1586, was another of 
 the brilliant dramatic brotherhood adorning this period. Deep 
 tragedy was Ford's excellence. Uniting dramatic authorship with 
 his practice as a lawyer, he contrived to avoid those abysses of deb* 
 and drink in which many brightening stars of the time quenched 
 their young lustre. Hallam says that Ford has " the power over 
 tears;" but his themes are often so revolting, that compassion 
 freezes into disgust Three of his tragedies are the BrotJier and 
 Sister, Loves Sacrifice, and Tlie Broken Heart. He wrote also an 
 historical play, Perkin Warbeck. Ford died about 1639. 
 
 THOMAS CAEEW, born in 1589, of an ancient Gloucestershire 
 family, was one of the brilliant courtier poets who clustered round 
 the throne of the first Charles. His lyrics are, on the whole, 
 graceful and flowing, though often deeply tainted with immorality 
 and irreligion. The masque, Coelum Britannicum, is a work from 
 his pen produced by order of the king. The thoughtless gaiety 
 and license of his life cost him many bitter tears, as he lay in 1639 
 upon his death-bed. 
 
 WILLIAM BEOWNE, born in 1590, was a native of Tavistock in 
 Devonshire. He wrote pastoral poetry, taking his inspiration 
 from Spenser. His life was chiefly spent in two noble families, 
 those of Caernarvon and Pembroke. Britannia's Pastorals is the 
 name of his chief work. It is rich in landscape painting, but 
 utterly deficient in the display of character. Browne died in 
 1645 at Ottery-St-Mary in his native shire. 
 
 ROBEET HEEEICK, poet and divine, was perhaps the sweetest of 
 the lyrists who sang in the seventeenth century. Born in Cheap- 
 
ROBERT HERRICK'S LYRICS. 171 
 
 .side, London, in 1591, and educated at Cambridge, he became in 
 1629 Vicar of Dean Prior in Devonshire. During the Civil War 
 and the Commonwealth he lived at Westminster, but at the 
 Restoration went back to his green Devonshire parish, an old man 
 of almost seventy, tired and sick, no doubt, of the convivial life he 
 had spent among the London taverns. He died in 1 674. There is a 
 cheerful grace, a light and happy sparkle in the poetry of Herrick; 
 many of his lyrics are matchless. To JBlossoms, To Da/odils, 
 Gather the Rosebuds ivhile ye may names like these suggest the 
 sources whence his verses draw their many-coloured beauty. 
 Flowers, birds, fruit, gems, pretty women, and little children are 
 his favourite themes. 
 
 FRANCIS QUARLES, born in 1592 in Essex, having occupied some 
 courtly positions, became Chronologer to the City of London. 
 Though a keen Royalist, suffering the loss of his dear books and 
 manuscripts in that cause, his poetical works, which form an 
 extravagant specimen of the Metaphysical school, have something 
 of the Puritan tone about them. He died in 1644. 
 
 GEORGE HERBERT, Rector of Bemerton in Wiltshire, and younger 
 brother of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, was born at Montgomery 
 Castle, Wales, in 1593. Before entering the Church he lived a 
 gay life at court. He, too, wrote in the strained style of Donne's 
 school; but his chief work, The Temple, a collection of sacred 
 poems, is filled with solemn, saintly music. His pure and active 
 life came to an untimely end in 1632. 
 
 JAMES SHIRLEY, born in London in 1596, was the last of the 
 Elizabethan dramatists. Possessing less fire and force than the 
 rest, he excels them in purity of thought and expression. The 
 true poet shines out in many passages of his plays. He gave up 
 the curacy of St. Albans, when he embraced the Roman Catholic 
 faith ; and, after a vain attempt to get up a school in that town, 
 he went to London to write for bread. The great fire of 1666 
 burned him out of house and home ; and a little after, in one of the 
 suburbs of London, his wife and he died on the same day. 
 
 RICHARD CRASHAW was a Fellow of Peterhouse College, Cam- 
 bridge, and took holy orders. In France he became a Roman 
 
172 CAMDEN THE ANTIQUARY. 
 
 Catholic, and, having passed to Italy, was made a Canon of Loretto. 
 His religious poetry, and his translations from Latin and Italian, 
 are of the first order, though somewhat marred by the affectations 
 of the time. This scholarly poet died in Italy about 1650. 
 
 SIR JOHN SUCKLING, born in 1 609, came at eighteen into a 
 great fortune. Having served under the Swedish banner in the 
 Thirty Years' War, he returned to England, to shine as a brilliant 
 but passing meteor in the court of Charles the First. More desirous, 
 perhaps, to win the fame of a skilful gamester and richly dressed 
 gallant than of a literary man, he yet, in the quieter hours of a feverish 
 life, produced some beautiful lyrics, brilliant outpourings of a poetic 
 genius that could not be repressed. Detected in a plot to set 
 Strafford free, he fled to France, where he died before 1642, having, 
 it is thought, committed suicide by poison. His Ballad on a 
 Wedding, and many of his songs are exquisite specimens of their 
 kind. 
 
 PROSE WRITERS. 
 
 THOMAS WILSON was a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, 
 and afterwards Dean of Durham, who wrote about 1553 a System 
 of Rhetoric and Logic, considered to be the first critical work 
 upon the English tongue. He strongly recommends the use of 
 a simple English style. 
 
 WILLIAM CAMDEN, the antiquary and writer of history, was 
 born in London in 1551, and received his higher education at 
 Oxford. Much of his earlier life was spent in connection with 
 Westminster School, in which he was successively Second and 
 Head-master. He afterwards became Clarencieux King-at-arrns. 
 The Britannia is his great work. Written in Latin, it is espe- 
 cially devoted to a description of the antiquities of his native land. 
 He wrote, besides other works, Latin narratives of Queen Eliza- 
 beth's reign and the Gunpowder Plot. He died in 1623. 
 
 RICHARD HAKLUYT and SAMUEL PURCHAS were two English 
 clergymen, who, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., compiled 
 books of travel and geographical discovery. Hakluyt's chief work, of 
 which the third volume was completed in 1 6 00, comprised an account 
 
173 
 
 of all the Principal Voyages undertaken ivithin the j>reciou& 1500 
 years. He was an associate and helper of Sir Walter Raleigh in the 
 work of colonizing North America. The chief work of the other 
 writer, bearing the quaint title of Purchas his Pilgrims, appeared in 
 1 G25. Another volume, entitled Purchas his Pilgrimage, had been 
 already published. Hakluyt died in 1616; Purchas, about 1628. 
 
 KING JAMES I. of England got rid of his superfluous learning 
 In the shape of certain literary works. Among his productions 
 three are specially remembered, but rather for the amusement than 
 the delight which they afford. His Dcemonologie defends his belief 
 in witches in a most erudite dialogue. His BasUicon Doron was 
 written in Scotland to leaven Prince Henry's mind with his own 
 notions and opinions. His Counterblast to Tobacco lifts a strenu- 
 ous but often very comical voice against the growing use of that 
 plant. Poems, too, in both English and Latin came from this 
 royal pen. 
 
 JOSEPH HALL, Bishop of Norwich, was born in Leicestershire 
 in 1574. Distinguished as the author of vigorous poetical satires, 
 he deserves yet greater praise for his sermons and other prose 
 writings. His Contemplations on Historical Passages of the Old 
 and New Testament and his Occasional Meditations form his chief 
 works. He died at a good old age in 1G56. 
 
 PiOBEKT BURTON, a native of Lindley in Leicestershire, was born 
 in 1578. Though Rector of Segrave in his own shire, he lived 
 chiefly at Christ-church College, Oxford, where he wrote his 
 famous work, T/te Anatomy of Melancholy, by Democritus Junior. 
 This strangely quaint and witty book, which is crammed with 
 learned quotations, and with curious gleanings from works that few 
 men ever read, became a public favourite at once. Laurence 
 Sterne has been convicted of stealing brilliants from Burton to 
 mingle with the tinsel and the paste of his own sentimentalities. 
 A short poem on Melancholy, containing twelve stanzas, opens 
 the " Anatomy." Burton's life was chequered with deep melan- 
 choly moods, to relieve which he wrote his famous book. He 
 died in 1640. 
 
 THOMAS DEKKER, a wild and penniless dramatist who produced 
 
174 THE LEARNED SELDEN. 
 
 above twenty plays, wrote, among other prose works, The Gull's 
 Hornbook, a satirical guide to the follies of London life, which 
 was published in 1609. Dekker died about 1638. 
 
 LORD HERBERT of Cherbury was born in 1581 at Eyton in 
 Shropshire, and was educated at Oxford. Though noted for his 
 deistic works, of which the chief is entitled De Veritate, he 
 deserves our kindly remembrance for his Life and Reign of Henry 
 VIII., published in 1649. Memoirs of his own Life were printed 
 more than a century after his death, which took place in 1648. 
 
 JAMES USSHER, Archbishop of Armagh, was born in Dublin in 
 1581. While Professor of Divinity in Trinity College, Dublin, he 
 became noted as a theologian and controversialist. A treatise, 
 called The Power of the Prince and Obedience of the Subject, 
 written in the reign of Charles I., fully displayed his Royalist 
 opinions. In 1641 he was obliged by the war in Ireland to take 
 refuge at Oxford, and, after many changes of abode, he died in 
 1656 at Ryegate in Surrey. He won his chief fame, as a chrono- 
 loger, by the publication (1650-54) of the Annals, a view of 
 general history from the Creation to the Fall of Jerusalem. 
 
 JOHN SELDEN, born in 1584 near Teiing in Sussex, earned 
 the distinguished praise from Milton of being "the cliief of learned 
 men reputed in this land." Educated at Oxford, he studied law 
 in the London schools. Besides several histories and antiquarian 
 works written in Latin, he was the author of an English book 
 called A Treatise on Titles of Honour, which, published in 1614, 
 is still highly valued by heralds and genealogists. His History 
 of Titlies (1618) excited the rage of the clergy and drew a rebuke 
 from the King. As a member of the Long Parliament, he took a 
 leading part in the politics of the day, but was opposed to the 
 Civil War. Appointed in 1 643 Keeper of the Records in the Tower, 
 he continued to write until his death in 1654. Some time after 
 his death his secretary, who had been acting the Boswell to this 
 Puritan Johnson, published the Table-talk that had dropped from 
 his learned lips during twenty years. 
 
 THOMAS HOBBES was born at Malmesbury in 1588. Some 
 years of Ids earlier life were spent in travelling on the Continent 
 
IZAAK WALTON'S " COMPLETE ANGLER." 175 
 
 as tutor to Lord Cavendish, afterwards Earl of Devonshire. After 
 a residence at Chatsworth, he was obliged to hide himself and his 
 Royalist doctrines at Paris in 1640; and there some years later he 
 became mathematical tutor to the Prince of Wales. He published 
 four works, dealing with politics and moral philosophy, which gave > 
 deep offence to the friends of religion and constitutional govern- 
 ment. The principal of these works he called Leviathan (1651); 
 and the key-note of his whole system, there developed, is the 
 doctrine that all our notions of right and wrong depend on self- 
 interest alone. Works of a different kind from the pen of Hobbes 
 are his Translation of Homer in Verse, and his Behemoth, a His- 
 tory of the Civil Wars. He died in December 1679. 
 
 IZAAK WALTON, who wielded pen and fishing-rod with equal love 
 and skill, was born at Stafford in 1593. He kept a linen draper's 
 shop in Cornhill, and then in Fleet Street, London ; retired from 
 business in 1643, and lived afterwards for forty years to enjoy his 
 favourite pursuit. His memory is dear to every lover of our litera- 
 ture for the delightful book he has left us, redolent of wild-flowers 
 and sweet country air The Complete Angler, or Contemplative. 
 Man's Recreation (1653). The Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, 
 George Herbert, and Bishop Sanderson, written with beautiful sim- 
 plicity, remain also as fruits of honest Izaak's old age. He died 
 in 1683 at the age of ninety. 
 
 JAMES HOWELL, born in Caermarthenshire about 1596, spent 
 much of his life travelling on the Continent as agent for a glass- 
 work as tutor to a young gentleman and as a political official. 
 Returning home, he was made in 1640 clerk to the Council; was 
 imprisoned in the Fleet by order of the Parliament; became historio- 
 grapher-royal in 1660, and died six years later. His Familiar 
 Letters (1645), giving, in lively, picturesque language, sketches of his 
 foreign observations, mingled with philosophical remarks, have 
 gained for him the reputation of being the earliest contributor to 
 our epistolary literature. He wrote altogether about forty works. 
 
17C DRESS OF THE CAVALIERS. 
 
 FOURTH ERA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 FROM THE SHUTTING OF THE THEATRES IN 1648 A,D. TO THE 
 .DEATH OF MILTON IN 1674 A.D. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PURITANS AND CAVALIERS-THEIR INFLUENCE UPON 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 Fui Han and Cavalier. 
 Dress of the Cavaliers. 
 Their wild life. 
 
 Gallantry in the field. 
 Their writings. 
 Furitan habits. 
 
 Hatred of amusement 
 
 Sincerity. 
 
 Greatest literary names. 
 
 JOSTLING in London streets, and scowling as they passed each 
 other on leafy country roads ; grappling in deadly conflict upon 
 many a battle-field from Edgehill to Naseby, resting upon hacked 
 sword or bloody ash-wood pike only till the leaping heart was 
 still enough to begin the strife again Puritans and Cavaliers 
 stand out in violent contrast during that period of English history 
 which is filled with the great central struggle of the seventeenth 
 century. Close and deadly though their occasional collision, the cur- 
 rents of their domestic lives flowed far apart ; the one, a brilliant 
 stream flashing along its noisy way, and toying with its flowery 
 banks, all unheeding of the great deep to which its waters ran ; 
 the other, a dark, strong, and solemn river, sweeping sternly on to 
 its goal between rugged shores of cold grey stone. 
 
 The violence of the opposition between Puritan and Cavalier 
 was strikingly expressed by the difference of their dress and of 
 their amusements. The Cavalier (the word was borrowed from 
 the Spanish) in full dress wore a brilliant silk or satin doublet 
 with slashed sleeves, a falling collar of rich point lace, a short 
 cloak hanging carelessly from one shoulder, and a broad-leafed 
 
\VILD LIFE OP THE CAVALIERS. 177 
 
 low-crowned hat of Flemish beaver, from which floated one or 
 two graceful feathers. His broad sword-belt, supporting a Spanish 
 rapier, was a marvel of costly embroidered-work. A laced buff 
 coat and silken sash sometimes took the place of the doublet ; and 
 when the steel gorget was buckled over this, the gallant Cavalier 
 was ready for the fray. Long waves of curled hair, rippling on the 
 shoulders, formed a graceful framework for the finely moulded fea- 
 tures of a high-bred English gentleman ; and to this class of the 
 nation the Cavaliers for the most part belonged. But, unhap- 
 pily, these silks and ringlets filled the taverns and surrounded the 
 gaming-tables of London by night and day. Great fortunes were 
 lost then, as in later times, on a single throw of the dice ; and 
 many a fair-plumed hat was dashed fiercely with curses in the 
 mud, when the half-sobered reveller, staggering with torn and 
 wine-splashed finery out of the tavern into the cold grey light of 
 the breaking day, found every gold piece vanished from his 
 shrunken purse. Well might he pluck at the dishevelled love- 
 lock special eye-sore to the Puritans which hung over his pallid 
 brow, and curse his drunken folly. Such a life lived many of the 
 Cavaliers. Tennis, billiards, drinking, masquerading, dressing, 
 intriguing, composing and singing love songs, filled their days and 
 their nights. Madly the whirlpool spun round with its reckless 
 freight of gaily dressed debauchees, who, seeing one and another 
 wasted face sink from view, only drowned the cry of dying remorse 
 in a wilder burst of revelry. A few were flung out from the fatal 
 circles with ruined fortune and broken health, to find nothing left 
 them but a painful dragging out of days in some lonely country 
 farm-house ; or, if the pure air and quiet hours restored them, a 
 life of exile, as a soldier in some foreign service, and then, perhaps, 
 a grave in unknown soil. Yet even all this vicious round could 
 not destroy the pluck of Englishmen. Gallantly and gaily did 
 Rupert's horsemen, the very flower of the Cavaliers, ride in the 
 face of hailing bullets upon the Puritan musketeers. While we 
 condemn the vices of the Cavaliers, and pity the wretched end of 
 so many of these brilliant English gentlemen, we cannot help 
 respecting the bravery of the men who rallied so loyally round 
 05) 12 
 
178 THE PURITAN DRESS AND MIEN. 
 
 the banner of their erring king, and, for the cause of monarchy, 
 spilt their blood on English battle-fields with the same care- 
 less gaiety as if they were pouring out bumpers of red wine in the 
 taverns by St. Paul's. 
 
 The literature of the Cavaliers, we may almost guess, did not, 
 for the most part, go very deep. The poetry was chiefly lyric, 
 the sparkling, spontaneous effusions of a genius, that poured 
 forth its sweet and living waters in spite of overwhelming floods 
 of wine and dense fumes of tobacco-smoke. Herrick, Suckling, 
 Waller, and the unhappy Lovelace were the chief poets of the 
 Cavaliers ; and the works of all are stamped with characters that 
 proclaim their birth-place and their fostering food. The Cavalier 
 was graceful and gay, polite and polished ; so are the verses of 
 Lovelace and his brother bards. The Cavalier was dissipated, and 
 often vicious; there are many works of these men that bear 
 deepest stains of immorality and vice. History, on the Cavalier 
 side, is best represented by Lord Clarendon ; theology, by the witty 
 Thomas Fuller and the brilliant Jeremy Taylor. The quaint 
 oddities of the former divine, and the gentle pictures, rich in 
 images of loveliness, with which the sermons of the latter are 
 studded, afford the most pleasing examples of English literature 
 written in the atmosphere of Cavalier life. 
 
 Of a totally different stamp were the Puritan and his writings. 
 Instead of the silk, satin, and lace which decked his gay antago- 
 nists, he affected usually a grave sobriety of dress and manners, 
 which should place him at the utmost possible distance from the 
 fashion of the vain world from which he sought to separate him- 
 self His tastes were simple, his pleasures moderate, and his 
 behaviour reverent and circumspect. Living in an atmosphere of 
 habitual seriousness, the Bible was much in his hands and its 
 sacred words often on his lips ; while, disdaining lighter recreations, 
 he often found his chief enjoyment in the hearing of sermons 
 and the singing of psalms. As in other days of high religious 
 fervour, his children at their baptism were called by sacred names, 
 either drawn from the genealogical lists of Old Testament times, 
 or expressive of his Christian faith and hope. That the perfor- 
 
THE PURITAN LITERATURE. 170 
 
 mance of the stage, such as it then was, steeped in a shameless 
 licentiousness which shocked alike good men of every party, should 
 be the object of his utter abhorrence, was a matter of course , but 
 with it were rejected other sports and pastimes of a less question- 
 able kind, but which were still, in his view, inseparably mixed up 
 with sin as the mistletoe, the boar's head, and the country games 
 around the May-pole, decorated with green and flowing boughs. 
 Opposed, in short, to the riotous and dashing Cavaliers, both 
 in political and religious views, the Puritans strove to draw the 
 line as sharply as possible between themselves and their gaily 
 attired antagonists, and to stand in every respect as far apart 
 from these godless revellers as they could. They went too far, 
 undoubtedly; but they were, in point of morality and religion at 
 least, on the right side of the dividing line ; and we can easily 
 forgive the austere tone in which Sergeant Zerubbabel Grace, 
 discoursing to his troopers, proclaimed the truths of the Bible, when 
 we remember that the same brave and honest soldier gave good proofs 
 of his sincerity, by avoiding the ale-house and the dicing-room, 
 and living in constant fear of Him who said, "Swear not at all." 
 
 A profound religious thoughtfulness was the root, in the char- 
 acter of the English Puritans, out of which grew their great works 
 of the pen. 
 
 The period of the Civil War was too full of hurry and blood- 
 shed to be prolific in any but controversial writings. One 
 princely work, indeed, the Areopagitica of Milton, lifted its lofty 
 voice above the clash of swords and the roll of musketry, its 
 noble eloquence undimmed by the blackening sulphur-smoke. 
 Liberty was the grand stake, for which the English Puritans were 
 then playing at the game of war ; and there was among them one, 
 the grandest intellect of all, who could not stand idly by and 
 see professing champions of the sacred cause fellow-soldiers by 
 his own side in the great battle of freedom lay, in their blindness, 
 the heavy fetter of a license on the English press. To Milton the 
 freedom of human thought and speech was a far grander aim 
 than even the relief of the English people from the tyranny of 
 Charles Stuart. 
 
ISO THE GREAT PURITAN MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 When the Civil War was over, and Charles rested in his bloody 
 grave, the day of Roundhead triumph came. Yet not the proudest 
 period of the Puritan literature. Pure in many things, as its 
 name proclaimed it, the Puritan mind needed to pass through a 
 fiery furnace before its dross was quite purged away, and the fine 
 gold shone out with clearest lustre. 
 
 While the Cavalier poets had been stringing their garlands of 
 artificial blossoms in the heated air of the Stuart court, Milton had 
 been weaving his sweet chaplets of unfading wild-flowers in the 
 meadows of Horton. It was not in the nature of things that the 
 great Puritan poet should pass through the trying hours of conflict 
 and of triumph without many stains of earth deepening on his spirit. 
 To purge these away, required suffering in many shapes blind- 
 ness, bitterness of soul, threatening ruin, and certain narrowness of 
 means. Yet bodily affliction and political disgrace could not break 
 the giant's wing ; they but served to give it greater strength. From 
 a fall which would have laid a feebler man still in his coffin, Milton 
 arose with his noblest poem completed in his hand. And Milton's 
 noblest poem is the crown and glory of our English literature. 
 What more needs to be said of Puritan influence upon English 
 letters than that Puritan Milton wrote the Paradise Lost ? 
 
 Puritanism acted powerfully, too, upon our English prose, find- 
 ing its highest expression under this form in the works of John 
 Bunyan and Richard Baxter. Here, also, the fervour of religious 
 earnestness leavens the whole mass. A massive strength and 
 solemn elevation of tone, form the grand characteristics of a school 
 in which the naked majesty of the Divine perhaps too much over- 
 shadows the tenderness and gentleness of the human element. 
 The stern work of those sad times was little fitted to nourish in 
 the breasts of good men those feelings from which bright thoughts 
 and happy sunny affections spring ; but the worst enemy of these 
 remarkable men cannot deny, that the main-spring of the Puritan 
 mind, as displayed in written works and recorded actions, was 
 a simple fear of God, and an over-mastering desire to fulfil every 
 duty, in the face of any consequences, no matter how perilous or 
 painful. 
 
LECTURES AT THE SAVOY. 181 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THOMAS FULLER. 
 
 Born 1608 A.D Died 1661 A.D. 
 
 Birth and education. Collecting materials. 
 
 Love of peace. End of the war. 
 
 The Civil War. Rector of Waltlmm. 
 
 In the field. Late honours. 
 
 Death 
 
 Worthies of England. 
 Character of his works. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 "WORTHY old Fuller," "quaint old Thomas Fuller," are the 
 affectionate names by which this witty English divine is often 
 called. He was the son of a Northamptonshire clergyman, and 
 was born in 1608 at Aldwinckle, a place rendered illustrious 
 in later days by the birth of the poet Dryden. Passing from 
 under the tuition of his father, he entered Queen's College, 
 Cambridge, in his thirteenth year. Ten years later he became a 
 Fellow of Sidney Sussex. To follow the steps by which he rose 
 in the Church, would be out of place here ; it is sufficient to say, 
 that when he was little more than thirty years of age he had 
 already won a distinguished reputation in the London pulpits, and 
 had become Lecturer at the Savoy. 
 
 The clouds of the Civil War, charged with fire and blood, were 
 fast darkening over Britain, as Fuller laboured in this prominent 
 sphere. Remembering that his Master had said, " Blessed are the 
 peace-makers," he lost no opportunity of striving to reconcile the 
 parties, that were every day drifting further apart. His sermons 
 all pointed to this great and noble end ; his conversation in society 
 was all woven of this golden thread. At last the deluge burst 
 upon the land ; and the eloquent clergyman, upon whom the 
 Parliament looked with jealous eyes, was forced to leave his pulpit, 
 and betake himself to Oxford, where the King had fixed his court. 
 Fuller's moderation had obtained for him in London, with the Par- 
 liament at least, the name of a keen Royalist; but now in the head- 
 
182 PULLER'S LIFE IN THE CAMP. 
 
 quarters of the royal party, all liot for carnage, the same peace- 
 loving temper caused him to be accused of a Puritan taint. His 
 books and manuscripts, dear companions of his quietest hours, were 
 taken from him ; and there was no resource left him but to join the 
 royal army in the field. As chaplain to Lord Hopton, he moved 
 with the royal troops from place to place, fulfilling his sacred 
 duties faithfully, but employing his leisure in the collection of 
 materials for a literary work. Wherever the tents were pitched, or 
 the soldiers quartered, he took care to note down all the old legends 
 afloat in the district, and to visit every place within reach, which 
 possessed any interest for the liistorian or the archaeologist No 
 better preparation could have been made for the composition of 
 TJie Worthies of England; and when we add to his own personal 
 observations the gleanings of a wide correspondence, we shall form 
 some idea of the industrious care with which Fuller built up a work 
 that has contributed so largely to make his name famous. Camp life 
 seems to have kindled something of warlike ardour in the peaceful 
 chaplain's breast ; for we read that, when Basing Hall was assailed 
 by the Koundheads under Waller, after the battle of Cheriton 
 Down, Fuller, who had been left by his patron in command of 
 the garrison, bestirred himself so bravely in its defence, that the 
 besiegers were repulsed with heavy loss. After the downfall of 
 the royal cause he lived for some years at Exeter, constantly 
 engaged in preaching or writing. Good TJiouyhts in Bad Times, 
 and Good TJwughts in Worse Titties are the titles of the two 
 books which he is said to have written in this capital of south- 
 western England. 
 
 After about two years of wandering he found himself once more 
 in London, a worn man in what was in truth a changed place. 
 For some time he preached where he could, until he obtained v, 
 
 permanent pulpit in St Bride's, Fleet Street. Then, having 
 
 1 648 passed the examination of the "Triers," he settled down in 
 
 A.D. 1648 at Waltham Abbey in Essex, to the rectory of which 
 
 he had been presented by the Earl of Carlisle. During 
 the bloody year which followed, and the eleven years of interreg- 
 num, his pen and voice were busy as ever in the cause of truth. 
 
WIT AND WISDOM OP THOMAS FULLER. 183 
 
 In spite of Cromwell's interdict lie continued to preach, and in 
 1656 his Church History of Britain from the Birth of Christ to the 
 Year 1648 was given to the world. 
 
 The Restoration brought him once more prominently into view. 
 He received again his lectureship at the Savoy, and his prebendal 
 stall at Salisbury; he was chosen chaplain to the King, and created 
 Doctor of Divinity by the authorities of Cambridge. But Fuller's 
 day on earth was near its close. This gleam of sunshine, which 
 followed the grey mist of its afternoon, was brief and 
 passing. Scarcely had he worn these honours for a year, Aug. 16, 
 when he sank into the grave, smitten by a violent fever, 1661 
 which was then known as " the new disease." Two hun- A.D. 
 dred of bis brother ministers in sad procession followed 
 his coffin to the tomb. 
 
 Thomas Fuller is chiefly remembered for two works, his 
 " Church History of Britain," published in 1656, and his 
 " Worthies of England," published the year after his death. The 
 latter is his greatest work. Begun during his wanderings with 
 the royal army, and continued through all the changes of his after 
 life, this quaint, delightful collection of literary odds and ends, 
 deals not alone with the personal history of eminent Englishmen, 
 as the name would seem to imply, but also with botany, topo- 
 graphy, architecture, antiquities, and a host of other things con- 
 nected with the shires in which they were born. The queer but very 
 telling vtit of Fuller sparkles in every line. He possessed in an 
 eminent degree that curious felicity of language which condenses 
 a vast store of wisdom into a few brief and pithy words; so that 
 maxims and aphorisms may be culled by the hundred from the 
 pages of his books. We have lately had the "Wit and Wisdom of 
 Sydney Smith," from a London publisher; a still better book 
 would be the "Wit and Wisdom of Thomas Fuller." The " Church 
 History" was condemned in the author's own day for its "fun and 
 quibble;" but there was nothing venomous or foul in the fun of 
 Fuller, which has well been called " the sweetest-blooded wit that 
 was ever infused into man or book." As well might we chide the 
 lark for its joyous song, as this gentle parson for his pleasant jokes 
 
184 SPECIMEN OF FULLER'S PROSE. 
 
 and quaint conceits. Besides the works already mentioned, Fuller 
 wrote Tlie History of tJie Holy War, The Holy and the Profane 
 States, A Pisgah View of Palestine, and very many Essays, Tracts, 
 and Sermons. 
 
 THE SEA. 
 (PROM "THE HOLY STATE.") 
 
 Tell me, ye naturalists, who sounded the first march and retreat to the tide, 
 " Hither shalt thou come, and no further 1" Why doth not the water recover 
 his right over the earth, being higher in nature ? Whence came the salt, and 
 who first boiled it, which made so much brine 1 When the winds are not only 
 wild in a storm, but even stark mad in an hurricane, who is it that restores them 
 again to their wits, and brings them asleep in a calm 1 Who made the mighty 
 whales, which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil swimming in them ? 
 Who first taught the water to imitate the creatures on land, so that the sea is 
 the stable of horse-fishes, the stall of kine-fishes, the sty of hog-fishes, the kennel 
 of dog-fishes, and in all things the sea the ape of the land ? Whence grows the 
 ambergris in the sea] which is not so hard to find where it is as to know what it 
 is. Was not God the first ship-wright ? and have not all vessels on the water de- 
 scended from the loins (or ribs rather) of Noah's ark 1 or else, who durst be so bold, 
 with a few crooked boards nailed together, a stick standing upright, and a rag tied 
 to it, to adventure into the ocean? What loadstone first touched the loadstone 1 
 or how first fell it in love with the North, rather affecting that cold climate than 
 the pleasant East, or fruitful South or West 1 How comes that stone to know 
 more than men, and find the way to the land in a mist ? In most of these, men 
 take sanctuary at occuJta qu.aJ.itas (some hidden quality), and complain that the 
 room is dark, when their eyes are blind. Indeed, they are God's wonders; 
 and that seaman the greatest wonder of all for his blockishness, who, seeing 
 them duily, neither takes notice of them, admires at them, nor is thankful fot 
 them. 
 
THE EARLY LIFE OF JEEEMY TAYLOR. 185 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 JEREMY TAYLOE. 
 
 Born 1613 A.D Died 1667 A.D. 
 
 Preaching. 
 Rise of Taylor. 
 The Civil War. 
 The Welsh school. 
 Pen-work. 
 
 Return to London. 
 
 Crosses to Ireland. 
 
 Trouble. 
 
 The Restoration. 
 
 Bishop of Down. 
 
 Difficulties of the post. 
 Death. 
 
 Taylor's style. 
 Chief works. 
 Illustrative extract, 
 
 THERE is no reason why the picturesque and the fanciful should 
 be excluded from the oratory of the pulpit. As Christianity is 
 emphatically the religion of man, and imparts to every element of 
 his nature at once its highest culture and its noblest consecration, 
 so there is no faculty or power within him which does not admit 
 of being devoted to its service. Within its sacred and truly catholic 
 pale, the poet, the philosopher, the logician, the man of sentiment 
 and the man of abstract thought have each his place. Even the 
 greatest of the apostles would be " all things to all men, if by 
 any means he might save some." It was on this principle 
 that Jeremy Taylor devoted the stores of his rich and brilliant 
 fancy to the service of the Cross lending all the charms of 
 beauty to set forth the sanctity of truth. He strove to teach 
 as did that gentle Saviour whose minister he was ; and therefore 
 the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, the dashing sea, the 
 roaring wind, the weeping sky, and a thousand other strong and 
 lovely things scattered around him in the world, supplied him 
 with lessons, whose dear familiar beauty charmed his hearers, and 
 still charms his readers into rapt attention. 
 
 This " poet among preachers," .the son of a poor but well-de- 
 scended surgeon-barber, was born at Cambridge in 1613. Having 
 received his elementary education at the Grammar-school of his 
 native town, he, when not yet fourteen, entered Caius College as a 
 sizar, the humblest class of students. When he had studied at 
 Cambridge for some years, he went to London ; and there, by his 
 
186 A SCHOOLMASTER 1$ WALES. 
 
 handsome face and still finer style of preaching, he attracted the 
 notice of the great Archbishop Laud, who was then in the full blaze 
 of power. Under the patronage of so noted a man the advancement 
 of Taylor was rapid. Laud earnestly wished to establish him at 
 Oxford ; and in 1636 secured for him a fellowship in All Souls 
 College. In the following year he became, through Juxon, 
 Bishop of London, the rector of Uppingham in Rutlandshire ; and 
 to that quiet parsonage, two years later, he brought home his first 
 wife, Phoebe Langdale. Three years passed by years of mingled 
 joy and sorrow ; for they made him the father of three sons, but 
 took from him his gentle wife. 
 
 Then came the storm of the Civil War; and in the wreck of 
 the throne the fortunes of Jeremy Taylor suffered shipwreck too. 
 His life at this period presents a striking resemblance to the life 
 of Fuller. Like that witty priest, he joined the royal party at 
 Oxford, accompanied the troops to the field in the capacity of 
 chaplain, and took an active share in the hard work of the war. 
 In the battle fought at Cardigan he was made prisoner by the 
 Roundheads. His release, however, soon followed ; and, having 
 no longer a home among the rich woodlands of Rutlandshire for 
 his rectory had been sequestrated by the Parliament he resolved 
 to cast his lot in the mountain-land of Wales, and calmly wait for 
 better times. There, at Newton-hall in Caermarthenshire, he set 
 up a school in conjunction with two accomplished friends, who 
 like himself had fallen upon evil days. Time slid away ; King 
 Charles was beheaded, and Oliver assumed the purple robe of Pro- 
 tector. Far away from the great centres of learning and distinc- 
 tion, girdled round by the huge Cambrian mountains, the Chrys- 
 ostom of our English literature lived a peaceful but very busy 
 life. His good friend John Evelyn, and his kind neighbour the 
 Earl of Carbery, stretched out willing hands to help him in his 
 need. His marriage with a lady, who possessed an estate in Caer- 
 marthen, relieved him from the wearing toil of the school-room. 
 But if his life grew easier, he certainly did not relax in the work 
 for which he was best fitted. 
 
 Ever labouring with his pen, he sent forth from his secluded 
 
BTSHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR. 187 
 
 dwelling-place book after book, enriched with the choicest fancies 
 of a most poetic mind. But even the privacy of his life could not 
 keep him entirely safe; fine and imprisonment fell heavily on him 
 at various times during the ascendency of the Puritans, against 
 whom he spoke and wrote on some occasions very strongly. At 
 last, probably weary of a retirement which did not shield him 
 from his foes, he returned to London in 1657. An invitation from 
 the Earl of Conway induced him, in the following year, to settle 
 in the north of Ireland, where he officiated as lecturer at Lisburn, 
 and also at Portmore, a village on the shores of Lough Neagh. 
 He fixed his residence at the latter place. Here, too, Puritan 
 resentment found him out. An informer gave evidence that the 
 minister of Lisburn had used the sign of the cross in baptism. 
 Arrested with violence, Taylor was hurried in deep mid-winter to 
 answer before the Irish Council for his act. Exposure and anxiety 
 brought on a fever, which did him the good office of softening the 
 sentence of the court. 
 
 Soon afterwards visiting London on literary business, he signed 
 the Royalist declaration of April 24, 1660, and in the following 
 month the joy-bells, which rang in the Restoration of the second 
 Charles, sounded a note of preferment to Taylor. The 
 bishopric of Down and Connor, to which was afterwards Aug. 
 added the see of Dromore, rewarded the eloquent 1660 
 preacher, whose Royalist zeal had never languished. Yet, A.D. 
 after all, this mitre was but the badge of an honourable, 
 but not an easy exile, in which Taylor spent his remaining 
 years. A hard and thankless office it must have been for an 
 English bishop to superintend an Irish diocese at that day. 
 His nation and his faith were both unpopular. Congregations, 
 driven by the terror of strict penal laws, crowded the churches 
 every Sunday to hear a service which many of them could not 
 understand, and which most of them regarded with the strongest 
 dislike. Many of his clergy, also, appointed under the old system 
 of things, looked jealously on the authority of a bishop. Battling 
 with difficulties so many and so great, Taylor must often have 
 eiglied after his quiet parsonage at Uppingham, or even after his 
 
188 STYLE AND WORKS OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 
 
 school- room at Newton-hall. But he did his duty nobly in a 
 most difficult position, until an attack of fever cut him off at the 
 early age of fifty-five. His death took place at Lisburn in 1GC7. 
 
 Hallam characterizes the style of Jeremy Taylor's sermons as 
 being far too Asiatic in their abundance of ornament, and too 
 much loaded with flower-garlands of quotation from other, espe- 
 cially classical, writers. Yet the great critic assigns to the great 
 preacher the praise of being " the chief ornament of the English 
 pulpit up to the middle of the seventeenth century," an admission 
 which does much to blunt the point of his censure. 
 
 Taylor does, undoubtedly, sometimes run riot in sweet metaphors, 
 and lose his way in a maze of illustrations ; but, even so, is it not 
 pleasanter and better to wander through a lovely garden, although 
 the flowers are sometimes tangling together in a brilliant chaos and 
 tripping us as we walk, than to plod over dry and sandy wastes, 
 where showers, if they ever fall, seem only to wash the green out 
 of the parched and stunted grass 1 
 
 Jeremy Taylor's most popular devotional work is his Holy Living 
 and Holy Dying. Other works of the same class are The Life 
 of Christ and The Golden Grove; of which the latter is a series of 
 meditations named after the seat of Earl Carbery, his neighbour 
 in Wales. These were all written in his Welsh retreat. There, 
 too, he wrote a generous, liberal, and most eloquent plea for tolera- 
 tion in religious matters, entitled Tlie Liberty of Prophesying ;* in 
 the dedication of which he refers with pathetic beauty to the 
 violence of the storm which had " dashed the vessel of the Church 
 all in pieces," and had cast himself, a shipwrecked man, on the 
 coast of Wales. His last great work, styled Ductor Dubitantium, 
 treats of the guidance of the conscience, and is still considered our 
 great standard English book on casuistry. But Taylor's style is 
 not well suited to make clear a subject so difficult and intricate; 
 nor does the plan, which the author lays down, aid in giving dis- 
 tinctness to his teaching. 
 
 * Prophesying is here used in the sense of preaching. Compare its use in certain p?rts 
 of the New Testament. 
 
SPECIMEN OF TAYLOR'S STYLE. 189 
 
 ON PRAYER. 
 
 Anger is a perfect alienation of the mind from prayer, and therefore is con- 
 trary to that attention which presents our prayers in a right line to God. For 
 so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing 
 as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor 
 bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion 
 made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest 
 than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings, till 
 the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was 
 over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had 
 learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the 
 air, about his ministries here below. So is the prayer of a good man : when his 
 affairs have required business, and his business was matter of discipline, and 
 las discipline was to pass upon a sinning person, or had a design of charity, his 
 duty met with the infirmities of a man, and anger was its instrument ; and the 
 instrument became stronger than the prime agent, and raised a tempest, and 
 overruled the man ; and then his prayer was broken, and his thoughts were 
 troubled, and his words went up towards a cloud ; and his thoughts pulled them 
 back again, and made them without intention; and the good man sighs for his 
 infirmity, but must be content to lose that prayer, and he must recover it when 
 his anger is removed, and his spirit is becalmed, made even as the brow of 
 Jesus, and smooth like the heart of God ; and then it ascends to heaven upon 
 the wings of the holy dove, and dwells with God, till it returns, like the useful 
 t-eo, loaden with a blessing and the dew of heaven. 
 
190 TWO OLD PILLARS IN PICCADILLY. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EDWABD HYDE, EARL OP CLAEENDON. 
 Born 1608 A.D. ... ... Died 1674 A.D. 
 
 Two old pillars. 
 Early days of Hyde. 
 Begins public life. 
 His first exile. 
 The Restoration. 
 
 His second exile. 
 
 Death. 
 
 Milton and Clarendon, 
 
 History of the Rebellion 
 
 Illustrative extract 
 
 FORMING the door-posts of a stable-yard, attached to the Tlnvc 
 Kings' Inn in Piccadilly, there stand, or stood a short time since, 
 two old defaced Corinthian pillars, chipped, weather-stained, drab- 
 painted, and bearing upon their faded acanthus crowns the sign- 
 board of the livery-stables. Ostlers lounge and smoke there; passers- 
 by give no heed to the poor relics of a dead grandeur; and the 
 brown London mud bespatters them pitilessly from capital to 
 base, as rattling wheels jolt past over the uneven pavement. 
 These pillars are all that remain of a splendid palace, which was 
 reared upon that site by the famous Edward Hyde, Earl of 
 Clarendon and Lord High Chancellor of England. It was built at 
 an unhappy time, when England could but ill spare the 50,000 
 sunk in its gorgeous stone-work, and when England's King and 
 Chancellor were hated by the people with a bitter hatred. So it 
 was nicknamed Dunkirk House, and Tangier Hall, and insulting 
 couplets were chalked upon its gates by a howling rabble, who 
 shivered its windows with stones, when the Dutch cannon were 
 heard in the estuary of the Thames. Clarendon, who built it, was 
 then near the day of his fall. 
 
 Already he had seen heavy reverses. When he left the pleasant 
 lawns of Dinton in Wiltshire, where he was born in 1608, to study 
 at Oxford for the Church, and afterwards to pore over ponderous 
 law-books in the old chambers of the Middle Temple, he little 
 foresaw either his splendid rise or his sad decline. Still lesa 
 
CLARENDON MADE LOUD CHANCELLOR. 191 
 
 did lie dream, in those golden days of youth, that out of the dark 
 days of his second exile would come a book, which should gild 
 his name with even brighter lustre than statesmanship or devotion 
 to his king could win for him. A chequered reputation on the 
 page of history, and two old pillars in Piccadilly, might have been 
 all that remained of the great lawyer's life-work, had not his 
 brilliant pen raised a monument of eloquence, imperishable while 
 the English language lives. 
 
 As member for Wootton Basset he began his political career in 
 1640, having previously, though enjoying a considerable private 
 fortune, devoted himself so earnestly to the practice of the law as 
 to win by it much renown and many friends. His rise to royal 
 favour was very speedy. Having aided the King most materially 
 by writing several important papers, he was knighted in 1643, and 
 made Chancellor of the Exchequer. But in spite of all that the 
 swords of the Cavaliers or the eloquence of Hyde could do, the cause 
 of Charles declined, and it was judged right that the Prince 
 of Wales should leave England. Hyde accompanied the 1646 
 royal boy to Jersey, where after some time he commenced A.D. 
 his great History of the Rebellion. It would be out of 
 place here to trace the wanderings of his first exile. At the Hague 
 he heard of the Whitehall tragedy. At Paris he shared the 
 poverty of the royal Stuart sometimes with neither clothes nor fire 
 to keep out the winter cold, and often with not a livre he could 
 call his own. All that the unfortunate, lazy, dissipated, uncrowned, 
 and kingdomless monarch could do to recompense the fidelity of 
 this devoted servant, he did. He made him his Lord Chancellor 
 an empty name written on an empty purse, as things went then. 
 
 But soon came the Restoration with its pealing bells and 
 scattered flowers. Hyde, created Earl of Clarendon, 
 became a real Lord Chancellor, entitled to sit on the 1660 
 actual woolsack. Then for seven years he was the ruling A.D. 
 spirit of English politics, and he shares in many of the dark 
 stains, which lie upon the memory of King Charles II. The feeling 
 of the nation grew strong against him. He lost the royal favour. 
 In August 1667 he had to give up the Great Seal; and, with a trial 
 
192 CLARENDON AND MILTON. 
 
 for high treason hanging over liis grey head, he fled down to the 
 coast, and took ship at the pretty village of Erith for the French 
 shore. Louis proved unfriendly to the fallen statesman. From 
 place to place the old man wandered, finding solace only in his 
 pen. Seven years passed wearily by, gout racking his feeble 
 frame. A plaintive petition in his last days entreated his heartless 
 master's leave to die at home. " Seven years," he wrote, " was a 
 time prescribed and limited by God himself for the expiration of 
 some of his greatest judgments ; and it is full that time since I 
 have, with all possible humility, sustained the insupportable weight 
 of the king's displeasure. Since it will be in nobody's power 
 
 long to prevent me from dying, methinks the desiring a 
 
 1 6 74 place to die in should not be thought a great presumption." 
 
 A.D. No answer came; and when the year 1674 was near its 
 
 close, Clarendon breathed his last at Rouen. 
 The great Cavalier prince of historical portrait painters out- 
 lived the great Puritan prince of epic poets but a few days. 
 Born in the same year, Clarendon and Milton stood all their lives 
 apart, towering in rival greatness above their fellows in the grand 
 struggle of their century. The year of the Restoration, which 
 brought wealth and splendour to the Cavalier, plunged the blind 
 old Puritan in bitter poverty. But a few years more, and the great 
 Earl, too, was stricken down from his lofty place, and sent a home- 
 less wanderer to a stranger's land. To both, their sternest discipline 
 was their greatest gain ; for when the colours of hope and gladness 
 had faded from the landscape of their lives, and nothing but a waste 
 of splendourless days seemed to stretch in cheerless vista before 
 them, they turned to the desk for solace, and found in the exercise 
 of their literary skill, not peace alone, but fame. Milton wrote 
 most of his great Poem in blindness and disgrace ; Clarendon com- 
 pleted his great History during a painful exile. 
 
 Clarendon's " History of the Rebellion " (mark the Cavalier in 
 the last word of this title) is not in all things a faithful picture of 
 those terrible days, red with civil and with royal blood. Nor ia 
 this wonderful, for the writer was absent from his native land dur- 
 ing a great part of the eventful strife, which he designates by so 
 
THE "HISTORY OF THE REBELLIO^" [ V J103 
 
 pointed a name. It is very unequally written, here adorned with a 
 passage of most picturesque and glowing eloquence, and there marred 
 by a " ravelled sleave " of sentences, tangled together in utter de- 
 fiance of grammatical construction. Yet he is never, even in Ms 
 most slovenly passages, obscure. It has been well remarked that 
 his language is that of the speaker, not of the writer and if we 
 remember Hyde's training at the bar, we shall cease to wonder at his 
 off-hand, careless style. When he sits down to paint the character of 
 some celebrated man, his pencil seems dipt in the brightest hues, 
 and, as touch after touch falls lovingly on the canvas, we feel 
 that a master's hand is tracing the growing form. The History , 
 was not published until 1707 ; his Life and the Continuation of the 
 History, not until 1759. Another remarkable work of Clarendon 
 is his Essay on an Active and Contemplative Life. 
 
 CHARACTER AND DEATH OF LORD FALKLAND. 
 
 (FROM THE "HISTORY OP THE REBELLION.") 
 
 When there was any overture or hope of peace, he would be more erect and 
 vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to press anything which he thought might 
 promote it; and sitting among his friends, often after a deep silence, and frequent 
 sighs, would, with a shrill and sad accent, ingeminate the word Peace, peace; 
 and would passionately profess, " that the very agony of the war and the view of 
 the calamities and desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep 
 from him, and would shortly break his heart. " This made some think, or pre- 
 tend to think, " that he was so much enamoured of peace, that he would have 
 been glad the King should have bought it at any price ;" which was a most 
 unreasonable calumny ; as if a man that was himself the most punctual and 
 precise in every circumstance, that might reflect upon conscience or honour, 
 could have wished the King to have committed a trespass against either 
 
 In the morning before the battle, as always upon action, he was very cheerful, 
 and put himself into the first rank of the Lord Byron's regiment, then advancing 
 upon the enemy, who had lined the hedges on both sides with musketeers ; from 
 whence he was shot with a musket in the lower part of the belly, and in the 
 instant falling from his horse, his body was not found till the next morning ; 
 till when, there was some hope he might have been a prisoner, though his nearest 
 friends, who knew his temper, received small comfort from that imagination. 
 Thus fell that incomparable young man, in the four-and-thirtieth year of his 
 age, having so much despatched the true business of life, that the eldest rarely 
 attain to that immense knowledge, and the youngest enter not into the world 
 with more innocency : whosoever leads such a life, needs be the less anxious upon 
 how short warning it is taken from him. 
 
 (16) 13 
 
194 
 
 SPLENDOUR OF MILTON S FAME. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 JOHN MILTON, 
 
 Born 1608 A.D Died 1674 A.D. 
 
 Milton's fame. 
 The scrivener's home. 
 The Puritan school-boy. 
 Troubles at Cambridge. 
 Ode on the Nativity. 
 Life at Horton. 
 Earlier works. 
 Continental travel. 
 School in Aldersgate. 
 Marries Mary Powell 
 Deserted. 
 
 Areopagitica. 
 Reconciled. 
 The Tenure. 
 Latin Secretary. 
 Eikonoklastcs. 
 The Defences. 
 Blindness. 
 Petty France. 
 Begins Paradise Lost. 
 The Restoration. 
 Thomas Ellwood. 
 
 Paradise Lost completed. 
 Published. 
 Terms of the sale. 
 Not neglected. 
 Later works. 
 Picture of old Milton. 
 His daily life. 
 His death. 
 List of chief works. 
 Critical notes. 
 Illustrative extracts. 
 
 PERHAPS the finest sentence in that noble fragment of an English 
 History, by which the dead Macaulay yet speaks to a grateful, reverent 
 nation, is a sentence thus recording the glory of John Milton : 
 
 "A mightier poet, tried at once by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy, 
 and blindness, meditated, undisturbed by the obscene tumult which 
 raged all around him, a song so sublime and so holy that it would 
 not have misbecome the lips of those ethereal Virtues whom he saw, 
 with that inner eye which no calamity could darken, flinging down 
 on the jasper pavement their crowns of amaranth and gold." 
 
 If Milton had written not one line of verse, his richly jewelled and 
 majestic prose would have raised him to a lofty rank among the 
 Raleighs and the Bacons, the Taylors and the Gibbons of our Eng- 
 lish tongue ; and if he had dropped the poet's lyre for ever, when 
 he exchanged the green shades of Horton and the crystal skies of 
 Italy for the smoke and din of London life and the heat of a great 
 controversial war, the songs already sung by the youthful Puritan 
 bard had won a chaplet of unfading bays, at least as bright as those 
 that decorate the brows of Dryden and of Pope. But, when we add 
 to these achievements the sublime and solemn anthem of his blind 
 old age, the lustre of his life's work brightens to such intensity, 
 that there is but one name in the long roll of English writers 
 which does not grow dim in the surpassing radiance of his fame. 
 
A HAPPY PURITAN HOME. 195 
 
 Shakspere and Milton dwell apart from all, in a loftier region of 
 their own. Great Consuls in the mighty republic of English letters, 
 to them alone belong the honours of the ivory chair, the robe with 
 purple hem, and the rod-surrounded axe. 
 
 In the reign of Elizabeth a certain John Mylton was under- 
 ranger of Shotover Forest, not far from Oxford. This was the 
 poet's grandfather. A strict Eoman Catholic, he disinherited his 
 son for adopting the Protestant faith; and this son, also a John 
 Milton, having gone to London, set up, as a scrivener or notary- 
 public, at the sign of the Spread Eagle in Bread Street. There, 
 in the intervals of his professional will-drawing and money-lending 
 John Milton the scrivener wrote trifling verses and composed 
 elaborate pieces of music. Under the wings of this 
 Spread Eagle, which seems to have shadowed a very com- 1608 
 fortable, happy home, was born, on the 9th of December A.D. 
 1608, John Milton the poet, son of a Puritan scrivener, and 
 grandson of a Eoman Catholic ranger ; receiving from his father 
 literary tastes and a love of music ; and from his mother a kind, 
 gentle nature, and the sad inheritance of weak eyes. 
 
 The Puritan influences, amid which the boy grew up, moulded 
 his character to a shape it never lost. Having received his earlier 
 education at home, from a Scotchman, Thomas Young, he went 
 at about twelve years of age to St. Paul's school, which was then 
 under the direction of a Mr. Gill. Even at that unripe age Milton's 
 studious tastes showed themselves. Night after night he was up over 
 his books till past twelve, and neither watering eyes nor increasing 
 headaches could daunt the brave young worker. We cannot but 
 be pained when we think of this intense application, by which Mil- 
 ton laid the foundation of the wonderful learning displayed in "Para- 
 dise Lost." The midnight studies of the child cost the old man his 
 enjoyment of heaven's light and earth's colouring. Yet even here 
 there was a blessing in disguise; for the affliction which quenched 
 the light of the body's eye, deepened and strengthened the vision 
 of that inner, spiritual eye, " which no calamity could darken." 
 
 While yet a school-boy, Milton could write capital Latin and 
 Greek, either in verse or prose; and knew something, too, of 
 
196 MILTON AT CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 Hebrew. He had read with delight the poems of Spenser, and 
 Sylvester's translation of the Frenchman, Du Bartas; and had 
 tried his boyish pen on English verse by translating the 114th 
 and 136th Psalms. 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge, being chosen for the higher instruc- 
 
 tion of the youthful poet, he went thither in 1624 as a 
 
 minor pensioner. His tutor was Chappel, afterwards 
 
 Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and Bishop of Cork. 
 
 What was the ground of dispute we cannot exactly tell, but a quarrel 
 
 took place between tutor and pupil, so serious that Milton had to 
 
 leave his college for a while.* This incident Johnson exaggerates 
 
 into rustication, insinuating on the same page that Milton was 
 
 whipped at Cambridge. It is true that the rod, plied in the lower 
 
 schools with systematic cruelty, had not yet been quite abandoned 
 
 in the college class-room ; but there is not sufficient ground for 
 
 believing that Milton was flogged at college, merely because flogging 
 
 at college was not quite done away with in his youthful days. 
 
 The delicate beauty of the student's face, with its shell-like 
 pink and white, and the rolling masses of silken auburn hair, 
 parted in the middle, that framed its oval contour, excited the 
 jeers of some rougher class-mates, who called him "The Lady of 
 the College." They might well have spared their mockery, for 
 the blonde beauty was going to outshine them all, and even then 
 was showing signs of a wondrous genius in its dawn. In the 
 "winter wild" of 1629, Milton's twenty-first year, he composed 
 his magnificent Ode on tlie Morning of Christ's Nativity, which 
 ranks among the finest specimens of lyrical poetry that any age 
 or nation has produced. Yet Johnson, in his Life of Milton, does 
 not even mention this grand burst of song ! 
 
 Having completed his course, and taken his degree of 
 M.A., he left Cambridge in 1632, to spend five calm de- 
 lightful years in his father's country house at Horton in 
 Buckinghamshire. 
 
 It is impossible to doubt that the lovely pictures of Eden-life, 
 
 * It hns been maintained by some keen and able reasoners that Milton never left hU 
 college at all. 
 
FIVE HAPPY YEAIIS AT HORTON. 197 
 
 which we find in the fourth and some succeeding books o! 
 "Paradise Lost" sunny days and innocent enjoyments, shadowy 
 rose-bowers, gentle labours amid vine and orchard, delicate fruit 
 repasts, and sweet scenes of rosy morning and silver moonlight 
 were drawn from early memories of the Horton glades and gardens, 
 idealized by the bright sunlight of poetic fancy. 
 
 Deep study, quiet country walks, and poetic composition, broken 
 now and then by a run to London for books, or tuition in music and 
 mathematics, filled up the softly flowing days of the poet's rural life. 
 
 At Horton and on the Continent Milton spent the vacation 
 period of his life a happy six years' holiday intervening between 
 his Cambridge study and his London school; and five poems, 
 round which the scent of the hawthorn hedge is ever fresh and 
 sweet, were the exercises which gave a zest to the enjoyment of 
 these bright and careless years. L' Allegro, 11 Penseroso, Arcades, 
 Comus, and Lycidas were written at Horton. The country breezes 
 seem to have swept off the grey shadows of the Cambridge rooms, 
 and to have called forth his love of nature in buds and blossoms 
 of the richest luxuriance. How many verses were woven in the 
 fragrant meadows, all embroidered with wild flowers, or by the 
 chime of the silver stream, we do not know; but the odours and 
 the colours of sweet rural life breathe and brighten in every line. 
 
 How curiously the life one lives is reflected in his works ! As 
 the sea wave takes the colour of the sky above it, the multitudi- 
 nous billows of thought that roll in every human soul are tinged with 
 the hues of the outward life. Place the Ode on tlie Nativity side 
 by side with L' Allegro, and mark the contrasted tints. Residence 
 within the " studious cloisters pale" has given to the one a stern 
 grey awfulness, a pure classic beauty, and a grave learnedness, 
 which have but little in common with^ the frolicsome play and 
 brown, healthy, country life, that laugh and gambol in the other. 
 
 His mother's death in 1637 broke the sweet charm that had 
 bound him to Horton. There was nothing now to pre- 
 vent him from, starting upon his Continental tour, and 
 accordingly, in the following year, armed with advice and 
 letters from Sir Henry Wotton, the Provost of Eton, he crossed the 
 
198 IN FRANCE AND ITALY. 
 
 straits to France. We shall not follow him minutely on hia 
 journeyings. He was absent from England for fifteen months, 
 during which he travelled through France and Italy, residing for 
 a time in some of the principal cities. At Paris he met Hugo 
 Grotius, the great Dutchman ; at Florence he visited the blind 
 old Galileo, who then lay in the prison of the Inquisition for dar- 
 ing to speak what he believed about the stars; at Rome he heard 
 Leonora Baroni sing, and was welcomed with remarkable attention 
 in the first circles of society; at Naples, beyond which he did not go, 
 he was guided through the city by the Marquis of Villa, the friend 
 and biographer of Tasso. The influence which Italian scenery, 
 sculpture, and music had in kindling the imagination of the grave 
 English Puritan and storing his memory with a wealth of classic 
 thoughts, that gave shape and colour to the ideas he had drawn 
 from books among the woods of Horton, formed a most important 
 element in the education of the poet for his great work. Amid his 
 recollections of foreign travel, scenic, artistic, literary, historic, 
 classic, there stole, too, a tinge of love, whose purple light yet 
 lingers on his Italian Sonnets. It was at Florence that the fair- 
 cheeked Englishman met a beauty of Bologna, whose black eyes 
 subdued his heart, and whose voice completed the conquest by 
 binding it in silver chains chains which it cost him a pang to 
 
 break before he could tear himself away. After visiting 
 
 1639 Venice and Geneva, among other places, he returned 
 
 A.D. by way of France to England. Amid all the license and 
 
 vice of Continental life, as it then was, he passed pure 
 and unstained, returning with the bloom of his young religious 
 feelings unfaded, like the flush of English manhood on his check. 
 The thought of writing an epic poem appears to have ripened to a 
 purpose in Italy; but he had not yet chosen his great theme. 
 The story of Arthur, or some other hero of ancient British clays, 
 seems at this tune to have been floating before his mind. 
 
 The toils of a teacher's life, and the composition of many proso 
 works filled up the chief part of those ten years which elapsed be- 
 tween Milton's return from abroad and his appointment as Foreign 
 Secretary (1 639-1 G49V His poetic muse was all but silent. Six 
 
THE SCHOOL IN ALDERSdATE STREET. 199 
 
 of these years were spent in a retired garden-house, up an entry off 
 Aldersgate Street. There, with a few leaves and blossoms round 
 him, shut in from the noisy street, he read with his pupils 
 among them his own nephews, the Philh'pses an extensive course, 
 comprising several uncommon classics, some Hebrew, a sprinkling 
 of Chaldee and Syriac, mathematics and astronomy not omitting 
 the Greek Testament and some Dutch divinity on Sundays. His 
 pen was at first almost wholly taken up with his intensely bitter 
 attacks upon Episcopacy, opening in 1641 with a pamphlet on lie- 
 formation in England, and closing with the best of the series, his 
 Apology for Smectymnuus* To the seclusion of Aldersgate Street, 
 Milton, a man of thirty-five, brought home his first bride Mary, the 
 daughter of Richard Powell, a Royalist Justice of the Peace, 
 living at Forest Hill near Shotover. It was a hasty mar- 1 643 
 riage, and far from a happy one. The young wife, who A.D. 
 seems not to have fully counted the cost of such a change, 
 had Cavalier notions of housekeeping and social life, very unlike 
 the quiet frugality of Milton's home. She missed the dancing and 
 the laughter of Forest Hill. When the friends who had brought 
 her home left the house, its gloom seemed to deepen tenfold; her 
 grave and studious husband never thought of leaving his books 
 and pen for a while, to cheer her loneliness until she became used 
 to a domestic climate so unlike that which she had left. In a few 
 weeks she returned to her father's house, seemingly to pay a short 
 visit, but inwardly resolved to leave her serious bridegroom and 
 his gloomy garden-house to keep each other company. He wrote, 
 and got no reply ; he sent, and his messenger was ill-treated. 
 It was a clear case that John Milton was deserted by his wife. 
 
 His four Works on Divorce, which were published in 1644 
 and 1645, are evidently the fruits of this matrimonial 
 misery. ' Sweeter fruit, however, than these sour produc- *"" 
 tions marks the former year; for then was addressed 
 to the Parliament the celebrated Areopagitica, finest of all his 
 
 * Smectymnuus is a word made up of the initials of the five names of those Puritan minis- 
 ters who joined the strife on Milton's side. They were Stephen Marshall, Edward Calainy. 
 Thomas Young, Matthew Ncwcome, and William (UUilliam) Spenstow. 
 
200 APPOINTED LATIN SECRETARY. 
 
 prose compositions. His Tractate on Education appeared in the 
 same year. 
 
 The estrangement between Milton and his wife having lasted 
 for two years, a reconciliation took place in the house of a 
 friend. Mary Milton, flinging herself in tears at her husband's 
 feet, was once more taken to his home, which was now a large 
 house in Barbican. So completely was the breach healed, that 
 the husband's door was opened to her ruined family, driven from 
 Forest Hill by the fortunes of the Civil War ; and in Milton's 
 house old Richard Powell soon died. 
 
 His pupils having decreased in number about this time, the 
 poet thought it prudent to take a backward step by removing into a 
 smaller house. We soon find him in Holborn, where his residence 
 had an entrance into Lincoln's Inn Fields. Here he wrote part of 
 his History of England, and probably some of his compilations; and 
 here, while the axe was falling on the neck of Charles Stuart, 
 1649 he was correcting the last proofs of a work entitled The 
 A.D. Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, which argued the lawful- 
 ness of that terrible deed, whose red stain can never be 
 effaced from the annals of those sad times. Published a week or two 
 after the tragedy of Whitehall, the "Tenure" excited such admir- 
 ing attention that the office of Foreign or Latin Secretary to the 
 Council, worth about 290 a year, was offered to the author. 
 Thus opened a new era of Milton's life. 
 
 The period of eleven years, coming between the Regicide and 
 the Restoration, presents perhaps the deepest contrasts of light and 
 shadow that we find in the chequered life of Milton. Appointed 
 Secretary of Foreign Tongues, he removed to Charing Cross, and 
 afterwards to the official apartments at Whitehall, which he occu- 
 pied for about eighteen months. His direct duties were not 
 heavy, consisting merely in conducting the foreign correspondence 
 of the Council in Latin, which was then the language of diplomacy. 
 But his pen was also required to do higher work than the writing 
 of state papers. The blood of an English king, crying from an 
 English scaffold, had roused rage and horror throughout Europe ; 
 and Milton was selected by tho Parliament to front the storm, and 
 
MILTON GROWS TOTALLY BLIND. 201 
 
 lay it if he could. In reply to the sad description of the suffering 
 king, which was presented by the well-known Eikon JBasilike, he 
 wrote his Eikonoklastes (Image-breaker) j in which, reviling the 
 memory of Charles with a rancour alike unbecoming and unchris- 
 tian, he smites with a rude and heavy hand the defender of dead 
 majesty. To this period also belong his two great Latin works, 
 Defences for the People of England; in which the voice of the 
 Puritan is uplifted with somewhat more of dignity, and certainly 
 with greater power. The first " Defence" was written in answer to 
 Salmasius of Leyden, a philologer of European fame ; whom the 
 triumphant reply is said to have smitten so sorely to the heart, 
 that he died of the blow. But controversies like these are pitiful 
 sights. It is sad to see a magnificent genius like Milton stooping 
 to fling those paving-stones of abuse "rogue, puppy, foul- 
 mouthed wretch " which come ready to the hand of every sot 
 and shrew in England. 
 
 Why we do not know, but Milton soon left his Whitehall 
 lodgings for a pretty garden-house in Petty France, Westminster, 
 with an opening into St. James's Park. There about 1653 two 
 heavy afflictions fell upon the poor man. He lost his wife, Mary, 
 who, with all her faults, had, since their reconciliation, kept his 
 house prudently and well ; and that paralysis of the optic nerve, 
 which had been coming on for years, left him totally blind. 
 Many symptoms had foretold the calamity. He saw an iris 
 round the candle ; his left eye, when used alone, diminished the 
 size of the objects he looked at; things swam before his gaze j and 
 at night, when he lay down and closed his eyes, there 
 came for a time a flash of light and a play of brilliant 1 6 54 
 colours. A blind and widowed man, with three little A.D. 
 girls under eight to look after, and a heavy load of public 
 pen-work to do, presents a sorrowful spectacle. Such was Milton's 
 case in 1654. 
 
 In two or three years he married again ; but his second wife, 
 Catherine Woodcock, whom he dearly loved, died in fifteen montha 
 after their union. So his daughters grew up wild and undisci- 
 plined, to cost their father many a heart-ache in his declining daya. 
 
202 "PARADISE LOST" BEGUN. 
 
 His blindness did not involve the loss of his office as Foreign 
 Secretary. An assistant, and afterwards a colleague, aided him in 
 the performance of his duties. This colleague, in 1G59, was his 
 friend Andrew Marvell, who received, as Milton himself then did, 
 the sum of 200 a year. 
 
 In spite of the gloom which blindness and bereavement had 
 cast over the garden-house in Petty France, and the worries 
 caused by those poor boisterous hoidens, whose mother was dead, 
 Milton must have enjoyed many hours of sober tranquillity there. 
 His fame had spread far beyond the borders of his own land. 
 To Continental strangers, Cromwell and Milton, the man of action 
 and the man of thought, were the representative men of England 
 the great British lions, who were then really worthy of a visit and 
 a view. A few literary friends, too, often came to cheer his leisure 
 hours. And, better than all, before the added darkness of poverty 
 and despair deepened upon him, he had begun to soar on wing 
 .sublime into those starry realms of thought, below which he had 
 too long been walking with folded pinions, busied with common 
 cares and soiled with earthly stains. The first lines of Paradise 
 Lost were lying in his desk. 
 
 The last state paper written by Milton bears date May 15th, 
 1659. None but the most important work of the Foreign Office 
 was done by his pen in the later years of the Commonwealth. 
 
 The Restoration brought gloom and terror to the household of 
 
 the Puritan poet, who had written too many bitter things 
 
 1660 of the slain father to be easy in his mind at the return 
 
 A.D. of the exiled son. For a time he was forced to hide 
 
 himself in a friend's house in Bartholomew Close. But 
 
 influential admirers exerted their interest for him ; and though the 
 
 "Eikonoklastes" and the "Defences" were burned by the common 
 
 hangman, the writer was included in the Act of Indemnity, and 
 
 got leave to settle down into safe obscurity. Obscurity it might 
 
 have been to a common man, but to Milton it proved the brightest 
 
 period of his life. The fresh laurels of the Cambridge student, 
 
 the pastoral sweetness of the Horton poet, the polished graces of 
 
 the traveller, the triumphs of the keen and bitter controversialist, 
 
"PARADISE LOST" COMPLETED. 203 
 
 the fame of the accomplished Latin Secretary, all grow dim 
 beside the lustrous achievements of that blind old man, who 
 was often to be seen on sunny days, in a coat of coarse grey 
 cloth, sitting at the door of a mean house in Artillery Walk near 
 Bunhill Fields. Through all changes and perils his unfailing 
 solace must have been the composition of his great work. A young 
 Quaker, Thomas Ellwood, came often of an afternoon to read Latin 
 to the helpless poet j and this good friend it was who secured for 
 him that cottage at Chalfont in Buckinghamshire, where the 
 Miltons took refuge from the Great Plague that ravaged London 
 in 1665. The Quaker, who was tutor in a rich family of Chal- 
 font, called upon the poet some time after he had settled down in 
 his new abode. During the visit Milton, calling for a 
 manuscript, handed it to Ellwood, and bade him take it 1665 
 home to read. It was the newly finished poem of A.D. 
 Paradise Lost. Returning it, after a while, to his blind 
 friend, Ellwood said, "Thou hast said much here of Paradise 
 Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found ?" This 
 casual remark led to the composition of the minor epic, Paradise 
 Regained. 
 
 When the terrors of the Plague had passed, Milton returned to 
 Bunhill Fields, prepared to dispose of his great poem. It seemed 
 in many ways an unfortunate time for so heavy a venture. The 
 Great Fire of 1666 had just laid the shops and dwellings of 
 nearly all London in ashes. And wares, made to find a ready sale 
 in that day, needed to be highly spiced with choice blasphemies 
 and gross obscenity. At length, however, a bookseller was found 
 who consented to buy the poem. And a very hard bargain 
 indeed did Mr. Samuel Simmons drive with Ex-secretary Milton. 
 The terms agreed upon were these : 5 in hand, 5 on the sale 
 of 1300 copies of the first edition, and two similar sums on the 
 sale of a like number of the second and third editions, 
 no edition to exceed 1500 copies. The poem w r as pub- 1667 
 lished in 1667, in the form of a small quarto, at three A.D. 
 shillings. Milton was dead when the third edition of 
 "Paradise Lost" appeared in 1678, and his widow surrendered 
 
204 THE SALE OF "PAEA.DI3E LOST." 
 
 all her claims on Simmons for the sum of 8. Thus, in all, to 
 Milton and his heirs, there came only 18"" for this greatest poem 
 of modern ages ! 
 
 There is extant, in the poet's own handwriting, a receipt for the 
 second sura of 5, dated 1669, which shows that at least 1300 
 copies of the book had gone off in its first two years. That scrap 
 of worn paper sufficiently refutes the statement, so often advanced 
 in former days, that to all the other woes heaped on Milton's 
 grey head, the neglect of the reading public was added as a last 
 and worst infliction. Few sacred epics would command a larger 
 sale even in these book-devouring days. Though Charles and his 
 glittering voluptuaries preferred the whimsical adventures of 
 Hudibras to the lofty strains of "Paradise Lost," there were 
 thousands of true-hearted Puritans in England to read and love 
 the noble verses of that veteran scholar, who had stood by the 
 great Oliver in the palmy days of the Commonwealth, and had 
 done with his pen for England's glory, at least as much as the 
 rugged Lord Protector had ever done with that weighty sword 
 he bore. 
 
 In 1670 appeared Milton's History of England, and in the 
 following year Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes were 
 published in a thin octavo. His last three years were occupied 
 in preparing for the press several minor works in Latin and in 
 English. The clouded close of his life was calm and peaceful, on 
 the whole, although his undutiful daughters caused him much 
 vexation. His third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, a young woman 
 whom he had married soon after the Restoration, tended his de- 
 clining years with careful affection. 
 
 Such a picture of old Milton's daily life as that which we sub- 
 
 *Some say 23 in all; but it is very unlikely that Simmons would go beyond the original 
 20 agreed on as the price of the poem. During Milton's life he received two payments of 
 5 ; when the 1300 copies of the second edition were sold, his widow became entitled to 
 the third 5; and she seems, rather than wait for the sale of the stipulated number of the 
 third edition, to have preferred 3 in hand in addition to the sum due. This seems to us 
 the meaning of her giving up all her claims on Simmons in 1678 for 8. If she had already 
 received the fourth sum of 5, her claims had ceased to exist; and only by supposing that 
 this fourth sum of 5 was included in the 8, can the total reach 23. The third edition 
 was published in 1678, and no money was One on it until 1300 copies had been sold. Hence 
 the fourth 5 canuot have formed a part of the final settlement of S. 
 
THE LAST DAYS OP MILTON. 205 
 
 join possesses a peculiar value, in enabling us to bring nearer to 
 our hearts the great English epic poet, who ranks with Homer, 
 with Virgil, and with Dante. 
 
 " An ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, found John 
 Milton in a small chamber, hung with rusty green, sitting in an 
 elbow-chair, and dressed neatly in black; pale, but not cadaverous; 
 his hands and feet gouty, and with chalk-stones." * 
 
 " In his latter years he retired every night at nine o'clock, and 
 lay till four in summer, till five in winter ; and if not disposed 
 then to rise, he had some one to sit at his bed-side and read to 
 him. When he rose he had a chapter of the Hebrew Bible read 
 for him ; and then, with of course the intervention of breakfast, 
 he studied till twelve. He then dined, took some exercise for an 
 hour, generally in a chair, in which he used to swing himself, 
 and afterwards played on the organ or the bass-viol, and either 
 sang himself or made his wife sing, who, as he said, had a good 
 voice, but no ear. He then resumed his studies till six, from 
 which hour till eight he conversed with those who came to visit 
 him. He finally took a light supper, smoked a pipe of tobacco, 
 and drank a glass of water, after which he retired to rest." f 
 
 So calmly passed the days of the blind old poet, until, a month 
 before the completion of his sixty-sixth year, he passed 
 away from earth with scarcely a pang. It was on Sunday, 1 6 74 
 the 8th of November, that the sad event occurred. Gout, A.D. 
 his old foe, had for some time been wearing him away ; 
 and for months he knew that his life on earth was drawing to an 
 end. His body was laid beside his father's dust in the church of 
 St. Giles, Cripplegate. 
 
 The following list contains the names of Milton's chief works, 
 with the dates and places of their composition or publication : 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 Ode on the Nativity, ... Composed in 1629, Cambridge. 
 
 L' Allegro, ... Doubtful, Horton. 
 
 II Penseroso, 
 
 Arcades, ... 1634, 
 
 * Richardson. t Keightley, following Aubrey. 
 
20G LIST OF MILTON'S CHIEF WORKS. 
 
 Comus, 
 Lycidas, 
 Italian Sonnets, 
 Paradise Lost, 
 Paradise Regained, ... 
 Samson Agonistes, ... 
 English Sonnets, 
 
 Composed in 1634, Horton. 
 1637, 
 
 1638-9, Florence. 
 Published in 16C7, London. 
 
 1671, 
 
 Various times and places. 
 
 PROSE WORKS. 
 
 Of Reformation in England, ... Composed in 1641, London. 
 Prelatical Episcopacy, 
 
 Apology for Smectymnuus, ... 1642, 
 
 Areopagitica, ... ... 1644, 
 
 Tractate on Education, 
 
 The Tenure of Kings, ... 1649, 
 
 Eikonoklastes, 
 
 Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, 1650, 
 
 Defensio Secunda, ... ... 1654, 
 
 History of England, ... Published in 1670, 
 
 De Doctrina Christiana, ... 1823,* 
 
 1? Allegro and II Penseroso are two companion pictures of life 
 at Horton, where they were written. No ecstasies of joy or 
 sorrow are there depicted, but those moods of mirth and pensive- 
 ness which chased each other across the poet's mind, like lights 
 and shadows across a summer landscape. 
 
 Arcades, a short pastoral masque, which was originally performed 
 at Harefield Park before the Dowager-Countess of Derby, consists 
 of three songs and a speech by the Genius of the wood. Some 
 consider " Arcades " to be only a fragment. 
 
 Comiu is an exquisite masque, founded on an actual occurrence. 
 Its plot is this : A beautiful lady, lost in a wood, is brought 
 under the spells of the magician Comus. Her fate seems sealed, 
 until a kindly spirit appearing in guise of a shepherd to her 
 brothers, who are vainly seeking their sister, gives them a root 
 called haemony, by means of which they set at defiance the power 
 of the enchanter. They dash into the palace, interrupt the progress 
 of a delicious banquet, save their sister, and put to flight Comus and 
 
 * The Latin manuscript waa found In a press in the State-paper Office in 1823, wrapped 
 In an envelope with other papers of Milton. The publication of an English version gave 
 origin to Macaulay's brilliant Essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Review (August 1825). 
 
THE CHOICE OF A SUBJECT. 207 
 
 his attendant rabble. The masque was acted at Ludlow Castle by 
 the children of the Earl of Bridgewater, then President of Wales. 
 
 Lycidas is a sweetly mournful pastoral, a poem "In Me- 
 moriam," written on the death of Milton's college friend, King, 
 who was drowned when crossing to Ireland in a crazy vessel 
 
 Paradise Lost. For seven years Milton laboured at the com- 
 position of his greatest work (1658-1665) ; but for twice seven 
 years or more the vast design must have been shaping itself into 
 its wonderful symmetry within the poet's brain. 
 
 The subject was not chosen rashly or with haste, and nowhere 
 could be found a theme richer in material for genius to work upon, 
 or more deeply fraught with a sad human interest. Many themes, 
 no doubt, were carefully weighed, only to be rejected. Those stories 
 of ancient Britain, which Geoffrey of Monmouth has collected, 
 early caught the poet's attention and held it long. We can fancy 
 his patriotic heart thrilling proudly and gladly with the thought 
 of rearing upon the unknown graves of Arthur and his knights a 
 great literary monument, at which the British people gazing, 
 should learn to love the sleeping warriors evermore. But with 
 growing years and wisdom this idea lost its charms, a change 
 which inspired those lines at the beginning of the Ninth Book : 
 
 " Since first this subject for heroic song 
 Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late ; 
 Not sedulous by nature to indite 
 Wars, hitherto the only argument 
 Heroic deemed ; chief mastery to dissect 
 With, long and tedious havoc fabled knights, 
 In battles feigned j (the better fortitude 
 Of patience and heroic martyrdom 
 Unsung ;) or to describe races and games, 
 Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields, 
 Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, 
 Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights 
 At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast 
 Served up in hall with sewers and seneschals ; 
 The skill of artifice or office mean ! 
 Not that which justly gives heroic name 
 To person, or to poem." 
 
 The first rough sketches of the poem took the shape of a 
 
208 MILTON'S PORTRAITURE OF SATAN. 
 
 tragedy or mystery on the " Fall of Man." Two sucli draughts 
 are among the Cambridge manuscripts. But the tragic form was 
 luckily soon abandoned for the epic. 
 
 The burning lake the council of the fallen spirits the ordain- 
 ing of the plan of salvation Satan's voyage to the earth Eden 
 and its gentle tenants their pure and happy life Raphael's visit 
 and discourse upon the war of the angels and the creation of the 
 world Adam's tale of his own awaking to life, and his first meet- 
 ing with the lovely Eve the temptation and the fall Satan's 
 triumphant return to hell, and the sudden fading of exultation 
 under the first stroke of his doom the intercession of the Son 
 the mission of Michael to eject the guilty pair the revelation of 
 the future to Adam in a vision and the sad departure of our first 
 parents from their happy garden, now guarded by the sword of 
 God, such are the salient points in the magnificent plan de- 
 veloped in the twelve books of the " Paradise Lost." 
 
 Interesting glimpses of Milton's life occur in the opening 
 passages of certain books. Most pathetic of these is the sad but 
 beautifully patient lament of the old man upon his blindness at the 
 beginning of the Third. The poet's love of music, which amounted 
 to an absorbing passion, inspired some of the grandest outbursts 
 of his song. 
 
 Hallam says, " The conception of Satan is doubtless the first 
 effort of Milton's genius. Dante could not have ventured to spare 
 so much lustre for a ruined archangel, in an age when nothing less 
 than horns and a tail were the orthodox creed." The magic power 
 of Milton's genius conjures up before us a winged, colossal, fire- 
 eyed shape, whose size we do not know, but are left to guess dimly 
 at by comparison with the hugest objects. His shield is like the 
 moon seen through a telescope ; compared with the spear, which 
 helps his painful steps over the burning marl, the mast of a mighty 
 ship dwindles to a wand. We find no definite outline of shape, 
 no distinct measurement of size. Vague dimness and colossal im- 
 mensity deepen the awfulness of the portrait, raising it infinitely 
 far above the absurd caricature of a terrible subject, to which 
 Hallam's sarcasm refers. 
 
THE POWER OF DIMNESS. 209 
 
 The Adam and Eve of " Paradise Lost" are beautiful creations 
 of poetic fancy, founding on Bible truth. They are true man and 
 woman not poetic ideals which are never realized in human life. 
 
 And what grand conceptions, painted as only true genius can 
 paint, are those dreadful impersonations of Sin and Death, that bar 
 the Arch-fiend's way at Hell's nine-fold gates ! Dimness is here 
 again a wonderful power in the poet's hand. The King of Terrors 
 is thus described in the Second Book : 
 
 " The other shape, 
 
 If shape it might be called, that shape had none 
 Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, 
 Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, 
 For each seemed either : black it stood as night, 
 Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, 
 And shqpk--a dreadful dart ; what seemed his head 
 The likeness of a kingly crown had on." 
 
 There are in this/ fearful image only three points on which the 
 mind can fasten,/^- the colour, black a dreadful dart the likeness 
 of a kingly cro/vn : all else is shapeless cloud. 
 
 The verse j^ which this noblest of English poems is -written, 
 flows on with a deep and solemn current, not broken, as the blank- 
 verse of a dramatist must be, into various alternations of rapid 
 and of pool quick, brilliant dialogue, and smooth, extended soli- 
 loquy or speech but holding the even tenor of its way amid 
 scenes of surpassing terror and delight, changing its music and its 
 hue as it rolls upon its onward course. Awful though its tone is, 
 when the glare of the fiery gulf falls red upon its stream, or the 
 noise of battling angels shakes its shores, it breathes the sweetest 
 pastoral melody as it glides on through the green and flowery 
 borders of sinless Eden. 
 
 Paradise Regained, a shorter epic in four books, owed its origin 
 to Ellwood's suggestion at Chalfont. It describes in most expres- 
 sive verse the temptation and the triumph of our Saviour, and is 
 said to have been preferred by the poet himself to his grander work. 
 Yet it must be reckoned inferior both in style and interest to its 
 great predecessor, although the authorship of so fine a poem would 
 have made the fame of a meaner bard. 
 14 
 
210 SAMSON AGONISTES. 
 
 Samson Ayonistes is a dramatic poem, cast in the mould of the 
 old Greek tragedies, for which Milton had a deep admiring love. 
 It has, like the Greek plays, a chorus taking part in the dialogue. 
 Samson's captivity, and the revenge he took upon his idolatrous 
 oppressors, form the argument of the drama. It was the last great 
 sun-burst of Milton's splendid poetic genius. Such a theme pos- 
 sessed an irresistible attraction for the mind of an intellectual and 
 imaginative Samson, himself smitten with blindness, and fallen in 
 his evil days amid a revelling and blasphemous crowd, that jibed 
 with ceaseless scorn at the venerable Puritan, whose grey eyes 
 rolled in vain to seek the light of heaven. 
 
 Sonnets. Many of Milton's sonnets are very fine. One of tho 
 noblest is that burst of righteous indignation evoked by the mas- 
 sacre of the Waldenses. Cromwell and Milton felt alike in this 
 momentous affair : while the Lord Protector threatened the thunder 
 of English cannon, the Latin Secretary launched the thunders of 
 his English verse against the cruel Piedmontese. 
 
 The Areopagitica is Milton's greatest prose work. Never has 
 the grand theme of a free press been handled with greater elo- 
 quence or power. Here we see how true a figure is that fine 
 image by which Macaulay characterizes Milton's prose, "A perfect 
 Held of cloth of gold, stiff with gorgeous embroidery." 
 
 SATAN TO BEELZEBUB. 
 
 (PARADISE LOST, BOOK i.) 
 
 " Is this the region, this the soil, the clime," 
 Said then the lost archangel, " this the seat 
 That we must change for heaven ] this mournful gloom 
 For that celestial light 1 Be it so ! since he, 
 Who now is Sovran, can dispose and bid 
 What shall be right : farthest from him is best, 
 Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme 
 Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, 
 Where joy for ever dwells ! Hail, horrors ! hail, 
 Infernal world ! and thou, profoundest Hell, 
 Receive thy new possessor ! one who brings 
 A mind not to be changed by place or time. 
 The mind is its own place, and in itself 
 Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. 
 
SPECIMENS OF MILTON'S VEKSE. 21 1 
 
 What matter where, if I be still the same, 
 And what I should be, all but less than he 
 Whom thunder hath made greater ? Here at least 
 We shall be free ; the Almighty hath not built 
 Here for his envy ; will not drive us hence : 
 Here we may reign secure ; and in my choice 
 To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell : 
 Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven. 
 But wherefore let we then our faithful friends, 
 The associates and copartners of our loss, 
 Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool, 
 And call them not to share with us their part 
 In this unhappy mansion ; or once more, 
 With rallied arms, to try what may be yet 
 Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell ? " 
 
 THE ANGELS. 
 (PAEADISE LOST, BOOK III.) 
 
 No sooner had the Almighty ceased, but all 
 The multitude of angels, with a shout 
 Loud as from numbers without number, sweet 
 As from blest voices, uttering joy, Heaven rung 
 With jubilee, and loud hosannas filled 
 The eternal regions. Lowly reverent 
 Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground, 
 With solemn adoration, down they cast 
 Their crowns inwove with amarant and gold 
 Immortal amarant, a flower which once 
 In Paradise, fast by the tree of life, 
 Began to bloom ; but soon for man's offence 
 To Heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows, 
 And flowers aloft, shading the fount of life, 
 And where the river of bliss, through midst of Heaven, 
 Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream : 
 With these, that never fade, the spirits elect 
 Bind their resplendent locks inwreathed with beams ; 
 Now in loose garlands thick thrown off, the bright 
 Pavement, that like a sea of jasper shone, 
 Impurpled with celestial roses smiled. 
 Then, crowned again, their golden harps they took 
 Harps ever tuned, that glittering by their side 
 Like quivers hung ; and, with preamble sweet 
 Of charming symphony, they introduce 
 Their sacred song, and waken raptures high : 
 No voice exempt no voice but well could join 
 Melodious part ; such concord is in Heaven. 
 
212 DAVENANT AND WALLER. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 OTHER WRITERS OP THE FOURTH ERA. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 Sir William Davenant 
 Edmund Waller. 
 Henry Vauchun. 
 Sir John Denham. 
 Richard Lovelace.^ 
 Abraham Cowley. v 
 William Chamberlayne. 
 
 Charles Cotton. 
 
 PROSE WBITEBS. 
 
 John Gauden. 
 Sir Thomas Browne. 
 Ralph Cudworth, 
 John Evelyn. 
 Andrew Marvell. 
 
 Algernon Sidney. 
 Robert Boyle, 
 Sir William Temple 
 John Ray. 
 John Tillotson. 
 Isaac Barrow. 
 Samuel Pepys. ^ 
 Robert South. 
 
 SIB WILLIAM DAVENANT, born in 1605 at Oxford, where hia 
 father kept a tavern, became laureate on the death of Ben Jonson. 
 He was a keen Royalist, and in the Civil War suffered many changes 
 of fortune. While an exile in France he wrote part of the tedious 
 heroic poem Gondibert, which is the chief work now associated 
 with his name. During the Commonwealth, while on board a 
 ship bound for Virginia, he was arrested by the sailors of the Par- 
 liament, and confined at Cowes and in the Tower. Milton is 
 thought to have aided in obtaining his release; and Davenant, 
 we are told, repaid the kindness, when the Restoration changed the 
 fortunes of the poets. Resuming his old occupation, the manage- 
 ment of a theatre, Davenant spent his last years in peace, and died 
 in 1668. 
 
 EDMUND WALLER, born in 1605, is one of the brilliant, courtly, 
 superficial poets, who nourished under the rule of our two Kings 
 Charles. The rich and well-born youth was a member of Parlia- 
 ment at eighteen. At first he took the popular side, but in the 
 Civil War, being detected in a Royalist plot, he suffered imprison- 
 ment and fine. After a sojourn in France, he came home to cele- 
 brate in verse the glory of Cromwell; and not long afterwards, in 
 a poem of inferior merit, to welcome the returning Stuart king. 
 He then sat for Hastings, for various other places in successive 
 parliaments, and at eighty years of age for a Cornish borough. 
 He died and was buried in 1687 at Beaconsfield, where, little 
 
LOVELACE AND COWLEY. 213 
 
 more than a century later, the body of the great Edmund Burke 
 was laid in the grave. Waller's verses are smooth, elegant, and 
 polished; but they are little more. His speeches in Parliament 
 were, in general, excellent and telling. 
 
 HENRY VAUGHAN, born in Brecknockshire in 1614, was first a 
 lawyer and then a physician. His chief merit lies in his Sacred 
 Poetry. But, with much deep feeling, it has all the faults of the 
 Metaphysical school, many of them in an exaggerated form. 
 
 SIR JOHN DENHAM, the author of Cooper's Hill, was born in 
 1615 at Dublin, the son of the Chief Baron of Exchequer in Ire- 
 land. At Oxford he became acquainted with the most brilliant 
 and dissolute of the young Cavaliers, and with these he after- 
 wards gambled away the fortune left him by his father. " Cooper's 
 Hill " is a descriptive poem, varied by the thoughts suggested by 
 such striking objects in the landscape as the Thames, Windsor 
 Forest, and the flats of Runnymede. It is a good specimen of 
 local poetry. Like all the Royalist party, he rose in fortune and 
 favour at the Restoration, becoming then a surveyor of royal build- 
 ings and a Knight of the Bath. He died in 1668. A poor tra- 
 gedy, the /So})hy, founded on incidents in Turkish life, was also 
 written by him. 
 
 \^^' 
 
 RICHARD LOVELACE, born in a knightly mansion in 1618, was 
 the most unhappy of the Cavalier poets. For his gallant struggles 
 in the cause of his king, he suffered imprisonment, during which 
 he collected and published his Odes and Songs. The marriage of 
 his sweetheart with another, she thought that he had died of his 
 wounds in France, broke his hopes and his heart ; and through 
 the years of the Commonwealth he continued to sink, until in 
 1658 he died, a ragged and consumptive beggar, in an alley near 
 Shoe Lane. His poetry resembles Ilerrick's, but with less sparkle 
 and more conceit. 
 
 ABRAHAM COWLEY, born in London in 1618, was the son of a 
 stationer in Cheapside. He became a Fellow of Trinity College, 
 Cambridge. Like Pope, he wrote poems in early boyhood, and 
 published a volume when only thirteen. His Royalist principles 
 caused him to be expelled from Cambridge ; and, after some time 
 
21 4: THE 
 
 at Oxford, lie went with Queen Henrietta to France, where lie 
 lived for twelve years. Disappointed after the Restoration in his 
 hopes of preferment, he retired to Chertsey by the Thames, where 
 his old timbered house is still pointed out. There he lived, in 
 studious quiet but not content, for seven years, when in 1667 a 
 neglected cold killed him after a fortnight's illness. He wrote Mis- 
 cellanies,\kz Mistress m Love Verses, Pindaric Odes, andiheDavideis, 
 an heroic poem upon David. His light sparkling renderings of 
 Horace and Anacreon are his happiest efforts. In many of his 
 works there is a constant straining after effect, which has been well 
 named wit-writing. His prose is simple, pure, and animated. 
 .No poet of his day was more popular than Cowley, who is now 
 but little read. 
 
 WILLIAM CHAMBERLAYNE, of Shaftesbury in Dorset, born in 
 1G19, wrote two long poems, which Campbell rescued from ob- 
 Bcurity. They are Love's Victory, a tragi-comedy ; and Pliaron- 
 nida, an heroic poem. The latter, especially, contains some fine 
 and varied scenes. Chamberlayne died in 1689. A country 
 doctor practising at Shaftesbury, he associated little with the great 
 men of his day. 
 
 CHARLES COTTON, the witty poet-friend of Walton, was a 
 Derbyshire man, born there in 1630. His father, Sir George, left 
 him the encumbered estate of Ashbourne. Cotton was always in 
 money difficulties ; but his light, easy nature enabled him to pass 
 through life unsoured. The Dove, a noted trout-stream of his 
 native shire, was the great resort of Cotton and his old friend 
 Izaak, to whom many of his poems were addressed. The poet 
 died in 1687. 
 
 PROSE WRITERS. 
 
 JOHN GAUDEN was born in 1605, at Mayfield in Essex, and 
 was educated at St. John's, Cambridge. He is considered, upon 
 satisfactory evidence, to have written the celebrated work, Eikon 
 Basilike* or the Portraiture of His Most Sacred Majesty (Charles I.) 
 in his Solitude and Sufferings, which came out some days after 
 * The Royal Image. 
 
BROWNE, CUDWORTH, AND EVELYN. 215 
 
 the king's death. Some still think that Charles wrote the book 
 himself: it was published under the royal name. But Gauden's 
 complaining letters to Clarendon, coupled with other evidence, 
 seem to prove that this Royalist clergyman was the author of the 
 " Eikon." Fifty editions were sold in one year. Milton, in his 
 Eikonoklastes (Image-breaker), smote the "Eikon" with his weighty 
 pen: but it bravely stood the blow. Gauden, who was made, 
 under Charles II., Bishop of Exeter, and afterwards Bishop of 
 Worcester, died in 1662. 
 
 SIR THOMAS BROWNE, born in London in 1605, was a physician 
 in practice at Norwich. His works Religio Medici, or the 
 Religion of a Physician (1 642), Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Vulgar 
 Errors (1646),- and Hydriotaphia, a treatise on the Sepulchral 
 Urns of Norfolk (1658) display, perhaps, the most extreme 
 specimens our literature affords of that style, loaded with heavy 
 Latin words, which was so dear to Dr. Johnson's pen. Coleridge, 
 with whom Browne was a favourite author, praises the enthusiasm 
 and entireness with which the eccentric doctor handles every sub- 
 ject he takes up. Browne died in 1682. 
 
 RALPH CUDWORTH, born in 1617, was Regius Professor of 
 Hebrew at Cambridge. He published in 1678 a great work, 
 entitled The True Intellectual System of the Universe; in which he 
 maintains that there is an Almighty, All- wise God, that there is 
 an everlasting distinction between justice and injustice, and that 
 the human will is free. This work was intended to combat wide- 
 spread atheistic doctrines. A treatise on Eternal and Immutable 
 Morality, also from Cudworth's pen, appeared after his death ; and 
 many of his manuscript works are preserved in the British 
 Museum. He died in 1688. 
 
 JOHN EVELYN, born in 1620 to the enjoyment of a good fortune, 
 spent his abundant leisure in popularizing science. The Sylva, 
 which contains an account of forest trees and their uses, proved the 
 means of stirring up proprietors to plant oak-trees largely over the 
 country, for use in ship-building. Terra, a work on agriculture, 
 appeared in 1675. But the most interesting of Evelyn's works is 
 his Diary, which presents us with a clear view of English life, 
 
21 G MARVELL, SIDNEY, AND BOYLE. 
 
 especially under Charles II., and a description of all great public 
 events, in which the writer had any interest. The " Diary" was not 
 published till 1818. Evelyn's snug house and beautiful gardens 
 at Deptford were shamefully abused by his imperial tenant, the 
 Czar Peter, who used often to amuse himself by riding on a wheel- 
 barrow through a great holly hedge. Evelyn died in 1706. 
 
 ANDREW MARVELL, Milton's friend, wrote both poetry and 
 prose. He was born in Lincolnshire in 1620-21. Upon finishing 
 his education at Cambridge, he travelled, and afterwards acted as 
 secretary to the embassy at Constantinople. In 1657 he became 
 assistant to Milton, the Latin Secretary. As member for Hull, he 
 is said to have refused a bribe of 1000 offered by Charles II. 
 His treatise on Popery and Arbitrary Government in England 
 was, perhaps, the greatest effort of his pen. His poems are marked 
 with elegance and pathos. In 1678 he died, it was rumoured, by 
 poison. 
 
 ALGERNON SIDNEY, son of the Earl of Leicester, was born about 
 1621. He was a colonel of cavalry in the Parliamentary army 
 during the Civil War; but was no friend to Cromwell, whose 
 assumption of power he condemned. After the Restoration he 
 remained on the Continent for seventeen years; and then, having 
 received a pardon from the King, he returned to see his aged 
 father. Placing himself in opposition to the court, he was beheaded 
 in 1683, on a charge of conspiracy against the government. A 
 folio of 462 pages, entitled Discourses on Government, is the only 
 important work of Sidney that we possess. It was written in 
 opposition to the doctrine of divine right. The establishment of a 
 republic in England was Sidney's life-long dream. 
 
 EGBERT BOYLE, son of the Earl of Cork, was born at Lismorc 
 in 1627. Distinguished for his researches in Chemistry and 
 Natural Philosophy, he was one of the original members of the 
 Royal Society. Air and the air-pump were his favourite subjects. 
 His numerous works consist of philosophical treatises, and several 
 works on religious topics. His Occasional Reflections on Several 
 Subjects, published in 1665, gave origin to Swift's well-known 
 caricature, Meditation on a Broom-stick. Boyle died in 1691. 
 
TEMPLE, HAY, TILLOTSON, AND BARROW. 217 
 
 SIB, WILLIAM TEMPLE, noted as the negotiator of the Triple 
 Alliance, and as that English envoy at the Hague who arranged 
 the marriage between William of Orange and the Princess Mary 
 of England, was born in London in 1628. His scheme of a 
 Council of Thirty, to bring the perplexed government of Charles II. 
 into order, proved a failure. During the intervals of public life 
 Temple wrote many clear and musical JSssays on various subjects, 
 among which we may note those on the Netherlands, Government, 
 and Learning. Gardening, too, his favourite recreation, employed 
 his pen. His last days were spent at Moor Park in Surrey, wl ere 
 young Jonathan Swift was for a time his secretary. He died in 
 1699. 
 
 JOHN RAY, a blacksmith's son, born in 1628, at Black Notley 
 in Essex, was a very celebrated naturalist. His General History 
 of Plants, and his popular work on the Wisdom of God in the 
 Works of Creation are his chief productions. Birds, fishes, insects, 
 and quadrupeds, all attracted the attention of Ray ; but botany was 
 his favourite study. He died in 1705. 
 
 JOHN TILLOTSON, who became Archbishop of Canterbury after 
 the Revolution, was originally the son of a Puritan clothier at 
 Sowerby near Halifax, where he was born in 1630. His associa- 
 tions at Cambridge, and certain books he read, gradually led to a 
 change of views ; and he entered the Church of England after 
 1662. He first became celebrated as a preacher at St. Lawrence's 
 in the Jewry. Having held the primacy for only three years, he 
 died in 1694. His Sermons, sold after his death for nearly 3000, 
 are his only literary remains. They are strong and sensible, but 
 often without much literary grace. 
 
 ISAAC BARROW, the predecessor of Newton in his mathematical 
 professorship at Cambridge, was born in London in 1630. His 
 father was a linen-draper. Barrow was a man of versatile talent. 
 Anatomy, chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, Greek, optics, and 
 theology, all engaged his attention at various times ; and in all 
 he did well. His literary works are chiefly mathematical and 
 theological. The former are in Latin; the latter, consisting of 
 sermons and polemical treatises, were written with much care, 
 
218 PEPYS AND SOUTH. 
 
 and are remarkable for easy fertility of thought. Barrow died of. 
 fever in 1677, having attained the honourable stations of Master 
 of Trinity, and Vice- Chancel! or of his University. 
 
 SAMUEL PEPYS, son of a London tailor, rose, by the help of his 
 cousin Montagu, to be Secretary to the Admiralty tinder Charles 
 II. and James II. He is worth remembrance as the writer of a 
 most amusing Diary r , originally kept in short-hand, which depicts 
 the life of the time even to the minutest details of dinners, lace, 
 and coat-buttons. The vanities and faults of the writer himself 
 are displayed with comical unconcern. But the poor fellow had 
 little notion that readers of the nineteenth century would, have 
 many a hearty laugh over his secret memoranda. He died 
 in 1703. 
 
 ROBERT SOUTH, reputed to have been the wittiest of the old 
 English divines, was the son of a London merchant, and was born 
 in 1633 at Hackney. Educated at Oxford, he was chosen Public 
 Orator in 1660. Besides being chaplain to Lord Chancellor 
 Clarendon and rector of Islip in Oxfordshire, he held some other 
 valuable livings. South's wit, unhappily, was often mixed with 
 venom. Extreme in his opinions, he held all Nonconformists in 
 abhorrence. But his love of royalty was fully as strong as his 
 attachment to the National Church. No clergyman of his day 
 exceeded him in the fervour of those sermons in which he main- 
 tained the doctrines so delightful to the Stuarts of passive 
 obedience and divine right. South died in 1716. In spite of 
 his intolerance as a public preacher, he bore the private reputation 
 of a good and charitable man. 
 
POISON OF THE KESTOKATION EKA, 219 
 
 FIFTH ERA OF ENGLISH LITEEATURE. 
 
 FHOM THE DEATH OF MILTON IN 1674 A.D. TO THE FIRST 
 PUBLICATION OF THE TATLER IN 1709 A.D, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE COURT OF CHARLES II. 
 
 Poison. 
 
 French influence. 
 Shamelessness. 
 A sad picture. 
 
 Spread of vice. 
 The theatres. 
 The poison too strong. 
 What Burke said. 
 
 IT is not our purpose to present a minute picture of the court - 
 life, rotten to the very core, which blighted English morals and 
 English literature during the reign of the second Charles. But, 
 to preserve the completeness of our plan, this painful and repulsive 
 subject must be touched upon; for there are many of our English 
 writers whose spirit cannot be fully understood unless we know 
 at least a little of the moral air they breathed, and the fountains 
 from which they drank their inspiration. Mephitic air and 
 poisoned streams they truly were from which the courtly authors 
 of the Restoration Era drew the sustenance and productive 
 power of their minds. The little band of Puritan authors, 
 folded in the mantle of righteousness, stood apart, untainted 
 and serene. 
 
 These Puritans, when in the ascendant, had with an iron hand 
 crushed down many amusements, the desire of which is a natural \ 
 appetite of man, and had thus created a hunger and a longing for the 
 forbidden things, which became an unappeasable frenzy when the 
 Restoration brought a change. The nation then plunged madly into 
 

 220 AN EVENING SCENE AT WHITEHALL. 
 
 the opposite extreme. And when we remember that from France, 
 with the restored King, there came a troop of new fashions ami 
 amusements, which were but the old vices of human nature tricked 
 out in modern attire, we shall see what kind of food the royal 
 Court provided for the famished people. 
 
 An utter absence of shame marked the mode of life in this 
 most wicked age. It was not that gambling as high, drinking 
 as deep, adulteries as vile, had not been in other reigns. 
 What stamps the reign of Charles II. with a deeper brand of 
 infamy is the fact, that there was no attempt to throw even the 
 thinnest veil over the evil that was rampant everywhere. The 
 blush of innocence seemed almost forgotten in the court- 
 circles of England. Men and women were alike immoral nay, 
 t depraved. 
 
 On Sunday the first of February, 1685 the night before Charles 
 was seized with his mortal illness the great gallery of Whitehall 
 presented a scene of " inexpressible luxury and profaneness, 
 gaming and all dissoluteness," which may be taken as a specimen 
 of what had been witnessed there a thousand times before 
 during his disgraceful reign. The king sat talking with three 
 of his mistresses. A French page, on whom the royal hand de- 
 lighted to shower presents of ponies, guineas, and fine clothes, sang 
 love-songs to the group. At a large table close by, where 
 two thousand yellow guineas were heaped into a great bank, 
 sat twenty of the profligate courtiers playing basset, then the 
 fashionable game at cards. This went on, as it had been going 
 on for five and twenty years, in the full gaze of all who chose to 
 come and see. Little wonder that the poison should spread right 
 and left, sinking down to the lowest classes of the people; and 
 still less wonder that such shameless, undisguised licentiousness, 
 should be faithfully reflected in the plays and the books, which 
 were written in the hope of extracting smiles and gold from 
 the beautiful profligates and high-born gamesters who surrounded 
 the sullied throne. 
 
 Whitehall, as was natural, gave the tone to all English society ; 
 and books are but the reflection of what society thinks and does. 
 
A VICIOUS LITERATURE. 221 
 
 So the vices of Whitehall were mirrored in many of the chief) 
 writings of the time. All the Comedies, and much of the Poetry, 
 written from the Restoration to the close of the century, and 
 later too, are disgustingly vicious. It took many a long year to 
 root out the poisonous weeds that, sown in this age, spread 
 their tangling fibres through the best soils of English poetry. 
 Even yet the English stage has hardly been cleansed from the 
 pollutions heaped upon it by the play-wrights, who manufac- 
 tured highly-flavoured vice for the delectation of the wicked 
 men and women that hung by the skirts of the worst of our Stuart 
 kings. 
 
 When the theatres were re-opened at the Restoration, a new 
 splendour was thrown around their performances. The female 
 characters began to be personated by women. Rich dresses, 
 beautifully painted scenes, and fine decorations, added to the 
 attractions of the drama a dazzling effect, unknown in earlier 
 times. Crowds flocked nightly to the play : and how were * 
 they entertained? Almost all duties to God and to man were/ 
 held up to public mockery. Virtue in every form, especially 
 truth and modesty, came in for the largest share of the comedian's , 
 jeering; the strongest sympathies of the audience were stirred, 
 and their loudest applause drawn forth, by the triumph of 
 the profligate, and the ridicule cast upon the victims of his 
 success. 
 
 The plays of Dryden are nearly all tainted with the poisons that 
 floated thick in the social atmosphere of the time; but those of 
 Wycherley are, perhaps, the most diseased specimens of our 
 dramatic literature that have lived to the present day. The 
 satires, songs, and novels of the period also bear the brand and 
 scars of vice, and flaunt them openly in the eyes of all. The 
 writers of such things penned them without compunction; and 
 there were few who thought it shame to read of vicious deeds, 
 which sun and moon saw done by night and day without a blush 
 or a pang of conscience. Yet there are things more dangerous 
 than this brazen effrontery, this shameless show of iniquity. 
 Men grow disgusted and surfeited with the grossness of paraded 
 
222 DANGER OF WELL-DRESSED VICE, 
 
 sin. Edmund Burke was a great and wise man ; but he 
 said a very foolish and pernicious thing, when, at the close of his 
 indignant outburst in memory of the fallen Queen of France, he 
 told the world that " vice itself loses half its evil by losing all its 
 grossness." Never was a greater falsehood spoken. The vice 
 which is draped in the garb of virtue, or has the varnish of an 
 outward refinement laid over its leprosy, is tenfold more infectious 
 and destructive than the shameless wickedness which wears no 
 veil to hide its loathsome front 
 
THE AUTHOR OF " HUDIBRAS." 223 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SAMUEL BUTLER, 
 
 Born 1612 A,D Died 1680 A.D. 
 
 Butler's poem. 
 Birth and education. 
 Clerk at Earl's Coomb. 
 Better days. 
 Household of Luke. 
 Taking notes. 
 
 Marriage. 
 Turns author. 
 Disappointed. 
 His death. 
 
 Character of his work. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 AFTEK the Eestoration of King Charles II. had thrown the Puritans 
 into the shade, a man of almost fifty years, who had seen the 
 bloody drama of the Revolution played out, and had been thrown 
 by the changes of those troubled years into close contact with both 
 Cavaliers and Roundheads, wrote a poem which cast even deeper 
 ridicule upon the men of the steeple-hat and the sad-coloured 
 dress than all the studied mockeries of a plumed and ringleted 
 court could do. The man was Samuel Butler ; the poem was Hudi- 
 bras. What Shakspere is among English dramatists, Milton among 
 English epic poets, Bunyan among English allegorists, Butler is 
 among the writers of English burlesque prince and paramount. 
 
 He sprang from a lowly stock. His father farmed a few acres 
 in the parish of Strensham in Worcestershire ; and there the poet 
 came to life in 1612. His schooling he got in Worcester; but 
 the want of money prevented him from enjoying the benefit of a 
 college education, although he is thought to have resided for some 
 time at Cambridge, hovering round the halls of learning without 
 being able to find an entrance there. 
 
 His abilities, however, gained him a few friends. He spent 
 some time at Earl's Coomb in his native shire, acting as clerk to 
 Justice Jeffreys ; and his leisure hours, while he held this humble 
 post, were devoted, not alone to study, but also to the refining 
 enjoyments of music and painting. Not long ago some sorry 
 daubs, patching the broken windows of a house at Earl's Coomb, 
 

 224 AilONG THE PURITANS. 
 
 were shown as the productions of the poet's pencil. If these were 
 his, they only afforded another proof, in addition to the myriads 
 we already have, that there are few men who can excel in more 
 than one branch of art or study. 
 
 It was a happy day for Butler, which transferred him to the 
 mansion of the Countess of Kent. We do not know in what 
 capacity he served this rich and noble lady ; but there he found 
 what, no doubt, deeply gladdened the heart of the rustic scholar 
 the free use of a fine library, and the conversation of a learned 
 man, Selden, who then managed the affairs of that household. 
 Here he lived how long we cannot say revelling in books of all 
 kinds, and often repaying by literary help the kindness of the 
 scholarly steward. 
 
 Butler's life, as it has come down to us, is full of gaps. Knocked 
 about from one employment to another, he acquired by his very 
 misfortunes that rare and varied knowledge of human life which 
 he displays so admirably in " Hudibras." The next scene in 
 which he appears is the grave household of Sir Samuel Luke, a 
 strict Puritan of Bedfordshire, who held a county office that of 
 scout-master under Cromwell. The atmosphere which Butler 
 here breathed must have been somewhat uncongenial ; yet it was 
 his residence among the Puritans that prepared him for his famous 
 work, supplied material for his fine word-pictures, and sharpened 
 his stinging pen. Little did the Roundhead knight and his quiet 
 household think that the poor tutor, whose bubbling, irrepressible 
 wit, no doubt often scandalized the circumspect decorum of the 
 dining-hall, was, like a traitor in the camp, taking silent notes, 
 soon to be printed with a vengeance. 
 
 Another gap, and Butler re-appears as secretary to the Earl of 
 Carbery, the President of Wales, who conferred on him the 
 stewardship of Ludlow Castle. It was then after the Restora- 
 tion, and brighter days seemed to be dawning for the Royalist 
 wit. So good were his prospects, that, although there must have 
 been grey hairs under the huge bush of false curls which it was 
 then the fashion to wear, he ventured to marry, as he thought, a 
 fortune. But ill-luck still pursued him ; his wife's money vanished 
 
A QUEER AND CLEVER BOOK. ^5 
 
 through the failure of the securities, and Butler found himself as 
 poor as ever. Then it was that he first came before the 
 public as an author. The first part of "Hudibras" was 1663 
 published, and sprang at once into fame. The moment A.D. 
 was most propitious, for the degraded Puritans afforded 
 a favourite mark for the shafts of courtly ridicule. The loud 
 insulting laugh of the Cavalier party rang everywhere, as they read 
 verses which chimed in with every feeling they had. The Merry 
 Monarch was so tickled with the debates between the Presbyterian 
 justice and the Independent clerk, that he often quoted witty 
 couplets from the book. Yet fame did not mend the fortunes of 
 poor Butler. He got promises from his noble friends, but he got 
 little more; and in 1680 he died obscurely in Rose Street, Covent L 
 Garden, having suffered deeply from the bitter pangs of that hope 
 deferred, which maketh the heart sick. 
 
 " Hudibras" is justly considered the best burlesque poem in the " 
 English language. For drollery and wit it cannot be surpassed. 
 Written in the short tetrameter line, to which Scott has given so 
 martial a ring, its queer couplets are at once understood and easily 
 remembered none the less for the extraordinary rhymes, which 
 now and then startle us into a laugh. What can we expect but broad 
 satiric fun in a poem in which we find a canto beginning thus : 
 
 " There was an ancient sage philosopher, 
 That had read Alexander Koss over." 
 
 The adventures of Don Quixote, no doubt, suggested the idea of 
 this work. Sir Hudibras, a Presby_terian knight, and his clerk, 
 Squire Ralpho, sally forth to seek adventures and redress grievances, 
 much as did the chivalrous knight of La Mancha and his trusty 
 Sancho Panza. Nine cantos are filled with the squabbles, loves, 
 and woes of master and man, whose Puritan manners and opinions 
 are represented in a most ludicrous light. 
 
 THE LEARNING OF HUDIBRAS. 
 
 He was in logic a great critic, 
 
 Profoundly skilled in analytic ; 
 
 He could distinguish, and divide 
 
 A hair 'twixt south and south-west side ; 
 
 <"> 15 
 
22 G SPECIMEN OF " HUDIBRA.S." 
 
 On either which he would dispute, 
 
 Confute, change hands, and still confute j 
 
 He'd undertake to prove by force 
 
 Of argument a man's no horse ; 
 
 He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl, 
 
 And that a lord may be an owl 
 
 A calf, an alderman a goose, a justice 
 
 And rooks, committee-men and trustees, 
 
 He'd run in debt by disputation, 
 
 And pay with ratiocination: 
 
 All this by syllogism, true 
 
 In mood and figure, he would do. 
 
 For rhetoric, he could not ope 
 
 His mouth but out there flew a trope; 
 
 And when he happened to break off 
 
 I' th' middle of his speech, or cough, 
 
 H' had hard words, ready to show why, 
 
 And tell what rules he did it by : 
 
 Else, when with greatest art he spoke, 
 
 You'd think he talked like other folk; 
 
 For all a rhetorician's rules 
 
 Teach nothing but to name his tools. 
 
 But, when he pleased to shew 't, his speech 
 
 In loftiness of sound was rich ; 
 
 A Babylonish dialect, 
 
 Which learned pedants much affect : 
 
 It was a party-coloured dress 
 
 Of patched and piebald languages ; 
 
 'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin, 
 
 Like fustian heretofore on satin. 
 
 It had an odd promiscuous tone, 
 
 As if he had talked three parts in one; 
 
 Which made some think, when he did gabble, 
 
 Th' had heard three labourers of Babel; 
 
 Or Cerberus himself pronounce 
 
 A leash of languages at once. 
 
THE YOUTH OF BUNYAN. 227 
 
 CHAPTER III, 
 
 JOHN BUNYAff. 
 
 Born 1628 A.D Died 1688 A,D. 
 
 Youth of Bunyan. 
 His soldier life. 
 His marriage. 
 First convictions. 
 
 Rebuked for cursing. 
 Begins to preach. 
 Arrested. 
 Pleading of his wife. 
 
 Life In Bedford JaiL 
 Last years and death. 
 The Pilgrim's Progress, 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 A BOOK which little children love to read, may safely be pro-'* 
 nounced a good book. In our English literature there are two ' 
 works that have been tried for many score of years by this 
 unfailing test, and have never been found wanting. These are the 
 Pilgrim! 8 Progress of Bunyan and the Robinson Crusoe of Defoe. 
 For many generations golden heads and rosy cheeks have been 
 bent over the never-tiring pages ; nor can we imagine a time when 
 children shall cease to care about the perilous travels of Christian, 
 or shall not grow half-afraid, yet filled with a strange delight, 
 when they read of Friday's footstep in the sand. 
 
 That famous Puritan tinker, who wrote the " Pilgrim's Progress," \ 
 was born in the village of Elstow, a mile from Bedford, in the 
 year 1628. He was emphatically a man of the people. Few 
 have passed through so fierce an ordeal of mental struggle and 
 religious horror. He tells us in his Grace Abounding to the Chief 
 of Sinners, a sort of religious autobiography, that even at the 
 age of nine or ten, fearful dreams, and thoughts of the burning 
 lake and the devils chained down to wait for the great Judgment, 
 haunted him at intervals. Then, when the pain lulled, he plunged 
 into sin, running riot in many vices at an early age. While yet a 
 boy, he enlisted in the army of the Parliament, and saw some service 
 in the war. He tells us of a narrow escape he had. At a certain 
 siege the siege of Leicester, it is said he was selected as sen- 
 tinel for a certain post, and was on the point of going out to mount 
 guard, when another soldier asked leave to go instead of him. 
 
228 A WICKED MAN IMPRESSED. 
 
 Bunyan agreed; and the poor fellow, who took his place, was 
 shot dead with a bullet through the brain. Yet in spite of this, 
 and two escapes from drowning, he grew more careless still 
 
 At the age of nineteen he married a young woman of his own 
 . rank in life. They had, he tells us, " neither dish nor spoon 
 betwixt them ;" but she brought to his humble home two religious 
 books, and she herself had found the Pearl of great price. Faith- 
 's fully and lovingly this tender wife dealt with the wayward boy, 
 until she led him to read these good books, the legacy of her 
 dying father, and brought him with her to church. There one 
 Sunday he heard a sermon on the duties of that day, and the sin 
 of breaking in on its holy calm, which flashed a new light into 
 his soul With a heavy heart he went home; and when, as usual, 
 he went out in the afternoon on the village green to play cat with 
 his roistering associates, and in the full flush of the game had 
 struck the piece of wood one blow away from the hole suddenly 
 as in old times a hand wrote on the wall of the Chaldean palace 
 these words darted into his mind, " Wilt thou leave thy sins 
 and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell 1 " Although 
 he got a momentary shock, yet Bunyan still remained unim- 
 pressed, until, about a month later, he was cursing at the 
 shop window of a neighbour so horribly as to draw a severe 
 rebuke from the woman of the house, who was herself of the 
 worst character. Such a check from such lips silenced the blas- 
 phemer, who, standing with down-hung head, wished, as he touch- 
 ingly says, "that he was a little child again, that his father might 
 learn him to speak without this wicked way of swearing." He then 
 began to read the Bible and to amend his life repenting, among 
 other things, of his dancing, his ale-quaffing, and his bell-ringing. 
 The first two might, certainly, lead to sin, but we cannot class the 
 third among great offences. Yet we must not smile at Bunyan's 
 fears lest the bells might fall and kill him, for earnestness like his 
 is too rare and too sublime for ridicule. However, the incident 
 which made the deepest impression on Bunyan's soul, and which 
 must certainly be looked on as the turning-point in his life, was 
 his happening to overhear a conversation about the new birth 
 
UUNYAN IN BEDFORD JAIL. 229 
 
 * 
 
 among three or four poor women sitting at a door in Bedford 
 So thankfully did they speak of what God, through Jesus Christ, j 
 had done for their souls, and so lovingly did they quote the Bible 
 words, that Bunyan went away feeling as he had never felt before, 
 and unable to think of anything but the conversation he had heard. 
 
 Thus, knot after knot, the bonds of sin were cut from his soul, 
 and John Bunyan became a new man. About the year 1656 he 
 commenced to preach in the villages of Bedfordshire, having 
 already been for three years a member of a Baptist congregation. 
 
 With slight interruption he continued this good work until the 
 Restoration, when he was arrested as a holder of conven- 
 ticles, which were then declared unlawful. By Justice Win- 1660 
 gate he was committed to Bedford Jail, where, in spite of a A.D. 
 noble effort made by his second wife to obtain his release, 
 he remained for twelve years. Within a chamber of the old Swan 
 Enn that faithful wife, with blushing face but undaunted heart, 
 pleaded before the judges and the gentlemen of the shire for her 
 prisoned husband. "Will your husband leave preaching?" said 
 Judge Twisden. " My lord," said the noble woman, " he dares not 
 leave preaching so long as he can speak." And so Bunyan lay in 
 jail, his wife and children weaving laces, upon which he fixed tags, 
 to get them daily bread. Happily for us, his jailer was a kind- 
 hearted man, disposed to deal as gently as he could with his 
 ward. Bunyan had two books with him the Bible and " Fox's 
 Book of Martyrs," which he studied constantly and deeply. He 
 had also pen and ink, with liberty to use them ; and thus it was 
 that to these years of cell-life we owe our matchless allegory, The 
 Pilgrim's Progress the joy of childhood and the solace of old age 
 a book second only to the Bible. Towards the end of the twelve 
 years the rigour of Bunyan's confinement was relaxed ; he was allowed 
 to go out into the town ; and once he went to London. And through 
 all he preached at every opportunity, often meeting his little flock 
 under the silent stars, where the trees cast dark shadows . 
 
 upon the sleepy Ouse. His last year in jail is memorable A D 
 for his ordination in the room of his old minister and 
 friend, Mr. GiiFord. Then, released by the aid of Barlow, Bishop of 
 
230 " THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 
 
 Lincoln, who knew him by his books and his preaching, he held 
 
 his services in a barn at Bedford, which was purchased for 
 
 50, and fitted up as a chapel. There he laboured with voice and 
 
 pen for sixteen years, often visiting London, where the churches 
 
 were always crowded to the doors when he preached. A 
 
 1688 j ourney under heavy rain from Beading to London brought 
 
 A.D. on a fever, of which he died in his sixty-first year. A 
 
 hundred years ago, a green decaying grave-stone, on which 
 
 was inscribed in faint lettering, "Here lies John Bunyan," was 
 
 pointed out in the cemetery at Bimhill Fields. 
 
 Macaulay's opinion of Bunyan is worth remembrance. In a 
 fine review of Southey's edition, he says that "Bunyan is as 
 decidedly the first of allegorists, as Demosthenes is the first of 
 orators, or Shakspere the first of dramatists." The adventures of 
 Christian need no description. They are told in plain, unvar- 
 nished English, which pretends to no excellence of style, and yet 
 has a power that more polished language often lacks. Bunyan, a 
 common working-man, had no thought of style as he wrote. All 
 he desired was, to place vividly before his readers certain pictures, 
 which he himself saw almost as clearly as if he had been Christian 
 trudging on a real highway, instead of Bunyan writing within 
 dark prison walls. And this he has done with such marvellous 
 skill, that we, too, feel the green grass of the Delectable Moun- 
 tains beneath our feet, and shudder as the awful darkness of the 
 Valley of the Shadow of Death closes around us. First published 
 in 1678, this wonderful book ran through ten editions in seven 
 years. It has since been printed in countless thousands, and has 
 been translated into all the chief tongues of earth. 
 
 The Holy War, which describes the siege and capture of the 
 city of Mansoul by Diabolus, is another allegory from the pen 
 of Bunyan, also written within his cell at Bedford. 
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 (FROM "THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.") 
 
 I saw then in my dream, so far as this valley reached, there was, on the right 
 hand, a very deep ditch ; that ditch it is into which the blind have led the blind 
 in all ages, and have both there miserably perished. Again, behold, on the left 
 
SPECIMEN OF BUNYAN'S PKOSE. 231 
 
 hand, there was a very dangerous quag, into which even if a good man falls, he 
 finds no bottom for his feet to stand on : into that quag King David once did 
 fall, and had no doubt therein been smothered, had not He that is able plucked 
 him out. The pathway was here also exceeding narrow, and therefore good 
 Christian was the more put to it : for when he sought, in the dark, to shun the 
 ditch on the one hand, he was ready to tip over into the mire on the other; 
 also, when he sought to escape the mire, without great carefulness he would be 
 ready to fall into the ditch. Thus he went on, and I heard him here sigh bifr 
 terly; for besides the danger mentioned above, the pathway here was so dark, 
 that oft-times when he lifted up his foot to set forward, he knew not where, or 
 upon what, he should set it next. About the midst of the valley I perceived the 
 mouth of Hell to be ; and it stood also hard by the way-side. And ever and anon 
 the flame and smoke would oome out in such abundance, with sparks and hideous 
 noises, that he was forced to put up his sword, and betake himself to another 
 weapon, called all-prayer. So he cried, in my hearing, Lord, I beseech tkee, 
 deliver my soul. Thus he went on a great while, yet still the flames would be 
 reaching towards him. Also he heard doleful voices, and rushings to and fro ; 
 so that sometimes he thought he should be torn to pieces or trodden down like 
 inire in the streets. 
 
232 BAXTEIt'ri EARLY LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RICHARD BAXTER, 
 
 Born 1615 A.D Died 1691 A.D. 
 
 Early life. 
 Kidderminster. 
 The Civil War. 
 Defends monarchy. 
 Tempted. 
 
 Secession. 
 Busy life. 
 His trial. 
 Chief works. 
 Illustrative extract 
 
 4 
 
 No name stands higher in the history of our theological literature 
 than that of Richard Baxter, the great Puritan divine. Born in 
 1615 at Rowdon, a village in Shropsliire, he passed, after some 
 desultory work at school, and a course of private theological study, 
 into the ministry of the Church of England. During the nine 
 months after his ordination, which took place when he was twenty- 
 three, he held the mastership of the Free Grammar School at 
 
 Dudley. Then, having acted as curate of Bridgenorth 
 
 1640 for a while, he settled down in 1640 in the parish of 
 
 A.D. Kidderminster, where his untiring devotion to his flock, 
 
 and the deep earnestness of his sermons, soon won for 
 him a considerable name. Already some of those oaths, which 
 worked such fatal mischief in the Church at that day, had 
 crossed the path of Baxter; but he had passed them by unheeded. 
 So long as his conscience told him that he was rightly doing his 
 Christian work, he troubled himself little to obey every letter of 
 the ritual laid down for his observance. 
 
 The Civil War then broke out ; and although he was the friend 
 of monarchy, his religious leanings caused him to side with the 
 Parliament. He became a chaplain in the Roundhead army, 
 followed his regiment through many scenes of blood, and yet 
 always preserved the character of a peace-maker, as befitted a true 
 soldier of the Cross. Standing midway between two extremes of 
 conflicting opinion, he incurred, as such good men have often 
 
SECEDES PltOM THE NATIONAL CflUKt'H. 233 
 
 incurred, the suspicion of both parties. While he loved royalty, he 
 disliked the conduct of the King ; but, for all his dislike, it was 
 with a heart full of sorrow that he beheld the discrowned head of 
 Charles degraded to a bloody death. And when the throne lay 
 overturned in the tempest of Revolution, the pastor of Kidder- 
 minster, standing face to face with the great Oliver himself, dared, 
 with a noble courage, to lift his voice in defence of that ancient 
 monarchy, which has ever been the glory of the land. Meek and 
 moderate though he was, and much as he loved peace, he was too 
 good and too honest a man to bate one jot of the principles which 
 he held dearer than life or fame. 
 
 Soon after the Restoration, Clarendon tried to tempt him with 
 an offer of the bishopric of Hereford ; but he steadily refused this 
 and other golden baits. Baxter was a Trimmer in religion as in 
 politics; he loved the name, for he held it to be synonymous with 
 "peacemaker." Believing that Episcopacy was in many respects 
 a good and lawful system, he yet sided with the Presbyterians in 
 denying the absolute need of ordination by a bishop. And he 
 further agreed with the Presbyterians in adopting the Bible as the 
 sole guide of man in faith and conduct. Accordingly, when the 
 Act of Uniformity was passed in 1662, this good man 
 had no resource but to leave the bosom of the National 1662 
 Church. Taking shelter at Acton in Middlesex, he A.D. 
 spent several years in active literary work, suffering 
 heavy penalties more than once for his strict adherence to the 
 simple worship, which he believed to be right and true in the 
 sight of God. We cannot follow him through the trials of those 
 troubled years. After the Indulgence of 1672 his life was chiefly 
 spent in London, where he preached and wrote with incessant 
 industry. There were many days and weeks when his pulpit was 
 silent ; for the Nonconformists, among whom he was a leader, were 
 ground from time to time to the very dust by the infatuated 
 Stuarts. But his pen was always busy ; and at length it goaded 
 his enemies into open war. 
 
 A passage in his Commentary on the New Testament, complaining 
 bitterly of the sufferings inflicted on the Dissenters, was held to be 
 
234 THE TRIAL AND DEATH OF BAXTER. 
 
 sufficient ground for a charge of sedition against the veteran minister, 
 now worn down by age and illness. The trial came on at GuildhalJ, 
 before that bloated drunkard, who, a little later, stained the pure 
 
 ermined robe of English justice deep red in the slaughter 
 
 1685 of the Bloody Assizes. All attempts on the part of 
 
 A.D. Baxter and his lawyers to obtain a hearing were roared 
 
 down by the brutal Jeffreys. "Richard, Richard, dost 
 thou think we will let thee poison the court 1 Richard, thou 
 art an old knave. Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, 
 and every book as full of sedition as an egg is full of meat." From 
 such a judge, and a servile jury, there was no escape. Pronounced 
 "Guilty" after a moment's conference, the old man was sent to 
 jail, because he could not pay the heavy fine imposed upon him ; 
 and he lay in the King's Bench prison for nearly eighteen months. 
 Soon after his release, which was obtained by the kindness of 
 Lord Powis, he had the joy of seeing the great second Revolution 
 usher in a brighter day of civil and religious freedom. Then, full 
 of years and crowned with their good works, he descended into 
 an honoured grave, December 8th, 1691. 
 
 His published writings, which were nearly all upon divinity, 
 reached at least to the enormous number of one hundred and sixty- 
 eight. In the quietude of his study at Kidderminster he com- 
 posed those two works of great practical power, by which he is 
 best known, The Saints' Everlasting Rest, and A Call to the 
 Unconverted. We have also from this gifted pen A Narrative 
 of his Oion Life and Times, to which Johnson and Coleridge agree 
 in awarding the highest praise. The wonder of Baxter's laborious 
 life becomes yet greater, when we remember that, like our Saxon 
 Alfred and other illustrious men, he had to struggle through nearly 
 all his years with a delicate and feeble frame. How he spent his 
 vacation hours, when heavy sickness compelled him to snatch a 
 little rest, may be judged from the following passage : 
 
 BAXTER REGRETS HIS HASTE IN WRITING. 
 
 Concerning almost all my writings, I must confess that my own judgment is, 
 that fewer, well studied and polished, had been better; but the reader, who can 
 safely censure the boots, is not fit to censure the author, unless he had been 
 
SPECIMEN OF BAXTER'S PROSE. 235 
 
 upon the place, and acquainted with all the occasions and circumstances, in- 
 deed, for the Saints' Jlest, I had four months' vacancy to write it, but in the 
 midst of continual languishing and medicine; but, for the rest, I wrote them in 
 the crowd of all my other employments, which would allow me no great leisure 
 for polishing and exactness, or any ornament; so that I scarce ever wrote one 
 sheet twice over, nor stayed to make any blots or interlinings, but was fain to 
 let it go as it was first conceived : and when my own desire was rather to stay 
 upon one thing long than run over many, some sudden occasions or other extorted 
 almost all my writings from me; and the apprehensions of present usefulness or 
 necessity prevailed against all other motives ; so that the divines which were at 
 hand with me still put me on, and approved of what I did, because they were 
 moved by present necessities as well as I; but those that were far off, and felt 
 not those nearer motives, did rather wish that I had taken the other way, and 
 published a few elaborate writings; and I am ready myself to be ot their mind, 
 when I forget the case that I then stood in, and have lost the sense of former 
 motives. 
 
236 EAKLY LIFE OF DRYDEiJ. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 
 
 Born 1631 A.D Died 1700 A.D. 
 
 Brick and marble, 
 Dryden's early life. 
 Astrsea Redux. 
 Writing fr the stage. 
 His prose. 
 Literary income. 
 
 His pjeat Satire. 
 Keligio Laici. 
 Chan RC of creed. 
 The Hind and Panther. 
 Loses the laurel. 
 Translates Virgil. 
 
 Will's coffee-house. 
 Alexander's Feast. 
 The Fables. 
 His death. 
 French influences. 
 Illustrative extract 
 
 DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, borrowing a classic metaphor, which de- 
 scribes what Augustus did for Rome, says in reference to English 
 poetry, that Dry den found it brick and left it marble. Let it not 
 be forgotten that Johnson, in his " Lives of the Poets," (a most 
 unsafe book,) has ignored Shakspere and vilified Milton. To the 
 mental eye of the ponderous critic, "Paradise Lost" and "Macbeth" 
 were built of common brick, while Dryden's Satires and Fables 
 shone with the lustre of Parian stone. We condemn the compari- 
 son as wholly exaggerated, and partly untrue ; and yet we would 
 not for a moment deny Dryden's exalted rank as a poet and a 
 master of the English tongue. 
 
 Our knowledge of Dryden's early life is meagre. Born of Puri- 
 tan parents, on the 9th of August 1631, at Aldwinckle 
 1631 in Northamptonshire, he received his school education 
 A.D. at Westminster, under Dr. Busby, of birchen memory. 
 Then, elected a Westminster scholar, he passed to 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, where, no doubt, he wrote English 
 verses, as he had often done at school. But he seems to have 
 passed without marked distinction through his college course. 
 
 When the great Oliver died, the young poet created some sen- 
 sation by a copy of verses which he wrote upon the sad event. 
 Two years later, he celebrated the restoration of Charles Stuart, 
 in a poem called Astrcea Redux. So sudden a change of political 
 
WfilTIXG FOR THE THEATRES. 237 
 
 principle has been harshly blamed; but we can scarcely censure young 
 Dryden for feeling, as all England felt at the time, that a load of 
 fear had rolled away when Charles came back from exile to fill his 
 father's throne. 
 
 Inheriting only a small estate of .60 a year, Dryden was com- 
 pelled to take to literature as a profession, devoting his pen at first 
 to the service of the newly-opened theatres. TJie Wild Gallant 
 was his first play. His marriage with Lady Elizabeth Howard 
 took place about the opening of his theatrical career. 
 
 Then play after play came flowing from his fertile pen; all 
 tainted, sad to say, with the gross licentiousness of that shameful 
 age ; and cramped, like the shape of a tight-laced fashionable, into 
 rhyming couplets, which were but a poor substitute for the noble 
 music of Shakspere's blank-verse. In all, during eight and 
 twenty years Dryden produced eight and twenty plays; among 
 the chief of which we may note The Indian JZmperor (1667), and 
 The Conquest of Granada (1672). This dramatic authorship was 
 then the only field in which an author could hope to reap a fair 
 crop of guineas, for the sale of books was as yet miserably small 
 It is sad to contemplate a man of genius driven to waste the elec- 
 tric force of his mind upon a kind of writing for which his talents 
 were but slightly fitted sad to see the composer of one of the 
 finest English odes, and of satires that rival the master-pieces of 
 Juvenal, forced to drudge for a dissolute green-room, and to play 
 the rhyming buffoon for a coarse and ribald pit. Nor was this 
 the only evil. Mean passions were engendered by this pitiful 
 struggle for popular applause. Poor Elkanah Settle, a rhymster of 
 the day, one of Rochester's creatures, who was afterwards impaled 
 on the point of Dryden's satiric pen, incurred great John's wrath by 
 some slight successes in the dramatic line, which the silly man 
 had prefaced with a puny war-blast of defiance. The torrent of 
 abuse, which Dryden poured round this shallow brain, would better 
 become a shrewish fishwife than one of England's greatest bards. 
 
 Let us turn from the mournful sight of wasted and degraded 
 genius to Dryden's other works. Though writing so busily for 
 the stage, he had yet found spare hours to produce his Annus 
 
238 
 
 Mirabilis, a poem on the year of the Great Fire, and his Essay on 
 Dramatic Poesy; in the latter of which he labours hard but vainly 
 to prove that rhyme is suited to tragedy. The Essay is a valuable 
 piece of criticism, which derives additional charms from the 
 elegance of its prose and its frank avowal of Shakspere's surpass- 
 ing genius. And here, dismissing Dryden's prose, we may say 
 that few English authors have written prose so well. His Prefaces 
 and Dedications things which, though now nearly banished from 
 our books, were then most elaborate pieces of writing are brilliant 
 and polished essays upon various topics of literature and art. 
 
 Not unprofitably did Dryden fight the battle of life with his 
 pen. His dramatic work brought him over 300 a year; in 1670 
 he became poet-laureate (worth 100 a year and a tierce of wine), 
 , and royal historiographer (worth another 100 a year.) The pity 
 is, that for this 600 a year he had to dip his pen in pollution, on 
 peril of losing the favour of a wicked Court. 
 
 At fifty, Dryden's genius was in full bloom. In 1681 he pro- 
 duced that marvellous group of satiric portraits which forms the 
 first part of Absalom and Acfiitophel. Old Testament names, 
 borrowed from David's day, denote the leading men of the corrupted 
 English court. Monmouth was Absalom; Shaftesbury, 
 1681 Achitophel; Buckingham, Zimri * And never has poet 
 A.D. winged more terrible weapons of political warfare than 
 the shower of bright and poisoned lines that fell on the 
 luckless objects of Dryden's rage. Conscious for the first time, 
 after this great effort, of the dreadful wounds his pen could give, the 
 poet did not henceforth spare its use. Other satires, The Medal, 
 launched against Shaftesbury alone, and Mac Flecknoe, hurled at 
 the head of poet Shadwell, speedily followed ; but neither of these 
 came up in poetry or point to his great satire of 1681. 
 
 The poem, Religio Laid, written about this time, displays the 
 author's mind convulsed with religious doubts. A severe mental 
 struggle resulted in his abandonment of Protestantism for the 
 Roman Catholic faith; an event which, unhappily for his repu- 
 
 * The satirist hail a special grudge against Buckingham, who, In 1671, brought out a farce 
 called The n<.JicarsaJ, in which Dryden and his heroic dramas were held up to public ridicula 
 
TRANSLATION OP VIEGIL. 239 
 
 tation, occurred at a time when such a change was the high 
 road to royal favour. It is right, however, to say, that the pension 
 of 100, which some believe him to have received as the reward 
 of his defection, had been already granted by Charles, and was 
 now merely restored by James. On the whole, the change seems 
 to have been one for which Dryden had deeper motives than the 
 desire of gold or royal favour. He reared his children, and died 
 in the Eoman Catholic faith. In a beautiful allegory, The Hind 
 and Panther, he exhibits his new-born affection for the Church of 
 his adoption, which he paints as a "milk-white hind, immortal 
 and unchanged." The Church of England is represented by the 
 panther, " the fairest creature of the spotted kind " j while dis- 
 senting sects play their various parts as bears, hares, boars, and 
 other animals. In spite of the grotesque antithesis involved in 
 making wild beasts discuss theology, it affords a splendid specimen 
 of Dryden's chief quality his power of reasoning in rhyme. 
 
 When William and Mary ascended the English throne, Dryden, 
 who thus lost his laureateship with its guineas and its wine, 
 sank into a bookseller's hack, depending for daily bread almost 
 entirely upon his pen. He then undertook a work for which his 
 genius was quite unfitted the translation into English verse of 
 the sweet and graceful Virgil. The verses of the Latin poet 
 have the velvet bloom, the dewy softness, the delicate odour of a 
 flower ; the version of the Englishman has the hardness and bril- 
 liance of a gem : and, when we find only flowers cut in stone, 
 where we expect to see flowers blooming in sweet reality no 
 matter how skilful the lapidary, how rich the colouring, or pure 
 the water of the jewel admiring the triumph of art, we miss the 
 sweetness of nature, and long to exchange the rainbow play of 
 coloured light for the stealing fragrance and tender hues of the 
 living blossom. For this heavy task of turning the Georgics and 
 the ^Eneid into English pentameters, the work of three 
 toilsome years, the poet received 1 200. The translation 1697 
 was published in 1697. It was not his first task of the A.D. 
 kind. The year before, he had translated part of Juvenal 
 and all Persius; and, earlier, had employed his pen upon scattered 
 
240 " ALEXANDER'S FEAST" AND "THE FABLES." 
 
 poems from Horace, Ovid, and Theocritus. We think sorrowfully 
 of the old man toiling at his desk upon this heavy task, often pur- 
 suing the " sad mechanic exercise " with little heart ; for we be- 
 lieve he must have felt that his English rendering did not breathe 
 the true spirit of Virgil's verse. Yet, in spite of such occasional 
 clouds, the sunset of his life was fair. He was the great literary 
 lion of his day ; and no country stranger, of any taste for letters, 
 thought his round of London sights complete, unless he had been 
 to Will's Coffee-house in Russell Street, where, ensconced in a 
 snug arm-chair, by the fire or out on the balcony, according to the 
 season, old John sat, pipe in hand, laying down the law upon dis- 
 puted points in literature or politics. Happy was the favoured 
 rustic who could boast to his admiring friends that he had got a 
 pinch of snuff from the great man's box! 
 
 V During these sunset years he wrote his finest lyric the Ode 
 \for St. Cecilia's Day, which is generally known as Alexander's 
 Feast, and which, notwithstanding Hallam's unfavourable opinion, 
 still remains a favourite ; and not without deserving to be so. It 
 cost him a fortnight's toil. Changing his metre with the variations 
 of his theme, the poet sweeps the strings of the fierce and softer 
 passions of the human breast ; or, to use another figure, choosing 
 with rapid and skilful finger the brightest threads from what is 
 to many the tangled skein of our English tongue, he weaves of 
 them a brilliant tapestry, glowing with a succession of fair and ter- 
 rible pictures. No English poem better illustrates the wonderful 
 pliancy of the tongue we speak. But it takes a master's touch 
 to weave the threads as Dryden did ; his silk and gold would 
 change in meaner hands to grey hemp and rusted wire. 
 
 The composition of his Fables occupied the poet's last two years. 
 For this work, of about twelve thousand lines, he received some- 
 what more than 250 from Jacob Tonson, who sold books at the 
 Judge's Head in Chancery Lane. "The Fables" rank with 
 Dry den's finest works. Consisting of tales from Boccaccio and 
 Chaucer, dressed in modern diction, they are, unhappily, often 
 stained with a deeper tinge of licentiousness than even the 
 originals possess. 
 
THE 
 
 FRENCHIFIED ENGLISH. [\ TJ 1 241 
 
 /v 0!F t 
 
 After a life of literary toil, productive of many splendid works, 
 yet scarcely one whose splendour is not crusted over with 
 the foul, obscuring fungus of a vicious age, Dryden let - _~ J 
 fall his pen from a dying hand At sixty-eight, a ne- . D 
 glected inflammation of the foot carried him off after a 
 short illness. His body was buried in Westminster Abbey, where 
 his name may be read among the names of many wiser and purer 
 men. 
 
 Most of this poet's faults sprang from the corrupting spread of 
 French influences. Ever since the days of the Confessor and the 
 Conqueror, France has been the arbiter of English fashions in the 
 way of dress : our British ladies still prize the bonnets, silks, and 
 gloves of Paris and Lyons far beyond those of their native land. 
 Little harm in all this. But it was a black day for England, when the 
 ship which carried Charles the Second to a throne bore also over 
 the narrow sea a cargo of French vices and false tastes, to spread 
 their poison through court and coffee-house, and even to mingle with 
 the ink that dropped from the poet's pen. The trick of writing 
 tragedies in rhyme the trick of intermingling firm, strong English 
 sense, with tinsel-scraps of French, like fraicheur tmdfougue the 
 trick of often substituting cold,, glittering mannerisms, for the sweet 
 fresh light of natural language are the chief symptoms of this 
 foreign disease in Dryden's work. In that marble palace which, 
 according to Johnson, he reared from the rude blocks of the Eng- 
 lish tongue, there are too many gilded cornices and panellings from 
 Versailles. Yet in this foreign adornment he was far surpassed by 
 his imitator and admirer of the next generation, little Alexander 
 Pope, who unquestionably ranks facile princeps among the painters 
 and decorators of the literary guild. 
 
 CHARACTER OF S II A F T E S B U R Y. 
 (FROM "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.") 
 
 Of these the false Acliitophel was first ; 
 A name to all succeeding ages curst : 
 For close designs and crooked counsels fit ; 
 Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit ; 
 (15) 16 
 
242 SPECIMENS OF DRYDEX's VERSE- 
 
 Restless, unfixed in principles and place ; 
 
 In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace : 
 
 A fiery soul, which, working out its way, 
 
 Fretted the pigmy body to decay, 
 
 And o'er-informed the tenement of clay. 
 
 A daring pilot in extremity ; 
 
 Pleased with the danger when the waves went high, 
 
 He sought the storms ; but, for a calm unfit, 
 
 Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. 
 
 Great wits are sure to madness near allied, 
 
 And thin partitions do their bounds divide ; 
 
 Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest, 
 
 Refuse his age the needful hours of rest ? 
 
 Punish a body which he could not please ; 
 
 Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease ? 
 
 And all to leave what with his toil he won, 
 
 To that unfeathered two-legged thing a son. 
 
 CHARACTER OF BUCKINGHAM. 
 
 Some of their chiefs were princes of the land : 
 In the first rank of these did Zimri stand ; 
 A man so various that he seemed to be, 
 Not one, but all mankind's epitome : 
 Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, 
 Was ev'rything by starts, and nothing long ; 
 But, in the course of one revolving moon, 
 Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon. 
 Blest madman ! who could ev'ry hour employ 
 With something new to wish, or to enjoy. 
 Railing and praising were his usual themes; 
 And both, to shew his judgment, in extremes ; 
 So over- violent, or over-civil, 
 That every man with him was God or devil. 
 In squandering wealth was his peculiar art ; 
 Nothing went unrewarded but desert : 
 Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late, 
 He had his jest, and they had his estate. 
 He laughed himself from court, then sought relief 
 By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief; 
 For, spite of him, the weight of business fell 
 On Absalom and wise Achitophel ; 
 Thus, wicked but in will, of means beref% 
 He left not faction, but of that was left. 
 
LOCKE STUDIES MEDICINE. 243 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 JOHN LOCKE. 
 
 Born 1632 A.D Died 1704 A.D. 
 
 Literary greatness. 
 Birth and education. 
 Studies medicine. 
 Diplomacy. 
 
 Tutor to the Ashleys. 
 Exile in Holland. 
 The Revolution. 
 Public employments. 
 
 His death. 
 The Essay. 
 Minor works. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 LOCKE'S great work, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, 
 has done more than any other book to popularize the study of 
 mental philosophy. He, therefore, well deserves a place among 
 the great names of English literature. 
 
 Born in 1632, at Wrington near Bristol, he received his educa- 
 tion at Westminster School, and Christ Church, Oxford ; and in 
 the halls of that venerable college he learned, as the illustrious 
 Bacon had learned at Cambridge, to dislike the philosophy of 
 old Aristotle, at least when applied to the production of mere 
 wordy bubbles by the schoolmen of Western Europe. Choos- 
 ing the profession^ of medicine, he bent his great mind to the 
 mastery of its details ; but the feebleness of his constitution 
 prevented him from facing the hard and wearing work of a physi- 
 cian's life. Well for England that it was so ; else one of the greatest 
 of our mental philosophers might have drudged his life away in 
 the dimness of a poor country surgery, had he not most luckily 
 possessed a pair of delicate lungs. So the thin student turned 
 diplomatist, and went to Germany as secretary to Sir Walter 
 Vane. Declining an invitation to enter the Church, he afterwards 
 found a home in the house of Lord Ashley, where he acted as tutor 
 to the son, and afterwards to the grandson, of his patron. The last- 
 named pupil became that distinguished moralist whose lofty periods 
 delighted the literati of Queen Anne's reign. To the fortunes of 
 Lord Ashley, who received the earldom of Shaftcsbury in 1672, 
 
244 AN EXILE AT AMSTERDAM. 
 
 Locke attached himself with tender fidelity ; and with these for- 
 tunes his own brightened or grew dark. At the table of his noble 
 friend he met the first Englishmen of the day; and when, in 1675, 
 fears of consumption led him to seek health in the sunnier air of 
 France, his residence at Moiitpelier and at Paris brought him into 
 contact with many eminent French scholars and literary men. When 
 Shaftesbury regained power in 1679, he called Locke to his side ; 
 and when misfortune came, the Earl and his faithful friend found 
 a refuge in hospitable Holland. There Locke lived for six years 
 (1682-88), enjoying the society of learned friends, especially the 
 weekly meeting which they established for the discussion of philo- 
 sophical questions, and patiently bringing on towards its end the 
 great book, which has made his name famous. It mattered little 
 to the invalid scholar, in his quiet lodging at Amsterdam, that his 
 name had, by command of the King, been blotted out from the list of 
 Christ Church men. A real danger threatened him, when the 
 English ambassador demanded that he, with many others, should 
 be given up by the Dutch government, as aiders and abettors of 
 Monmouth in that ill-fated invasion which ended on the field of 
 Sedgemoor. But the clouds blew past, and the Revolution soon 
 re-opened his native land to the exile. A man so distinguished 
 would have been a strong pillar of William's throne, had his 
 health permitted him to engage actively in the public service. 
 As it was, he became a Commissioner of Appeals at 200 a year, 
 and afterwards, for a short time, one of the members of the 
 Board of Trade ; but London fog and smoke soon drove the poor 
 asthmatic old man into the purer air of the country. Gates in Essex, 
 the mansion of his friend, Sir Francis Masham, opened 
 1704 its kindly doors to him ; and there, with his Bible in his 
 A.D. hand, he faded gently out of life. We cannot help lov- 
 ing the simple and unpretending scholar, with a heart full 
 
 I of the milk of human kindness, who did life's work so humbly, 
 
 v yet so well. 
 
 Locke's Essay, published in 1690, was the fruit of nearly twenty 
 years' laborious thought. One day, while he was conversing with 
 five or six friends, doubts and difficulties rose so thick around the 
 
^ ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LOCKE'S "ESSAY." 245 
 
 subject of their talk, that they could not see their way. Locke, to 
 use his own words, proposed that " it was necessary to examine 
 their own abilities, and see what objects their understandings 
 were, or were not, fitted to deal with." So the four books of the 
 "Essay" began, and his exile enabled him to bring them to a close. 
 In clear, plain, homely English, sometimes rather tawdrily dressed 
 with figures of speech, he lays down his doctrine of ideas, which 
 he derives from two great sources sensation and reflection. The 
 third book, which treats of words, their defects and their abuse, 
 is considered to be the most valuable part of this celebrated work. 
 
 His chief minor works are, Letters concerning Toleration, written .(,** 
 partly in Holland two Treatises on Civil Government, designed to jjb 
 maintain the title of King William to the English throne (r 
 Thoughts concerning Education, in which he deals not only with 
 book-learning, but with dress, food, accomplishments, morality, re- 
 creation, health, all things that belong to the development of the 
 mind or the body of a child and a sequel to this, called The Con- 
 duct of tJie Understanding, which was published after his death. 
 
 THE POWER OF PRACTICE. 
 
 Some men are remarked for pleasantness in raillery ; others, for apologues, and 
 apposite, diverting stories. This is aj.t to be taken for the effect of pare 
 nature, and that the rather, because it is not got by rules, and those who excel 
 in either of them, never purposely set themselves to the study of it as an art to 
 be learnt. But yet it is true, that at first some lucky hit, which took with 
 somebody, and gained him commendation, encouraged him to try again, inclined 
 his thoughts and endeavours that way, till at last he insensibly got a facility in 
 it without perceiving how ; and that is attributed wholly to nature, which was 
 much more the effect of use and practice. I do not deny that natural disposition 
 may often give the fh-st rise to it ; but that never carries a man far without use 
 and exercise, and it is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind as well 
 as those of the body to their perfection. Many a good poetic vein is buried 
 nnder a trade, and never produces anything for want of improvement. We see 
 the ways of discourse and reasoning are very different, even concerning the 
 same matter, at court and in the university. And he that will go but from 
 Westminster Hall to the Exchange, will find a different genius and turn in their 
 ways of talking ; and one cannot think that all whose lot fell in the city were 
 born with different parts from those who were bred at the university or inns of 
 court. 
 
246 
 
 ROSCOMMON, DORSET, SEDIJ5Y. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OTHER WRITERS OF THE FIFTH ERA. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 Eai 1 of Roscommon, 
 Earl of Dorset. 
 Sir Charles Sedley. 
 Earl of Rochester. 
 Thomas Otway. / 
 Matthew Prior. * 
 John Philips. 
 
 PROSK WRITEK3. 
 
 Henry More. 
 
 John Owen. 
 Edward Stillingfleet 
 Thomas Burnct. 
 Thomas Sprat 
 Lady Rachel Russell. 
 William Wycherley. 
 William Sherlock. 
 Gilbert Burnct 
 John Strypc. 
 
 William Penn. 
 Robert Barclay. 
 Daniel Defoe. - 
 Matthew Henry. 
 Richard Bentley. 
 Sir John Vaabrugh. 
 John Arbuthnot. vX 
 William Congrcvc. - 
 George Farquhar. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 WENTWORTH DILLON, Earl of Roscommon, born in 1634, was the 
 nephew of Strafford. He wrote, according to Pope, the only un- 
 spotted poetry in the days of Charles II. His chief work is called 
 An Essay on Translated Verse; he also translated Horace's Art <>j 
 Poetry, and wrote minor poems. He died in 1685. 
 
 CHARLES SACKVILLE, Earl of Dorset, born about 1637, wrote, 
 among other songs, one .beginning, To all you ladies now at land, 
 which he composed at sea the night before a battle. He held 
 high posts at court under Charles II. and William IIL His 
 verses were only occasional recreations. He is rather to be 
 honoured for his patronage and aid of such men as Butler and 
 Dryclen than for his own compositions. He died about 1705. 
 
 SIR CHARLES SEDLEY, born in 1639, was in his prime during 
 the reign of Charles II. His Plays, and especially his Songs, arc 
 sparkling, light and graceful, with perhaps more of the true 
 Cavalier spirit in them than the works of contemporary lyrist? 
 display. He took a prominent part in bringing about the Re- 
 volution of 1688. Thirteen years later (1701) he died. 
 
 JOHN "WILMOT, Earl of Rochester, was born in 1647. His 
 early death at thirty-three, brought on by his own wild and 
 drunken profligacy, left him but a short time to win a writer's fame. 
 
OTWAY, PKIOR, PHILIPS. 24? 
 
 Yet some of his Songs have lived, though most of them are stained 
 too deeply with the vices of the man who wrote them, to permit 
 their circulation in our purer days. 
 
 THOMAS OTWAY, the greatest dramatic name of Dryden's age, 
 was born in 1651, at Trotting in Sussex. The son of a clergyman, 
 he was educated at Winchester and Oxford. From the halls of 
 Oxford he passed to the London stage ; but had only small success 
 as an actor. Not so when he took up the dramatist's pen. 
 Almost the only gleam of prosperity that favoured the poet shone 
 in 1677, when, by the interest of the Earl of Plymouth, he was 
 made a cornet of dragoons, and shipped off to Flanders. But he 
 soon lost his commission by dissipation, and returned to his play- 
 writing. He died in 1685, a poor and wasted debauchee, who 
 had yet, by his tragedies, greatly surpassed the laboured dramas 
 of Dryden, and had come not far short of the most pathetic 
 scenes in Shakspere. Three years before his death he produced 
 Venice Preserved, the play for which his name is still honoured on 
 the English stage. The Orphan is a powerful but indelicate 
 tragedy. 
 
 MATTHEW PEIOE, bom in 1664, at Abbot Street in Dorsetshire, 
 rose from humble life his uncle kept a tavern at Charing Cross 
 to be secretary at the Hague, ambassador to the Court of Ver- 
 sailles, and a Commissioner of Trade. The kindness of the Earl 
 of Dorset, who found the little waiter of the Kummer Inn reading 
 Horace one day, enabled him to enter St. John's, Cambridge, of 
 which college he became a Fellow.' He won his place in the 
 diplomatic service by writing, in conjunction with Montagu, The 
 Town and Country Mouse, a burlesque upon Dryden's " Hind and 
 Panther." Prior's best known poems are light occasional pieces 
 of the Artificial school. His longest and most laboured work is a 
 serious poem, called Solomon. After having lain, untried, in 
 prison for two years, accused by the Whigs of treasonable negotia- 
 tion with France, he lived on the profits of his poems and the 
 bounty of Lord Oxford, at whose seat of Wimpole he died in 
 1721. 
 
 JOHN PHILIPS, author of The Splendid Shilling and other works, 
 
248 PROSE WRITERS OF THE FIFTH ERA. 
 
 was born in 1676, the son of the Archdeacon of Salop. During 
 his short life he died in 1708, aged thirty-two he wrote several 
 poems in the intervals of his medical studies. " The Splendid 
 Shilling " imitates and tries to parody the style of Milton. 
 
 PROSE WRITERS. 
 
 HENRY MORE, born in 1614, lived a hermit-life at Cambridge, 
 much as the poet Gray did in later days. He was a great 
 admirer of Plato, and wrote much on metaphysical subjects, of 
 which the mistier kind had a strong attraction for his pen. The 
 Mystery of Godliness The Mystery of Iniquity The Immortality 
 of the Soul are among the themes he dealt with. More died in 
 1687. He wrote poems also, of which the principal is called 
 Psychozoia, or Life of tlie Soul. 
 
 JOHN OWEN, born in 1616, at Stadham in Oxfordshire, was a 
 great favourite with Cromwell, who took him to Dublin and to Edin- 
 burgh, and caused him to be made Vice-Chancellor of Oxford. He 
 was long the leading minister of the Independent body. Among 
 his numerous,, but far from graceful writings, we may name A n 
 Exposition of the Hebrews; A Discourse of the Holy Spirit; and 
 The Divine Original of tlie Scriptures. This amiable and learned 
 man, whom even his opponents could not dislike, died in 1683. 
 
 EDWARD STILLINGFLEET, whose life extended from 1635 to 
 1699, became Bishop of Worcester in 1689. He wrote Origines 
 Sacrae, or a Rational Account of Natural and Revealed Religion, 
 and also a Defence of the Trinity; the latter in reply to part of 
 Locke's Essay. Stillingfleet's Sermons, too, are justly remembered 
 for their good sense and force of style. 
 
 THOMAS BURNET, Master of the Charter-house, was born in 
 1635, and died in 1715. His chief work, originally in Latin, but 
 rendered into English in 1691, was The Sacred TJieory of the Earth. 
 Written in a day when geological science was yet unborn, it is, of 
 course, full of error and wild speculation ; but its eloquence and 
 picturesque grandeur of style redeem it from oblivion. Burners 
 other principal works were, A rchceologia Philosophica^On Christian 
 Faith and Duties and The State of the Dead and Reviving. He 
 
PP.USE WRITERS OF THE FIFTH ERA. 249 
 
 held some peculiar religious views, which debarred him from pre- 
 ferment in the Church. 
 
 THOMAS SPRAT, born in 1G36, at Fallaton in Devonshire, was 
 educated at Wadham College, Oxford, and became Bishop of 
 Rochester in 1G84. He wrote with remarkable eloquence a 
 History of the Royal Society; An Account of the Rye-house Plot; 
 and a short Life of Coivley. Sprat died in 1713. 
 
 LADY RACHEL RUSSELL, the daughter of the Earl of Southamp- 
 ton, and the devoted wife of that Lord William Russell who was 
 beheaded in 1683 for an alleged share in the Rye-house Plot, 
 deserves remembrance here for her beautiful Letters. They 
 were published fifty years after her death, which took place in 
 1723. 
 
 WILLIAM WYCHERLEY, born in Shropshire in 1640, belongs to 
 the most shameful period in the history of the English people and 
 their literature. Educated as a lawyer, he abandoned his profes- 
 sion for the worst dissipations of London life. His Comedies, 
 upon which his reputation as a literary man is founded, reflect the 
 pollutions of the writer's mind. When it is said that they were 
 all the fashion with the wits and beauties of Charles the Second's 
 court, their character becomes clear at once. Wycherley died in 
 1715. 
 
 WILLIAM SHERLOCK, Dean of St. Paul's, and known as the 
 author of a Practical Discourse concerning Death, was born in 
 1641. He wrote much against the Dissenters. His Vindication 
 of the Trinity involved him in a controversy with South, He 
 wrote also a treatise On the Immortality of the Soul. Sherlock 
 died in 1707. 
 
 GILBERT BURNET, born at Edinburgh in 1643, was the son of 
 a Scottish judge. Having graduated at Aberdeen, Gilbert entered 
 the Church. Minister of Salton in Haddingtonshire Professor 
 of Divinity at Glasgow preacher in the Rolls Chapel, London 
 an exile on the Continent, residing chiefly at the Hague he be- 
 came, at the Revolution, Bishop of Salisbury, as a reward for his 
 adherence to William of Orange. His literary fame rests prin- 
 cipally on his historical works the History of the Reformation, 
 
250 PROSE WRITERS OF THE FIFTH ERA. 
 
 and the History of My Own Times. The latter, sketching the Civil 
 War and the histoiy of Cromwell, enters with greater minuteness 
 into the period between the Restoration and the Treaty of Utrecht. 
 Burnet's work on the Thirtytwne Articles is his chief theological 
 treatise. He died in 1715. 
 
 JOHN STRYPE, born in 1643, deserves remembrance for his 
 biographical and antiquarian works. Lives ofCranmer, Cheke, Grin- 
 dal, Whitgift, and many others, proceeded from his pen, besides the 
 Annals of the Reformation, and Ecclesiastical Memorials. He 
 was a clergyman of the Church of England, and held many posts, 
 the last being a lectureship at Hackney. He died in 1737, aged 
 ninety-four. 
 
 WILLIAM PENN, the son of the celebrated admiral, was born in 
 1 644. Though more distinguished as a colonist than as an author, 
 he wrote several treatises in defence of Quakerism. No Cross No 
 Crown, TJie Conduct of Life, and A Brief Account of the People 
 called Quakers, are among his works. He died in 1718. 
 
 ROBERT BARCLAY, born in 1648, at Gordonstown in Moray, 
 followed his father, Colonel Barclay, in joining the virtuous and 
 God-fearing sect, then called Quakers, but now known as Friends. 
 His Apology for these persecuted Christians is a remarkable theo- 
 logical work. He died in 1690. 
 
 DANIEL DEFOE, born in 1661, was the son of a London butcher. 
 After trying various occupations, hosier, tile-maker, and woollen- 
 merchant he devoted himself to literature, and took up pen 
 on the Whig side. For his political attacks he suffered the pil- 
 lory, imprisonment, and fine. But his greatest efforts were works 
 of fiction, of which Robinson Cnisoe, published in 1719, is the 
 chief. No English writer has ever excelled him in his power of 
 painting fictitious events in the colours of truth. His simple 
 and natural style has much to do with this. TJie Relation of 
 Mrs. Veal's Apparition, prefixed to Drelincourt on Death, affords, 
 perhaps, the best specimen of Defoe's wonderful power of clothing 
 fiction with the garb of truth. He died in 1731, leaving behind 
 him many debts, and a host of works amounting to two hundred 
 and ten books and pamphlets. 
 
THOSE WRITERS OF THE FIFTH ERA. 251 
 
 MATTHEW HENRY, born in Flintshire in 1662, studied law, 
 but afterwards became a Nonconformist minister. Chester and 
 Hackney were the scenes of his labour. His name- is now re- 
 membered chiefly for that Commentary on the JBible, which bis 
 death in 1714 prevented him from finishing. 
 
 RICHARD BENTLEY, who was born in 1662 and died in 1742, 
 became Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Regius Pro- 
 fessor of Divinity in that university. He has been called the 
 greatest classical scholar England ever produced. Editions of 
 Horace, Terence, and Phcedrus are among his principal works. He 
 also edited Milton, but with very small success. 
 
 SIR JOHN VANBRUGH, born about 1666, was a sugar-baker's son, 
 who produced architectural designs, and wrote witty but licentious 
 comedies. Under Queen Anne he was Clarencieux King-at-arms ; 
 and under George I., Comptroller of the royal works. The Pro- 
 voked Wife is, perhaps, his best play. Blenheim and Castle 
 Howard were his chief works as an architect. Vanbrugh died in 
 1726. 
 
 JOHN ARBUTHNOT, born in Kincardineshire in 1667, was noted 
 in London as a physician, a writer, and a wit. He wrote, besides 
 several other things, much of Martin Scriblerus, published in 
 Pope's works the History of John Bull (1712), which was a fine 
 piece of ridicule aimed at Marlborough treatises on the Scolding 
 of the Ancients, and the Art of Political Lying. The very titles 
 of his works express their humorous tone. He was physician in 
 ordinary to Queen Anne, and died in 1735. 
 
 WILLIAM CONGREVE was an exception to the common lot of his 
 dramatic brethren, for he lived and died in opulence and ease. 
 Born in Yorkshire about 1670, he became at twenty-two a dramatic 
 author. But he had the good fortune to obtain several government 
 situations, which, when swelled by the emoluments of the secre- 
 taryship of Jamaica, received in 1715, were worth about 1200 a 
 year. The same calamity that darkened the old age of Milton, 
 fell on the latter days of Congreve ; but the licentious dramatist 
 had not the same pure, angelic visions, to solace his hours of 
 blindness as passed before the mental eye of the great Puritan, 
 
252 PROSE WRITERS OF THE FIFTH ERA. 
 
 Congreve wrote one tragedy, Tfe Mourning Bride. His comedies 
 are steeped in vice. How much this writer was idolized in his 
 own day, may be judged from the strange honours paid by a 
 Duchess of Maryborough to his memory. Having caused images 
 of the dead poet to be made, one of ivory and one of wax, she 
 placed the former daily at her table, and caused the feet of the 
 latter to be regularly blistered and rubbed by her doctors, as had 
 been done for the gouty limbs of the dying man, when he was a 
 member of her household. Congreve's life came to a close in 
 1729. 
 
 GEORGE FARQUHAR, born in Londonderry in 1678, was an actor, 
 a military officer, and a writer of comedies. His chief plays are 
 TJie Recruiting Officer (170G), and TJie Beaux' Stratagem (1707). 
 He died in his thirtieth year. "\Vycherlcy, Vanbrugh, Congreve, 
 and Farquhar form a group of comic dramatists, who reflect vividly 
 in their works the glittering and wicked life which courtiers and 
 fashionables lived during the half century between the Restoration 
 ntid the accession of the Guclpha. 
 
"THE NEWS OF THE PRESENT WEEK.'' 253 
 
 SIXTH ERA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 FROM THE FIRST PUBLICATION OF THE TATLER IN 1709 A.D. TO THE 
 PUBLICATION OF PAMELA IN 1740 A.D. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 NEWSPAPERS AND SERIALS. 
 
 Earliest newspapers. 
 Papers of the Civil War. 
 London Gazette. 
 The Newsletter. 
 Liberty of the Press. 
 
 Parliamentary debates. 
 Early reporting. 
 The Times. 
 High pressure. 
 Addison and Steele. 
 
 Reviews. 
 
 Magazines. 
 Encyclopaedias. 
 Periodical writers. 
 A literary contrast. 
 
 THE Acta Diurna of ancient Rome, the Gazetta of Venice, and the 
 Afficlie of France contained the germs from which grew the modern 
 newspaper or journal. Small sheets or packets of news began to 
 appear in England during the reign of James I. ; and when the 
 Thirty Years' War set all Britain on the qui vive, one of these, 
 entitled The News of the Present Week, was established in 1G22, to 
 give the latest particulars of the great Continental struggle. This 
 may be considered our first regular newspaper. The earlier news- 
 pamphlets had no fixed time of publication. 
 
 The Civil War between Charles and his Parliament gave a 
 political tone to this infant journalism. Each party had several 
 organs ; and a furious paper war kept pace with the sterner con- 
 flict that convulsed the laud. Very curious and often comical are 
 the titles of these news-books for papers they can scarcely be 
 called, being chiefly in the form of quarto pamphlets. Once, 
 twice, thrice a week there came out a host of bitter and malicious 
 Scotch Doves, Parliament Kites, Secret Ou-h; ancj when the Weekly 
 
254 " THE NEWSLETTER." 
 
 Discoverer saw the light, at once there sprang up a rival, The 
 Weekly Discoverer Stripped Naked. Mercurys of many sorts 
 abounded on both sides. 
 
 The reigns of Charles II. and his brother James were fruitful 
 in newspapers of small size, and generally of short life. The fan- 
 tastic folly of the age was often reflected in both title and contents. 
 How we should laugh now at the appearance of a paper entitled, 
 us was one of these, News from the Land of Chivalry, being the 
 Pleasant and Delectable History and Wonderful and Strange 
 Adventures of Don Rugero de Strangmento, Knight of the 
 Squeaking Fiddlestick. Macaulay tells us that the quantity of 
 matter contained in one of these publications during a whole year 
 was not more than is often found in two numbers of the " Times." 
 Of The London Gazette, which came out on Mondays and Thurs- 
 days, " the contents generally were a royal proclamation, two or 
 three Tory addresses, notices of two or three promotions, an 
 account of a skirmish between the imperial troops and the Janis- 
 saries on the Danube, a description of a highwayman, an announce- 
 ment of a grand cockfight between two persons of honour, and an 
 advertisement offering a reward for a strayed dog. The wholo 
 made up two pages of moderate size." 
 
 At this time the Newsletter did the work of our daily papers. 
 News was to be learned chiefly in the coffee-houses, which were 
 thronged all day long by the idle men, and for some hours were 
 frequented by even the busiest men, in the capital. The evening 
 before post-day, the correspondents of the country districts gathered 
 all the scraps of intelligence they had collected in their daily 
 rambles into the form of a letter, which went down duly by the 
 post to enlighten justices of peace in their offices, country rectors 
 in their studies, village tradesmen and neighbouring farmers in 
 the sanded tap-rooms of rustic ale-houses. When we remember 
 the slowness of communication a hundred and fifty years ago, it 
 will not seem wonderful that the country was a week or a fort- 
 night behind the town in the current history of the times. To 
 us, who have electric wires and penny papers, this would seem 
 intolerable. 
 
OLD STYLE OF REPORTING. 255 
 
 It is not our purpose here to enter into a detailed account of 
 the growth of the English newspaper. To do so would carry us 
 far beyond our available space. The press, when freed in 1694 
 from restrictions on its liberty, advanced with rapid strides. 
 There was something of a check, when the Tory government in 
 1712 laid a stamp-tax on newspapers a halfpenny on half a 
 sheet, a penny on a whole sheet, and a shilling on every adver- 
 tisement. But through all checks its onward progress was steady 
 and sure. 
 
 Yet it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that the 
 parliamentary debates began to be reported at any length. Nor 
 was it without a fierce struggle that the London printers won this 
 important right. Of those who did stout battle for the public in 
 this contest, William Woodfall was most prominent. A meagre 
 summary at first, and some days later, an elaborate version of 
 the speeches, some perhaps written, but many certainly retouched, 
 by Dr. Johnson or other leading litterateur of the day, formed the 
 parliamentary debate as it appeared in print before WoodfalTs 
 reporting began. Having set up the Diary in 1789, this extra- 
 ordinary man would listen for many hours, from the strangers' 
 gallery in St. Stephen's, to the progress of the debate, and then, 
 going to the printing office, would write off from memory all that 
 he had heard. His report sometimes extended to sixteen columns 
 each not, of course, containing anything like the matter of a 
 column in the "Times" of our day, but yet large enough to make 
 the feat a rare and remarkable instance of what the educated 
 memory can retain. This, however, was too much for a man to 
 do for more than a few years. There are, indeed, few men who 
 could do it at all. The employment of several reporters to divide 
 the labour, and the subsequent introduction of reporting in short- 
 hand, enabled the papers to furnish earlier and more accurate 
 accounts of what was done in the Houses of Parliament. 
 
 On the first of January 1788 appeared the first number of The 
 Times, the new form of the little Daily Register, that had already 
 been for three years in existence. It was a puny, meagre thing, 
 compared with its gigantic offspring, which is delivered damp 
 
250 THE r^EiS-LlFE 01' TO-DAY. 
 
 from the prc;>s at thousands of London doors every morning 
 before early breakfast-time, and before tlie bun Las set has 
 been read over nearly all England. But it grew and throve; 
 uud \\l\ci\ in 1814 the power of steam was employed to work the 
 press, the foundation was laid of the magnificent success this 
 giant sheet has since achieved A newspaper paying, as the 
 " Times " does, between 40,000 and 50,000 a year for paper* 
 duty alone, is indeed a wonderful triumph of human energy, and 
 a colossal proof of the reading-power of our age. 
 
 There is something feverish about the rate at which the drums of 
 the newspaper press revolve now-a-days. At ten or eleven o'clock 
 at night some noted member of the House a Gladstone or a 
 Palmerston, a Derby or a Disraeli gets upon his legs to speak. 
 For two hours he enchains the House with his eloquence, and, 
 perhaps, concludes by turning back on his foes the weapon aimed 
 at the very heart of his party. At twelve or one, in some brightly 
 lighted room in Printing-House Square, an editor sits down to 
 his desk, with a digest of this very speech before him, to tear it 
 to pieces or applaud it to the skies, as it may happen to chime or 
 clash with his own opinions on the question of debate. Not far 
 away sit the keen-eyed reporters, busied with, their task of tran- 
 scribing their short-hand notes for the press. On for the bare life 
 race all the busy pens. The wheels of the brain are all whirring 
 away at top speed and highest pressure. At last article and 
 reports are finished. Then arises the rattle of composing-sticks 
 and type. The great drum of Hoe's machine, and its satellite 
 cylinders, begin their swift rounds; and before eight o'clock in 
 the morning the bolt of the Thunderer has fallen on the speech- 
 maker or his foes, as the case may be. 
 
 Journalism employs thousands of able pens over all the king- 
 dom, and has done much to lift the literary profession from the 
 low position in which all but its most prominent members lay 
 during a great part of the last century. Let us now turn to take 
 a brief view of the rise of those other periodicals, whose abundance 
 and excellence form one of the leading literary features of tho 
 present age. 
 
THE PRINCIPAL REVIEWS. 257 
 
 Although Defoe's Review, begun in 1704, was, strictly speaking, 
 the first English serial, it was not until Richard Steele and Joseph 
 Addison began to write the pleasant and eloquent papers of The. 
 Taller, that the foundation of our periodical literature was firmly 
 laid. TJie Spectator followed a yet nobler specimen of the early 
 and now old-fashioned serial. Then came, at various intervals 
 throughout the eighteenth century, and with varying fortunes, 
 The Gentleman's Magazine, The Guardian, and The Rambler, 
 the last of which was written nearly all by Samuel Johnson ; 
 and in Scotland, The Mirror and The Lounger, to which Henry 
 Mackenzie was the principal contributor. 
 
 The older periodicals, which now lie upon our tables, date for 
 the most part from the early years of the present century. We 
 take the Reviews first for a few words of comment. Earliest, and 
 in former times most brilliant of these large Quarterlys, was The 
 Edinburgh Review, whose Whig principles are symbolized by the 
 buff and blue of its pasteboard cover. One day in 1802, Sydney 
 Smith, meeting Brougham and some other young Liberals at 
 Jeffrey's house, which was then a high flat somewhere in Buccleuch 
 Place, Edinburgh, proposed to start a Review. The happy idea 
 took the fancy of all present; and the first number of the "Edin- 
 burgh" soon appeared. Its circulation reached in 1813 to 12,000 
 or 13,000 copies. This periodical was afterwards enriched by the 
 stately and magnificent essays of the historian Macaulay. 
 
 When the Tories saw the success and felt the power of the 
 "Edinburgh," they in 1809 started The Quarterly Review, which has 
 ever since been growing in public favour. John Gibson Lockhart, 
 the son-in-law and biographer of Sir Walter Scott, was for many 
 years editor of the " Quarterly." The Westminster Review began in 
 1824 to represent Radical opinions. These serials and their 
 younger brethren, appearing every quarter in thick volumes at a 
 comparatively high price, contain articles on the leading books 
 and political questions of the day. A great work is often singly 
 reviewed ; but the usual plan adopted is to collect a number of 
 works bearing on a topic of prominent interest, and upon these to 
 found an essay of tolerable length. Recently, a lighter sort of 
 
 (15) 17 
 
258 ENCYCLOPEDIAS AND MAGAZINES. 
 
 review artillery has been brought into the literary and political 
 battle-field Discarding the heavy guns, fired at long intervals, 
 as lumbering and comparatively ineffective, the writers of The 
 Saturday Review and its tribe discharge weekly volleys of sting- 
 ing rifle-balls and smashing round-shot from their light twelve- 
 pounders, often with tremendous effect. The Atlienceum stands at 
 the head of the weekly reviews, which are devoted solely to liter- 
 ature, science, and art. 
 
 The Magazine, which is generally a monthly serial, though deal- 
 ing somewhat in light reviewing, aims rather at the amusement 
 and instruction of its readers by a dozen or so of original articles, 
 including tales, sketches, essays, and short poems. Blackwood, 
 Fraser, The New Monthly, The Dublin University, Bentley, and 
 Tait are the older favourites ; but, within a year or two, there has 
 come upon our tables a flood of cheaper periodicals of this class, 
 and, riding on the highest crest of the wave, the rich maize-coloured 
 Cornhill, which numbers its readers by the hundred thousand, and 
 supplies for a solitary silver shilling a monthly crop of heavy 
 golden grain, reaped from the finest brain-soils in the land. 
 
 A class of serials, deserving a longer notice than we can give 
 them here, are the Encyclopaedias. Chief of these is the Ency* 
 clopcedia- Britannica, of which the eighth edition has just been 
 completed, enriched with articles from the first pens in Britain. 
 The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, edited by Sir David Brewster, is 
 valuable for its scientific articles. Lardner's Cyclopaedia con- 
 tains a valuable series of histories, part of England by Mack- 
 intosh, Scotland by Scott, and Ireland by Moore. 
 
 No men have done more for periodical literature than the Messrs. 
 Chambers of Edinburgh. They enjoy the credit of having set on 
 foot the cheapest form of serial by the publication in 1832 of 
 their Journal, which has lived through a long career of usefulness, 
 and is flourishing still in almost pristine vigour amid a host of 
 younger rivals. 
 
 We have in this chapter glanced along the whole course of our 
 serial literature up to the present day, because we shall not have 
 an opportunity of returning to the subject, and no historical 
 
A LITERARY CONTRAST. 259 
 
 sketch of English literature would be complete without such a 
 view. Laying down the last number of the " Quarterly" or the 
 " Cornhill," we bethink us of the little leaf, on which, a hundred 
 and fifty years ago, poor Dick Steel e and stately Mr. Addison 
 wrote the first magazine and review articles, that deserve the name 
 in English literature; and are filled with wonder at the vast 
 increase of the kind. There are many Addisons and very many 
 Steeles among the literary men of our day; but so great is the 
 supply of healthy, graceful English writing, and so much have 
 matters altered in the way of remunerating literary men, that the 
 Commissioners of Stamps and the Secretaries of State are not 
 chosen by Lord Palmerston from among the contributors to Black- 
 ivood or All the Year Round. Then, there is the pleasant thought 
 to compensate for this want of fame and of political promotion, 
 that every man of letters, who can use his pen well, and can sit 
 steadily at his desk for some hours a day, is sure of earning a 
 comfortable livelihood, and holding a respectable place in society. 
 In Queen Anne's day, it was Addison and Steele, Pope and Swift, 
 and a few more, who got all the fame and the guineas, who drank 
 their wine, and spent their afternoons in the saloons of the great ; 
 while the great majority of authors starved and shivered in garrets, 
 or pawned their clothes for the food their pens could not win. In 
 Victoria's reign there are few political prizes, but there is wide- 
 spread comfort; and the man qualified to live by pen-work, is 
 sure of finding that work to do, if to his ability he but adds the 
 all-important qualities of industry and common sense. 
 
260 EARLY LIFE OF ADDISON. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 Born 1672 A.D Died 1719 A.D. 
 
 Birth and school days. 
 At Oxford. 
 Foreign travel. 
 The Campaign. 
 
 Political rise. 
 The Taller. 
 The Spectator. 
 Tragedy of Cato. 
 
 Married life. 
 Retirement and death. 
 Thackeray's Addlson. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 WHEN Joseph Addison was born in 1C72, his father was rector 
 of Milston, near Amesbury in Wiltshire. He received the best 
 part of his education at the Charter-house in London, a school 
 which has sent forth many of our first wits and literary men. It 
 was there that he met Dick Steele, a good-hearted, mischief-lov- 
 ing Irish boy; and the juvenile friendship, cemented no doubt by 
 numerous tart transactions and much illegal Latin-verse making, 
 was renewed at college and in later life. At the age of fifteen 
 Addison left school for Queen's College, Oxford ; two years later 
 he obtained a scholarship in Magdalen, where his Latin poems 
 won for him considerable renown. 
 
 His first flight in English verse was an Address to Drydtn 
 (1694), by which he gained the great man's friendship, no slight 
 matter to a newly fledged poet, whose face was hardly known in 
 the coffee-houses. Dryden admitted his Translation of part cj 
 the Fourth Georgic into a book of Miscellanies. Other poems 
 followed from the same pen. Some verses in honour of the King, 
 though poor enough, won the favour of Lord Somers, through 
 whom they reached the royal hand; and the fortunate writer 
 
 received a pension of 300 a year, that he might cultivate 
 
 1699 his classic tastes by travel on the Continent. So, with a 
 
 A.D. full purse and the reputation of being the most elegant 
 
 scholar of his day in England, Addison set out upon the 
 grand tour. From Italy he wrote a poetical Letter to Lord Halifax^ 
 which is looked upon as the finest of his works in English verse. 
 
APPEARANCE OF "THE SPECTATOR." 2G1 
 
 King William's death, however, stopping his pension, cut short 
 his travelled ease; and home he came, a poor yet cheerful scholar, 
 to wait quietly for fortune in a shabby lodging up two pair of 
 stairs in the Haymarket. While he lay thus under eclipse, the 
 great battle of Blenheim was fought; and being employed by 
 Treasurer Godolphin to write a poem in praise of the event, his 
 performance of the task gave such satisfaction to the Ministry, 
 that he was soon made Commissioner of Appeals. The lucky 
 poem, known as The Campaign, chanted loudly the praises of 
 Marlborough, who is compared, in a passage that took the whole 
 town by storm, to an angel guiding the whirlwind. Mr. Com- 
 missioner Addison changed by-and-by into Mr. Under-Secretary 
 of State; Mr. Under-Secretary, into the Secretary for Ireland; the 
 Secretary for Ireland, into one of His Majesty's principal Secretaries 
 of State (1717), the last being the greatest eminence reached by 
 Addison in that most slippery profession of politics. 
 
 To mount so many rounds of the ladder took him a full dozen of 
 years, during which his pen had been doing its finest work. 
 Though he made his literary debut as a poet, he achieved his 
 highest fame as the writer of some of the sweetest and most art- 
 less prose that adorns our literature. 
 
 In the spring of 1709 his old school-fellow, Steels, started a tri- 
 weekly sheet called The Taller, which for a penny gave a short 
 article and some scraps of news. Addison, who was then in Ire- 
 land, wrote occasionally for this leaf. But when the " Tatler," after 
 living for nearly two years, gave place to the more 
 famous daily sheet, called The Spectator, Addison became 1711 
 a constant contributor, and by his prose papers exalted the A.D. 
 periodical to the highest rank among the English classics. 
 There, on the tray beside the delicate porcelain cups, from which 
 beauty and beau sipped their fragrant chocolate or tea by the 
 toilette-table in the late noonday, lay the welcome little sheet of 
 sparkling wit or elegant criticism, giving a new zest to the morning 
 meal, and suggesting fresh topics for the afternoon chat in the toy- 
 shops or on the Moll. Addison's papers were marked with one of 
 the four letters, C. L. I. O. taken either from the Muse's name, 
 
262 THE TRAGEDY OF "CATO." 
 
 or from the initial letters of Chelsea, London, Islington, and the 
 Office, places where the papers were probably written. The Essays 
 on Milton, the Vision of Mirza, and the account of Sir Roger dc 
 Coverlets Visit to London, may be taken as some of the finest speci- 
 mens of what Addison's graceful pen could do. The "Spectator" 
 lasted for 635 numbers, continuing to appear, with one break of 
 eighteen months during which Tlie Guardian ran its course, until 
 the end of 1714. The first sketch of Sir Roger we owe to the pen 
 of Steele ; but it was a character such as the gentle Addison loved, 
 and Addison is certainly the painter, in full length, of the good 
 old bachelor baronet, full of whims and oddities, simple as a child 
 and gentle as a woman, who lives in our hearts among the most 
 prized of the friends we make in" books, and whom we always 
 honour as a true gentleman, though we sometimes steal a good- 
 natured laugh at his rustic softness. 
 
 Since Addison's return from Italy, four acts of a Roman drama 
 had been lying in his desk Profiting by the temporary stoppage 
 of the " Spectator," upon the completion of the seventh volume in 
 1712, he set to work upon the unfinished play, and soon gave Cato 
 
 to the stage. It was performed for the first time at Drury 
 
 1713 Lane in April 1 7 1 3, to a house crammed from pit to ceiling 
 
 A.D. with all the wits and statesmen of the capital. We, 
 
 who live in days when Kean writes himself F.S.A., and 
 every buckle and shoe-tie of the wardrobe, in our better theatres 
 at least, must pass the scrutiny of men deeply skilled in all the 
 fashions of antiquity, smile at the incongruity of Cato in a flowered 
 dressing-gown and a black wig that cost fifty guineas; and the 
 brocaded Marcia in that famous hoop of Queen Anne's time, which 
 lias revived in the crinoline of Victoria's gentle reign. But Cato, 
 thus attired, was not laughed at; for it was the theatrical fashion 
 of the day to dress all characters in wig and hoop, exactly like 
 those worn by the people of quality, who took snuff or flirted the 
 fan in the resplendent box-row. A similar anachronism was com- 
 -nitted by the old Norman romancers, who turned every hero no 
 matter whether he was Abraham or Alexander into a steel-clad 
 knight of the Middle Ages. " Cato " was a great success. All 
 
A COLD, UNGENIAL SPLENDOUft. 263 
 
 Addison's friends were in ecstasies of delight ; and even the Tories 
 allowed that the author was a man of too pure and elevated genius 
 to be mixed up with common political quarrels. People stood 
 knocking at the theatre doors at noon, and for more than a month 
 the play was performed every night. Time has greatly abated the 
 reputation of this drama. Like Addison's own nature, it is calm 
 and cold ; undeniably excellent as a piece of literary sculpture, full 
 of fine declamation and well-chiselled dialogue, but falling far 
 below the natural greatness of "Macbeth" or "Julius Caesar." 
 We remember Addison chiefly as the kindly genius who wrote the 
 most charming papers of the "Spectator;" his own generation 
 idolized him as the author of " Cato." 
 
 Almost a year before his appointment as Secretary of State, lie 
 married the Countess-Dowager of Warwick, and took up his abode 
 in Holland House. The union was not a happy one between the 
 cold and polished scholar, and the gorgeous, dashing woman of rank, 
 who probably never found out how sweet and pure a spirit burned 
 beneath the ice of her husband's outward manner. The quiet, 
 lonely man, loved to escape from the gilded saloons of Holland 
 House into the city, where he wandered through the clubs, or 
 sat with some old friend over a bottle of wine. And here it 
 must be said gladly would we avoid it if we could that the great 
 Joseph Addison was often in his lifetime the worse for wine. 
 The same hand that wrote " Mirza," and won for the " Spectator" 
 its honoured place on English book-shelves, is found writing glee- 
 fully to a friend at Hamburg about the choice old hock that had 
 set it shaking. Let us be gentle in our blame, for it was the vice 
 of the age. The pity is, that so fair a reputation should suffer 
 from this sorry stain. 
 
 Addison's power lay in his pen ; as a public speaker he broke 
 down completely. This defect, coupled with the decay of his 
 health, induced him to retire from office with a pension of 1500 
 a year. Asthma rapidly weakened him; symptoms of dropsy 
 appeared ; and he soon lay upon his death-bed. " See," said he 
 to his son-in-law, "how a Christian can die!" And then this 
 gentle spirit, that, amid many faults and weaknesses, had ever 
 
264 THACKERAY ON ADDISOJS's STYLE. 
 
 cherished a deep, reverential gratitude to God, passed at forty- 
 eight from this troubled life, let us humbly trust, to that 
 golden city of everlasting peace, which needs no sun to 
 light it, for the Lamb is the light thereof. 
 No better close for this slight sketch could be found than the 
 charming picture of Addison in his prime, which we owe to 
 Thackeray's brilliant pen.* 
 
 " Addison wrote his papers as gaily as if he was going out for a 
 holiday. When Steele's ' Tatler' first began his prattle, Addison, 
 then in Ireland, caught at his friend's notion, poured in paper after 
 paper, and contributed the stores of his mind, the sweet fruits 
 of his reading, the delightful gleanings of his daily observation, 
 with a wonderful profusion, and, as it seemed, an almost endless 
 fecundity. He was six-and- thirty years old : full and ripe. He 
 had not worked crop after crop from his brain, manuring hastily, 
 subsoiling indifferently, cutting and sowing and cutting again, 
 like other luckless cultivators of letters. He had not done much 
 as yet ; a few Latin poems graceful prolusions ; a polite book of 
 travels ; a dissertation on medals, not very deep ; four acts of a 
 tragedy, a great classical exercise ; and the ' Campaign,' a large 
 prize poem that won an enormous prize. But with his friend's 
 discovery of the 'Tatler,' Addison's calling was found, and the most 
 
 delightful talker in the world began to speak His writings 
 
 do not show insight into or reverence for the love of women, 
 which I take to be, one the consequence of the other. He walks 
 about the world watching their pretty humours, fashions, follies, 
 flirtations, rivalries; and noting them with the most charming 
 archness. He sees them in public, in the theatre, or the assembly, 
 or the puppet-show ; or at the toy-shop, higgling for gloves and 
 lace; or at the auction, battling together over a blue porcelain 
 dragon, or a darling monster in japan ; or at church, eyeing the 
 width of their rivals' hoops, or the breadth of their laces, as they 
 sweep down the aisles. Or he looks out of his window at the 
 Garter in St. James's Street, at Ardelia's coach, as she blazes to 
 the drawing-room with her coronet and six footmen ; and remeni* 
 
 * Se English Humorist* of the Eighteenth Century, Lecture it 
 
SPECIMEN OF ADDISON'S PROSE. 265 
 
 bering that her father was a Turkey merchant in the city, calcu- 
 lates how many sponges went to purchase her ear-rings, and how 
 many drums of figs to build her coach box; or he demurely 
 watches behind a tree in Spring Garden as Saccharissa (whom he 
 knows under her mask) trips out of her chair to the alley where 
 Sir Fopling is waiting." 
 
 SKETCH OF WILL WIMBLE. 
 (SPECTATOR, NO. 108.) 
 
 As I was yesterday morning walking with Sir Roger before his house, a 
 country fellow brought him a huge fish, which, he told him, Mr. William 
 Wimble had caught that very morning ; and that he presented it with his service 
 to him, and intended to come and dine with him. At the same time he delivered 
 a letter, which my friend read to me as soon as the messenger left him. 
 
 " SIR ROGER, 
 
 " I desire you to accept of a jack, which is the best I have caught 
 this season. I intend to come and stay with you a week, and see how the perch 
 bite in the Black river. I observed with some concern, the last time I saw you 
 upon the bowling-green, that your whip wanted a lash to it ; I will bring half 
 a dozen with me that I twisted last week, which I hope will serve you all the 
 time you are in the country. I have not been out of the saddle for six days 
 last past, having been at Eton with Sir John's eldest son. He takes to his 
 learning hugely. 
 
 " I am, Sir, your humble servant, 
 
 " WILL WIMBLE." 
 
 This extraordinary letter, and message that accompanied it, made me very 
 curious to know the character and quality of the gentleman who sent them; 
 which I found to be as follow: Will Wimble is younger brother to a baronet, 
 and descended of the ancient family of the Wimbles. He is now between forty 
 and fifty; but being bred to no business and born to no estate, he generally lives 
 with his eldest brother as superintendent of his game. He hunts a pack of dogs 
 better than any man in the country, and is very famous for finding out a hare. 
 He is extremely well versed in all the little handicrafts of an idle man. He 
 makes a May-fly to a miracle ; and furnishes the whole country with angle-rods. 
 As he is a good-natured, officious fellow, and very much esteemed on account of 
 his family, he is a welcome guest at every house, and keeps up a good corre- 
 spondence among all the gentlemen about him. He carries a tulip root in hia 
 pocket from one to another, or exchanges a puppy between a couple of friends, 
 that live perhaps in the opposite sides of the country. These gentleman- lika 
 manufactures and obliging little humours make Will the darling of the country. 
 
266 EARLY LIFE OF KEWTOK. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SIE ISAAC NEWTON. 
 
 Born 1642 A.D Died 1727 A.D. 
 
 Newton's fame. 
 Early life. 
 College career. 
 The Princlpta. 
 M.P. for Cambridge. 
 
 Master of the Mini. 
 Loss of his papers. 
 High honours. 
 English works. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 ALTHOUGH Newton's fame does not rest upon his contributions 
 to English literature, we need make no apology for presenting 
 here a brief view of the life and works of that Englishman who 
 wrote the Principia, and won for his native land the fame of 
 1 laving given birth to the greatest natural philosopher the world 
 has ever seen. 
 
 The hamlet of Woolsthorpe, eight miles south of Graiitham in 
 Lincolnshire, was the birth-place of Isaac Newton. His father 
 farmed a small estate. During his school-life at Grantham and 
 elsewhere, a remarkable taste for mechanics led him to spend his 
 leisure in the construction of such things as model wind-mills and 
 water-clocks; but his progress in his studies was very slow, until 
 a strange accident produced a change. The boy above him gave 
 him a heavy kick in the stomach one day ; and this so roused the 
 energies of young Isaac, that he worked industriously until he got 
 above his injurer. He then continued his successful career until 
 he stood at the head of his class. 
 
 At seventeen he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, became 
 ultimately a Fellow, and in 1669 succeeded Dr. Barrow as Luca- 
 sian Professor of Mathematics. Here were performed most of those 
 splendid optical experiments which placed the science of light on 
 new foundations. Here and at Woolsthorpe, where he sometimes 
 spent a while, he busied himself with those sublime investiga- 
 tions, resulting in his discovery of that grand law of universal 
 
NEWTON'S " PKINCIPIA." 267 
 
 gravitation which the stars obey, as they wheel in huge ellipses 
 round a central sun, and which at the same time guides the fall 
 of the tiniest leaflet that flutters dead to the earth in the silence 
 of an autumn wood. 
 
 In 1672 Newton was elected a member of the Koyal Society, 
 which was then an infant association, only twelve years old. 
 Through the studious years that followed, his great work a Latin 
 treatise entitled in full, Philosophies Naturalis Principia Mathc- 
 matica was slowly but steadily growing to complete- 
 ness. It was published in 1687, at the expense of the 1687 
 members of the Koyal Society, who were justly proud of A.D. 
 the distinguished author. In the following year the 
 University of Cambridge returned him as one of the members 
 who represented her in Parliament an honour which he enjoyed 
 more than once. But through all these years of honour and 
 success he remained a comparatively poor man, until in 1695 he 
 received his appointment as Warden of the Mint, a post worth 
 about 600 a year. This he held for four years, when he was 
 promoted to be Master, with a salary of more than double what 
 he had been receiving as Warden. 
 
 In 1692 occurred that distressing accident which some believe 
 to have shaken his great mind for a time. The commonly received 
 story and a pretty one it is, often quoted to show how a gentle 
 patience adorned the character of this great philosopher runs 
 thus : One winter morning, having shut his pet dog Diamond in 
 his study, he came back from early chapel to find all his manu- 
 scripts upon the theory of colours, notes upon the experiments 
 of twenty busy years, reduced to a heap of tinder. The dog had 
 knocked down a lighted candle and set the papers in a blaze. 
 " Ah ! Diamond, Diamond, little do you know the mischief you 
 have done," was the only rebuke the dog received though, as a 
 Cambridge student writing in his diary at that very time tells us, 
 "Every one thought that Newton would have run mad." 
 
 High honours crowned the later life of the philosopher; of 
 these the chief were his election in 1703 as President of the Koyal 
 Society, an office conferred on him every succeeding year until his 
 
2G8 NEWTON'S ENGLISH WORKS. 
 
 death; and his knighthood in 1705, under the royal hand of good 
 Queen Anne. His long life, more fruitful, perhaps, in great won- 
 ders of scientific discovery than that of any other man in ancient 
 or modern times, came to a close at Kensington in 1727, when the 
 old man had passed his eighty-fourth year. 
 
 From the long list of Newton's works, the principal of which 
 were written in Latin, some English publications may be selected. 
 The first edition of his Optics (1704) appeared in his own tongue. 
 A work entitled, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amcn>//, 
 was printed after the author's death. And, more interesting than 
 either, both as affording a favourable specimen of Newton's literary 
 power, and a proof how deeply this great interpreter of nature's 
 laws was fascinated by the shadowy mysteries of prophecy, is 
 the theological treatise, styled Observations upon the Prophecies oj 
 Daniel and tfie Apocalypse of St. John, which his executors pub- 
 lished in 1733. 
 
 THE LANGUAGE OF PROPHECY. 
 
 For understanding tbe prophecies, we are, in the first place, to acquaint our- 
 selves with the figurative language of the prophets. This language is taken from 
 the analogy between the world natural and an empire or kingdom considered as 
 a world politic. 
 
 Accordingly, the whole world natural, consisting of heaven and earth, signifies 
 the whole world politic, consisting of thrones and people ; or so much of it as is 
 considered in the prophecy. And the things in that world signify the analogous 
 things in this. For the heavens, and the things therein, signify thrones and 
 dignities, and those who enjoy them; and the earth, with the things thereon, 
 the inferior people ; and the lowest parts of the earth, called Hades or Hell, the 
 lowest or most miserable part of them. "Whence, ascending towards heaven, and 
 descending to the earth, are put for rising and falling in power and honour ; 
 rising out of the earth or waters, and falling into them, for the rising up to any 
 dignity or dominion, out of the inferior state of the people, or falling down from 
 the same into that inferior state ; descending into the lower parts of the earth, 
 for descending to a very low and unhappy state ; speaking with a faint voice out 
 of the dust, for being in a weak and low condition ; moving from one place to 
 another, for translation from one office, dignity, or dominion to another ; great 
 earthquakes, and the shaking of heaven and earth, for the shaking of dominions, 
 BO as to distract or overthrow them; the creating a new heaven and earth, and 
 the passing away of an old one, or the beginning and end of the -world, for tie 
 rise and reign of the body politic signified thereby. 
 
ADDISON AND STEELE. 269 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SIR RICHARD STEELE. 
 Born 1675 A.D Died 1729 A.D. 
 
 Addison and Steele. 
 Dick at school. 
 In the Guards. 
 Captain Steele. 
 The Christian Hero, 
 
 Comedies. 
 His letters. 
 The Tatler. 
 The Spectator. 
 Steele's wit. 
 
 Politics. 
 The Crisis. 
 Improvidence. 
 His death. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 WHEN Addison returned from the Continent with a head much 
 better furnished with classic thoughts and elegant scholarship than 
 was his purse with guineas, foremost among the few faces that 
 presented themselves at the door of his dingy lodging in the Hay- 
 market, was the round good-humoured countenance of an old school- 
 fellow and college friend, formerly Dicky Steele of the Charter- 
 house, but now rollicking Captain Richard Steele of Lucas's Fusi- 
 liers. The two names Addison and Steele are inseparably 
 linked together, from the partnership of the two men in those 
 periodical essays out of which have grown our Blackwoods and 
 our Cornhills, our Edinburghs and our Quarterlys. 
 
 Steele, the son of a man who acted as Secretary to the Duke of 
 Ormondjthen Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, was born about 1675 in 
 Dublin. During his school-days at the Charter-house in London, 
 he was the admiring junior of Addison, whom he afterwards joined 
 at Oxford, being entered at Merton College in 1692. Leaving 
 Oxford without a degree, he enlisted, much against the wishes of 
 all his friends, as a private in the Horse Guards, dazzled by the 
 splendour of the richly laced scarlet coats and the white waving 
 plumes of that gallant corps. This rash step cost him a fortune ; 
 for a wealthy Irish relative, indignant at the news, cut the name 
 of the reckless fellow out of his will. But his agreeable manners, 
 and frank, open jovial ty, won him many friends. Ormond, in 
 
270 STEELE'S LETTERS TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 whose troop lie rode, obtained a cornetcy for him; lie becams 
 secretary to Colonel Lord Cutts; and ultimately was made a 
 captain in Lucas's Fusiliers. 
 
 During the wild life he spent about town with his brother 
 officers, stung sometimes by his upbraiding conscience, he wrote and 
 published a devotional work, called The Christian Hero, by which 
 he intended to correct his errors and force himself to pull up in 
 time. But his only reward was the laughter of the town ; for the 
 idea of a fast-living soldier, who could never resist the attractions 
 of the Rose Tavern or the delight of beating the watch at mid- 
 night, appearing in print as a religious character, seemed to have 
 in it something irresistibly comic. Yet for the time Steele wu.s 
 sincere in his intentions of reform. He soon, however, appeared 
 as an author in a different line. Three comedies from his pen 
 The Funeral, The Tender Husband, and Tlie Lying Lover were 
 performed in 1702, and the two following years. The sober tone 
 of the last having drawn down a storm of hisses from the audi- 
 ence, Steele in disgust withdrew from dramatic authorship. A 
 greater task than the writing of second-rate plays was in store for 
 his genial pen. 
 
 Between the failure of the " Lying Lover " and the first issue of 
 the " Tatler," Steele married his second wife, Prue, Miss 
 1707 Scurlock of Caermarthenshire, who, by preserving some 
 A.D. four hundred letters from her husband, written chiefly in 
 taverns and coffee-houses, has enabled us to form truer 
 ideas of the man Dick Steele than we could get from any other 
 source. There we have displayed the inner life of the improvident 
 rake, whose dissipation does not sour the sweetness of his nature, 
 who is often detained from home by some mythical business, and 
 softens his announcement of delay by a little present to his wife of 
 tea or walnuts, or a guinea or two, when his purse is not in its 
 normal condition of emptiness. He held at this time the appoint- 
 ment of Gazetteer, which he afterwards exchanged for the post of 
 Commissioner of Stamps. The former office, by giving him an 
 early command of foreign news, enabled him to commence the pub- 
 lication of the "Tatler" in 1709. 
 
" THE TATLER, " AND " THE SPECTATOR." 271 
 
 The 12th of April in that year marks the opening of a great era 
 in English literature, the birth of the first English 
 periodical worthy of the name. Three times a week, on 1709 
 the post-days, this penny sheet came out, and was A.D. 
 scattered through town and country. After a while Addi- 
 son lent his aid to his old school-fellow, and, when The Taller had 
 told his tale to a second New Year, after a short silence of two 
 months, the greater Spectator arose to fill the vacant space. Here 
 it was that Addison's genius shone in its fullest lustre; and, 
 though Steele's good-natured wit welled out as fresh and natural 
 as ever in the papers of the " Spectator," he suffers somewhat by 
 contrast with his greater friend. Among other gems of this 
 favourite classic, we owe to Steele's pen the first sketch of the 
 members who composed the Spectator Club. Addison has made 
 Sir Roger all his own, yet Steele certainly first placed the por- 
 trait upon canvas. 
 
 We have already called Steele's wit fresh and natural. It 
 came with no stinted flow. He wrote as he lived, freely and 
 carelessly, scattering the coinage of his brain, as he did his guineas, 
 with an unsparing hand All who read his papers, or his letters 
 to Prue, cannot help seeing the good heart of the rattle-brain shin- 
 ing out in every line. We can forgive, or at least forget, his tip- 
 pling in taverns and his unthinking extravagance, bad as these 
 were, in consideration of the loving touch with which he handles 
 the foibles of his neighbours, and the mirth without bitterness 
 that flows from his gentle pen. 
 
 Between the seventh and eighth volumes of the "Spectator" The 
 Guardian appeared, Steele and Addison being still the chief con- 
 tributors. Steele's entry upon parliamentary life, as member for 
 Stockbridge, relaxed his efforts as an essayist. Though he was 
 afterwards concerned in other periodicals, the Englishman, the 
 Reader, &e., neither his purse nor his reputation won much by 
 them. 
 
 It was a stirring time in politics, and Steele was not the man 
 to be behindhand in the fray. His pamphlet, The Crisis, raised 
 so great a storm against him that he was expelled from the House 
 
272 IMPROVIDENCE AND DEATH. 
 
 of Commons for libel. The death of Queen Anne, however, pro- 
 duced a change. Under the new dynasty Dick became Sir Richard 
 Steele, Governor of the royal Comedians, Surveyor of the royal 
 stables at Hampton Court, and Member of Parliament for Borough- 
 bridge in Yorkshire. In the House he spoke often and well ; at 
 home in Bloomsbury or elsewhere he wrote spicy articles, gave 
 splendid dinners, of course running up heavy bills, which he 
 always meant to pay, but somehow never did. Addison, who had 
 lent his easy-going friend 1000, had to pay himself by selling 
 Steele's country-house at Hampton, furniture and all, putting his 
 own money in his pocket, and handing the balance to poor Dick, 
 who, no doubt, was very glad to get a little ready cash for the 
 duns that knocked daily at the door. Steele's very successful 
 comedy, Tlie Conscious Lovers, acted at Drury Lane in 172:?, 
 brought him a large sum ; but even that could do little to melt 
 the millstone of debt hanging round the unfortunate author's 
 neck. His difficulties increased. Paralysis struck the haggard, 
 anxious spendthrift Giving up all he had to his creditors, he 
 hid himself at Llangunnor in Wales, where he still had a shelter 
 from the storm that his own improvidence had raised. There, 
 forgotten except by angry shopkeepers whom he could 
 1729 not pay, poor Steele breathed his last in 1729. His 
 A.D. dying years were dependent on the bounty of his credi- 
 tors. Let us learn the lesson of his life, grieving that the 
 affectionate soul, who loved to make all around him happy, should, 
 through his own easy negligence, have suffered so bitter pangs at 
 the last. 
 
 ORIGINAL SKETCH OF SIR ROGER DE COVERLET. 
 (SPECTATOR, NO. 2.) 
 
 The first of our society is a gentleman of Worcestershire, of an ancient descent, 
 a baronet, his name Sir Roger de Coverley. His great-grandfather was inventor 
 of that famous country-dance which is called after him. All who know that 
 shire are very well acquainted with the parts and merits of Sir Roger. He is a 
 gentleman that is very singular in his behaviour ; but his singularities proceed 
 from his good sense, and are contradictions to the manners of the world only as ha 
 thinks the world is in the wrong. However, this humour creates him no enemies, 
 
SPECIMEN OF STEELE'S PROSE. 27 C 
 
 for he does nothing with sourness or obstinacy ; and his being unconfmed to modes 
 and forms makes liira but the readier and more capable to please and oblige 
 all who know him. When he is in town, he lives in Soho Square. It is said lie 
 keeps himself a bachelor by reason he was crossed in love by a perverse beautiful 
 widow of the next county to him. Before this disappointment, Sir Roger was 
 what you call a fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord Rochester and 
 Sir George Etherege, fought a duel upon his first coming to town, and kicked 
 bully Dawson in a public coffee-house for calling him youngster. But, being ill- 
 used by the above-mentioned widow, he was very serious for a year and a half; 
 and though, his temper being naturally jovial, he at last got over it, he grew 
 careless of himself, and never dressed afterward. He continues to wear a coat 
 and doublet of the same cut that were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, 
 in his merry humours, he tells us has been in and out twelve times since he first 
 wore it. He is now in his fifty-sixth year, cheerful, gay, and hearty ; keeps a good 
 house both in town and country ; a great lover of mankind ; but there is such a 
 mirthful cast in his behaviour, that he is rather beloved than esteemed. His 
 tenants grow rich, his servants look satisfied, all the young women profess love 
 to him, and the young men are glad of his company. When he comes into a 
 house he calls the servants by their names, and talks all the way up stairs to a 
 visit. I must not omit, that Sir Roger is a justice of the quorum ; that he filla 
 the chair at a quarter- session with great abilities, and three months ago gained 
 universal applause by explaining a passage in the game Act. 
 
274 EARLY LIFE OF POPE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ALEXANDER POPE. 
 
 Born 1688 A.D Died 1744 A.D. 
 
 Pope's verse. 
 His early life. 
 Sets up as poet 
 Wycherley. 
 Essay on Criticism, 
 llape of the Lock. 
 
 Translation of Homer. 
 Villa at Twickenham. 
 His filial love. 
 Lady Mary Montapu. 
 Quarrel with Addbon, 
 Town and country. 
 
 The Dunciad. 
 Essay on Man. 
 Personal traiti 
 His death. 
 Other works. 
 Illustrative extract 
 
 PRINCE of the Artificial school of English poetry stands the 
 Koman Catholic poet, Alexander Pope, whose brilliant and versa- 
 tile powers were best displayed in Tlie Rape of tlie Lock and The 
 Dunciad. 
 
 Pope's father was a well-to-do linen-draper in the Strand, who 
 gave up business in disgust at the shadow which the Revolution 
 had flung upon his Church, and, retiring to Binfield, on the skirts 
 of Windsor Forest, locked up his fortune of 20,000 in a box, 
 from which he took the needful guineas as often as his purse ran 
 low. Banks were then in their infancy; and the seizure which 
 Charles II. had made of the public funds was too fresh in remem- 
 brance to make a government investment seem safe. His 
 1 688 delicate boy, Alexander, born in 1688, passed under some 
 A.D. priestly tutors, but never enjoyed a college training. 
 Before he was twelve the little invalid wrote an Ode to 
 Solitude, marked with a thoughtfulness beyond his years; and 
 after loitering for four summers longer among the picturesque 
 woodlands near his home spending summer and winter alike in 
 a constant round of studies, rambling but deep he boldly em- 
 braced the perilous vocation of a poet, and at sixteen began to 
 haunt the London coffee-houses in that character. Admiration of 
 Dryden was the grand passion of his boyhood; and when the 
 great monarch of letterdom, seated in his easy-chair at Will's, was 
 
275 
 
 one day pointed out by a good-natured friend to the pale, wistful 
 boy, who had already drunk deep into the old man's poetry, we 
 can well imagine the occasion marked with bright red letters in 
 the childish memory. From admiration to imitation, somebody 
 or other says, is but a step. Pope's versification was moulded 
 after Dryden's " long-resounding line." 
 
 Wycherley, a battered old literary rake, was young Pope's first 
 caresser; but in the coffee-room at Will's or Button's head- 
 quarters of the author-craft the boyish writer of the Pastorals, 
 which were as yet only handed about in manuscript, got many a 
 kind shake of the hand and hearty slap on the shoulder from greater 
 and better men than old Wycherley. 
 
 The poet soared to yet higher fame, when in 1711 his cele- 
 brated Essay on Criticism, begun two years earlier, issued 
 from the press. This performance, wonderful for a youth 1711 
 of twenty-one, contains many fine passages. The well- A.D. 
 known lines, illustrating the agreement of sound with 
 sense, afford a striking specimen of the ease with which Popo 
 wields his native speech. Then followed a sacred poem, The 
 Messiah, which appeared in No. 378 of the Spectator; and, 
 not long after, came those pathetic verses, An Elegy on an Un- 
 fortunate Lady, which, we are told, mourn the suicide of a rash 
 girl, who had cherished a violent passion for the sickly poet. 
 
 The theft of a lady's ringlet by her lover produced the happiest 
 effort of Pope's poetic skill. Lord Petre was the delinquent, and 
 Miss Arabella Fermor the injured fair one. The silly trick having 
 led to a coolness between the families, Pope set to work, inspired 
 by the wish to reconcile the estranged frowners by a good hearty 
 laugh. Thus came into being that epic in miniature, The 
 Rape of the Lock, which presents the most brilliant speci- 1713 
 men of the mock-heroic style to be found in English verse.* A.D. 
 We may read the reign of Anne through in many books 
 of history without receiving anything like so clear and vivid an 
 impression of what was then fashionable life, as we derive from 
 
 * The two original cantos were written in 1711, but in 1713 the poeir appeared in its pre 
 sent shape. 
 
276 TRANSLATION OF HOMER. 
 
 the five cantos that tell the woes of Belinda. The machinery of 
 the poem, as critics call the introduction of supernatural beings 
 into the action of the plot, Pope took from the Rosicrucian doc- 
 trine, that the four elements are rilled with sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, 
 and salamanders. Most comically does this airy by-play come to 
 act upon the progress of the story, reaching, perhaps, the climax of 
 its humour in the exquisitely absurd idea of a poor sylph who was 
 so eager to save the imperilled lock that she gets between the 
 scissor blades and is snipped in two. After a fierce battle, in 
 which Belinda, armed with a deadly bodkin, leads the van, the 
 severed tress flies up to take its place among the golden stars. 
 
 In The Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard we find the poet wasting his 
 pathos upon an unhappy theme. Tlie Temple of Fame, a fine 
 piece of descriptive writing founded on Chaucer's "House of 
 Fame," though written earlier, was published about this period of 
 his li e. 
 
 At twenty-four Pope undertook his most extensive, most profit- 
 able, yet assuredly not his greatest work. "It is a pretty poem, 
 Mr. Pope ; but you must not call it Homer," was the terse and 
 true remark of the great scholar Bentley upon the volumes sent 
 him by the poet. Many hundred verses were written on backs of 
 letters and chance scraps of paper, sometimes at the rate of fifty 
 lines a day. Begun in 1712 and finished in 1725, the Iliad and 
 the Odyssey together, after deducting the cost of some help which 
 lie got in the notes and the translation of the latter, brought the 
 poet a handsome fortune. Not sixty years before, a blind old man 
 in the same great city had sold the greatest epic of modern days 
 for 18. Pope, whose poetic fame grows pale before the splen- 
 dour of Milton's genius, as the stars die out before the sun, 
 pocketed more than 8000 for a clever translation. Like Dryden 
 translating Virgil, Pope did little more than reproduce the sense 
 of Homer's verse in smooth and neatly balanced English couplets, 
 leaving the spirit behind in the glorious rough old Greek, that 
 tumbles on the ear like the roar of a winter sea. 
 
 With the money thus obtained Pope had the good sense to buy 
 a villa at Twickenham, standing on five acres of land. The hour-i 
 
QUARREL WITH ADDISON. 277 
 
 whicli were not given to his desk, were spent in laying out hia 
 flower-beds, and adorning his famous grotto with such things as 
 red spar, Cornwall diamonds, Spanish silver, and lava from Vesu- 
 vius. Here, by the gentle Thames, his later years were spent; 
 here Swift, Bolingbroke, Gay, Arbuthnot, and a host of the most 
 brilliant men of the day, paid him frequent visits ; and it is, at 
 least, one tender trait in the character of a poet who has not had 
 very many kind sayings lavished on him, that here his old mother 
 found a warm welcome and a well-cushioned chair in her declining 
 days. 
 
 Pope's love-making was as artificial as his verse, but not so 
 successful. His professed passion for Lady Mary Montagu, of 
 letter-writing renown, suddenly changed its hue, rosy love turning 
 into pallid rage. So bitter, indeed, did the little man's remarks 
 grow after his repulse, that the lady used to call her quondam 
 swain " The wicked wasp of Twickenham." 
 
 Of course, Pope and Addison often met. When the poet first came 
 to town, a boy and little known, he danced attendance for a good 
 while upon the great Oxford scholar. He wrote an admirable pro- 
 logue for the tragedy of " Cato." But gradually a coolness arose be- 
 tween these celebrated men. Some think that Addison was jealous of 
 Pope's brightening fame ; others think that Pope's peevish temper, 
 often the accompaniment of a sickly frame, took offence at some 
 slight censures passed upon his " Essay on Criticism." Whatever 
 may have been its cause, the estrangement grew to a crisis, when 
 Pope issued a spiteful pamphlet against old John Dennis, who had 
 published certain " Remarks on the Tragedy of Cato." Addison, 
 vexed at the tone of the reply, although the lance was broken in 
 his own quarrel, hastily said, that if he answered the "Remarks" 
 at all, he would do it as a gentleman should. This Pope never 
 forgave; and the gulf grew wider when Tickell, Addison's close 
 friend, began a translation of Homer, which seemed to the sus- 
 picious eyes of Pope a wilful rivalry of his great work, secretly 
 done by Addison, but put out for appearance' sake under Tickell's 
 name. 
 
 The Odyssey and the editing of Shafapere occupied the pen of 
 
278 
 
 Pope for some years after his removal to Twickenham in 1718. 
 His weakly frame could not stand the wear and tear of city life, 
 as authors then lived. Thoroughly sick of spending night after 
 night till two or three o'clock over punch and Burgundy, in rooms 
 choking with tobacco smoke, the poet wisely separated himself 
 from the hard-living set, to which he had at first belonged, and 
 gave up his spare hours to the pure enjoyments of his garden and 
 his grotto. 
 
 The publication of his Miscellanies (1727-8), in which Swift also 
 took a share, brought round the heads of the offending authors an 
 angry swarm of scribblers, buzzing like wasps whose nest has been 
 rashly invaded. Then the real power of the crippled poet flashed 
 out in full lustre. Seizing each wretched insect with the firm 
 yet delicate hold of a skilful entomologist, he ruthlessly pinned 
 
 it, in the full gaze of the world's scorn, on the sheets of 
 
 1729 the immortal Dunciad. There the unfortunate creatures 
 
 A.D. still hang and wriggle; and there, while English books 
 
 are read, they shall remain. This epic of " Dunces " 
 (hence its name) celebrates the accession of a king at first Shak- 
 sperian Theobald, but in a later edition dramatic Gibber to the 
 vacant throne of Dulness, and describes the sports of authors, 
 booksellers, and critics, before the newly crowned monarch. The 
 fourth and last book is terribly severe upon the trifling education 
 of the day, the "black blockade" of college dons suffering not a 
 little Irom the satiric lash. The literary profession did not recover 
 for many a day from the onslaught of this bitter pen. To starve 
 in a Grub Street garret became, in the opinion of the public, the 
 sure destiny of every man who took to letters for a livelihood ; 
 and even now, when poets sometimes get their guinea a line, the 
 name has not altogether lost, in the minds of many an honest 
 merchant or yeoman, its old associations with threadbare coats, a 
 tendency to drink, and a general lack of half-crowns. 
 
 The " Dunciad," first published in 1728, was enlarged in the 
 following year; and in 1742 was completed by the addition of 
 the fourth book. The dethronement of Theobald, to make room 
 for Gibber, proved a great blunder; for the satiric lines, which 
 
PERSONAL TEAITS OF POPE. 279 
 
 pierced poor Theobald to the bone, fell blunt and pointless off a 
 man of totally different character. 
 
 A frequent visitor at the Twickenham villa was Lord Boling- 
 broke, well known as a politician, a libertine, and a sceptic. 
 Gradually the poison of his talk found its way into Pope's mind, 
 and a metrical system of morals, The Essay on Man, sprang from 
 the envenomed seeds. Condemning the opinions of the Essay, we 
 cannot but admire its versification ; but let us not forget that 
 deadly serpents often lie coiled under the freshest leaves and 
 sweetest blossoms of poetry. 
 
 Graceful and flowing Imitations of Horace were among Pope's 
 latest works. Through all this poet's life of fifty-six years he was 
 delicate and frail. The wonder is that soul and body kept to- 
 gether so long. When the poor little man got up in the morning, 
 he had to be sewed into stiff canvas stays, without which he 
 could not stand erect; his thin body was wrapped in fur and 
 flannel; and his meagre legs required three pairs of stockings to 
 give them a respectable look. After he grew bald, which happened 
 early in life, a velvet cap became his favourite head-dress. On 
 company days he wore a black velvet coat, a tie-wig, and a little 
 sword. When he stayed with a friend, all the servants were kept 
 in a bustle to answer Mr. Pope's never-ceasing calls. The house 
 was roused up at night to make him coffee, or bring him paper, 
 lest he might lose a happy thought. Poor fellow ! his fussiness 
 was a foible easily pardoned; and as to his temper, when we re- 
 member that his life to use his own sad words was " one long 
 disease," we can overlook the acid and the sting in remembrance of 
 the pain. The little spider so he describes his own meagre figure 
 that could spin webs of verse so brilliant and so deadly, lived 
 with simple elegance upon 800 a year ; paring his housekeeping 
 with, perhaps, too close a hand, but cherishing to the last beneath 
 his kindly roof the good old mother whom he loved so well. 
 
 His death took place at Twickenham on the 30th of 
 May, 1744. Asthma and other diseases had so worn 
 away his strength, that the moment of his decease could 
 not be perceived. 
 
280 SPECIMEN OF POPE'S VERSE. 
 
 Popes Letters, first published, as lie tried to make the world 
 believe, against his will, are well worth the reading; but his 
 finest piece of prose is the Preface to his edition of Shakspere. 
 Two of his well-known works have not yet been named Windsor 
 Forest and the Dying Christian to his Soul. The former, bright 
 with hues caught in woodland rambles, presents glowing pictures 
 of the scenery and sports which he had witnessed in the green 
 Blades of Windsor during the days of his dreamy, studious boyhood. 
 The latter, perhaps the feeblest effort of his great pen, is a stiff 
 and puerile rendering of the Emperor Adrian's last trembling 
 sigh. 
 
 FROM "THE RAPE OF THE LOCK." 
 
 For lo ! the board with cups and spoons is crowned, 
 The berries crackle, and the mill turns round : 
 On shining altars of Japan they raise 
 The silver lamp ; the fiery spirits blaze : 
 From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, 
 While China's earth receives the smoking tide; 
 At once they gratify their scent ami taste. 
 And frequent cups prolong the rich repast. 
 Straight hover round the fair her airy band : 
 Some, as she sipped, the fuming liquor fanned ; 
 Some o'er her lap their careful plumes displayed, 
 Trembling and conscious of the rich brocade. 
 Coffee (which makes the politician wise, 
 And see through all things with his half-shut eyes) 
 Sent up in vapours to the baron's brain 
 New stratagems the radiant lock to gain. 
 Ah ! cease, rash youth ; desist ere 'tis too late ; 
 Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate ! 
 Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air, 
 She dearly paid for Nisus' injured hair ! 
 
 But when to mischief mortals bend their wil], 
 How soon they find fit instruments of ill ! 
 Just then, Clarissa drew, with tempting grace, 
 A two-edged weapon from her shining case ; 
 So ladies, in romance, assist their knight, 
 Present the spear, and arm him for the fight. 
 He takes the gift with reverence, and extends 
 The little engine on his fingers' ends ; 
 This just behind Belinda's neck he spread, 
 As o'er the fragrant steams she bent her head. 
 
SPECIMEN OF TOPE'S VERSE. 28] 
 
 Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair, 
 
 A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair! 
 
 And thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear ; 
 
 Thrice she looked back, and thrice the foe drew near. 
 
 Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought 
 
 The close recesses of the virgin's thought : 
 
 As on the nosegay in her breast reclined, 
 
 He watched the ideas rising in her mind. 
 
 Sudden he viewed, in spite of all her art, 
 
 An earthly lover lurking at her heart. 
 
 Amazed, confused, he found his power expired, 
 
 Resigned to fate, and with a sigh retired. 
 
 The peer now spreads the glittering forfex wide 
 To enclose the lock ; now joins it, to divide. 
 E'en then, before the fatal engine closed, 
 A wretched Sylph too fondly interposed ; 
 Fate urged the shears, and cut the Sylph in twain 
 (But airy substance soon unites again), 
 The meeting pointn the sacred hair dissever 
 From the fair head, for ever, and ior ever ! 
 
282 EAfcLY LIFE Of SWIFT, 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT. 
 
 Born 1667 A.D Died 1745 A.D. 
 
 A tragedy. 
 Education. 
 Dependence. 
 Life at Temple's. 
 King William's offer. 
 
 Stella and Vanessa. 
 Takes up his pen. 
 The Tale of a Tub. 
 Dean of St Patrick's. 
 Drapier's Letters. 
 
 Gulliver's Travels. 
 Madness. 
 His death. 
 His poeins. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 THE life of the famous Dean Swift is a great tragedy. Through 
 all the acts a dark gigantic genius moves, an intellectual Saul, 
 towering by head and shoulders above his fellows, and possessed of 
 an evil spirit, which does not quite abandon its wretched prey even 
 when a pall of darkness settles on his ruined mind, and that 
 dreadful silence of three years begins to unfold itself between a 
 lurid life and the slumber of the narrow grave. 
 
 Swift was a Dublin man by birth, being born there in Hoey's 
 Court in 1667. But his parents and his ancestors were English. 
 His father, a mere bird of passage in Dublin, where he had come 
 in the hope of getting some practice as a lawyer, died seven 
 months before Jonathan's birth. At his uncle's expense he went 
 to Kilkenny School, and then to Trinity College, Dublin ; but in 
 neither did he distinguish himself above the average run of 
 students. Indeedj his degree of B.A. was of the lowest class, a 
 narrow escape from the disgrace of being plucked, which roused 
 him to studious resolves. And to the steady industry of the next 
 seven years he owed almost all the learning he ever had. 
 
 Dependence had all this while been burning like an acrid poison 
 into the proud boy's soul. But his lessons in the hard school of 
 adversity were not yet over. His uncle's death in 1688 flung him 
 upon the world, and forced him to seek a shelter at Moor Park in 
 the household of Sir William Temple, with whom his mother was 
 slightly connected. Here for many years Swift continued to eat 
 
SWIFT AT MOOfc PARE. 283 
 
 bitter bread ; waiting and looking out into the dim future for the 
 time when he could break his chains, and smite tenfold for every 
 stripe he had received. Standing mid-way between the elegantly 
 selfish Sir William, who wrote and gardened and quoted the 
 classics, and the liveried sneerers of the servants' hall, poor Swift 
 gnawed at his own heart in disdainful silence, writhing helplessly 
 under the lofty chidings of his Honour, and the vulgar insolence 
 of his Honour's own man. We can well imagine the working of 
 the swarthy features, the deadly concentrated light of the terrible 
 blue eye, and the convulsive starts of the ungainly limbs, as those 
 continual streams of petty scorn and malice trickled on the 
 spirit of the morbidly sensitive youth, who felt them like molten 
 lead, yet could not or dared not take revenge. At Temple's 
 Swift met King William, who, walking in the garden, showed 
 him how the Dutch cut their asparagus, and offered to make 
 him a captain of horse. One cannot help wishing that Swift had 
 accepted the troop. We should not, most probably, have had 
 Gulliver's Travels on our shelves, but the sabreing of French 
 dragoons might have acted as a safety-valve to the poisonous 
 humours which so many years of bondage had generated in his 
 breast ; and the red coat would not have burned him to the 
 bone, as the priest's cassock did, scorching him, as the poisoned 
 shirt scorched Hercules, until the wretched man burst into shrieks 
 of foaming rage. 
 
 In an evil hour Swift, who had already graduated as M.A. at 
 Oxford, crossed to Dublin, took holy orders, and became 
 prebend of Kilroot in Connor at 100 a year. But the life 1693 
 of a country parson was even worse misery to Swift than the A.D. 
 wretchedness of Moor Park. Thither, accordingly, he re- 
 turned, humbling himself in the du-st before the great baronet. 
 Then he became involved in his mysterious love-affair with Hester 
 Johnson, daughter of Sir William's housekeeper, better known by 
 Swift's pet name of Stella, whose black curls and loving eyes 
 threw their spells around the lonely Levite. 
 
 Let us glance forward along the course of this strange and 
 seemingly unfinished life, over which, from its very beginning, the 
 
28i " THE TALE OF A TUB." 
 
 black shadow of final insanity cast a gloom, and sec bow the sad 
 story of Swift's attachments comes to a close. Stella he seems to 
 have loved deeply, but not so well that he could bend his gigantic 
 ambition to a public marriage with her. By-and-by, before lie 
 became Dean of St. Patrick's in Dublin, a girl named Esther 
 Vanhomrigh fell in love with him, and was encouraged by the 
 flattered savage, who wrote poems in her praise. This lady was 
 the unhappy Vanessa of his verse. The two hearts, thus moved 
 with a strange tenderness for one who had little of the amiable in 
 his nature, were kept dangling round him by the cruel genius, 
 like silly moths round a lamp, until one after the other they were 
 burned to ashes. It is said that Swift and Stella were secretly 
 married in the Deanery garden; but the unfeeling man would not 
 avow the union to the world, and she sank at last into the grave 
 of sorrow. 
 
 The death of Temple in 1699 sent Swift to Ireland as the chap- 
 lain of Lord Berkeley. He soon became rector of Agher, and vicar 
 of Laracor and Rathbeggan in Heath. But in his thirty-fourth 
 
 year he took his place in the ranks of political penmen 
 
 1701 by writing a pamphlet on the Whig side. His pen wa.s 
 
 A.D. the lever, by which he meant to raise Jonathan Swift to 
 
 the pinnacle of clerical or political greatness. It certainly 
 won for him the adoration of a country, and one of the highest 
 niches in the temple of our literature ; but it could not raise a 
 mitre to his head, and he crushed it in his angry grasp till it began 
 to drop nothing but gall 
 
 One of his three great works was the extraordinary Tale of a 
 
 Tub; which was published, according to the author's state- 
 
 1704 ment, in order to divert the followers of Hobbes, author 
 
 A.D. of the Leviathan, from injuring the vessel of the State, 
 
 just as sailors were wont to fling out a tub in order to 
 turn aside a whale from his threatened dash upon their ship. 
 The Leviathan, he says, "tosses and plays with all schemes of 
 religion and government, whereof many are hollow, and dry, and 
 empty, and noisy, and wooden, and given to rotation." Three 
 brothers Peter, Martin, and .Tack receive from their dying father 
 
THE " DBAPIER LETTERS." . 285 
 
 coats, which, if carefully kept clean, will last them all their lives. 
 As the fashions change, they add to the simple coat shoulder- 
 knots, gold lace, silver fringes, embroidery of Indian figures, 
 twisting the meaning of their father's will so as to give a seeming 
 sanction to these innovations. Peter (evidently the apostle of 
 that name, here taken to represent the Roman Catholic Church) 
 locks up the will, assumes the style of a lord, and wears his 
 coat proudly, as it is. His brothers, stealing a copy of the docu- 
 ment, leave the great house, and begin to reform their coats. 
 Martin (Luther) goes to work cautiously in stripping off the 
 adornments, and leaves some of the embroidery alone lest he may 
 injure the cloth. But Jack (Calvin) in his hot zeal plucks off all at 
 once, and in so doing splits the seams, and tears away great pieces 
 of the coat. Thus does Swift depict the corruptions of early 
 Christianity, and the results of the Reformation, in a satire of 
 uncommon power and strange, mad drollery. His sympathies are 
 all with Martin, and Peter gets off better than Jack. 
 
 Disappointed in his hopes of preferment, Swift deserted from 
 the Whig ranks, and soon his shot began to plough through the 
 lines he had left. We cannot attempt to name the bitter and 
 caustic pamphlets that were hurled by the renegade against his 
 former friends. But his new allies dared not make a bishop of 
 the man who had written the "Tale of a Tub." The 
 Deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin, received in 1713, was 1713 
 the utmost they could do for him. And a short time A.D. 
 afterwards the Tory government fell, leaving no resource 
 to the disappointed Dean but to hide himself and his baffled hopes 
 in Dublin. To a great and troubled spirit, such as Swift's, exile 
 from the centre of conflict was a doom little better than burial 
 alive. 
 
 For about six years he lived quietly, but not contentedly, in Dublin, 
 employing his pen on various subjects. Then the rage against 
 England, which had been festering in his heart through all these 
 years, burst out. A pamphlet appeared advocating strongly the use 
 of Irish manufactures in Ireland ; undoubtedly a laudable work, 
 if we could forget that it sprang more from hatred to England 
 
286 A GREY-HAIRED MADMAN. 
 
 than love to Ireland. It took the fancy of the Irish people, a 
 fancy which was kindled into flames of enthusiastic admiration, 
 when the same pen produced in a Dublin newspaper a series of 
 Letters signed M. B. Drapier, in which the Irish were warned 
 against exchanging their gold and silver for the bad half- 
 1724 pence and farthings of Wolverhampton Wood, who had 
 
 A.D. obtained a patent empowering him to coin 180,000 
 worth of copper for circulation in Ireland. No one would 
 take the bad money ; all attempts to bring the writer to trial were 
 unsuccessful, though everybody knew that the Drapier and the 
 Dean were the same man. Swift became the idol of the nation, 
 possessed of unbounded influence over the rabble. " If," said 
 he to an archbishop who blamed him for kindling a riotous flame, 
 "if I had lifted up my finger, they would have torn you to 
 pieces." 
 
 Who has not read Gulliver's Travels? and what young reader 
 has not been startled to learn, when its fascinating pages were 
 devoured, that it is a great political and social satire, filled with 
 the mad freaks of a furious, fantastic, and cankered genius. Great- 
 ness and wisdom mark every page of the wonderful fiction ; but 
 such greatness and wisdom are often the attributes of a 
 1726 fiend. The dwarfs of Lilliput, the giants of Brobdignag, 
 
 A.D. the philosophers of Laputa, the magicians of Glubbdubdrib, 
 afford much amusement, although we can never get entirely 
 rid of the harsh and iron laugh of the narrator, whose mockery 
 chills us as we read Of the last voyage we may shortly say, that 
 none but a bad man could have imagined its events, and none but 
 impure minds can enjoy such revolting pictures. Hatred of men 
 has never, in any age or land, so polluted the current of a literature 
 as when Swift committed to paper his foul and monstrous con- 
 ception of the Yahoo. The strange, wild book, published anony- 
 mously in 1726, had great success, and was read by high and 
 low. 
 
 Long ago, sitting over his books on a garden-seat at Moor Park, 
 he had caught a giddiness and deafness, which afflicted him at 
 intervals through all his life. The attacks became more frequent 
 
SPECIMEN OF SWIFT'S PKOSE. 287 
 
 after Stella's death. His temper, always sullen, grew ferocious. 
 Yet he continued to write until 1736. Avarice and his savage 
 moods thinned the circle of his visitors by quick degrees ; and, 
 when deafness shut him out from the world of human talk, his 
 mind, flung in upon itself, darkened into madness. What a 
 terrific picture ! the lonely grey-haired lunatic hurrying for tei? 
 hours a day up and down his gloomy chamber, as if it were a cage 
 and he a chained wild beast j never sitting even to eat, but devouring, 
 as he walked, the plateful of cut meat which his keeper left for 
 him at meal-time. Such were Swift's last sad days. Stella was 
 well avenged. After three years of almost total silence, he died in 
 October 1745. A pile of black marble marks his burial-place in 
 St. Patrick's ; but a more striking monument of the wrecked and 
 wretched genius stands in one of Dublin streets Swift's Hospital 
 for idiots and incurable madmen, for the building and endowment 
 of which he bequeathed nearly all his fortune. 
 
 Swift's fame rests on his pure and powerful prose. He seems 
 to have hated foreign words as he hated men, and has given us 
 such nervous, bare, unadorned, genuine English, as we get from no 
 other pen. But he wrote verses too coarse, strong, and graphic. 
 Morning, The City Shower, a Rhapsody on Poetry, and Verses on 
 my Own Death are amongst his best poetic compositions. 
 
 GULLIVER'S BOATING IN BROBDIGNAG. 
 
 The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea-voyages, and took all 
 occasions to divert me when I was melancholy, asked me whether I understood 
 how to handle a sail or an oar, and whether a little exercise of rowing might not 
 be convenient for my health. I answered, that I understood both very well; for 
 although my proper employment had been to be surgeon or doctor to the ship, 
 yet often upon a pinch I was forced to work like a common mariner. But I 
 could not see how this could be done in their country, where the smallest wherry 
 was equal to a first-rate man-of-war among us, and such a boat as I could man- 
 age would never live in any of their rivers. Her majesty said, if I would con- 
 trive a boat, her own joiner should make it, and she would provide a place for 
 rae to sail in. The fellow was an ingenious workman, and, by my instructions, 
 in ten days finished a pleasure-boat, with all its tackling, able conveniently to 
 hold eight Europeans. When it was finished, the queen was so delighted, that 
 she ran with it in her lap to the king, who ordered it to be put in a cistern full 
 of water with me in it by way of trial; where 1 could not manage my two sculls, 
 
288 SPECIMKN OF SWIFT'S PROSK, 
 
 or little oars, for want of room. But the queen had before contrived another 
 project. She ordered the joiner to make a wooden trough of three hundred feet 
 long, fifty broad, and eight deep, which being well pitched, to prevent leaking, 
 was placed on the floor along the wall in an outer room of the palace. It had a 
 cock near the bottom to let out the water, when it began to grow stale ; and two 
 servants could easily fill it in half an hour, llere I often used to row for my 
 own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought them- 
 selves well entertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I would put up 
 my sail, and then my business was only to steer, while the ladies gave ine a gale 
 with their fans ; and when they were weary, some of the pages would blow n\y 
 sail forward with their breath, while I showed my art by steering starboard oi 
 larboard, as I pleased. When I had done, Qlumdalclitch always carried back my 
 boat into her closet, and hung it on a nail to dry. 
 
fiOWE, WATTS, PHILIPS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 OTHER WRITERS OP THE SIXTH ERA. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 Nicholas Rowe. 
 Isaac Watts. 
 Ambrose Philips. 
 Thomas Parnell. 
 Thomas Tickell. 
 Allan Ramsay. 
 
 *- John Gay. 
 Richard Savage. 
 Robert Blair. 
 John Dyer. 
 
 PROSE WRITERS. 
 
 Earl of Shaftesbury. 
 
 Samuel Clarke. 
 Lord Bolingbroke. 
 Bishop Berkeley. 
 Lady Mary Montagu. 
 Earl of Chesterfield. 
 Lord Kames. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 NICHOLAS HOWE, born about 1 673 in Bedfordshire, was educated for 
 the law, his father's profession. His plays, of which the chief 
 are The Fair Penitent and Jane Shore, won for the young lawyer 
 the notice of the great. His social qualities endeared him to his 
 literary friends. Upon the accession of George I. he was made 
 Poet-laureate, and held other more lucrative public offices. Rowe 
 died in 1718, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Pope, 
 Swift, and Addison were prominent among his friends. He is 
 also remembered as the first editor of Shakspere worthy of the 
 name. 
 
 ISAAC WATTS, born in 1674 at Southampton, became at twenty- 
 four assistant minister of an Independent congregation at Stoke 
 Newington. But his weak health prevented him from retaining 
 this position. The last thirty- six years of his long life were spent 
 in Abney House, whose kind owner, Sir Thomas Abney, was his 
 warmest friend. Here he wrote the beautifully simple Hymns, 
 which have made his name familiar to childhood. His works on 
 Logic, and The Improvement of the Mind, show that he could 
 write English prose also with clearness and force. He died in 
 1748. 
 
 AMBROSE PHILIPS, born in 1675 in Shropshire, received his 
 education at St. John's, Cambridge. He was the real original 
 (15) 19 
 
290 PARNELL, TICKELL, RAMSAY. 
 
 Namly Pamby, a nickname which was given to him on account 
 of the complimentary versicles he was fond of addressing to his 
 friends and their babies. His Pastorals, though much praised in 
 his own day, have not held their place in public favour. Philips 
 was bitterly satirized by Pope. He died in 1749. 
 
 THOMAS PARNELL, of English descent, but born in Dublin in 
 1 679, became archdeacon of Clogher, and, through the influence 
 of his friend Swift, vicar of Finglas. He lived chiefly in London. 
 TJie Hermit is the poem for which he now lives among the great 
 names of English literature. He died and was buried at Chester 
 in 1718. 
 
 THOMAS TICKELL, one of Addison's most intimate friends, born 
 near Carlisle in 1686, wrote the pathetic ballad of Colin and 
 Lucy. He undertook that translation of the Iliad which deepened 
 Pope's feeling towards Addison into something akin to hatred. 
 Tickell served Addisou as secretary, and in 1724 went to Ireland 
 as Secretary to the Lords- Justices. He died at Bath hi 1740. 
 He wrote an allegorical poem called Kensington Gardens, besides 
 many papers in the Spectator and the Guardian. 
 
 ALLAN RAMSAY, who was born in 1686 and died in 1758, was 
 a native of Leadhills, a Lanarkshire village. Most of his long 
 life was passed in Edinburgh, where he was a wig-maker, and 
 then a bookseller. His circulating library was the first that was 
 established in Scotland. The small quaint house, on the slope of 
 the Castle Hill, called Kamsay Lodge, was his residence during 
 his last twelve years. Allan's shop was a favourite lounge of the 
 poet Gay, when he came to Edinburgh. Ramsay's pastoral drama, 
 TJte Gentle Shepherd, first published in 1725 and written in the 
 strong broad Doric of North Britain, is the finest existing specimen 
 of its class. His songs, too, have endeared him to the Scottish 
 heart. The Yellow-haired Laddie and Lochaber no More are two 
 of his most popular lyrics. 
 
 JOHN GAY, a Devonshire man of good family, born in 1 688, 
 was at first apprenticed to a silk-mercer in the Strand. But Ills 
 wishes soared higher, especially after he took up the poet's pen. 
 As domestic secretary to the Duchess of Mon mouth, he found 
 
GAY, SAVAGE, BLAIR, DYER. 291 
 
 more leisure for writing, and rapidly brought out several poems 
 and dramatic pieces. For about two months he held the position 
 of Secretary to the Embassy at Hanover. But he was not fitted 
 for business of any kind, and found his proper sphere when he 
 was permitted to nestle down in a corner of the Queensberry 
 household as a humble friend and domestic joker. " There," says 
 Thackeray, " he was lapped in cotton, and had his plate of chicken 
 and his saucer of cream, and frisked, and barked, and wheezed, 
 and grew fat, and so ended." The Shepherd's Week, a series of 
 comic pastorals ; Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of 
 London; and The Fan, in three books, are among his works. But 
 his fame rests chiefly on his artless, pleasant Fables, his song of 
 Black-eyed Susan, and his Beggar^ Opera. Gay died of fever in 
 1732. " 
 
 EICHARD SAVAGE, born about 1697 in London, was the 
 illegitimate child of noble parents. His history is a miserable 
 tale. Drink and debauchery plunged him lower and lower, until 
 in 1743 he was found dead in his wretched bed within Bristol 
 Jail, where he lay a prisoner for debt. TJie Wanderer is his prin- 
 cipal work; written in 1729, during a short glimpse of sunshine 
 which he enjoyed in Lord Tyrconnel's mansion. 
 
 EGBERT BLAIR, born in 1699 at Edinburgh, became at thirty- 
 two minister of Athelstaneford in East Lothian. Before that 
 event he had composed his fine blank-verse poem, TJie Grave, but 
 it was not published till 1743. A private fortune enabled Blair 
 to cultivate society above what usually falls to the lot of a country 
 minister. He died in 1746. 
 
 JOHN DYER, painter, poet, and clergyman, was born in Caer- 
 marthenshire about 1698, and died in 1758. He wrote Grongar 
 Hill, The Ruins of Rome, and The Fleece; works which, especially 
 the first, entitle him to 'a high place among descriptive and pic- 
 turesque poets. 
 
 PROSE WRITERS. 
 
 ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, Earl of Shaftesbury, was born in 
 London in 1671. In fine, sonorous, and elaborate English he 
 
292 SIIAKTESBOKY, BOLINGBROKE, BERKELEY. 
 
 discussed the great themes of metaphysics, most difficult of all 
 sciences. His belief in a " moral sense, by which virtue and vice 
 things naturally and fundamentally distinct are discriminated, 
 and at once approved of or condemned, without reference to the 
 self-interest of him who judges," is the salient point in his philo- 
 sophical system. His works, published in three volumes, bear 
 the name, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times. 
 He died at Naples in 1713. 
 
 SAMUEL CLARKE, Newton's friend, was born at Norwich in 
 1G75. A graduate of Cambridge, he entered the Church, in which 
 he held important livings both in his native town and in West- 
 minster. His works are chiefly on such theological and metaphy- 
 sical subjects, as The Being and Attributes of God, Natural and 
 Revealed Religion, T/te Immortality of the Soul, and Tlie Trinity. 
 This learned and worthy man died in 1729. His refusal to 
 accept the lucrative post of Master of the Mint, vacant by New- 
 ton's death, because it would interfere with his clerical duties, 
 shows the unworldliness of his devotion to the sacred office he 
 had chosen. 
 
 HENRY ST. JOHN, Viscount Bolingbroke, born at Battersea in 
 1C78, received his education at Eton and Oxford. He was noted 
 as a cold-hearted profligate, as an unfortunate politician, and as 
 a writer of much eloquence, but of unfixed and shifting prin- 
 ciples, both in religion and philosophy. In the reign of Anne 
 he was Secretary of State. But the accession of the Guelphs drove 
 him to France, where he joined the Pretender. A pardon enabled 
 him in 1723 to return to England; but he was obliged again to 
 retire across the Straits. During those days of exile in France 
 some of his chief works were written : Reflections on Exile, Letters 
 on tlie, Study of History, and a Letter on tJie True Use of Retire- 
 ment. He afterwards wrote at Battersea Letters on tlie Spirit of 
 Patriotism, and the Idea of a Patriot Xing. From Bolingbroke 
 Pope got much of that ethical system unfolded in the Essay on 
 Man. Bolingbroke died in 1751. 
 
 GEORGE BERKELEY, made Bishop of Cloyne in 1734, was then 
 fifty years of age. He was born in 1G84 at Thomastown, in the 
 
LADY MONTAGU, CHESTERFIELD, HOME. 293 
 
 county Kilkenny. He is noted among our metaphysical writers, 
 especially for his Theory of Vision, and those works which embody 
 and display his theory of ideas. He strives, but in vain, to prove 
 that all sensible qualities, hardness, figure, extension, &c., are mere 
 ideas in our own minds, and have no existence at all in the things 
 we call hard, &c. a dangerous and unsound doctrine. Berkeley 
 died at Oxford in 1753. His English is simple, scholar-like, and 
 clear. 
 
 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU, daughter of the Duke of 
 Kingston, was born in 1690, and at twenty-two was married to 
 Edward Wortley Montagu. Her residence for two years (171 6-1 8) 
 at Constantinople, where her husband was English ambassador, 
 gave her an opportunity of seeing life in many varieties, and her 
 graceful, graphic Letters, descriptive of travel and foreign fashions, 
 abound with light and most agreeable reading. Her amusement 
 at Pope's silly declaration of love for her threw her into a hearty 
 burst of laughter, which made the little poet ever afterwards her 
 mortal foe. She died in 1761 , and her " Letters " were first printed 
 two years later. She conferred a great benefit on England by the 
 introduction of inoculation for the small-pox, a practice she had 
 noticed among the Turkish poor. 
 
 PHILIP STANHOPE, Earl of Chesterfield, born in 1694, wrote a 
 series of Letters to his son, which had a great sale in the years 
 succeeding the author's death. They are just such Letters as a 
 polished infidel man of fashion would write, and depict anything 
 but the true notion of gentlemanhood. A brilliant polish on the 
 surface would atone, according to the maxims of Chesterfield, for 
 any rottenness, however great, within. He died in 1773. 
 
 HENRY HOME, born in 1696, assumed the title of Lord Kames, 
 when in 1752 he ascended the Scottish bench. The work for 
 which his name is best known is that entitled The Elements of 
 Criticism, in which he founds the art upon the principles of 
 human nature. He wrote other metaphysical and several legal 
 works. He died in 1782. 
 
294 A VIOLENT CONTRAST. 
 
 SEVENTH ERA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 FROM THE PUBLICATION OF PAMELA IN 1740 A.D. TO THE DEATH 
 OF JOHNSON IN 1784 A.D. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 LITERARY LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Phases of author-life, 
 Walpole no bookman. 
 Life of well-to-do writers. 
 Grub Street hacks. 
 Passage from Mncaulay. 
 
 Success of a few. 
 Waiting on managers. 
 The great man's hall. 
 Dedications. 
 Booksellers' shops. 
 
 As we look back upon that remarkable era of our literature 
 which runs through Queen Anne's reign and far into that of 
 George the First, we see two phases of author-life the one rich 
 and brilliant the other dark, poor, and wretched. There are 
 no middle tints nothing but bright light and deepest shadow. 
 If an author made a hit, up he went to the very top of the tree, 
 where the golden fruit grew and the sunlight of courtly favour 
 played ever warmly round him ; if he failed to attract attention, 
 there was nothing for even the most hard-working hack but to 
 plod on with as much hope as he could muster, grubbing in the 
 earth around its roots for the wretched food that scarcely kept his 
 bones from starting through the skin. - 
 
 But the artificial system of encouragement, by which men who 
 wrote well, became, without the possession of other qualifications, 
 Ambassadors, Commissioners, Surveyors, or Secretaries, did not 
 last long. Walpole, a man who cared little for books and less for 
 their writers, came into office, and almost at once the whole literary 
 
THE WOSK THAT POOft AUTHORS DID. 295 
 
 profession sank, with a few exceptions, into indigence and obscurity. 
 The exceptions can easily be counted. Pope had made enough by 
 his '"Homer" to live snugly at Twickenham; so he was independent 
 of Walpole or any other man. Richardson, the novelist, lived on 
 the profits of his extensive business as a printer. Young, to be 
 sure, got a pension ; and Thomson, after tasting the worst miseries 
 of author-life, got 100 a year from the Prince of Wales and 
 a sinecure office worth other 300. But they were a mere 
 handful of the writers who swarmed in London during the last 
 century. Nearly all. the rest lived from hand to mouth, a life so 
 wretched and precarious, that Grub Street, in which they herded 
 together, has become a name inseparably associated with rags and 
 hunger. 
 
 The mode of life among prosperous writers has been indicated, 
 with sufficient clearness in the chapters on Addison and Steele. 
 They wore the clothes, drank the wine, played the games, and 
 resorted to the haunts of fine gentlemen in the time of Anne. 
 They tapped their snuff-boxes, and offered the perfumed pinch with 
 the true modish air, in the dainty drawing-rooms of Covent Garden 
 and Soho Square. They paid their twopence at the bar of the 
 fashionable coffee-houses, and lit their long clay pipes at the little 
 wax tapers that burned on the tables among the best company in 
 London. 
 
 There were literary men, however, of Addison's own time, but more 
 especially of a later day, to whom the penny or twopence paid for 
 admission to the coffee-house was often the price of a meal. These 
 poor stragglers were glad to get any kind of work that pen could 
 do. They compiled indexes and almanacs ; they wrote puffing re- 
 views and short notices of books ; they kept a stock of prefaces and 
 prologues always on hand, one of which they gladly sold for half- 
 a-crown. They edited classic authors with notes, and translated 
 works from French, Italian, Latin, or Greek, for fewer guineas than 
 the thin fingers that held their worn-out stump of a goose-quill. 
 It was a red-letter day with them, when one of their articles 
 was accepted by the proprietor of the Gentleman's Magazine. 
 And all this drudgery was in many cases imbittered by the con- 
 
296 DAILY LIFE OF GRUB STREET. 
 
 sciousness that they were fitted for higher work, and the feeling 
 that their daily battle for a crust and a garret was wearing out the 
 brain by sheer stress of over- work and under-pay. 
 
 Such a life, with its miseries and its fierce rushes into mad 
 debauchery, whenever a driblet of money came, is thus painted by 
 Macaulay in one of his Essays : " All that is squalid and miserable 
 might now be summed up in the word Poet. That word denoted 
 a creature dressed like a scare-crow, familiar with compters and 
 spunging-houses, and perfectly qualified to decide on the compar- 
 ative merits of the Common Side in the King's Bench prison, 
 and of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. Even the poorest pitied 
 him. And they well might pity him. For if their condition was 
 equally abject, their aspirings were not equally high, nor their 
 sense of insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret up four pair 
 of stairs ; to dine in a cellar among footmen out of place ; to trans- 
 late ten hours a day for the wages of a ditcher; to be hunted by 
 bailiffs from one haunt of beggary and pestilence to another, from 
 Grub Street to St. George's Fields, and from St George's Fields 
 to the alleys behind St. Martin's Church ; to sleep on a bulk in 
 June and amidst the ashes of a glass-house in December ; to die 
 in an hospital and to be buried in a parish vault, was the fate of 
 more than one writer, who, if he had lived thirty years earlier, 
 would have been admitted to the sittings of the Kitcat or the 
 Scriblerus Club, would have sat in Parliament, and would have 
 been intrusted with embassies to the High Allies ; who, if he had 
 lived in our time, would have found encouragement scarcely less 
 munificent in Albemarle Street or in Paternoster Row. 
 
 " As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so every walk of 
 life has its peculiar temptations. The literary character, assuredly, 
 has always had its share of faults, vanity, jealousy, morbid sensi- 
 bility. To these faults were now superadded the faults which are 
 commonly found in men whose livelihood is precarious, and whose 
 principles are exposed to the trial of severe distress. All the vices 
 of the gambler and of the beggar were blended with those of the 
 author. The prizes in the wretched lottery of book-making were 
 scarcely less ruinous than the blanks. If good fortune came, it 
 
A FIERCE, INCUKABLE RACE. 297 
 
 came in such a manner that it was almost certain to be abused. 
 After months of starvation and despair, a full third night or a 
 well-received dedication filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, un- 
 washed poet with guineas. He hastened to enjoy those luxuries 
 with the images of which his mind had been haunted, while he 
 was sleeping amidst the cinders and eating potatoes at the Irish 
 ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of taverns soon qualified him for 
 another year of night cellars. Such was the life of Savage, of 
 Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in gold-laced 
 hats and waistcoats ; sometimes lying in bed because their coats 
 had gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats because their linen 
 was in pawn ; sometimes drinking Champagne and Tokay ; some- 
 times standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge 
 island to snuff up the scent of what they could not afford to taste ; 
 they knew luxury; they knew beggary; but they never knew 
 comfort. These men were irreclaimable. They looked on a regu- 
 lar and frugal life with the same aversion which an old gipsy 
 or a Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the 
 restraints and securities of civilized communities. They were as 
 untamable, as much wedded to their desolate freedom, as the wild 
 ass. They could no more be broken in to the offices of social man 
 than the unicorn could be trained to serve and abide by the crib. 
 It was well if they did not, like the beasts of a still fiercer race, tear 
 the hands which ministered to their necessities. To assist them 
 was impossible; and the most benevolent of mankind at length 
 became weary of giving relief which was dissipated with the 
 wildest profusion as soon as it had been received. If a sum was 
 bestowed on the wretched adventurer, such as, properly husbanded, - 
 might have supplied him for six months, it was instantly spent in 
 strange freaks of sensuality, and, before forty-eight hours had 
 elapsed, the poet was again pestering all his acquaintances for two- 
 pence to get a plate of shin of beef at a subterraneous cook-shop. 
 If his friends gave him an asylum in their houses, those houses were 
 forthwith turned into taverns. All order was destroyed ; all busi- 
 ness was suspended. The most good-natured host began to repent 
 of his eagerness to serve a man of genius in distress, when he heard 
 
208 WAITING ON A MANAGER. 
 
 liis guest roaring for fresh punch at five o'clock in the morn- 
 ing." 
 
 Through such a life some, like Samuel Johnson, struggled up 
 to competence and fame ; but by far the greater number perished 
 prematurely, worn out with the toils and fiery fevers of the rugged 
 and perilous way ; and there was not a man of those who passed 
 safely through the furnace, but bore the deep scars of the burning 
 with him to the grave. 
 
 Men who lived thus on the verge of starvation, would not, as 
 we may well suppose, be very nice in their taste, or very choice 
 in the expressions which they hurled at a political or literary foe. 
 They needed to be kept in order ; and many brethren of the literary 
 craft were, therefore, no strangers in the eighteenth century to the 
 pillory and the scourge. 
 
 When an author had finished a play, his first care was to carry 
 the precious manuscript to the most likely manager he knew ; and 
 to this great man he confided it with many low bows and cringing 
 civilities. Weeks perhaps months passed by ; and the theatrical 
 season drew near its close. Still no missive from the theatre. 
 With fear and trembling the threadbare, haggard author presents 
 himself at the stage door, and is ushered, after some delay, into 
 the presence of the autocrat. He humbly ventures to remind 
 His Dramatic Highness of the play left there many months ago ; 
 and is rewarded for the sickening suspense he has endured, and 
 the abject humility he has had to assume in making his approaches 
 to the presence, by the cool assurance that such a thing has been 
 utterly forgotten until that moment. And sure enough, after 
 tumbling over heaps of similar papers, the dusty manuscript is 
 found lying as it was left, tied up with the very red string which 
 the wretched dramatist had begged from his landlady to encircle 
 the all-important roll. He is a lucky man if this second reminder 
 induces the manager to read and accept the play; the chances arc 
 that it is returned unread, with the consolatory remark that dozens 
 of authors have been so treated during the season. If he has heart 
 and pluck enough to persist, the only hope of really getting his 
 work put on the stage, is to curry favour with some nobleman's 
 
DANCING ATTENDANCE ON A GREAT MAN. 290 
 
 valet, who may induce his Lordship to read the play and recom- 
 mend it to a manager. One poor fellow, who had danced attendance 
 thus upon a leading London, manager for many months, at last 
 grew sick of the constant drain upon his temper and his patience, 
 and demanded his play again. It could not be found. Fruitless 
 search was made, it was gone. And when the broken-spirited 
 literary hack ventured to complain of such treatment, the irritated 
 manager, thrusting his hands into a drawer, drew out a bundle of 
 manuscript plays with, " Choose any three of these for your miser- 
 able scribble, and let me hear no more of it or you." 
 
 Equally trying to the spirit, and yet more galling in the abject 
 humility it demanded, was the hanging on at a great man's door, 
 or the waiting in a great man's hall to pluck my Lord by the sleeve 
 as he passed to his carriage, and beg a subscription for a forth- 
 coming volume of poetry or prose. Success in such an undertaking 
 depended much upon the number of half-crowns the poor author 
 could afford to invest in buying the good-will of .the porter or confi- 
 dential footman of His Grace or Sir John. Not even the highest 
 literary man was free from this humiliation of cringing before the 
 great. No book appeared without a fulsome dedication or flatter- 
 ing apostrophe addressed to some person of quality, as the phrase 
 then went, whose footman came smirking to the author's dingy 
 room a few days after publication with a present of five, or ten, 
 or twenty guineas the sum varying according to the amount of 
 flattery laid on the belauded name, or perhaps oftener according 
 to the run of luck which the gratified fashionable had happened 
 to meet at the card-table of the night before. 
 
 In such miserable ways alone could the author of the eighteenth 
 century eke out the poor pittance which the booksellers of the 
 time Tonson, Lintot, or Curll could or did afford to pay for 
 original works. But we must not suppose, as we might be led to 
 suppose if we judged alone from the works of disappointed authors, 
 that every London bookseller of the day was a kind of trading 
 ogre, who fattened on the blood and brains of the writers he em- 
 ployed. The sale of books in general was small and slow. The 
 circle of book-readers was narrow; but still narrower was the 
 
300 READING IN THE SHOP. 
 
 circle of book-buyers. Indeed many men never bought books at 
 all \ but when any work came out of which they wished to get 
 a sight, they went to the bookseller's shop day after day, and for 
 a small subscription obtained leave to read at the counter. 
 Marking their page where they left off in the afternoon, they came 
 back again and again, until the volume was finished. This prac- 
 tice, which crowded the shops and stalls of the booksellers a 
 hundred years ago with a floating population of readers, laid the 
 foundation of those useful circulating libraries and reading-cluba 
 which so abound in modern days. 
 
EARLY LIFE OF THOMSON. 301 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 JAMES THOMSON. 
 
 Born 1700 A.D Died 1748 A.D. 
 
 The Seasons. 
 Early life. 
 Arrives in London. 
 Winter. 
 
 Sophonisba. 
 
 On the Continent. 
 
 Secretary of Briefs. 
 
 Pensioned. 
 
 Cottage at Richmond, 
 His death. 
 
 The Castle of Indolence. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 EVERY one has read Thomson's Seasons; comparatively few have 
 read his Castle of Indolence. Yet the latter is the finer piece of 
 literary workmanship. The subject of the former comes home to 
 every heart, we like to find our own thoughts and feelings 
 pictured in the books we read ; and so the poem of the Seasons, 
 displaying in glittering blank-verse the changeful beauty of the 
 year, has come to be read by old and young, and loved by all. 
 
 The poet's father was minister of Ednam in Roxburghshire; 
 and there in 1700 James was born. Having received his elemen- 
 tary education at the Grammar School of Jedburgh, he became 
 a student in the University of Edinburgh. Nothing of importance 
 marked his progress there, until one day in the Divinity class- 
 room he paraphrased a psalm in language so brilliantly figurative 
 as to excite the wonder of the class and draw forth a rebuke from 
 the professor, who cautioned him against the use of such high- 
 flown diction in the pulpit. This was the turning-point in the 
 youth's career ; forthwith he abandoned his studies for the Church, 
 wrote poetry more diligently than before, and, upon the slightest 
 encouragement from a friend, went to seek his fortune among the 
 literary men of London. 
 
 A raw Scotchman, newly landed in London streets, was then 
 the butt of every Cockney witling, and the sure prey of every city 
 thief. Thomson did not escape ; for as he gaped along the street, 
 his letters of introduction, which he had carefully knotted into his 
 handkerchief, were stolen from his pocket. But he did not de- 
 
302 
 
 fipair. When his poem of Winter, of which his friend Mallet 
 thought very highly, was finished, he offered the manu- 
 1726 script to several booksellers without success ; until at last 
 A.D. a Mr. Millar bought it for three guineas. It appeared in 
 1726. Poets in those days, if they desired success, were 
 forced, as we have just seen, to dance attendance on the great. 
 Having selected some rich or powerful man, they wrote a dedica- 
 tion, crammed with compliments, which often drew from the nat- 
 tered magnate a purse of guineas, far outweighing the niggard pay 
 they got from their booksellers. Thomson in this way received 
 twenty guineas from Sir Spencer Compton. Quickly " Winter " 
 grew into public favour. One literary amateur and another read 
 it, and buzzed the praises of the new poet everywhere. The 
 panorama of the completed Seasons soon followed this success. 
 Thomson tried his pen, too, upon tragedy; but SopJionisba perished 
 from the stage in a few nights, killed by the echo of one weak line. 
 
 " Sophonfcba 1 Sophonlsba, 1 " 
 
 wrote the poor poet ; 
 
 14 Jemmy Thomson ! Jemmy Thomson, ! " 
 
 cried some critical mocking-bird ; and the mischief was done, for 
 all London rang with a ready laugh. 
 
 In 1731 Thomson set out for the Continent, as tutor to the son 
 of Sir Charles Talbot, afterwards Lord Chancellor. Having tra- 
 velled through France, Switzerland, and Italy with his pupil, he 
 returned to England and published a poem on Liberty, which he 
 wrongly considered to be his greatest work. About the same time 
 he received from his patron Talbot the easy place of Secretary of 
 Briefs in Chancery. When the Chancellor died, the Secretary lost 
 office ; although it is said that he might have retained it by soliciting 
 the favour of the incoming minister. The loss of this appointment 
 drove the poet again to pen-work. He wrote for the stage two 
 tragedies, which proved failures. But the Prince of Wales granted 
 him a yearly pension of 1 00; and he was, besides, made Sur- 
 veyor-General of the Leeward Islands, from which office, after 
 paying a man to do the work, he drew about 300 a year. 
 
STYLE OP " THE SEASONS." 303 
 
 So the fat and lazy poet found at last a snug haven in which 
 to spend his few remaining days. A pretty cottage at Eichmond, 
 filled with good furniture and well supplied with wine and ale, was 
 the last home of Thomson. There, lounging in his garden or his 
 easy-chair, he brought to a close his greatest poem, The Castle of 
 Indolence, lavishing on its polished lines the wealth of his ripened 
 genius. This latest effort was published in May 1748. One 
 day in the following August, after a sharp walk out of town, 
 which heated him, he took a boat at Hammersmith for Kew. On 
 the water he got chilled neglected the slight cold, as many do 
 became feverish and in a few days was dead. 
 
 The plan and style of Thomson's Seasons are too well known to 
 need much comment. Many fine episodes of human life relieve 
 the stillness and deepen the interest of the ever-changing pictures 
 of natural scenery which fill this beautiful poem. A certain 
 roughness and crudity, disfiguring many passages of the original 
 work, were removed by the poet, as years developed more fully his 
 artistic skill So many, indeed, were the changes and corrections, 
 that the third edition of the "Seasons" may be looked upon 
 almost as a new work. Thomson's style becomes occasionally 
 inflated and wordy ; but, as to the ring of his blank-verse, it has 
 been well said, that, with all its faults, it is his own not the echo 
 of another poet's song. 
 
 " The Castle of Indolence," an allegory written in the stanza and 
 the style of Spenser, affords a noble specimen of poetic art. No 
 better illustration could be given of that wonderful linking of 
 sound with sense, which critics call onomatopoeia. Stanza after 
 stanza rolling its dreamy music on the ear, soothes us with a soft 
 and sleepy charm. Like Tennyson's Lotus Eaters, the dwellers 
 in this enchanted keep lie steeped in drowsy luxury. The good 
 knight Industry breaks the magician's spell; but (alas for the 
 moral teaching of the allegory !) we have grown so delighted with 
 the still and cushioned life, whose hours glide slumberously by, 
 that we feel almost angry with the restless being who dissolves 
 the delicious charm. No man or boy need hope to be lured into 
 early rising by the study of this poem. That Thoin son's forte lay 
 
304 
 
 in description, is clearly shown in both his leading works. On 
 such a therne as Indolence he wrote con amore; for no man could 
 better enjoy the dolce far niente of the lazy Italian than he could 
 himself. And when, after some hard battling with the stern 
 realities of life, he had settled himself down in his quiet nest at 
 Richmond itself a Cottage of Indolence all circumstances were 
 most favourable to the composition of his great work. It took its 
 colours from his daily life. With 400 a year and nothing to do 
 for it lying down and rising when he liked sauntering in the 
 green lanes around his house, or sucking peaches in sunny nooks 
 of his little garden he mused and wrote and smoothed his verses, 
 undisturbed by anything which could mar the music of his song. 
 
 STANZAS FKOM "THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE." 
 
 In lowly dale, fast by a river's side, 
 
 With woody bill o'er bill encompassed round, 
 
 A most encbanting wizard did abide, 
 
 Thau whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found. 
 
 It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground : 
 
 And there a season at ween June and May, 
 
 Half pranked with spring, with summer half imbrowned, 
 
 A listless climate made, where, sooth to say, 
 
 No living wight could work, ne cared even for play. 
 
 Was nought around but images of rest : 
 Sleep-soothing groves and quiet lawns between; 
 And flowery beds that slumberous influence kest, 
 From poppies breathed ; and beds of pleasant green, 
 Where never yet was creeping creature seen. 
 Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets played, 
 And hurled everywhere their waters sheen ; 
 That, as they bickered through the sunny glade, 
 Though restless still themselves, a lulling nmruiur made. 
 
 Joined to the prattle of the purling rills, 
 Was heard the lowing herds along the vale, 
 And flocks loud bleating from the distant hills, 
 And vacant shepherds piping in the dale : 
 And now and then sweet Philomel would wail, 
 Or stock-doves 'plain amid the forest deep, 
 That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale ; 
 And still a coil the grasshopper did keep ; 
 
 these sounds yblent inclined all to sleep. 
 
SPECIMEN OF THOMSON'S VERSE. 305 
 
 Full in the passage of the vale above, 
 
 A sable, silent, solemn forest stood, 
 
 Where nought but shadowy forms was seen to move, 
 
 As Idlesse fancied in her dreaming mood ; 
 
 And up the hills, on either side, a wood 
 
 Of blackening pines, aye waving to and fro, 
 
 Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood ; 
 
 And where this valley winded out below, 
 
 The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow. 
 
 A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was, 
 Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye ; 
 And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, 
 For ever flushing round a summer sky: 
 There eke the soft delights, that witchingly 
 Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast, 
 And the calm pleasures, always hovered nigh ; 
 But whate'er smacked of noyance or unrest, 
 "Was far, far off expelled from this delicious nest. 
 
 20 
 
306 RICHARDSON AT SCHOOL, 
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 
 
 Born 1689 A.D Died 1761 A.D. 
 
 Birth and education. I King's Printer. 
 
 Boyish life. Begins to write. 
 
 Bound apprentice. Pamela. 
 
 Thrives in business. Clarissa Hailowo. 
 
 Sir Charles Grandison. 
 Value of such works. 
 His death. 
 Illustrative extract 
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON, the first parent of that countless tribe, the 
 modern novel, was a joiner's son. Born in Derbyshire in 1689, 
 the little fellow went to a village school, where he became 
 a great favourite with his class-fellows by the exercise of his 
 remarkable gift of story-telling. Ragged and bare-footed the little 
 circle may have been that hemmed in the boy-novelist with its 
 line of berry-brown cheeks and sun-bleached hair ; but it was a 
 pleasant picture for the old printer to look back upon through the 
 lens of many years, as the beginning of his fame. We have a 
 companion picture in the group that gathered so often in the 
 Yards of the Edinburgh High School round little Walter Scott, 
 clamorous for another story out of the teeming brain and glowing 
 fancy, which were destined to delight the world with the richly- 
 coloured fictions of a riper time. Nor was it only among the 
 school-boys of the village that young Sam Richardson was a 
 favourite. His quiet, womanly nature, made him love the society 
 of the gentler sex ; and while his rougher audiences were scattered 
 through the woods enjoying the savage glories of bird-nesting, or 
 were filling the village green with their noisy games at fives or hockey, 
 he sat, through spring afternoons and long summer evenings, the 
 centre of a little group of needle-women, who sewed and listened 
 while he read some pleasant book, or told one of his enchaining 
 tales. Three of these kind girl-friends put his abilities to another 
 use, when they secretly begged him to write their love-letters for 
 
A THRIVING PRINTER. 307 
 
 them, or at least to put what they had already written into a 
 polished shape. In these occupations of his boyhood we can 
 easily trace the germs, which grew in later years into Pamela and 
 Clarissa Harlowe. 
 
 In his fifteenth year young Richardson was bound appren- 
 tice to Mr. John Wilde, a London printer. And thenceforward 
 his career of prosperity in trade and of advancement in civic dig- 
 nity resembles strongly the upward progress of the honest appren- 
 tice, as delineated by Hogarth's graphic pencil. During his 
 seven years of servitude he is honoured and trusted by his master, 
 who calls him " the pillar of the house." His seven years over, 
 he remains for some time as foreman among the old familiar types 
 and presses. Then, setting up in business for himself in Salisbury 
 Court, Fleet Street, he marries his master's daughter, and rises 
 high in the estimation of the booksellers ; for he possesses all the 
 qualities most prized in a man of business, and, in addition, a certain 
 literary faculty, which lifts him high above the mere mechanical 
 craftsman. He continues in a small way to use the pen he had 
 found so telling in the service of the Derbyshire lasses. Book- 
 sellers whom he knew used often to ask him for a preface or a 
 dedication for the books he was printing. And so this honest 
 London printer nourished and throve, winning, by his gentle, 
 feminine kindness, the good-will of all around him, and amassing, 
 by steady industry and attention to his trade, a very considerable 
 fortune. His position as a business man may be judged from the 
 fact, that the printing of the Journals of the House of Commons 
 was given to him while he was yet comparatively young. He was 
 elected Master of the Stationers' Company in 175-i; and, six years 
 later, he bought one-half share in the patent of King's Printer. 
 
 But it is not as King's Printer that we remember Samuel Rich- 
 ardson with such reverent affection. When more than fifty years 
 of this printer's life had passed, a talent, which had been 
 slumbering almost unknown in the keen business brain, awoke to 
 active life. A couple of bookselling friends requested him to 
 draw up a series of familiar letters, containing hints for guiding 
 the affairs of common life. Richardson undertook the task, but> 
 
308 PUBLICATIOM OF " PAMELA." 
 
 inspired with the happy idea of giving a deeper human interest to 
 the letters, he made them tell a connected story, which he justly 
 thought would barb the moral with a keener and surer point. In 
 a similar way the " Pickwick Papers," perhaps the most humorous 
 book in English fiction, grew into being. A young writer, who 
 had already furnished picturesque sketches of London life to 
 an evening paper, was invited by a publishing firm to write some 
 comic adventures in illustration of a set of sporting plates. He 
 began to write, and, losing sight very soon of the original idea of 
 the work, he produced the narrative over which so many hearty, 
 honest laughs have been enjoyed. 
 
 The subject of Richardson's first novel, Pamela, or Virtue Re- 
 warded, is the domestic history of a pretty peasant girl who goes 
 out to service; and, after enduring many mishaps and escaping 
 
 many dangers, becomes the wife of her rich young master. 
 
 1740 A simple, common theme, and quite unlike the subject- 
 
 A.D. matter of those heavy, affected, licentious romances, 
 
 which had hitherto supplied readers of fiction with 
 poisonous amusement in their leisure hours. It is surprising with 
 how much truth Richardson has painted the life of this persecuted 
 girl That spice of the woman in his own nature, to which refer- 
 ence has been already made, and his early love for the playful and 
 innocent chat which beguiles the gentle toil of a circle of happy 
 girls, busy with their needle-work or knitting, give a peculiarly 
 feminine colouring to the pictures of Pamela's life. Little more 
 than three months were occupied with the composition of the 
 first part of this book. It appeared in 1740, and became the rage 
 at once. Five editions were sold within the year. The ladies 
 went wild with rapture over its pages, and began almost to idolize 
 the successful author. The appearance of "Pamela" has been 
 chosen, in our plan, as the opening of a new era hi English litera- 
 ture. It marks the turning of the tide. The affectation and deep 
 depravity of the earlier school of fiction had been slowly wearing 
 away. People were sick, without knowing it, of the paint and 
 patches, the brocades and strutting airs, which disguised the foul 
 Bpirit lurking under the garb of romance; and when a simple tale 
 
t: CLARISSA ' 5 ANl) ( " SIR CHARLES. 5 ' 309 
 
 appeared, whose faults we are disposed to magnify by a contrast 
 with our purer books, the reaction commenced, and a flood 
 began to rise, whose even, steady flow, has cleansed the deepening 
 channels of our literature from many pollutions. 
 
 "Pamela" was followed in 1748 by a yet greater work, The 
 History of Clarissa Harlowe. So powerful was the hold with 
 which this first of our great novelists had grasped the public 
 mind, that during the progress of " Clarissa," he was deluged with 
 letters, entreating him to save his heroine from the web of 
 misery he was slowly weaving round her. Happily for his own 
 fame, he turned a deaf ear to such requests, and has added to our 
 literary treasures a grand tragedy in prose, of which the catas- 
 trophe has been worthily compared to "the noblest efforts of 
 pathetic conception in Scott, in our elder dramatists, or in the 
 Greek tragedians." 
 
 In less than five years, Richardson was ready with the first 
 volumes of his third great work, Sir Charles Grandison; in which, 
 adopting a similar epistolary style, he paints with the same minute- 
 ness of touch the character of a gentleman and a Christian. 
 Here, it must be confessed, he somewhat fails ; for we get very tired 
 of the long-winded and ceremonious Sir Charles, and his prim 
 sweetheart. The truth seems to be, that Richardson hardly drew 
 Sir Charles from the life ; for although well to do as a citizen of rich 
 London, he had not the entree of those drawing-rooms, where one 
 or two genuine Grandisons mingled with scores of gaily dressed 
 and foully cankered Lovelaces. 
 
 Few read Richardson's novels in this fast age; for their extreme 
 length and minuteness of description, in which there appears 
 something of a womanish love of gossip repel any but earnest 
 students of English fiction. Our appetite for such tedious works 
 has been spoiled by the banquets which Scott and Thackeray 
 and Dickens have spread before us. But when we compare 
 " Pamela " and " Clarissa " with the works that had preceded them, 
 leaving out of sight those modern fictions which have since enriched 
 our libraries, we shall be better able to appreciate the value of such 
 productions, and we shall be less disposed to cavil at their faults, 
 
310 
 
 which stand clearly out in the light of modern refinement. Their 
 naturalness and comparative purity of tone made them, a precious 
 boon to reading England in the day when they were written. 
 
 Richardson's last years were spent in his villa at Parson's 
 Green, where the ladies, whose friendship he had won by his 
 gentle life and charming books, vied with one another in soothing 
 the last hours of the good old man. He died in 1761, at the 
 ripe age of seventy-two. 
 
 PAMELA AT CHURCH. 
 
 Yesterday we set out, attended by John, Abraham, .Benjamin, and Isnrv, 
 in fine new liveries, in the best chariot, which had been cleaned, lined, and new 
 harnessed; so that it looked like a quite new one; but I had no arms to quarter 
 with my dear lord and master's, though he jocularly, upon my noticing my 
 obscurity, said that he had a good mind to have the olive branch quartered for 
 mine. I was dressed in the suit of white, flowered with silver, a rich head-dress, 
 and the diamond necklace, ear-rings, &c., I mentioned before : and my dear sir, 
 in a fine laced silk waistcoat of blue Paduasoy, and his coat a pearl-coloured fine 
 cloth, with gold buttons and button-holes, and lined with white silk; and he 
 looked charmingly indeed. I said, I was too fine, and would have laid aside 
 some of the jewels; but he said, it would be thought a slight to me from him, as 
 his wife ; and though I apprehended that people might talk as it was, yet he 
 had rather they should say anything, than that I was not put upon an equal 
 foot, as his wife, with any lady he might have married. 
 
 It seems the neighbouring gentry had expected us, and there was a great con- 
 gregation; for (against my wish) we were a little late, so that, as we walked up 
 the church to his seat, we had many gazers and whisperers: but my dear master 
 behaved with so intrepid an air, and was so cheerful and complaisant to me, that 
 he did credit to his kind choice, instead of shewing as if he was ashamed of it : 
 rind I was resolved to busy my mind entirely with the duties of the day ; my in- 
 tentness on that occasion, and my thankfulness to God for His unspeakable 
 mercies to me, so took up my thoughts, I was much less concerned than I should 
 otherwise have been, at the gazings and whisperings of the congregation, whose 
 eyes were all turned to our seat. When the sermon was ended, we stayed the 
 longer, for the church to be pretty empty ; but we found great numbers at the 
 doors, and in the porch; and I had the pleasure of hearing many commendations, 
 as well of my person as my dress and behaviour, and not one reflection, or mark 
 of disrespect. 
 
CHARACTER Of FIELDING. 311 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HENRY FIELDING. 
 
 Born 1707 A.D Died 1754 A.D. 
 
 Pamela. 
 Early life. 
 Studies law. 
 Writes on politics. 
 
 Joseph Andrews. 
 A police magistrate. 
 Breaking up. 
 His deatli 
 
 His chief works. 
 The life they describe. 
 Nature of his plots. 
 Illustrative extract 
 
 MINGLED with the delighted murmur of praise and congratulation 
 which welcomed Richardson's " Pamela," there rang a mocking laugh 
 from the crowd of scamps and fast men, who ran riot in London 
 streets, beating the feeble old watchmen, and frightening timid 
 wayfarers out of their wits. To such men virtue was a jest; and 
 among the loudest laughers was a careless, good-humoured, very 
 clever lawyer of thirty-five, called Harry Fielding. Richardson 
 scarcely heeded for he must have expected the jeers of the 
 aristocratic coffee-houses ; but he was bitterly mortified at Field- 
 ing's laughter, for that mad wag laughed on paper, and in 1742 
 gave the world the novel of Joseph Andrews, a wicked mockery of 
 those virtuous lessons which the respectable printer of Salisbury 
 Court had endeavoured to inculcate by his first book. 
 
 The life of Fielding has in it much of the same colouring and 
 scenery as the life of Dick Steele a thoroughly congenial spirit, 
 gay, careless, improvident, witty, and excessively good-natured. 
 Lady Mary Montagu well knew of whom she was writing, when 
 she described Fielding as one who forgot every evil, when he was 
 before a venison pasty and a flask of champagne. 
 
 He was born in 1707, at Sharpham Park in Somersetshire. 
 His father was a general in the army, and his mother was the 
 daughter of a judge. General Fielding, who was a grandson of 
 the Earl of Denbigh, set an example of extravagance, which his 
 celebrated son was but too ready to imitate. A broken residence 
 at Eton and Leyden gave Harry a kind of rambling education; but, 
 
312 
 
 no supplies coming from home, he was obliged at the age of 
 twenty to cut his studies short, and try to make his bread by 
 writing for the London stage. He entered literary life as a com- 
 poser of light comedies and farces; but in this department he 
 gained no great renown. 
 
 About 1735 he married Miss Cradock, who brought him 
 1 500, upon the strength of which, and a small estate left him 
 by his mother, he retired to the country for a time. But only for 
 a time. Two years sufficed to scatter to the winds almost every 
 guinea he had; and he came up to town again, to enter the 
 
 Middle Temple, and there complete his long suspended 
 
 1 740 study of the law. Called to the bar in 1740, he struggled 
 
 A.D. for a while with the opening difficulties of a lawyer's 
 
 career ; but few briefs came his way, and his pen was the 
 chief bread-winner of the household. It was principally as a 
 pamphleteer, or political writer, in defence of the Hanoverian suc- 
 cession, that he employed his literary powers during this period 
 of his life. In our day, he would have written telling leaders for 
 the Times, or rather for the Saturday Review. 
 
 Then came that tide in the current of Ms life, w T hich, taken at 
 the flood, bore him on, if not to fortune, at least to lasting fame. 
 Richardson published " Pamela ; " and Fielding ridiculed the senti- 
 
 mentalism of the work in his Joseph Andrews. This start 
 
 1742 in the novel-writing line took place in 1742. The char- 
 
 A.D. acter of Parson Adams is justly considered to be Fielding's 
 
 master-piece of literary portraiture. 
 
 Now fairly embarked as a successful novelist, and fully awake 
 to the powers of that pen, long degraded to petty uses, he 
 continued to produce the works inseparably associated with his 
 name. His political connections, however, were still kept up. 
 For a while he edited a journal directed against the Jacobites, 
 who, in 1745, showed a front so threatening. And in 1749 he 
 was appointed, through the interest of Lord Lyttelton, one of the 
 Justices of Peace for Middlesex and Westminster. This position, 
 similar in nearly all respects to that of a London police-magis- 
 trate, brought him in fees amounting to not quite 300 a year. 
 
313 
 
 But though the emoluments of the office were small, and obtained 
 by unpleasant drudgery, his position yet enabled him to observe 
 phases of low and criminal life, which supplied fine material for 
 his darker sketches of English society. 
 
 Unhappily, this active man never could shake off the habits of 
 dissipation he had contracted in his early life ; and such bore, in 
 middle age, their necessary fruits. Dropsy, jaundice, and asthma 
 seized him in their dreadful grip, and, after a vain struggle 
 for health in England, he sailed in 1754 for Lisbon, to try 1754 
 the effect of a warmer climate. All was useless. His A.D. 
 life's strength was gone. In the autumn of that year he 
 died in the city of his exile, and was buried there in the cemetery 
 of the British Factory. 
 
 In spite of the coarseness and indelicacy which mar its pages, 
 Fielding's novel of Tom Jones is recognised as a work of remark- 
 able genius. Written in his first year of magistrate life, it con- 
 tains scenes and characters which could be drawn only from the 
 daily experiences of the police-bench, Jonathan Wild and Amelia 
 are the principal remaining fictions of this great artist. The 
 former depicts the career of a thief, who turns thief-catcher and 
 ends his days upon tlje gallows. The latter commemorates the 
 domestic virtue either of the novelist's first wife, or of that amiable 
 maid-servant, who sorrowed so deeply for the loss of her mistress, 
 that, in gratitude and tender concern for his motherless children, 
 he made her their second mother. And he never regretted the 
 step, for she did her duty with loving faithfulness both to him and 
 them. 
 
 The life described in Fielding's books was let us be thankful 
 for the change totally unlike the life we now live. Much of the 
 fun was of the roughest physical kind practical jokes that would 
 now-a-days fill our courts of law with actions for assault and battery, 
 and violent altercations in road-side inns, which generally ended in a 
 row, involving everybody present, to the serious detriment of eyes 
 and limbs. The melee of fishwives, cabbage-mongers, and police- 
 men, which enlivens every second or third scene of the comic 
 business in our Christmas pantomimes, affords us a specimen of 
 
3 i 4 THE PLAY AND THE NOVEL. 
 
 the same boisterous humour. Everything is pelted about, and 
 everybody beats everybody else, until the noisy crowd is hustled 
 off the stage, and the scene or chapter ends. The tedious mode 
 of travelling, especially the crawling of the stage waggon or 
 slow coach of those days, necessarily gives a striking prominence 
 to inn-life; for those who travelled much, a hundred years ago, 
 spent one-third of their nights in the Maypoles and Blue Dragons 
 that lined every road. The highwayman, too, is sure to figure 
 wherever the progress of travellers is depicted. And here the 
 novelist has ample scope for displaying the courage of his hero, 
 or the cowardice of some braggart soldier, who has been swearing 
 and twirling his moustache fiercely ever since the coach set out, 
 but who turns pale, and with shaking hand fumbles silently for 
 his purse, when the ominous pistol-barrel shows its dark muzzle 
 at the coach window. 
 
 Fielding's early practice as a writer for the stage formed his 
 first literary training for the great works that have made his name 
 famous. We may safely hazard the conjecture, that his novels 
 would have wanted much of their brilliant, changeful play, and 
 skilful development of story, if his pen had not been well prac- 
 tised already in the farces and vaudevilles of his dramatic days. 
 A play may be viewed, not improperly, as the skeleton of a novel. 
 The frame-work of dialogue is there, which, being filled up and 
 clothed with passages of description, grows into the full work of 
 fiction. A play acted on the stage before us, and a novel in the 
 hand, from which we read, address the mind through different 
 channels, but with like result. In a play, we see the bustling 
 movement of the plot, the varied dresses of the actors, and the 
 painted scenery amid which they play their parts ; and, combin- 
 ing these with the spoken words, we trace the outline of each 
 individual character, and become wrapped in the interest of the 
 story. In the novel, action, costume, and scenery are depicted 
 by those descriptive passages, of which Sir Walter Scott was so 
 tine a painter. 
 
SPECIMEN OP FIELDING'S PROSE. 315 
 
 PARTRIDGE AT THE PLAT. 
 
 As soon as the play, which was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, began, Par- 
 tridge was all attention, nor did he break silence till the entrance of the ghost; 
 upon which he asked Jones : " What man that was in the strange dress ; some- 
 thing," said he, " like what I have seen in a picture. Sure it's not armour, 
 is it?" Jones answered: "That is the ghost." To which Partridge replied, 
 with a smile : " Persuade me to that, sir, if you can. Though I can't say I ever 
 actually saw a ghost in my life, yet I am certain I should know one if I saw him 
 better than that comes to. No, no, sir ; ghosts don't appear in such dresses as 
 that neither." In this mistake, which caused much laughter in the neighbour- 
 hood of Partridge, he was suffered to continue till the scene between the ghost 
 and Hamlet, when Partridge gave that credit to Mr. Garrick which he had 
 denied to Jones, and fell into so violent a trembling that his knees knocked 
 against each other. Jones asked him what was the matter, and whether he was 
 afraid of the warrior upon the stage. " la ! sir," said he, " I perceive now it is 
 what you told me. I am not afraid of anything, for I know it is but a play ; 
 and if it was really a ghost, it could do one no harm at such a distance, and in 
 so much company; and yet if I was frightened, I am not the only person." 
 "Why, who," cries Jones; "dost thou take me to be such a coward here be- 
 sides thyself]" "Nay, you may call me coward if you will; but if that little 
 man there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw any man frightened in 
 my life. Ay, ay; go along with you! Ay, to be sure! Who's fool, then 1 ? 
 Will you ] Who ever saw such foolhardiness 1 Whatever happens, it is good 
 enough for you. Oh ! here he is again ! No further ! No, you've gone far 
 enough already; further than I'd have gone for all the king's dominions !" Jones 
 offered to speak, but Partridge cried: "Hush, hush, dear sir; don't you hear 
 him]" And during the whole speech of the ghost, he sat with his eyes fixed 
 partly on the ghost, and partly on Hamlet, and with his mouth open ; the same 
 passions, which succeeded each other in Hamlet, succeeding likewise in. him. 
 
316 SMOLLETt GOES TO LONDON. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 TOBIAS SMOLLETT. 
 
 Born 1721 A.D Died 1771 A.D. 
 
 Early life. 
 Surgeon's mate. 
 Coarse satires. 
 Roderick Random. 
 
 Peregrine Pickle. 
 Visits Scotland. 
 Edits a Review. 
 Writes history. 
 
 On his travels. 
 Humphrey Clinkei 
 Smollett's sailors. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 THIRD among the grand old masters of English fiction, both in 
 date of appearance as an author and in rank as a novelist, cornea 
 Tobias Smollett. Born in 1721, at Dalquhurn-house near Renton, 
 in Dumbartonshire, and educated at the Grammar School of Dum- 
 barton and the University of Glasgow, this boy of gentle blood 
 entered upon life as an apprentice to Mr. Gordon, an apothecary 
 in Glasgow. His grandfather, Sir James Smollett of Bonhill, who 
 had borne the expenses of his education, having died without 
 leaving him any further provision, the youth of nineteen made 
 his way up to London, carrying among his few shirts a tragedy, 
 called TJie Regicide, which he fondly hoped would raise him at 
 once to the pinnacle of fame and fortune. How many poor 
 fellows have toiled nightly for months over a crazy desk, and 
 have then trudged weary miles up to the Great Babylon with the 
 same high hope burning in their young hearts ! And how many, 
 a dozen years after that sanguine, light-hearted journey to town, 
 have found nothing left of those bright hopes but a few smoulder- 
 ing embers amid the grey ashes of a disappointed life ! 
 
 The Regicide being refused by the London managers, Smollett 
 had to fall back upon the profession he had learned from Gordon. 
 Finding the stage doors shut against him, he sought the humble 
 position of surgeon's mate in the navy, and was, after some time, 
 appointed to an eighty-gun ship. It was thus that he acquired 
 his wonderful knowledge of sailors and sailor-life. His ship form- 
 ing one of the fleet which was despatched against Carthagena with 
 
PUBLICATION OF "EODEBICK RANDOM." 317 
 
 BO disastrous a result, he had an opportunity of witnessing and 
 feeling the horrors of naval warfare. The story of the expedition 
 may be found in his novel of Roderick Random, and also in his 
 Compendium of Voyages and Travels. During a short residence 
 in Jamaica he met Miss Lascelles, the lady who afterwards became 
 his wife. 
 
 Upon his return to London in 1744 he endeavoured to estab- 
 lish himself as a medical man; but the attempt was unsuccess- 
 ful. Betaking himself more eagerly to the pen, when the lancet 
 failed him, he wreaked his revenge upon those whom he considered 
 his foes, by the publication in 1746 of Advice, a satire, which has 
 been well characterized as possessing all the dirt and vehemence 
 of Juvenal, with none of that writer's power. All through life 
 Smollett's unhappy temper preyed upon his own spirit, and made 
 enemies of some who might otherwise gladly have befriended the 
 struggling genius. He was one of those poor men who aim too 
 high at the outset of their career, and who for ever after their first 
 failure are possessed with the haunting monomania, that all the 
 world has entered into an envious plot to slight their works and 
 deprive them of their justly-earned fame. 
 
 Another coarse and bitter satire, The Reproof, in which actors, 
 authors, and critics were abused without stint or measure, pro- 
 duced a yet deeper feeling of disgust against the irritable surgeon, 
 a feeling which the publication of Roderick Random in 
 1748 could scarcely abate. This first novel at once 1748 
 stamped Smollett as one worthy to rank with the great A.D. 
 masters who were then plying the novelist's pen. But 
 his works are evidently the creations of a somewhat inferior mind. 
 There are, indeed, in Smollett's books an innate coarseness and 
 an unscrupulous love of the indelicate, which we do not find 
 in the works of Richardson or Fielding. Theirs is rather the 
 coarseness of the age in which they lived ; Smollett's is the 
 coarseness of a man the fibre of whose moral nature was as rough 
 as the roughest sacking. 
 
 His second novel, Peregrine Pickle, followed in three years. It 
 is disfigured by the same faults as its predecessor. Another at- 
 
318 AUTHORSHIP WITHOUT REST. 
 
 tempt to get into medical practice this time at Bath having 
 ended as before, he took a house at Chelsea, and became an author 
 by profession. If he could have flung away the hedgehog pricklea 
 of his temper along with his rusty lancet, he might have gathered 
 round him a circle of loving and admiring friends. But the 
 soured surgeon grew sourer still. His pen worked busily on. 
 Ferdinand Count Fatltom, the career of a sharper, and a transla- 
 tion of Don Quixote, occupied some four years, which bring us to 
 one of the few sunny spots we meet in this gloomy, battling life. 
 He visited Scotland ; felt the arms of his old mother again round 
 his neck ; saw the crystal Leven and the oak-woods of Cameron 
 once more ; talked of auld lang syne with former school-fellows 
 and boyish playmates ; and then hurried back to his alter ego, 
 sitting with knitted brow and bitter pen at a desk in southern 
 England. 
 
 Smollett's sixteen remaining years were years of incessant 
 literary occupation. He undertook to edit the Critical Revieio ; 
 an office for which he was ill qualified, since of all men, an editor 
 ought not to be quarrelsome. Endless, were the scrapes into 
 which the abuse of his editorial functions brought him. Admiral 
 Knowles had him fined 100, and imprisoned for three months, as 
 the author of a scurrilous libel. While he was in jail he wrote a 
 tiresome English imitation of Don Quixote's adventures, entitled 
 Sir Launcelot Greaves. Turning his pen from fiction to history, he 
 produced, in the brief period of fourteen months, a Complete His- 
 tory of England, from the landing of Caesar to the treaty of Aix- 
 la-Chapelle; to which he afterwards added chapters carrying the 
 work down to 1765. The latter part of this flowing History was 
 taken to supplement the greater work of the historian Hume. In 
 a few old-fashioned libraries Hume and Smollett even still stand 
 shoulder to shoulder as the great twin authorities on English his- 
 tory, although the light of modern research has detected errors and 
 flaws by the hundred in their finely-written story. 
 
 Wilkes and Smollett had a tilt about Lord Bute's ministry, in 
 which the latter, defending the quondam tutor of royalty, suffered 
 severely. The last years of the novelist, imbittered by the death 
 
" HUMPHREY CLINKER " COMPLETED. 319 
 
 of his only child, a girl of fifteen, were chiefly spent in restless 
 travel. Visiting France and Italy, he vented his increasing spleen 
 upon even the crumbling ruins of old Home, and the ex- 
 quisite statue of the Venus de Medici. The poor peevish author 
 was hastening to his end ; but before he sank beneath this life's 
 horizon, his genius shot forth its brightest beam. Disappointed 
 in his last earthly hope that of obtaining a consulship on some 
 shore of the Mediterranean, where his last hours might be pro- 
 longed in a milder air he travelled to the neighbourhood of Leg- 
 horn, and, settling in a cottage there, finished Humphrey Clinker, 
 which is undoubtedly his finest work. Lismahago is the best 
 character in this picture of English life; Bath is the principal 
 scene, upon which the actors play their various parts. 
 Scarcely was this brilliant work completed, when Smollett 1771 
 died, an invalided exile, worn out long before the allotted A.D. 
 seventy years. 
 
 His pictures of the navy-men who trod English decks a cen- 
 tury ago, are unsurpassed and imperishable. Trunnion, the one- 
 eyed commodore ; Hatchway and Bowling, the lieutenants ; Ap^ 
 Morgan, the kind but fiery Welsh surgeon ; Tom Pipes, the silent 
 boatswain, remain as types of a race of men long extinct, who 
 manned our ships when they were, in literal earnest, wooden walls, 
 and when the language and the discipline, to which officers of the 
 royal navy were accustomed, were somewhat of the roughest and 
 the hardest. 
 
 Smollett wrote poetry also, but it hardly rises above mediocrity. 
 His Ode to Independence, his Lines to Leven Water, and his Tears 
 of Scotland, present the most favourable specimens of his poetic 
 powers. 
 
 AN UNEXPECTED REUNION. 
 
 As we stood at the window of an inn that fronted the public prison, a person 
 arrived on horseback, genteelly though plainly dressed in a blue frock, with hia 
 own hair cut short, and a gold-laced hat upon his head. Alighting, and giving 
 his horse to the landlord, he advanced to an old man who was at work in paving 
 the street, and accosted him in these words: " This is hard work for such an old 
 man as you." So saying, he took the instrument out of his hand, and began to 
 
320 SPECIMEN OP SMOLLETT'S PROSE. 
 
 thump the pavement. After a few strokes, " Have you never a son," said he, 
 "to ease you of this labour 1 ?" "Yes, an' please your honour," replied the 
 senior, "I have three hopeful lads, but at present they are out of the way." 
 "Honour not me," cried the stranger; "it more becomes me to honour your 
 grey hairs. Where are those sons you talk of? " The ancient pavier said, his 
 eldest son was a captain in the East Indies, and the youngest had lately enlisted 
 as a soldier, in hopes of prospering like his brother. The gentleman desiring tc 
 know what was become of the second, he wiped his eyes, and owned he had 
 takea upon him his old father's debts, for which he was now in the prison hard 
 by. 
 
 The traveller made three quick steps towards the jail ; then turning short, 
 "Tell me," said he, "has that unnatural captain sent you nothing to relieve 
 your distresses ?" " Call him not unnatural," replied the other; " God's blessing 
 be upon him ! he sent me a great deal of money, but I made a bad use of it ; I 
 lost it by being security for a gentleman that was my landlord, and was stripped 
 of all I had in the world besides." At that instant a young man, thrusting out 
 his head and neck between two iron bars in the prison window, exclaimed : 
 " Father ! father! if my brother William is in life, that's he." " I am ! I am !" 
 cried the stranger, clasping the old man in his arms, and shedding a flood of 
 tears" I am your son Willy, sure enough !" Before the father, who was quite 
 confounded, could make any return to this tenderness, a decent old woman, bolt- 
 ing out from the door of a poor habitation, cried : " Where is my bairn? where 
 is my dear Willy ? " The captain no sooner beheld her than he quitted hia 
 father, and ran into her embrace. 
 
H4-ELY LIFE OP GRAY, 321 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THOMAS GRAY. 
 Born 1716 A.D Died 1771 A.D. 
 
 Birth and education. 
 At Cambridge. 
 Foreign travel. 
 Settles at Cambridge. 
 His tastes and studies. 
 
 Professor of history. 
 The Elegy. 
 His famous Odes. 
 Other works. 
 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 THE poet Gray was born in noisy Cornhill on a December day in 
 1716. His father, a money-scrivener, was a bad man, so violent 
 in temper that Mrs. Gray, separating from him, joined her sister 
 in opening a shop in Cornhill for the sale of Indian goods. To the 
 love of this good mother Thomas Gray owed his superior educa- 
 tion. Her brother being a master at Eton, the lad went there to 
 school, and found among his class-fellows young Horace Walpole, 
 with whom he soon struck up a close friendship. Many a time, 
 no doubt, Walpole, Gray, and West, another chum of the scrivener's 
 son, did their Latin verses together, and many a golden summer 
 evening they passed merrily with bat and ball in the meadows 
 by the smoothly flowing Thames. 
 
 In 1735 he entered as a pensioner at Peter-house, Cambridge, 
 his uncle's college. And for three years he lingered out his life 
 there, chained to a place whose laws and lectures he felt to be most 
 irksome. Mathematics were his especial disgust; but the classics 
 he loved with no common love, and studied with no common zeal. 
 His school-fellow Walpole was at Cambridge too; and when in 1738 
 Gray left without a degree, the two friends agreed to set out on a 
 Continental tour. Together they saw France and Italy; the poet 
 wandering with delight amid the ruins of the great past ; the con- 
 noisseur ransacking the old curiosity shops of Rome and Florence 
 in search of rare pictures and choice medallions, such as in later 
 days he piled up in dainty confusion under the roof of Strawberry 
 (l) 21 
 
322 A HERMIT AT CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 Hill. Their tastes being thus dissimilar, it is no wonder that 
 Walpole and Gray quarrelled and separated after some time. 
 
 Gray returned to England, and, upon his father's death, he 
 settled down at Cambridge, where most of his after life was spent. 
 It has been already said that he hated the ways of the place, which, 
 in his opinion, never looked so well as when it was empty ; but 
 there were books in abundance on the shelves of its noble libraries, 
 and their silent yet speaking charms he knew no other love 
 bound the poet for life to the banks of the Cam. Here, like a monk 
 in his cell, he read and wrote untiringly. A glance round his 
 study would, no doubt, have shown his tastes. Between the 
 leaves of a well-used Plato or Aristophanes there might often have 
 been found, drying for his horius siccus, some rare wild flowers, 
 which he had gathered in the meadows by the Cam. Books on 
 heraldry and architecture shouldered the trim classics on his loaded 
 book-shelves, while such things as sketches of ivied ruins, a lum- 
 bering suit of rusty armour, or a collection of curious daggers and 
 pistols hanging on the crowded walls, most probably displayed the 
 antiquarian tastes of the inmate. 
 
 A quiet life, like that the poet led, has almost no history. Be- 
 sides such salient points as the appearance of his various works, 
 there are only three events worthy of notice in his later years. 
 These events were his removal in 1756 to Pembroke Hall from 
 Peter-house, caused by the annoyance of some madcap students ; 
 Ids refusal in 1757 of the laurel, vacant by Gibber's death; and his 
 appointment in 1768 to the professorship of Modern History at 
 Cambridge. His chief trips were to London, where he lodged 
 near the British Museum, and explored its literary treasures with 
 a student's patient love ; to Scotland, where he met the poet 
 Beattie; to the English lakes in 1769; and to Wales in the 
 autumn before his death. This sad event took place in 1771. 
 He had been breaking up for many months, when gout, settling 
 in his stomach, cut him off with a sudden attack 
 
 Gray is best known by his famous Elegy Written in a Country 
 Church-yard, whose solemn stanzas roll out their muffled music, 
 like the subdued tolling of a great minster bell. Corrected and re- 
 
GRAY'S ODES. 323 
 
 corrected line by line, as were all this poet's works, it yet shows 
 no sign of elaboration its melancholy grace is the perfection of 
 art. There are writers with whom a slovenly style stands for 
 nature, and rude unpruned stanzas for the fairest growths of poetry. 
 Gray was not of these. His classically formed taste was too pure 
 and too fastidious to be content with anything but carefully 
 polished verses : and we .therefore have to thank him for giving us, 
 in the " Elegy," as noble a specimen of grave and scholarly English 
 as our literature affords. This poem was published in 1750. 
 
 But the triumph of his genius may be viewed in his two mag- 
 nificent Odes, The Progress of Poesy, and The Bard. The subject 
 of the latter is the terrific malison of a Welsh bard, escaped 
 from the massacre at Conway, who, standing on an inaccessible 
 crag, prophesies the doom of the Norman line of kings, and the 
 glories of the Tudors. This done, he springs from the rock to 
 perish in the foaming flood below. The chief facts of early Eng- 
 lish history have never been so finely woven into poetry as in 
 "The Bard." 
 
 Among his other poems we may notice his Ode to Spring ; 
 Hymn to Adversity ; his much admired Ode on a Distant Prospect 
 of Eton; and some light, humorous verses, on Mr. Walpolds Cat. 
 His chief prose writings are Letters, written in a clear, elegant, and 
 often most picturesque style. 
 
 OPENING STANZAS OF THE "ELEGY." 
 
 The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
 The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, 
 The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, 
 And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 
 
 Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 
 And all the air a solemn stillness holds, 
 Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, 
 And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds ; 
 
 Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower 
 The moping owl does to the moon complain 
 Of such as, wandering near her secret bower. 
 Molest her ancient solitary reign. 
 
321 SPECIMEN OP GRAY'S VERSE. 
 
 Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, 
 Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 
 Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, 
 The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 
 
 The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, 
 The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, 
 The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 
 No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 
 
 For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 
 Or busy housewife ply her evening care : 
 No children run to lisp their sire's return, 
 Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. 
 
 Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 
 Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke ; 
 How jocund did they drive their team a-field ! 
 How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke ! 
 
 Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, 
 Their homely joys and destiny obscure ; 
 Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 
 The short and simple annals of the poor. 
 
 The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
 And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
 Await alike the inevitable hour : 
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 
 
HUME'S EARLIER WORKS. 325 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 DAVID HUME. 
 
 Born 1711 A.D Died 1776 A.D. 
 
 Boyhood of Hume. 
 Law and commerce. 
 First books. 
 Paid occupation. 
 Advocates' Library. 
 
 History of England. 
 Character of the work. 
 Hume's prosperity. 
 Scepticism and errora 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 DAVID HOME, the first of his family to write himself Hume, was 
 a cadet of a distinguished Scottish house, and was born at Edin- 
 burgh in April 1711. After passing through the classes in the 
 College of his native city, he nominally began the study of the 
 law ; but, as he tells us himself, he was devouring Cicero and 
 Virgil, while his friends fancied he was poring over Voet and 
 Vinnius. Literature ousted law, and commerce had no better for- 
 tune. A few months among the sugar-houses of Bristol, far from 
 weaning young Hume from his literary tastes, only deepened his 
 love of study, and his desire to be a man of letters. 
 
 From Bristol he crossed to France, where he wrote his first 
 work, A Treatise of Human Nature, published in London in 1738. 
 It was an utter failure, not having achieved even the distinction of 
 being abused. His second work, Moral and Philosophical Essays, 
 composed partly in Scotland, met with tolerable success. 
 
 All this time he had been living on the slender means he got 
 from home. But in 1745 an occupation, well paid to make up 
 for its unpleasantness, fell in his way. He became the companion 
 of the young Marquis of Annandale, whose mind was somewhat 
 affected. Having held this charge for about a year, Hume accepted 
 the position of secretary to General St. Clair, in whose suite he 
 visited Vienna and Turin, seeing foreign life under most favourable 
 auspices, and mixing in the first Continental circles. 
 
3i>6 HUME'S " HISTORY OF ENGLAND." 
 
 After his return to Britain lie lived for two years in his brother's 
 house, engaged chiefly in the composition of his Political Dis- 
 courses and his Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. In 
 1 752 he undertook the charge of the Advocates' Library in Edin- 
 burgh ; not so much for the sake of the nominal salary then at- 
 tached to the office, as for the great command of books which such 
 a position gave him. 
 
 There he seems first to have formed the idea of writing that 
 History of England which made him famous. The work grew 
 to completeness in a most irregular fashion. Afraid at first to 
 face so long a stoiy as the entire range of English history, he 
 began with the accession of the Stuart race. The first 
 1754 volume, closing with the Regicide, appeared in 1754. 
 A.D. Only forty-five copies were sold in a twelvemonth ! His 
 sympathy for the slain king and Thorough-grinding 
 Strafford excited a cry of disapproval and rebuke from almost 
 every sect and every party. So deeply did he feel this mortifying 
 reception of his book, that, but for a French war breaking out, he 
 would have hidden himself, with changed name, in some country 
 town of France, and there have tried to forget his native land, and 
 the defeat of his literary ambition. But the ill wind of that 
 French war, which gave us Canada, also blew to our libraries the 
 remaining volumes of Hume's England. The second, treating of 
 the years between the Regicide and the Revolution, came out 
 in 1757. The tide had turned. Everybody began to read 
 and praise the book. The year 1759 saw the publication of 
 the third volume, containing the history of the Tudors ; and 
 two other volumes, in 1762, added the narrative of earlier 
 events, and brought the work to a triumphant close. For ease, 
 beauty, and picturesque power of style, there was then nothing like 
 it in the range of English historical literature : and for these 
 qualities it yet holds an honoured place on our book-shelves. Yet 
 the day of Hume as an authority on English history has long gone 
 by. The light of modern research has detected countless flaws and 
 distortions in the great book, which was carefully, even painfully, 
 revised as to its style, but which was formed in great part of a 
 
SCEPTICISM OP HUME. 327 
 
 mass of statements often gathered from very doubtful sources, 
 and heaped together, almost unsifted and untried. The diligence 
 of that eminent modern historian, who often read a quarto 
 volume to obtain material for a single sentence, and travelled 
 a hundred miles to verify a solitary fact, was utterly unknown to 
 David Hume. He wrote exquisitely ; but he sometimes spent the 
 beauty of his style upon mere chaff and saw-dust. Much the 
 same thing it was, as if a jeweller should frame a costly casket 
 and grace it with every adornment of art, that its rich beauty 
 might at last enshrine a few worthless pebbles or beads of coloured 
 glass. 
 
 The completion of his History made Hume a famous man. The 
 Earl of Hertford invited him to join the embassy at Paris, there 
 to act as interim secretary. His fame had gone before him, and ho 
 became a sort of lion in the French capital. When he re-crossed the 
 Straits of Dover, it was to find promotion awaiting him at home. 
 For about two years he acted as Under-Secretary of State, and in 
 1769 he returned to spend the evening of his life in the beautiful 
 city of his birth, "passing rich" with 1000 a year, the result 
 of a prudent life, and the profits of his pen. For seven years 
 longer he enjoyed the best society Edinburgh could afford, and 
 then, in August 1776, he died. A journey to Bath, in the spring 
 of that fatal year, was of no avail to stop the progress of hia 
 disease. 
 
 In philosophy and in religion Hume was a sceptic. He doubted 
 jvlmost everything, and attacked the Christian faith, especially by 
 striving to cut away the foundations on which our belief in 
 miracles rests. This being so, we cannot look in his great historical 
 work for that recognition of religion as the main-spring of civiliza- 
 tion, which our Bible and our common sense alike lead us to 
 require from a true historian. Unable to resist a paradox, or a 
 strange theory, he lost his way too often in the chase of flitting, 
 unsubstantial meteors. In his system of morality he traces the 
 goodness and badness of human actions or motives altogether to 
 considerations of utility. These things take much from his lustre 
 as an ornament of English literature. 
 
328 SPECIMEN OF HUME'S PROSE. 
 
 DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 
 
 She rejected all consolation ; she even refused food and sustenance ; and, 
 throwing herself on the floor, she remained sullen and immovable, feeding her 
 thoughts on her afflictions, and declaiing life and existence an insufferable 
 burden to her. Few words she uttered ; and they were all expressive of some 
 inward grief, which she cared not to reveal : but sighs and groans were the chief 
 vent which she gave to her despondency, and which, though they discovered her 
 sorrows, were never able to ease or assuage them. Ten days and nights she lay 
 upon the carpet, leaning on cushions winch her maids brought her: and her 
 physicians could not persuade her to allow herself to be put to bed, much less 
 to make trial of any remedies which they prescribed to her. Her anxious mind 
 at last had so long preyed on her frail body, that her end was visibly approaching ; 
 and the Council being assembled, sent the keeper, admiral, and secretary, to 
 know her will with regard to her successor. She answered with a faint voice, 
 that as she had held a regal sceptre, she desired no other than a royal successor. 
 Cecil requesting her to explain herself more particularly, she subjoined that she 
 would have a king to succeed her ; and who should that be but her nearest kina- 
 man, the king of Scots ? Being then advised by the archbishop of Canterbury to 
 fix her thoughts upon God, she replied that she did so, nor did her mind in the 
 least wander from him. Her voice soon after left her ; her senses failed ; she 
 fell into a lethargic slumber, which continued some hours, and she expired gently, 
 without further struggle or convulsion (March 24, 1603), in the seventieth year 
 of her age and forty-fifth of her reign. 
 
A COUNTRY MINISTER, 329 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WILLIAM ROBERTSON. 
 
 Born 1721 A.D Died 1793 A.D. 
 
 Birth and education. 
 The country minister. 
 Professional success. 
 Removal to Edinburgh. 
 History of Scotland. 
 
 Mary Stuart. 
 History of Charles V. 
 Historic style. 
 History of America. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 SECOND, in date of birth, of the illustrious historic triad that 
 graced the eighteenth century, was William Robertson, the son of 
 a Scottish clergyman. Born at Borthwick, in Mid-Lothian, in 
 the year 1721, he studied for the profession of his father; and at 
 the age of twenty-two was presented to the living of Gladsmuir, 
 in Haddingtonshire. 
 
 The quietude of his country manse was broken by few incidents, 
 annual visits to the General Assembly at Edinburgh being, per- 
 haps, the greatest events of the young minister's life. But the 
 completion of every week's sermon left his pen trained to greatel 
 skill in the weaving of eloquent and dignified English sentences ; 
 and every new book, which the weekly carrier brought .to the 
 moorland manse from some dim old shop in the High Street of 
 the metropolis, widened his views of society and civilization. In 
 his country retirement history became his favourite study. Most 
 ministers in his sphere are content with their pulpit-work, and 
 their round of farm-house visits, travelling beyond the literary 
 work required for their professional duty only to pen an occa- 
 sional letter to the newspapers, or to prepare for a telling appear- 
 ance, when summer calls the great Church Court into session. But 
 Robertson was not content with this. He preached, and visited, 
 and spoke admirably upon the great questions which in his day 
 came to be debated in the General Assembly; but while he did 
 these well, his leisure hours were devoted to building up a kind of 
 reputation which these could never build. The Rev. William 
 
330 ROBERTSON'S "HISTORY OF SCOTLAND." 
 
 Robertson, a distinguished minister of the Scottish Church, would 
 probably long ago have been forgotten, or, at least, only con- 
 founded with all the other Robertsons that have donned the 
 pulpit-gown; but the name of William Robertson, the historian 
 of Scotland, of Germany, and of America, cannot perish from the 
 annals of our literature, while history is read by Englishmen. 
 
 In 1758 the country pastor, whose "Recreations" took a shape 
 so noble and enduring, was promoted to Lady Tester's Church in 
 
 Edinburgh. And. in the following year, the reading 
 
 1759 public especially the literary men of London were 
 
 A.D. electrified by the appearance of A History of Scotland 
 
 from this unknown minister's pen. Dealing with the 
 reigns of Mary Stuart and her son, down to the accession of the 
 latter to the English throne, he described, in pure, pathetic, and 
 dignified language, the sorrows of that wretched Scotchwoman 
 with a French soul, who saw so little of Holyrood and so much 
 of English jails. He stands midway between those who believe 
 her to have been a beautiful martyr, and those who brand her as 
 a beautiful criminal. Agreeing with all writers as to the great 
 loveliness of this beheaded Scottish queen, he considers that the 
 intensity and long continuance of the sorrows, darkening over her 
 whole life until the bloody catastrophe of Fotheringay, have 
 blinded us to her faults, and that we therefore " approve of our 
 tears, as if they were shed for a person who had attained much 
 nearer to pure virtue." 
 
 The minister of Lady Tester's became, in three years after the 
 publication of this book, Principal of the University of Edinburgh; 
 and soon received a striking mark of royal approval in his appoint- 
 ment as historiographer for Scotland. Not content to rest on the 
 fame he had won, he pushed on to higher ground. His greatest 
 
 work, the History of Charles the Fifth of Germany, was 
 
 1769 published in 17 69, ten years after the appearance of L is first 
 
 A.D. production. A rapid view of European politics and society 
 
 previous to the accession of the great Emperor, precedes 
 the story of the reign, which is narrated in clear, majestic English. 
 The materials from which Robertson drew his account of this 
 
ROBERTSON'S HISTORICAL STYLE. 331 
 
 great central epoch of European history, have, since the day he 
 wrote, been tested, and sifted, and rearranged, with all the valu- 
 able additions that time has brought. And while his great 
 History still remains a standard work, valuable supplements stand 
 beside it in our libraries, from which a new light shines on many 
 portions of the character and reign of Charles the Fifth. The re- 
 searches of Prescott the American historian, and Stirling of Keir, 
 the latter of whom wrote "The Cloister Life of Charles V.," give us 
 another notion of the man Charles than we get from the purple 
 and gold of Robertson's portraiture. 
 
 The fault of this great historian was one common to the chief 
 writers of his time. Filled with an exaggerated idea of the dignity 
 of history, he trembles at the thought of descending to so mean a 
 thing as daily life. The Emperor moves before us in all his 
 grandeur, the rich velvet of his train sweeping in stately waves 
 upon the marble that he treads. We know many of the laws he 
 made, the wars he waged, the great public assemblies and pa- 
 geants of which he was the brilliant central figure; but we know 
 little of the man who dwelt within the gorgeous wrappings, for 
 we see him as if on a lofty terrace, where he plays his magnificent 
 part, while we stand far away at the foot of the stairs, humble 
 spectators of the imperial drama. Of the many-hued life the 
 people lived, we hear next to nothing. Such a treatment of 
 history may be termed the statuesque, as contrasted with the 
 picturesque pages of a writer like Macaulay. Stateliness and 
 elegance are the characteristic features of Robertson's style ; but, 
 inseparable from these, we find a cold sameness and want of 
 colour. He walks a minuet with the historic Muse ; who, according 
 to his notion of her, is a lady used only to the very best society, 
 dressed in the perfection of the mode, her complexion heightened 
 with the faintest brush of rouge, and withal too stately and 
 precise in her manners and her gait to be charged with such crimes 
 as naturalness or ease. 
 
 Eight years passed before his third great work TJie History of 
 America appeared. The story of Columbus fascinated his pen ; 
 and nowhere, perhaps, have we a finer specimen of stately narra- 
 
332 DEATU OF EOBEETSON. 
 
 tive than we possess in his description of the great first voyage 
 of the Italian sailor, and his landing on the new-found western 
 soil. 
 
 A year or two before his death, which occurred in 1793, at the 
 Grange House, near Edinburgh, he published an Essay on tlie 
 Earlier History of India; which, however, was founded on sources 
 not always reliable or safe. This, indeed, is a fault more or less 
 pervading all his works. Like Hume, he often adopted second- 
 hand statements, without looking carefully into the evidence on 
 which they rested ; and even the grand march of a stately style can 
 sometimes scarcely reconcile us to accept as history a narrative, of 
 whose facts we are not sure, and whose descriptive passages may 
 probably be, for aught we know, coloured with brighter than the 
 natural tints, for the mere sake of rhetorical effect. 
 
 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 
 
 About two hours before midnight, Columbus, standing on the forecastle, 
 observed a light at a distance, and privately pointed it out to Pedro Guttierez, 
 a page of the queen's wardrobe. Guttierez perceived it, and calling to Salcedo, 
 comptroller of the fleet, all three saw it in motion, as if it were carried from 
 place to place. A little after midnight, the joyful sound of " Land ! land 1 " was 
 heard from the Pinta, which kept always ahead of the other ships. But having 
 been so often deceived by fallacious appearances, every man was now become 
 slow of belief, and waited in all the anguish of uncertainty and impatience for 
 the return of day. As soon as morning dawned, all doubts and fears were dis- 
 pelled. From every ship an island was seen about two leagues to the north, 
 whose flat and verdant fields, well stored with wood, and watered with many 
 rivulets, presented the aspect of a delightful country. The crew of the Pinta 
 instantly began the Te Deum, as a hymn of thanksgiving to God, and were 
 joined by those of the other ships with tears of joy and transports of congratu- 
 lation. This office of gratitude to Heaven was followed by an act of justice 
 to their commander. They threw themselves at the feet of Columbus, with 
 feelings of self-condemnation, mingled with reverence. They implored him to 
 pardon their ignorance, incredulity, and insolence, which had created him so 
 much unnecessary disquiet, and had so often obstructed the prosecution of his 
 well-concerted plan ; and passing, in the warmth of their admiration, from one 
 extreme to another, they now pronounced the man whom they had so lately reviled 
 and threatened, to be a person inspired by Heaven with sagacity and fortitude more 
 than human, in order to accomplish a design so far beyond the ideas and concep- 
 tion of former ages. 
 
 As soon as the sun arose, all their boats were manned and armed. They rowed 
 
SPECIMEN OF ROBERTSON'S PROSE. 333 
 
 towards the island with their colours displayed, with warlike music, and other 
 martial pomp. As they approached the coast, they saw it covered with a multi- 
 tude of people, whom the novelty of the spectacle had drawn together, whose 
 attitudes and gestures expressed wonder and astonishment at the strange objects 
 which presented themselves to their view. Columbus was the first European 
 who set foot on the New World which he had discovered. He landed in a rich 
 dress, and with a naked sword in his hand. His men followed, and, kneeling 
 down, they all kissed the ground which they had so long desired to see. They 
 next erected a crucifix, and prostrating themselves before it, returned thanks to 
 (rod for conducting their voyage to such a happy issue. They then took solemn 
 possession of the country for the crown of Castile and Leon, with all the for- 
 malities which the Portuguese were accustomed to observe in acts of this kind 
 in their new discoveries. 
 
334 
 
 BOYHOOD OF GOLDSMITH. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 
 
 Born 1728 A.D Died 1774 A.D. 
 
 A gentle heart. 
 Oliver at school. 
 The sizar of Trinity. 
 The medical student. 
 A twelvemonth's walk. 
 
 London struggles. 
 Green Arbour Court. 
 Citizen of the World. 
 Vicar of Wakefield. 
 The Traveller. 
 
 Brick Court 
 
 The Deserted Village 
 
 Retaliation. 
 
 His death. 
 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 BUFFON'S well-known saying, "Le style est Vhomme" is by no man 
 better illustrated than by Oliver Goldsmith. A guileless good- 
 nature, a kind and tender love for all his human brotherhood, 
 a gay, unthinking hopefulness, shine clearly out from every page 
 he wrote. The latter half of his short life of forty-five years was 
 spent in a continuous struggle for daily bread ; his earlier years 
 were full of change and hardship. Yet sneers and buffets, drudgery 
 and debt, had no power to curdle the milk of human kindness 
 in this gentle heart. 
 
 Charles Goldsmith, a Protestant clergyman, was trying to live on 
 40 a year at the little village of Pallas or Pallasmore, in the county 
 of Longford, when in 1728 his famous son Oliver was born. Be- 
 fore the child was two years old, the living of Kilkenny West, worth 
 nearly 200 a year, rewarded this good parson for his virtues and 
 liis toils ; and the family in consequence removed to a commodious 
 house at Lissoy, in the county of Westmeath. Here little Oliver grew 
 up, went to the village school, and had a severe attack of small- 
 pox, which left deep pits in his poor face. When he went to 
 higher schools, at Elphin, Athlone, and Edgeworthstown, the thick, 
 awkward, pale, and pock-marked boy was knocked about and 
 made fun of by his cruel seniors, until the butt began to retort 
 sharp arrowy wit upon those who sneered at his ugly face or 
 uncouth movements. 
 
 In 1745 he passed the sizarship examination at Trinity Col- 
 
GOLDSMITH'S STUDENT-LIFE. 335 
 
 lege, Dublin, being placed last on the list of the eight successful 
 candidates. The sizar of those days, marked by a coarse black 
 sleeveless gown and a red cap, had to do much servile work 
 sweeping the courts, carrying the dishes up from the college 
 kitchen, and waiting upon the Fellows as they dined. The kind- 
 ness of his uncle Contarine, who had paid most of his school bills, 
 followed him to college too ; but even with this aid, when the 
 Reverend Charles Goldsmith died in 1747, his son Oliver was 
 left not far from starvation in the top room of No. 35. Here we 
 detect his first literary performances. Writing street-ballads for 
 five shillings apiece, he used to steal out at night to hear them 
 sung and watch their ready sale in the dimly lighted streets. 
 Here, too, we see the early symptoms of that benevolence, which 
 was almost a mental disease, for it was seldom that the five shillings 
 came home with the hungry student, some of the hard-earned 
 money had gone to the beggars he had met upon the way. Hated 
 and discouraged by his tutor, he grew idler than ever, took his full 
 share in the ducking of a bailiff, tried for a scholarship, and 
 failed, was knocked down by his tutor, ran away, was 
 brought back to college by his brother, took a very low 1749 
 B.A. in 1749, and then went home to his mother's little A.D. 
 cottage at Ballymahon for two years. 
 
 We cannot trace minutely his attempts to be a tutor, a clergy- 
 man, a lawyer, a physician. During his stay in Edinburgh, 
 whither he went in 1752 to study medicine, his name was better 
 known among his fellow-students as a good story-teller, and one 
 who sang a capital Irish song, than for any distinctions he won in 
 the class-rooms of the professors. His two winters in the Scottish 
 capital were followed by a winter at Leyden, where he lived chiefly 
 by teaching English. One day, after spending nearly all the money 
 he had just borrowed from a friend, in buying a parcel of rare 
 tulip-roots for his uncle Contarine, he left Leyden "with a guinea 
 in his pocket, but one shirt to his back, and a flute in his 
 hand," to make the grand tour of Europe, and seek for his medical 
 degree. 
 
 Between February 1755 and February 1756 he travelled 
 
336 STRUGGLES FOR BREAD. 
 
 through Flanders, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy very 
 often trudging all day on foot, and at night playing merry times 
 on his flute before a peasant's cottage, in the hope of a supper and a 
 bed for a time acting as companion or governor to the rich young 
 nephew of a pawnbroker and in Italy winning a shelter, a little 
 money, and a plate of macaroni by disputing in the Universities. 
 His degree of M.B., on which his claim to be called Doctor Gold- 
 smith rests, was probably received during these wanderings either 
 at Louvain or at Padua. No one can regret this twelvemonth's 
 walk, who has read The Traveller, or those chapters in the Vicar 
 of Wakefield which depict the career of a Philosophic Vaga- 
 bond. 
 
 And then began that struggle in the troubled waters of Lon- 
 don life, which closed only when the struggler lay coffined in 
 Brick Court. Before he settled down to the precarious work of 
 making a livelihood by his pen, he made a desperate attempt to 
 gain a footing in his own profession. In a shop on Fish Street 
 Hill he worked for a while with mortar and pestle as an apothe- 
 cary's drudge. He then commenced practice among the poor of 
 Southwark ; a scene of his life during which we catch two glimpses 
 of his little figure, once, in faded green and gold, talking to an 
 old school-fellow in the street; and again, in rusty black velvet, 
 with second-hand cane and wig, concealing a great patch in his 
 coat by pressing his old hat fashionably against his side, while 
 he resists the efforts of his poor patient to relieve him of the 
 encumbrance. In the printing-office of Richardson the novelist 
 he was for a tune reader and corrector to the press ; and he was after- 
 wards usher in Dr. Milner's school at Peckham, a position in which 
 
 he was far from being happy. One day Griffiths the book- 
 
 1757 seller, dining at Milner's, proposed to give him board 
 
 A.D. and a small salary if he would write for the Monthly 
 
 Review. Accepting the offer, he contributed many papers 
 to that periodical; but he complained that the bookseller, or the 
 bookseller's old wife, tampered with every one of them. Returning 
 in a few months to the old usher-life at Dr. Milner's, he felt a 
 
 gleam of prosperity, when he received his appointment 
 
GREEN ARBOUR COURT. 337 
 
 as surgeon to a factory on the Coromandel coast ; but, for some 
 unexplained reason, this hope of permanent employment came 
 to nothing. As a last chance, he presented himself at Surgeons' 
 Hall in a suit of clothes obtained on Griffiths' security, in 
 order to pass as a surgeon's mate in the navy; but fortunately 
 for the readers of the "Vicar" and "Sweet Auburn," he was 
 plucked. This last hope broken in his eager grasp, 
 he was driven to the pen once more. His rejection at 1758 
 Surgeons' Hall may thus be viewed as marking his real A.D. 
 entrance upon the literary profession. 
 
 A garret in a miserable, tottering square, called Green Arbour 
 Court, which was approached by a flight of stone stairs, styled sugges- 
 tively " Break-Neck-Steps," had lately become his home. This dirty 
 room, furnished with a mean bed and a single wooden chair, witnessed 
 the misery of the would-be surgeon's mate on the night of his rejec- 
 tion, and saw him, thoughtless of all but burning pity, go out, four 
 days later, to pawn the clothes he had got on the bookseller's security, 
 in order to help his poor landlady, whose husband had just been 
 seized by bailiffs. There he wrote reviews and memoirs for 
 Smollett's periodical. There he was visited by Percy of the 
 " Reliques," who found him writing his first important 
 work, An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning 1759 
 in Europe. He was soon engaged to write a three-penny A.D. 
 periodical, which was to appear every Saturday under 
 the title of The See. It was a Uue book, utterly unlike the 
 ponderous tomes so called now, for it was full of wit and graceful 
 writing. But it did not take. Still the busy pen worked on. 
 " The British Magazine," edited by Smollett, was enriched with 
 several Essays by Goldsmith. Among these we find some of his most 
 charming shorter pieces ; of which the Reverie in the Boar's Head at 
 Eastcheap, and the story of the Shabby Actor, picked up in St. 
 James's Park, are oftenest read and best liked. Soon in the " Public 
 Ledger," a newly sprung paper, there appeared a series of Letters, 
 describing a Chinaman's impressions of English life, which attracted 
 considerable notice. These productions of Goldsmith's pen were 
 afterwards published in a collected form as The Citizen of the 
 (is) 22 
 
338 GOLDSMITH AND JOHNSON. 
 
 World. And if the hack of Green Arbour Court had written no 
 more than these Letters, contributed twice a week to the " Ledger" 
 for a guinea apiece, he might, as the creator of Beau Tibbs and 
 the Man in Black, claim a high place among our English classics. 
 
 The night of the 31st of May 1761 was memorable in Wine 
 Office Court, where Goldsmith then lived ; for on that night the 
 great Johnson ate his first supper at Goldsmith's table. Percy 
 brought about the meeting; and Johnson, in honour of the occa- 
 sion, as well as to disabuse his entertainer's mind of the idea 
 that he was a sloven, went through the unusual ceremonies of 
 powdering his wig and putting on clean linen. 
 
 Another visit from Johnson to Goldsmith, in the country lodging 
 at Islington, where the latter had taken refuge from the din and 
 dinginess of Fleet Street, stands out in violent contrast to this social 
 evening. It was three years later. The little Irishman and the big 
 Englishman had grown to be firm friends. Many a Monday night at 
 seven had they shaken hands at the Turk's Head in Soho, where the 
 famous weekly suppers of the Literary Club had already 
 1764 begun. One morning in 1764 an urgent message arrived 
 A.D. from Goldsmith, begging Johnson to come to him as 
 soon as possible. Johnson sent him a guinea, and went 
 out to Islington immediately afterwards. He found that poor 
 Goldsmith had been arrested by his landlady for the rent. A 
 newly opened bottle of Madeira stood on the table, which Johnson 
 wisely corked before he began to talk of what was to be done. 
 Goldsmith producing a manuscript novel from his desk, down sat 
 his friend to look over The Vicar of Wakefidd. Struck at onco 
 with the merit of the work, Johnson went out and sold it to a 
 bookseller for sixty pounds, with which the now triumphant Gold- 
 smith discharged the debt he owed. 
 
 Fifteen months passed before an advertisement in the " St 
 James's Chronicle" announced TJie Vicar of Wakefield in two 
 duodecimo volumes. The interval between sale and publication 
 had made its author famous ; for his beautiful poem of The Traveller 
 had appeared not long after the distressful day at Islington. 
 Johnson declared that it would not be easy to find anything equal 
 
339 
 
 to it since the death of Pope. The sister of Reynolds said, after 
 hearing the poem read aloud, that she would never more think 
 Dr. Goldsmith ugly. A simple saying, but very true, and very 
 natural. The world has indorsed the utterance of that fussy, middle- 
 aged lady. The bull-dog face, with its rugged skin, and coarse, 
 blunt features, shines with a beauty from within, above all loveli- 
 ness of flesh and blood, as we close the pages of " The Traveller," 
 " The Deserted Village," or " The Vicar of Wakefield," and think of 
 the little man who wrote these works. We forget that he delighted 
 to array his small person in sky-blue and bloom-coloured coats, and 
 to exhibit himself, as if pinned through with a long sword, in 
 the glittering crowds that filled the gardens at Vauxhall; or, if 
 we remember these things, it is only to smile good-naturedly at 
 the weakness of a great man. The Vicar of Wakefield needs no 
 description. An exquisite naturalness is its prevailing charm. 
 No bad man could write a book so full of the soft sunshine and 
 tender beauty of domestic life, so sweetly wrought out of the 
 gentle recollections of the old home at Lissoy. It was coloured 
 with the hues of childhood's memory; and the central figure in 
 the group of shadows from the past, that came to cheer the poor 
 London author in his lonely garret, was the image of his dead 
 father. " For," says John Forster in his Life of Goldsmith, not 
 more truly than beautifully, " they who have loved, laughed, and 
 wept with the Man in Black of the Citizen of the World, the 
 Preacher of the Deserted Village, and Doctor Primrose in the Vicar 
 of Wakefield, have given laughter, love, and tears to the Pteverend 
 Charles Goldsmith." 
 
 Still the busy pen worked on, for the wolf was always at the 
 door. Among the minor tasks of the quondam usher we find an 
 English Grammar, written for five guineas ; and in later days some 
 Sclwol Histories, abridgments of his larger volumes. But more 
 famous works claim our notice. 
 
 His comedy of The Good-Natured Man, acted in 1768, brought 
 him nearly .500 ; which, with the true Grub Street impro- 
 vidence, he scattered to the winds at once. He bought 1768 
 those chambers in Brick Court, Middle Temple, where A.D. 
 
340 
 
 the last act of his life-drama was played out. He furnished them 
 in mahogany and blue moreen. He gave frequent dinners and 
 suppers, startling all the quiet barristers round him with noisy 
 games at blind-man's buff and the choruses of jovial songs. He 
 was constantly in society with Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds, 
 and lived far beyond his means. 
 
 In May 1770 appeared his finest poem, The Deserted Village. 
 
 Before August closed, a fifth edition was nearly ex- 
 
 1770 hausted. The village, "sweet Auburn," whose present 
 
 A.D. desolation strikes the heart more painfully from the lovely 
 
 pictures of vanished joy the poet sets before us, was that 
 hamlet of Lissoy where his boyhood had been spent. The soft 
 features of the landscape, the evening sports of the village train, 
 the various noises of life rising from the cottage homes, the 
 meek and earnest country preacher, the buzzing school, the 
 white-washed ale-house, attract by turns our admiration as we 
 read this exquisite poem. And not least touching is this yearning 
 utterance, spoken from the literary toiler's deep and solitary heart : 
 
 In all my wanderings round this world of care, 
 In all my griefs and God has given my shard- 
 I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, 
 Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; 
 To husband out life's taper at the close, 
 And keep the flame from wasting by repose : 
 I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 
 Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill, 
 Around my fire an evening group to draw, 
 And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ; 
 And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue, 
 Pants to the place from whence at first he flew, 
 I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
 Here to return and die at home at last. 
 
 The emphatic words of poor dying Gray, who heard " The De- 
 serted Village" read at Malvern, where he spent his last summer in 
 a vain search for health, must be echoed by every feeling heart, 
 " That man is a poet." 
 
 Debt now had Goldsmith fast in its terrible talons. He worked 
 on, but was forced to trade upon his future, to draw heavy ad- 
 
DEATH OP GOLDSMITH. 341 
 
 vances from his booksellers in order to meet the pressing wants of 
 the hour. He undertook a History of England, in four volumes ; a 
 History of the Earth and Animated Nature, largely a translation from 
 Buffon ; Histories of Greece and Rome ; and wrote a second successful 
 comedy, She /Stoops to Conquer, which was first acted in 1773. 
 
 The last flash of his genius was the short poem, Retaliation, 
 written in reply to some jibing epitaphs, which were composed on 
 him by the company met one day at dinner in the St. James's 
 Coffee-house. Garrick's couplet ran thus : 
 
 " Here lies poet Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll, 
 Who wrote like on angel, but talked like poor roll." 
 
 And certainly in the reply poor Garrick suffers for his unkindness ; 
 for never with so light but so perfect a touch was the skin peeled 
 from any character. 
 
 With hands yet full of unfinished work, Goldsmith lay down to 
 die. An old illness seized him. Low fever set in. He took 
 powders against the advice of his doctors, and died, after nine 
 clays' sickness, on the 4th of April 1774. "Is your 
 mind at ease?" asked the doctor by his bed-side. " No, 1774 
 it is not," was the sad reply. At last the spendthrift author A.D. 
 had lost " his knack of hoping," as he used to call the un- 
 thinking joy ousness of his nature. His debts and the memory of his 
 reckless life cast heavy shadows on his dying bed. In the spirit 
 of that sublime prayer, which we learn to say at our mother's 
 knee in the season of life when, in truth, " we take no thought 
 for the morrow/' let us hope that the gentle, thoughtless, erring 
 nature, which gave and forgave so much on earth, found in Heaven 
 that mercy which every human spirit needs. 
 
 THE FAMILY PICTURE. 
 
 (FROM "THE VICAK OP WAKEFIELD. ") 
 
 My wife and daughters, happening to return a visit at neighbour Flamborough's, 
 found that family had lately got their pictures drawn by a limner, who travelled 
 the country, and took likenesses for fifteen shillings a head. As this family and 
 ours had long a sort of rivalry in point of taste, our spirit took the alarm at this 
 stolen march upon us, and, notwithstanding all I could say, and I said much, it 
 was resolve! that we should have our pictures done too. Having, therefore, 
 
342 SPECIMEN OF GOLDSMITH'S PROSE. 
 
 engaged the limner, (for what could I do?) our next deliberation was to show 
 the superiority of our taste in the attitudes. As for our neighbour's family, 
 there were seven of them, and they were drawn with seven oranges, a thing 
 quite out of taste, no variety in life, no composition in the world. We desired 
 to have something in a brighter style, and, after many debates, at length came a 
 unanimous resolution of being drawn together, in one large historical family- 
 piece. This would be cheaper, since one frame would serve for all ; and it would 
 be infinitely more genteel, for all families of any taste were now drawn in the 
 same manner. As we did not immediately recollect an historical subject to hit 
 us, we were contented each with being drawn as independent historical figures. 
 My wife desired to be represented as Venus ; and the painter was requested not 
 to be too frugal of his diamonds in her stomacher and hair. Her two little ones 
 were to be as Cupids by her side ; while I, in my gown and bands, was to pre- 
 sent her with my books on the Whistonian Controversy. Olivia would be drawn 
 as an Amazon, sitting upon a bank of flowers, dressed in a green Joseph, richly 
 laced with gold, and a whip in her hand. Sophia was to be a shepherdess, 
 with as many sheep as the painter could put in for nothing ; and Moses was to 
 be dressed out with a hat and white feather. 
 
 Our taste so much pleased the squire, that he insisted on being put in as one 
 of the family, in the character of Alexander the Great at Olivia's feet. This 
 was considered by us all as an indication of his desire to be introduced into the 
 family, nor could we refuse his request. The painter was therefore set to work, 
 and, as he wrought with assiduity and expedition, in less than four days the 
 whole was completed. The piece was large, and it must be owned he did not 
 spare his colours ; for which my wife gave him great encomiums. We were all 
 perfectly satisfied with his performance; but an unfortunate circumstance, which 
 had not occurred till the picture was finished, now struck us with dismay. It 
 was so very large that we had no place in the house to fix it ! How we all came 
 to disregard so material a point is inconceivable; but certain it is we had all 
 been greatly remiss. This picture, therefore, instead of gratifying our vanity, 
 as we hoped, leaned in a most mortifying manner against the kitchen wall, 
 where the canvas was stretched and painted, much too large to be got through 
 any of the doors, and the jest of all our neighbours. One compared it to Robin- 
 son Crusoe's long-boat, too large to be removed; another thought it more 
 resembled a reel in a bottle ; some wondered how it could be got out, but still 
 more were amazed how it ever got in. 
 
A PICTURE OF JOHNSON. 343 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 Born 1709 A.D Died 1784 A.D. 
 
 Picture of Johnson. 
 Birth and education. 
 Struggles of his youth. 
 Starts for London. 
 A bookseller's hack. 
 
 Rambler and Idler. 
 The Dictionary. 
 Rasselas. 
 The pension. 
 James BoswelL 
 
 Life of Johnson. 
 Lives of the Poets. 
 His last years. 
 His style. 
 Letter to Chesterfield. 
 
 A HUGE and slovenly figure, clad in a greasy brown coat and coarse 
 black worsted stockings, wearing a grey wig with scorched f oretop, 
 rolls in his arm-chair long past midnight, holding in a dirty hand 
 his nineteenth cup of tea. As he pauses to utter one of his ter- 
 rible growls of argument, or rather of dogmatic assertion, com- 
 mencing invariably with a thunderous " Sir," we have leisure to 
 note the bitten nails, the scars of king's evil that mark his swollen 
 face, and the convulsive workings of the muscles round mouth 
 and eyes, which accompany the puffs and snorts foreboding a 
 coming storm of ponderous English talk. Such was the famous 
 Doctor Samuel Johnson in his old age, when he had climbed from 
 the most squalid cellars of Grub Street to the dictatorial throne 
 of English criticism such the man who wrote Rasselas and 
 London, who compiled the great English Dictionary, and com- 
 posed the majestically moral pages of the Rambler. 
 
 This celebrated son of a poor man, who used to spread his little 
 book- stall on market-day in Lichfield to tempt the louts of 
 Staffordshire, was born in that town on the 18th of September 1709. 
 From infancy the child struggled with constitutional disease, 
 which weakened his eyes and left indelible seams across his little 
 face. The father gave his poor afflicted boy all he could a liberal 
 education ; and upon this foundation the best for fame that can 
 ever be laid the work of a great and noble lifetime began to rise. 
 
 Slowly, obscurely, and with many heavy falls, did the ill- 
 
344 SETS OUT FOR LONDON. 
 
 dressed, ugly, clumsy youth begin to take his first steps towards the 
 kingship of English letterdom. Having received his elementary edu- 
 cation chiefly at Stourbridge, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford. 
 But his dying father could spare no more money to the lad, so 
 a degree could not be taken then. He must wait until he has 
 earned a higher title with his pen. One terrible foe, with which 
 poor Johnson had to battle through all his life, must not be for- 
 gotten, when we strive to estimate the greatness of his triumph 
 over circumstances. Fits of morbid melancholy often seized him, 
 which, as he says, " kept him mad half his life." Penniless, dis- 
 eased, ill-favoured, but half educated, and touched with terrible 
 
 insanity, the youth of twenty-two stood on the threshold 
 
 1731 of the mean house, within which his father lay dead, 
 
 A.D. looking out upon a world, that seemed all cold and bare 
 
 and friendless to his gaze. No wonder that his earlier 
 portrait shows a thin cheek and saddened brow, with lines of 
 suffering already round the wasted lips. 
 
 Trudging on foot to Market Bos worth in Leicestershire, he 
 became usher in a school. It would not do; by natural tem- 
 perament he was totally unfitted for the work. We then find him 
 translating for a bookseller in Birmingham ; and after a while mar- 
 rying a Mrs. Porter, the widow of a mercer there, who had 800.'* 
 With this money he attempted to start a school of his own near 
 Lichfield ; but he could not gather pupils enough to pay the rent 
 
 and keep his wife in comfort. So, packing up his little 
 
 1736 stock of clothes and books, he set out in March 1736 for 
 
 A.D. London, accompanied by a former pupil, fresh-coloured, 
 
 good-humoured, little Davy Garrick, who was going up to 
 study law in Lincoln's Inn, but in whose brain the foot-lights were 
 already shining far more brightly than briefs or pleadings at the 
 bar. It was just as well for the theatre-going folks of England 
 that the little Huguenot's head did not become a wig-block, on 
 which to air a covering of grey horse-hair. 
 
 So up to London went the dapper pupil and his great hulking 
 
 * Mrs. Johnson died on the 17th of March 1752, to the deep and lasting grief of her 
 buiband, and was buried at Bromley. 
 
BEGINNING TO BE FAMOUS. 345 
 
 master; and there they parted, to meet occasionally, but each to 
 go his several way. And Johnson's was a hard and perilous path. 
 We have already given a picture of literary life in those days. 
 The worst miseries of such a life were endured by Johnson. For 
 six-and-twenty years the pen scarcely ever left his hand. How 
 often he and Savage wandered foot-sore all night through the streets 
 of London, unable to hire the meanest shelter ; how often they spent 
 their last penny on a little loaf, which they tore with wolfish teeth, 
 we cannot tell. But we know that miseries like these were commonly 
 endured by men of letters in Johnson's day, and that he had his 
 full share of such bitterness and want. It was for Cave the 
 bookseller that he chiefly drudged, enriching the "Gentleman's 
 Magazine " with articles of various kinds. His poem London, a 
 satire in imitation of Juvenal, laid the foundation of his literary 
 fame, by establishing him in the good graces of the booksellers. 
 For this work Dodsley gave him ten guineas. A Life of Savage 
 (1744) was followed by a second satire in Juvenal's manner, The 
 Vanity of Human Wishes (1749); but these are only the most 
 notable works in a vast crowd of minor writings, which occupied 
 the days and nights of these busy years. His tragedy of Irene, 
 begun in his teaching days, was brought upon the stage in 1749; 
 but it failed to hold its ground. 
 
 Johnson's name is inseparably associated with the Rambler, a 
 periodical of the "Spectator" class, which appeared twice a week 
 between March 1750 and March 1752. Only four of the papers 
 proceeded from other pens. There was some strange sympathy 
 between the bulky frame of the essayist and the ponderous words 
 that came from his ink-bottle ; and in the pages of the " Rambler " 
 there is certainly much of wordy weight. He reappeared as an 
 essayist, after the lapse of six years, in a lighter periodical called 
 the Idler, which ran to 103 numbers, closing with its last sheet 
 the chequered list of single-article serials, which had opened with 
 the " Tatler's" pleasant talk. 
 
 While writing for the " Rambler," and for some years before the 
 starting of that heavy serial, Johnson had been steadily at work 
 Upon his Dictionary of tlie English Language. There was no such 
 
34G " THE DICTIONARY" AND " RASSELAS." 
 
 work in English literature ; and wlien Johnson undertook to finish 
 the herculean labour in three years, he had but a slight notion oi 
 the toil that lay before him. He was to receive for the completed 
 work 1575; a comparatively small sum when we recollect that it 
 took him seven years to bring his labour to a close, and that he had 
 to pay several copyists, who sat in his house in Gough Square, 
 in a room fitted up like a lawyer's office, working away at the slips 
 of paper on which the various words, definitions, and quotations 
 were jotted down roughly by the great lexicographer himself. The 
 name we have just used sounded sweet to the ear of classical John- 
 son, who was never so happy as when piling these huge blocks of 
 antiquity into English sentences. The "Dictionary" was a great 
 work, but necessarily imperfect In etymology it is very defective ; 
 for of those Teutonic languages from which come three-fifths of 
 our English, he knew next to nothing. 
 
 When Johnson's mother died, he devoted the nights of a single 
 week to the composition of a book, which paid the 
 1759 expenses of her funeral This was Easselas, a tale of 
 A.D. Abyssinia, in which much solid morality is incul- 
 cated in language of " a long resounding march." But 
 there is no attempt on the part of the author to identify himself 
 with Oriental modes of thought. The Jieik and burnoos of the 
 Eastern prince and philosopher cannot conceal the old brown coat 
 and worsted stockings of the pompous English moralist. The 
 grey wig peeps from below the turban. In a word, Johnson talks 
 at us throughout the entire book ; he talks sensibly and well, but 
 we cannot believe in the thin disguise of tawny cheek and mus- 
 lin robes. If we could imagine Johnson " doing" the Nile, as 
 modern English travellers are apt to call their boating up that 
 noble river ; and for a freak, donning the native dress, and staining 
 his cheeks with the printers' ink of which he knew so much; we 
 might be able, perhaps, to conceive how such grand declamations, 
 as certain paragraphs we know of in Rasselas, came to be spoken 
 among the lotuses and river-horses of the African highlands. 
 
 The great turning-point of Johnson's life, at which he cornea 
 out from darkness, or at least from dim twilight, into bright and 
 
BOSWELL'S " LIFE OP JOFHSON." 347 
 
 steady light, is that May day in 1762 on which he received the happy 
 news that the king had conferred on him a pension of 300 
 a year. Thenceforward he wrote less, but talked con- 1762 
 tinually. We know all about the Johnson of this later A.D. 
 period. The Johnson who starved with Savage, is a dim 
 shadow; but the burly Doctor who lived in Bolt Court, and 
 thought no English or Scottish landscape at all comparable to the 
 mud-splashed pavement and soot-stained houses of Fleet Street, 
 is almost a living reality, with whom any evening we please we 
 may sit for hours to hear him talk. We know even how he ate 
 his dinner with flushed face and the veins swollen on his broad 
 forehead. We know that he puffed, and grunted, and contradicted 
 everybody, reviling as fools, and blockheads, and barren rascals 
 all who dared to differ from his Literary Highness. We know that 
 he had secret stores of orange-peel, hoarded we know not why 
 and that he never was happy unless he had touched every post he 
 passed in the streets, when walking to and from his house. We 
 know that he bore marks of scrofula, and was troubled with St. 
 Vitus's dance. And we know that he sheltered with unchanging 
 kindness in his house a peevish old doctor, a blind old woman, 
 and a negro, with some of whom it was often hard to bear. We 
 know no other author as this old man is known. For in 1763 he 
 became acquainted with James Boswell, Esquire, a Scottish advo- 
 cate of shallow brain but imperturbable conceit, the thickness of 
 whose mental skin enabled him to enjoy the great Englishman's 
 society, in spite of sneers and insults hurled by day and night at 
 his empty head. Not a perfect vacuum, however, was that head ; 
 for one fixed idea possessed it admiration of Samuel Johnson, 
 and the resolve to lose no words that fell from his idolized lips. 
 Nearly every night when Boswell went home he wrote out what 
 he remembered of the evening's talk; and these notes grew ulti- 
 mately into his great Life of Johnson. To this fussy, foolish man, 
 the but and buffoon of the distinguished society into which he 
 had pushed himself, we owe a book which is justly held to be the 
 best biography in the English language. Of other men, whose 
 lives have been written, we possess pictures ; of Johnson we have 
 
348 
 
 a photograph, accurate in every line and descending to the 
 minutest details of his person and his habits. Having spoken 
 thus far of the man, we shall shortly sum up the chief events of 
 his closing life, and leave the full story to be gathered from the 
 pages of BoswelTs marvellous book. 
 
 His degree of LL.D., conferred in 1765 by the University of 
 Dublin, was confirmed some years later by his own Alma Mater. 
 In 1765 he published his edition of Shakspere, the preface to 
 which is one of the best specimens of his prose we have. In the 
 autumn of 1773 he made a tour through eastern Scotland and the 
 Hebrides ; and from his Letters to Mrs. Thrale he afterwards con- 
 structed his Journey to tJie Hebi4dcs. In 1775 he visited Paris. 
 
 The Lives of tJie Poets, finished in 1781, formed the last of his 
 important works. " Beginning with Cowley, he writes of the lead- 
 ing poets down to his own day. His unfair view of Milton has been 
 already noticed. In truth, Johnson seems never to have felt the full 
 meaning of the word " poet." He was himself a master of pentameter 
 rhymes, smooth, lofty, full-sounding; and we strongly suspect that 
 the skilful manufacture of such appeared to him the highest flight 
 of poetic genius. If he had any poetic fancy at all, it must have been 
 of the clumsiest and palest kind, grey with London smoke and 
 smothered in Latin polysyllables. Let no young reader take his 
 knowledge of the English poets from Johnson's Lives, if he would 
 know the true proportions of our bards. Some of his dwarfs are 
 giants; many of his giants have dwindled into dwarfs. 
 
 Burke, Garrick, Gibbon, Reynolds, Goldsmith, and many others 
 of the first men in London, were the constant associates of great 
 King Samuel. Of these, Garrick was the only man who had known 
 him almost from the first. The Tlirales a rich brewer and his 
 wife opened their hospitable house to the Doctor in his declining 
 years. Streatham became more his home than the lonely cham- 
 bers in Bolt Court. Here he drank countless cups of tea, had 
 his friends from London out to see him, and was, in fact, a second 
 master of the house. But the end was creeping on. One friend after 
 another dropped into the grave. And after two years of compli- 
 cated disorders paralysis, dropsy, asthma, and the old melancholy 
 
>r 
 
 JOHNSON'S ENGLISH STYLE. 349 
 
 V . 
 
 < lie joined the company of illustrious dead that sleq> in silence 
 under the stones of Westminster Abbey. On Monday the 1 3th 
 of December 1784 his last breath was drawn, at his own house in 
 London. 
 
 Dr. Johnson's English style demands a few words. So peculiar 
 is it, and such a swarm of imitators grew up during the half century 
 of his greatest fame, that a special name Johnsonese has been 
 often used to denote the march of its ponderous classic words. Yet 
 it was not original, and not a many -toned style. There were in our 
 literature, earli er than Dr. Johnson's day, writers who far outdid their 
 Fleet Street disciple in recruiting our native ranks with heavy-armed 
 warriors from the Greek phalanx and the Latin legion. Of these 
 writers Sir Thomas Browne was perhaps the chief. Goldy, as the great 
 Samuel loved to call the author of the " Deserted Village," got many 
 a sore blow from the Doctor's conversational sledge-hammer ; but 
 he certainly contrived to get within the Doctor's guard and hit him 
 home, when he said, " If you were to write a fable about little fislies, 
 Doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like ivliales" Macaulay 
 tells us that when Johnson wrote for publication, he did his 
 sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His Letters from the 
 Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work, of which the 
 " Journey to the Hebrides " is a translation ; and it is amusing to 
 compare the two versions. " When we were taken up stairs," 
 says he in one of his letters, " a dirty fellow bounced out of the 
 bed on which one of us was to lie." This incident is recorded in 
 the Journey as follows : " Out of one of the beds, on which we 
 were to repose, started up, at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops 
 from the forge." Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. " The 
 Rehearsal," he said, very unjustly, " has not wit enough to keep 
 it sweet." Then, after a pause, " It has not vitality enough to 
 preserve it from putrefaction." 
 
 One of the most natural pieces of English that ever came from 
 Johnson's pen, was his letter to Lord Chesterfield, written in a 
 proud and angry mood to reject the offered patronage of that 
 nobleman. We subjoin it, in preference to heavier specimens of 
 Johnson's style. 
 
350 LETTER TO LORD CI1ESTERFIELD. 
 
 February 7th, 1754. 
 
 MY LORD, 
 
 I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of The World, that 
 two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public, were written 
 by your Lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour which, being very little 
 accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive or in what 
 terms to acknowledge. 
 
 When, with some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship, I was 
 overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address, and 
 could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself Le vainqueur du vainqueur 
 tie la terre, that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world contend- 
 ing; but I found my attendance so little encouraged that neither pride nor 
 modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your Lord- 
 ^jship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and 
 - % uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could ; and no man is well 
 pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. 
 
 Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms, 
 or was repulsed from your door ; during which time I have been pushing on my 
 work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought 
 it at last to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of 
 encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I 
 never had a patron before. The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted 
 with Love, and found him a native of the rocks. Is not a patron, my Lord, one 
 who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when 
 he has reached ground, encumbers him with help 1 
 
 The notice you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had 
 been kind ; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it ; 
 till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. 
 I hope it is no very cynical asperity, not to confess obligations when no benefit 
 has been received ; or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing 
 that to a patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. 
 
 Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of 
 learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be pos- 
 sible, with less ; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope in which 
 I once boasted myself with so much exultation, 
 
 My Lord, 
 Your Lordship's most humble, most obedient Servant, 
 
 SAM. JOHNSON. 
 
POETS OP THE SEVENTH ERA. 
 
 351 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 OTHER WRITERS OP THE SEVENTH ERA. 
 
 POET3. 
 
 James Macpherson. 
 
 Horace Walpole. 
 
 William Shenstone. 
 
 Charles Churchill. 
 
 Hugh Blair. 
 
 William Collins. 
 
 Thomas Chatterton. 
 
 Gilbert White. 
 
 Mark Akeuside. 
 
 
 Samuel Foote. 
 
 The Wartons. 
 
 PKOSE WllITKUS. 
 
 Sir William Blackstone, 
 
 John Home. 
 
 Philip Doddridge. 
 
 Adam Smith. 
 
 William Mason. 
 
 John Wesley. 
 
 Junius. 
 
 Thomas Percy. 
 
 Thomas Keid. 
 
 Adam Ferguson. 
 
 Erasmus Darwin. 
 
 Laurence Sterne. 
 
 James Boswell. 
 
 William Falconer. 
 
 David Garrick. 
 
 William Paley. 
 
 James Beattie. 
 
 
 
 POETS. 
 
 WILLIAM SHENSTONE, born in 1714, at Leasowesin Shropshire, 
 after receiving his higher education at Pembroke College, Oxford, 
 retired to spend his days upon those acres, of which his father's 
 death had left him master. His chief works are the Schoolmistress, 
 " a descriptive sketch, after the manner of Spenser;" and the Pas- 
 toral Ballad, which is considered the finest English specimen of 
 its class. Shenstone died at Leasowes in 1763. 
 
 WILLIAM COLLINS, one of our finest writers of the Ode, was the 
 son of a hatter at Chichester, and was born there in 1721. He 
 enjoyed the advantage of a classical education at Winchester, and 
 at Magdalen College, Oxford. The Passions, and his Odes to 
 Liberty and Evening, are his finest lyrical pieces. His Oriental 
 Eclogues, written at college, afford a specimen of his powers in 
 another style that of descriptive writing. After a short life, 
 clouded with many disappointments, Collins sank into a nervous 
 weakness, which continued until his death in 1759. 
 
 MARK AKENSIDE wrote the Pleasures of Imagination. He was 
 the son of a butcher at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he was born 
 in 1721. In 1744 he took his degree of M.D. at Leyden. His 
 great poem had already appeared. He enjoyed some practice as a 
 
3/52 POETS OF THE SEVENTH ERA. 
 
 physician ; but his chief support was derived from the liberality 
 of a friend. Akenside died somewhat suddenly in 1770 of putrid 
 sore throat 
 
 The WARTONS, a father and two sons, were poets and 
 poetical critics during part of the last century. The father was 
 Professor of Poetry at Oxford, an office which was also held by 
 his second son, Thomas, (1728-1790.) Thomas Warton's chief 
 poem was Tlie Pleasures of Melancholy, published when he was 
 only nineteen; but his greatest work was his History of English 
 Poetry. He became poet-laureate in 1785. An elder brother, 
 Joseph, who was head-master of Winchester School and after- 
 wards a prebend of St. Paul's, also wrote poems, but of inferior 
 merit. His Ode to Fancy may be considered a favourable specimen 
 of his style. 
 
 JOHN HOME, a well-known dramatist, was born at Leith in 1722. 
 He became minister of Athelstaneford, but when he wrote the 
 tragedy of Douglas, he had to resign his living. Lord Bute having 
 conferred on him a sinecure office and a pension, together worth 
 about 600 a year, on this comfortable income he enjoyed the 
 best literary society of the Scottish capital. Of all his works, 
 Douglas alone has lived. Home died in 1808. 
 
 WILLIAM MASON, born in Yorkshire in 1725, was a close friend 
 of the poet Gray, whose acquaintance he made at Cambridge. 
 Mason wrote many odes and dramas; but The English Garden, a 
 blank-verse poem in four books, was his chief composition. After 
 the death of Gray he edited the Poems, and published the Life 
 and Letters of his friend. Mason died in 1797. 
 
 THOMAS PERCY, Bishop of Dromore, deserves our gratitude for 
 his collection of ballads, published in 17G5 under the title of 
 Reliques of English Poetry. These old songs, revived and often 
 supplemented by the collector, gave a strong impulse to the genius 
 of Scott and other poets. Percy, a Shropshire man, lived from 
 1728 until 1811. Before obtaining the bishopric of Dromore he 
 was Dean of Carlisle. 
 
 ERASMUS DARWIN, the poet-laureate of botany, was born in 
 1731, at Els ton near Newark. Having received his education 
 
POETS OF THE SEVENTH ERA. 353 
 
 at Cambridge, and taken a medical degree at Edinburgh, he began 
 to practise as a physician at Lichfield. His principal poem, Tlie 
 Botanic Garden, appeared in three parts between 1781 and 1792. 
 His reputation as a poet has greatly declined. He died in 1802. 
 
 WILLIAM FALCONER, born at Edinburgh in 1732, was the son 
 of a barber. His early life at sea prepared him for the composition 
 of his fine poem, The Shipwreck. The " Britannia," of which he 
 was second mate, was wrecked off Cape Colonna. He was after- 
 wards a midshipman and purser in the Royal Navy. In 1769 or 
 early in 1770, the " Aurora," on board of which he was then serving, 
 foundered, with the loss of all hands, it is supposed, in the Mozam- 
 bique Channel. Thus the poet of The Shipwreck died amid the 
 waves, whose power he so finely painted. 
 
 JAMES SEATTLE, born in 1735, at Laurencekirk in Kincardineshire, 
 was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen. His fame as a poet 
 rests upon The Minstrel, published in 1771. Written in the 
 Spenserian stanza, it depicts beautifully the opening character of 
 Edwin, a young village poet. Beattie, who became at an early age 
 Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at Marischal College, 
 died of paralysis in 1803. 
 
 JAMES MACPHERSON, a Scottish Chatterton of maturer growth 
 who did not commit suicide, was born in 1738, at Kingussie in 
 Inverness-shire, and was educated at Aberdeen. In 1762 and 
 1763 he gave to the world two epic poems, Fingal and Temora, 
 which he professed to have translated from materials discovered in 
 the Highlands of Scotland. The opinion generally received now 
 is, that he discovered them in his own desk, written on his own paper 
 with his own pen. They present, in florid and highly coloured 
 prose, stirring pictures of old Celtic life. Many years of Macpherson's 
 life were spent in London as a political writer. At Belleville, a 
 property which he bought in his native parish, he died in 1796. 
 
 CHARLES CHURCHILL, born in Westminster in 1731, was a 
 dissipated and disgraced clergyman, who wrote biting and fluid 
 poetry of an inferior order. The Rosciad, Night, and the Prophecy 
 of Famine are among his most noted works. He died of fever at 
 Boulogne in 1764. 
 
 (i&) 23 
 
354 THOMAS CHATTERTON. 
 
 THOMAS CHATTERTON, "the marvellous boy that perished in 
 his pride," was the son of a schoolmaster at Bristol. There the 
 young poet was born in 1752. Educated in the most humble way, 
 he entered an attorney's office at fourteen. The covers of old school- 
 books left by his dead father were formed of valueless parchment 
 deeds, taken from an old chest in the muniment room of 
 a Bristol church. Among these remains of " Mr. Canynge's 
 Coffre," Chatterton pretended to have found fragments of ancient 
 poems, sermons, and articles descriptive of the city churches, &c. 
 Tliey were all written by himself, in the old lettering and spelling, 
 upon stained parchments. The boy of seventeen went up to 
 London to write for bread and fame. He toiled hard, but sank 
 into infidelity and intemperance. One effort to save himself from 
 this whirlpool an application for the position of surgeon's mate 
 in Africa failed. He sent most of his money home to his mother 
 and sisters, "with glowing accounts of his prospects. But his 
 prospects proved a deceptive mirage. Soon, stung to the core of his 
 proud heart by neglect and increasing want, he formed the desperate 
 resolve of suicide. One August day in 1770 the lad, not yet 
 eighteen, took a dose of arsenic, and died amid the fragments of 
 his torn papers. Picturesque description is the leading charm of 
 his poems. 
 
 PROSE WRITERS. 
 
 PHILIP DODDRLDGE, remarkable as a theological writer, was 
 born in London in 1702. Much of his life was spent at North- 
 ampton, where for many years he had a flourishing school His 
 Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, his Passages in the Life. 
 of Colonel Gardiner, and his Family Expositor, are all popular 
 and standard works. Dr. Doddridge died at Lisbon in 1751. 
 
 JOHN WESLEY, born in 1703, at Ep worth in Lincolnshire, was 
 famous as the most eminent of the founders of Methodism. He 
 was educated at the Charter-house and at Christ Church, Oxford, 
 and afterwards became Fellow of Lincoln College. There, with 
 his younger brother Charles, he joined a few seriously dis- 
 posed students in private meetings for prayer and in visiting 
 
PROSE WRITERS OF THE SEVENTH ERA. 355 
 
 the sick and poor. In conjunction with George Whitefield, a 
 celebrated pulpit orator, whose electric eloquence startled thou- 
 sands into serious thought, he travelled about and preached with 
 an earnestness little understood in that day. His best-known 
 works are his Journal and his Hymns; in the latter of which 
 Ins brother gave him important aid. John Wesley died in 1791. 
 
 THOMAS KEID, born in 1710, at Strachan in Kincardineshire, held 
 in succession the professorships of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen 
 and Glasgow. His Inquiry into tJie Human Mind (1764) was an 
 effective reply to Hume's sceptical doctrines. Essays on the Intel- 
 lectual and Active Powers of Man came afterwards from his pen. 
 Reid died in 1796. 
 
 LAURENCE STERNE, author of Tristram Shandy and The Senti- 
 mental Journey, was born in 1713, at Clonmel. Educated at 
 Cambridge, he entered the Church, becoming rector of Sutton 
 and a prebend of York. The living of Stillington also added to 
 his income after his marriage. The publication of "Tristram 
 Shandy," beginning in 1759, closed in 1762. His Sentimental 
 Journey was the fruit of his second Continental tour, undertaken 
 in 1765. Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Dr. Slop, Yorick the parson, 
 the widow Wadman, and Susannah are the leading creations of hia 
 imagination. Fine humour and delicate pathos appear in Sterne's 
 works; but the grace of these is often marred by the affected glitter 
 of his style and the indecent hints, which betray the wolf in 
 sheep's clothing, the profligate hidden in the parson's gown. He 
 has been charged with wholesale pillaging from Burton and other 
 old authors. Sterne died in 1768 in a London lodging-house, 
 with no one by his bed but a hired nurse. 
 
 DAVID GARRICK, the famous actor and theatrical manager, 
 employed his pen sometimes in the writing of plays, of which the 
 best are The Lying Valet and Miss in her Teens. Born at Licli- 
 field in 1716, Garrick came up to London with Johnson, studied 
 law, embarked afterwards in business as a wine-merchant, but found 
 his fitting sphere in 1741, when he became an actor by professioa 
 He died in 1779. 
 
 HORACE WALPOLE, the third son of the well-known statesman; 
 
35 C PROSE WRITERS OF THE SEVENTH ERA. 
 
 was bom in 1717. He sat in Parliament for twenty -six years, 
 but never made any figure as a politician. Much of his time and 
 his snug income of 4000 a year went in the decoration of his 
 villa at Twickenham, well known as Strawberry Hill. His tastes 
 were eminently Gothic. Not content with realizing a Gothic 
 mansion in the turrets and stained-glass windows of Strawberry 
 Hill, he wrote a singular Gothic romance, called Tlie Castle oj 
 Otranto. But his racy sparkling Letters and Memoirs of his own 
 time, unrivalled in their way, give him his chief title to a place 
 among the best English writers. Walpole, who became Earl of 
 Orford in 1791, died six years later. 
 
 HUGH BLAIR, born at Edinburgh in 1718, is best remembered 
 for his polished Sermons and his Rhetorical Lectures. Having filled 
 in succession the pulpits of three Edinburgh churches, and held an 
 honoured place in the best circles of that city, he died there in 1 800. 
 
 GILBERT WHITE, a country clergyman, born in 1720, has made 
 his Hampshire parish well known through all the land, especially 
 to young readers, by his charming book, The Natural History o/ 
 Selkorne. This simple-minded earnest man has painted, in sweet 
 and natural language, the busy life around his daily walks. White 
 died in 1793. 
 
 SAMUEL FOOTE, born in 1721 and educated at Oxford, shone 
 as an actor and dramatic writer. In 1747 he commenced 
 his theatrical career. The Minor and The Mayor of Garratt 
 may be named among the twenty plays he gave to the English 
 stage. Foote, who was unrivalled for a mimicry that did not 
 spare the chief characters of his own day, died in 1777. 
 
 SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, a celebrated lawyer, born in London 
 in 1723, published in 17G5 a popular law-book, entitled Commen- 
 taries on tJte Laws of England, which is still reckoned the great 
 standard work on that subject. He died in 1 780, being then a 
 judge in the Court of Common Pleas. 
 
 ADAM SMITH was born in 1723, at Kirkcaldy in Fifeshire. He 
 was Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, and afterwards a 
 Commissioner of Customs. His great work, The Wealth of Nations, 
 showing that labour is the only source of the opulence of nations, 
 
PROSE WKITERS OF THE SEVENTH EKA. 357 
 
 laid the foundation of the important science of Political Economy, 
 This book appeared in 1776. Adam Smith had previously pub- 
 lished a metaphysical work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 
 He died in 1790. 
 
 JUNTUS, the nom de plume of an unknown writer, who wrote 
 in The Public Advertiser a series of political Letters, com- 
 mencing January 21st, 1769. For fierce invective, piercing, 
 brilliant sarcasm, and appropriate imagery, these " Letters" remain 
 unrivalled. Who Junius was is still a mystery, although Sir 
 Philip Francis, born at Dublin in 1740, who was chief clerk 
 in the War Office between 1763 and 1772, is the man in whose 
 favour the evidence is strongest. 
 
 ADAM FERGUSON, who was born in 1724, held in succession 
 two professorships in the University of Edinburgh. He wrote, 
 among other works, The History of Civil /Society, and The History 
 of the Roman Republic. He died in 1816. 
 
 JAMES BOSWELL, born in 1740, was the son of a Scottish judge. 
 Attaching himself to Dr. Johnson, this conceited and foolish man 
 took notes of the great man's conversation, which he afterwards 
 embodied in his famous Life of Johnson. No better biography 
 lias ever been written. Boswell died in 1795. 
 
 WILLIAM PALEY, bora at Peterborough in 1743, having received 
 Ids higher education at Christ's College, Cambridge, entered the 
 Church of England, in which he rose to be Archdeacon of Carlisle, 
 His chief works were Elements of Moral and Political Philosophy, 
 (1785); Horce Paulince, (1790); View of the Evidences of Chris- 
 tianity, (1794); and Natural Tlwology, (1802). His style is 
 simple and homely, but very clear. Paley died in 1805. 
 
858 POETRY AND PliOSK. 
 
 EIGHTH ERA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 FROM THE DEATH OF JOHNSON IN 1784 A.D. TO THE DEATH Of 
 SCOTT IN 1832 A.D 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 SOME NOTES ON POETRY AND CRITICISM. 
 
 Poetry and prose. 
 English metre. 
 Inverted order. 
 A higher language. 
 
 Use of figures. 
 Essence of poetry. 
 Epic poems. 
 Dramatic poems. 
 
 The Unities. 
 Lyric poems. 
 Poetic " Schools." 
 Objective and subjective. 
 
 WHEN we turn from Milton's "Paradise Lost" to Macaulay'? 
 "History of England," we perceive at once a difference in the 
 language of the two. The one we call poetry; the other, prose. 
 And when we recollect that we do not talk, at least most of us 
 do not talk, to our friends in the same style as that in which 
 Milton describes the Council of Infernal Peers, or Macaulay the 
 Relief of Londonderry, we perceive that language assumes a third, 
 its lowest form, in the conversation that prevails around our 
 dinner tables, or upon our pleasant country walks. Of the three 
 shapes that language takes poetry, literary prose, colloquial 
 prose poetry is, undoubtedly, the chief. 
 
 Taking English poetry in the common sense of the word, as a 
 peculiar form of language, we find that it differs from prose 
 mainly in having a regular succession of accented syllables. In 
 short, it possesses metre as its chief characteristic feature. Every 
 line is divided into so many feet, composed of short and long 
 syllables arranged according to certain laws of prosody. With a 
 regular foot-fall the voice steps or marches along the line, keeping 
 
POETICAL LANGUAGE. 359 
 
 time like the soldier on drill, or tlie musician among his bars. 
 In many languages syllables have a quantity, which makes them 
 intrinsically long or short ; but in English poetry that syllable alone 
 is long on which an accent falls. Poets, therefore, in the use of 
 that license which they have, or take, sometimes shift an accent, to 
 suit their measure. The inversion of the order of words, within 
 certain limits, is a necessary consequence of throwing language 
 into a metrical form. Poetry, then, differs from prose, in the first 
 place, in having metre ; and, as a consequence of this, in adopting 
 an unusual arrangement of words and phrases. The object of in- 
 verting the order, however, is often not so much to suit the metre 
 as to give additional emphasis or rhetorical effect. 
 
 But we find more than this in poetry, else poetry and verse are 
 one and the same thing. That they are not, we know to our cost, 
 when we are compelled to wade through some of those productions 
 which throng our booksellers' windows at times, without, all 
 mauve and gleaming gold within, all barrenness and froth. 
 
 We must have, in addition to the metrical form, the use of un* 
 common words and turns of expression, to lift the language above 
 the level of written prose. Shakspere, instead of saying, as he 
 would, no doubt, have done in telling a ghost-story to his wife, 
 " The clock then striking one," puts into the mouth of the sentinel, 
 Bernardo, " The oell then beating one." When Thomson describes 
 the spring-ploughing, the ox becomes a steer, the plough is the 
 shining share, and the upturned earth appears in his verse as the 
 glebe. The use of periphrase (the round-about mode of expression) 
 here comes largely to the poet's aid. Birds are children of t/ie slcy, 
 songsters of the grove, tuneful choirs, &c. ; ice is a crystal floor, 
 or a sheet of polished steel. These are almost all figurative forms, 
 and it is partly by the abundant use of figures that the higher 
 level of speech is gained. 
 
 Yet there is something beyond all this. Smoothly the 
 metre may flow on, without a hitch or hinderance brilliantly the 
 tropes may cluster in each shining line lofty as a page of the 
 " Rambler" may be the tone of the faultless speech yet, for all, the 
 composition may fall short of true poetry. There is a something, 
 
360 THE ESSENCE OF POETRY. 
 
 an essence, which most of us can feel ivhen present, or at once 
 detect the lack of, which is yet entirely indefinable. We are as 
 little able to define the essence of poetry as to describe the fra- 
 grance of a rose, or the nature of that mysterious fluid which 
 shows itself in a flash of lightning and draws the needle towards 
 the north. Let us be content to enjoy the sweet effect of that most 
 subtile cause, which has baffled the acutest thinkers in their 
 attempts to give it " a local habitation and a name." Lying, as it 
 does, in the thought, we can no more express it in words than we 
 can assign a shape or colour to the human soul It is the 
 electric fluid of the soul, streaming always through the world 
 of thought and speech and writing, flashing out occasionally 
 into grand thunder-bursts of song and the lightning play of true 
 genius. Some minds are highly charged with the brilliant essence 
 positive minds, an electrician would call them : others are nega- 
 tive to the last degree. Some minds, as good conductors, can easily 
 receive and give out the flow of thought ; very many have no con- 
 ducting power at all, being incapable alike of enjoying the plea- 
 sures of poetry, or of communicating those pleasures to other 
 minds. 
 
 All poetry, so far as its form goes, may be classed, for purposes 
 of convenience, under three heads Epic, Dramatic, and Lyric. 
 Blair defines the Epic poem to be " a recital of some illustrious 
 enterprise in a poetic form." To this it may be added that the 
 epic poem is generally composed in the highest form of verse that 
 the prosody of the language possesses in a word, in the heroic 
 measure of the tongue. Milton's " Paradise Lost" is undoubtedly 
 the great epic of the English tongue, founded upon one of the 
 loftiest themes that could employ any pen, and written in that 
 stately blank-verse, that noble iambic pentameter, which holds 
 the place in our tongue that is held in Greek and Latin by the 
 hexameter of the "Iliad" and the "^Eneid." 
 
 Dramatic poetry assumes the form that we commonly call a play, 
 breaking into the two branches, Tragedy and Comedy. We 
 can easily single out a great example here among our English authors; 
 for one name that of Shakspere stands far above the crowd of 
 
THREE FORMS OF POETRY. 3d 
 
 
 
 his brother dramatists. Without being at all strictly true, there is 
 a good deal of sense in a familiar mode of distinguishing tragedy 
 from comedy namely, that a tragedy completes its plot with the 
 death of the principal characters, while a comedy is sure to end in 
 their marriage. The tragedy, like the epic poem, generally adopts the 
 leading measure of the tongue ; the language of prose better suits 
 the lower level of comedy, which depicts the scenes of every-day 
 life rather than the great sufferings or great crimes that form the 
 proper material for a tragic poem. A tragedy, in its usual form, 
 contains five acts, each act consisting of a variable number of 
 scenes. The third, or central act, is the natural place for the crisis 
 of the plot ; and the fifth for the catastrophe, or wind-up smash of 
 the whole. Thus, in " Hamlet," the play-scene and the fencing- 
 scene are so arranged, that we have a central point as well 
 as a final point of interest ; and in " Julius Caesar," the murder 
 nt the Capitol and the battle of Philippi are placed upon the same 
 artistic principle. By writers of the Artificial school much atten- 
 tion is paid to preserving the three unities of action, place, and 
 time. The need of making all the incidents tend to one great 
 centre of the plot, and thus preserving the unity of action, is very 
 manifest ; for nothing is more confusing than the attempt to carry 
 on several plots within the same play. But the need of sticking 
 always to one place, and of confining the time supposed to pass in 
 the dramatic story to the few hours actually spent in the repre- 
 sentation of the play, does not so manifestly appear, when we find 
 our greatest dramatist continually violating both of these unities 
 without in the least marring the effect of his magnificent crea- 
 tions. 
 
 Of Lyric poetry, which is composed chiefly of songs and short 
 poems, such as might be set to music, the works of Robert 
 Burns afford our finest example. Thomas Moore, too, in his 
 "Irish Melodies" has given us some splendid lyrics ; but there is 
 in these considerably more of the artificial than we find in the 
 sweet fresh verses of the Ayrshire peasant. 
 
 We have used the word " school " in speaking of poetry. It is 
 applied, as well in literature as in art, to a set of men whose works 
 
362 VARIOUS SCHOOLS OF POETRY. 
 
 
 
 are founded on a certain known principle, which appears in all as 
 a distinctive feature. Thus we have that Metaphysical or Un- 
 natural school, of which the poet Donne was head-boy ; we have 
 the Artificial or French school, represented by Dryden and Pope ; 
 the Transition school, of which Thomson, Gray, and Collins are good 
 specimens; the Lake school, deriving its name from the fact that 
 its founders, Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, lived for the 
 most part among the lakes of northern England ; and the German 
 school, of which Tennyson and Longfellow are the modern exem- 
 plars. These are the "schools" to which most frequent refer- 
 ence is made by critics. 
 
 We close this rambling chapter with another note. Two meta- 
 physical words, objective and subjective, have been much used of 
 late in reference to the poetic treatment of a theme. The former 
 expresses chiefly the picturing of outward life, as perceived by the 
 senses of the observer, or realized by his fancy: of this style, Scott 
 is one of the greatest masters. The latter denotes that kind of 
 poetry which gives, instead of the outward scene, the various 
 thoughts and feelings excited by it in the poet's mind. For 
 example, let a deserted house be the subject. The objective poet 
 paints the moss-grown steps the damp-stained walls the garden 
 tangling with a wilderness of weeds the rusty hinges of the door 
 the broken or dirt-incrusted panes of the closed windows ; 
 while the subjective poet broods over the probable history of its 
 scattered tenants, or, attracted by a solemn resemblance, conjures 
 up the image of a human body this house of clay we all inhabit 
 deserted by its immortal inmate its eyes, " those windows of 
 the soul," closed and sealed up in the long sleep of death. 
 
BEGUN AND ENDED. 363 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EDWARD GIBBON. 
 
 Born 1737 A.D Died 1794 A.D. 
 
 Evening in the Capitol 
 The Acacia Walk. 
 Early life and education. 
 Changes of creed. 
 
 His first work. 
 The History begun. 
 Life at Lausanne. 
 Death of Gibbon. 
 
 The great subject. 
 Style and treatment. 
 Radical evils. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 Ox an October evening in the year 1764, a young English gentle- 
 man of twenty-seven resolved to write a book of history. His 
 own words tell us of the romantic circumstances in which the 
 great resolve was made : 
 
 " As I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the 
 barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, 
 the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the city first started 
 to my mind." 
 
 The same man, Edward Gibbon, has thus described the com- 
 pletion of his great work at Lausanne, when he had passed his 
 fiftieth year : 
 
 " It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June 
 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the 
 last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden. 
 After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, 
 or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the 
 country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, 
 the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected 
 from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble 
 the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and per- 
 haps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon 
 humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by 
 the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agree- 
 able companion-; and that, whatsoever might be the future date of 
 my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious." 
 
364 EARLY LIFE OF GIBBON. 
 
 Gibbon was born in the year 1737, at Putney in Surrey 
 The delicate boy received much of his early education from hi.i 
 aunt; and when he went to Westminster School at the age of 
 twelve, ill health prevented him from giving very close attention 
 to his studies. In 1752 he became a gentleman commoner of Mag- 
 dalen College, Oxford, arriving at that seat of learning, as he tells 
 us himself, "with a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a 
 doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a school-boy would have 
 been ashamed." The key to this statement we find in the fact, that, 
 while too ill for study during his school-days, he had been devour- 
 ing works of all sorts, especially enjoying with the keenest relish 
 books of history and geography. As was the case with Walter 
 Scott, the mind of the youthful invalid never lost the colouring 
 with which these sick-bed readings had saturated its fibres. A t 
 Oxford, Gibbon led a wild and idle life for fourteen months, when, 
 as the result of his private reading, he turned to the Roman 
 Catholic Church. This change closed his university career. 
 
 After spending a year in the house of a Protestant clergyman at 
 
 Lausanne in Switzerland, where his father had placed 
 
 1754 him, he returned to the Protestant Church, expressing his 
 
 A.D. belief in the commonly accepted truths of Christianity. 
 
 But there is reason for more than fear that any change 
 
 he made was made as a mere matter of form. The truth seems 
 
 to be, that Gibbon had read himself into infidelity ; and in his 
 
 History he makes very light indeed of Christianity as a motive 
 
 power in the civilization of man. 
 
 His five years at Lausanne made him a perfect master of French, 
 and considerably advanced his neglected Latin studies. Some 
 time after his return to England he published his first work, a 
 little French treatise, entitled Essai sur V Etude de la Litterature ; 
 which, in England at least, was soon forgotten. Acting for a 
 while as captain in the Hampshire Militia, he gained considerable 
 insight into modern military tactics; and we can easily fancy 
 the great historian of the Roman Empire pausing, pen in hand, 
 as lie sat in after years in his summer-house by the blue waters 
 of Lake Leman, writing the story of some mediaeval battle, to think 
 
305 
 
 of the days when lie used to drill his grenadiers in the barrack- 
 yards of England. 
 
 When his father died in 1770, leaving him an estate much 
 hampered with debt, he settled in London, and began to write. 
 From the outset of the work he felt the magnitude and difficulty 
 of the theme. All was dark and doubtful. Three times he com- 
 posed the first chapter, and twice he composed the second and third, 
 before he felt satisfied with them ; but, as he advanced, what seemed 
 to be a chaos of tangled facts, mixed in hopeless confusion, grew 
 under his shaping hand into an orderly and beautiful narrative j 
 and before he had gone very deep into his subject, his gorgeous 
 and stately style had grown so familiar to lu's pen, that he made 
 no second copy of what he wrote, but sent the first manuscript 
 direct to the printer. In 1776, when he had been already two 
 years in Parliament as member for Liskeard, the first 
 volume of The, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1776 
 was published; and the author sprang at once into A.D. 
 literary fame. In five years (1781) the second and third 
 volumes made their appearance ; soon after which the historian, 
 disappointed in his hopes of a permanent government post, retired 
 to the house of a literary friend at Lausanne, where he wrote the 
 rest of the work. 
 
 His life at Lausanne was simple and studious. Rising before 
 eight, he was called from his study to an English breakfast at 
 nine. He then shut himself up among his books and papers till 
 half-past one, when he dressed for the two o'clock Swiss dinner, 
 at which a friend or two often joined the table. Light reading, 
 chess, or visiting filled up the interval between dinner and the 
 assemblies. A quiet game of whist and a supper of bread and 
 cheese passed the evening hours, and eleven o'clock saw all in bed. 
 This life, with slight interruption, Gibbon lived for the four years 
 which he spent in the completion of his great work. After the 
 publication of the last volumes, which he saw through the press 
 in 1788, he returned to Lausanne, and did not leave it until 
 the death of Lady Sheffield in 1793 brought him hastily to 
 London, in order to console the bereaved husband, who was hid 
 
366 A COLOSSAL WORK. 
 
 most intimate friend. In little more than six months after ha 
 had left his Swiss retirement, he died in London, of a disease 
 which had long been preying on his strength (January 16, 1794). 
 
 Viewed simply as a literary performance, " The Decline and Fall 
 of the Roman Empire" must be regarded, in spite of its defects and 
 errors, as the noblest historical work in the English language. When 
 we remember the immensity of the subject, the history, during 
 nearly thirteen centuries, not only of the two great branches of the 
 Roman Empire, but of all the various nations that played a part in 
 the grand drama of which Rome and Constantinople were the cen- 
 tral scenes we are struck with astonishment at the courage of the 
 mind that could grapple with a theme so gigantic. We think of 
 Gibbon, sitting down to compose that memorable first chapter for 
 the first time, as of some strapping woodsman, who, on the outskirts 
 of a spreading forest, strikes his bright axe deep into the bark of 
 the first tree. A wilderness of tangling boughs and thorny under- 
 wood, pathless and unexplored, lies stretching out before liis gaze. 
 But day by day the clearing grows wider. The fallen timber is 
 shaped for use and beauty. The corn-patch waves its golden 
 plumes every season in a larger circle. Gardens and cultured farms 
 smile, where before the sunlight could scarcely shine through a 
 rank, unfruitful thicket. 
 
 From the reign of the Antonines to the fall of Constantinople 
 the narrative extends, filling much of that great gap which long 
 severed the history of ancient Rome from the history of modern 
 Europe. The style is lofty, musical, sometimes pompous in its 
 gorgeous stateliness. No man has better understood the power 
 of the picturesque in historical composition ; and throughout the 
 entire work the law of historical perspective, by which events and 
 characters receive their due proportion of space, is wonderfully 
 maintained. From the range of his deep and varied reading he 
 drew materials for the splendid panorama he has unfolded to our 
 view. The manners and customs of peoples, the geography of 
 countries, the science of war^ the systems of law, the progress of 
 the arts, are all woven with masterly skill into the brilliant 
 tissue of events. 
 
GIBBON'S " SOLEMN SNEEK." 367 
 
 But in this great book there are deep-rooted and terrible evils. 
 Without denying the evidences of Christianity, the historian loses 
 no opportunity of slighting its power and sneering at its purity. 
 Utterly ignoring the work of a Divine hand in the wonderful spread 
 of the gospel of Christ, he traces the development of the Christian 
 system only to secondary causes, and dwells at length, and with a 
 seeming pleasure, on the corruptions of the early Church, as if these 
 had grown out of the system itself, instead of being the foul fun- 
 guses of human sin. His chapters on the spread of Christianity 
 have nothing in them of the fire with which he describes the 
 blood-stained marches of Mahomet and Tamerlane. Then he has 
 not only the sneer of the Voltaire school, but that deep depravity 
 of imagination which made them revel in licentious and disgust- 
 ing details. Such faults as these, coupled with the fact that his 
 acquaintance with the Byzantine historians is considered to have 
 been but superficial, are abiding blots on this great literary achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 THE ATTACK ON CONSTANTINOPLE. 
 
 At daybreak, without the customary signal of the morning gun, the Turks 
 assaulted the city by sea and land ; and the similitude of a twined or twisted 
 thread has been applied to the closeness and continuity of their line of attack. 
 The foremost rank consisted of the refuse of the host, a voluntary crowd, who 
 fought without order or command; of the feebleness of age or childhood, of 
 peasants and vagrants, and of all who had joined the camp in the blind hope of 
 plunder and martyrdom. The common impulse drove them onwards to the wall : 
 the most audacious to climb were instantly precipitated ; and not a dart, not a 
 bullet, of the Christians was idly wasted on the accumulated throng. But their 
 strength and ammunition were wasted in this laborious defence. The ditch was 
 filled with the bodies of the slain, they supported the footsteps of their com- 
 panions ; and of this devoted vanguard the death was more serviceable than the 
 life. Under their respective bashaws and sanjaks the troops of Anatolia and 
 Romania were successively led to the charge : their progress was various and 
 doubtful ; but, after a conflict of two hours, the Greeks still maintained and 
 improved their advantage; and the voice of the Emperor was heard encouraging 
 his soldiers to achieve, by a last effort, the deliverance of their country. In that 
 fatal moment the janizaries arose, fresh, vigorous, and invincible. The Sultan 
 himself on horseback, with an iron mace in his hand, was the spectator and 
 judge of their valour. He was surrounded by ten thousand of his domestic 
 troops, whom he reserved for the decisive occasion j and the tide of battle was 
 
3CS SPECIMEN OF GIBBON'S PROSE. 
 
 directed and impelled by his voice and eye. His numerous ministers of justice 
 were posted behind the line, to urge, to restrain, to punish ; and if danger was 
 in the front, shame and inevitable death were in the rear, of the fugitives. The 
 cries of fear and of pain were drowned in the martial music of drums, trumpets, 
 and attaballs ; and experience has proved, that the mechanical operation of 
 sounds, by quickening the circulation of the blood and spirits, will act on the 
 human machine more forcibly than the eloquence of reason and honour. From 
 the lines, the galleys, and the bridge, the Ottoman artillery thundered on all 
 sides ; and the camp and city, the Greeks and the Turks, were involved in a 
 cloud of smoke, which could only be dispelled by the final deliverance or destruc- 
 tion of the Roman Empire. 
 
THE SONGS OF BURNS. 369 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 ROBERT BURNS. 
 
 Born 1759 A.D Died 1796 A.D. 
 
 The lyrist's power. 
 Birth of Burns. 
 His scanty schooling. 
 Following the plough. 
 Bound for Jamaica. 
 
 Poems published. 
 In Edinburgh. 
 At Ellisland. 
 At Dumfries. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 HOBEET BUKNS was an Ayrshire ploughman. But beneath the 
 "hodden grey" of the peasant's dress there shone poetic fire as 
 pure and bright as the world has ever seen. : The faults of the 
 man are forgotten, or at least forgiven, for the sake of a sur- 
 passing music, which, sounding first from the smoky interior of n. 
 clay-built cabin, has spread its sweetness into every home, not in 
 Britain only, but wherever the English tongue is heard. Yet 
 other and sterner scenes than the domestic circle are even more 
 deeply blessed by this enchanting influence. Soldiers on the 
 dusty march or round the red logs of the bivouac fire sailors in 
 the long dark nights at sea amid washing waves and creaking 
 cordage trappers and woodmen in the ancient forests of the New 
 World miners crushing quartz in the golden bed of the Sacra- 
 mento or the Eraser shepherds galloping from huge flock to flock 
 over the boundless pastures of Australia have all had their lone- 
 liness cheered, their rugged natures softened, and the crust, which 
 gathers on the human heart through years of sin and hardship, 
 melted into tender tears, by the gentle or spirit-stirring magic of 
 Hubert Burns's songs. No lyrist goes home to the heart so straight 
 as he. 
 
 Thirty-seven years of sorrow and struggle, chequered with one 
 
 or two brief flickering gleams of apparent prosperity, made up the 
 
 poet's span of life. He was born on the 25th of January 1759, 
 
 in a mud cabin not far from the Bridge of Doon, in the Ayrshire 
 
 05) 24 
 
370 HOW BURNS WAS TAUGHT. 
 
 parish of Alloway. His father, a gardener, who had struggled 
 into a humble business as a nurseryman on his own account, 
 built with his own hands the clay walls within which Eobert first 
 saw the light. Going to school at six years of age, the boy battled 
 his way stoutly through the mysteries of English reading, pot-hooks 
 and hangers, the multiplication table, and other sorrows of the young, 
 until at eleven years of age he had acquired a very fair degree of 
 elementary education. It was all his good father could give him ; 
 and when it became necessary to employ the young hands in the 
 labour of a farm, Mount Oliphant, to which the family removed in 
 1767, some occasional evening studies rubbed away the rust that 
 mil come, and added a little to the scanty stock of knowledge 
 already gained. " A fortnight's French," which the simple rustic 
 was fond of parading in his letters, and a summer quarter at land- 
 surveying, completed all the instruction the poet ever got, beyond 
 what he was able to pick up from a few books that lay on his humble 
 shelf. The Spectator, Alexander Pope, and Allan Ramsay were 
 there ; and by-and-by Thomson, Shenstone, Sterne, and Mackenzie 
 joined the little company of silent friends. 
 
 But out on the fields of Mossgiel, amid the birds and wild- 
 flowers of a Lowland farm, he learned his finest lessons, and conned 
 them with all his earnest heart, as he held the handles of the 
 plough. A little heap of leaves and stubble, torn to pieces by the 
 ruthless ploughshare, one cold November day, exposes to the frosty 
 wind a poor wee field-mouse, that starts frightened from the ruin. 
 The tender heart of the poet-ploughman swells and bubbles into 
 song. And again, when April is weeping on the field, the crushing 
 of a crimson-tipped daisy beneath the up-turned furrow, draws 
 from the same gentle heart a sweet, compassionate lament, and 
 exquisite comparisons. Poems like those to the Mouse and the 
 Daisy, are true wild-flowers, touched with a fairy grace, and breath- 
 ing a delicate fragrance, such as the blossoms of no cultured garden 
 can ever boast. 
 
 But the ploughing that led to the production of these poems was 
 profitless in other respects. In vain Robert and his brother Gilbert 
 toiled " like galley-slaves." In vain their mother looked after the 
 
LIONIZED IN EDINBURGH. 371 
 
 dairy and the eggs. Things became so bad on the farm that the 
 poet resolved to sail for Jamaica, in the hope of obtaining a steward- 
 ship on some sugar-plantation. Desirous both to raise the need- 
 ful funds and to leave behind some lasting memorial of himself, 
 which might prevent his name from being utterly forgotten in 
 the land of his birth, he had six hundred copies of his 
 poems printed at Kilmarnock, and scattered among the 1786 
 shops of a few booksellers. The little volume went off A.D. 
 rapidly; and nearly twenty guineas chinked in the poet's 
 purse, after paying all expenses of the edition. His passage was 
 taken in the first ship that was to sail from the Clyde ; his chest 
 was on the way to Greenock; a farewell to the bonnie banks of 
 Ayr was breathed in his touching song, The gloomy night is gather- 
 ing fast; when a letter changed the current of his life, and kept 
 the poet in his native land. It was to a friend of Burns from 
 Dr. Blacklock of Edinburgh, himself a poet, giving such praise as 
 the modest rustic had not dared to hope for. 
 
 True to his impulsive soul, he turned his back at once on the 
 Clyde, and in November 1786 arrived in Edinburgh with very few 
 shillings, and not a letter of recommendation to win a friend. But 
 his book, which was there before him, unlocked the doors of the 
 first Edinburgh mansions to the peasant who had so sweet a note. 
 Burns became the rage. Earls, grave historians, popular novelists, 
 moral philosophers, listened with applause to his fresh and bril- 
 liant talk; asked select friends to meet him at dinner; subscribed 
 for the second edition of his poems, by which he cleared nearly 
 .500; and then, when the gloss had worn off their plaything, 
 and some fresh novelty had sprung up among them, this man, of 
 whom his country is now so proud, in whose honour, not two 
 years ago, every Scottish bell pealed joyously all day long, and 
 every Scottish heart grew kinder all the world over, was looked 
 coldly on, neglected, and forgotten : but not until the poison of 
 a capricious flattery had sown deadly seeds in the poet's soul. 
 
 The rest of his life-story, except for the immortal works his 
 later years produced, is a tale of deep sadness, and had best be 
 briefly told. -Having taken the farm of Ellisland, about a hun- 
 
372 THE LAST DAYS OF BURNS. 
 
 dred acres on the Nitli not far from Dumfries, be married Jean 
 Armour, to whom lie had long been attached, and settled down to 
 a country life once more. This phase of his career opened in June 
 1788. Some time afterwards, by the interest of a friend, he 
 obtained the office of exciseman for the district in which he lived. 
 The sum he derived from this employment never above 70 a 
 year but ill repaid him for the time its duties cost, and the dan- 
 gers of that unsettled, convivial life, to which his excitable nature 
 was thus exposed. After struggling for more than three years 
 with the stubborn soil of Ellisland, and vainly trying to raise good 
 crops while he looked after the whisky stills, he gave up the farm, 
 and in 1791 went to live at Dumfries, upon his slender income as 
 a gauger. 
 
 A third edition of his poems, enriched with the inimitable Tarn 
 o' SJuinter, which he had written at Ellisland, came out two years 
 later. But there were then not many sands of his life-glass to 
 run. Sickness, debt, " the proud man's contumely," and the fell 
 gripe or bitter dregs of those dissipated habits to which liis ardent, 
 passionate nature was but too prone, cast heavy clouds upon the 
 closing scene of his short, pathetic life. He died at Dumfries on 
 the 21st of July 1796. 
 
 It is chiefly for his Songs that the memory of Robert Burns 
 is so dear to his countrymen. But the lines already noticed 
 To a Daisy and a Mouse; the beautiful domestic picture of 
 Tlie Cottar's Saturday Night; the noble Elegy on Captain Matthew 
 Henderson; the mad, low-life revelry of The Jolly Beggars; and, 
 above all, the serio-comic tale of Tarn o' Shanter, with its market- 
 day carouse, its ride through the stormy midnight, its horrible 
 witch-dance within the old Kirk of Alloway, and its thrilling 
 escape of the rash farmer and his old grey mare ; these are works 
 wliich fully display the versatile genius of Robert Burns, and raise 
 him to the highest rank among cur British bards. Most of his 
 poems were written in Lowland Scotch ; but in a mood more than 
 commonly pathetic, he rises to an English style, so refined and 
 beautiful, that we almost wonder where a Scottish peasant could 
 have learned the pure and lofty strain. 
 
SPECIMEN OF BUKNS'S VERSE. 373 
 
 TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY. 
 
 Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, 
 Thou's met me in an evil hour ; 
 For I maun crush amang the stoure 
 
 Thy slender stem : 
 To spare thee now is past my power, 
 
 Thou bonnie gem. 
 
 Alas ! it's no thy neibor sweet, 
 The bonnie Lark, companion meet, 
 Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, 
 
 Wi* spreckled breast, 
 When upward-springing, blithe, to greet 
 
 The purpliiig east ! 
 
 Cauld blew the bitter-biting north 
 Upon thy early, humble birth ; 
 Tet cheerfully thou glinted forth 
 
 Amid the storm, 
 Scarce reared above the parent earth 
 
 Thy tender form. 
 
 The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, 
 High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield ; 
 But thou beneath the random bield 
 
 0' clod or stane 
 Adorns the histie stibble-field, 
 
 Unseen, alane. 
 
 There, in thy scanty mantle clad, 
 Thy snawie bosom sun- ward spread, 
 Thou lifts thy unassuming head 
 
 In humble guise ; 
 But now the share uptears thy bed, 
 
 And low thou lies ! 
 
 Such is the fate of artless maid, 
 Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade ! 
 By love's simplicity betrayed, 
 
 And guileless trust, 
 Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid 
 
 Low i' the dust. 
 
 Such is the fate of simple bard 
 
 On life's rough ocean luckless starred ! 
 
 Unskilful he to note the card 
 
 Of prudent lore, 
 Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, 
 
 And whelm him o'er. 
 
374 SPECIMEN OF BURNS'S VERSE. 
 
 Such fate to suffering worth is giveu, 
 Who long with wants and woes has striven, 
 By human pride or cunning driven 
 
 To misery's brink, 
 Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven, 
 
 He, ruined, sink! 
 
 Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate, 
 That fate is thine no distant date ; 
 Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate, 
 
 Full on thy bloom, 
 Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight 
 
 Shall be thy doom ! 
 
THE OPENING OF A GREAT CAREER. > 375 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EDMUND BURKE. 
 Born 1730 A.D ...Died 1797 A,D. 
 
 Early days. 
 Called to the bar. 
 Literary life. 
 Dublin Castle. 
 In Parliament. 
 
 Trial of Hastings. 
 
 The French Revolution. 
 
 Death of his son. 
 
 Last days at Gregories.' 
 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 EDMUND BURKE, first of our political writers and among the 
 greatest of our orators, was born in 1730, in a house on Arraii 
 Quay, Dublin. His father was an attorney, who enjoyed a large 
 and thriving practice. Many of Edmund's early days were spent 
 in the county of Cork, not far from the ruined walls of Kilcolman, 
 where his namesake Spenser had lived and written, and whence 
 the poet had fled a broken-hearted man. In his twelfth year 
 young Burke was sent to school at Ballitore in Kildare j and there, 
 under a skilful master, Abraham Shackelton the Quaker, he studied 
 for about two years. 
 
 Trinity College, Dublin, where his picture holds an honourable 
 place on the wall of the Examination Hall, received him as a 
 student in 1743. To shine at the English bar was his young 
 ambition ; and so he was entered at the Middle Temple in 1747. 
 But he never became a lawyer; his great genius soon found its 
 fitting sphere in a statesman's life. In the meantime, however, 
 he began to write his way to fame. An imitation of Lord Boling- 
 broke's style, The Vindication of Natural Society, was followed 
 by his well-known Essay on the Sullime and Beautiful. Having 
 married Miss Nugent of Bath, on the strength of an allowance of 
 200 a year from his father and what his pen could make, he 
 formed additional literary engagements with the bookseller Dodsley. 
 For a sketch of American History in two volumes he received fifty 
 guineas ; and was paid at the rate of 100 a volume for the Annual 
 
37 G ORATORY OP BURKE. 
 
 Register, which first appeared in 1759. So, writing for daily 
 bread, and struggling manfully with many difficulties, cheered by 
 the love of his wife and his little son, Burke toiled onward and 
 upward, never letting go the hope of fame. 
 
 His entrance on political life may be dated from his appoint- 
 ment in 1761 as private secretary to "Single Speech" Hamilton, 
 who then became Chief Secretary for Ireland. The atmosphere 
 of Dublin Castle did not long agree with the clever young Whig, 
 who threw up a lately conferred pension of 300 a year, broke 
 with Hamilton, and returned to London, where a brilliant career 
 awaited him. 
 
 Having been appointed private secretary to the Marquis of 
 
 Kockingham, who became Prime Minister in 17G5, Burke in the 
 
 following year entered Parliament as member for Wend- 
 
 1766 over in Buckinghamshire. At the age of thirty-six he 
 
 A.D. stood for the first time on the floor of St. Stephen's 
 Chapel, whose walls were to ring so often during the next 
 eight-and-twenty years with the rolling periods of his grand 
 eloquence, and the peals of acclamation bursting alike from friend 
 and foe. Among the great men who then sat upon the benches 
 of the ancient hall, Burke at once took a foremost place. The 
 triumphs of his eloquent tongue we cannot follow here, for it is 
 ours to mark only the achievements of his brilliant pen. In the 
 stirring years of the American War he poured out the opulence of 
 a richly-stored mind in many noble orations ; but the crown of his 
 glory as an orator was won in the great Hall of Westminster, 
 where, in the presence of the noblest and the fairest, the wisest 
 and most gifted of the land, he uttered the thunders of his eloquence 
 in the impeachment of Warren Hastings, Governor-Gene- 
 1788 ral of India. Opening the case in February 1788 in a 
 
 A.D. speech of four days, he continued his statement during 
 certain days of April, and wound up his charges with an 
 address, which began on the 28th of May and lasted for the nine 
 succeeding days. As he spoke, the sceneiy of the East rice-field 
 and jungle, gilded temple and broad-bosomed river, with a ?ky 
 of heated copper glowing over all unfolded itself in a brilliant 
 
377 
 
 picture before the kindled fancy of his audience; and when the 
 sufferings of the tortured Hindoos and the desolation of their 
 wasted fields were painted, as only Burke could paint in words, 
 the eifect of the sudden contrast upon those who heard him was 
 like the shock of a, Leyden jar. Ladies sobbed and screamed, 
 handkerchiefs and smelling-bottles were in constant use, and " some 
 were even carried out in fits." 
 
 Another great subject filled his thoughts during his last years. 
 He foresaw the hurricane that was blackening over France, 
 and, when it broke in fury, he wrote his greatest work, 1790 
 entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France; in which A.D. 
 he lifts a powerful voice to warn England against cherish- 
 ing at home the fatal seeds that were bearing so terrible a harvest 
 across the waves of the Channel. 
 
 From the ceaseless toil of a statesman's life Burke sometimes 
 stole away to his gardens at Gregories, near Beaconsfield, where, 
 so far back as 1768, he had purchased an estate for .20,000. A 
 heavy blow at last fell on his grey head, and bowed it with sorrow 
 to the grave. His dear son Richard, who had been for thirty-six 
 years the light of his eyes, sank under a rapid consumption. 
 With some of Milton's glorious words upon his lips, this gifted 
 man died in the arms of his great father. The world was then all 
 darkness to Edmund Burke. But a little ago it was June, 
 and he had sat for the last time in the Commons, glory- 1794 
 ing in the thought that he had a gallant son to fill the A.D. 
 place he was leaving empty. It was now ah August day 
 a marble mask of that son lay before him in an unclosed coffin, 
 but the spirit had left the clay. 
 
 In his retreat at Beaconsfield he still continued to write, produc- 
 ing during his last two years some of his best works. A pension 
 having been conferred on the veteran statesman, two of the Peers 
 thought fit to find fault with the richly-deserved honour. It 
 would have been wise for the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of 
 Lauderdale to let the old lion die in peace. They thought that 
 he was toothless, until he rose with gnashing fangs and tore the 
 wretches limb from limb. The Letter to a Noble Lord, called forth 
 
378 SPECIMEN OF BURKE'S PROSE. 
 
 by this ungenerous attack, stands next to the "French Revolution" 
 as a specimen of Burke's powerful style. Other works of his last 
 years were Letters on a Regicide Peace and Observations on tJie Con- 
 duct of tlie Minority. At last he began to sink daily, for his heart 
 was still bleeding for his son. In vain for four months 
 the waters of Bath were tried. He returned home to die, 
 and was laid in a vault under Beaconsfield Church, beside 
 the dust of his darling Richard. 
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 (PROM THE " FBKKCH REVOLUTION.") 
 
 It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the 
 Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly 
 seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, 
 decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in glittering 
 likfe the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh, what a revolu- 
 tion ! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that eleva- 
 tion and that fall ! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to 
 those of distant, enthusiastic, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to 
 carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I 
 dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation 
 of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten 
 thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look 
 that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of 
 sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded ; and the glory of Europe 
 is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous 
 loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that 
 subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit 
 of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, 
 the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone ! It is gone, that 
 sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, 
 which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it 
 touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness. 
 
CHILDHOOD OF COWPER. 
 
 379 
 
 CHAPTEK V. 
 
 WILLIAM COWPEE. 
 
 Born 1731 A.D Died 1800 A.D. 
 
 The sensitive-plant. 
 A kind mother. 
 Misery at school 
 Studies the law. 
 The clerkship in the Lords. 
 
 Madness. 
 The Unwins. 
 Life at Olney. 
 Earliest poems. 
 The Task. 
 
 Tirocininm. 
 Last days. 
 Letters. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 IF we compare our English literature to a beautiful garden, where 
 Milton lifts his head to heaven in the spotless chalice of the tall white 
 lily, and Shakspere scatters his dramas round him in beds of fragrant 
 roses, blushing with a thousand various shades some stained to 
 the core as if with blood, others unfolding their fair pink petals 
 with a lovely smile to the summer sun, what shall we find in 
 shrub or flower so like the timid, shrinking spirit of William Cow- 
 per, as that delicate sensitive-plant, whose leaves, folding up at 
 the slightest touch, cannot bear even the brighter rays of the 
 cherishing sun *? 
 
 The Beverend Doctor John Cowper, a royal chaplain, the son 
 of a judge, and the nephew of a lord-chancellor, was rector of 
 Great Berkhamstead in Hertfordshire, when his son William was 
 born there in 1731. A tender mother a lady of the highest 
 descent watched the infancy and childhood of the boy. Her 
 hand it was that wrapped his little scarlet cloak around him, and 
 filled his little bag with biscuits, every morning before he went to 
 his first school. By her knee was his happiest place, where he 
 often amused himself by marking out the flowered pattern of her 
 dress on paper with a pin, taking a child's delight in his simple 
 skill. He was only six years old when this fond mother died; 
 thus early upon the childish head a pitiless storm began to beat. 
 More than fifty years after the day on which a sad little face, 
 looking from the nursery window, had seen a dark hearse mov- 
 
380 STUDYING LAW WITH THUKLOW. 
 
 ing slowly from the door, an old man, smitten with incurable 
 madness but then enjoying a brief lucid interval, bent over a 
 picture, and saw the never-forgotten image of that kindest earthly 
 friend, from whom he had so long been severed, but whom he was 
 so soon to join in the sorrowless land. There are no more touch- 
 ing and beautiful lines in English poetry or prose than Cowper's 
 Verses to his Mother's Picture. 
 
 The circumstance to which his morbid nervousness and melan- 
 choly may most of all be traced, is full of warning for the young. 
 The poor motherless boy of six was sent to a boarding-school at 
 Market Street in Hertfordshire, where a senior pupil, whose 
 brutality and cowardice cannot be too strongly condemned, led 
 the child a terrible life for two years, crushing down his young 
 spirit with cruel blows and bitter persecution. It was a happy 
 release, when he was removed from this scene of misery to the 
 house of an eminent oculist, for the treatment of his eyes, which 
 the poor little fellow had probably cried into a state of violent 
 inflammation. His seven years at Westminster School were less 
 unpleasant to the timid boy, though there too lie had to take his 
 full share of buffeting and sneers. 
 
 The law being his appointed profession, he entered an attorney's 
 office at eighteen, and there spent three years. This period and a 
 few succeeding years formed almost the only spot of sunshine in 
 the poet's life. Many a hearty laugh echoed through the gloomy 
 office, where Cowper and his fellow-apprentice afterwards Lord- 
 Chancellor Thurlow made believe that they were studying the 
 English law. Called to the bar in 1754, he lived for some time 
 an idle, agreeable life, in his Temple chambers, writing a little for 
 the serials of the day, and taking a share in the wit-combats of 
 the " Nonsense Club," which consisted nearly altogether of "West- 
 minster men. It was during this part of his life that he fell in 
 love with his cousin Theodora, a passion the unfortunate issue of 
 which gave a darker colouring to the naturally sombre spirit of 
 the young lawyer. 
 
 A relative presented him in the year 17G3 to a valuable 
 clerkship in the Lords, which required the holder of the office to 
 
FRIENDSHIP OF THE UNWINS. 381 
 
 appear frequently before the House. The idea of such a thing 
 was, in Cowper's own words, " mortal poison " to his shrinking 
 nature. A more private post that of Clerk of the Jour- 
 nals of the House of Lords was then substituted for the 1763 
 former gift ; but, most unexpectedly, the presentee was A.D. 
 summoned to the bar to be examined as to his fitness for 
 the post. Obliged to face the future horror of this examination, 
 while for months he worked hard to prepare himself for passing it 
 creditably, his mind gave way, he tried to kill himself ; and a 
 private asylum at St. Albans became for eighteen months the 
 refuge of the afflicted man. 
 
 A deep religious melancholy was the form of his mental disease ; 
 an awful terror that his soul was lost for ever, beyond the power 
 of redemption, hung in a thick night-cloud upon his life. Three 
 times after the first attack the madness returned, for nearly four 
 years previous to 1776 for about six months in 1787 and 
 during his last six years, from 1794 to 1800. 
 
 The friendship of the Unwins was the great blessing of his life. 
 At Huntingdon he became intimate with this kind family, then 
 consisting of the Reverend Morley Unwin, his wife, son, and 
 daughter ; and the friendship grew so strong, that Cowper 
 went in 1766 to live in their calm and cheerful home. 1766 
 The good clergyman was killed in the following year by A.D. 
 a fall from his horse, and the widow and her daughter 
 went to live at Olney in Buckinghamshire. Thither Cowper 
 accompanied them, for he was now unalterably one of the quiet 
 household. 
 
 Here the timid spirit nestled in a pleasant home. A walk with 
 his dog by the reedy banks of the placid Ouse, to admire the 
 white and gold of the water-lilies that floated on the deep stream 
 a round of visits to the cottages of the neighbouring poor the 
 composition of some hymns for his friend John Newton, the 
 curate of the parish, filled up his peaceful days for a time. But 
 the terrible shadows were thickening again round his brain. A 
 .second fit of madness came in 1773, and all was dark for more 
 threo ye.ira. 
 
382 FIRST APPEARANCE AS A POET. 
 
 When light once more broke through the clouds, the need of 
 some graver and more constant work made the man of fifty, who 
 had already produced light occasional verses, take pen in hand, and 
 sit down seriously to write a book of poems. For recreation he 
 had his flowers, his pet hares, his landscape drawing, and his 
 manufacture of bird-cages; but poetry now became the serious 
 business of his life. 
 
 His first volume was issued in 1782. It contained three grave 
 
 and powerful satires, Truth, Table-talk, and Expostulation, 
 
 1782 with poems on Error, Hope, Charity, and kindred subjects, 
 
 A.D. written chiefly in pentameter rhymes. No great success 
 
 rewarded this first instalment of Cowper's poetic toil ; but 
 at least two men, whose good opinion was worth more than gold, 
 saw real merit in the modest book. Johnson and Franklin recog- 
 nised in the recluse of fifty a true and eminent poet. 
 
 But higher efforts lay before the literary hermit. The widow 
 of Sir Robert Austen, coming to live at Olney, soon became intimate 
 with the melancholy Cowper. To cheer him, she told the story of 
 John Gilpin, whose comical equestrianism became the subject of 
 a famous ballad. In this rattling tale and other minor pieces, as 
 well as in numberless satiric and ironical touches scattered through 
 the mass of his poems, we catch gleams of a sunny humour lurk- 
 ing below the shy and sensitive moods which wrapt the poet from 
 public gaze. To Lady Austen, Cowper owed the origin of his 
 greatest work, The Task. She asked him to write some blank- 
 verse, and playfully gave him the Sofa as a subject. Beginning a 
 
 poem on this homely theme, he produced the six books 
 
 1785 of TJie Task, which took its name from the circumstances 
 
 A.D. of its origin. From a humorous historical sketch of the 
 
 gradual improvement of seats, the three-legged stool grow- 
 ing into the softly cushioned sofa, he glides into the pleasures of a 
 country walk, and following out the natural train of thought, draws 
 a strong contrast between rural and city life, lavishing loving praise 
 upon the former. The second book, entitled Tlie Tiine-piece, opens 
 with a just and powerful denunciation of slavery, and proceeds to 
 declare the blessings and the need of peace among the nations, 
 
LAST DAYS OF COWPEK. 383 
 
 A noble apostrophe to England, and a brilliantly sarcastic pic- 
 ture of a fashionable preacher are among the more striking pas- 
 sages of this book. Then come The Garden, The Winter Even- 
 ing, The Winter Morning Walk, and The Winter Walk at Noon, 
 full of exquisite description and deep kindliness. Mirrored in 
 these beautiful poems, we see the peaceful recreations and the 
 gentle nature of this amiable afflicted man. We learn to rever- 
 ence him for his wisdom, to love him for his human tenderness, 
 and to sympathize pitifully and deeply with the overshadowing 
 sorrow of his fitful life. 
 
 Accompanying "The Task," which appeared in 1785 to take the 
 hearts of all Englishmen by storm, was a review of schools, entitled 
 Tirocinium, strongly recommending private tuition in preference to 
 education at a public school. The sad experience of his own early 
 school-days was, without doubt, the root from which this poem sprang. 
 
 Dissatisfied with Pope's version of the great Greek epics, Cow- 
 per now undertook to translate Homer into English verse; and by 
 working regularly at the rate of forty lines a day, he accomplished 
 the task in a few years. A passing attack of his old malady laid 
 him by for a while during the progress of this work. The 
 "Homer" appeared in 1791 ; and a revised edition, altered and 
 corrected to a great extent, followed in 1799. Kind friends of 
 his youth drew round the poor old man in his last years. His 
 cousin, Lady Hesketh, induced him to remove to a villa at Wes- 
 ton, about a mile from his well-loved Olney. But the last and 
 thickest cloud was darkening down. About 1794 the gloom of 
 madness fell again upon his mind, and only for very brief intervals 
 was there any light, until the ineffable brilliance of a higher life 
 broke upon his raptured gaze. A sad sight it must have been to 
 see the grey-haired sufferer standing by the coffin, where his faith- 
 ful friend of many years the kind, devoted Mary Unwin lay in 
 the last marble sleep. She died 'in 1796; and in less than four 
 years the gentle poet, whom her roof-tree had sheltered, 
 and her gentle ministerings had cheered and solaced for April 25, 
 fully thirty years, closed his eyes for ever on the earth, 1800 
 which had been to him indeed a place of many sorrows. A.D. 
 
384 THE LAST SAD NOTE. 
 
 A pension of ,300 a year from the king Lad comforted his 
 declining days. He was able before death to revise his " Homer," 
 and to leave in the little poem of TJie Castaway descriptive of a 
 sailor's death, who had been washed overboard in the mid Atlantic 
 the last sad wail of his noble lyre. Already the darkness of 
 the Valley of the Shadow of Death was on his soul, when he sang 
 the concluding words : 
 
 "We perished, each alone; 
 But I beneath a rougher sea, 
 And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he." 
 
 To forget Cowper's Letters, in a sketch of his literary life, would 
 be unpardonable. Southey, his best biographer, calls him " the 
 best of English letter-writers ; " and there is no exaggeration in 
 the praise. Loathing from Ids soul, as he tells us, all affectation, 
 he writes to his friends in fine simple English words, which have 
 caught their lustre, as style must always do, from the beauty of 
 the thoughts expressed. A sweet, delicate humour, plays through- 
 out these charming compositions, like golden sunlight on a clem 
 nnd pebbled stream. 
 
 APOSTROPHE TO WINTER. 
 (FROM "THE TASK," BOOK iv.) 
 
 Winter ! ruler of the inverted year, 
 
 Thy scattered hair with sleet like ashes filled, 
 Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks 
 Fringed with a beard made white with other suows 
 Than those of age, thy forehead wrapped in clouds, 
 A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne 
 A sliding car, indebted to no wheels, 
 But urged by storms along its slippery way, 
 
 1 love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st, 
 
 And dreaded as thou art ! Thou hold'st the sun 
 A prisoner in the yet undawning east, 
 Shortening his journey between morn and noon, 
 And hurrying him, impatient of his stay, 
 
 Down to the rosy west 
 
 No rattling wheels stop short before these gates; 
 No powdered pert, proficient in the art 
 Of sounding an alarm, assaults these doors 
 
SPECIMEN OF COWPER'S VERSE. S&5 
 
 Till the street rings; no stationary steeds 
 
 Cough their own knell, while, heedless of the sound, 
 
 The silent circle fan themselves, and quake : 
 
 But here the needle plies its busy task, 
 
 The pattern grows ; the well-depicted flower, 
 
 Wrought patiently into the snowy lawn, 
 
 Unfolds its bosom; buds, and leaves, and sprigs, 
 
 And curling tendrils, gracefully disposed, 
 
 Follow the nimble fingers of the fair; 
 
 A wreath, that cannot fade, of flowers that blow 
 
 With most success when all besides decay. 
 
 The poet's or historian's page by one 
 
 Made vocal for the amusement of the rest; 
 
 The sprightly lyre, whose treasure of sweet sounds 
 
 The touch from many a trembling chord shakes out; 
 
 And the clear voice symphonious, yet distinct, 
 
 And in the charming strife triumphant still, 
 
 Beguile the night, and set a keener edge 
 
 On female industry; the threaded steel 
 
 Flies swiftly, and unfelt the task proceeds. 
 
 The volume closed, the customary rites 
 
 Of the last meal commence. A Roman meal ! 
 
 Such as the mistress of the world once found 
 
 Delicious, when her patriots of high note, 
 
 Perhaps by moonlight, at their humble doors, 
 
 And under an old oak's domestic shade, 
 
 Enjoyed, spare feast ! a radish and an egg. 
 
 Discourse ensues, not trivial, yet not dull, 
 
 Nor such as with a frown forbids the play 
 
 Of fancy, or proscribes the sound of mirth: 
 
 Nor do we madly, like an impious world, 
 
 Who deem religion frenzy, and the (jod 
 
 That made them an intruder on their joys, 
 
 Start at his awful name, or deem his jtruiac 
 
 A jarring note. 
 
 25 
 
586 EARLY LIFE OF 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON. 
 Born 1788 A,D Died 1824 A,D. 
 
 Tarentage. 
 
 At Aberdeen. 
 
 The little lord. 
 
 Harrow and Cambridge. 
 
 Hours of Idleness. 
 
 Attack and reply. 
 Chllde Harold. 
 A London lion. 
 
 Leaves England for ever. 
 Italian life. 
 Later works. 
 
 Turkish talcs. In Greece to die. 
 
 Unhappy marriage. Illustrative extract 
 
 Ixthe year 1790 a profligate and dissipated captain in the Guards 
 abandoned his wife and a little child of two years in the stony 
 wilderness of London. The officer's name was John Byron; his 
 wife was Catherine Gordon of Gight in Aberdeenshire. He went 
 abroad to die : she went north to Aberdeen with her little lame 
 boy to live as well as she could on 1 30 a year. 
 
 There, in Scottish schools, the boy received his early education, 
 until an announcement reached the small household in the city of 
 granite, that, by the death of his grand-uncle, "Geordie" was a lord, 
 
 and owner of Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire. At 
 
 1798 once his weak, capricious mother, was seized with a desperate 
 
 A.D. horror of her son's lameness, which had existed from his 
 
 birth. In vain she tried quacks and doctors. The foot re- 
 mained unchangeably distorted, and to the last a look at the de- 
 formity stabbed Byron like a dagger. Less than two years at a 
 Dulwich boarding-school, and some tune at Harrow, prepared the 
 young lord for entering Trinity CoUege, Cambridge, in 1 805. Already 
 the youth of seventeen, thoroughly spoiled by his foolish mother, 
 who flung things at him one moment, and strained him to her 
 breast the next, had been neglecting his regular studies, but eagerly 
 devouring other books of every class and kind. Oriental history 
 seems early to have fascinated his taste ; and this early love gave 
 its own colouring to his chief poetical works. Already, too, an- 
 other love than that for books had been tinging his spirit with its 
 
" ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS." 387 
 
 hues. The lame but handsome boy was only fifteen, when he met 
 that Mary Chaworth, whose coldness towards him was the first 
 rill of lasting bitterness that mingled with the current of his life. 
 The beautiful Dream, which we find among his minor poems, tells 
 the sad story of this boyish love and its results. 
 
 The young lord's life at Cambridge lasted about two years, 
 during which he made some firm friends among the students, but 
 annoyed and estranged the college Dons by his irregularities. 
 Among other freaks, he kept bull-dogs and a bear in his rooms, the 
 latter of which he introduced to visitors as in training for a fellow- 
 ship. His lameness did not prevent him from taking a full share 
 in athletic sports. At school he had loved hockey and cricket 
 better than the Latin poets. At college, and during his residence 
 at Newstead, before he came of age, he was passionately fond of 
 boating. A large Newfoundland dog was his invariable com- 
 panion during the lonely cruisings he enjoyed.* 
 
 During his leisure hours at school and college he had been 
 perming occasional verses, which appeared at Newark in 1807, in 
 a little volume entitled Hours of Idleness. Very boyish 
 and very weak these verses were, but they hardly merited 1807 
 the weighty scorn with which an Edinburgh reviewer A.D. 
 noticed them within the year. Stung to the quick by 
 this article, with the authorship of which Lord Brougham is charged, 
 the " noble minor" retorted in a poem, English Sards and Scotch 
 Reviewers, which showed the world that the abused versicles 
 were but the languid recreations of a man in whose hand, when 
 roused to earnest work, the pen became a tremendous and destruc- 
 tive weapon. 
 
 Two years of foreign travel (1809-1811), led the poet through 
 scenes whose beauty and historic interest inspired the first two 
 cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Though Byron was only 
 one-and-twenty when he set out upon this tour of Spain and 
 Turkey, the shadow of disappointed love had long been brooding 
 upon his heart. In spite of his own repeated denials, we cannot 
 
 * The Epitaph on this dog, especially the last line, affords a strange glimpse of the poet's 
 misanthropic pride. 
 
388 FIRST CANTOS OB' 
 
 help identifying the writer with this gloomy Childe Harold, who 
 had exhausted in revelry and vice the power of enjoying life. 
 Not that Byron at this early stage felt within his breast only the cold 
 and lifeless embers of wild passions, which had burned themselves 
 to death ; but the poor young fellow, smarting sorely under his 
 early sorrow, and feeling that his talents were of no common kind, 
 grew into that diseased state of mind which leads a man to believe 
 that it is a fine thing to hate all the world and care for nothing 
 to be utterly blase and done-up, and alone and uncared-for. So 
 he pictures Childe Harold to have been j and the same unpleasant 
 character is reproduced in nearly all his portraitures of men. 
 When the first two cantos of this noble poem were published in 
 1812, the author, who only five years earlier had been 
 1812 sneered at as a weakling, rose by unanimous consent to 
 A.D. the head of the London literary world. In his own 
 words, he awoke one morning to find himself famous. 
 As the Ayrshire peasant had been caressed by the fashionables of 
 Edinburgh, the aristocratic and handsome Byron was idolized in 
 the saloons of London. 
 
 His life, as a man of fashion and a literary lion, lasted for about 
 three years. During this time he took his seat in the House of 
 Lords, and made three speeches without producing any marked effect. 
 
 The material gathered during his travels being yet far from 
 exhausted, he wrote those fine Turkish tales, which kindled in the 
 public mind of England an enthusiastic feeling towards modern 
 Greece. TJie Giaour and Tlw Bridt of Abydos appeared in 1813; 
 The Corsair and Lara, in the following year. The two former 
 are written in that eight-syllabled line which suits so well the 
 narration of stirring and romantic adventures. In the latter he 
 adopted the rhyming pentameters of Dryden and Pope, but gave 
 them a music and a colour all his own. In all four the inevitable 
 and unwholesome Byronic hero, sallow, wasted, dark-haired, 
 mysterious, ill-hnmoured, casts his chill upon us. Childe Harold 
 has wound a crimson shawl round his high, pale brow, has donned 
 the snowy capote, has stuck ataghan and silver-mounted pistols in his 
 belt, and in full Gr?.ek dress glooms at us with his melancholy eyes, 
 
AN EXILED WANDERER. 389 
 
 Byron's marriage with Miss Milbanke took place in 1815. 
 Almost from the beginning there were disagreements, and in a 
 twelvemonth the union was dissolved. One daughter, Ada, to 
 whom are addressed the touching lines which open the third canto 
 of " Childe Harold," reminded the unhappy parents of what their 
 home might have been. 
 
 Having produced The Siege of Corinth and Parisina amid the 
 miseries of his last months in London, where he was abused in 
 the papers and hissed in the streets for his conduct to his wife, he 
 left England in disgust in the spring of 1816, and never saw his 
 native land again. Restless and miserable years they were that 
 filled up the allotted span of poor Byron's life. He passed a lonely 
 wanderer, with many a poisoned arrow rankling in his memory 
 and heart over the blood-stained ground of Waterloo, amid the 
 snowy summits of the Jura echoing with frequent thunder, into 
 the beautiful Italian land, to find in the faded palaces of Venice 
 and the mouldering columns of Rome fit emblems of his own 
 ruined life, but, alas ! not to read these lessons of the dead past 
 with a softening and repentant soul. At Venice, at Ravenna, at 
 Pisa, and at Rome, he lived a wicked and most irregular life, writ- 
 ing many poems, for which he received many thousand pounds, but 
 descending, as he sank morally, into a fitful and frequently morbid 
 style, too often poisoned with reckless blasphemy and unconcealed 
 licentiousness. 
 
 His greatest work, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage* was finished in 
 1818. The third canto was written at Geneva; the 
 fourth and last, chiefly at Venice. The Spenserian 1818 
 stanza takes a noble music in the skilful hand of Byron. A.D, 
 The view of modern Rome, the starlight vision of the 
 bleeding Gladiator, and the address to the Ocean, which no 
 familiarity can ever rob of its sublime effect, are the finest passages 
 of the closing poem. 
 
 Of course Byron tried his pen at dramatic writing. Almost 
 every poet does. But the author of "Childe Harold" and the 
 
 * Childe is an old English word, signifying a knight. Byron at first intended to give an 
 antique cast to the diction of the poem. 
 
390 DEATH OF BYRON. 
 
 "Corsair" had not the power ongoing out of himself, which a success- 
 ful dramatist must possess. That dark and morbidly romantic 
 figure, of whom we have spoken before, haunts us through all the 
 Mysteries and Tragedies which this unhappy genius produced in 
 the later years of his shadowed life. Cain and Manfred are the 
 most powerful of these works; but they afford, especially the 
 former, a terrible view into the workings of a mind steeped in 
 rebellious pride and misanthropy. Marino Faliero, TJie Two 
 Foscari, Sardanapalus, Werner, Heaven and Earth, and The 
 Deforined Transformed, are the principal remaining dramas from 
 Byron's pen. 
 
 His last great literary effort was the composition of his most 
 dangerous work, Don Juan. Dangerous, we say, because it 
 is draped and garlanded with passages of exceeding beauty and 
 sweetness. It stands, a fragment of unfinished toil, a sad me- 
 mento of lofty genius debased to the foulest use. Never were 
 shining gold and black mire so industriously heaped together. 
 It seems as if the unhappy bard, tired of hating his fellow-mortals, 
 had turned with fierce mockery upon himself, to degrade and 
 trample on that very genius upon which was based his only claim 
 to admiration, and which alone can save from ridicule his scornful 
 isolation of himself. 
 
 Byron's last enterprise flings a somewhat pathetic light upon 
 his closing days. The Greece whose ancient glories and whose 
 lovely shores had formed a chief theme of his earlier song, had 
 risen at length from her ignoble bondage. The War of Inde- 
 pendence had begun. Sailing from Leghorn in 1823, Byron 
 landed in Cephalonia, and soon passed to Missolonghi. With 
 money, with advice, with encouragement, and with bodily service, 
 he began to work eagerly in the cause of his adopted land. 
 Difficulties were thick around him ; for wild lawlessness was every- 
 where, and fierce quarrels occurred in the Greek army every 
 day. In a few months he did much to overcome these troubles, 
 and was looking forward with eagerness to leading an attack on 
 Lepanto, when fever, rising from the marshes of Missolonghi, 
 seized in its deadly gripe his enervated and toil-worn frame. 
 
SPECIMEN OF BYRON'S VERSE. 391 
 
 He died on the 19th of April 1824 ; and three days later, his 
 turbulent Suliotes gathered, pale and tearful, round his 
 coffin, to hear the funeral service read. The body of 1824 
 the poet was carried to England, and interred in the A.D. 
 family vault at Hucknall, near Newstead. 
 
 TJie Prisoner of Chilian, a sweetly mournful sketch written at 
 Geneva; TJie Lament o/Tasso; The Prophecy of Dante; JSeppo, 
 a light tale of Venetian life j Mazeppa; and the terrible Vision 
 of Judgment, written in mockery of a like-titled poem by Southey, 
 with whom he had a deadly feud, complete the list of Byron'3 
 more important works. 
 
 ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN. 
 
 (FROM "CHILDE HAROLD.") 
 
 HOLL on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean roll ! 
 Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; 
 Man marks the earth with ruin his control 
 Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain 
 The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
 A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, 
 When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, 
 He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan- 
 Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. 
 
 His steps are not upon thy paths thy fields 
 Are not a spoil for him thou dost arise 
 And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields 
 For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, 
 Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, 
 And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray 
 And howling to his gods, where haply lies 
 His petty hope in some near port or bay, 
 And dashest him again to earth : there let him lay 
 
 The armaments, which thunder- strike the walls 
 Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake 
 And monarchs tremble in their capitals ; 
 The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make 
 Their clay creator the vain title take 
 Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war : 
 These are thy toys, and as the snowy flake, 
 They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar 
 Alike the Armada's pride, and spoils of Trafalgar. 
 
392 SPECIMEN OF BYRON'S VERSE. 
 
 Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee. 
 Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage what are they? 
 Thy waters wasted them while they were free, 
 And many a tyrant since; their shores obey 
 The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay 
 Has dried up realms to deserts; not so thou, 
 Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play 
 Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow 
 Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. 
 
 Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form 
 Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, 
 Calm or convulsed in breeze, or gale, or storm 
 Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime 
 Dark-heaving, boundless, endless, and sublime - 
 The image of Eternity the throne 
 Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime 
 The monsters of the deep are made; each zone 
 Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. 
 
 And I have loved thee, Ocean ! and my joy 
 Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be 
 Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy 
 I wantoned with thy breakers they to me 
 Were a delight; and if the freshening sea 
 Made them a terror 'twas a pleasing fear; 
 For I was as it were a child of thee, 
 And trusted to thy billows far and near, 
 And laid my hand upon thy mane as I do here. 
 
KARLY LIFE OF CRABBE. 
 
 393 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GEORGE CRABBE. 
 
 Born 1754 A.D Died 1832 A.D. 
 
 A line of Byron. 
 Aldborough. 
 Treasured verses. 
 Pills and plasters. 
 
 Five pounds wanted. 
 In London. 
 Kindness of Burke. 
 The Library. 
 
 The Village. 
 A country parson's life. 
 Theme of Crabbe. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 " NATURE'S sternest painter, yet the best," wrote Lord Byron of 
 the poet Crabbe. It was a just and generous compliment, deriving 
 additional value from the brilliance of the pen that traced the words. 
 
 Well might George Crabbe be a painter of stern and gloomy 
 scenes, for with these he had been familiar from earliest childhood. 
 His first recollections were of a flat and ugly coast, bordered with 
 slimy rock-pools, washed by discoloured waves, and tenanted only 
 by a race of wild, amphibious, weather-beaten men, who, for 
 the most part, added to their lawful calling as fishermen the yet 
 more hazardous occupation of the smuggler. Such was the 
 scenery, and such were the people round Aldborough in Suffolk, 
 where in 1754 he was born. His father, the salt-master 
 or collector of salt duties in that little town, treated his 1754 
 6on George, as he seems to have treated everybody else, A.D. 
 with considerable harshness. But the boy had early 
 found a consolation for the passing griefs of childhood. He used 
 to cut out for his private reading the occasional verses of a peri- 
 odical, for which his father subscribed. Over and over again the 
 treasured scraps were conned, until the happy owner began to 
 imitate their simple music. 
 
 The life of Crabbe, before settling down into the quietude of 
 a rural parish, presents pleasant and painful scenes. The boy 
 of fourteen, who had already got some grounding in classics 
 and mathematics, was apprenticed to a surgeon at Wickham Brook, 
 
394 SEEKING FAME IN LONDON. 
 
 near Bury St. Edmund's. Here he met with such ill-treatment, 
 that it was thought right to remove him to another master, at 
 Woodbridge in his native shire. Secretly, amid all discourage- 
 ments and sorrows, the young poet, even when he was rolling pills 
 or grinding nauseous drugs in a mortar, had been cultivating his 
 new-found talent for making verses. In the house of his hard 
 taskmaster he had " filled a drawer with poetry." And, while at 
 Woodbridge, he won a prize for a poem on Hope, which was pro- 
 posed by the proprietor of a certain magazine. The success of this 
 maiden effort sealed the future fate of Crabbe. Thenceforward 
 for life he was a poet ; and in a short time, after a brave attempt 
 to establish himself in his profession at Aldborough, he was drawn 
 by an irresistible magnetism into the then perilous struggles of 
 literary life in London. 
 
 This is the strangest period of his story. An apothecary's shop 
 man and a country clergyman have nothing wonderful about their 
 daily lives. But there is often a romance about the career of 
 a literary adventurer, especially during his earlier struggles, whirl i 
 possesses a remarkable fascination. Even the first step Crabbe 
 took towards getting to London was original and odd. He had 
 no money. He sat down and wrote a letter, asking the loan of 
 five pounds from Mr. Dudley North, whose brother had once con- 
 tested the town of Aldborough at an election. The money came. 
 A sloop bound for London was in the harbour, and soon the ex- 
 surgeon stood in the solitude of those busy streets. 
 
 There he went through the old routine of hard work and bitter 
 rejection, in the midst of which so many earnest, hopeful hearts 
 have failed and broken. His poems were refused; a publisher, to 
 whom he had intrusted the issuing of a work on his own account, 
 failed ; his money was nearly gone ; and want stared him in the 
 face. Just at this crisis he thought of his letter to North and the 
 cordial reply. At once acting on the recollection, he wrote, enclosing 
 poems, to the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor, and others. 
 No answer came. He would try the great Edmund Burke. With 
 a beating heart he knocked at the statesman's door one night, 
 handed in a letter, and then went in pitiable agitation to walk to 
 
395 
 
 and fro on Westminster Bridge, till the lamps went out along the 
 river, and the red dawn began to glimmer in the east. Burke's 
 kindness was prompt and real. Appointing a time for Crabbe to 
 call, he looked over the manuscripts ; picked out two, The Library 
 and The Village; good-naturedly pointed out some passages in need 
 of change ; and, better than all, took the works to Dodsley's shop 
 and recommended them to that eminent bookseller. Going further 
 still, he brought the poet out to Beaconsfield, where he introduced 
 him to some of the first men of the day. The tide had turned, 
 and thenceforward there was no struggle in the peaceful life of 
 Crabbe. 
 
 In 1781 The Library was published. Lord Chancellor Thurlow 
 became his friend, though tardily. At Burke's suggestion the poet 
 qualified himself for entering the Church, and was ordained in the 
 August of 1782. The quondam surgeon went back to Aldborough 
 as curate of the parish, with every prospect of competence and 
 fame. His good friend Burke did not forget the struggler he had 
 saved from want, or worse than want. The statesman's influence 
 having obtained for him the domestic chaplaincy in the household 
 of the Duke of Kutland, he exchanged Aldborough parsonage for 
 Belvoir Castle. Then appeared in 1783 The Village, the 
 revisal of which was among the last works of Dr. John- 1783 
 son's toilsome life ; and so decided was the success of A.D. 
 the poem, that its publication may be regarded as the 
 seal of George Crabbe's fame. Presented by Thurlow with 
 two small livings in Dorsetshire, the successful poet married 
 without delay that gentle Suffolk girl who had waited for him so 
 long. 
 
 The quiet current of his days then flowed on without any striking 
 change or remarkable sorrow, except the gentle regrets of moving 
 occasionally from one parish to another, and that one darkest cloud 
 of his life, the loss of his affectionate wife. In 1785 he published 
 The Newspaper; and then his name was not seen in the publishers' 
 lists for two-and-twenty years. The flowers, insects, and rocks of his 
 parish, wherever he might be, engaged much of his studious love. 
 With his sons, whom he taught at home, he read French and 
 
396 CRABBE'S CHIEF THEME. 
 
 Italian books, and took long walks through the fields. Such 
 pursuits, combined with the unflagging labour of the pen, filled 
 those hours of the country clergyman that were not given to the 
 duties of his sacred office. 
 
 His most successful work, Tlie Parish Register, appeared in 
 1807 ; and three years later came The Bwough, in which, perhaps, 
 we find his most powerful painting. About a year after the losa 
 of his wife, which befell him in 1813, he was presented by the 
 
 Duke of Rutland to the living of Trowbridge in Wilt- 
 
 1814 shire, worth 800 a year. There he wrought at his last 
 
 A.D. great literary task, Tlie Tales of the Hall, which were 
 
 published in 1819, and for which, with the remaining 
 copyright of his poems, he received the large sum of 3000. 
 There, too, he died at a ripe old age, on the 3rd of February 
 1832. 
 
 The English poor their woes, weaknesses, and sins form the 
 almost unvarying theme of Crabbe's poetry. Himself a poor 
 man's son, he could not help, whenever he visited the hovels or the 
 parish workhouse at Huston or at Trowbridge, recollecting the 
 days when he had played with ragged boys down by the shipping 
 in the little harbour of Aldborough ; or when he had stood by the 
 sick-beds of labourers and boatmen, a poor country surgeon living a 
 more wretched and precarious life than many of his patients. He 
 had been himself within the veil of the poor man's life he had 
 himself felt many of the sorrows that smite the poor; and thus it 
 was that he could produce, with such marvellous truth and minute- 
 ness of detail, those grey photographs of humble village life which 
 extorted Byron's expressive line. The distinguishing feature of 
 his poetry is the wonderful minuteness of his descriptive passages. 
 One of the most objective of our poets, he described faithfully all 
 that he saw, and little seems to have escaped his searching ken. 
 Upon the sea he dwells with especial love. It was almost the 
 only beautiful object that met his young eyes at Aldborough ; and 
 whether he writes of it as the gentle, sunny thing, that taps lazily 
 at the side of a stranded ship, or the fierce and powerful element 
 that sweeps in white fury over sharp and splintered rocks, some 
 
SPECIMEN OF CRABBE'S VERSE. 397 
 
 of his finest lines flow and brighten in its praise. He has been 
 called a " Pope in worsted stockings ; " which simply means, when 
 we get rid of the faint flavour of the wit, that he wrote in the 
 pentameter couplet of which Pope was so fond, and that he wrote 
 about the poor. Otherwise, there is as slight similarity between 
 the testy little invalid of Twickenham, and the mild, venerable 
 rector of Trowbridge, as between the powdered and brocaded 
 Belinda of the one, whose tress is severed by the daring scissors, 
 and the sweet, rustic, rosy-cheeked Phoebe Dawson of the other, 
 who trips smiling across the village green. 
 
 ISAAC ASHFORD. 
 (FROM "THE PARISH REGISTER.") 
 
 Next to these ladies, but in nought allied, 
 
 A noble peasant, Isaac Ashford, died. 
 
 Noble he was, contemning all things mean, 
 
 His truth unquestioned and his soul serene. 
 
 Of no man's presence Isaac felt afraid ; 
 
 At no man's question Isaac looked dismayed : 
 
 Shame knew him not, he dreaded no disgrace; 
 
 Truth, simple truth, was written in his face. 
 
 Yet while the serious thought his soul approved, 
 
 Cheerful he seemed, and gentleness he loved ; 
 
 To bliss domestic he his heart resigned, 
 
 And with the firmest, had the fondest mind. 
 
 Were others joyful, he looked smiling on, 
 
 And gave allowance where he needed none; 
 
 Good he refused with future ill to buy, 
 
 Nor knew a joy that caused reflection's sigh. 
 
 A friend to virtue, his unclouded breast 
 
 No envy stung, no jealousy distressed 
 
 Bane of the poor ! it wounds their weaker mind 
 
 To miss one favour which their neighbours find. 
 
 Yet far was he from stoic pride removed ; 
 
 He felt humanely, and he warmly loved: 
 
 I marked his action when his infant died, 
 
 And his old neighbour for offence was tried ; 
 
 The still tears, stealing down that furrowed cheek, 
 
 Spoke pity plainer than the tongue can speak. 
 
 If pride was his, 'twas not their vulgar pride, 
 
 Who. i their base contempt, the great deride; 
 
398 SPECIMEN OF CRABBE'S VERSE. 
 
 Nor pride in learning, though ray clerk agreed, 
 If fate should call him, Ashford might succeed ; 
 Nor pride in rustic skill, although we knew 
 None his superior, and his equals few: 
 But if that spirit in his soul had place, 
 It was the jealous pride that shuns disgrace; 
 A pride in honest fame, by virtue gained, 
 In sturdy boys to virtuous labours trained ; 
 Pride in the power that guards his country's caasfc, 
 And all that Englishmen enjoy and boast ; 
 Pride in a life that slander's tongue defied, 
 In fact, a noble passion, misnamed pride. 
 
FOUR PERIODS OP SCOTT'S LIFE. 399 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 Born 1771 A.D Died 1832 A.D. 
 
 Four periods. 
 First associations. 
 At school and college 
 Translates Lenore. 
 Border Minstrelsy. 
 Life at Ashestiel. 
 The Last Minstrel. 
 Clarty-Hole. 
 
 Waverley. 
 Succeeding novels. 
 Abbotsford. 
 The crash. 
 Killing work. 
 Life of Napoleon. 
 Woodstock. 
 Paralysis. 
 
 Visit to Italy. 
 The dropping of the pea 
 Death and burial. 
 List of chief works. 
 His poetry. 
 Word-painting. 
 Historical novels. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 WHETHER we estimate him by the enormous amount of literary 
 work he accomplished, or by the splendour of the fame that he 
 achieved, Scott must be reckoned beyond question the greatest 
 writer that the nineteenth century has yet produced. Before he 
 began to pour his wonderful series of novels from a well of fancy 
 that seemed without measure and without depth, he had already 
 won a brilliant and lasting renown as a poet of chivalry and romance. 
 As the object of this chapter is to present a clear and vivid 
 sketch of Scott's life, we shall best avoid confusion by dividing 
 that life into four great periods, to be touched on in succession, 
 reserving for the close a short account of the principal works with 
 which this magnificent genius endowed his country and the world. 
 
 I. From his birth in 1771 to his entrance on literary life in 
 1796 by the publication of Burger's Lenore, translated 
 from the German. This period, extending over twenty- 
 five years, includes his early life, his education, his 
 apprenticeship, and his first appearance as an advocate. 
 II. From 1796 to the publication of Waverley in 1814. This 
 period of eighteen years, from his twenty-fifth to his forty- 
 third year, includes the publication of his chief poems, and 
 his editions of Dryden and of Swift. It was a time of 
 growing fame. 
 
400 THE BEST-LOVED SCENE OF ALL. 
 
 III. From 1814 to the great catastrophe of 182G, when he sat 
 
 down, a man of fifty-five, to write off a debt considerably 
 above 100,000. During these twelve years, the brightest 
 of his life, he produced his finest novels, and built on the 
 banks of Tweed his mansion of Abbotsford. 
 
 IV. From 1826 to his death, a period of six years, devoted to 
 
 constant literary toil, rendered doubly painful towards the 
 end by the consciousness of decaying powers, and the shocks 
 of mortal disease. Literally, Scott wrote himself to death. 
 The noble genius, straining every nerve under an over- 
 whelming burden, burst his heart and fell, just when the 
 goal of his honourable hopes began to rise clearly into view. 
 
 In a house at the head of the College Wynd in Edinburgh 
 Walter Scott was born, on the 15th of August 1771. 
 1771 His father was a respectable Writer to the Signet; his 
 A.D. mother, Anne Rutherford, was the daughter of an eminent 
 Edinburgh physician. When a toddling bairn of only 
 eighteen months, a severe teething fever deprived him of the power 
 of his right leg. The earliest recollections of the child were of a 
 fairer kind than the College Wynd, or even George's Square, to 
 which the family soon removed, could afford. The delighted eyes 
 of the poor lame little fellow, as he lay among his intimate friends 
 the sheep, on the grass-cushioned crags of Sandy-Knowe, saw, below, 
 the windings of the silver Tweed, and the grey ruins of Dryburgh 
 nestling among dark yew trees ; and in front the purple summits of 
 " Eildon's triple height." And this scene, the first he was conscious 
 of gazing upon, was to the last most fondly loved of all. With 
 Tweed, above all other names, the memory of Scott is imperish- 
 ably associated. And upon that warm September day when 
 his spirit fled, "the gentle ripple of Tweed over its pebbles" was 
 almost the last earthly sound that fell upon his dying ear. 
 
 At the High School of Edinburgh he spent some years, having 
 entered Luke Eraser's second class in 1779, and passed to the 
 tuition of the rector, Dr. Adam, in 1782. He did nothing re- 
 markable in the class-rooms ; but in the yards of the High School 
 
TRANSLATION OF " LENORE." 401 
 
 he was very popular, on account of liis powers as a story-teller. 
 We should not forget, however, that lie won Dr. Adam's attention by 
 some clever poetical versions from Horace and Virgil. Indiscrimi- 
 nate reading was the grand passion of his boyhood. He tells us how 
 he found some odd volumes of Shakspere in liis mother's dressing- 
 room, where he sometimes slept, and with what absorbing delight he 
 sat in his shirt reading them by the light of the fire, until he heard the 
 noise of the family rising from the supper-table. Spenser, too, was an 
 especial favourite with him,, read many a time, during holiday hours, 
 in some sheltered nook of Salisbury Craigs or the Blackford Hills. 
 
 After a short attendance at the Latin, Greek, and Logic classes 
 of the Edinburgh University, he was apprenticed to his father in 
 1786. Of Greek he knew next to nothing. He was well read in 
 Shakspere and Milton ; but took especial delight in such writers 
 as Spenser, Boccaccio, and Froissart. Nothing, he says, but his 
 strong taste for historical study, a study that never grew weak, 
 saved his mind at this time from utter dissipation. A dangerous 
 illness, arising from the bursting of a blood-vessel, which occur- 
 red about the second year of his apprenticeship, gave him several 
 months of almost uninterrupted reading, and deepened the colour- 
 ing caught from old chivalrous romance, which remained to the 
 last the characteristic of his mind. 
 
 When his apprenticeship was duly served, he studied for the 
 bar, and in July 1792 donned the wig and gown of a Scottish 
 advocate. But this honourable garb was to him little more than a 
 matter of form; for the practice of law, which never yielded him 200 
 a year, was soon given up for more congenial and illustrious toils. 
 
 The literary career of Scott opens with the publication of his 
 Translations from Burger. The study of German having become 
 fashionable in Edinburgh some years earlier, Scott, with other young 
 lawyers, loungers of the "Mountain," as their idling bench in the Par- 
 liament House was called, formed a class for the study of that language. 
 Having heard of " Lenore," the young student procured a copy, and 
 one night after supper sat down to translate the thrilling 
 tale. It was published, with "The Wild Huntsman," a 1796 
 rendering from the same author, in the autumn of 179G. A. p. 
 (W) * So 
 
402 LIFE AT ASHESTIEL. 
 
 A cottage at Lasswade soon received Scott and his young 
 Frenck bride, whose maiden name was Charlotte Carpenter, or 
 Ckarpentier; and there the lawyer-poet lived happily by the lovely 
 Esk, occasionally varying his literary labours by the stirring details 
 of military drill on Portobello sands ; for he now wore scarlet, as 
 quarter-master of the Edinburgh Light Horse. We all know 
 how the galloping and wheeling of these cavalry drills, with 
 braying trumpets, flashing steel, and the wild excitement of the 
 headlong charge, must have kindled martial fire in the breast of 
 the author of " Marmion." 
 
 In 1799 Scott was appointed, by the influence of the Duke of 
 Buccleuch, Sheriff-deputy of Selkirkshire, poetically called Ettiick 
 Forest. With the income of this office 300 a year 
 1804 and some little fortune held by his wife, he soon 
 A.D. established himself at the farm of Ashestiel on the Tweed, 
 not far from the Yarrow, a literary man now by profes- 
 sion. This house, where he resided for the greater part of nearly 
 eight years, stood in an old-fashioned garden fenced with holly 
 hedges, and on a high bank, which was divided from the river he 
 loved so well only by a narrow strip of green meadow. Already 
 he had raised his name in literary circles by the publication of 
 several noble ballads and three volumes of the Border Minstrelsy, 
 filled partly with original poems, but chiefly with pieces gathered 
 during those tours in southern Scotland, which he called his " raids 
 into Liddesdale." 
 
 His life at Ashestiel may serve as a specimen of his routine to 
 the last, when he was in the country. Rising at five, he lit his 
 own fire (if it was cold weather), dressed with care, and went out 
 to see his favourite horse. At six he was seated -at his desk in 
 his shooting-jacket, or other out-of-doors garb, with a dog or two 
 couched at his feet. There he wrote till breakfast- time, at nine 
 or ten ; and by that hour he had, in his own words, " broken the 
 neck of the day's work." A couple of hours after breakfast were 
 also given to the pen, and at twelve he was "his own man" free 
 for the day. By one he was on horseback, with his greyhounds 
 led by his side, ready for some hours' coursing; or he was gliding 
 
" THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL." 403 
 
 in a boat over some deep pool on Tweed, salmon-spear in hand, 
 watching in the sunlight for a silver-scaled twenty -pounder.* Such 
 sports, varied with breezy rides by green glen and purple moor- 
 land, closed the day, whose early hours had been given to the 
 battle of Flodden, or the romantic wanderings of Fitzjames. 
 
 It was at Ashestiel that his first great poem The Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel was completed. Published in January 
 1805, this noble picture of the wild Border life of by- 1805 
 gone days raised the Sheriff of Ettrick Forest to an exalted A.D. 
 rank among British poets. The grey-haired Harper, who 
 timidly turned his weary feet towards the iron gate of Newark, 
 and tuned his harp to such glorious strains, is one of the finest 
 creations of our poetical literature. This tale was but the first 
 of a series of picturesque romances, couched in flowing verse of 
 eight syllables, and coloured with the brightest hues of Highland 
 and knightly life, that proceeded during the next ten years from 
 Scott's magic pen. Of these enchanting poems we shall here 
 name only Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. Another impor- 
 tant work of this period was his Life and Works ofDryden, 
 which, published in eighteen volumes in 1808, cost him much 
 toil during the three years he spent upon it. 
 
 The dream of being a Tweedside laird began, with his 
 brightening fame and growing wealth, to take a definite shape. 
 In 1806 he had been appointed one of the Clerks of Session, 
 in room of old Mr. Home; promotion which did not at once 
 increase his income, but gave him the prospect of 800 a 
 year, in addition to his salary as sheriff, upon the death of his 
 predecessor. Accordingly, he purchased the farm of 
 Clarty-Hole, consisting of about a hundred acres, stretch- 1811 
 ing for half a mile along the Tweed, not far from the A.D. 
 foot of the Gala. This ill-named and not very well- 
 favoured spot formed the nucleus of Abbotsford. One piece of 
 neighbouring land after another was added, a mansion was 
 built, which has been called "a Gothic romance embodied in 
 Btone and mortar," the bare banks of Tweed were clothed with 
 
 * In that day even sheriffs plied the leister. 
 
404 THE VISION OF A HAND. 
 
 plantations of young wood, and the fair dream of the poet's life 
 was fast shaping itself into a grand and apparently solid reality. 
 But this is all in anticipation of our story. 
 
 The year after his removal to Abbotsford, which took place in 
 1812, a letter from the Lord Chamberlain offered him the laureate- 
 ship, in the name of the Prince Regent. This honour Scott 
 declined with respectful thanks. He was meanwhile toiling hard 
 at his Life and Works of Dean Swift. 
 
 But a power, greater than even himself was conscious of, had lain 
 all this time sleeping in his brain. Fragments of an historical tale 
 in prose, which was designed to give a picture of old Scottish life 
 and manners, had been lying for years in his cabinet, when one day, 
 as he was searching for some fishing-tackle, he came upon the almost 
 forgotten sheets. It was then the autumn of 1813. Though en- 
 gaged in finishing his edition of Swift, he set to work upon the tale. 
 The greater part of the first volume was done during the ensuing 
 Christmas vacation, and " the evenings of three summer weeks " 
 completed the remaining two. A gay party of young men were 
 sitting over their wine in a house in George Street upon one of 
 those summer evenings, when the host drew attention to a window, 
 where a solitary hand appeared, working without stay or weari- 
 ness at a desk, and tossing down page after page of manuscript upon 
 a rising heap. " It is the same every night," said young Menzies ; "I 
 can't stand the sight of it when I am not at my books. Still it 
 goes oil unwearied, and so it will be till candles are brought in, 
 and nobody knows how long after that." It was Walter Scott's 
 hand, writing the last volumes of " Waverley," seen as he sat in a 
 back room of that house in North Castle Street No. 39 which 
 was long his Edinburgh residence. 
 
 When the work was finished, the manuscript was copied by 
 John Ballantyne, in whose printing concern Scott had, 
 1814* man y y ears earlier > become a partner ; and then Waverley, 
 A or 'Tis Sixty Years Since, was given to the world, but 
 
 without the author's name. A cruise on board the Light- 
 house yacht to Shetland and Orkney and round among tho 
 Hebrides, which filled two summer months of the same year, 
 
ABBOTSFOED. 405 
 
 supplied him with materials for his fine poem, The Lord of the 
 Isles, published in the following January. 
 
 The success of " Waverley " was immediate and remarkable, al- 
 though it appeared in what publishers call the dead season. " Who 
 wrote the nameless book ? " became the great literary question of 
 the day ; and when, from the same hidden hand, there came a series 
 of new novels, brilliant and enchaining as no novels had ever been 
 before, the marvel grew greater still. Most carefully was the secret 
 kept. One of the Ballantynes always copied the manuscript 
 before it was sent to press. For a time Scott was not suspected, 
 owing to the mass of other literary work he got through ; 
 but, in Edinburgh at least, long before his own confession at tho 
 Theatrical Fund Dinner in 1827 rent a then transparent veil, the 
 authorship of the Waverley novels was no mystery. 
 
 Elated by this success, and feeling like a man who had come 
 suddenly upon a rich and unwrought mine of gold, Scott began to 
 build and to plant at Abbotsford, and to buy land with all the 
 earnestness of a most hopeful nature. His industry never relaxed ; 
 nor did his public duties ever suffer from the severe desk-toil that he 
 went through every day. While Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, 
 Rob Roy, The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, and 
 many other works, were in progress, he sat daily during the winter 
 and spring in the Court of Session, attended to his duties as Sheriff, 
 gave dinners in Castle Street, or went to " refresh the machine" and 
 entertain his friends at Abbotsford. Never had a hard-working 
 litterateur so many hours to give to his friends. When the morn- 
 ing's task was over in the little back parlour in Castle Street a 
 neat and orderly room, with its blue morocco books in dustless 
 regularity, and its well-used silver ink-stand shining as if new 
 he took his drive, or frolicked with his dogs, until it was time to 
 show his bright and happy face in the drawing-room of some 
 friend. And at Abbotsford there was no difference in the desk- 
 work; but when that was done, he went with the ardour of a boy 
 into the sports and pleasures of rural life, or walked out among 
 his young trees with his unfailing retinue of dogs frisking about 
 his feet. And none was happier than that hard-featured and 
 
403 THE CRASH OF 1826. 
 
 faithful old forester, Tom Purdie, whom Scott's kindness had 
 changed from a poacher into a devoted servant, when he saw the 
 green shooting-coat, white hat, and drab trousers of the jovial 
 Sheriff appearing in the distance on the path that led to the 
 plantations. The decoration of the interior of his mansion by the 
 Tweed, and the collection of old armour, foreign weapons, Indian 
 creases and idols, Highland targets, and a thousand such things, 
 dear to his chivalrous and antiquarian tastes, occupied many of 
 his busiest and happiest hours. Upon his armory and his wood- 
 lands, his house and grounds, his furniture and painting, he spent 
 thousands of pounds; and to meet the expenses of such costly 
 doings, and of the free hospitality to which his generous nature 
 prompted him doing the honours for all Scotland, as he 
 said he coined his rich and fertile brain into vast sums the 
 prices of his magical works. Unhappily, much of this money 
 was spent before it was earned; and the ruinous system of re- 
 ceiving bills from his publishers as payment for undone work, 
 when once entered upon, grew into a wild and destructive habit. 
 Author and publishers, alike intoxicated by success, became too 
 giddy to look far into the future. Yet that retributive 
 future was coming with swift and awful pace. As they neared 
 the cataract, the smooth, deceitful current, bore them yet more 
 swiftly on. At last the money panic of 1825 came with its 
 perils and its crashes. Hurst and Robinson went down. Then 
 followed Constable and Ballantyne. Scott's splendid fortune, 
 all built of paper now utterly worthless, crumpled up like a torn 
 balloon ; and the author of the Waverley Novels stood, 
 1826 at fifty-five years of age, not penniless alone, but 
 A.t>. burdened, as a partner in the Ballantyne concern, with 
 a debt of 117,000. Nobly refusing to permit his credi- 
 tors or rather the creditors of the firm to which he belonged 
 to suffer any loss that he could help, he devoted his life and his 
 pen to the herculean task of removing this mountain-debt. Thus 
 opens the last, the shortest, and the saddest of the four periods 
 into which we have marked out this great life. 
 
 Already his strong frame had been heavily shaken by severe 
 
DYING IN HARNESS. 40? 
 
 illness. Especially in 1819 the year after lie accepted tlie offer 
 of a baronetcy jaundice had turned the slightly grey hair, that 
 fringed his conical forehead, to snowy white. The first symptoms 
 of apoplexy had appeared in 1823. Yet the valiant soul was never 
 shaken by the failing of the once sturdy frame. Amid the gloom 
 of his commercial distresses under the deeper sorrow of his wife's 
 death, which befell him in the same sad year he worked steadily 
 and bravely on. Every day saw its heavy task performed ; and he 
 seldom laid aside his pen until he had filled six large pages with 
 close writing, which he calculated as equal to thirty pages of print. 
 
 Some months before the crash, he had entered upon a new 
 and much more laborious kind of work. He had undertaken to 
 write a Life of Napoleon Buonaparte. Formerly, with head erect 
 and left hand at liberty for patting his stag-hound Maida, or 
 other canine occupant of his " den," he had been used to write 
 sheet after sheet of a novel with the same facile industry as on that 
 summer evening when the young advocates in George Street saw 
 the vision of a hand. But now he had to gather books, pamphlets, 
 newspapers, letters, and all other kinds of historical materials 
 round his writing-table, arid painfully and slowly, note-book in 
 hand, to wade through heavy masses of detail in search of dates 
 and facts. Before, he had read for pleasure ; the old man had 
 now to read, often with aching head and dim eyes, for the mate- 
 rials of his task. Heavy work for any one ; heavier for him, who 
 had been used to pour forth the riches of his own mind without 
 trouble and without research. Both morning and evening must 
 now for the most part be given to literary toil. 
 
 Woodstock was the first novel he wrote after his great misfor- 
 tune; and its sale for .8228 it was the work of only three 
 months gave strength to the hopes of the brave old man, that 
 a few years would clear him from Ms gigantic debt. But the toil 
 was killing him. The nine volumes of his "Life of Napoleon" were 
 published in 1827. Essays, reviews, histories, letters, and tales, 
 among the last that series called The Chronicles of the Canongate, 
 poured from the unresting pen as fast as they had ever done in 
 its strongest days. His delightful Tales of a Grandfather, in 
 
408 THE LAST DAYS OF SCOTT. 
 
 tvhicli for the first time a picturesque colouring was given to history 
 intended for the perusal of the young, were among the works of 
 his declining years. Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous 
 were the last of his published novels. What he called The Opus 
 Magnum, a reprint of his novels with explanatory introductions 
 and notes historical and antiquarian, may also be named as one of 
 the chief tasks in the closing life of the novelist. 
 
 At last, in the midst of his toil, there came a day February 
 15th, 1830 when he fell speechless in his drawing-room under 
 a stroke of paralysis. From that time he never was the same 
 man, and " a cloudiness " in his words and arrangement shows 
 that the shock had told upon the mind. Fits of apoplexy 
 and paralysis occurred at intervals during that and the following 
 year; and, as a last hope, the worn-out workman sailed 
 1831 in the autumn of 1831 for Malta and Italy. He lived 
 A.D. at Naples and at Rome for about six months; and in 
 the former city he spent many of his morning hours in 
 the composition of two novels, The Siege of Malta, and Bizarro, 
 which were never finished, and which last feeble efforts of a mind 
 shattered by disease his friends wisely did not judge it right to 
 publish. On his way home down the Rhine the relentless malady 
 struck him a mortal blow. His earnest wish was to die at Abbots- 
 ford, the loved place that had cost him so dear; and there he 
 soon found himself with his grandchildren and his dogs playing 
 round the chair he could not leave. 
 
 Perhaps the saddest scene of all this sad time sadder even 
 than the kneeling family round the dying bed was the last effort 
 of the author to return to his old occupation. On the 17th of 
 July, awaking from sleep, he desired his writing materials to 
 be prepared. When the chair, in which he lay propped up with 
 pillows, was moved into his study and placed before the desk, 
 his daughter put a pen into his hand ; but, alas ! there was no 
 power in the fingers to close on the familiar thing. It dropped 
 upon the paper, and the helpless old man sank back to weep in 
 silence. 
 
 Little more than two months later, on the 21st of September 
 
LIST OF SCOTT'S CHIEF WOEKS. 4U9 
 
 1832, this great man died, as lie had wished to die, at Abbotsford, 
 with all his children round his bed; and on the fifth day after 
 death his body was laid beside the dust of his wife in Dryburgh 
 Abbey, whose grey walls he had seen among the yews from his 
 grassy seat on the crags of Sandy-Knowe. 
 
 Some of Scott's chief works have been named in sketching his 
 life. We subjoin here, for more accurate reference, a chronological 
 list of the most important. Any one who has glanced over the 
 catalogue of his writings appended to his Life by Lockhart, will 
 know how useless it would be to give a complete list in a book 
 like this : 
 
 The Lay of the Last Minstrel/ ... ... ... 1805 
 
 Marmion,* ... ... ... ... ... 1808 
 
 Life and Works of Dryden, ... ... ... ... 
 
 The Lady of the Lake,* ... ... ... ... 1810 
 
 Vision of Don Roderick,* ... ... ... ... 1811 
 
 Rokeby,* ... ... ... ... ... ... 1812 - 
 
 Life and Works of Swift, ... ... ... ... 1814 
 
 Waverley, ... ... ... ... ... 
 
 The Lord of the Isles,* ... ... ... ... , 1815 
 
 Guy Mannering, 
 
 The Antiquary, ... ... ... ... ... 1816 
 
 The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality, ... 
 
 Rob Roy, ... ... ... ... ... 1817 
 
 The Heart of Mid-Lothian, ... ... ... ... 1818 
 
 Bride of Laramermoor, ... .. ... ... 1819 
 
 Legend of Montrose, ... ... ... ... 
 
 Ivanhoe, ... ... ... ... ... ... 
 
 The Monastery, ... ... ... ... ... 1820 
 
 The Abbot, ' ... ... ... ... ... 
 
 Lives of the Novelists, ... ... ... ... 
 
 Kenihvorth, ... ... ... ... ... 1821 
 
 Fortunes of Nigel, ... ... ... ... ... 1822 
 
 Peverilofthe Peak, ... ... ... ... 1823 
 
 Quentin Durward, ... ... ... ... ... 
 
 Redgauntlet, ... ... ... ... ... 1824 
 
 The Talisman, ... ... ... ... ... 1825 
 
 Letters of Malachi Malagrowther, ... ... ... 1826 
 
 Woodstock, ... ... 
 
 Life of Napoleon, ... ... ... ... ... 1827 
 
 Tales of a Grandfather First Series, 
 
 * These arc i>ucms. 
 
410 CHARACTER OF feCOTl's WORKS. 
 
 The Fair Maid of Perth, ... 1828 
 
 Tales of a Grandfather Second Series, ... ... 
 
 Tales of a Grandfather Third Series, ... ... 1829 
 
 Count Robert and Castle Dangerous, ... ... ... 1831 
 
 Though facile princeps in his own peculiar realm of poetry, Scott's 
 brilliant renown rests chiefly on his novels. The same love of 
 chivalrous adventure and mediaeval romance colours his best works 
 in both branches of literature. The author of "Mannion" and 
 " The Lady of the Lake " was just the man to produce, in maturer 
 age and with finer literary skill, the changeful, pathetic brilliance of 
 " Waverley," and the courtly splendour of " Kenilworth." Of his 
 poems, " The Lady of the Lake " is perhaps the best. Nothing could 
 surpass, for vivid force, the meeting and the duel between the dis- 
 guised king and the rebel chieftain, Roderick Dhu ; or that rapid 
 flight of the Fiery Cross over mountain and moor, by which the 
 clansmen are summoned to the tryst. The opening of Michael 
 Scott's grave, in the " Lay of the Last Minstrel," and the battle of 
 Flodden, at the close of " Mannion," are pictures that none but true 
 genius could paint. The fine songs, scattered through the works of 
 Scott, afford further evidence of his great poetic powers. Who does 
 not know and delight in Young Lochinvar and Bonnie Dundee ? 
 
 Scott was eminently a painter in words. The picturesque was 
 his forte. Witness the magnificent descriptions of natural scenery 
 sunsets, stormy sea, deep woodland glades with which many 
 of his chapters open. But his portraitures surpass his land- 
 scapes. For variety and true painting of character he was un- 
 doubtedly the Shakspere of our English prose. What a crowd 
 of names, "familiar as household words," come rushing on the 
 mind, as we think of the gallery of portraits his magical pencil has 
 left for our endless delight and study ! There is scarcely a class 
 of old Scottish life without its type in this collection. Dominie 
 Sampson Nicol Jarvie Jeanie Deans Edie Ochiltree Jona- 
 than Oldbuck Meg Dods Dandie Dinmont Dugald Dalgetty 
 their descendants (typical, of course) may still be found by the 
 banks of Forth and Clyde and Tweed. 
 
 Of the twenty-nine tales which form the Waverley Novels* th 
 
GfcouNt>-woii: otf SCOTT'S NOVELS. 411 
 
 greater part have an historical ground-work. Scottish history and 
 Scottish soil were invested by the genius of Scott with a new 
 lustre. Tourists came from all parts of the world to see the places 
 where Fitz-James, Rob Roy, and Jeanie Deans had played their 
 fancied parts. Nor was the "Wizard himself forgotten amid the 
 romance of the magical scenes his genius had conjured up. 
 .Abbotsford is still one of the sights of Scotland. But Scott was 
 not the man to work a vein until it began to yield a base, inferior 
 ore. When he felt that he had fallen below the level of his earlier 
 poetical works, he turned to prose ; and when " Waverley," " The 
 Antiquary," "Old Mortality," "Rob Roy," "The Heart of Mid- 
 Lothian," and so forth, had gone deep into the pictured life of Scottish 
 history and society, he felt that it was time to break new ground. 
 So, turning to English annals, he reproduced in "Ivanhoe" the bril- 
 liant, chivalrous days of the Lion-hearted King. And then fol- 
 lowed several novels founded upon the most striking eras of 
 English history. Of these, " Kenilworth," a picture of Elizabeth 
 and her court " The Fortunes of Nigel," dealing with London life 
 in the reign of James the First " Peveril of the Peak," a story of 
 the Restoration era and " Woodstock," a tale of Cromwell's time 
 may be named as the chief specimens. " The Talisman" carries 
 us to the East during the third Crusade, and " Quentin Durward " 
 introduces us to the French court during the reign of that strange 
 mixture of cruelty, cunning, arid superstition, King Louis XI. So 
 the theme was varied, and thus the interest was maintained. Well 
 might Byron ' say of this wonderful master of fiction, " He is a 
 library in himself." 
 
 The chief work of actual history by Scott is his " Life of 
 Napoleon." It is not a satisfactory performance. Written too near 
 the time of which it treats to be quite impartial, it also bears in 
 many places the marks of haste and imperfect execution. The train- 
 ing through which Scott had been going for the previous ten years, 
 was not of a kind to fit him for working with perfect patience 
 upon a theme so vast and difficult. The laborious research and 
 the careful balancing of conflicting evidence, which such a work 
 required, were net the things to which Scott had been accustomed 
 
412 SPECIMEN of SCOTT'S THOSE. 
 
 in his literary toils. The complete change of literary habits in- 
 volved in this work has been noticed during the progress of our 
 sketch. 
 
 KNIGHTHOOD IN THE LISTS. 
 
 (FROM "IVANHOE.") 
 
 At length, as the Saracenic music of the challengers concluded one of those 
 long and high flourishes with which they had broken the silence of the lists, it 
 was answered by a solitary trumpet, which breathed a note of defiance from the 
 northern extremity. All eyes were turned to see the new champion whom these 
 sounds announced ; and no sooner were the barriers opened than he paced into 
 the lists. As far as could be judged of a man sheathed in armour, the new 
 adventurer did not greatly exceed the middle size, and seemed to be rather 
 slender than strongly made. His suit of armour was formed of steel, richly 
 inlaid with gold ; and the device on his shield was a young oak-tree pulled up by 
 the roots, with the Spanish word Desdichado, signifying Disinherited. He was 
 mounted on a gallant black horse ; and as he passed through the lists he grace- 
 fully saluted the Prince and the ladies by lowering his lance. The dexterity 
 with which he managed his steed, and something of youthful grace which he dis- 
 played in his manner, won him the favour of the multitude, which some of the 
 lower classes expressed by calling out, " Touch Ralph de Vipont's shield ! 
 touch the Hospitaller's shield ; he has the least sure seat ; he is your cheapest 
 bargain !" 
 
 The champion, moving onward amid these well-meant hints, ascended the 
 platform by the sloping alley which led to it from the lists, and, to the astonish- 
 ment of all present, riding straight up to the central pavilion, struck with the 
 sharp end of his spear the shield of Brian de Bois-Guilbert until it rang again. 
 All stood astonished at his presumption, 'but none more than the redoubted 
 knight, whom he had thus defied to mortal combat, and who, little expecting so 
 rude a challenge, was standing carelessly at the door of the pavilion. 
 
 When the two champions stood opposed to each other at the two extremities 
 of the lists, the public expectation was strained to the highest pitch. Few 
 augured the possibility that the encounter could terminate well for the Disin- 
 herited Knight; yet his courage and gallantry secured the general good wishes 
 of the spectators. 
 
 The trumpets had no sooner given the signal than the champions vanished 
 from their posts with the speed of lightning, and closed in the centre of the lists 
 with the shock of a thunderbolt. The lances burst into shivers up to the very 
 grasp ; and it seemed at the moment that both knights had fallen, for the shock 
 had made each horse recoil backwards upon its haunches. The address of the 
 riders recovered their steeds by use of the bridle and spur ; and having glared on 
 each other for an instant with eyes which seemed to flash fire through the bars 
 of their visors, each made a demivolt, and, retiring to the extremity of the lists, 
 received a fresh lance from the attendants. 
 
SPECIMEN OF SCOTT 8 PROSE. 
 
 413 
 
 A loud shout from the spectators, waving of scarfs and handkerchiefs, and 
 general acclamations, attested the interest taken by the spectators in this 
 encounter ; the most equal, as well as the best performed, which had graced the 
 day. But no sooner had the knights resumed their station than the clamour 01 
 applause was hushed into a silence so deep and so dead, that it seemed the mul- 
 titude were afraid even to breathe. 
 
 A few minutes' pause having been allowed, that the combatants and their 
 horses might recover breath, Prince John with his truncheon signed to the 
 trumpets to sound the onset. The champions a second time sprang from their 
 stations, and closed in the centre of the lists, with the same speed, the same dex- 
 terity, the same violence, but not the same equal fortune as before. 
 
 In this second encounter, the Templar aimed at the centre of his antagonist's 
 shield, and struck it so fair and forcibly, that his spear went to shivers, and the 
 Disinherited Knight reeled in his saddle. On the other hand, that champion 
 had, in the beginning of his career, directed the point of his lance towards Eois- 
 Guilbert's shield, but, changing his aim almost in the moment of encounter, he 
 addressed it to the helmet, a mark more difficult to hit, but which, if attained, 
 rendered the shock more irresistible. Fair and true he hit the Norman on the 
 visor, where his lance's point kept hold of the bars. Yet, even at this disadvan- 
 tage, the Templar sustained his high reputation ; and had not the girths of hia 
 saddle burst, he might not have been unhorsed. As it chanced, however, saddle, 
 Lorse, and aian rolled on the ground under a cloud of dust. 
 
414 
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF NAMES. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OTHER WRITERS OF THE EIGHTH ERA. 
 
 PORTS. 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh. 
 
 Savage Landor. 
 
 Samuel Rogers. 
 
 John Lingard. 
 
 Supplementaiy List 
 
 James Hogg. 
 
 Thomas M'Crie. 
 
 
 Jiimes Montgomery. 
 
 James Mill. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC WRITERS. 
 
 Thomas Moore. 
 
 Henry Hollum. 
 
 Jeremy Bentham. 
 
 Robert TannahilL 
 
 William Napier. 
 
 Dugald Stewart. 
 
 Thomas Campbell. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 David Ricardo. 
 
 Felicia Hemans. 
 
 
 Thomas Brown. 
 
 Reginald Heber. 
 
 NOVELISTS. 
 
 Sir Humphry Davy. 
 
 Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Henry Mackenzie. 
 
 Sir John Herschel. 
 
 Kirke White. 
 
 Frances Burney. 
 
 
 Percy Shelley. 
 
 Maria Edgeworth. 
 
 THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLAEi 
 
 John Keats. 
 
 John Gait 
 
 Adam Clarke. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 Frances Trollope. 
 
 Robert Hull. 
 
 
 Supplementary List 
 
 Edward Irving. 
 
 DRAMATISTS. 
 
 
 Richard Person. 
 
 Hannah More. 
 
 ESSAYISTS AND CRITICS. 
 
 
 Brinsley Sheridan. 
 
 William CobbetL 
 
 TRAVELLERS. 
 
 Joanna Baillie. 
 
 John Foster. 
 
 James Bruce. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 William Hazlitt. 
 
 Mungo Park. 
 
 
 Sydney Smith. 
 
 Edward Clarke. 
 
 HISTORIANS. 
 
 Lord Jeffrey. 
 
 
 William Roscoe. 
 
 Charles Lamb. 
 
 TRANSLATORS. 
 
 OWING to the multitude of names that crow T d upon us as we 
 approach our own day, we must, in this and the similar chapter 
 of the Ninth Era, depart from the simple division into Poets and 
 Prose Writers, hitherto adopted in the last chapter of each period, 
 and class authors under nine heads, viz., Poets, Dramatists, His- 
 torians, Novelists, Essayists and Critics, Scientific Writers, Theo- 
 logians and Scholars, Travellers, and Translators. Those names 
 which limited space prevents us from noticing at any length, will 
 form a list at the end of each section. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 SAMUEL ROGERS, a London banker, whose reputation as a poet 
 stands very high, was born in 1763, at Stoke Newington, a metro- 
 politan suburb. His chief poems are TJie Pleasures of Memory 
 
ROGERS, HOGG, MONTGOMERY, MOORE. 415 
 
 (1792); Columbus (1812); Human Life (1819); and Italy, of 
 which the first part appeared in 1822. A graceful and gentle 
 spirit fills the poetry of Rogers. His love for the beautiful in 
 nature and in art led him to delight in " a setting sun, or lake 
 among the mountains," and at the same time to fill his house in 
 St. James's Place with the finest pictures wealth could buy. 
 The breakfasts he gave in this pleasant home used to draw some 
 of the first men in London round his table. Never weary of 
 benevolence, especially to the literary struggler, this kindly, clever 
 man, lived far into the present century, dying in 1855. 
 
 JAMES HOGG, the Ettrick Shepherd, was born in Selkirkshire 
 in 1770. He began by writing songs, and gathered some pieces 
 for Scott's " Border Minstrelsy." The Queen's Wake, a legendary 
 poem published in 1813, stamped him as a true poet. Among the 
 ballads supposed to be sung to Queen Mary is the exquisite 
 fairy tale, Kilmeny. From the nature, of his themes, this poet 
 may be classed with Spenser, as a bard of romantic and legendary 
 strain. Madoc of the Moor, in Spenser's stanza, and The Pil- 
 grims of the Sun, in blank- verse, are among the most important 
 of his later works. Many of his songs are very fine ; and several 
 novels, too, came from his untaught pen. As a farmer he was un- 
 successful, like Burns. His chief residence was a cottage at Altrive, 
 where he died of dropsy in 1835. 
 
 JAMES MONTGOMERY, well known as the author of two richly 
 descriptive poems, Greenland and The Pelican Island, was born 
 in 1771, at Irvine in Ayrshire. Much of his life was spent in 
 the wearing toil of a journalist, as editor of the Sheffield Iris. 
 He was twice imprisoned for imputed libels. In addition to the 
 works already named, he wrote The Wanderer in Switzerland, The 
 West Indies, Prison Amusements, Tlie World before the Flood, and 
 many other poems. He died in 1854, having long enjoyed a 
 pension of 200 a year. 
 
 THOMAS MOORE was born in Dublin on the 28th of May 
 1779. At fourteen he contributed verse to a magazine. Having 
 studied at Trinity College, he entered the Middle Temple in London 
 as a student of law. His first important literary undertaking 
 
41 C TAXNAIIILL AND CAMPBELL. 
 
 was a Translation from Anacreon, published in 1800. The works 
 for which he is chiefly remembered are his Irish Melodies, exquisite 
 specimens of polished and most musical verse; and his Lalla 
 Itookh (Tulip -cheek), a glittering picture of Eastern life and thought. 
 Shutting himself up in a Derbyshire cottage with a pile of books 
 on Oriental history and travel, he so steeped his mind in the 
 colours of his theme, that he is said to have been asked by one 
 who knew Asia well, at what time he had travelled there. The 
 Fudge Family in Paris, a sparkling satire, and The Epicurean, a 
 romance of Oriental life in poetic prose, deserve special mention 
 among the works of Moore. Burns and Moore stand side by side 
 as the lyrists of two kindred nations. But the works of the latter, 
 polished and surpassingly sweet as they are, have something of 
 ;i i Ira wing-room sheen about them, which does not find its way 
 to the heart so readily as the simple grace of the unconventional 
 Ayrshire peasant. The Muse of the Irish lawyer is crowned with 
 a circlet of shining gems ; the Muse of the Scottish peasant wears 
 a garland of sweet field-flowers. Moore lived a brilliant, fashion- 
 able life in London, and died in 1852. 
 
 ROBERT TANNAHILL, born at Paisley in 1774, was in early life 
 a weaver. His Scottish songs, among which may be named 
 Gloomy Winters now awa, and Jessie the Flower o' Dunblane, are 
 remarkable for sweetness and power. The return of his poems 
 by a publisher, to whom he had sent them, so preyed upon his 
 sensitive mind, that it gave way and he drowned himself in a 
 neighbouring brook (1810). 
 
 THOMAS CAMPBELL was a native of Glasgow. Born there in 
 1777, he distinguished himself at the University by his poetical 
 translations from the Greek Tuition and booksellers' work sup- 
 ported him, until he made a hit in 1799 by his Pleasures of Hope, 
 which was written in a dusky Edinburgh lodging. His other 
 great poem, Gertrude of Wyoming, a tale of Pennsylvania, appeared 
 in 1809. Fine as these are, however, they are surpassed by his 
 smaller poems, many of which, such as Holienlinden and Lord 
 Clli it's Daughter, are extraordinary specimens of scenic power, or 
 picturing in words. Such noble naval lays as T1x Battle of tlie 
 
MRS. HEMANS, HEBER, HUNT. 417 
 
 Baltic, and Ye Mariners of England, obtained for him a government 
 pension. In prose he won considerable praise for the critical 
 notices attached to his Specimens of the British Poets. He edited 
 the "New Monthly Magazine" for ten years. He died in 1844. 
 
 FELICIA HEMANS (maiden name, Browne) was born at Liver- 
 pool in 1793, the daughter of a merchant. Amid the lovely 
 scenery of Wales her youth was spent. Her marriage with 
 Captain Hemans was far from happy. Appearing before the 
 public as a poetess in her fifteenth year, she continued at intervals 
 to produce works of exquisite grace and tenderness, until some 
 three weeks before her death, which took place in Dublin on the 
 16th of May 1835. The Forest Sanctuary is her finest poem; 
 but to name those lyrics and shorter poems from her pen, which 
 live in the memory like favourite tunes, would be an endless 
 task. Such are The Voice of Spring, The Graves of a Household, 
 The Battle of Morgarlen, The Palm Tree, and The Sunbeam. Her 
 tragedy, The Vespers of Palermo, though abounding in beauty, 
 has not enough of dramatic effect to suit the stage. 
 
 REGINALD HEBER was bom in 1783, at Malpas in Cheshire. 
 Educated at Oxford, and there distinguished for both Latin and 
 English verse especially for his fine prize poem, Palestine he 
 became a Fellow of All Souls' College, and entered the Church. 
 In 1809 he published Europe, or Lines on the Present War. Ap- 
 pointed Bishop of Calcutta in 1823, he was in the full career of 
 active usefulness, when he died suddenly in his bath one morning 
 at Trichinopoly, having worn the mitre only three years. This 
 gentle poet is, perhaps, best known by such sweet missionary 
 hymns as that beginning, " From Greenland's icy mountains." 
 
 LEIGH HUNT, born in 1784, at Southgate in Middlesex, went to 
 school at Christ's Hospital with Charles Lamb. Poetry and 
 journalism began early to employ his lively pen. In 1808 Hunt 
 and his brother started The Examiner, a weekly paper, in which 
 he made some statements about the Prince Regent that led to his 
 imprisonment for libel. Turning his cell and prison-yard into a 
 little bower of sweet flowers, he lived there for two years, receiving 
 visits from Byron, Moore, and other sympathetic friends. Hi>i 
 05) 27 
 
418 WHITE AND SHELLEY. 
 
 Italian poem, A Story of Rimini, was published after his libera- 
 tion. His visit to Italy, and alliance with Byron in the publication 
 of The Liberal were unfortunate undertakings. A narrative poem 
 called TJie Palfrey, and a drama, A Legend of Florence, are among 
 his other works. His prose Essays, Sketches, and Memoirs have all 
 the characteristics of his verse a light picturesque gracefulness 
 being the prevailing quality of both. He died in 1859. 
 
 HENEY KIEKE WHITE, the son of a butcher, was born at Not- 
 tingham on the 21st of August 1785. At fourteen he was appren- 
 ticed to a stocking-weaver; but, disliking the trade, he afterwards 
 entered an attorney's office. A silver medal, awarded him for a 
 translation of Horace, which was proposed in the Monthly Preceptor, 
 confirmed the boy's desire to cultivate poetry. In 1803 he pub- 
 lished a volume of poems, the chief piece in which was called Clifton 
 Grove. The notice of Southey cheered the young poet's heart, and 
 the kindness of new friends enabled him to enter St. John's College, 
 Cambridge, as a sizar. There he wrought so hard to win the 
 honours of scholarship and science, that he died in 1806, a victim 
 to intense study acting on a somewhat delicate frame. Southey 
 edited his Remains, consisting of poems on various subjects and 
 letters to his friends. 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, a baronet's son, born in 1792 at Field 
 Place in Sussex, lived a short, unhappy life. The young student 
 of romance wrote two novels while yet a school-boy. Expelled 
 from Oxford for his atheism, he wrote at eighteen a poem called 
 Queen Mob, full of power and beauty, but debased in its very grain 
 and ground- work by rank infidelity and blasphemy. Alastor, or 
 the Spirit of Solitude, a poetical picture of his own lawless and un- 
 resting soul ; The Revolt of Islam, written in his country-house 
 at Great Marlow in Bucks ; PrometJieus Unbound, a classic 
 drama, mystical and impious, written under the blue Roman sky 
 amid bowers of fragrant blossom ; and TJie Cenci, a powerful but 
 repulsive tragedy, form the leading works of this brilliant, way- 
 ward, ill-fated youth. Some of his minor poems, among which 
 we may specify The Cloud, TJie Skylark, and the delicious Sensitive 
 Plant, actually overflow with lyrical beauty both of thought and 
 
JOHN KEATS. 419 
 
 language. Delicacy of constitution forced him to the sweet air of 
 Italy, where he saw a good deal of Byron. Boating was his 
 favourite recreation; and one July day in 1822, returning from 
 Leghorn, a squall overset his little craft in the Gulf of Spezzia, 
 and he perished in the waves. 
 
 JOHN KEATS, born in London in October 1795, was early 
 bound apprentice to a surgeon. Cultivating poetry with great 
 earnestness, he published Endymion, a Poetic Romance, in 1818. 
 A severe and scornful review of this first effort, which appeared 
 in the " Quarterly," struck like a dagger to the heart of the sensitive 
 poet, and probably hastened his death. Before consumption, which 
 was a family disease, slew this brilliant young " singer of the senses," 
 he had written Hyperion, The Eve of St. Agnes, Lamia, Isabella, 
 and other poems, which showed that his untrained, over-luxuriant 
 imagination, springing from the root of true genius, could be 
 pruned into the production of works well worthy to live. Keats 
 died at Rome on the 27th of December 1820, and was buried in the 
 Protestant Cemetery there, under a sweet carpeting of violets and 
 daisies. When the body of drowned Shelley drifted ashore, a 
 volume of Keats was found in the pocket of his brine-soaked coat. 
 He had already shown his love for the young surgeon-poet by an 
 elegy called Adonais. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 MICHAEL BRUCE. (1746-1767) Portmoak, Kinross a schoolmaster Lochleven; 
 
 An Elegy written in Spring. 
 SIR WILLIAM JONES. (1746-1794) London a Judge in tlie Supreme Court in 
 
 Bengal Song of Hafiz ; Hindoo Wife. 
 JOHN LOGAN. (1748-1788) Soutra, Mid-Lothian a Scottish minister The 
 
 Cuckoo; The Country in Autumn; Runnimede. 
 ROBERT FERGUSSON. (1751-1774) Edinburgh a lawyer's clerk poet of Scottish 
 
 town life Guid Braid Claitli; To the Tron Kirk Bett. 
 WILLIAM GIPFORD. (1756-1826) Ash burton, Devonshire The Baviad; The 
 
 Mceviad Editor of " Quarterly." 
 WILLIAM SOTHEBY. (1757-1833) London a dragoon officer Orestes, Saul, 
 
 Italy; translations from Wieland, Virgil, and Homer. 
 WM. L. BOWLES. (1762-1850) K ing's- Sutton, Northamptonshire canon of 
 
 Salisbury Sonnets ; Sorroivs of Switzerland ; Missionary of the Andes. 
 JAMES GRAHAME. (1765-1811)- Glasgow curate of Sedgefield, Durham The 
 
 Sabbath; Mary Queen of Scots, 
 
420 HANNAH MORE AND SHERIDAN. 
 
 ROBERT BLOOMFIELD. (1766-1823) Honiugton, near Bury St. Edmunds, Suf- 
 folk Tlie Farmer's Boy; Rural Tales; Mayday with the Muses. 
 
 J. HOOKHAM FBEBE. (1769-1846) diplomatist Most Interesting Particular 
 relating to King Arthur, by the Brothers Whistlecraft. 
 
 HUN. WM. R. SPENCER. (1770-1834) author of Beth Gelert and minor poeius; 
 translator of Lenore. 
 
 MARY TIGHB. (1773-1810) Miss Blackford county of Wicklow, Ireland 
 Psyche, in six cantos. 
 
 JUUN LEYDEN. (1775-1811) Denholm, Roxburghshire Scenes of Infancy; The 
 Mermaid ; Ode to a Odd Coin. 
 
 JAMES SMITH. (1775-1839) London solicitor in conjunction with his brother 
 Horace wrote Rejected Addresses, in imitation of popular authors. 
 
 GEORGE CROLY. (1780-1860)-Dublin Rector of St. Stephen's, Walbrook P>'tf 
 in 1815; Angel of the World; Catiline, a tragedy; Salathiel, a romance. 
 
 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. (1784-1842) Blackwood, Dumfries-shire Chantrey's as- 
 sistant Scottish Songs ; Sir Marmadule Maxwell; The Maidof Elvan; 
 Life of WiUcie. 
 
 WILLIAM TENNANT. (1785-1848) Anstruther, Fife professor at St. Andrews 
 Anster Fair; Thane of Fife; Dinging Down of the Cathedral. 
 
 KBBNEZER ELLIOTT. (1781-1849) Masborough, Yorkshire iron-founder Corn 
 Law Rhymes. 
 
 RICHARD BARIIAM. (1788-1845) Canterbury an Episcopal clergyman In- 
 goldxby Legends, in prose and verse ; My Cousin Nicholas, (a novel). 
 
 JOHN KKBLE. (1790-1866) Episcopal clergyman Professor of Poetry al 
 Oxford The Christian Year. 
 
 CHARLES WOLFE. (1791-1823) Dublin Episcopal minister Burialof Sir John 
 Moore ; Jugurtha in Prison. 
 
 RUBERT POLLOK. (1799-1827) Muirhouse, Renfrewshire theological student 
 The Course of Time, a sacred epic. 
 
 DRAMATISTS. 
 
 HANNAH MORE, the daughter of a Gloucestershire schoolmaster, 
 was born in 1745. Her three tragedies, produced under Garrick's 
 encouragement, were TJie Inflexible Captive, Percy, and The Fatal 
 Falsehood. Of these, " Percy " is the best. She is also remem- 
 bered for her very numerous Tales and other prose works, many of 
 which treat of female education. Of the former, Calebs in search 
 of a wife, was remarkably popular. She died in 1833. 
 
 RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, distinguished as a manager, 
 dramatist, and statesman, was born in Dublin in 1751. At 
 twenty-four he produced The Jtivals, in which Captain Absolute 
 and Mrs. Malaprop are well-known characters. But his greatest 
 
JOANNA BAILLIE, 110SCOE. 421 
 
 work was TJie School for Scandal, which, produced in 1777, is 
 justly regarded as the finest comedy of our later literature. The 
 Duenna, an opera ] The Critic, a witty farce, containing the capital 
 character of Sir Fretful Plagiary ; and Pizarro, an adaptation from 
 Kotzebue's American drama, may be named among his other works. 
 Sheridan's chief political appearance was his great speech on the 
 impeachment of Hastings. He died in 1816. 
 
 JOANNA BAILLIE was born in 1762, at the manse of Bothwell 
 in Lanarkshire. Her dramatic works, written during thirty-eight 
 years, fill many volumes ; but they are nearly all fitter to be read 
 than acted. She commenced in 1798 a Series of Plays on the Pas- 
 sions, intending to make each passion the central theme of a tragedy 
 and a comedy. Sir Walter Scott considered her to be most suc- 
 cessful in the delineations of Fear. De Montfort is the only one 
 of Miss Baillie's plays that has been put upon the stage. Count 
 Basil is a drama of similar stamp. She wrote also fine Scottish 
 songs and many minor poems. She died at Hampstead in 1851. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 RICHARD CUMBERLAND. (1732-1811) Cambridge secretary to Board of Trade 
 comedies, TJie West Indian; The Wheel of Fortune. 
 
 GEORGE COLMAN. (1733-1794) Florence manager of Covent Garden and the 
 Haymarket theatres comedies, The Jealous Wife; The Clandestine Mar- 
 riage. 
 
 THOMAS HOLCROPT. (1745-1809) London pedler, jockey, shoemaker, actor, 
 author comedies. The Road to Ruin ; The Deserted Daughter. 
 
 GEORGE COLMAN the Younger. (1762-1836) London manager of the Hay- 
 market and Examiner of plays comedies, John Bull', Heir at Law ; Poor 
 Gentleman comic poems, Newcastle Apothecary, Lodgings for Sinyle 
 Gentlemen, &c. 
 
 CHARLES K. MATURIN. (Died in 1824) curate of St. Peter's, Dublin Bertram, 
 . a tragedy ; and Women, a romantic novel. 
 
 HISTORIANS. 
 
 WILLIAM ROSCOE, originally an attorney, but afterwards a 
 banker, was a native of Liverpool, born there in 1753. Devoting 
 himself early to literature, he produced a poem on slavery, called 
 The Wrongs or Africa. But he soon turned to the work for which 
 
422 MACKINTOSH, LINGARD, M CRIE. 
 
 he was better suited. In 1796 he published in two volumes The. 
 Life of Lorenzo de Medici; and nine years later, in 1805, The Life 
 and Pontificate of Leo X., a great work, but received with less 
 enthusiasm than " Lorenzo." He represented Liverpool in Parlia- 
 ment for some time. The failure in 1816 of the bank in whicb 
 he was a partner, plunged him in difficulties. He died in 1831. 
 
 SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH was born in 1765, at Aldourie House, 
 on the banks of Loch Ness. Called to the English bar in 1795, 
 he won considerable renown by his defence of Peltier, went out 
 to India as Recorder of Bombay, and in seven years retired on a 
 pension of 1200. Amid the whirl of public life he did something 
 with his pen, as if to show what he might have done in greater 
 quiet and with greater industry. Some articles in the " Edinburgh 
 Review," a Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy for the "Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica," part of a History of England for Lardner's " Cyclo- 
 paedia," and a short Life of Sir Thomas More, are almost the only 
 works of Mackintosh. His brilliant conversation caused him to be 
 much sought after in society, and thus little time was left for the 
 labour of the pen. He died rather suddenly in 1832. 
 
 JOHN LINGARD, born at Winchester in 1771, was the author of 
 a History of England from the invasion by the Romans to the 
 abdication of James II., of which the first volumes appeared in 
 1819. Such a work, written by a Roman Catholic priest, as 
 Lingard was, must naturally discuss the Reformation and kindred 
 subjects from a hostile point of view; but, making this allowance, 
 Lingard's " History " is a calm and learned narrative, especially 
 valuable in those chapters which deal with the Anglo-Saxons and 
 their life. A smaller work, on The Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon 
 Church, displays a deep insight into this distant period of our 
 national history. Lingard died in 1851, at Hornby, near Lan- 
 caster. 
 
 THOMAS M'CRiE, celebrated as the author of the Life of John 
 Knox, was born in 1772, at Dunse in Berwickshire. The "Life of 
 Knox," first published in 1813, deals not only with the man, but 
 with the stirring times of which he was a central figure. A Life 
 of Andrew Melville proceeded also from the pen of this eminent 
 
MILL, HALLAM, NAPIER. 423 
 
 Scottish clergyman. M'Crie's condemnation of Sir Walter Scott's 
 picture of the Covenanters, as displayed in " Old Mortality," drew 
 from the illustrious novelist a reply in the shape of a review of his 
 own work in the " Quarterly." The biographer of Knox lived, 
 respected and beloved, until 1835. 
 
 JAMES MILL, born in 1773, at Logie Pert, near Montrose, is 
 noted as a metaphysician, political economist, and historian. 
 His great work, in the last capacity, was a History of British 
 India, which was published in five volumes in 1817-18. Mill 
 advocated many of the progressive views of Jeremy Bentham. He 
 died in 1836. 
 
 HENRY HALLAM, the son of the Dean of Wells, was born in 
 1778, and received his education at Eton and Christ Church, 
 Oxford. He has worthily won the praise of being "the most 
 judicial of our great modern historians." A great brother- 
 labourer in the same toilsome field, Macaulay, pays him the high 
 compliment of accepting any fact vouched for by him, as almost 
 certain to be correct. Having studied in the Inner Temple, he 
 was called to the bar, and soon became a Commissioner of Audit. 
 Besides his early contributions to the "Edinburgh Review," he wrote 
 three great historical works, which have raised him to the very 
 highest literary rank. These are, View of Europe during the 
 Middle Ages, (1818), extending from the middle of the fifth to the 
 end of the fifteenth century; The Constitutional History of Eng- 
 land, from the accession of Henry VII. to the death of George II., 
 published in 1827; and An Introduction to the Literature of 
 Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, which 
 appeared in 1837-38. Outliving his sons by many years, this 
 great historian died in 1859. 
 
 WILLIAM NAPIER, born in 1785, at Castletown in Ireland, went 
 through the bloody scenes of The Peninsular War, of which he 
 produced a most accurate and graphic History, between 1828 and 
 1840. Southey's History of the same war is comparatively 
 clumsy. Colonel Sir W. Napier wrote also Tlie Conquest of Scinde, 
 and The Life of 8ir Charles Napier. He died February 1 2th, 
 i860. 
 
424 MACKENZIE, MISS BURNEY. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 DAVID DALRYMPLB. (1726-1792) Lord HaUes Edinburgh a Scottish jndge 
 
 Annals of Scotland, from Malcolm III. to the accession of the Stuarts. 
 GEORGE CHALMERS. (1742-1825) Fochabers, Elgin barrister in America - 
 
 Caledonia (Antiquities and Early History of Scotland) ; Life of Queen 
 
 Mary ; Life of Sir David Lyndsay. 
 WILLIAM MITFORD. (1744-1827) London colonel of South Hampshire Militia 
 
 and member of Parliament History of Greece, from an anti-democratio 
 
 point of view. 
 WILLIAM COXE. (1747-1828) London -Archdeacon of Wilts History oj 
 
 Austria; Memoirs of Walpole and Marlborough. 
 JOHN PINKERTON. (1758-1825) Edinburgh a lawyer History of Scotland, 
 
 before the reign of Malcolm III. and under the Stuarts ; The Scythians 
 
 or Goths. 
 
 MALCOLM LAINQ. (1762-1818) Orkney a Scottish lawyer History of Scot- 
 land, from 1603 to 1707 ; Dissertations on the Gowrie Plot and the Murder 
 
 of Darnley. 
 AHARON TURNER. (1768-1847) a London solicitor History of the Angh- 
 
 Saxons;. History of England during the Middle Ages. 
 PATRICK FRASKR TTTLER. (1791-1849) Edinburgh son of Lord Woodhouselee, 
 
 author of Universal History History of Scotland, from Alexander III. to 
 
 the Union of the Crowns in 1603 ; Lives of Scottish Worthies ; Life of 
 
 Raleigh. 
 
 NOVELISTS. 
 
 HENRY MACKENZIE, born in Edinburgh in 1745, and educated 
 there, published in 1771 a novel called The Man of Feeling ', in 
 which the prominent character is Harley. T/te Man of tlie World 
 is an inferior work. Sterne was Mackenzie's model ; but the dis- 
 ciple has more true feeling in his books than the master. Having 
 held for some time the office of Comptroller of Taxes for Scotland, 
 Mackenzie, who was a lawyer by profession, died in 1831. 
 
 FRANCES BURNEY (MADAME D'ARBLAY), was the daughter of 
 Dr. Burney, author of the History of Music, and was born 
 in 1752, at Lynn Regis in Norfolk. In early life she wrote a 
 novel called Evelina, or a Young Lady's Entrance into tJie World, 
 which, being published in 1778, raised its author to great popu- 
 larity. This was her best work. Cecilia (1782) is more highly 
 finished, but less interesting. After her marriage with Count 
 D'Arblay, a French refugee, had freed her from the "splendid 
 
MISS EDGEWORTH, GALT, MRS. TROLLOPE. 425 
 
 slavery" of keeping Queen Charlotte's robes, she wrote a tragedy and 
 two novels, but of greatly inferior merit. She died in 1840, and, 
 two years later, appeared her Diary and Letters, edited by her niece. 
 
 MARIA EDGEWORTH, born in 1767, at Hare Hatch, near Head- 
 ing in Berkshire, spent nearly all her life at Edgeworthstown, in 
 the county of Longford. Taught chiefly by her father, Richard 
 Lovell Edgeworth, author of several educational and engineering 
 works, she began her career as a novelist in 1801 with Castle 
 Rackrent, a tale of Irish extravagance. At intervals appeared 
 Belinda, Popular Tales, Leonora, Tales of Fashionable Life, 
 Patronage, and a host of other fictions, the series closing in 1834 
 with Helen. The hollowness of frivolous, fashionable life, as it 
 then was, and the racy varieties of real Irish character, are 
 depicted in these novels with marvellous skill. In 1823 Miss 
 Edgeworth paid a visit to her admirer and brother-artist, Sir 
 Walter Scott, at his mansion of Abbotsford. She died in 1849, 
 aged eighty-three. 
 
 JOHN GALT, born in 1779, at Irvine in Ayrshire, spent his 
 youth in an unsettled way. A custom-house clerk at Greenock, a 
 law-student at Lincoln's Inn, a traveller for health about the shores 
 of the Mediterranean, a writer for the stage, a merchant at Gib- 
 raltar, he at last found his proper sphere in the production of 
 Scottish novels. The Ayrshire Legatees (1820), and The Annals 
 of the Parish (1821), were followed by Sir Andrew Wylie, The 
 Entail, The Last of tlie Lairds, and, after a visit to Canada on 
 commercial business, by Lawrie Todd. Having spent a life of con- 
 stant literary toil, he died in 1839, at Greenock, shattered by 
 repeated shocks of paralysis. 
 
 FRANCES TROLLOPE, the daughter of an English clergyman, was 
 born in 1790. She was past fifty when, in 1832, she entered 
 the literary field by her work entitled The Domestic Manners of 
 the Americans, in which she satirizes most severely the people 
 of the States. 'Her first novel was TJie Abbess (1833). Then 
 followed from her fertile pen a whole army of fictions and books 
 of travel, sometimes pouring into the libraries at the rate of nine 
 volumes a year. Perhaps the best of these are The Vicar of 
 
4:20 SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF NOVELISTS. 
 
 Wredtill (1837), The Widow Barnaby (1839), and The Ward 
 of Thorpe Combe (1842). She ceased to write about 1856. 
 and died in 1863 at Florence; but her sons, Anthony and Tom, 
 by their literary industry and talent, still uphold the honour of 
 the well-known name. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 JOHN MOORE. (1729-1802) Stirling physician in Glasgow and London father 
 of the hero of Cornnna Zduco ; Edward. 
 
 CHARLOTTE SMITH. (1749-1806) Surrey The Old English Manor-house; 
 Emmeline. 
 
 SOPHIA LEE (1750-1824) and her sister HARRIET (1766-1851) The Canter- 
 bury Tales and dramas. 
 
 ELIZABETH INCHBALD. (1753-1821) near Bury St. Edmunds an actress A 
 Simple Story ; Nature and Art ; plays. 
 
 WILLIAM GODWIN. (1756-1836) Wisbeach, Cambridgeshire at first a Dissent- 
 ing minister Caleb Williams; St. Leon. 
 
 ELIZABETH HAMILTON. (1758-1816) Belfast a merchant's daughter Cot- 
 tagers of Glenburnie. 
 
 WILLIAM BEOKFORD. (1759-1844) son of a London millionaire Vathek, an 
 Arabian Tale. 
 
 ANN RADOLIFFE. (1764-1823) London novelist of the Terrific school 
 Romance of the Forest ; Mysteries of Udolpho ; The Italian. 
 
 R. PLUMER WARD. (1762-1846) held office in the Admiralty Tremaine, or 
 the Man of Refinement ; De Vere ; De Clifford. 
 
 AMELIA OPIB. (1769-1853) Miss Alderson of Norwich wife of the painter 
 Opie Father and Daughter ; Tales of the Heart ; Temper. 
 
 MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS. (1773-1818) London The Monk; Bravo of Venice; 
 Tales of Wonder (poems) ; The Castk Spectre (a play). 
 
 JANE AUSTEN. (1775-1817) Steventon, Hampshire a clergyman's daughter 
 Pride and Prejudice ; Mansfield Park ; Persuasion. 
 
 MARY BRUNTON. (1778-1818) Miss Balfour of Burrey in Orkney an Edin- 
 burgh minister's wife Self -Control ; Discipline. 
 
 JAMES MORIER. (1780-1849) Secretary of Embassy in Persia Hajji Baba; 
 Zohrab; The Mirza. 
 
 THOMAS HOPE. (died 1831) a rich English merchant of Amsterdam Anasta- 
 sius, or Memoirs of a Modern Greek. 
 
 MARY FERRIER. (1782-1854) Edinburgh daughter of a Clerk of Session 
 Marriage; The Inheritance ; Destiny. 
 
 LADY MORGAN. (1786-1859) Sydney Owenson Dublin an actor's daughter 
 and a physician's wife The Wild Irish Girl ; O'Donnett. 
 
 THEODORE HOOK. (1788-1842) London dramatist, novelist, journalist Gil- 
 bert Gurney; Sayings and Doings ; Jack Brag. 
 
 MARY MITFORD. (1789-1855) Alresford, Hampshire Our Village ; Belford 
 Rcyix. 
 
COBBETT, FOSTER. HA2LITT, SMITH. 42? 
 
 COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTOK. (1790-1849) Miss Power Knockbrit, near Clon- 
 juel The Repealers ; Belle of a, Season; Victims of Society ; Idler in 
 Italy ; Idler in France. 
 
 ANNA POKIER. (1780-1832) Don Sebastian; and JANE PORTER (1776-1850) 
 Thaddeus of Warsaw ; Scottish Chiefs. 
 
 THOMAS C. GRATTAN. (born 1796) Dublin Highways and Byways; Heiress 
 of Bruges; History of the Netherlands. 
 
 MART SHELLEY. (1797-1851) Miss Godwin the poet's second wife Franken- 
 stein. 
 
 ESSAYISTS AND CRITICS. 
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT, born in 1762, at Farnham in Surrey, attracted 
 considerable notice by his sturdy, fresh English writings. First a 
 field-labourer, he became afterwards a soldier, rising to the rank 
 of serjeant-major. After the passing of the Reform Bill he was 
 elected member for Oldham, but failed as a public speaker. Rural 
 Rides, Cottage Economy, works on America, and articles in the 
 Political Register form his chief literary remains. These have 
 an especial value, as illustrating a fine type of the English peasant 
 mind. Cobbett died in 1835. 
 
 JOHN FOSTEE, a farmer's son, was born in 1770, near Halifax 
 in Yorkshire. He began public life as a Baptist preacher. His 
 literary reputation rests partly on his articles in the Eclectic Review^ 
 but more especially on his four Essays, which were first published 
 in 1805 in the form of letters. The Essays are On a Man's 
 Writing Memoirs of Himself; On Decision of Character; On the 
 Epithet Romantic ; On Evangelical Religion rendered less accept- 
 able to Persons of Taste. He died in 1843. 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT, a brilliant and refined critic, was born in 
 1778, at Maidstone. Originally a painter, he became in 1803 
 author by profession, and through all his life contributed largely 
 to the periodicals of the day. His Life of Napoleon was his most 
 elaborate work. But he is chiefly celebrated for his Characters 
 of Shakspere's Plays, his Table- Talk, and his Lectures upon the 
 English Poets. Hazlitt died of cholera in 1830. 
 
 SYDNEY SMITH, born in 1771, at Woodford in Essex, earned; 
 by his sayings and his works, the reputation of a brilliant wit. 
 Entering the Church, he was at various times curate in a village 
 
428 JEFFREY, LAMB, LANDOR. 
 
 on Salisbury Plain, a tutor in Edinburgh, a London preacher, 
 rector of Foston-le-Clay in Yorkshire, of Combe Florey in Somer- 
 setshire, and then a canon of St. Paul's. In 1802 he took a 
 share in originating the Edinburgh Review, of which he was the 
 first editor. His Letters on the Subject of tJie Catholics, l>y Peter 
 Plymley, are, perhaps, the finest example we have of wit used as 
 a political weapon. In Yorkshire, where he wrote these Letters, 
 he lamented the solitude of his position, as being "ten miles 
 from a lemon." His Letters to ArcMeacon Singleton and Letters 
 on tlie Pennsylvanian Bonds display the same wonderful power of 
 sly and telling drollery. He died in February 1845. 
 
 FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY, a distinguished critic, was born in 
 Edinburgh on the 23d of October, 1773. He became an advocate 
 in 1794. Soon after the establishment of the Edinburgh Review 
 he assumed the editorship, and in that position he continued, 
 writing the chief poetical articles, until 1829, when he retired, on 
 being elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates. Raised to the 
 bench in 1834, he died in 1850. 
 
 CHARLES LAMB, born in London in 1775, remained in heart a 
 Londoner to the last. Becoming at seventeen a clerk in the 
 India House, this gentle, stuttering recluse, devoted his life to tho 
 care of his sister Mary, who at dinner one day, in a fit of heredi- 
 tary madness, stabbed her mother to death with a knife. He was 
 a school-fellow and an attached friend of Coleridge, whose poetry 
 prompted his own attempts in verse. He wrote John Woodvil, 
 a tragedy ; Tales Founded on the Plays of Shakspere, and occasional 
 poems. But his literary fame rests chiefly upon Essays by 
 JSlia, which appeared originally in the " London Magazine." 
 The delicate grace and flavour of these papers cannot be described. 
 Ketiring on a pension from his clerkship in 1825, " Coming home 
 for ever on Tuesday week," as he tells Wordsworth in a letter, 
 he spent the ten remaining years of his life chiefly at Enfield. He 
 died in 1835 of erysipelas, caused by a fall which slightly cut 
 his face. 
 
 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, born in 1775, at Ipsley Court in 
 Warwickshire, died at Florence in 18G4, having outlived the 
 
BENTHAM, STEWART. 
 
 429 
 
 generation to which he belonged. Besides Gebir, an epic, Count 
 Julian, a tragedy, and various minor poems, he produced a 
 prose work, Imaginary Conversations, for which his name is most 
 renowned. His later works, The Last Fruit off an Old Tree, and 
 Dry Sticks Fagoted, especially the second, bear evident marks 
 of a decayed and corrupted genius. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 HORNE TOOZE. (1736-1812) son of a London poulterer a lawjer tried for 
 
 high treason in 1794 Epea Pteroenta, or The Diversions of Purley. 
 WILLIAM COMBE. (1741-1823) Letters of the late Lord Lyttelton ; Tour of Dr. 
 
 Syntax (verse). 
 ARCHIBALD ALISON. (1757-1838) Episcopal minister in Edinburgh Essay 
 
 on Taste. 
 ISAAC DISRAELI. (1766-1848) son of an Italian Jew Curiositiesof Literature; 
 
 Quarrels of Authors ; Calamities of Authors. 
 HKNRY LORD BROUGHAM. (1778-1868) Edinburgh Articles in Edinburgh 
 
 Review; Observations on Light; Statesmen of George 11].; England 
 
 under the House of Lancaster. 
 SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. (1762-1837) editor of Retrospective Review; Censura 
 
 Literaria, an account of Old English Books; Letters on the Genius of 
 
 Byron. 
 JOHN WILSON CROKER. (1780-1857) Galway secretary to the Admiralty 
 
 Articles in the Quarterly; edited BoswelVs Life of Johnson; Lord 
 
 Hervcy's Memoirs of the Court of George II. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC WRITERS. 
 
 JEREMY BENTHAM, born in 1748, was the son of a London 
 solicitor. Beginning his literary career in 1776 with a Fragment 
 on Government, founded on a passage in Blackstone, he continued 
 through a long life to write upon law and politics. His grand 
 principle of action, which he wished to push to a dangerous 
 extreme, was "the greatest happiness to the greatest number." 
 He died in 1832. 
 
 DUGALD STEWART, born in Edinburgh in 1753, became in 
 1 780 Professor of Moral Philosophy in that University. His chief 
 works, founded on the views of Reid, were The Philosophy of the 
 Mind; a Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical 
 
430 RICARDO, BROWN, DAVY, UERSCHEL. 
 
 and Ethical Philosophy (written for the " Encyclopaedia Britan- 
 nica"); and a View of the Active and Moral Powers of Man. 
 His Outlines of Moral Philosophy form a favourite elementary 
 text-book on that subject. He died in his native city in 
 1828. 
 
 DAVID RICARDO, born in London in 1772, was the son of a 
 Dutch Jew. In the midst of his business as a thriving stock- 
 broker, he found time to write several works on political economy. 
 His pamphlet on The High Price of Bullion was his first publi- 
 cation. But his fame rests on a treatise called The Principle* o, 
 Political Economy and Taxation (1817), which ranks next in 
 importance to Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." Ricardo died 
 in 1823, after some sessions of parliamentary life. 
 
 THOMAS BROWN, successor of Dugald Stewart, was a native of 
 Galloway, born in 1778. After some practice as a physician, 
 he found in 1810 a more congenial sphere in the work of the 
 Moral Philosophy chair. His Lectures on the Philosophy of ilie 
 Human Mind are his chief production. He also published some 
 graceful poetry. He died in 1820. 
 
 SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, born in 1778, at Penzance in Cornwall, 
 became distinguished as a chemist, and read many valuable papers 
 before the Royal Society, upon the results of his researches. Most 
 of these were published in the Transactions of the Society. His 
 great invention of the safety-lamp won for him in 1818 a 
 baronetcy. In general literature he was the author of Salmonia, 
 or Days of Fly-Fishing, and Consolations in Travel, or The Last 
 Days of a Philosoplier. He died in 1829. 
 
 Sin JOHN HERSCHEL, born in 1790, at Slough, near Windsor, 
 received his education at St. John's, Cambridge. He is one of 
 our most eminent scientific men. Among his many works we may 
 name Treatises on Sound and Light; and, yet more popular, his 
 Discourse on Natural Philosophy in Lardner's " Cyclopaedia," and 
 his Outlines of Astronomy, of which the original was published in 
 the same work. He was Master of the Mint for some time, and 
 lived for four years at the Cape, engaged in an astronomical survey 
 of the southern hemisphere. 
 
CLARKE, HALL, IRVING, PORSON. 431 
 
 Supplementary List, 
 
 GEORGE COMBE. (1788-1858) an Edinburgh Writer to the Signet .Sway* on 
 Phrenology ; The Constitution of Man. 
 
 JOHN ABERCROMBIE. -(1781-1844) Aberdeen an eminent Edinburgh physician 
 The Intellectual Powers and the Investigation of Truth ; Philosophy of 
 the Moral Feelings. 
 
 ALEXANDER WILSON. (1766-1813) originally a Paisley weaver American 
 Ornithology. 
 
 J, RAMSAY M'CULLOCH. (1790-1864) Galloway in the Stationery Office 
 Elements of Political Economy ; Dictionary of Commerce; Statistical Ac- 
 count of the British Empire. 
 
 THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS. 
 
 ADAM CLARKE, the son of a schoolmaster at Moybeg in Derry, 
 where he was born in 1760, won great renown as an Oriental 
 scholar and Biblical critic. He was a Wesleyan Methodist. A 
 Commentary on the Bible and a Bibliographical Dictionary are his 
 chief works. He died of cholera in 1832. 
 
 EGBERT HALL, born in 1764, at Arnsby in Leicestershire, was a 
 distinguished Baptist preacher. Two of his leading publications 
 were, An Apology for the Freedom of the Press, and A Sermon on 
 Modern Infidelity. Perhaps his finest sermon was that upon the 
 Death of the Princess Charlotte. Hall died at Bristol in 1831. 
 
 EDWARD IRVING, a tanner's son, was born in 1792, at Annan in 
 Dumfries-shire. Having assisted Dr. Chalmers in Glasgow, he re- 
 moved to Cross Street Church, London, where his preaching created 
 an extraordinary sensation. Many of his Sermons and Lectures 
 were published. Charged in 1830 with heresy, he was soon 
 deposed, and in 1834 died in Glasgow of consumption. 
 
 KICHARD PORSON, son of a parish-clerk in Norfolk, and born 
 there in 1759, won great renown at Cambridge, where he was Pro- 
 fessor of Greek. His critical pen was especially engaged upon Euri- 
 pides, Homer, jEschylus, and Herodotus. Adversaria, or Notes and 
 Emendations of the Greek Poets, was published after his death. 
 In college-life he was notorious for deep drinking, and noted foi 
 liis pungent sarcasms. He died in 1803. 
 
432 TRAVELLERS AND TRANSLATORS. 
 
 TRAVELLERS. 
 
 Books of travel and geographical discovery have come, within 
 the last hundred years, to form a very large and important 
 section of our literature. JAMES BRUCE of Kinnaird (1730- 
 1794), the brave seeker for the sources of the Nile, and MUNGO 
 PARK (1771-1805), that young surgeon of Selkirkshire who 
 explored the basin of the Niger and died in its waters, have 
 left us narratives of their adventures. The works of the latter 
 possess much simple literary grace. Lieutenant CLAPPERTON, 
 RICHARD LANDER of Niger fame, BURCKHARDT a Switzer, and 
 BELZONI an Italian, added greatly to our knowledge of Africa. Dr. 
 EDWARD CLARKE of Cambridge (1769-1822), a polished and obser- 
 vant scholar, wrote a valuable account of his travels through the 
 East, including Russia, Tartary, Turkey, Greece, Palestine, and Egypt. 
 FORSYTH, EUSTACE, MATHEWS, Lady MORGAN, and many others, 
 contributed works on Italy. The Polar Regions have found describers 
 in nearly all those brave officers who have tried to penetrate the 
 icy seas. Among such, PARRY, Ross, the lamented FRANKLIN, 
 and SCORESBY the whale-fisher, stand out prominently. SILK 
 BUCKINGHAM, in Asia Minor and Arabia; MALCOLM, MORLER, 
 OUSELY, and KER PORTER, in Persia ; FRASER, among the Hima- 
 layas ; STAUNTON, BARKOW, and ELLIS, in China ; Captain BASIL 
 HALL, all over the Pacific and round its shores ; INGLIS, in Nor- 
 way, France, Switzerland, and among the Pyrenees and Spanish 
 Sierras are a few of the leading travellers, who, during this era 
 of our literature, added valuable works to the geographical shelf of 
 our libraries. 
 
 TRANSLATORS. 
 
 The number of translating pens employed upon the Greek and 
 Roman authors is beyond counting. PHILIP FRANCIS (died 1773) 
 translated Horace and Demostlienes ; THOMAS MITCHELL (1783- 
 
TRANSLATORS. 433 
 
 1845), devoted his classic skill to Aristophanes; while in our own 
 time Professor BLACKIE, besides Goethe's Faust, has given us 
 JEschylus in an English dress; and THEODORE MARTIN, of Bon 
 Gaultier fame, has lately translated the Odes of Horace and the 
 lyrics of Catullus. The gentleman last named is also well known 
 for his translations from the Danish and the German. In the 
 latter he has been associated with Professor Aytoun. 
 
 A noble version of Dante by the Eev. HENRY FRANCIS GARY 
 (1772-1844); Ariosto by WILLIAM EOSE (1775-1843) ; Calderon 
 the Spanish dramatist by DENIS F. MCCARTHY ; the Lusiad of 
 Camoens the Portuguese poet by WILLIAM MICKLE (1734-1788); 
 and Poems from the same author by Viscount STRANGFORD (1780- 
 1855); Goethe's Faust and Schiller's Song of the Bell by Lord 
 ELLESMERE (1800-1857) ; Burger's Lenore, Lessing's Nathan, 
 Goethe's Iphigenia, and Schiller's Bride of Messina, by WILLIAM 
 TAYLOR (1765-1836); Russian, Polish, Magyar, Bohemian Poetry 
 by Sir JOHN BOWRING (born 1792);. Norse and Icelandic Tales by 
 DASENT, are far from exhausting the list of our best transla- 
 tions. Bohn's Library contains a most valuable set of these 
 works, almost all of the highest stamp. 
 
 28 
 
434 THE STANHOPE PRESS. 
 
 NINTH ERA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 FROM THE DEATH OP SCOTT IN 1832 A.D. TO THE PRESENT TIME. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 PRINTING BY STEAM. 
 
 The old press. 
 
 Earl Stanhope. 
 
 Koniff. 
 
 Nicholson. 
 
 An anxious night. 
 
 Statement in the Time*. 
 
 Konig's machine. 
 
 Cowpcr and Applegath. 
 
 Statistics. 
 
 Scene in Printing-House Square. 
 
 THE clumsy press, with which William Caxton and Wynkyn de 
 Worde printed off their black-letter volumes in the Almonry or 
 Red-pale at Westminster, continued with slight alterations to 
 supply Britain with the works of Shakspere, Milton, Dryden. 
 Pope, Goldsmith, Cowper, in a word, of all the writers who adorned 
 our literature until the present century was some years old. 
 
 Its great improver was Charles, third Earl Stanhope, who, 
 born in 1753, devoted much of his aristocratic leisure to the study 
 of machinery. The chief change he made was " in forming the 
 entire press of iron, the plate being large enough to print a whole 
 sheet at once, instead of requiring a double action." The blank 
 paper, being placed upon a frame-work, is folded down upon the 
 newly inked types, which lie in a " form" upon a horizontal slab. 
 Paper and type being wheeled, by the turning of a handle, under 
 a heavy square plate of metal, this, called the platten, is, by means 
 of a lever, brought down upon the paper, pressing it suddenly 
 and strongly against the type. The printed sheet is wheeled 
 
KONIG'S MACHINE. 435 
 
 out; another takes its place; and so the work of the Stanhope 
 press proceeds. 
 
 A Saxon clockmaker, called Konig, who could find no Conti- 
 nental printers to take up the subject of an improved press, came 
 to London with his plans about the year 1804. He found the 
 presses there throwing off 250 single impressions in an hour; 
 and setting steadily to work in the face of many difficulties, he 
 persevered until he had constructed a printing machine capable 
 of being worked by steam. Already, about the year 1790, a Mr. 
 Nicholson had taken out a patent for printing by revolving cylin- 
 ders, one of which was surrounded with type, and the other with 
 soft leather, so that a sheet, passing between them, received the 
 impression. It remained for Konig to apply this principle to the 
 steam machine; and so considerable was his success, that in 1814 
 Mr. John Walter of the Times, alive to everything in the shape of 
 literary progress, gave him a commission to set up his cylinders 
 on the premises of the great Daily. 
 
 This was a dangerous move, needing the utmost caution ; for the 
 infuriated pressmen, maddened by the prospect of hand-labour 
 in printing being superseded by machinery, would have torn to 
 pieces both inventor and. invention, had they got any inkling of 
 the work that was going on, not many yards away. When all 
 was ready, the pressmen were told one night to wait for 
 news expected from the Continent, and at six o'clock on a Nov. 29, 
 dark November morning, Mr. Walter came in among 1814 
 them with the damp sheets in his hand, to tell them ^ <D> 
 that the Times was already printed off by steam; that if 
 they meant violence, he was ready for them ; but that if they kept 
 quiet, their wages should be continued until they got work else- 
 where. Taken completely aback, they looked in amazement 
 at the paper which he distributed among them, and without a 
 struggle they yielded to the power of this friendly foe. And ever 
 since that anxious night the clank of the engine and the rushing 
 of white hot steam have been heard amid the multitudinous 
 noises of Printing-House Square. 
 
 The following announcement appeared in the Times of that 
 
43C IMPROVEMENT OF THE STEAM-MA CD IN E. 
 
 same November morning: "The reader now holds in bis hands 
 one of the many thousand impressions of the Times newspaper, 
 which were taken last night by a mechanical apparatus. That 
 the magnitude of the invention may be justly appreciated by its 
 effects, we shall inform the public that after the letters are placed 
 by the compositors, and enclosed in what is called a ' form,' little 
 more remains for man to do than to attend and watch this uncon- 
 scious agent in its operations. The machine is then merely sup- 
 plied with paper ; itself places the form, inks it, adjusts the paper 
 to the form newly inked, stamps the sheet, and gives it forth to 
 the hands of the attendant, at the same time withdrawing the 
 form for a fresh coat of ink, which itself again distributes, to meet 
 the ensuing sheet, now advancing for impression : and the whole 
 of these complicated acts are performed with such a velocity and 
 simultaneousness of movement, that no less than 1100 sheets are 
 impressed in one hour." 
 
 Konig's first machine, although an undoubted stride far beyond 
 the Stanhope press, was comparatively clumsy and complicated. 
 Its worst point was the inking apparatus, in which no fewer than 
 forty wheels were always at work. The type was laid on a flat 
 surface, and the impression was taken by passing it under a large 
 cylinder. He afterwards improved the machine, so as to accom- 
 plish the printing of the sheet on both sides. 
 
 A simpler machine by Cowper and Applegath was introduced 
 in 1818, which, in order to secure register a technical name 
 for the perfect coincidence of the printed matter on opposite sides 
 of the same sheet had, between the printing cylinders, two 
 drums, under and over which the paper was passed. Still the 
 march of improvement continued. A four-cylinder machine, also 
 by Cowper and Applegath, began in 1827 to print at the rate of 
 about 5000 copies in an hour. Napier also made many improve- 
 ments. The process of inking became simpler, and so 
 1848 the work went on, until in 1848 Applegath set up a 
 A.D. machine, which consisted of a great central upright drum, 
 surrounded by eight smaller cylinders also vertical, bound 
 in cloth, and connected by toothed wheels with the central mass. 
 
THE POINTING OF "THE TIMES." 437 
 
 so that the rate of revolution should be uniform in all the nine. 
 The type was arranged in vertical columns upon the great drum. 
 Every cylinder had its own inking apparatus. Eight workmen, 
 standing on elevated stages before eight piles of blank paper, sup- 
 plied sheet after sheet to the tape fingers of the monster, which, 
 drawing the paper down to a cylinder, passed it round, and car- 
 ried it off impressed. About 12,000 copies in an hour were thus 
 produced. Hoe of New York is now the engineer, who supplies 
 Times, Scotsman, and all our leading newspapers with their huge 
 wonder-working machines. 
 
 On the 7th of May 1850, the Times and its Supplement con- 
 tained 72 columns, or 17,500 lines, made up of more than one 
 million types. Two-fifths of this matter were written after seven 
 in the evening. Here are some notes of the night's work : 
 
 Supplement sent to press ... ... 7.50 P.M. 
 
 First form of the paper do. ... ... 4.15 A.M. 
 
 Second form do. ... ... ... 4.45 " 
 
 7000 papers printed off before ... ... 6.15 " 
 
 21,000 do. do. 7.30 " 
 
 34,000 do. do. 8.45 " 
 
 The entire impression of this gigantic newspaper, for one day, 
 was therefore completed in about four hours. 
 
 But even 1850, near as it looks, is behind the age in newspaper 
 life. Let us see how the Times is worked in 1861. And here 
 we need make no apology for borrowing the words of a graphic 
 describer, who is himself, if we mistake not, thoroughly familiar 
 with the scene he depicts.* 
 
 "The printing-house of the Times, near Blackfriars Bridge, forms 
 a companion picture to Gutenberg's printing-room in the old abbey 
 at Strasbourg, and illustrates not only the development of the art, 
 but the progress of the world during the intervening centuries. 
 Visit Printing-House Square in the day-time, and you find it a 
 quiet, sleepy place, with hardly any signs of life or movement 
 about it, except in the advertisement office in the corner, where 
 people are continually going out and in, and the clerks have a 
 
 * From " The Triumphs of Invention and Discovery," by J. Hamilton Fyfe. 
 
438 THE PRINTING OF " THE TIMES." 
 
 busy time of it, shovelling money into the till all day long. But 
 come back in the evening, and the place will wear a very different 
 aspect. All signs of drowsiness have disappeared, and the office 
 is all lighted up, and instinct with bustle and activity. Messen- 
 gers are rushing out and in, telegraph boys, railway porters, and 
 1 devils ' of all sorts and sizes. Cabs are driving up every few 
 minutes and depositing reporters, hot from the gallery of the 
 House of Commons or the House of Lords, each with his budget 
 of short-hand notes to decipher and transcribe. Up stairs, in his 
 sanctum, the editor and his deputies are busy preparing or select- 
 ing the articles and reports, which are to appear in the next day's 
 paper. In another part of the building the compositors are hard 
 at work, picking up types, and arranging them in ' stickfulls,' 
 which being emptied out into * galleys,' are firmly fixed therein 
 by little wedges of wood, in order that 'proofs' may be taken of 
 them. The proofs pass into the hands of the various sets of 
 readers, who compare them with the ' copy ' from which they arc 
 set up, and mark any errors on the margin of the slips, which then 
 find their way back to the compositors, who correct the types 
 according to the marks. The ' galleys ' are next seized by the 
 persons charged with the ' making-up ' of the paper, who divide 
 them into columns of equal length. An ordinary Times news- 
 paper, with a single inside sheet of advertisements, contains 
 seventy-two columns, or 1 7,500 lines, made up of upwards of a 
 million pieces of type ; of which matter about two-fifths are often 
 written, composed, and corrected after seven o'clock in the even- 
 ing. If the advertisement sheet be double, as it frequently is, the 
 paper will contain ninety-six columns. The types set up by the 
 compositors are not sent to the machine. A mould is taken of 
 them in a composition of brown paper, by means of which a 
 ( stereotype ' is cast in metal, and from this the paper is printed. 
 The advertisement sheet, single or double, as the case may be, is 
 generally ready for the press between seven and eight o'clock at 
 night. The rest of the paper is divided into two ' forms,' that 
 is, columns arranged in pages and bound together by an iron 
 frame, one for each side of the sheet. Into the first of these the 
 
439 
 
 person who 'makes up' endeavours to put all the early news, 
 and it is sent to press usually about four o'clock. The other 
 ' form ' is reserved for the leading articles, telegrams, and all the 
 latest intelligence, and does not reach the press till near five o'clock. 
 
 " The first sight of Hoe's machine, by a couple of which the 
 Times is now printed, fills the beholder with bewilderment and 
 awe. You see before you a huge pile of iron cylinders, wheels, 
 cranks, and levers, whirling away at a rate that makes you giddy 
 to look at, and with a grinding and gnashing of teeth that almost 
 drives you deaf to listen to. With insatiable appetite the furious 
 monster devours ream after ream of snowy sheets of paper, placed 
 in its many gaping jaws by the slaves who wait on it, but seems 
 to find none to suit its digestion, for back come all the sheets again, 
 each with the mark of this strange beast printed on one side. Its 
 hunger never is appeased, it is always swallowing and always 
 disgorging; and it is as much as the little ' devils ' who wait on it 
 can do, to put the paper between its lips and take it out again. 
 But a bell rings suddenly, the monster gives a gasp, and is 
 straightway still and dead to all appearance. Upon a closer in- 
 spection, now that it is at rest, and with some explanation from 
 the foreman, you begin to have some idea of the process that has 
 been going on before your astonished eyes. 
 
 "The core of the machine consists of a large drum, turning on a 
 horizontal axis, round which revolve ten smaller cylinders, also on 
 horizontal axes, in close proximity to the drum. The stereotyped 
 matter is bound, like a malefactor on the wheel, to the central 
 drum, and round each cylinder a sheet of paper is constantly being 
 passed. It is obvious, therefore, that if the type be inked, and 
 each of the cylinders be kept properly supplied with a sheet of 
 paper, a single revolution of the drum will cause the ten cylinders 
 to revolve likewise, and produce an impression on one side of each 
 of the sheets of paper. For this purpose it is necessary to have 
 the type inked ten times during every revolution of the drum; 
 and this is managed by a very ingenious contrivance, which, how- 
 ever, is too complicated for description here. The feeding of the 
 cylinders is provided for in this way : Over each cylinder is a 
 
440 THE PRESS SUPERSEDED BY THE MACHINE. 
 
 sloping desk, upon which rests a heap of sheets of white paper 
 A lad the ' layer-on ' stands by the side of the desk and pushes 
 forward the paper, a sheet at a time, towards the tape fingers of 
 the machine, which, clutching hold of it, drag it into the interior, 
 where it is passed round the cylinders, and printed on the outer 
 side by pressure against the types on the drum. The sheet is 
 then laid hold of by another set of tapes, carried to the other end 
 of the machine from that at which it entered, and there laid down 
 on a desk by a projecting flapper of lath- work. Another lad the 
 'taker-off' is in attendance to remove the printed sheets at cer- 
 tain intervals. The drum revolves in less than two seconds ; and 
 in that time, therefore, ten sheets for the same operation is per- 
 formed simultaneously by the ten cylinders are sucked in at one 
 end and disgorged at the other, printed on one side, thus giving 
 about 20,000 impressions in an hour." 
 
 We have taken the Times as the best example of these wonder- 
 ful improvements in the art of printing, both because the working 
 of that paper is upon a colossal scale, and it therefore well 
 deserves to be noticed first, and because almost eveiy improve- 
 ment came into earliest play in the machine-room at Printing- 
 House Square. The influence of the great change the substitu- 
 tion of the steam printing '-machine for the hand- worked printing- 
 press has been felt in every corner of the land, where a cheap 
 book or a penny newspaper has found its way ; and it must be 
 indeed a sequestered nook into which these have not pushed 
 themselves in Britain. So that famous and tremendous word, 
 " The Press," at whose sound blusterers have suddenly grown 
 meek as lambs, and Cruelty has pocketed his whip, trying to look 
 innocent and kind, is now a sort of misnomer ; for the Press is 
 actually rusting in lumber-rooms, or, at best, printing off the cloudy 
 hand-bills of a country town, while the place of power is held by the 
 Machine, which roars and struggles and puffs by day and night in 
 the accomplishment of its enormous task. Such a change has half 
 a century produced in Caxton's art and mystery ! How the old 
 mercer would stare and rub his eyes, if these eyes could open now 
 upon a modern printing-room in any of our great publishing concerns ! 
 
EARLY LIFE OF COLERIDGE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 Born 1772 A.D Died 1834 A.D. 
 
 A great dreamer. 
 Early life. 
 A light dragoon. 
 Bound for America. 
 
 Nether Stowey. 
 The Ancient Mariner. 
 Visits Germany. 
 Unsettled life. 
 
 Shelter at Highgate. 
 Christabel. 
 Other works. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 COLERIDGE, a magnificent dreamer, has left us only a few frag- 
 ments to show what his life-work might have been, had industry 
 been wedded to his lofty genius. We think of him as of some 
 rarely gifted architect, before whose mind's eye visions of sublime 
 temples were continually floating, but whose realized work consists 
 of a few pillars and friezes, exquisitely beautiful, indeed, but lying 
 on the chosen site unfinished and unset. 
 
 Born at Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire, on the 21st of October 
 1772, this youngest child of a poor country vicar entered the 
 hard school of an orphan's life at Christ's Hospital. There, with- 
 in grey old walls, began his cherished friendship with the gentle 
 Charles Lamb. Already, under the long blue coat of " the inspired 
 charity-boy," the nature of the man was burning. He dreamed 
 away his days ; he read books of every kind with insatiable relish, 
 until history, novels, even poetry, began to pall upon his taste, 
 and nothing but metaphysics could afford any delight to the boy 
 of fifteen. The sonnets of Bowles, however, struck a chord, 
 whose vibration filled his young soul with untold pleasure. 
 During the two years of his residence at Cambridge, whither he 
 went in 1791 as an exhibitioner of Jesus College, his habits 
 deepened. Ideals, ever floating before his mind, sadly im- 
 peded the real work of the student. His first success a gold 
 medal for Greek verse was followed by some defeats, which, 
 Coupled with a little debt and his admiration for revolutionary 
 
442 DfcEAMS AT BUISTOL AND POEMS AT STOWEY. 
 
 France, caused him to abandon a college life without taking hia 
 degree. 
 
 Starving in London, he enlisted in the 15th Light Dragoons 
 under the name of Comberbach, and spent four wretched months 
 in trying to fathom the mysteries of drill and stable-work. The 
 discovery of his classical attainments by the captain of his troop, 
 who observed some Latin words written under his saddle as it hung 
 upon the wall, led to his release from this position. 
 
 We then find him at Bristol, with his new friend Southey and 
 four other young enthusiasts, building a splendid castle in the air. 
 They were to sail over the Atlantic to the banks of the Susquehanna, 
 and there to found a Pantisocracy, or domestic republic, where all 
 goods should be property in common, and the leisure of the work- 
 men should be devoted to literature. Only one thing was wanted 
 to carry out the scheme money. Failing this, the pretty bubble 
 burst. Probable starvation by the Avon, instead of republican 
 ease and plenty by the Susquehanna, was the stern reality which 
 now pushed its dark face into the dreamer's life. His 
 1795 pen, employed by a Bristol bookseller, kept off this ugly 
 A.D. shape ; and soon the struggler added to his difficulties by 
 an early marriage with a girl, whose sister became 
 Southey's wife. Poor Lovell, who died very soon, had already 
 wedded the third of these Bristol Graces. 
 
 A cottage at Nether Stowey in Somersetshire, nestling at the 
 foot of the Quan took hills, received the youthful pair, who resided 
 there for about three years. Out of this, the brightest period in a 
 desultory life, blossomed some of the finest poetry that Coleridge 
 has written. An Ode to the Departing Year, and that piece 
 entitled France, which Shelley loved so well, are among the 
 productions of this peaceful time. But finer than these are 
 two works of the same period, which deserve more than passing 
 mention. The Rime of the Auncient Marinere was written at 
 Stowey, and there Christabel was begun. 
 
 " The Ancient Mariner " is a poem in the simple, picturesque 
 style of the old ballad. The tale told to a spell-bound wedding- 
 guest by an old sailor, who, in a few vivid touches, is made to 
 
443 
 
 stand before us with grey beard, glittering eyes, and long, brown, 
 Bkiimy hands enchains us with strange and mystic power. The 
 shooting of the albatross, that came through the snowy fog to 
 cheer the crew the red blistering calm that fell upon the sea 
 the skeleton ship with its phantom dicers driving across the sun 
 in view of the thirst-scorched seamen the lonely life of the 
 guilty mariner on the rolling sea amid the corpses of his ship- 
 mates the springing of good thoughts at the sight of the beau- 
 tiful water-snakes sporting "beyond the shadow of the ship" the 
 coming of sleet, and rain, and a spectral wind and the final 
 deliverance from the doomed vessel, are among the pictures that 
 flit before us as we read shadows all, but touched with weird 
 light and colour, as from another world. 
 
 A visit to Germany (1798), the expense of which was defrayed 
 by the Wedgewoods of Staffordshire, deepened the hues of mys- 
 ticism already tinging the spirit of Coleridge. His translation of 
 Schiller's Wattenstein was the principal result of his residence in 
 that land of learning and romance. Upon his return to England 
 in 1800, he took up his abode in Southey's house at Keswick, 
 and with some temporary interruptions he continued to make the 
 Lakes his head-quarters for ten years. He wrote largely for The 
 Morning Post; during a visit to Malta in 1804 he acted as sec- 
 retary to the governor of that island ; he came home to deliver his 
 eloquent and profound criticisms on /Shakspere to a London audi- 
 ence, and to issue the weekly essays of the short-lived Friend, 
 which ceased after a few numbers, as had happened to the Watch- 
 man, a similar venture of the old Bristol days. During these 
 many changes, his opinions, both political and religious, had 
 veered completely round. Once a Red Republican, he was now a 
 keen upholder of the throne ; once a Unitarian preacher at Taunton 
 and Shrewsbury, he now acknowledged his firm belief in the Trinity. 
 
 In 1810 he bade good-bye to the Lakes, and went to live in Lon- 
 don with various friends, who could forgive and pity the <toi(\ 
 thriftless, erring man for the sake of his splendid genius. 
 His natural sloth and dreaminess were increased by the 
 destructive habit of opium-eating, or rather laudanum-drinking, 
 
444 CARLYLE'S PORTRAIT OF COLERIDGE. 
 
 which he had fonned while using the drug as a medicine. Deeper 
 and deeper he plunged into those abysses of German metaphysics 
 towards which he had been gradually drifting. Various convulsive 
 efforts at hard work were made by him at times, but all his great 
 plans dissolved into vapour and vanished. The roof of Oilman, a 
 friendly surgeon at Highgate, sheltered the dreamer during his last 
 nineteen years ; and there the old man used for hours to pour out 
 his wonderful talk in a stream, which was often turbid and slow, 
 but which sometimes broke into a brilliant run, or discovered, 
 through its clear crystal, the rich sands of gold and shining gems 
 below. At Highgate he died in July 1834. 
 
 Carlyle's portrait of Coleridge " sitting on the brow of Highgate 
 Hill," to be found in his " Life of Sterling," is remarkably vivid : 
 " Brow and head were round, and of massive weight; but the face 
 was flabby and irresolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full 
 of sorrow as of inspiration ; confused pain looked mildly from them, 
 as in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure and air, good 
 and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute; ex- 
 pressive of weakness under possibility of strength. He hung loosely 
 on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping attitude ; in walking, 
 he rather shuffled than decisively stepped; and a lady once re- 
 marked, he never could fix which side of the garden-walk would 
 suit him best, but continually shifted, in cork-screw fashion, and 
 kept trying both. A heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely much- 
 suflering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted 
 itself into a plaintive snuffle and sing-song; he spoke as if preach- 
 ing you would have said preaching earnestly, and also hope- 
 lessly, the weightiest things. I still recollect his 'object' and 
 'subject,' terms of continual recurrence in the Kantean pro- 
 vince ; and how he sung and snuffled them into ' om-m-mject' 
 and { sum-m-mject,' with a kind of solemn shake or quaver, as 
 he rolled along." 
 
 His noble fragment, Christabel, has been already named. Begun 
 at Stowey, and continued upon his return from Germany, by the 
 advice of Byron it was given to the world in 1816 in its unfinished 
 loveliness. Both Byron and Scott have echoed the irregular music 
 
"CHRISTABEL" AND OTHER POEMS. 445 
 
 of its verse, though with peculiar variations. It is a tale of strange 
 witchcraft. A sweet and innocent girl, praying for her lover's safety 
 beneath a huge oak-tree outside the castle gate, under the dim moon- 
 light of an April sky, is startled by the appearance of a witch, dis- 
 guised as a richly-clad beauty in distress. The gentle Christabel 
 asks the wanderer into the castle ; the disguise is there laid aside ; 
 some horrible shape smites the poor hospitable maid into a trance; 
 and the blinking glance of the witch's small, dull, snake- like 
 eyes, shot suddenly at the shuddering victim, clouds the innocent 
 blue of her eye with a passive imitation of the same hateful 
 look. In dealing with mystic themes like this, Coleridge was 
 master of a spell over thought and language, such as no other 
 writer has ever possessed. But his inspiration came in gusts, and 
 fragments grew around him at such a rate that soon the difficulty 
 of choosing what to finish caused all to remain undone. His life \ 
 was a succession of beginnings which never saw an end. He went 
 to college, but took no degree. He prepared for emigration, but 
 did not start. He got married, but left others to support his wife 
 and children. At twenty-five he planned an epic on the Destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem^ ; but to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow 
 passed without one written line. A great genius with a great in- 
 firmity the twinhood of mental strength and feebleness he 
 claims at once our reverence and our deep compassion. 
 
 Besides the works already named there are two which cannot 
 be forgotten, as examples of the varied powers of this great poet. 
 For simple tenderness and depth of natural feeling his little love- 
 song of Genemeve cannot be surpassed. And the Hymn before 
 Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni^ of which we quote some lines, 
 has in it an exultant sublimity akin to Milton's song. While the 
 melody of Genemeve most resembles the sighing of " a lonely flute," 
 stealing through the odours of the summer dusk, this Hymn to 
 Mont Blanc swells through the darkness of the Alpine morning 
 up to the rosy summit of the snow, with all the tumultuous 
 music of a vast organ, pealing in unison with the chorus of ten 
 thousand rejoicing throats. 
 
 Coleridge's Lectures on Slmkspere have been already named 
 
446 SPECIMEN OF COLERIDGE'S VERSE. 
 
 The review of Wordsworth's poetry, which may be found in 
 his Bioyraphia Liter -aria, has been pronounced to be " perhaps 
 the most philosophical piece of criticism extant in the language." 
 Though able to penetrate deep into the mysteries of Shakspere's 
 power over tears and laughter, he had himself no genuine dramatic 
 faculty. His tragedies, Remorse and Zapoyla, contain some noble 
 passages, but we read therii with cold, unkindling souls. 
 
 FROM THE HYMN AT CIIAMOUNI. 
 
 Thou first aiid chief, sole sovran of the vale ! 
 struggling with the darkness all the night, 
 And visited all night by troops of stars, 
 Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink I 
 Companion of the morning star at dawn, 
 Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn 
 Co-herald ! wake, wake, and utter praise ! 
 Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth ? 
 Who filled thy countenance with rosy light ] 
 Who made thee parent of perpetual streams? 
 
 And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad ! 
 Who called you forth from night and utter death, 
 From dark and icy caverns called you forth, 
 Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, 
 For ever shattered, and the same for ever ] 
 Who gave you your invulnerable life, 
 Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, 
 Unceasing thunder and eternal foam ? 
 And who commanded and the silence came 
 Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest ? 
 
 Ye ice-falls ! ye that from the mountain's brow 
 Adown enormous ravines slope amain 
 Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, 
 And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge ! 
 Motionless torrents ! silent cataracts ! 
 Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven 
 Beneath the keen full moon ] Who bade the sun 
 Clothe you with rainbows ? Who, with living flowers 
 Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet ? 
 God ! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, 
 Answer ! and let the ice-plains echo, God 1 
 God ! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice ! 
 Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds I 
 And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow, 
 And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God ! 
 
EARLY LIFE OF SOUTHEY. 447 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY. 
 Born 1774 A,D Died 1843 A.D. 
 
 Early life. 
 Pantisocrats. 
 Lisbon and law. 
 Thalaba. 
 
 Banks of the Greta. 
 Hard work. 
 The Laurel. 
 Last years. 
 
 Leading poemx 
 Kehama. 
 Prose works. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY, a linen draper's son, was born in Wine Street, 
 Bristol, on the 12th of August 1774. After passing through 
 various local seminaries, he went in 1788, at the expense of his 
 uncle, the Reverend Herbert Hill, to the celebrated school of West- 
 minster. From that school he was expelled four years afterwards, 
 owing to the share "he had taken in an article against flogging, 
 which appeared in a magazine conducted by the senior boys. 
 Entering Balliol College, Oxford, in 1792, he spent a couple of 
 years in general reading and industrious verse-making, carrying from 
 the University, according to his own account, a knowledge of but 
 two things as the fruit of his imperfect undergraduate course 
 how to row and how to swim. 
 
 At Oxford he met Coleridge, and these " birds of a feather," 
 both smitten by the widening swell of the French Revolution, 
 rank Republicans in political creed, and Unitarians in religious 
 profession, formed, in conjunction with others, the wild American 
 scheme spoken of in the sketch of Coleridge. Southey, Coleridge, 
 and their friend Lovell, another of the Pantisocrats, became the 
 husbands of three sisters of Bristol; all of whom were gathered in 
 a while under Southey's roof, for Lovell soon died, and Coleridge 
 in his vast dreamings often forgot the real duty of supporting his 
 wife and children. 
 
 Already Southey's pen had been busily at work. At college he had 
 composed an epic poem, Joan of Arc, for which that kindly book- 
 
448 
 
 seller of Bristol, Cottle, now gave the young husband fifty guineas. 
 A volume of poems, written in conjunction with Lovell under the 
 names of Bion and Moschus, had previously appeared ; and a wild, 
 revolutionary piece, Wat Tyler, had been written in a fit of repub- 
 licanism. The last-named work was surreptitiously published many 
 years afterwards by a bookseller, who wanted to annoy the Laureate, 
 then a celebrated man. 
 
 Between his two visits (1795 and 1800) to Lisbon, where his 
 uncle was chaplain of the British Factory, he studied law at 
 Gray's Inn, advancing, to use his own expression, "with sufficient 
 rapidity in Blackstone and Madoc." The latter was an epic poem. 
 This divided love could not last, and so Blackstone was at last 
 given up, while Madoc advanced to completion. Before settling 
 down to these temporary and uncongenial studies, he had published 
 Letters from Spain and Portugal, the offspring of his first visit to 
 the Peninsula. 
 
 In 1801 appeared the first of a series of great poems, intended 
 to illustrate those various systems of mythology, which are so rich 
 in poetic ore. Although its sale was slow, this work did much 
 to raise the author's literary fame. Called Tlialaba, tlie, Destroyer, 
 it depicts, in blank-verse of very irregular length but of great 
 music, the perils and ultimate triumph of an Arabian hero, who 
 fights with and conquers the powers of Evil A splendid moon- 
 light shining on the Eastern sands, with two figures a sad mother 
 and a weeping boy wandering in the pale radiance, is the opening 
 picture of a poem which abounds in brilliant painting. For the 
 copyright of this work, which was finished in Portugal, Southey 
 received a hundred guineas. 
 
 After one more effort towards a permanent settlement in some 
 
 recognised position the acceptance of a private secretaryship to 
 
 the Irish Chancellor of Exchequer, worth 350 a year, which 
 
 he kept for only six months he became a literary man 
 
 1804 by- profession, and in 1804 fixed his residence on the 
 
 A.D. banks of the Greta near Keswick, in the heart of the 
 
 Lake country. Coleridge was already there, settled for 
 
 f,o long a time as a being ever on the wing could settle; and 
 
SOUTHER'S HARD WORK. 449 
 
 Wordsworth lived about fourteen miles oftj at Mount Rydal, near 
 Ambleside. 
 
 Already his incessant industry had begun, but it now deepened 
 into a life-long habit, until the busy brain wore itself out, and the 
 workman could but wander without purpose and without power 
 among the books, which he had gathered with patient love around 
 the walls of his writing-room. Few events of any note, beyond 
 the publication of his various works, marked the life of this busy 
 author. In a letter to a friend he thus describes a day, and most 
 of his days were similarly spent : 
 
 " Three pages of history (of Portugal) after breakfast (equivalent 
 to five in small quarto printing) ; then to transcribe and copy for 
 the press, or to make any selections and biographies (for " Speci- 
 mens of the British Poets"), or what else suits my humour till 
 dinner-time. From dinner-time till tea I read, write letters, see the 
 newspaper, and very often indulge in a siesta. After tea I go to 
 poetry (he was now writing the " Curse of Kehama "), and correct 
 and re-write and copy till I am tired ; and then turn to anything 
 else till supper. And this is my life." 
 
 No wonder that a friend should say in deep astonishment, on 
 hearing of such incessant toil, " But, Southey, tell me, when do 
 you think ? " 
 
 We postpone for a little a notice of his various works. When 
 Pye died in 1813, Southey received the Laurel which Scott had just 
 declined. In 1821 Oxford conferred on him the degree of LL.D. 
 A pension of 300 a year was granted to him in 1835 by Sir Robert 
 Peel, who had already offered him a baronetcy. His first wife 
 having died in 1837, he contracted a second marriage two years 
 later with the poetess, Caroline Bowles, who was then an elderly 
 lady of fifty-two, and whose four years of married life were given 
 to the tendance of the poor Laureate, already, like the elm-tree 
 pointed to by Swift himself the saddest example of so terrible an 
 end beginning to die at tJie top. During the last three years of 
 Southey's life his over-wrought mind was a total blank. He died 
 at Greta on the 21st of March 1843. 
 
 The poetry of Southey, though not of the very highest order, 
 a*) 29 
 
450 " THE CURSE OF KEHAMA." 
 
 displays undoubted genius. His ambition as a poet was great ; 
 and few could have made more of the unmanageable themes 
 he selected. Madoc, a Welshman's supposed discovery and con- 
 quest of Mexico (1805); Tlw Curse of Kehama, a tale of the 
 Hindoo mythology (1810); and Roderick, Last of the Goths, a 
 blank-verse epic on early Spanish history (1814), are his principal 
 poems, besides those already named. Among many others we 
 may mention The Vision of Judgment, which provoked Byron's 
 terribly sarcastic echo; and his latest efforts in verse, All for Love, 
 and The Pilgrim of Compostella. His Lakist tendencies can best 
 be observed in his minor poems and ballads, of which Lord William, 
 Mary the Maid of the Inn, and The Old Woman of Berkeley are 
 well-known specimens. 
 
 " The Curse of Kehama " is his finest poem. In verse of most 
 irregular music, but completely suited to his fantastic theme, he 
 leads us to the terrestrial paradise, to the realms below the sea, 
 to the heaven of heavens, and, in a sublime passage, through 
 adamantine rock, lit with a furnace glow, into Padalon, the Indian 
 Hades. We follow the strange career of Kehama, a Hindoo rajah, 
 who by penance and self-inflicted torture raises himself to a level 
 with Brahma and Vishnu ; we suffer with the poor mortal, who 
 is burdened with the spell of a terrible curse laid on him by the 
 enchanter, and we rejoice in his final deliverance and restoration 
 to his family. Various Hindoo gods, a ghost, a benevolent spirit, 
 and a woman, who receives immortality at the end, are among the 
 dramatis persona. Scenery and costume, situations and senti- 
 ments, are alike in keeping with the Oriental nature of the work. 
 But, for all its splendour and all its correctness as a work of art, 
 it is so far removed from the world in which our sympathies lie, 
 that few can fully appreciate this noble poem, and perhaps none 
 can return to it with never-wearied love, as to a play of Shakspere 
 or a novel by Scott. 
 
 Southey was a remarkable writer of English prose. His Life 
 of Nelson (1813) is a model of its kind. Clear, polished, and 
 thoroughly unstrained, a language flowed from his practised pen 
 which few English writers have surpassed. A History of Brazil 
 
BOUTHEY'S PROSE WORKS. 451 
 
 (1st vol. 1810); Lives of John Wesley, Chatter ton, Kirke White, 
 and Cowper ; a History of the Peninsular War (1st vol. 1823) ; 
 Colloquies on Society (1829), a strange and not over-wise book, 
 giving an account of conversations between Montesinos (Southey 
 himself) and the ghost of Sir Thomas More, who visits him at 
 Keswick; Lives of the British Admirals for Lardner's "Cyclo- 
 paedia" (1833); and The Doctor (1834), stand out prominently amid 
 a host of articles for the Quarterly, and occasional papers on 
 almost everjr subject, which filled up the idle hours of this most 
 indefatigable author. Like Johnson he was living from " hand 
 to mouth," until a pension placed him above the fear of want; but 
 he could not then give up the habits of incessant study and lite- 
 rary toil, which had grown to be his second nature. He was never 
 so happy as when he sat amid his books, pen in hand, adding 
 newly-written sheets to the pile of manuscript already lying in his 
 copy-drawer. 
 
 A VOYAGE THROUGH THE SKY. 
 (FROM " KEHAMA.") 
 
 Then in the ship of heaven Ereenia laid 
 
 The waking, wondering maid ; 
 The ship of heaven, instinct with thought, displayed 
 
 Its living sail, and glides along the sky, 
 
 On either side, in wavy tide, 
 The clouds of morn along its path divide ; 
 The winds that swept in wild career on high 
 Before its presence check their charmed force ; 
 The winds that loitering lagged along their course 
 
 Around the living bark enamoured play, 
 Swell underneath the sail, -and sing before its way. 
 
 That bark, in shape, was like the furrowed shell 
 Wherein the sea-nymphs to their parent-king, 
 On festal day, their duteous offerings bring. 
 
 Its hue? Go watch the last green light 
 Ere evening yields the western star to night ; 
 Or fix upon the sun thy strenuous sight 
 Till thou hast reached its orb of chrysolite. 
 
 The sail, from end to end displayed, 
 
 Bent, like a rainbow, o'er the maid. 
 
462 SPECIMEN OF SOUTHEY'S VERSE. 
 
 An angel's head, with visual eye, 
 Through trackless space directs its chosen way ; 
 
 Nor aid of wing, nor foot, nor fin, 
 Requires to voyage o'er the obedient sky. 
 Smooth as the swan when not a breeze at even 
 
 Disturbs the surface of the silver stream, 
 Through air and sunshine sails the ship of heaven. 
 
 Recumbent there the maiden glides along 
 
 On her aerial way, 
 How swift she feels not, though the swiftest wind 
 
 Had flagged in flight behind. 
 Motionless as a sleeping babe she lay, 
 
 And all serene in mind, 
 Feeling no fear ; for that ethereal air 
 With such new life and joyance filled her heart, 
 
 Fear could not enter there ; 
 For sure she deemed her mortal part was o'er, 
 And she was sailing to the heavenly shore ; 
 And that angelic form, who moved beside, 
 Was some good spirit sent to be her guide. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Through air and sunshine sails the ship of heaven ; 
 
 Far, far beneath them lies 
 The gross and heavy atmosphere of earth ; 
 And with the Swerga gales 
 The maid of mortal birth 
 At every breath a new delight inhales. 
 And now toward its port the ship of heaven 
 Swift as a falling meteor shapes its flight, 
 Yet gently as the dews of night that gem 
 And do not bend the hare-bell's slenderest stem. 
 Daughter of earth, Ereenia cried, alight ; 
 This is thy place of rest, the Swerga this, 
 
 Lo, here my bower of bliss ! 
 He furled his azure wings, which round him fold 
 
 Graceful as robes of Grecian chief of old. 
 
 The happy Kailyal knew not where to gaze ; 
 
 Her eyes around in joyful wonder roam, 
 
 Now turned upon the lovely Glendoveer, 
 
 Now on his heavenly home. 
 
THE LAKE SOHOOL OF POETRY. 453 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Born 1770 A.D Died 1850 A,D. 
 
 The Lake School. 
 Wordsworth's style. 
 Early life. 
 His maiden work. 
 
 Coleridge. 
 By the Lakes. 
 Rydal Mount. 
 The Excursion. 
 
 Works of later years. 
 Some minor poems. 
 His last years. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 WORDSWORTH was the great master of the Lake School,* in which 
 Coleridge and Southey were also prominent members. Choosing 
 the simplest speech of educated Englishmen as a vehicle for the 
 expression of their thoughts, and passing by with quiet scorn the 
 used-up subjects of the Romancists the military hero waving his 
 red sword amid battle smoke ; the assassin watching from the 
 dark shadow of a vaulted doorway his unconscious victim, who 
 strolls, singing in the white moonlight, down the empty street ; 
 the lover, " sighing like furnace with a woeful ballad made to his 
 mistress's eyebrow," and kindred themes the poets of the Lake 
 School took their subjects often from among the commonest things, 
 and wrote their poems in the simplest style. Bending a reve- 
 rent ear to the mysterious harmonies of nature, to the ceaseless 
 song of praise that rises from every blade of grass and every dew- 
 drop, warbles in the fluting of every lark, and sweeps to heaven 
 in every wave of air, they found in their own deep hearts a 
 musical echo of that song, and shaping into words the swelling of 
 their inward faith, they spoke to the world in a way to which the 
 world was little used, about things in which the world saw no 
 poetic beauty. The history of a hard-hearted hawker of earthen- 
 ware and his ass, the adventures of Betty Foy's idiot son, and 
 
 * The Lake School derived its name from the fact that its three most conspicuous mem- 
 bers, Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, lived chiefly by the English lakes. Originally a 
 contemptuous name, it has gradually come to be the recognised title of Wordsworth and 
 his disciples. 
 
454 THE LANGUAGE OF WORDSWORTH. 
 
 the wanderings of an old pedler, are among the themes chosen by 
 Wordsworth for the utterance of his poetic soul. As of old the 
 Puritans had done in political and domestic life, the Lakists went too 
 far in their disdain for the conventional ornaments and subjects of 
 poetry. But their theory, a healthful one, based on sound principles, 
 made an impression on the British mind deeper and more lasting 
 than many think. Like that ozone or electrified oxygen in the 
 natural air, upon which, say chemists, our health and spirits depend, 
 its subtle influence is ever stealing through the atmosphere of 
 our national thought, quickening the scattered germs of a truer 
 and purer poetic philosophy than has yet prevailed. As all advo- 
 cates of a new theory are apt to do, Wordsworth ran at first into 
 an almost ridiculous extreme of simplicity, both in the selection of 
 his subjects and his treatment of them. His ballads, on their first 
 publication, raised a perfect storm of disdainful laughter among the 
 critics of the day, laughter which he heard serenely, conscious 
 that he was right in the main, and that time alone was needed to 
 insure the triumph of his views. But here it must be remembered, 
 that the language in which his highest thoughts found their fit- 
 ting expression is not by any means a common-place language. 
 When telling the tale of Johnny Foy, the idiot who stayed out all 
 night, he may properly enough descend to humble strains like 
 these : 
 
 " And now she's at the doctor's door, 
 She lifts the knocker, rap, rap, rap 
 The doctor at the casement shows 
 His glimmering eyes that peep and doze ! 
 And one hand rubs his old night-cap." 
 
 But when higher themes attract his pen, as, for example, in that 
 noble simile, among the finest our poetry contains, 
 
 " I have seen 
 
 A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract 
 Of inland ground, applying to his ear 
 The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell, 
 To which, in silence hushed, his very soul 
 Listened intensely : and his countenance soon 
 
WORDSWORTH'S EARLY LIFE. 455 
 
 Brightened with joy ; for, murmuring from within, 
 Were heard sonorous cadences, whereby, 
 To his belief, the monitor expressed 
 Mysterious union with its native sea : 
 Even such a shell the universe itself 
 Is to the ear of Faith," 
 
 his style is elevated far above the level of our common speech, as 
 a poetic style must always be, that takes its tone and colour from 
 the lofty thoughts which it embodies. 
 
 Wordsworth, an attorney's son, was born on the 7th of April 
 1770, at Cockermouth in Cumberland. Both father and mother 
 died while he was yet a boy j and w^terf" his school education was 
 considered, by the uncle under whose guardianship he passed, to 
 be sufficiently advanced, he was sent in 1787 to St. John's College, 
 Cambridge. There, during the four years of his undergraduate 
 course, he read a good deal, studied Italian, wrote poetry, and, 
 when the welcomed vacations released him from what he con- 
 sidered to be an irksome and narrow course of study, went upon 
 various tours that in the autumn of 1790 being directed to France 
 and Switzerland, although the tempest of Revolution was then 
 raging with great fury. In the following year, having graduated, 
 he went again to France, with a soul on fire in her cause. There 
 he stayed for fifteen months, and there he might have perished by 
 the guillotine in the growing ardour of his sympathy for the 
 Girondists, had not his return to England in 1792 changed the 
 current of his life. 
 
 His friends wished him to enter the Church; but he was born 
 to be a poet and nothing else. The love of poetry was the grand 
 passion of his heart, gaining strength as the flame of republican- 
 ism wasted and died with the coming of maturer years. 
 In 1793 appeared a modest book of descriptive verse, 1793 
 containing two poems in the heroic couplet, entitled An A.D. 
 Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches of walks among 
 the Alps. This maiden appearance of the poet Wordsworth 
 revealed to thinking minds the rise of a new star, destined to shed 
 a brilliant lustre on the land. Coleridge, a kindred spirit, wag 
 especially struck with the merit of the work 
 
456 WORDSWORTH SETTLES BY THE LAKES. 
 
 The need of earning a livelihood had turned the young poet'a 
 thoughts to the law and the career of a journalist, when, happily 
 for the literature of the nineteenth century, the kindness of Cal- 
 vert, a dying friend, who left him 900 and a pressing request 
 that he would devote himself to poetry, marked out another future 
 for the man of twenty-five. 
 
 Settling down in Somersetshire with his sister, he wrote Salis- 
 bury Plain and a tragedy called TJie Borderers, and soon afterwards 
 made the acquaintance of Coleridge. When the latter took up 
 house at Nether Stowey, his new friend, in order to be near him, 
 removed to Alfoxden, three miles off; and they lived thus in con- 
 stant association with each other. A volume called LyriA 
 Ballads appeared in 1798, containing twenty -three pieces, the 
 first being the " Ancient Mariner," and the rest poems by Words- 
 worth. It fell all but dead from the press. 
 
 After a tour in Germany, Wordsworth settled with his sister 
 in a cottage at Grasmere, among those hills whose blue peaks 
 had bounded the world of his childhood There he resided for 
 nine years, during which his marriage and the commencement of 
 his great philosophical poem, of which we have but two instal- 
 ments, were the chief occurrences. The payment of 8500 by 
 the Earl of Lonsdale, in settlement of a debt due to his father, en- 
 abled him at the time of his marriage to look forward with com- 
 posure to a life undisturbed by the cares of money-getting, a cir- 
 cumstance of no small importance to the successful cultivation of 
 that calm and thoughtful poetry towards which his native genius 
 was inclined. In 1808 he removed to Allan Bank, and in 1813 to 
 Rydal Mount, both places lying in sight of those sweet 
 1813 lakes, and under the shadow of those old hills, which have 
 A.D. become inseparably associated with his name and mernor}'. 
 At Bydal Mount, " a cottage-like building, almost hidden 
 by a profusion of roses and ivy," from whose grassy lawn a silver 
 gleam of Windermere could be caught to the south, the poet spent 
 the greater half of his life. About the time of his removal to this 
 charming residence, the office of Distributor of Stamps for the 
 county of Westmoreland, the salary of which was ,500 a year, 
 
" THE EXCURSION." 457 
 
 with no very heavy duties attached to it, made a considerable 
 addition to his private means. He owed his appointment to the 
 influence of Lord Lonsdale. 
 
 In the following year he published his noblest poem, The Excur- 
 sion, which brought him little or no money, and drew down upon 
 him the wrath of the critics, Jeffrey of the "Edinburgh" leading 
 the hostile van. " This will never do," wrote the great Athenian 
 lawyer; but alas for his prophecy! this (i.e., "The Excur- 
 sion") has been doing ever since, making its way steadily 1814 
 upwards, like a star that climbs into the clear sky A.D. 
 above masses of cloud hung upon the horizon, and 
 sheds its mild yet penetrating light with growing power as it 
 climbs. When we examine the structure of this great work only 
 a fragment, let it be remembered, of a vast moral epic, to be called 
 The^Reclusej in which the poet intended to discuss the human soul 
 in all its deepest workings and its loftiest relations we find no 
 dramatic life, and little human interest; and to this feature of 
 the poem, as well as to the novelty of finding subtle metaphysical 
 reasoning embodied in blank- verse, its original unpopularity must 
 be ascribed. Even still, though yearly widening, the circle of 
 those who read the " Excursion " is small ; for it is a poem written 
 only for the thinking few. Those who read poetry as some do, 
 only for the story, will be hipped and desperately bored by the 
 grave musical philosophy of the old Scotch pedler and his friends. 
 Yet it is not all a web of subtle reasoning, for there are rich 
 studies from nature and life scattered plentifully over its more 
 thoughtful ground-work. Coleridge, who was his friend's truest 
 and finest critic, describes the higher efforts of "Wordsworth's pen 
 as being characterized by "an austere purity of language, both 
 grammatically and logically." No English poet, who has dealt 
 with lofty themes, is more thoroughly English in both his single 
 words and his turns of expression. 
 
 The chief remaining works of this great writer are TJie White 
 Due of Rylstone (1815), a tragic tale founded on the ruin of a 
 northern family in the Civil War; Peter Bell (1819), a remark- 
 able specimen of the Lakist writings, which he dedicated to 
 
458 WORDSWORTH'S MINOR WORKS. 
 
 Southey;* Sonnets on the River Duddon; The Waggoner, dedi- 
 cated to Charles Lamb ; Memorials of a Tour on tlie Continent ; 
 Ecclesiastical Sonnets; Yarrow Revisited, and otJier Poems; and 
 The Prelude, a fragment of autobiography, describing the growth 
 of a poet's mind, which was not published until the author was 
 dead. In the composition of Sonnets, a poetic form of which 
 he was remarkably fond, he has not been excelled by the finest of 
 the old masters. As he says of Milton, we may say of himself 
 with regard to the sonnet, 
 
 " In his hand 
 
 The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew 
 Soul-animating strains." 
 
 " Wordsworth's sonnet never goes off, as it were, with a clap or 
 repercussion at the close ; but is thrown up like a rocket, breaks 
 into light, and falls in a soft shower of brightness." 
 
 Some of his minor poems, displaying his genius in its simple 
 beauty and unaffected grace, are Ruth, a touching tale of Love 
 and Madness; We are Seven, a glimpse of that higher wisdom 
 which the lips of childhood often speak ; the classic Laodamia, 
 clear-lined and graceful as an antique cameo; and those Lines on 
 Revisiting the Wye, of which we quote a part, rich in the calmly 
 eloquent philosophy that formed the golden woof of all he 
 wrote. 
 
 In 1842 the old man, then past seventy, resigning his public 
 office to his son, received a pension of 300 a year; and in 1843, 
 on the death of Southey, he became poet-laureate. Seven years 
 later, he sank into the grave, dying a few days after the 
 completion of his eightieth year. His remains were 
 laid in the churchyard of Grasmere, by the side of his 
 darling daughter, who had been taken from him three 
 years before. 
 
 * One of the finest examples of Wordsworth's direct simplicity of expression occurs in 
 the de&cription of Peter's utter want of sympathy with the beauty of Nature, 
 
 " A primross by a river's brim, 
 A jellow primrose was to him, 
 And it VM nothing more." 
 
SPECIMEN OF WORDSWORTH'S VERSE. 459 
 
 THOUGHTS ON REVISITING THE WYE. 
 
 Oh ! how oft, 
 
 In darkness, and ainid the many shapes 
 Of joyless daylight, when the fretful stir 
 Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, 
 Have hung upon the beatings of my heart, 
 How oft in spirit have I turned to thee, 
 
 silvan Wye ! thou wanderer through the woods- 
 How often has my spirit turned to thee ! 
 
 And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, 
 
 With many recognitions dim and faint, 
 
 And somewhat of a sad perplexity, 
 
 The picture of the mind revives again, 
 
 While here I stand, not only with the sense 
 
 Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts 
 
 That in this moment there is life and food 
 
 For future years. And so I dare to hope, 
 
 Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first 
 
 1 came among these hills; when, like a roe, 
 I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides 
 Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, 
 Wherever nature led ; more like a man 
 Flying from something that he dreads, than one 
 Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then 
 The coarser pleasures of my boyish days 
 
 And their glad animal movements all gone by 
 To me was all in all I cannot paint 
 What then I was. The sounding cataract 
 Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, 
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
 Their colours and their forms were then to me 
 An appetite; a feeling and a love 
 That had no need of a remoter charm, 
 By thought supplied, or any interest 
 Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past, 
 And all its aching joys are now no more, 
 And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this 
 Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur; other gifts 
 Have followed, for such loss, I would believe, 
 Abundant recompense. For I have learned 
 To look on nature, not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes 
 The still sad music of humanity, 
 Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 
4 GO SPECIMEN OP WORDSWORTH'S VEKSE. 
 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts; a se'nse sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking tilings, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 
 A lover of the meadows and the woods 
 And mountains, and of all that we behold 
 From this green earth, of all the mighty woiM 
 Of eye and ear, both what they half create 
 And what perceive; well pleased to recognise 
 In nature, and the language of the sense, 
 The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
 The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 
 Of all my moral being. 
 
KARLY LIFE OP MACAULAY, 46] 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY. 
 Born 1800 A.D Died 1859 A.D. 
 
 Macaulay's fame. 
 His lineage. 
 His college life. 
 Article on Milton. 
 
 Called to the bar. 
 Political life. 
 Out in India. 
 Beaten at Edinburgh. 
 
 History of England. 
 The Peerage. 
 Lays of Ancient Rome. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 DISTINGUISHED as a descriptive poet by his fine Lays of Ancient 
 Rome, and yet more distinguished as a master of English prose 
 by his Essays and his noble History of England, Macaulay stands 
 prominent among the highest literary names of the nineteenth 
 century. When, amid the Christmas festivities of 1859, a 
 mournful whisper crept into almost every home in the land, tell- 
 ing of his death, there were few hearts so thoroughly engrossed 
 by the pleasures of the passing hour as not to send a thought of 
 affectionate sorrow into that quiet room at Kensington, where the 
 great Historian and Essayist the only man whom England ever 
 made- a lord for the power of his pen lay mute and still among 
 his cherished books and the half-written sheets of his unfinished 
 volume. 
 
 Macaulay was of Scottish lineage, being a descendant of the 
 Macaulays of Lewis in Ross-shire. His grandfather, John, was a 
 Presbyterian minister. His father, Zachary, who spent part of his 
 life in Jamaica, became well known for his exertions in opposition 
 to the hateful slave-trade. At Rothley Temple in Leicestershire, 
 the seat of Zachary's brother-in-law, a rich English merchant and 
 member of Parliament, the future historian was born in 1800, and 
 was named Thomas Babington, after the uncle in whose house 
 he first saw the light. 
 
 Young Macaulay's career as a student of Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, was crowned with high honours. Entering in 1818, he 
 
4G2 ARTICLE ON " MILTON." 
 
 obtained in the following year the Chancellor's medal for a poem 
 called Pompeii; in 1821 he received a similar distinction for a poem 
 on Evening, and was, besides, elected to the Craven scholarship ; 
 and he had been for a year Fellow of Trinity when, in 1825, he took 
 his degree of Master of Arts. And in the arena of the Union 
 Debating Society, where the keenest and brightest minds of Cam- 
 bridge met to display their skill in fence, few could measure 
 weapons with Babington Macaulay. Such honours formed no 
 unfitting prelude for the career of literary and political renown upon 
 which he entered without delay. While yet an undergraduate, he 
 had contributed to The Etonian, a short-lived serial conducted 
 by Praed, his most formidable rival at the Union ; and had 
 also, in company with that author of "Quince" and the "Red 
 Fisherman," written for KnighCs Quarterly Magazine. Here 
 his first public laurels were won. But the young student of 
 law he was now working away at Lincoln's Inn in prepara- 
 tion for his call to the bar before donning the legal robe, had 
 achieved a success of which many older men might well be 
 proud. Milton's newly-found treatise on "Christian Doctrine" 
 having been rendered into English, Macaulay contributed to 
 
 an August number of the " Edinburgh Review " that 
 
 1825 article on Milton, which must be regarded as the 
 
 A.D. starting-point of his literary fame. It was brilliant 
 
 even to excess. The writer himself, when the added 
 skill and taste of nearly twenty years had chastened his 
 style, condemned this article, as being "overloaded with gaudy 
 and ungraceful ornament." But its appearance was felt, by all 
 the reading public, to mark the rising of a new star of uncommon 
 lustre above the horizon; and it is easier to forgive an excess 
 of real brilliance, which, we know, coming years must purify and 
 subdue, than to endure a poverty of light, or, still worse, that dis- 
 play of pinchbeck jewels, glittering with affected lustre, of which 
 our young literature is too full. 
 
 About six months after the appearance of Milton, the writer 
 was called to the English bar. We pass lightly over his profes- 
 sional and political career. His Whig friends soon made him a 
 
MACAULAY'S POLITICAL CAREER. 463 
 
 Commissioner of Bankruptcy. He took his seat in 1830 as mem- 
 ber for Calne. He spoke often and with great power in the battle 
 of the Keform Bill, and won considerable reputation as an orator, 
 although his delivery was monotonous and he lacked some of the 
 physical qualities of a telling speaker. His orations were rather 
 brilliant political essays than great outbursts of natural eloquence, 
 like the speeches of Chatham or Burke. From 1832 to 1834 he 
 was member for Leeds. And then he went out to India as legal 
 adviser to the Supreme Council of Calcutta, his principal business 
 there being the preparation of a new penal code of Indian law. 
 The formation of this code led him to the investigation of Indian 
 history, a study which bore fine fruit in his Essays on Lord 
 Clive and Warren Hastings, the principal literary results of the 
 two years and a half which he spent in the East. Many of 
 Ms best articles in the "Edinburgh" came home by the Indian 
 mail, recreations of his leisure at Calcutta. In 1839 Macaulay, 
 then newly returned from India, became member for Edinburgh, 
 upon taking office under Lord Melbourne as Secretary at War, 
 and this connection with the Scottish capital lasted for eight years. 
 Under Lord John (now Earl) Kussell, he was in 1846 appointed 
 Paymaster-General of the Forces ; but, in the following year, his 
 vote in favour of the Maynooth grant having given offence to 
 some of the Edinburgh electors, he was beaten at the poll by 
 Mr. Cowan. 
 
 The defeat was a victory. Macaulay the member for Edin- 
 burgh, sinking out of public view for two years, emerges as 
 Macaulay the historian of England. Living chiefly at the Albany, 
 and spending many of his mornings among the literary treasures 
 of the British Museum, quartering himself for weeks at a country 
 ale-house in the village of Weston Zoyland, that he might write 
 his stirring and vivid description of the battle of Sedgemoor on 
 the very spot, he devoted all his strength to more enduring work 
 than Essays in the " Edinburgh Review." The first two volumes 
 of The History of England from the Accession of James 
 the Second, published in 1849, were received with an 1849 
 enthusiasm fully equal to the reception of Gibbon's A.D. 
 
464 MACAULAY'S " HISTORY OF ENGLAND." 
 
 Decline and Fall. The plan was a great one. " I purpose to 
 write the history of England from the accession of King James 
 the Second down to a time which is within the memory of 
 men still living," are the opening words of the opening chapter. 
 He has brought the work down only to the death of William the 
 Third, and that with gaps in the concluding and imperfect volume. 
 We cannot say that a Histoiy from the time of James the Second 
 down to the battle of Waterloo or the death of blind old King 
 George, written by so great a pen within the compass of half-a-dozen 
 volumes, would have been a book of little interest to the general 
 reader, for we know what brilliant summaries of historical periods, 
 all glowing with colour and filled with life, the Essayist has given 
 us ; but a summarized History would greatly lack the charm 
 with which the volumes of Macaulay enchain us, as we pass 
 in review the panorama of court and camp and council-room 
 and country-house, unfolded to our delighted gaze. To condense 
 the Rebellion of Monmouth, the Trial of the Bishops, the Siege 
 of Derry, the Battle of the Boyne, or the Massacre of Glencoe 
 into fewer pages, would be to squeeze out most of the splendid 
 colouring that reminds us of Titian or Tintoretto, and scatter 
 to the winds those little traits of personal appearance and in- 
 dividual action those glimpses of weather, scenery, costume, 
 and domestic life which make authentic history read, in his 
 pictured pages, like a tale of romance. One of Macaulay's 
 favourite maxims how greatly in description the particular excels 
 the general is finely exemplified by all his writings. The third 
 and fourth volumes of the History were published in 1855. Cart- 
 loads of copies left the publisher's ware-room, and the presses could 
 hardly work quick enough to keep pace with the demand. The 
 last volume, published in the present year (1861), is formed of such 
 manuscripts as were found among his papers after death, partly 
 revised, partly in original roughness (which, however, surpasses 
 the elaborate smoothness of most other men). The Death-bed of 
 Dutch William is the last scene described; but the narrative of 
 the fifth volume is not continuous, it being wisely thought better to 
 leave the fragments as the dead artist's hand had left them, than to 
 
DEATH OF LORD MACAULAY. 465 
 
 link these fragments together with pieces of inferior workman- 
 ship. 
 
 The first chapter of this noble work contains a rapid but masterly 
 view of earlier English history, becoming more detailed and pic- 
 turesque as that period of which Cromwell is the central figure 
 widens on the historian's view. The second chapter depicts the 
 shameful reign of the second Charles. The third among all, 
 most characteristic of Macaulay's historical treatment shows us 
 the cabbages and gooseberry bushes growing close to the country 
 squire's hall door in 1685 ; leads us through the shrub-wood, with 
 here and there a woodcock, which covered the site of now brilliant, 
 busy Regent Street ; introduces us to the literary gossips at Will's 
 Coffee-house, and the grave surgeons who clustered round Garra- 
 way's tables ; carries us in a Flying Coach at the wonderful rate of 
 forty miles a day along roads thick with quagmires and infested with 
 highwaymen ; brings us even into the crowded jails, festering with 
 dirt, disease, and crime ; gives us, in short, such a picture of old 
 England in the days of the Stuarts as no writer had ever given 
 us before. From novels, plays, pictures, maps, poems, diaries, 
 letters, and a hundred other such sources, with patient industry he 
 collected his materials for this remarkable view of English life. 
 Then, after an overture so magnificent, the brilliant drama, on 
 which the black curtain fell sadly soon, opens with the death of 
 King Charles the Second. 
 
 The slight put upon Macaulay by the electors of Edinburgh 
 was somewhat atoned for in 1852, when they returned him as 
 their member, although he issued no address and stooped to 
 solicit no vote. For four years he continued to represent that 
 city in Parliament ; but his day of public life was nearly over, he 
 was fast breaking prematurely down. Resigning his seat in 1856, 
 he entered the Upper House in the following year as Baron 
 Macaulay of Rothley Temple, having received his peerage 
 chiefly as a fitting tribute to his eminent literary merit. 1859 
 He wore the coronet little more than two years, dying on A.D. 
 the 28th of December 1850. 
 
 We have spoken of Macaulay's prose. The little poetry he has 
 (is) 30 
 
466 " THE LAYS OF ANCIENT HOME." 
 
 left us affords almost equal delight, and is equally worthy of closa 
 and careful study. Having tried his youthful pen in the composi- 
 tion of stirring ballads from English and French history, such as 
 Tlie Armada and the Battle of Ivry, on his return from India he 
 resumed this style in his noble Lays of Ancient Rome, which were 
 published in 1842. The four Lays, Horatius Cocks, The Battle 
 of Lake Reyillus, Virginius, and The PropJiecy of Capys are im- 
 aginative reproductions, in the English ballad style and measure, of 
 those old songs which Niebuhr justly believes to have formed the 
 early history of Rome. For marvellous power over the picturesque 
 a single line, sometimes even a single word, suggesting a landscape 
 or a group these Lays have never been surpassed by any poems 
 of their kind. The free swing of the melody, streaming on in 
 a rush of Saxon words, such as alone can trace vivid pictures on 
 an English page, has a mingling of warlike fire, thoroughly in keep- 
 ing with the character of the plain, hardy, bronze-cheeked, iron- 
 limbed plebeians of the early Republic, who are supposed to listen 
 to and be kindled by the song. 
 
 THE BURIAL-PLACE OF MONMOUTH, 
 
 Iii the meantime many handkerchiefs were dipped in the Duke's blood ; for by 
 a large part of the multitude he was regarded as a martyr, who had died for the 
 Protestant religion. The head and body were placed in a coffin covered with 
 black velvet, and were laid privately under the communion-table of Saint Peter's 
 Chapel in the Tower. Within four years the pavement of the chancel was again 
 disturbed ; and hard by the remains of Moumouth were laid the remains of 
 Jeffreys. In truth, there is no sadder spot on the earth than that little cemetery. 
 Death is there associated not, as in Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's, with 
 genius and virtue, with public veneration and imperishable renown ; not, as in 
 our humblest churches and church-yards, with everything that is most endearing 
 in social and domestic charities ; but with whatever is darkest in human nature 
 and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the 
 inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of 
 fallen greatness and of blighted fame. Thither have been carried, through suc- 
 cessive ages, by the rude hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the 
 bleeding relics of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties, 
 the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts. Thither was borne, before 
 Che window where Jane Grey was praying, the mangled corpse of Guiiford 
 Dudley. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Protector of the realm, 
 reposes there by the brother whom he murdered. There has mouldered away 
 
SPECIMEN OF MACAULAY'S PROSE. 467 
 
 the headless trunk of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Cardinal of Saint 
 Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a better age, and to have died in a better 
 cause. There are laid John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Lord High 
 Admiral; and Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Lord High Treasurer. There, 
 too, is another Essex, on whom nature and fortune had lavished all their 
 bounties in vain, and whom valour, grace, genius, royal favour, popular applause, 
 conducted to an early and ignominious doom. Not far off sleep two chiefs cf the 
 great house of Howard, Thomas, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and Philip, eleventh 
 Earl of Arundel. Here and there, among the thick graves of unquiet and 
 aspiring statesmen, lie more delicate sufferers ; Margaret of Salisbury, the last 
 of the proud name of Plantagenet, and those two fair Queens who perished by 
 the jealous rage of Hemy. Such was the dust with which the dust of Monmouth 
 mingled. 
 
4C8 EARLY LIFE OF KNOWLES. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SHERIDAN KNOWLES. 
 Born 1784 A.D Died 18G2 A.D. 
 
 The modern drama. 
 Early life. 
 Hazlitt's help. 
 Goes on the stage. 
 At Waterford. 
 
 Chief playg. 
 Pensioned. 
 Preaching. 
 Poetic style. 
 Illustrative extract 
 
 ALTHOUGH the English drama lias fallen from its high estate, a 
 few men still remind us in this nineteenth century that we are 
 the countrymen of Shakspere, of Jonson, and of Massinger. Among 
 such may be named Sheridan Knowles, the author of Virginius; 
 Henry Taylor, the author of Philip van Artevelde; and Thomas 
 Noon Talfourd, the author of Ion. That dramatic writing may 
 not be entirely without a representative name in this last era of 
 our literary history, we take the first and most prolific of these 
 dramatists as the subject of a brief sketch. 
 
 James Sheridan Knowles was born in the year 1784, in Anne 
 Street, Cork. His father was an English master and teacher 
 of elocution there. During the boyhood of the dramatist the 
 family removed to London, where the spirit of poetry began to 
 stir in his heart, when he was about twelve years old. Writing 
 a play for his boy friends, he conducted the performance him- 
 self. Then came from the new-fledged pen an opera, a ballad 
 called The Welsh Harper, and a Spanish tragedy. But what 
 more than all gave the genius of young Knowles its decided 
 literary bent, was the notice with which the distinguished critic 
 Hazlitt honoured him. Many a clever boy has written plays and 
 poems at twelve or fourteen without turning out a Sheridan 
 Knowles. Hazlitt, however, brought the boy to his house, made 
 him known to Coleridge and to Lamb, and did him the invaluable 
 
BEGINNINGS OF FAME. 469 
 
 kindness of criticising his juvenile productions, and cultivating liia 
 dramatic tastes. 
 
 It was in the Crow Street Theatre of Dublin that Knowlea 
 made his debut upon the stage. He did not take with the audience ; 
 in fact, his first appearance was an utter failure. Yet we find him 
 persevering in his efforts to be an actor ; and it was well for his 
 fame that he did persevere, for his stage-experience must have 
 greatly aided him in the preparation of his popular dramas. Con- 
 joining, as did his far greater prototype Shakspere, the occupations 
 of actor and dramatic author, he knew, from daily habit and 
 observation, what was required to make a play tell upon the house. 
 None but a practical teacher can produce a thoroughly good and 
 useful school-book; and, granting him to possess the requisite 
 brains, we may reasonably expect the actor to produce a more 
 effective play than the working lawyer, or the author who never 
 leaves his desk. 
 
 In a theatrical company at Waterford, to which Knowles was 
 for some time attached, he met Edmund Kean, who filled the 
 principal part in his first acted play, called Leo the Gipsy. 
 There, too, the publication of a small volume of poems, entitled 
 Fugitive Pieces, brought the literary struggler a little money and 
 some reputation. 
 
 But Belfast was the opening scene of his decided success in the 
 walk he had chosen. While engaged there as a teacher of elocution 
 and grammar, he produced a drama called Brian JBoroihme, which 
 was received in the local theatre with enthusiastic applause. 
 And then came the first of his great plays, Caius Gracchus. 1815 
 Spurred on by success, for which he had long been bat- A.D. 
 tling and hoping, he continued his dramatic authorship. 
 Virginius was the next production of his facile pen. Though 
 offered to Kean indeed it is said to have been written at his 
 request it was not first acted at Drury Lane, but came out under 
 less favourable auspices in Glasgow. There it had a most success- 
 ful run. Macready soon got hold of it, studied it, played it, and 
 made his own fortune and the fame of Knowles. According to 
 the opinion of Hazlitt, the author's old friend and mental father 
 
470 LATER LIFE OF KNOWLES. 
 
 no mean authority on a point of dramatic criticism "Virginius" 
 was Macready's greatest character. William Tell; The Beggar 
 of Bethnal Green; Tlie Hunchback; TJie Wife, a Tale of Mantua; 
 Love ; and several other popular and successful plays, added, dur- 
 ing the next twenty -three years, to the fame that Knowles had 
 already won. In many of these he played the leading character 
 himself. Crossing the Atlantic in 1836, he found in America the 
 warmest welcome and the kindest appreciation of his professional 
 talent. 
 
 When his health began to fail, application having been made 
 to the Government by a number of dramatic authors, and also 
 by some Glasgow merchants, a pension of 200 a year was granted 
 to him in 1849. 
 
 Since the close of his professional life he has. written a couple 
 of novels, of which we shall say no more than that they are 
 unworthy of his earlier fame ; and has also displayed his contro- 
 versial power in two works, The Rock of Rome, and The Idol De- 
 molished by its own Priest. So long as his health permitted, he 
 acted in his later years as a lay preacher of the Baptist persua- 
 sion ; and after some time of decaying strength he died at Tor- 
 quay in 1862. 
 
 The dramatic style of Sheridan Knowles was modelled after the 
 Elizabethan plays, especially those of Philip Massinger. And 
 here, with all our admiration for the effectiveness and artistic con- 
 struction of Virginius and Tell, we must confess that the model 
 seems at times to peep out too plainly, and that we would rather 
 have Knowles writing in his own proper and natural manner 
 than be obliged to look upon him sometimes as a second-hand 
 Massinger, revived on the stage of the nineteenth century, but 
 speaking after the fashion of those days when the Globe and the 
 Rose were in all their primitive glory. The poetry of Knowles is 
 not of the intense school, but "sparkles through his plays, mildly 
 and agreeably ; seldom impeding with useless glitter the progress 
 and development of incident and character, but mingling itself 
 with them, and raising them pleasantly above the prosaic level of 
 tommon life." 
 
SPECIMEN Of KNOWLES' VEHSE. 47l 
 
 FROM "WILLIAM TELL." 
 
 Scaling yonder peak, 
 I saw an eagle wheeling near its brow, 
 O'er the abyss. His broad expanded wings 
 Lay calm and motionless upon the air, 
 As if he floated there, without their aid, 
 By the sole act of his unlorded will, 
 That buoyed him proudly up. Instinctively 
 I bent my bow : yet kept he rounding still 
 His airy circle, as in the delight 
 Of measuring the ample range beneath 
 And round about ; absorbed, he heeded not 
 The death that threatened him. I could not shoot 
 'Twas Liberty ! I turned my bow aside, 
 And let him soar away. 
 
 Heavens ! with what pride I used 
 To walk these hills, and look up to my God, 
 And think the land was free. Yes, it was free 
 From end to end, from cliff to lake, 'twas free 
 Free as our torrents are that leap our rocks 
 And plough our valleys without asking leave ; 
 Or as our peaks that wear their caps of snow 
 In very presence of the regal sun. 
 How happy was I then ! I loved 
 Its very storms. Yes, I have often sat 
 In my boat at night, when midway o'er the lake 
 The stars went out, and down the mountain-gorge 
 The wind came roaring. I have sat and eyed 
 The thunder breaking from his cloud, and smiled 
 To see him shake his lightnings o'er my head, 
 And think I had no master save his own. 
 On the wild jutting cliff, o'ertaken oft 
 By the mountain-blast, I've laid me flat along ; 
 And while gust followed gust more furiously, 
 As if to sweep me o'er the horrid brink, 
 Then I have thought of other lands, whose storms 
 Are summer flaws to those of mine, and just 
 Have wished me there ; the thought that mine was frefc 
 Has checked that wish ; and I have raised my head> 
 And cried in thraldom to that furious wind> 
 Blow on I this is the iand of Liberty I 
 
472 EARLY LITE OF TEKNYSON. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 Born 1810 A.D Still living, 1869 A.D. 
 
 Tennyson's fame, 
 Timbuctoo. 
 First publications. 
 Poems of '33. 
 
 Poems of '42. 
 The Princess. 
 In Memorlam. 
 A change of scene. 
 
 Made Laureate. 
 
 Maud. 
 
 Idylls of the Kin?. 
 
 Illustrative extract 
 
 NOT always lias the Laurel been given to him most worthy of 
 that royal honour; but when the reverend brow of Wordsworth 
 drooped in death, there was none fitter to succeed " the old man 
 eloquent" than the English gentleman who now wears the wreath. 
 By consent of all, Alfred Tennyson stands at the head of English 
 poets in the passing generation. In his own department of liter- 
 ature he is the representative man of the age caressed by critics, 
 admired by all, imitated by not a few. Rare are the poems pub- 
 lished now-a-days untouched with the light of this master-mind, 
 whose pure and steady radiance has been diffusing itself in ever- 
 widening circles for more than thirty years. 
 
 A Lincolnshire clergyman, rector of Somersby, had three 
 sons Frederick, Charles, and Alfred. All have written poetry, 
 the third and greatest of the three being the present Laureate. 
 Tennyson's poetic career may be said to have begun in 1829, 
 when, as an undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he won 
 the Chancellor's medal for a poem in English blank- verse upon 
 the somewhat unpromising theme of Timbuctoo. About the same 
 time he joined his brother Charles in the publication of Poems 
 by two Brothers. 
 
 But in 1830 a bolder step was taken. A Cornhill publisher 
 
 announced a modest volume, bearing on its title-page the 
 
 words Poems, chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson, in which 
 
 such pieces as Mariana in the Moated Grange, C1firilL 
 
 and The Ballad of Oriana, showed that a minstrel of brilliant 
 
THE GROWTH OF POETIC FAME. 473 
 
 promise was trying his 'prentice hand upon the lyre of English 
 song. 
 
 Undaunted by the frigid reception of his first venture, Tenny- 
 son published a second volume in 1833, containing, besides cor- 
 rected reprints of some former poems, many new compositions, 
 which marked a striking advance both in thought and style. 
 Those who then read for the first time The Lady of Shalott, The 
 Miller's Daughter, jEnone, The Lotus JZaters, and, above all, The 
 Queen of the May, an exquisitely touching picture of a pretty wilful 
 village girl fading away amid the brightening blossoms of an Eng- 
 lish spring, felt that a new well of poetic thought had burst out to 
 gladden and make green the arid roads of modern life. One part 
 of a poet's lofty mission is to battle with that tendency to the 
 common-place and the matter-of-fact, which belongs to a money- 
 getting age, by affording such nutriment to the imagination as 
 may keep its fair shoots from withering away in the hot and dusty 
 struggle of our daily lives. And no English poet of modern 
 days has more nobly fulfilled this exalted function than he who 
 has given us the sweet fruits of genius that have just been named. 
 
 The critics of 1833 were unkind and unjust to the youthful 
 singer ; and for nine years the sweet voice was silent. But it was 
 not the silence of an idle life. Locksley Hall was unfolding its 
 pathetic and passionate beauty. The Gardener's Daughter and 
 Dora were budding into life. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, one of 
 the sternest rebukes ever levelled at the cold arrogance and deadly 
 cruelty of high-born beauty, was in preparation. And such frag- 
 mentary poems as Morte d' Arthur and Godiva, dealing with the 
 chivalrous and feudal times of old England, were giving earnest 
 of what the minstrel might do in some future day, should he choose 
 his theme from that dim past, through whose mists we see in 
 broken outline, with here and there a glimpse of brilliant colour 
 shining through a rift, confused groups of giant men, whose life was 
 summed up in the battle, the tilt-yard, the chase, and the carouse. 
 When in 1 842 appeared two volumes, containing the poems 
 to which we have referred with many others of remark- 1842 
 able beauty, the victory was won. Another King Alfred A.D. 
 
474 
 
 was crowned in England, whose realm lias wider bounds and 
 whose sceptre has another power than the sceptre and the realm 
 of the illustrious Saxoa 
 
 Tennyson's next work was published in 1847, a fanciful poem 
 of the epic class, written in blank- verse, entitled The Princess, a 
 Medley. At a little pic-nic on the grassy turf within a ruin, seven 
 college men tell the tale in turn, and 
 
 ' ' The *vomen saug 
 
 Between the rougher voices of the men, 
 Like linnets in the pauses of the wind." 
 
 A prince and princess are betrothed, but have never met. He 
 loves the unseen beauty; she, influenced by two strong-minded 
 widows, hates the thoughts of marriage, and founds a University 
 for girls. Disguised in female dress, the prince and two friends 
 don the academic robe of lilac silk, and mingle with the gentle 
 under-graduates. All goes well lectures are duly attended until 
 upon a geological excursion the princess falls into a whirling 
 river, and is snatched from the brink of a cataract by her lover. 
 The secret being thus discovered, the pretenders are expelled, in 
 spite of a life saved. Then comes war between the kingdoms ; 
 the prince is struck senseless in the strife ; and as Ida, the Head 
 of the College, moves round the sick-bed, where he lies hovering 
 between life and death, a new light dawns upon her. She begins 
 to feel that the gentle ministrations of home are a fitter study for 
 her sex than the quadrature of the circle or the properties of 
 amygdaloid. By degrees 
 
 " A closer interest flourished up, 
 Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these, 
 Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears 
 By some cold morning glacier ; frail at first 
 And feeble, all unconscious of itself, 
 But such as gathered colour day by day." 
 
 We never think of characterizing the poem by adjectives like 
 "sublime" or "magnificent," for it pretends to no such qualities 
 as these express. " Exquisite," " beautiful," " graceful," " tender*" 
 are rather the words we choose. A delicate playfulness runa 
 
475 
 
 through every page, like a golden thread through rich brocade. 
 But with the sweet satiric touch there often mingles a tone of 
 deep social wisdom, which exalts the poem far above mere pretti- 
 ness. Some of the intervening lyrics are the perfection of lingual 
 music, especially those lines descriptive of the dying echo of a 
 bugle-note sounded amid the rocky shores of a lake. 
 
 Early in life a great sorrow had fallen upon Tennyson. Arthur 
 Henry Hallam, the historian's son, who had been the poet's bosom 
 friend at college and had been affianced to his sister, died in 
 1833 at Vienna. Stunned by the heavy blow, the surviving friend 
 long refuses to be comforted; and the black shadow of the pall 
 and the coffin broods upon his soul. But merciful time works its 
 cure. The shadows turn grey, are touched with light, and at last 
 roll off in golden clouds. "The sad mechanic exercise" of weav- 
 ing verses in memory of his dead companion restores the mourner 
 to himself, and brings him back to take renewed pleasure in the 
 days that pass. But the gaiety of youth is gone ; the graver 
 brow and somewhat saddened voice tell of one who has 1850 
 drunk of that bitter cup, which Infinite Wisdom often pre- A.D. 
 pares to purify the soul and fit it for higher deeds. Such 
 were the circumstances in which this work the history of a human 
 sorrow was composed. Not until 1850 did the group of poems, 
 which, to the number of one hundred and twenty-nine, make up the 
 tributary In Memoriam, appear in a printed volume. The stanza, 
 in which all are written, is the well-known eight-syllabled quatrain ; 
 to which a very simple modification of rhyme, an exchange between 
 the third and fourth lines, imparts an uncommon tone, 
 
 " I hold it true whate'er befall ; 
 
 I feel it when I sorrow most ; 
 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have love.d at all." 
 
 The lost friend, dying at Vienna, was borne to England and 
 buried in the chancel of Clevedon Church in Somersetshire. How 
 beautifully these circumstances are woven together in the following 
 lines, which condense in their simple language the spirit of all the 
 scenery round that lonely tomb : 
 
47 G CHANGE OF LITE-SCENE. 
 
 " The Danube to the Severn gave 
 
 The darkened heart that beats no more ; 
 They laid him by the pleasant shore, 
 And in the hearing of the wave. 
 
 There twice a day the Severn fills ; 
 The salt sea-water passes by, 
 And hushes half the babbling Wye, 
 
 And makes a silence in the hills." 
 
 Tennyson's early life amid the fens of Lincolnshire and Cam- 
 bridge led him to paint, in his earlier poems, the features of such 
 landscapes as are common there. The barren moor the tangled 
 water-courses, embroidered with brilliant flowering weeds the 
 great mere, shimmering in the frosty moonlight the pool, fringed 
 with tall sword-grass and bristling with bulrushes, meet us 
 continually in his first volumes. But his manhood has been 
 spent in a different scene. At Farrhigford in the Isle of Wight, 
 on the road from Alum Bay to Carisbrook, he has resided for 
 many years, amid green undulating woodland, thick with apple- 
 trees, and fringed with silver sand and snowy rocks, on which 
 the light-green summer sea and the black waves of winter flow 
 with the changeful music of their seasons. The landscape of 
 southern England, where green and daisied downs take the place 
 of the grey wolds to which his young eyes were accustomed, is 
 often painted in his later works. Within his quiet home by the 
 sea the stalwart, dark-bearded poet lives among his children and 
 his books, strolling often, no doubt, beyond the privet-hedge that 
 bounds his lawn and garden, but seeing little society except that 
 of a few chosen friends. 
 
 When Wordsworth died in 1850, the vacant laurel was worthily 
 
 conferred on the author of " Locksley Hall " and " The 
 
 1850 Princess." His Ode on the Death of Wellington, which is 
 
 A.D. the chief work he has produced in his official capacity, 
 
 though somewhat monotonous, sounds in many passages 
 like the roll of the muffled drums that startle Nelson in his sleep 
 beneath the pavement of St. Paul's, as the car of bronze bears 
 a dead soldier to his side. 
 
"THE IDYLLS OF THE KING." 477 
 
 idaud and other Poems were published by Tennyson in 1855. 
 " Maud " is scarcely so fine a work as many that preceded it from 
 the same pen. A squire's daughter, wooed by a new-made lord, 
 prefers another gentleman, who is somewhat of the Byronic 
 stamp. The serenade or invocation, sung by the lover as he 
 waits at dawn for Maud among the roses and lilies in the Hall 
 garden, after the guests of the evening have gone, is full of 
 passionate fire and delicacy of thought. In the duel, which 
 results from the discovery of their meeting, Maud's brother is 
 killed, and her sweetheart has to flee the land. The Crimean war 
 is then hauled most incongruously into the dream, for it is now 
 the dream of a dead man, and "the blood-red blossom of war 
 with a heart of fire," flaming from the cannon's mouth, lights up 
 the concluding scene of a wild, ill-jointed tale, rich, however, in such 
 splendours of English expression as few but Tennyson can produce. 
 
 We now notice, very briefly, the Laureate's latest work, of his 
 longer poems undoubtedly the best.* Turning his gaze back 
 into that dim past from which he had already drawn one or 
 two striking scenes, he reproduced the shadowy court at Caeiieon, 
 where King Arthur and his knights won their dusky-bright renown. 
 He has succeeded admirably in setting before us the 
 brilliant and the darker sides of that old and well-nigh for- 1859 
 gotten life, in the four tales which form The Idylls of the A.D. 
 King. The delicate Enid, riding in her faded silk before 
 her cruel lord, the sweet and faithful Elaine gazing tenderly on 
 the shield of her absent knight, the crafty beauty, Vivien, weav- 
 ing her spells round old wizard Merlin to shear him of his 
 strength, and shrieking, as the forked lightning splinters an 
 oak hard by, and, finest picture of all, the guilty Queen Guine- 
 vere lying in an agony of remorse at the feet of Arthur, her 
 tear-wet face crushed close to the convent floor, and her dark, 
 dishevelled hair floating in the dust, while the noble forgiveness 
 of the injured King and his sad farewell pierce her to the very 
 soul, these are the subjects of the song. The " Idylls" are in blank - 
 
 * We must look upon " In Memoriam " rather as a group of elegies a funeral wreatU 
 of mingled asphodel and yew than as a single poem. 
 
478 SPECIMEN OF TENNYSON'S VERSE. 
 
 verse, whose fine polish and sweetly-varied music prove the 
 Laureate to be a consummate master of that noble instrument in 
 skilful hands, the English tongue. 
 
 Enoch Artlen, a touching domestic story of humble life, has 
 been the chief offspring of Tennyson's muse in recent years. The 
 same volume contains Aylmer's Field, some minor poems of which 
 the principal are Titlumus and the Northern Farmer, and a few 
 Experiments in various metres unsuited to the genius of the Eng- 
 lish language. 
 
 MEETING OF ENID AND GERAINT. 
 (FROM "THE IDYLLS OP THE KINO.") 
 
 Then rode Geraint into the castle court, 
 
 His charger trampling many a prickly star 
 
 Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones. 
 
 He looked, and saw that all was ruinous. 
 
 Here stood a shattered archway, plumed with fern ; 
 
 And here had fall'n a great part of a tower, 
 
 Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, 
 
 And, like a crag, was gay with wilding flowers : 
 
 And high above, a piece of turret stair, 
 
 Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound 
 
 Bare to the sun ; and monstrous ivy-stems 
 
 Claspt the grey walls with hairy-fibred arms, 
 
 And sucked the joining of the stones, and lu 
 
 A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove. 
 
 And while he waited in the castle court, 
 The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang 
 Clear through the open casement of the Hall, 
 Singing : and as the sweet voice of a bird, 
 Heard by the hinder in a lonely isle, 
 Moves him to think what kind of bird it id 
 That sings so delicately clear, and make 
 Conjecture of the plumage and the form ; 
 So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint, 
 And made him like a man abroad at morn, 
 When first the liquid note beloved of men 
 Comes flying over many a windy wave 
 To Britain, and in April suddenly 
 Breaks from a coppice gemmed with green and re*l, 
 And he suspends his converse with a friend, 
 Or it may be the labour of his hands, 
 
SPECIMEN OF TENNYSON'S VERSE. 479 
 
 To think or say " There is the nightingale ;" 
 So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said, 
 "Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me." 
 It chanced the song that Enid sang was one 
 Of Fortune and her wheel, and Enid sang : 
 
 " Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud ; 
 Turn thy wild wheel, through sunshine, storm, and cloud ; 
 Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate. 
 
 " Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown ; 
 With that wild wheel we go not up or down ; 
 Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great. 
 
 " Smile, and we smile, the lords of many lands ; 
 Frown, and we smile, the lords of our own hands ; 
 For man is man, and master of his fate. 
 
 " Turn, turn thy wheel above the staring crowd ; 
 Thy wheel and thou are shadows in the cloud ; 
 Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate." 
 
 " Hark ! by the bird's song you may learn the nest," 
 Said Yniol; "enter quickly." Entering then, 
 Right o'er a mount of newly-fallen stones, 
 The dusky-rafter 'd, many- cob web'd Hall, 
 He found an ancient dame in dim brocade ; 
 And near her, like a blossom vermeil- white, 
 That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath, 
 Moved the fair Enid, all in faded silk, 
 Her daughter. 
 
480 EARLY LIFE OF DICKENS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 Born 1812 A.D Still living, 1869 A.D. 
 
 Two tfreut novelists. 
 Dickens' father. 
 The attorney's office. 
 Reporting. 
 Sketches by Boz. 
 
 The Pickwick Papers. 
 Nicholas Nickleby. 
 Little Nell 
 In America. 
 David Copperfleld. 
 
 Later works. 
 Christmas stories. 
 Ugly heroes. 
 His later style. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 THERE are two distinguished living authors, who divide the 
 honour of being called, "First novelist of the day." Charles 
 Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray stand side by side on 
 that proud eminence, each with his multitude of admirers ; each 
 striving with the other in a fair and generous rivalry ; each more 
 than willing to acknowledge how justly the applause of the 
 nation, and those less evanescent fruits of literary toil, which 
 chink and shine and fill the banker's book with figures, have 
 fallen to the lot of his brother-artist. " I think of these past 
 writers," said the present editor of the Gornhill, when lecturing to 
 a London audience upon the Reverend Laurence Sterne, " and of 
 one who lives amongst us now, and am grateful for the innocent 
 laughter, and the sweet, unsullied page, which the author of 
 " David Copperfield " gives to my children." 
 
 Though born at Landport, Portsmouth, where his father, 
 
 John Dickens, who was connected with the Navy 
 
 1812 Pay Department, happened to be residing at the time, 
 
 A.D. the celebrated novelist is essentially a London man ; 
 
 for thither the family removed upon the conclusion of 
 the war. The pay-clerk having become a parliamentary reporter, 
 young Charles grew up in an atmosphere likeliest of all to develop 
 any literary tastes he possessed ; for there are, perhaps, no men 
 who acquire a truer and more intimate knowledge of public char- 
 acters and new books than those who report for the London press, 
 
481 
 
 When the fitting time came, Charles Dickens was placed by his 
 father in an attorney's office ; but the occupation was veiy dis- 
 tasteful to the young man, who soon abandoned it for the more 
 stirring life his father led. We cannot regret this little attempt 
 upon a father's part to make his son take root in what he believed 
 a safer soil, when we remember those fine pictures of middle-class 
 lawyer-life, ranging from deepest tragedy to broad uproarious 
 fun, which are scattered among the pages of " Pickwick." 
 
 After a short engagement on The True Sun, Dickens joined 
 the staff of The Morning Chronicle, where he soon took a 
 first rank among the reporters. He began to sketch upon paper 
 the varied life he saw. The letter-box of a magazine The Old 
 Monthly, we believe received one day a little manuscript, dropped 
 in by a modest passer-by. With quickly beating heart the author 
 of that slender scroll got hold of the fresh uncut serial, some 
 time afterwards, and with a joy the author feels only once in life, 
 saw himself in print. It was the first of those delightful Sketches 
 ly Boz, * which were soon transferred to the columns of the 
 Chronicle, and when the author's fame grew bright, were published 
 in a separate form. 
 
 But the beginning of his fame dates from the publication of the 
 unrivalled Pickwick Papers. The adventures and misadventures 
 of a party of Cockney sportsmen formed the original idea of the 
 book, as proposed by the publisher, and begun by 
 Dickens. Boz was to write the chapters, and Seymour 183? 
 to furnish the illustrations. Glimpses of this original A.D. 
 plan appear in Mr. Winkle's disastrous rook-shooting, 
 the ride and drive towards Dingley Dell, the hot September day 
 among the partridges, when Mr. Pickwick found the cold punch so 
 very pleasant, the skating ^ene at Manor Farm ; but as the 
 work went on, the scope of theTapers expanded, both the sporting 
 and the club being forgotten, or rarely referred to, in the varied 
 
 * Boz was a little sister's corruption of the name Moses, by which Dickens, whose young 
 head was full of the "Vicar of Wakefield" and kindred works, used playfully to call hia 
 younger brother. It is pleasant to think that this novelist, who lias depicted the quiet 
 graces of an English home so tenderly and truthfully, should have taken the nom de plume, 
 with which he signed his earliest papers, from the Hspings of a little child, 
 
 (15 31 
 
4:82 EARLIER NOVELS OF DICKENS. 
 
 pictures of life, through which we follow the fortunes of the kind old 
 bachelor, his three friends, and his attached servant, the inimi- 
 table Sam Weller, an indescribable but perfectly natural compound 
 of Cockney slang atnd the coolest impudence, with rich ever- 
 bubbling humour and the tenderest fidelity. 
 
 Then followed Nicliolas Nickleby, a tale crowded with finely 
 drawn portraits and scenes of modern English life ; among which, 
 perhaps, the sojourn of Nicholas at the wretched Yorkshire school, 
 and his stay among the Portsmouth actors, are richest in charac- 
 ter and colouring. This is generally looked upon as the finest 
 work from Dickens' pen. 
 
 While for a short time editor of " Bentley's Miscellany," he 
 contributed to its pages the striking story of Oliver Twist, in which 
 some of the lowest and vilest forms of London life are painted 
 with a startling truthfulness that rivals the pencil of Defoe. The 
 publication of "Nickleby" in monthly numbers " putting forth 
 two green leaves a month," as the author expresses it in a pretty 
 botanical conceit having proved very successful, a new work was 
 projected, to appear in the same form, and also in low- 
 1840 priced weekly numbers. This was Master Humphrey's 
 A.D. Clock, a connected series of tales, among which there ap- 
 peared The Old Curiosity Shop, and Barndby Rudge. 
 The former of these whose central figure, Little Nell, is one 
 of the most exquisite creations of modern fiction contains 
 the finest writing that has ever come from this brilliant pen. 
 " Barnaby Rudge " is a tale of the last century, which mingles its 
 fictitious plot with the story of the Gordon Riots in London. A 
 wonderfully gifted raven plays no unimportant part in the stirring 
 drama. 
 
 A visit to America supplied material for two new works, 
 
 American Notes for General Circulation, and Martin 
 
 1843 Chuzzlewit, a novel in both of which he deals very 
 
 JLD. severely with some peculiarities of Transatlantic life 
 
 and character ; too severely, we may safely say, for the 
 
 tendency of Dickens in all his painting is towards caricature. 
 
 This fault is an outgrowth of his very power. Seizing in an 
 
LATEE NOVELS OF DICKENS. 483 
 
 instant, with an intense abstraction, the odd feature or whimsical 
 bent in any man or woman, he creates a character from that 
 single quality, making his creation stand out in bright and 
 startling relief as the type of a whole class. Among the English 
 characters of Chuzzlewit, the scoundrel Pecksniff and the immortal 
 Sairey Gamp are undoubtedly the most artistic and original 
 
 After a twelvemonth in Italy, Dickens came home to establish and 
 edit a morning paper, Tlie Daily News, to which he contributed 
 sketches entitled Pictures from Italy. But from this heavy, and 
 to some extent thankless task, he soon returned to the more con- 
 genial field of fiction. Dombey and Son, the tale of a starched and 
 purse-proud merchant, whose every thought is centred in the House 
 (not of Commons, but of business); David Gopperfield, the story of a 
 young literary man struggling up to fame, as the author himself 
 had done, through the thorny toils of short-hand notes ; and 
 Bleak House, founded on the miseries of a suit in Chancery, came 
 out in brilliant succession, to delight a million readers. " Copper- 
 field " especially is prized as the finest of his later novels. 
 
 Upon the conclusion of " David Copperfield," Dickens under- 
 took to conduct a weekly serial, called Household Words, 
 which is now his own property, under the title of All the 1850 
 Year Round. To this he contributed A Child's History A.D. 
 of England, giving a picturesque view of the national 
 growth and fortunes. And soon after the conclusion of " Bleak 
 House," he wrote for the same serial his tale of a Strike, called 
 Hard Times, 
 
 Little Dorrit, depicting the touching devotion of a young girl 
 to her selfish father, who is a prisoner for debt ; A Tale of Two 
 Cities (London and Paris), filled with the horrors of the French 
 Revolution; Great Expectations hinging upon the return of a 
 convict; and Our Mutual Friend, are his recent works. 
 
 We should not forget, in reviewing the fruits of Dickens' busy 
 pen, the charming series of Christmas tales which commenced in 
 1843 with A Christmas Carol. The Chimes and The Cricket on 
 the Hearth are deservedly the most popular of these minor works, 
 all of which, to be thoroughly enjoyed, should be read by the 
 
48-1 DICKENS' PKT CHARACTER. 
 
 cheery light of a Christmas fire, while the polished green and 
 vivid scarlet of the fresh holly boughs wink upon the parlour 
 wall, and the crisp snow sparkles out of doors in the frosty star- 
 light No finished portrait is Trotty Veck, but a slightly-filled 
 sketch, what artists call a study, yet who can forget or fail to 
 love the good old fellow ? 
 
 On such a portrait Dickens loves to lavish his highest skill. 
 Choosing some character of the most unpromising outward 
 appearance Smike, the starved, half-witted drudge of a Yorkshire 
 school ; Pinch, the awkward, shambling assistant of a rascally 
 country architect; Ham, a rough, tar-splashed, weather-beaten 
 fisherman of Yarmouth ; Joe, the huge, stout blacksmith, whose 
 dull brain can scarcely shape a thought clearly into words he 
 makes us love them all, for the truth, the honesty, the sweet, guile- 
 less, forgiving spirit that lives within the ungainly frame. If 
 Dickens had done no more than create the Tom Pinch of " Chuzzle- 
 wit," and the blacksmith Joe of " Great Expectations," he deserves 
 lasting gratitude and fame. As the commonest weed, the meanest 
 reptile has its own beauty and its own use in the grand scheme of 
 Creation as some delicate blossom or tender leaf nestles in the 
 nooks of every ruin, no matter how wildly or how long the storm 
 may have beaten on its walls, or how entirely defaced by war or 
 time the tracery of its stonework may have become so man or 
 woman never falls so low, never grows so ugly or repulsive, never 
 is so thoroughly ridiculous or stupid, as utterly to lose the outlines 
 of that Divine image in which the ancient parents of the race were 
 created. And although we, with clay-dimmed eyes, cannot clearly 
 see why a man is ugly or a tree distorted, we must not forget 
 that the plainest face and the homeliest manner may cover a 
 noble intellect and a heart beating with tenderest pity and love 
 for humankind. Such we take to be the great moral, of Dickens' 
 "sweet, unsullied page." 
 
 In some of his later works a slightly morbid desire for violent 
 effects has disfigured his plots and his style. He has become less 
 natural in colours and in grouping, too violent in the former, 
 too theatrical in the latter. The rage for sensation-dramas, 
 
SPECIMEN OF DICKENS' PROSE. 485 
 
 for something more peppery and stimulating than a simple 
 picture of human life, which has infected the modern stage, seems 
 somewhat to have touched his pen. But that pen, in its own 
 best vein, has lost none of its early power, as his latest tale has 
 shown. 
 
 TIM LINKINWATER'S WINDOW. 
 (FROM " NICHOLAS NICKLEBT.") 
 
 " There is a double wall-flower at No. 6 in the court, is there 1 " said Nicholas. 
 
 " Yes, there is," replied Tim, "and planted in a cracked jug without a 
 spout. There were hyacinths there this last spring, blossoming in but you'll 
 laugh at that, of course." 
 
 "At what T 
 
 " At their blossoming in old blacking-bottles," said Tim. 
 
 "Not I, indeed," returned Nicholas. 
 
 Tim looked wistfully at him for a moment, as if he were encouraged by the 
 tone of this reply to be more communicative on the subject ; and sticking behind 
 his ear a pen that he had been making, and shutting up his knife with a sharp 
 click, said, " They belong to a sickly, bed-ridden, hump-backed boy, and seem 
 to be the only pleasures, Mr. Nickleby, of his sad existence. How many years 
 is it," said Tim, pondering, " since I first noticed him, quite a little child, drag- 
 ging himself about on a pair of tiny crutches ? "Well ! well ! not many ; but 
 though they would appear nothing if I thought of other things, they seem a long, 
 long time, when I think of him. It is a sad thing," said Tim, breaking off, "to 
 see a little deformed child sitting apart from other children, who are active and 
 merry, watching the games he is denied the power to share in. He made my 
 heart ache very often." 
 
 " It is a good heart," said Nicholas, " that disentangles itself from the close 
 avocations of every day, to heed such things. You were saying " 
 
 " That the flowers belonged to this poor boy," said Tim, " that's all. When 
 it is fine weather, and he can crawl out of bed, he draws a chair close to the 
 window, and sits there looking at them, and arranging them all day long. We 
 used to nod at first, and then we came to speak. Formerly, when I called to 
 him of a morning, and asked him how he was, he would smile and say, ' Better : ' 
 but now he shakes his head, and only bends more closely over his old plants. It 
 must be dull to watch the dark house-tops and the flying clouds for so many 
 months ; but he is very patient." 
 
 " Is there nobody in the house to cheer or help him ?" asked Nicholas. 
 
 "His father lives there, I believe," replied Tim, " and other people too ; but 
 no one seems to care much for the poor sickly cripple. 1 have asked him very 
 often if I can do nothing for him ; his answer is always the same 'Nothing.' 
 His voice has grown weak of late, but I can see that he makes the old reply, 
 He can't leave his bed now, so they have moved it close beside the window ; and 
 there he lies all day, now looking at the sky, and now at his flowers, which he 
 
486 
 
 still makes shift to trim and water with his own thin hands. At night, when 
 he sees my candle, he draws back his curtain, and leaves it so till I am in bed. 
 It seems such company to him to know that I am there, that I often sit at ray 
 window for an hour or more, that he may see I am still awake ; and sometimes 
 I get up in the night to look at the dull, melancholy light in his little room, and 
 wonder whether he is awake or sleeping. 
 
 " The night will not be long coming," said Tim, " when he will sleep and 
 never wake again on earth. We have never so much as shaken hands in all our 
 lives, and yet I shall miss him like an old friend. Are there any country flowers 
 that could interest me like these, do you think ! Or do you suppose that the 
 withering of a hundred kinds of the choicest flowers that blow, called by the 
 hardest Latin names that were ever invented, would give me one fraction of the 
 pain that I shall feel when these old jugs and bottles are swept away as lumber. 
 Country!" cried Tim, with a contemptuous emphasis ; "don't you know that 
 I couldn't have such a court under my bed-room window anywhere but in 
 London 1" 
 
 With which inquiry Tim turned his back, and pretending to be absorbed in 
 his accounts, took an opportunity of hastily wiping his eyes, when he supposed 
 Nicholas was looking another way. 
 
EA&LY LIFE OF THACKERAY. 487 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
 Born 1811 A.D Died 1863 A.D. 
 
 Early life. 
 School and college. 
 Writes for Eraser. 
 Writes for Punch. 
 Vanity F; 
 
 air. 
 
 Pendennis. 
 English Humourists. 
 Henry Esmond. 
 The Newcomes. 
 The Four Georges. 
 
 The Virginians. 
 Editor of the Cornhili. 
 Often abused. 
 Character of his works. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 THE author of Vanity Fair and The Snols of England was born 
 in 181 1, at Calcutta. His father, descended from a good old York- 
 shire family, held office in the Civil Service of the East India 
 Company. The novelist was yet a very little child when that 
 separation from his parents, which is the bitterest penalty attached 
 to Indian life, took place. His own words give us a glimpse of 
 the voyage to England. " Our ship touched at an island on the 
 way home, where my black servant took me a walk over rocks and 
 hills till we passed a garden where we saw a man walking. ' That 
 is Bonaparte,' said the black : ' he eats three sheep every day and 
 all the children he can lay his hands on.' " "We can well imagine 
 little fingers tightening round the dark hand that held them, as 
 the pair hurried back to the ship and looks of terror glancing 
 from the little white face back to the trees where this ogre lived. 
 
 The old Charter-house school, lovingly painted in more than 
 one of his works, was the place of his education ; and his name is 
 the latest of those household words which that quiet cloister has 
 given to the literature of England. After some time at Cambridge, 
 where he did not stay to take a degree, he entered life, the heir to 
 a fortune of many thousand pounds, resolved to devote himself to 
 the easel and the brush. His studies in the art-galleries of Rome 
 and some of the German cities, particularly Weimar, prepared 
 him, unconsciously to himself, for that other painting in pen and 
 ink to which his life was afterwards devoted. 
 
188 THACKERAY'S EARLIER WORKS. 
 
 The loss of a large part of his fortune made it necessary that 
 he should be more than an amateur student of art. He entered 
 at the Middle Temple, and began his literary career in the pages 
 of " Eraser's Magazine." Month by month there appeared tales and 
 sketches by Michael Angelo Titmarsh and George Fitz-boodle, 
 Esquire ; which, although slow in attracting general attention, 
 caught the eye of such men as John Sterling, who saw in them 
 the evidence of great talent in the bud. The Hoggarty Diamond, 
 TJie Paris Sketch-Book, The Chronicle of tlie Drum, and Tin Irish 
 tiketcli-Boolc were among the first works of this artist-author's 
 pencil. Barry Lyndon, the story of an Irish fortune-hunter, 
 also appeared in " Eraser." 
 
 The columns of Punch were next enlivened by Thackeray's 
 sketches ; and no papers, in the formidable array of wit and 
 fun, which for twenty years has been growing into volumes under 
 the striped jacket of that distinguished criminal, have ever sur- 
 passed Jeames's Diary, or The Snob Papers. The former, inimi- 
 tably rich in its spelling wliich, whether the writer meant it or not, 
 most delightfully exposes the absurdities of the Plumetic system 
 contains the history of a London flunkey, elevated to sudden 
 wealth by speculation in railway shares. The latter, with a touch 
 of light and seemingly careless banter, twitches the cloak from 
 Humbug and Hypocrisy, especially as these wretched things are 
 found in London clubs and drawing-rooms, and discloses them in 
 all their ridiculous meanness to the scorn of honest men. 
 
 Then appeared Thackeray's first, and, in the eyes of many, his 
 greatest novel, Vanity Fair. Running its course in serial num- 
 bers, it rapidly became a favourite. It was utterly unlike the 
 fiction already on English tables. A very clever and thoroughly 
 unprincipled governess, Becky Sharp, pushing and schem- 
 1 84 6 ing her way into fashionable life, is certainly the heroine 
 A.D. of the book. She personifies intellect without virtue. 
 Opposed to her is the sweet, amiable, pretty, but some- 
 what silly Amelia Sedley, who represents virtue without intellect 
 Pictures of Continental life mingle with London scenes ; and espe- 
 cially we have a sketch of Brussels in those terrible days wher 
 
"PENDENNIS" AND "ESMOND." 489 
 
 Waterloo thunder was in the air. Prominent among the portrait- 
 ures of men in "Vanity Fair" are the fat Indian official, Jos. Sedley, 
 whose delicate health does not interfere with the play of his knife 
 and fork the big, hulking dragoon, Eawdon Crawley, whose heart, 
 for all his nonsense, is in the right place the empty dandy, 
 George, upon whom little Amelia wastes her sweetness and the 
 unselfish and devoted William Dobbin, a kind of Tom Pinch in 
 regimentals. 
 
 The History of Arthur Pendennis, the second great work from 
 Thackeray's pen, followed in a short time. In the character of 
 Pendennis the novelist depicts a man full of faults and weaknesses, 
 who is acted on by the common influences of modern life. 
 Mrs. Pendennis, the hero's mother, and Laura, who, although 1 84 9 
 too good for the scamp, finally becomes his wife, are the A.D. 
 chief feminine portraits. The Major, a worldly old beau, 
 and that fine fellow, George Warrington, a literary man, who acts 
 as the good genius of Pen, are capitally drawn. 
 
 Six brilliant and appreciative Lectures on the English Humour- 
 ists of the Eighteenth Century, dealing, among others, with Swift, 
 Pope, Addison, Steele, Hogarth, and Goldsmith, delighted a 
 fashionable London crowd at Willis's Rooms in 1851, and were 
 afterwards delivered by the author, both in Scotland and America. 
 They have since been printed, and have sold remarkably well. 
 
 Many of the literary men, whose books and manners Thackeray 
 discussed in the delightful gossip of these Lectures, mingle in the 
 mimic life of his next work, The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. 
 The days of Blenheim and Ramillies are revived. Swift, Congreve, 
 Addison, and Steele walk once more among men. Jacobites are 
 plotting for the return of those exiled princes who live across the 
 water. Queen Anne is on the English throne. As a work 
 of literary art, Esmond stands, perhaps, higher than either 1S52 
 Vanity Fair or The Newcomes. The hero, who has long A.D. 
 sought Beatrix Castlewood, a self-willed beauty, consoles 
 himself for rejection by a union with her mother, and settles down 
 in Virginia to write the story of his life. The novelist had a diffi- 
 cult task to accomplish in reconciling his readers to a plot so un- 
 
400 LATER NOVELS AND LECTURES. 
 
 common ; but any slight revulsion of feeling which we experience 
 at the change is amply atoned for by the eloquence of the book 
 and its truthfulness as a piece of historical painting. 
 
 The Newcomes, Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family, edited ly 
 
 Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, appeared in monthly numbers, which 
 
 completed their tale in 1855. The story is one of modern life. 
 
 And, in all the range of fiction, nothing goes deeper to the heart 
 
 than the affecting spectacle of that true gentleman, and 
 
 1855 gentlest man, old Colonel Newcome, lying, after a life of 
 
 A.D. virtue and devotion, on a poor death-bed within the gloom 
 
 of the old Charter-house. Amid a crowd of new and 
 
 striking characters, we find here a lovely picture of womanhood in 
 
 the sweet Ethel Newcome. 
 
 The success of the " English Humourists " induced the lecturer 
 to try his pen a second time in this attractive field. Continuing 
 those light and graceful sketches of later English history which 
 form the ground-work of " Esmond," he produced a series of 
 lectures on The Four Georges, which he delivered first in the States, 
 then in London, and afterwards in several leading cities of Great 
 Britain. These lectures have since appeared in the " Cornhill 
 Magazine." The darker side of the Germanized English Court is 
 here depicted. He tells with great pathos the domestic tragedy of 
 poor old " Farmer George," third of the name, closing the sorrow- 
 ful story with a passage in his own peculiar vein, full of mournful 
 beauty and deep feeling. But the son of that blind, insane, deaf old 
 king is treated with such contemptuous sarcasm such fine-pointed, 
 piercing irony, as a Thackeray alone can sprinkle or fling upon his 
 victim. All the poor paints and feathers, in which this royal char- 
 acter is tricked out in contemporary books and records of his reign, 
 shrivel and drop under the fluid flame ; and the man, poor and 
 miserable and naked, stands disclosed to view. 
 
 Hie Virginians, a continuation of " Esmond," founded like 
 
 that work on an historical basis, began to appear towards 
 
 the close of 1857. The story embraces pictures of life in 
 
 England during the reign of George the Second, and 
 
 places before us the literary men and wi^s who thronged the 
 
EDITOR OF THE " CORNHILL." 491 
 
 coffee-houses of that time. The American War forms a part of 
 the historical ground-work of the plot. 
 
 Nine years ago the "Cornhill Magazine" was started, with 
 Thackeray as its editor. If his position in English letterdom had 
 been a doubtful one, the splendid success of that serial would at once 
 have dissolved all doubts. The circulation of the second number 
 exceeded one hundred thousand ; nor was this sudden leap over 
 the heads of all other serials of the day a mere spasmodic effort 
 the sudden soaring of a blazing rocket which comes down a black- 
 ened stick. The position quickly won has been steadily main- 
 tained. In addition to his editorial duties, Mr. Thackeray contri- 
 buted largely to the pages of his magazine. A short story, called 
 Lovel the Widower, rather confused in its plot, and somewhat 
 unpleasant in its heroine, yet bearing witness to the undiminished 
 brilliance of his pen; a novel, entitled Philip, which ranks among 
 his finest picturing of life and character ; and those queer, delight- 
 ful, rambling, thoroughly Thackerayesque Roundabout Papers, 
 which many abuse but all delight in frolics of genius " wander- 
 ing at its own sweet will " through all wildernesses of topics, past 
 and present, were his chief works after he undertook the literary 
 management of the " Cornhill." This eminent novelist died sud- 
 denly in his bedroom in London on the Christmas Eve of 1863. 
 
 Thackeray had his full share of abuse; but he lived, or rather 
 wrote it down. " He sees no good in man," cried one. " Cold, 
 sneering cynic," says another. " Vanitas Vanitatum, and never 
 another theme." Cries like these, which have all but died away, 
 were evoked by the author's earlier works, in which he devoted 
 his pen rather to the humiliation of empty pride and the destruc- 
 tion of those shams which flourish thickly in the atmosphere of 
 London fashion, than to the direct inculcation of virtue by the 
 creation of virtuous models. His genius resembles some tart and 
 sparkling wine, which has ripened with age into a mellow cordial 
 golden, sweet, and strong. His later works, though somewhat 
 less pungent, possess a deeper human wisdom and a sunnier glow 
 of benevolence. 
 
 His language is fresh and idiomatic English, abounding in tli3 
 
492 THE LANGUAGE OF THACKERAY. 
 
 better coinage from the mint of slang, though never descending to 
 its baser metals. Words that would have shocked Dr. Johnson, 
 and which still startle gentlemen of the old school by their direct 
 expressiveness, rise to his pen continually. And he talks to hi.s 
 readers out of the pleasant page he gives them with a playful, 
 genial artlessness, which not unfrequently changes to a sudden 
 shower of sharp, satiric hits. That which especially distin- 
 guishes his works, among the crowd of English novels that 
 load our shelves and tables, lies in his portrayal of human 
 character as it is. Painting men and women as he meets them at 
 dinner or watches them in the park, he gives us no paragons of 
 perfection forms of exquisite beauty enshrining minds of unsullied 
 purity, or that opposite ideal so familiar to the readers of romance 
 but men and women, with all their faults and foibles, with their 
 modest virtues shrinking from exhibition, or their meanness well 
 deserving the censor's lash. Illustrations by himself adorn all his 
 larger works, displaying the same tendency to teach by apparent 
 fun-making, and the same dislike of the conventional, which per- 
 vade the letter-press. No stranger pencil could so well convey the 
 spirit cf that delicate irony and sparkling banter which flow freely 
 from Thackeray's pen. 
 
 DEATH OF GEORGE THE THIRD. 
 (FROM "THE FOUR GEORGES.") 
 
 All the world knows the story of his malady : all history presents no sadder 
 figure than that of the old man, blind and deprired of reason, wandering through 
 the rooms of his palace, addressing imaginary parliaments, reviewing fancied 
 troops, holding ghostly courts. I have seen his picture as it was taken at this 
 time, hanging in the apartment of bis daughter, the Landgravine of Hesse Hom- 
 bourg amidst books and Windsor furniture, and a hundred fond reminiscences 
 of her English home. The poor old father is represented in a purple gown, his 
 snowy beard falling over his breast the star of his famous Order still idly shin- 
 ing on it. He was not only sightless he became utterly deaf. All light, all 
 reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of God, were 
 taken from him. Some slight lucid moments he had ; in one of which the queen, 
 desiring to see him, entered the room, and found him singing a hymn, and accom- 
 panying himself at the harpsichord. When he had finished, he knelt down anil 
 prayed aloud for her, and then for his family, and then for the nation, concluding 
 with a prayer for himself, that it might please God to avert his heavy calamity 
 
SPECIMEN OF THACKERAY'S PROSE. 493 
 
 from him, but if not, to give him resignation to submit. He then burst into 
 tears, and his reason again fled. 
 
 \Vhat preacher need moralize on this story; what words save the simplest are 
 requisite to tell it 1 It is too terrible for tears. The thought of such a misery 
 smites me down in submission before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch 
 Supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable Dispenser of life, death, 
 happi-ness, victory. " brothers," I said to those who heard me first in 
 America " brothers ! speaking the same dear mother tongue comrades ! 
 enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal 
 corpse, and call a truce to battle ! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to 
 kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest : dead, whom millions prayed 
 for in vain. Driven off his throne ; buffeted by rude hands ; with his children 
 in revolt; the darling of his old age killed before him untimely; our Lear hangs 
 over her breathless lips and crien, ' Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little ! ' 
 
 Vex not his ghost oh ! let him pass he hates him 
 That would upon the rack of this tough world 
 Stretch him out longer! ' 
 
 Hush, Strife and Quarrel, over the solomn grave ! Sound, Trumpets, a mourn- 
 ful march. Fall, Dark Curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful 
 tragedy ! " 
 
494 EJLRLY LIFE OF CAELYLB. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE, 
 Born 1795 A.D Still living, 1869 A.D. 
 
 Thinking In German. 
 Early life. 
 Literary start. 
 Craigenputtoch. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 French Revolution. 
 Lecturing. 
 Carlyle's Cromwell 
 
 Latter-Day Pamphlets. 
 Life of Sterling: 
 Frederick the Great. 
 Illustrative extract. 
 
 IT lias been said that Thomas Carlylc thinks in German; which, 
 without looking too closely into its metaphysical accuracy, may be 
 accepted as a brief character of his remarkable mind, From the 
 leading German writers his thoughts have caught their deepest 
 colouring, and his style some of its most startling qualities. No 
 English classic possesses a more strongly marked individuality on 
 paper than does this latest of the great names of our varied and 
 wealthy literature. 
 
 Born on the 4th of December 1795, in the parish of Middlebie 
 in Dumfries-shire, he enjoyed the incalculable blessing of wise and 
 pious parents in that honest farmer and farmer's wife whom he 
 called father and mother. After attending school at Annan he 
 passed to the University of Edinburgh, where his earnest mind 
 was devoted chiefly to mathematical studies under Leslie. The 
 thoughtful student became for a while a teacher, as mathematical 
 master in a Fifeshire school, and afterwards as tutor to Charles 
 Buller. His parents had destined him for the Church. But 
 neither the school-room nor the pulpit was his fitting sphere. 
 Literature soon attracting him with resistless power, he began 
 that career of authorship which has placed his name among the 
 first in English literature. 
 
 Some short biographies for Brewster's " Edinburgh Encyclo- 
 paedia," among which were Montesquieu , Montaigne, 
 1823 Nelson, The. Pitts a translation of Legendre's Geometry 
 A.D. and, more important than any of these, as an early 
 
LIFE AT CRAIGENPUTTOCH. 495 
 
 indication of the future direction of his thoughts, a translation of 
 Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, were the literary labours of 1823, his 
 first year of pen-work 
 
 A Life of Schiller, publi shed by scattered chapters in the " Lon- 
 don Magazine," and afterwards enlarged, was the second fruit of 
 this Scottish sapling grafted upon German thought. It appeared 
 in 1825 as a separate volume. During the same year the author 
 became a married man with other resources than those of brain 
 and pen. 
 
 For several years Craigcnputtoch, a small estate about fifteen 
 miles north-west of Dumfries, a patch of corn-land nestling among 
 trees in the middle of the black Galloway moors, was the con- 
 genial home of this great man, whose mind, prone by nature and 
 by habit to dwell apart, "wrapped in the solitude of its own 
 originality," flamed out occasionally from its hermit-cell upon 
 the shams andjlun&yism of that seething world, whose roar lay 
 beyond the swelling granite hills. In this lonely nook he wrote 
 several things for the Reviews, among which Characteristics 
 and Burns in the "Edinburgh," and Goethe in the "Foreign 
 Quarterly," are notable. His estimate of Burns is remarkable for 
 its sympathetic justice, and its straightforward recognition in the 
 poet of a true manhood, swathed in wretched environments. And 
 not less is it remarkable as our finest specimen of Carlyle's earlier 
 manner, before he had laid aside the conventional forms of Eng- 
 lish speech for that language of splintered fire, rapid and sudden 
 as the forked lightning, and often as jagged too, which we find in 
 his later works. 
 
 But Sartor Resartus (The Patcher Kepatched) was the principal 
 result of the quiet thoughtfulness by study-fire or on pony's 
 back to which the Craigenputtoch life was chiefly given up. 
 Professing to be a review of a German work on dress, it is in 
 reality a philosophical essay, illustrating in a very original and 
 powerful style the transcendentalism of Fichte. Professor Dio- 
 genes Teufelsdrockh is the imaginary mouthpiece, through which 
 Carlyle inveighs against the old clothes of falsehood and conven- 
 tionalism that smother and conceal a Divine idea lying wrapped in 
 
496 "THE FRENCH REVOLUTION." 
 
 the centre of our human life. So odd the subject and apparently 
 grotesque the style, that London publishers looked very shy at the 
 offered manuscript, which could find its way to the public only in 
 fragments through the pages of "Eraser's Magazine" (1833-34). 
 The year 1837 is the central point in Carlyle's literary life, for 
 then appeared TJie French Revolution, a History, written as no 
 history had ever been written before. All the scenes in that won- 
 derful tale of blood and tears flash out upon our gaze, as we read, 
 with a startling vividness and distinctness of outline, entirely 
 unlike the way in which the stately pictures of Gibbon and 
 Macaulay grow upon the unfolding canvas, and thoroughly in 
 keeping with the wild hurry and seeming clisjointedness of 
 the tumultuous time. Carlyle's pen has not yet outdone this 
 brilliant historic piece. But it must not be forgotten, that those 
 
 who wish to know all the minutiae of the French Revolu- 
 
 1837 tion, must supplement their reading of Carlyle's " History " 
 
 A.D. with the study of calmer works, which aim, not so much 
 
 at fixing on the mind with bright sun-darts a succession 
 of indelible photographs, as at heaping together with quiet and 
 careful industry all the details of the tremendous drama. Defiant 
 of critical canons, and regarding that stately pomp of diction 
 which some think u the dignity of history " requires, as an intoler- 
 able sham, this hater of old clothes works out his own ideas in 
 his own way paints with a brush of daring lawlessness is minute 
 at one time, even to the wart on a hero's eyebrow, at another 
 so broad in his treatment that a single dash of colour depicts a 
 man \iolates every propriety of conventional art, liistorical per- 
 spective excepted fills his pages with abrupt and startling apos- 
 trophes often flings together a bundle of words, which, upon cool 
 analysis, we find to be a mass of disjointed notes drives at full 
 swing through all school-notions of logical order and grammatical 
 arrangement, scattering right and left into ignominious exile 
 nominatives and verbs, articles and pronouns, and yet strikes so 
 surely to the brain and heart, that his pictures, printed with an 
 instantaneous flash, live on the mental retina for ever. 
 The delivery of certain courses of Lectures on German 
 
" CROMWELL'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES." 497 
 
 lure, The Revolutions of Modern Europe, and Heroes, Hero- 
 Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840), combined with tho 
 production of a tract on Chartism (1839) and an historical con- 
 trast, entitled Past and Present (1843), filled up eight years between 
 the publication of the " French Revolution " and the appearance 
 of a second great work. 
 
 That work is entitled The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Crom- 
 well, with Elucidations. A vast heap of materials, collected with 
 painful patience from all sources, " fished up," as the collector tells 
 us, " from foul Lethean quagmires, and washed clean from foreign 
 stupidities such a job of buck-washing as I do not long to re- 
 peat," was given to the world in fair order and modernized form, 
 the great Puritan being made to speak from the dead past with 
 his own voice and pen. This book, however, is no mere edition 
 of Cromwell's works. What he modestly calls <4 Elucidations," the 
 setting of these rough recovered gems, are brilliant specimens of 
 Carlyle's historic style. His portraiture of the great 
 Oliver, and his battle-piece of*Dunbar, are well worthy 1845 
 of the pencil which drew Mirabeau and Marie Antoin- A.D. 
 ette, the storming of the Bastille, and the shrill drum- 
 led march of the Paris women to Versailles. That substratum 
 of the Puritan or old Covenanter in his character, to which Leigh 
 Hunt arid Hannay make allusion, kindled into volcanic flame when 
 Cromwell formed his theme. He is, indeed, himself a literary 
 Cromwell, waging sternest war with all the force of an earnest 
 soul against modern humbug, untruth, and noisy pretension. No 
 wonder that this soldier of the pen, among the stanchest of our 
 century, looking back across two hundred years of history, should 
 recognise natural royalty in the craggy brow, solid frame, and iron 
 soul of a Huntingdon farmer who could lead armies to certain 
 triumph and dissolve a senate with the stamping of his foot. An 
 electric sympathy linked the two : true manhood sharpened Crom- 
 well's sword and true manhood guides Carlyle's pen. 
 
 The toppling thrones and surging peoples of the disastrous year 
 1848 stirred the impulsive oracle to a vehement utterance. The 
 Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850) assailed with most galling invec- 
 (i) 32 
 
408 
 
 live and contemptuous ridicule the leading politicians and in- 
 stitutions of the country. The hollowness of great men and 
 the servility of small are lashed with a furious, stinging whip, whose 
 thongs, steeped in the salt of grim fantastic wit, cut and smart 
 to the very bone. Yet many blows are too fierce, too sweeping, 
 and many fall harmless upon sound and honest things. 
 
 His Life of John Sterling (1851), a brilliant Essayist who had 
 conducted the " Athenaeum " for a while, and who died prematurely 
 in 1844, grew out of his dissatisfaction with the picture which Arch- 
 deacon Hare had given of the free-thinking curate. It is a fine 
 specimen of literary skill; but the sympathy which the writer 
 shows for the loose religious views of his friend has been heavily 
 blamed. 
 
 During recent years Mr. Caiiyle, residing chiefly at Chelsea, 
 has been employed upon The History of Friedrich IL, called 
 Frederick the Great. This stern soldier has been chosen as the 
 hero of a new work, not because the historian believes him to 
 have been a truly great man, but * because he managed not to be 
 a liar and a charlatan, as his century was." Frederick and Voltaire 
 
 are the types of action and of thought in the eighteenth 
 
 1858 century. In 1858 the first and second volumes of 
 
 A.D. " Frederick " appeared ; but they were only preliminary 
 
 to the greater story of his reign, bringing his life 
 through a tangled thicket of Brandenburg and Hohenzollern 
 genealogy, up to the death, in 1740, of his bearish old father, 
 Friedrich Wilheliu. Mr. Carlyle visited the leading battle-fields 
 of the Seven Years' War, while collecting material for the con- 
 cluding volumes of his History. Though inferior to his French 
 devolution, this work presents here and there pictures coloured 
 with that lawless but potent brilliance, that wild, abrupt, impulsive 
 touch, which distinguish this master's style from that of all other 
 writers of English. Clarendon nor Gibbon nor Macaulay, all 
 great masters of the historic pencil and well skilled in the por- 
 traiture of men, can scarcely match, can certainly not overmatch, 
 that image of the great Frederick the very Fritz himself that 
 starts to life in the opening pages of Carlyle's latest work. 
 
SPECIMEN OF -CARLYLE'S PROSE. 499 
 
 PORTRAIT CF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 
 
 He is a king every inch of him, though without the trappings of a king. Pre- 
 gents himself in a Spartan simplicity of- vesture : no crown, but an old military 
 cocked hat generally old, or trampled and kneaded into absolute softness if new; 
 no sceptre but one like Agamemnon's, a walking-stick cut from the woods, which 
 serves also as a riding-stick (with which he hits the horse "between the ears," 
 say authors) ; and for royal robes, a mere soldier's blue coat with red facings, 
 coat likely to be old, and sure to have a good deal of Spanish snuff on the breast 
 of it ; rest of the apparel dim, unobtrusive in colour or cut, ending in high over- 
 knee military boots, which may be brushed (and, I hope, kept soft with an 
 underhand suspicion of oil), but are not permitted to be blackened or varnished, 
 Day and Martin with their soot- pots forbidden to approach. The man is not 
 of god-like physiognomy, any more than of imposing stature or costume : close- 
 shut mouth with thin lips, prominent jaws and nose, receding brow, by no 
 means of Olympian height ; head, however, is of long form, and has superlative 
 gray eyes in it. Not what is called a beautiful man ; nor yet, by all appearance, 
 what is called a happy. On the contrary, the face bears evidence of many sor- 
 rows, as they are termed, of much hard labour done in this world ; and seems to 
 anticipate nothing but more still coming. Quiet stoicism, capable enough of 
 what joys there were, but not expecting any worth mention ; great unconscious 
 and some conscious pride, well tempered with a cheery mockery of humour, are 
 written on that old face, which carries its chin well forward, in spite of the slight 
 stoop about the neck ; snuffy nose, rather flung into the air, under its old cocked 
 hat, like an old snuffy lion on the watch ; and such a pair of eyes as no man, or 
 lion, or lynx of that century bore elsewhere, according to all the testimony we 
 have. " Those eyes," says Mirabeau, " which, at the bidding of his great soul, 
 fascinated you with seduction or with terror." Most excellent, potent, brilliant 
 eyes, swift-darting as the stars, steadfast as the sun ; gray, we said, of the azure- 
 gray colour ; large enough, not of glaring size ; the habitual expression of them 
 vigilance and penetrating sense, rapidity resting on depth. Which is an excellent 
 combination, and gives us the notion of a lambent outer radiance, springing 
 from some great inner sea of light and fire in the man. The voice, if he speak 
 to you, is of similar physiognomy : clear, melodious, and sonorous; all tones aro 
 in it, from that of ingenuous inquiry, graceful sociality, light-flowing banter 
 (rather prickly for most part), up to definite word of command, up to desolating 
 word of rebuke and reprobation. 
 
500 
 
 THOMAS HOOD. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 OTHER WRITERS OF THE NINTH ERA, 
 
 ror.n. 
 
 Janus Anthony Froude. 
 
 Thomas Hood. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 David Macbeth Moir. 
 
 
 Miss Landon. 
 
 K&SATISTS, CRITICS, ETC. 
 
 Thomas Alrd. 
 
 John Wilson. 
 
 lion. Mrs. Norton. 
 
 Thomas De Quincey. 
 
 Mis. Hi-owning. 
 
 Anna Jameson. 
 
 Robert Browning. 
 
 Harriet Martineau. 
 
 William E. Aytoun. 
 
 Sarah Ellis. 
 
 Philip Bailey. 
 
 Arthur Helps. 
 
 Sydney Dobell. 
 
 John Rusk in. 
 
 Alexander Smith. 
 
 Supplementary List 
 
 Supplementary I.i.st. 
 
 
 
 NOVELISTS. 
 
 PRAMATISTS. 
 
 Frederick Man-vat. 
 
 Sir Thomas Talfourd. 
 
 William Carleton. 
 
 Henry Taylor. 
 
 George P. R. James. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 Douglaa Jerrold. 
 
 
 Sir E. Bulwer Lytton. 
 
 HISTORIANS & BIOGRAPHERS. 
 
 Harrison Ainsworth. 
 
 Sir Archibald Alison. 
 
 Benjamin Disraeli. 
 
 George Grote. 
 
 Charles Lever. 
 
 Thomas Arnold. 
 
 Samuel Warren. 
 
 Bishop Thirlwnll. 
 
 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 Sir Francis Palgrave. 
 
 Charlotte Bronte". 
 
 John Gibson Lockhart 
 
 Wilkie Collins. 
 
 John Forster. 
 
 Dinah Muloch. 
 
 George Henry Lewes. 
 
 James Hannay. 
 
 David Mnsson. 
 
 Elizabeth Cask ell. 
 
 Henry Thomas Buckle. 
 
 George Eliot 
 
 Anthony Trollope. 
 Supplementary List 
 
 SCIENTIFIC WRITERS. 
 
 Sir David Brewster. 
 Archbishop Whately. 
 Sir William Hamilton. 
 Sir Roderick Murchison. 
 William Whcwell. 
 Mary Somerville. 
 Hugh Miller. 
 John Stuart Mill. - 
 Supplemental y Li>t. 
 
 THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS 
 
 Thomas Chalmers. 
 Isaac Taylor. 
 Henry Rogers. 
 John W. Donaldson. 
 Supplementary LU. 
 
 TRAVELLERS, ETC. 
 
 Samuel Laing. 
 David Livingstone. 
 Austen Layard. 
 Richard Ford. 
 George Borrow. 
 Alexander Kinglake. 
 Sir Emerson Tennont. 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 THOMAS HOOD, born in 1798, was the son of a London bookseller. 
 His literary career began in Dundee, where he contributed to a 
 local magazine. His works abound in sparkling wit and humour, 
 being crammed with the choicest puns and most whimsical 
 turns of thought. But his true power as a poet, unfortunately 
 seldom put forth, appears in such tragic pieces as Eugene Aram's 
 Dream. The Swg of tfo Shirt, and The Bridge of Sighs, or 
 
MISS LANDON, MllS. NORTON, MllS. BROWNING. 501 
 
 in the Pica of the Midsummer Fairies. A kindred spirit, Jerrold, 
 says that " his various pen touched alike the springs of laughter 
 and the sources of tears." Hood died in 1845. 
 
 DAVID MACBETH Mom, born in 1798 was the Delta of lack- 
 wood's Magazine. The surgeon of Musselburgh found time to culti- 
 vate a poetic genius of the first order. A gentle melancholy is the 
 ruling spirit of his works ; but from his novel of Mansie Wauch, 
 a mellow Scottish humour shines softly out. He died in 1851. 
 
 LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON was born in 1802 at Old Brompton, 
 Her signature of L. E. L. soon became known by her beautiful poems 
 in the Literary Gazette. The Improvisatrice and The Golden Vioht 
 are among her principal works. She wrote also three novels, one 
 of which is called Romance and Reality. Having married Mr. 
 Maclean, Governor of Cape Coast Castle in Africa, she went out to 
 that lonely home to die. One October morning in 1839, about two 
 months after her arrival, she was found dead on her bedroom floor, 
 having accidentally, it is thought, taken an overdose of prussic acid. 
 Rich luxuriance of fancy is the characteristic of her poetry. 
 
 THOMAS AIRD, born in 1802, at Bowden in Roxburghshire, contri- 
 buted many poems to Blaclcwood. He was long editor of the Dum- 
 fries Herald. Tlie DeviPs^Dream is his noblest poem. Some racy 
 prose sketches of Scottish character have also come from his pen. 
 
 CAROLINE NORTON (Miss Sheridan), grand-daughter of the 
 celebrated dramatist, was born in 1808. The Sorrows of Rosalie 
 The Undying One, a legend of the Wandering Jew The 
 Dream and The Child of the Islands, may be named among her 
 poems. Stuart of Du-nleath is her principal novel. 
 
 ELIZABETH BROWNING (Miss Barrett) attracted notice first by a 
 translation of the Prometheus Round of ^Eschylus. A long illness 
 in early life, occasioned by the bursting of a vessel in the lungs, 
 enabled her, by a wide and varied course of reading, and much 
 deep, solitary thought, to prepare for the high vocation of a poet. 
 She certainly has given us the sweetest and noblest strains of 
 poetry that have come in the present generation from lier sex. In 
 1846 she went to reside at Florence; and what she saw of Tuscan 
 affairs inspired her fine political poem of Casa Guidi Windows. 
 
502 BROWNING, AYTOUN, BAILEY, DOBELL. 
 
 A long poem in blank- verse, Aurora Leigh, depicts the maiden Hie 
 of a poetess, " the autobiography of a heart and intellect." The 
 principal favourites among Mrs. Browning's poems are, The J)uchr?3 
 May Bertha in the Lane Cowper's Grave The Cry of the Chil- 
 dren Lady Geraldine's Courtship Sonnets from the Portuguese. 
 This gifted lady died in the earlier part of the year 1861. 
 
 ROBERT BROWNIXO, the husband of the lady just named, was 
 born at Cambenvell in 1812. lie published Paracelsus in 1836. 
 Then followed Pippa Passes; Stra/ord (1837), and Tlie Blot on 
 the Scutcheon (1843), tragedies which proved failures on the stage; 
 Bells and Pomegranates; and in 18/55, Men and Women. Ob- 
 scurity is his chief fault (take Sordelto, as an example) : but the 
 lightning of great poetic genius shines through the clouds. 
 Recently (1869) he has published a new poem entitled The Ring 
 and tJie Book. 
 
 WILLIAM EDMONDSTOUNE AYTOUN was born in 1813 at Edin- 
 burgh. While at college his poem of Judith attracted the notice 
 of Professor Wilson. But his fame rests chiefly upon his spirit- 
 stirring Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers. He also wrote the historic 
 romance of Bothu"ell, and a most effective satire on modern poets, 
 entitled Firmilian, a Spasmodic Tragedy, l>y Percy T. Jones. He 
 filled the chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the University of 
 Edinburgh, and was also Sheriff and Vice-Admiral of Orkney. In 
 conjunction with THEODORE MARTIN, a parliamentary solicitor in 
 London, he wrote Ballads by Bon Gaulticr, and joined the same 
 friend in translating the lyrics of Goetlie. Professor Aytoun died 
 in 1865. 
 
 PHILIP JAMES BAILEY, born in 1816 at Nottingham, has written 
 some noble but unequal poems. Festus is his chief work (1839). 
 The Angel World and The Mystic followed in succession, both 
 being in the same rapturous and exalted style. In The Aye, a 
 Colloquial Satire, he tried another key, pitched as low as his 
 former strains were high. 
 
 SYDNEY DOBELL, whose nom de plume is Sydney Yenclys, was 
 born in 1824 at Peckham Rye. In the uncongenial atmosphere 
 of a wine-merchant's counting-house his father followed that 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF POETS. 503 
 
 business near Cheltenham he cultivated poetry with much 
 success. The Roman (1850), was his first, and is still his best 
 poem. Balder Sonnets on the War, written in conjunction with 
 ALEXANDER SMITH and England in Time of War, complete the 
 list of Mr. Dobell's works already published. 
 
 ALEXANDER SMITH, born in 1830 at Kilmarnock, made his 
 fame by A Life Drama, written amid the toils of drawing patterns 
 for a muslin house in Glasgow. A second volume, entitled City 
 Poems, rich with the same excessive wealth of imagery, appeared 
 in 1857. We have here the black streets of smoky Glasgow 
 glorified with poetic light, which sometimes brightens to sublimity. 
 The year 18G1 produced mellowed fruit of his genius in a fine 
 poem of the epic class, Edwin of Deira, which gives a stirring and 
 truthful picture of Saxon life in old Northumbria. Mr. Smith, 
 who had been for several years Secretary to the University of 
 Edinburgh, died in 1867 at Wardie near Edinburgh, cut off at the 
 age which proved fatal to Burns and to Byron. In a domestic novel, 
 styled Alfred Hagartfs Household, and a book of Essays called 
 Dreamthorp, he gave proof that a poet can often write most graphic 
 and graceful prose. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 CAROLINE SOUTHEY. (1787-1854) Miss Bowles Buckland, Hants Ellen 
 
 Fitz- Arthur; The Widow's Talc; Chapters on Churchyards (prose). 
 WILLIAM THOM. (1789-1848) Aberdeen a weaver of Inverury Rhymes and 
 
 Recollections. 
 
 BRYAN PROCTER. (1790-1868) known as Barry Cornwall barrister and Com- 
 missioner of Lunacy Martian Colonna; Flood of Thessaly; Dramatic 
 Scenes; Mirandola (a tragedy). 
 
 HENRY HART MILMAN. (1791-1868) London Dean of St. Paul's Fazio (a 
 tragedy); Samor; The Fall of Jerusalem ; The Martyr of Antioch ; His- 
 tory of Latin Christianity (prose). 
 
 JOHN CLARE. (1793 still living) Helpstone, Northamptonshire a plough- 
 man Poems of Rural Life ; The Village Minstrel. 
 
 HARTLEY COLERIDGE. (1796-1849) Clevedon, near Bristol Poems ; Lives of 
 
 Northern Worthies (prose). DERWENT COLERIDGE. (1800 still living) 
 
 Keswick Memoir of Hartley Coleridge. SARA COLERIDGE. (1803- 
 
 1852) Keswick Phantasmion. 
 
 HAYNES BAYLY. (1797-1839) near Bath lyrist The Soldier's Tear; I'd It 
 
 a Butterfly. 
 
 WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. (1797-1835) Glasgow journalist Scottish Min- 
 strelsy; Jcanie Morrison. 
 
504 SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF POETS. 
 
 ALARIC ALEXANDER WATTS. (1799-1864) London journalist Poetical 
 Sketches; Lyrics of the Heart. 
 
 JOHN EDMUND RKADE. dramatist and poet Italy; Revelations of Life ; Cain 
 and Catiline (dramas). 
 
 WISTIIROP MACKWORTH PRAED. (1802-1839) London barrister and poli- 
 tician The Red Fisherman ; Quince. 
 
 RICHARD HENRY HORNB. (1803 still living) London Orion, an epic (suld 
 at a farthing); Cosmo de Medici and Death of Marlowe (dramas). 
 
 CHARLES SWAIN. (1803 still living) Manchester an engraver The Mind; 
 English Melodies; Letters of Laura D'A uvcrnc. 
 
 THOMAS KIBBLE HERVEY (1804-1859) Manchester editor of the Athenwun 
 Australia; Modern Sculpture ; England's Helicon. * 
 
 THOMAS RAOG. (1808 still living) Nottingham lace-weave*- and bookseller 
 The, Deity; Martyr of Vernlam; Jlcber. 
 
 RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES (1809-still living) now LORD HOUOHTON York- 
 shire politician Poems of Many Years; Palm Leaves; Life of Keats. 
 
 MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER. (1810 still living) London barrister Pro- 
 verbial Philosophy; An Authors Mind; The Crock of Gold. 
 
 CHARLES MACKAY. (1812 still living) Perth journalist Voices from the 
 Crowd; Town Lyrics ; Egeria ; The Salamandrine. 
 
 ROBERT NICOLL. (1814-1837) Tullybeltane, Perthshire editor of the Leeds 
 Times Thoughts of Heaven ; Death. 
 
 FRANCES BROWN. (1816 still living) Stranorlar, Donegal The Star of 
 A ttcghci ; Vision of Schwartz ; Lyrics. 
 
 ELIZA COOK. (1817 still living) Southwark Mclaia, and Lyrical Pieces. 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. (1822 still living) Lalehara son of Dr. Arnold inspec- 
 tor of schools The Strayed Reveller ; Empcdocles on Etna. 
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE. (1823 still living) Woodford, Essex assistant librarian, 
 British Museum Tamerton Church Tower; The Angel in the House. 
 
 GERALD MASSEY (1828 still living) Tring, Hertfordshire originally a factory 
 boy Babe Christ aM '; Craigcrook Castle. 
 
 Among the many poets to whom our space prevents us from doing justice, 
 WILLIAM BENNETT, and two Irish minstrels, DENIS FLORENCE M'CARTHY of 
 Dublin and WILLIAM ALLINQHAM of Ballyshannon, are prominent. Of the ladies 
 who adorn this department of our current literature it would be unpardonable to 
 pass over ISA CRAIG, who wrote the prize poem on Burns in 1859; BESSIE 
 PARKKS, author of Gabriel ; MARY HUME, author of Normiton ; and ADELAIDE 
 PROCTER, author of Legends and Lyrics; all of whom have added new lustre to 
 their literary fame by untiring efforts to open a wider field of employment to 
 their sex. 
 
 DRAMATISTS. 
 
 SIR THOMAS NOON TALFOURD, boni in 1795 in a suburb of Staf- 
 ford, was the son of a brewer at Reading in Berkshire. Edu- 
 cated for the law, he rose rapidly, until in 1849 a scat on the 
 
DRAMATISTS. 505 
 
 bench rewarded Iris talents and his toils. Five years later, he 
 died suddenly of apoplexy, while charging the grand jury at 
 Stafford. The study of the Greek drama, upon which he wrote 
 an Essay, guided his pen to the production of some noble works. 
 His principt^play^is^oT^^But The Athenian Captive ; Gh33sie, 
 or the Fate of the Macdonalds ; and The Castilian^jtfQ afloramas 
 of powerful cast and cleVaTfed^yle. We also owe a Life of Charles 
 Lamb to t&rs"accomplished man! *- 
 
 HEJSRY .!EAjiiiLbfcrn in the beginning of the present century, 
 has contributed to the modern English drama one of its finest 
 works, Philip van Artevelde, founded on the history of the famous 
 brewer of Ghent. This noble and stately play was published in 
 1834. To its accomplished author we also owe a drama, founded 
 on early English history, called Edwin the Fair. Mr. Taylor, who 
 holds a senior clerkship in the Colonial Office, is author of The 
 Eve of the Conquest and other poems, and of Essays entitled Notes 
 from Life and Notes from Books. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES. (1803-1849) son of a learned physician Tlie Brides 
 
 Tragedy. 
 RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. (died 1851) Dublin an orator and politician Evadne; 
 
 The Apostate. 
 
 GILBERT ABBOTT A'BECKETT. (1810-1856) London a police magistrate- 
 many Plays ; also Comic Blackstone ; Comic Histories of England and 
 
 Rome. 
 TOM TAYLOR. (1817 still living) Sunderland Secretary to Board of Health 
 
 many Comedies and Farces; contributions to Punch; Memorials of 
 
 Haydon. 
 WESTLAND MARSTON. (1825 still living) Boston, Leicestershire Heart of 
 
 the World; Patrician's Daughter. 
 ROBERT B. BROUQH. (born 1828) London brewer's son What to Eat, Drink, 
 
 and Avoid ; Medea (a burlesque), &c. 
 
 Other names worthy of honourable mention under this head are SHIRLEY 
 BROOKS, the novelist (Our Governess; The Creole) WILKIE COLLINS (The Frozen 
 Deep) MARK LEMON, editor of Punch (more than fifty Farces, &c.) HENRY 
 MAYHEW, founder of Punch and author of London Labour and the London Poor 
 (The Wandering Minstrel, a farce). 
 
506 HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS. 
 
 HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS. 
 
 SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON, born in 1792 at Kenley in Shropshire, 
 received his education at the University of Edinburgh. Called to 
 the Scottish bar, he was appointed in 1834 Sheriff of Lanarkshire, 
 a position which lie held up to his death in 1867. His great work 
 is The History of Europe from the Commencement of tJie French 
 Revolution to the Restoration of the Bourbons, published in ten 
 volumes between 1839 and 1842. Eight volumes, carrying the 
 work on to the Accession of -Louis \<'i>leon, were afterwards added. 
 Many errors Lave been detected in this great work ; but in spite 
 of imperfection it remains a remarkable monument of the his- 
 torian's energy, perseverance, and literary skill. Sir Archibald, 
 made a baronet in 1852, was also the author of A Life of M<ni- 
 borouyh. 
 
 GEORGE GROTE, bora in 1794 at Clay Hill, near Beckenhain in 
 Kent, was educated at the Charter-house. Amid the toils of a 
 London banking-house, he found time to prosecute historical 
 studies with so much success, that his great work, Tlie History of 
 Greece, from tlw earliest period to the Death of Alexander the 
 Great, completed in 1856, ranks with the best of our modern his- 
 tories. The sympathies of the writer throughout the entire narra- 
 tive are enlisted on the side of Athenian democracy. 
 
 THOMAS ARNOLD, the celebrated head-master of Rugby, was 
 born in 1795, at East Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Educated at 
 Oxford, he became a Fellow of Oriel His appointment to Rugby 
 School took place in 1828. As an author, he was chiefly distin- 
 guished for a fragment of Roman History, closing with the Second 
 Punic War. This work is modelled after Niebuhr. An edition of 
 Thucydides ; eight Historical Lectures, delivered at Oxford, where 
 he became Professor of Modern History in 1841 ; his Sermons to 
 the Rugby boys ; and his collected Essays, complete the short list 
 of his published works. He died suddenly at Rugby in the sum- 
 mer of 1842. 
 
 CONNOP THIRLWALL, born in 1797, at Stepney in Middlesex, 
 having studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, was called to 
 
HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS. 507 
 
 the bar in 1825 at Lincoln's Inn. But after three years ho 
 abandoned the law for the Church, and ultimately became Bishop 
 of St. David's. A calm and scholarly History of Greece, written 
 originally for Lardner's " Cyclopaedia," gives him an honourable 
 place among British authors. 
 
 SIR FRANCIS PALGRAVE, born in London, Deputy-keeper of 
 Public Records, produced several remarkable historical works. 
 The History of the Anglo-Saxons ; The Rise and Progress of the 
 English Commonwealth; and especially The History of Normandy 
 and of England, of which the Norman Conquest is the central 
 subject, are his leading works. He died in 1SG1. 
 
 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART, born in 1794, at Cambusnethan in 
 Lanarkshire, is best known as the biographer of Sir Walter Scott, 
 whose son-in-law he was. Except Boswell's " Johnson " we have 
 no finer " Life " in the language. The diary and letters of Scott 
 are interwoven with the story of his life, in that finished, graceful 
 style, of which Lockhart was a thorough master. Valerius, a tale 
 of Trajan's time; Eeginald Dalton, an English story; and two 
 other similar works, entitle Lockhart to a high place among novelists. 
 His Spanish Ballads possess remarkable poetic fire; and his 
 articles in the Quarterly Review, which he edited from 1826 until 
 shortly before his death in 1854, place him in the foremost rank 
 of English essayists and critics. 
 
 JOHN FORSTER, born in 1812 at Newcastle, was long the acting 
 editor of the " Examiner." His literary fame rests on the Lives of 
 the Statesmen of the Commonwealth, and still more surely on an 
 admirable Life of Goldsmith, in which the man and his times are 
 all produced with vivid effect. Mr. Forster is a Commissioner of 
 Lunacy. 
 
 GEORGE HENRY LEWES, born in 1817 in London, early forsook 
 the study of medicine for the more congenial toils of the pen. 
 His literary talent has been directed to a great variety of subjects; 
 and in all, his power of clothing a dry theme with living interest 
 manifests itself clearly. His chief works are A Biographical His- 
 tory of Philosophy, and a Life of Goethe. But he has also written 
 a Life of Robespierre ; The Physiology of Common Life; The Spanish 
 
508 HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS. 
 
 Drama; besides two novels, a tragedy, and serial articles without 
 number. 
 
 DAVID MASSON, born in 1823 at Aberdeen, wrought his way 
 steadily with his pen, through journalism and magazine-work, up to 
 his present position as Professor of English Literature in the Univer- 
 sity of Edinburgh, and editor of a Macmillan's Magazine." He has 
 written Jtritish Novelists and thtir Styles, and other works; and 
 is at present engaged upon the Life and I'lmes of John Miltou, 
 of which the volume already published affords a fine sample. 
 
 HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE was the author of a remarkable History 
 of Civilization^ of which the second volume appeared some time 
 ago. To tracing the development of national intellect he lias 
 devoted patient attention, and has marshalled an array of evidence 
 in support of his views that tells of deep and long research. But 
 he follows Comte, the French author of Positive Philosophy, in 
 ignoring that all-wise Providence whom we gratefully recognise as 
 the Supreme Agent in the advancement of mankind. This is the 
 radical fault of a learned and finely written work. Buckle died 
 at Damascus in 1862. 
 
 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, an ex-Fellow of Exeter College, 
 Oxford, is distinguished as the author of a graphic and eloquent 
 History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of 
 Elizabeth. In this work, Henry VIII. the English Bluebeard, 
 as he has been not unfitly styled is set in a much more favour- 
 able light than in all previous histories of his reign. Mr. Fronde 
 has for years held the editorship of " Eraser's Magazine." 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 LORD CAMPBELL. (1779-1861) Springfield, Fife originally a reporter for the 
 
 " Morning Chronicle " Lord Chancellor of England Lircs of the Lord 
 
 Cliancellors ; Lives of the Chief-Justices. 
 CHARLES KNIGHT. (1790 still living) Windsor publisher and author Old 
 
 Printer and Modern Press; Popular History of England; Edition of 
 
 Shakspere. 
 ROBERT VAUGHAN. (about 179S-1S68) an Independent minister John de 
 
 Wycliffc; England under the Stiiarts; Revolutions of English History 
 
 (Vols. I. and II.). 
 
ESSAYISTS AND CRITICS. 509 
 
 AGNES STRICKLAND. Reydon-hall, Suffolk Lives of the Queens of England 
 
 and of Scotland. Her sister ELIZABETH aided her in this work. 
 WALTER FARQTJHAR HOOK. Dean of Chichester Ecclesiastical Biography; 
 
 Church Dictionary; Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury (Vol. I.) 
 ROBERT CHAMBERS. (1802 still living) Peebles an Edinburgh publisher 
 
 Traditions of Edinburgh; History of the Rebellion of 1745-46; Domestic 
 
 A nndls of Scotland. 
 COSMO I NNES. Professor of History, Edinburgh Scotland in the Middle Ages; 
 
 Sketches of Early Scottish History. 
 EARL STANHOPE. (1805 still living) Walmer formerly Lord Mahon Life oj 
 
 Bclisarius; War of Succession in Spain; History of England from the 
 
 Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles. 
 SIR GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS. (1806-1863) The Credibility of Early 
 
 Roman History ; Influence of Authority on Opinion. 
 JOHN HILL BURTON. (1809 still living) Aberdeen a Scottish advocate Life 
 
 of Hume; Lives of Lord Lovat and Duncan Forbes of Culloden; History 
 
 of Scotland. 
 THOMAS ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE. son of the celebrated lady-novelist Girlhood of 
 
 Catherine de Medici ; A Decade of Italian Women. 
 
 WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL. (1816 still living) Dublin Special Correspon- 
 dent of the " Times" Letters on the Crimean War ; Diary in India. 
 GEORGE WILSON. (1818-1859) Edinburgh chemist and lecturer Lives oj 
 
 Johii Reid and Henry Cavendish; Five Gateways of Knowledge (popular 
 
 science); Life of Edward Forbes (completed by Geikie). 
 SIR WILLIAM STIRLING-MAXWELL. (1818 still living) Kenmure,near Glasgow 
 
 Laird of Keir Annals of Spanish Artists; Cloisfer-Life of Charles V.; 
 
 Life of Velasquez. 
 \YILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON. (1821 still living) Yorkshire barrister editor 
 
 of the "Athenaeum" Lives of John Howard, William. Penn, Admiral 
 
 Blake, and Lord Bacon ; and New America (a book of travel). 
 H ANNA'S Life of Chalmers ; MUIRHEAD'S Life of James Watt; SMILES' Life of 
 George Stcphenson; CARRUTHERs'Zt/e of Pope; Miss PARDOE'S Lives of Francis I. 
 and Marie de Medici; Miss FREER'S lieign of Henry IV. of France; MERI- 
 v ALE'S History of the Romans under the Empire; EYRE CROWE'S History of 
 France; JAMES WHITE'S Eighteen Christian Centuries, and Histories of France 
 and England; and GEORGE FINLAY'S Histories of Mediceval and Modern 
 Greece, are among the works to which we cannot here do justice. 
 
 ESSAYISTS, CRITICS, ETC. 
 
 JOHN WILSON, born in 1785 at Paisley, was the son of a wealthy 
 manufacturer. During his course at Magdalen College, Oxford, 
 he won the Newdigate prize for English poetry. Settling down 
 at Elleray, on the banks of Windermere, he enjoyed for some 
 
510 ESSAYISTS AND CRITICS. 
 
 time the lovely scenery of the Lakes, and tlie friendship of 
 Wordsworth, in whose poetic school he was a promising disciple. 
 But changing circumstances led him to fix his residence at Edin- 
 burgh, where he was appointed in 1820 to the chair of Moral 
 Philosophy. Like Walter Scott, he won his earliest laurels in 
 poetry; but a greener wreath awaited him in the realms of English 
 prose. The Isle of Palms (1812), and The City of the Plague 
 ( 1 81 G), are his chief poetical works. Under the name of Christopher 
 North, he contributed to "Blackwood's Magazine" paper after paper, 
 enriched with a glorious eloquence, w r hich struck a flash of enthu- 
 siasm even from the calm, judicial Hallam. The various Essays 
 on Spenser and Homer, the Essay on Burns, and those inimitably 
 witty and brilliant conversations, known as Nodes Ambrosianae, 
 afford, perhaps, the finest specimens of Wilson's prose. A collec- 
 tion of sweet, pathetic tales, entitled Lights and Sliadows ofScottisli, 
 Life, and a novel in the same style, The Trials of Margaret 
 Lyndsay, display the gentle, almost feminine spirit, that burned 
 within the huge, muscular frame of the literary athlete. Three 
 years before his death, this man, of whose memory and fame 
 Scotland may well be proud, received a pension of 300 a year. 
 He died at Edinburgh on the 3d of April 1854. 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y, born in 1786 at Manchester, was a 
 merchant's son. Educated at Eton and Oxford, he soon embarked 
 in literary pursuits. His most remarkable works are, The Confes- 
 sions of an English Opium- Eater, first published in the " London 
 Magazine ;" and Suspiria de Profundis, contributed to " Black- 
 wood." In reading the former papers it should be remembered 
 that De Quincey was long a slave to the use of that deadly drug, 
 and with difficulty tore himself not without suffering and shattered 
 health from the clutch of the horrible habit. His Lives oj 
 Shakspere and Pope in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," and his 
 Logic of Political Economy, are characterized, like all his works, 
 by wonderful eloquence and thorough grasp of his subject. He 
 died at Edinburgh in December 1859. 
 
 ANNA JAMESON, born in 1796 at Dublin, was the daughter 
 of Murphy the painter. Her works on art rank with those of 
 
ESSAYISTS AND CKITICS. 511 
 
 Kuskin. Two Hand-looks, descriptive of tlie Public and Private 
 Galleries of London, were written by this accomplished woman. 
 But her most noted works are, Characteristics of Women, containing 
 an estimate of Shakspere's heroines, as just as it is beautiful; 
 and Sacred and Legendary Art, including Legends of the Monastic 
 Orders and Legends of the Madonna. Mrs. Jameson died in March 
 1860. 
 
 HARRIET MARTINEAU, born in 1802 at Norwich, is the author 
 of many works on subjects of Political and Social Economy. She 
 has written also Society in America; DeerbrooJc and The Hour and 
 the Man, two novels ; and The History of tlie Thirty Years' Peace. 
 Her collection of correspondence between Mr. Atkinson and 
 herself, under the title, On tlie Laws of Man's Nature and Develop- 
 ment, contains a direct avowal of atheism. She has for many 
 years resided at Ambleside, in the Lake district. 
 
 SARAH ELLIS, the daughter of a Quaker named Stickney, 
 married in 1837 William Ellis, long a missionary in the South Sea 
 Islands. Her chief work, The Women of England, appeared in the 
 following year. Ringing the changes on this title, she produced, 
 in succession, among other works devoted to moral instruction, 
 The Daughters the Wives and the Mothers of England. Books 
 of travel and several short tales have proceeded from her busy pen. 
 Her husband is known as the author of Polynesian HesearcJies, 
 History of Madagascar, and many other works. 
 
 ARTHUR HELPS, educated at Cambridge, has grown into the 
 favour of thoughtful readers by the pure, calm wisdom of such 
 works as Friends in Council and Companions of My Solitude. He 
 has given us also a History of the Spanish Conquest of America, 
 a strange fiction, called Realmah, and two historical dramas. 
 
 JOHN BUSKIN, born in 1819 in London, is the son of a rich 
 wine-merchant. He received his education at Christ's Church, 
 Oxford. His first publication, Modern Painters, by an Oxford 
 Graduate (1843), won instant attention by its intrepid criticisms, 
 and yet more by its brilliant and lofty style. Turner is his espe- 
 cial favourite. Attracted from painting to architecture during his 
 Continental tours, he has uttered his love for old Gothic art in 
 
512 NOVELISTS. 
 
 two works, entitled The Seven Lamps c,f Architecture and Tin 
 Stones of Venice. Pre-Raphaelite Art has also been defended by this 
 bright, sharp pen. Travelling, of late, into the less flowery fields 
 of Political Economy, he has lost his way, and has written things 
 papers in the " Cornhill" chiefly which are not likely to add 
 to his fame as a writer, or his character as a man of common sense. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 JOHN PAYNE COLLIKR. (1789 still living) London originally a law-student 
 and journalist Poet ical Decameron; History of Dramatic Poetry; Life 
 and Works of Shakspere. 
 
 WILLIAM MAGINN. (1794-1842) Cork author and journal ist Articles in 
 Blackwood and Frascr ; especially Shakspere Papers, and Homeric 
 Ballads. 
 
 WILLIAM HOWITT. (1795 -still living) Heanor, Derbyshire Look of the 
 Seasons; Rural Life in England ; Life in Germany; Two Years in Vic- 
 toria. MAKY HOWITT, his wife, aided him in many works. 
 
 ALEXANDER DYOE. (1 798 still living) Edinburgh Episcopal clergyman 
 Xotes on Shakspere; Lives and Wnrka <>f Elizabethan Dra<ii(tti.<t!t. 
 
 Jons STERLING. (1806-1844) Kaimes Castle, Bute conductor of the "Athe- 
 naeum" curate of Hurstmonceaux Essays in Athcnieum and Blackwootl; 
 Poems ; Strafford (a tragedy). 
 
 MARY COWDEN CLARKE. (1809 still living) Miss Novello Complete Concord- 
 ance to Shakspere; Girlhood of SJiakspere's Heroines. 
 
 GEORGE GILFILLAN. (1813 still living) Comrie, Perthshire United Presby- 
 terian minister in Dundee A Gallery of Literary Portraits; Bards of 
 the Bible. 
 
 SAMUEL PHILLIPS. (1815-1854) London Literary Essays in the. Times; 
 Caleb Stukelcy (a novel). 
 
 GEORGE BRIMLEY. (1819-1857) Cambridge Librarian of Trinity College, 
 Cambridge Essays in the Spectator and Frascr. 
 
 NOVELISTS. 
 
 FREDERICK MARRYAT, a captain in the Royal Navy, was born 
 in 1792, in London. No better painter of English sailor-life has 
 sought the favour of the reading world since Smollett gave us 
 Trunnion and Pipes. Frank Mildmay (1829) was Marryat's first 
 venture. Then came in quick succession from his fertile pen 
 Newton Forster Peter Simple Jacob Faithful Midshipman 
 Easy, and ^ host of similar works, full of wild hilarious life and 
 
NOVELISTS. 513 
 
 stirring adventures. Captain Manyat, whose professional daring 
 and skill would have raised him high, apart from all literary fame, 
 died in 1848, at Langham in Norfolk. 
 
 WILLIAM CARLETON, who has done for the gray frieze of the 
 Irish peasant what Marryat did for the English blue-jacket, was 
 born in 1798, at Prillick in the county of Tyrone. His father 
 was a peasant, simple and unlearned, but overflowing with the 
 legends and romantic tales in which the wilder parts of Ireland 
 are so rich. Intended for a Roman Catholic priest, Carleton turned 
 in youth to literature. His first work, Traits and Stories of the. 
 Irish Peasantry, appeared in 1830 without his name, and was at 
 once successful. Fardorougha, the Miser ; Valentine M'Clutchy , 
 and Willy Reilly, are his chief remaining works : but his most 
 pathetic and humorous passages occur in his shorter pieces. Mr. 
 Carleton enjoyed a pension of 200 a year. 
 
 GEORGE PAYNE RAINSFORD JAMES, born in 1801 in London, 
 was one of the most voluminous of modern English novelists. 
 The shelves of the circulating libraries still groan under his endless 
 volumes ; and there are readers of peculiar taste who enjoy his 
 monotonous fictions. His great field is modern history; and per- 
 haps his first historical novel, Richelieu (1829), is his best. But 
 to read one of James's novels is to read all. His famous opening 
 scene of two travellers winding on horseback down a mountain 
 road, in the red light of sunset the one dark and elderly, the 
 other young and fair, &c., has been often turned into fun. James 
 acted for a time as British Consul at Eichmond in Virginia; but 
 he exchanged that post for a similar office at Venice, where he died 
 in June 1860. 
 
 DOUGLAS JERROLD, born in London in 1803, was an actor's son. 
 Having spent two years at sea, and worked for some time as a printer, 
 he entered literary life as a writer for the Coburg theatre. Mack- 
 eyed Susan is still a stage favourite, and all his dramatic works 
 are radiant with true wit. Time Works Wonders, is, perhaps, the 
 best of them. However, Jerrold's fame rests rather upon his con- 
 tributions to Punch and other serials. Who can forget The 
 Caudle Curtain-Lectures ? Such works as St. Giles and St. James, 
 05) 33 
 
514 NOVELISTS. 
 
 and the Story of a Feather, display his power as a novelist. For 
 some years before his death, which occurred in 1857, he edited 
 " Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper." His son Blauchard now holds a, 
 similar position. 
 
 SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, bora in 1805, is the third son 
 of General Bulwer, of I ley don Hall in Norfolk. The name of 
 Lytton he assumed, when he succeeded, in 1843, to his mother's 
 estate of Knebworth. Educated at Cambridge, he broke ground 
 as a novelist in 1827, when Falkland (a tale tinged deeply with 
 the red and black of Byron's style) appeared. Then came Pelham, 
 a la Theodore Hook. We cannot attempt to follow out the list. 
 Such unhealthy novels as Paul Clifford and Eugene Aram, i:i 
 which a robber and a murderer are clothed with heroic light, 
 afforded but small promise of successors like Tlie Last Days of 
 Pompeii, Rienzi, and TJie Last of tJte Barons, and still smaller pro- 
 mise of those matured works, The Caxtons, My Novel, and What 
 will he Do with It ? in which the novelist, turning from baser ore, 
 has struck upon a vein of pure and lustrous gold. Bulwer Lytton's 
 earliest literary efforts were directed to verse-making, and more 
 than once he lias returned to this form of literature. He has tried 
 his hand at satire in The Siamese Tioins and The New Timon, and 
 has written a long metrical romance called King Arthur ; but a 
 poem on Milton is considered to be his best work in English verse. 
 Among several plays from this versatile pen, Iticlielieu and Tlte 
 Lady of Lyons deserve special mention. As a politician and an 
 orator, Sir Edward, now Lord Lytton, has won great distinction. 
 
 WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH, born in 1805 at Manchester, 
 is a powerful, but often repulsive writer of fiction. His Rookwood 
 and Jack Slieppard are shoots of the same poisonous tree as bore 
 Bulwer Lytton's " Eugene Aram." In such works as The Tower 
 of London, Old St. Paul's, and Windsor Castle, English history 
 has supplied the ground-work of Ainsworth's plots. He owns and 
 edits " Bentlcy's Miscellany." 
 
 BENJAMIN DISRAELI, born in 1805 in London, is the son of old 
 Isaac D'Israeli, who wrote the " Curiosities of Literature." Vivian 
 Grey (1826) was his first novel; and among the many that followed 
 
NOVELISTS. 515 
 
 WQ may single out Contarini Fleming ; Henrietta Temple; and 
 Coningsly, in the last of which he mingles politics with the usual 
 staples of a modern novel. A fantastic kind of Eastern exaggera- 
 tion the unpruned luxuriance of a Judean vine whose branches 
 run over the wall characterizes both the plots and the style of 
 Mr. Disraeli's works. As a politician, he holds a foremost rank 
 on the Conservative side, was twice Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 under Lord Derby, and has recently held the seals as Premier. 
 
 CHAELES LEVEE, born in 1806 at Dublin, was physician to the 
 embassy at Brussels when he wrote his first work, The Confes- 
 sions of Harry Lorrequer. Charles O^M alley and Jack II into n, 
 works of the same dashing military style, followed, to the delight 
 of thousands. The fun and frolic of Irish life, especially such life 
 as officers see, were there depicted in most spirit-stirring style. 
 Poland Cashel, The Knight of Gwynne, and The Dodd Family 
 A broad, are the best of his later fictions. Lever edited the " Dublin 
 University Magazine" for a while, but has since resided, for the 
 most part, in Italy. He is now Consul at Trieste. 
 
 SAMUEL WAEREN, born in 1807 in Denbighshire, was Recorder 
 of Hull, and then Master in Lunacy. He is chiefly known as a novel- 
 ist by his tragical sketches in " Blackwood," entitled Passages from 
 the Diary of a I 'ate Physician, and his fine novel, Ten Thousand a Year. 
 
 CHAELES KINGSLEY, born in 1819, at Holne Vicarage in Devon- 
 shire, studied at Magdalen College, Cambridge, and entered the 
 Church of England. He soon became rector of Eversley, a moor- 
 land parish in Hampshire. His first important literary work was 
 a dramatic poem, called The Saint's Tragedy, founded on the story 
 of Elizabeth of Hungary (1848). A novel, entitled Alton Locke, 
 Tailor and Poet, dealing with some of the problems of modern 
 trade, and written in thorough sympathy with the working-classes, 
 came next from his pen. Yeast, a Problem ; Phw.thon, or Loose 
 Thoughts for Loose Thinkers; Hypatia, or New Friends with an 
 Old Face ; Alexandria and her Schools, a series of lectures de- 
 livered in Edinburgh ; Glaucus, or the Wonders of the Shore, arc 
 among his remaining works. But his finest production is the 
 novel, Westward Ho I founded on the Elizabethan sailor-life, and 
 
516 NOVELISTS. 
 
 depicting, in connection with the fictitious history of Sir Amyas 
 Leigh, the fortunes of Raleigh, Drake, and Hawkins, and the 
 brilliant affair with the Armada. In addition to his brilliant prose 
 he has produced some very fine poetry. Andromeda is, perhaps, 
 the most elaborate of his later poems ; but it is chieily in lyrics 
 that his poetic genius shines. Mr. Kingsley has been lately 
 appointed Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. 
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE*, better known by her pseudonym of Currer 
 Bell, was one of the most original novelists of the day. The 
 daughter of an Irish curate settled in Yorkshire, she grew up in 
 the wilds of Haworth. After a short time as pupil and teacher in 
 a school at Brussels, she returned to the bleak parsonage, where she 
 commenced to write a novel. Her two sisters engaged in similar 
 works at the same time. Charlotte's work, The Professor, was 
 rejected by the "London publishers ; but the rejection was sweet- 
 ened by encouragement to try a more saleable book. The fruit of 
 this advice was soon beheld in Jane Eyre (1847), a wort of startling 
 interest and power, which at once made the author famous. Shirley 
 and Villette are the remaining works of this woman of true genius. 
 She married her father's curate, Mr. Nichol, in June 1854 ; but 
 died in the following March, in her thirty-ninth year. 
 
 WILKIE COLLINS, bom in London in 1825, is the son of the 
 painter Wifliam Collins. He wrote his father's Life ; a novel 
 called Antonina ; The Frozen Deep, a drama ; and The Dead Secret. 
 But his novel, The Woman in White, contributed to " All the Year 
 Round," is undoubtedly his best work. Plunged in a mystery 
 before the first chapter has closed, we remain dark and breathless 
 almost to the last page of the tale. No Name, Armadale, and 
 The Moonstone, are more recent fictions from his pen. 
 
 DINAH MARIA MULOCH was bora in 1826, at Stoke-upon-Trent 
 in Staffordshire. Her first novel was The Ogilvies ( 1 849). Perhaps 
 her best is John Halifax, Gentleman (1856). 
 
 JAMES HANNAY, bom in 1827 at Dumfries, entered the navy 
 at thirteen, and for five years (1840-45) served on board of various 
 ships. Since the latter date he has been engaged constantly in 
 literary work, and has won considerable distinction as a novelist 
 
NOVELISTS. 51 7 
 
 and reviewer. Singleton Fontenoy is the most popular of his 
 works; Eustace Conyers is perhaps the best. His Lectures on 
 Satire and Satirists, delivered in London in 1853, have been pub- 
 lished; and not long since appeared a selection from his brilliant 
 Essays contributed to the Quarterly Review. Mr. Hannay is at 
 present British Consul at Barcelona. 
 
 ELIZABETH GASKELL, the wife of a Unitarian minister in Man- 
 chester, contributed to our literature a remarkable picture of 
 English factory life in her novel of Mary Barton, and a most 
 interesting biography in her Life of Charlotte Bronte. She died 
 suddenly in 18G5. 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT (said to be Miss Evans) has produced some of 
 the most remarkable novels of the day. Beginning her literary 
 career with Scenes of Clerical Life, she afterwards took the read- 
 ing public by storm, when Adam Bede appeared. This lady has 
 since written The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner, the Weaver 
 of Ravelhoe; but neither of these works comes up to the mimic 
 scene, on which Adam Bede, Hetty Sorrel, Dinah Morris, and the 
 delightful Mrs. Poyser play their varied parts of mingled fun and 
 deep sad earnest. Her later works are Romola, Felix Holt, and 
 a dramatic poem of high merit, entitled The Spanish Gipsy. 
 
 ANTHONY TROLLOPE, who held an important position in the 
 General Post-Office, has followed in the steps of his famous mother. 
 Beginning with Irish stories, he afterwards struck upon a vein but 
 little wrought by former novelists life among English clergymen. 
 The Warden; Barcliester Towers; Doctor Thome; The Bertrams; 
 Framley Parsonage; The Claverings; and The Last Chronicle of 
 Barset, are among his chief completed works. Trollope is a most 
 prolific novelist : his fictions possess great merit as unexaggerated 
 pictures of modern English life among the upper-middle classes. 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD, bom at Huntly in 1826, first attracted 
 notice by a work called Phantasies. He has since attained to 
 considerable reputation as a poet and novelist. Among his recent 
 works, which are imbued with an earnest religious spirit, we may 
 name Alec Forbes, David Elginbrod, Annals of a Quiet Neighbour 
 hood, and a volume of poems called The Disciple. 
 
518 SCIENTIFIC WRITERS. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 GEORGK GLEIO. (1706 still living) son of the Bishop of Brechin Chaplain - 
 
 General to the Forces The Sulaltcrn ; The Chelsea Pensioners. 
 SAMUEL LOVER. (1797-1868) Dublin a miniature painter Rory 'More ; 
 
 Handy Andy (novels) noted also for Irish songs. 
 JOHN BANIM. (1800-1842) Kilkenny originally a miniature painter The 
 
 0'IIara Tales. 
 
 ANNE MARSH. (about 1798) Miss Caldwell of Newcastlc-under-Lyne a Lon- 
 don banker's wife Two Old Men's Tales; Emilia Wyndham. 
 CATIIEIUXE GORE. (about 1799-1861) novelist of fashionable lifeJfvthcrs 
 
 and Daughters; Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb. 
 GERALD GRIFFIN. (1803-1840) Limerick journalist The Minister Talcs; 
 
 The Collegians. 
 
 WILLIAM H. MAXWELL. (died 1850) captain in the army Stories of Water- 
 loo; Hector CfHallorav. 
 ANNA MARIA HALL. Miss Fielding of Wexford wife of S. C. Hall, of the Art 
 
 Journal The Jlurraiirt > .- J.tvlits and Shadows of Irish Life; Marian. 
 ALBERT SMITH. (1816-1860) Chertsey originally a medical man lecturer on 
 
 Mont Diane and China Christopher Tadpole; Mr. Lcdbnry (novels). 
 SHIRLEY BROOKS. (1816 still living) lawyer and journalist The Gordian 
 
 Knot; Aspen Court; The Sitrcr Cord; Sooner or J.nt, r. 
 ANGUS BETHUNE REACH. (1821-1856) Inverness reporter and critic Clement 
 
 Lorimer; Leonard Lindsay ; Natural History of Horcs and llnmliix; 
 
 Claret and Olives (book of travel). 
 JAMES GRANT. (1822 -still living) Edinburgh served some time in the 62nd 
 
 Regt. Romance of War; Jane Seton; Memorials of Edinburgh Castle. 
 GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. Gaslight and Daylight, in London; Hogarth; Scrcn 
 
 Sons of Mammon. 
 CHARLES READS. English barrister Peg Woffinyton; Christie Johnston; 
 
 Never too Late to Mend. 
 THOMAS HUGHES. Chancery barrister Scouring of the White Horse Tom 
 
 Brou-n's School Days; Tom Lrown at Oxford .(contributed to "Mac- 
 
 millan"). 
 
 Modern novels are numberless, and we are forced to omit many deserving 
 names. FRANK SMEDLEY, author of Frank Fairlegh and Lewis ArundelCup- 
 tain MAYNE REID, author of the Scalp-Hunters and many thrilling tales of war 
 and hunting in American wilds Miss GERALDINE JEWSBURY, author of Zoe and 
 The Half-Sisters and Mrs. CATHERINE CROWE (Miss Stevens), author of Susan 
 Hopley and The Night Side of Nature, may serve to close the list of English 
 novelists. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC WRITERS. 
 
 SIR DAVID BREWSTER, born in 1781 at Jedburgh, died in 1868 as 
 Principal of the University of Edinburgh. The pen of a scientific 
 
SCIENTIFIC WRITERS. 619 
 
 man is not often gifted with the grace and brilliance that adorn 
 his works. He spent twenty years (1808-1828) in editing the 
 " Edinburgh Encyclopaedia." A treatise on the Kaleidoscope 
 (which he invented in 1816); a treatise on Optics; More Worlds 
 than One; and especially his Life of Sir Isaac Newton, may be 
 singled out from his valuable writings. Sir David was long 
 Principal of the United College at St. Andrews. 
 
 RICHARD WHATELY, son of the Rev. Dr. Whately of Nonsuch 
 Park in Surrey, was Archbishop of Dublin from 1831 until his death 
 in 1863. Born in 1787, he received his education at Oriel College, 
 Oxford, of which he became Fellow in 1811. His principal works 
 are Elements of Logic ; Elements of Rhetoric ; Lectures on Political 
 Economy; Essays on Difficulties in the Epistles of St. Paul; and an- 
 notated editions of Bacon's Essays and Paley's Moral Philosophy, 
 in which the notes afford a pleasing specimen of his style. 
 
 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, born in 1788 at Glasgow, won his 
 world-wide fame as a metaphysician during his twenty years 1 
 tenure of the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics in the University 
 of Edinburgh. The son of a Glasgow professor, he passed from 
 the college of his native town to Oxford, as the holder of the Snell 
 Exhibition. He was called to the Scottish bar in 1813, and in 
 1821 was appointed to the Chair of Universal History at Edin- 
 burgh. This he exchanged in fifteen years (1836) for that posi- 
 tion round which his learning has cast such lustre. His Essays 
 from the Edinburgh Review, and his Edition of Dr. Reid's Works, 
 were published during his lifetime. And after his death appeared 
 his Lectures, edited by Dr. Mansel of Oxford, and Professor Veitch, 
 now of Glasgow. Hamilton died in 1856. 
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON, born in 1792, at Tarradale in Ross- 
 shire, began life as a military officer, and served for nine years 
 (1807-1816) in the Peninsula and elsewhere. The rest of his 
 life has been given to geology. His great work is called Siluria, the 
 History of the Oldest Known Rocks Containing Organic Remains. 
 A work on the Geology of Russia resulted from his examination of 
 the strata eastward to the Ural Mountains. Sir Roderick is now 
 Director-General of the Geological Survey of the British Isles. 
 
520 SCIENTIFIC WRITERS. 
 
 WILLIAM WHEWELL, born in 1795 at Lancaster, died in 1866 as 
 Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. To this position he nobly 
 fought his way from the humble station of a carpenter's son. 
 One of the Bridgewater treatises, entitled Astronomy and General 
 Physics in reference to Natural Theology, was written by him ; but 
 his greatest work is The History and Philosophy of the Inductive 
 Sciences. 
 
 MARY SOMERVILLE, a Scottish lady of deep scientific learning 
 and considerable literary skill, published in 1832 a redaction of 
 Laplace's work, which she called The Mechanism of the Heavens. 
 Her fame rests chiefly on her second work, The Connection of the 
 Physical Sciences. She has also published a 1'hysical Geograj >////. 
 Her first husband was a naval officer; her second is a Scottish 
 minister. 
 
 HUGH MILLER, no less remarkable as a master of picturesque 
 English prose than as a practical geologist, was born in 1802 at 
 Cromarty. After such education as his native town could give, 
 he went to work as a stone-mason in the neighbouring quarries. 
 There his hammer became an instrument of magic, breaking the 
 young workman's way into a subterranean Wonderland. A volume 
 of Poems (1829), and some Letters on the Herring Fishery, opened 
 his brilliant literary career. After fifteen years spent with hammer 
 and chisel the highest flight of his art being the cutting of 
 epitaphs on tombstones he became, after his marriage, accountant 
 in a Cromarty bank. In this position about six years were spent, 
 during which his chief literary performance was Scenes and Legends 
 in tlic North of Scotland, or tlie Traditional History of Cromarty. 
 His zeal on behalf of the Non-Intrusion principle, then agitating 
 the Church of Scotland, led him to write two powerful pamphlets, 
 which attracted so much notice that he was selected in 1840 to 
 edit the Edinburgh Witness. This station he filled until the sad 
 day of his death. Amid the unceasing toils and distractions of 
 journalism, he continued to cultivate his darling study. The Old 
 Red Sandstone (1841) ; First Impressions of England and its 
 People (1847); Footprints of the Creator (1850); an autobio- 
 graphy entitled J/y Schools and Schoolmasters (1854); and The 
 
SCIENTIFIC WRITERS. 521 
 
 Testimony of the Rocks (1857), a work which he had just com- 
 pleted when madness impelled him to point the fatal pistol to his 
 heart, mark the unceasing labour through which he held his way 
 from year to year. He shot himself on the 24th of December, 
 1856. The Cruise of the Betsy, a geological voyage to the 
 Hebrides; and The Sketch-book of Popular Geology, edited by his 
 widow, have appeared since his death. The varied splendour of 
 his style, and the giant grasp of his mental faculties, are dis- 
 played in his grand Mosaic Vision of Creation, woven of such 
 coloured shadows as may have rolled in a gorgeous panorama 
 oefore the eye of the prophet, sitting upon a hill top in the lonely 
 Midian desert. 
 
 JOHN STUART MILL, the son of the historian of India, and the 
 author of a System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (1843) ; 
 Essays on Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844); 
 Principles of Political Economy (1848); and Liberty (1859), 
 takes rank among the first thinkers of the time. His philosophy 
 is opposed in most respects to the system of Bacon. He held, as 
 did his father, the office of Examiner of Indian Correspondence, 
 retiring when the Company was dissolved in 1859. Mr. Mill 
 was born in 1806. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 WILLIAM SMITH. (1769-1839) Churchill, Oxfordshire founder of English 
 
 geology Geological Map of England; Organic Remains. 
 WILLIAM BUCKLAND. (1784-1856) Dean of Westminster one of the Bridge- 
 water treatises on Geology and Mineralogy in Reference to Natural 
 
 Theology. 
 GIDEON MANTELL. (1788-1852) an English physician The Fossils of the 
 
 South Downs; The Medals of Creation; Wonders of Geology. 
 DIONYSIUS LARDNER. (1793-1859) Hand-Book of Natural Philosophy and 
 
 Astronomy; Museum of Science and Art; edition of Euclid. 
 MICHAEL FARADAY. (1794-1867) a blacksmith's son greatest English 
 
 chemist Researches on Electricity; Popular Lectures on Chemistry of a 
 
 Candle, &c. 
 SIR CHARLES LYELL. (1797 still living) Kinnordy, Forfarshire Principles 
 
 of Geology ; Elements of Geology ; Travels in North America. 
 RICHARD OWEN. (about 1803 still living) Lancaster a distinguished surgeon 
 
 and physiologist History of British Fossil Mammals and Birds; British 
 
 Fossil Reptiles. 
 
522 THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS. 
 
 JAMES FERRIER. (1808-1864) Professor of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews 
 Institutes of Afetajrfiysic ; edition of Wilson's Works. 
 
 Dr. MANSKL of Oxford, author of Limit* of Rdiyious Thought, and joint- 
 editor of Sir William Hamilton's Lectures Dr. MORELL, Inspector of Schools 
 in England, author of A History and Critical View of the Speculative Philo- 
 sophy of Europe during the Nineteenth Century Professor M'CosH, now Pn-.si- 
 dent of Princeton College in the United States, author of the Method of the 
 Divine Government Professor ALEXANDER BAIN of Aberdeen, author of The 
 Menses and the Intellect ; The Emotions and the Will and HERBERT SPENCER, 
 author of First Principles of Psychology, have made valuable contributions to 
 the scientific literature of the present century. 
 
 The Dissertations, written for the Encyclopedia Britannica from time to time 
 during the last hundred years, trace the progress of Physical and Mental Science 
 with remarkable clearness and effect. DUGALD STEWART and Sir JAMES MACK- 
 INTOSH took up Ethical Philosophy; Archbishop WHATKLT dealt with the His- 
 tory of Christianity ; while Mathematics and Physics have been treated succes- 
 sively by JOHN PLATPAIR (1748-1819), Sir JOHN LESLIE (1766-1832), and JAMKS 
 DAVID FORBES (born 1808 now Principal of the United College, St. Andrews). 
 Leslie wrote also a remarkable work on Heat; and Forbes is well known for his 
 books upon Glaciers. 
 
 THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS. 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS, born in 1780, at Anstruthcr in Fifeshire, 
 was a merchant's son. Educated at St. Andrews, he was ordained 
 in 1803 as minister of Kilmany in his native county. Twelve 
 years later (1815) he removed to Glasgow, where his splendid 
 fame as a pulpit orator was chiefly won. Jeffrey's striking char- 
 acterization best conveys the marvellous power which this wonder- 
 ful man had over every audience he addressed, " He buries his 
 adversaries under the fragments of burning mountains." In 1823 
 he went to St. Andrews as Professor of Moral Philosophy in the 
 United College; and in 1828 he exchanged this post for the Chair 
 of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh. When the Disrup- 
 tion of 1843 took place, Chalmers was prominent among the 
 founders of the Free Church of Scotland. On the 31st of May 
 1847 he was found dead in his bed, with no sign of suffering on 
 his placid face. A most interesting and graphic Life of this 
 eminent orator and scholar has been written by his son-in-law, 
 Dr. Hanna of Edinburgh. Thirty-four volumes are filled with 
 
THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS. 523 
 
 the gathered works of Chalmers. His Natural Theology, his 
 Evidences of Christianity, his Lectures on the Romans, and 
 his magnificent Astronomical Discourses, may be singled out 
 as noble specimens of literary work. But the qualities which 
 distinguish these pervade all his writings. From heaven and 
 earth and sea, from the world of mind and the world of 
 matter, he drew countless illustrations to clothe his subject in a 
 fitting garb. He touched a pebble, and it became a gem. He 
 looked on a scene, and it brightened into beauty or faded into 
 gloom, as wrath or mercy lit his eye. His audience heard with 
 7m ears, saw with his vision, and followed in rapt wonder the 
 man whose resistless spirit had flung its lightning chains around 
 them. 
 
 ISAAC TAYLOR, born in 1787 at Lavenham, the son of an Inde- 
 pendent minister, settled down at Stanford Rivers, not far from 
 his home at Ongar in Essex, to write The Natural History of 
 Enthusiasm. It appeared anonymously in 1829. The Physical 
 Theory of Another Life, and Ancient Christianity, may be named 
 among his many works. Taylor died in 1865. 
 
 WILLIAM MURE of Caldwell, born in 1799, a colonel in the 
 Renfrewshire Militia, is distinguished for his learned and care- 
 fully written Critical History of the Language and Literature of 
 Ancient Greece. In the Homeric controversy Colonel Mure sides 
 with those who consider the Iliad and Odyssey to have been the 
 work of a single poet. He died in 1860. 
 
 THOMAS GUTHRIE, born in 1800, at Brechin in Forfarshire, is 
 a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. The " Times," in a 
 review of one of his works, calls him " The greatest of our pulpit 
 orators." Some of his principal works are, A Plea for Ragged 
 Schools; The Gospel in Ezekiel ; The City, its Sins and Sorrows ; 
 Christ and the Inheritance of the Saints. 
 
 JOHN WILLIAM DONALDSON, born about 1810, was the son of 
 a London merchant. He became a Fellow of Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, and was for many years head-master of the Grammar 
 School of Bury St. Edmunds. His principal works, The Theatre 
 of the Greeks, The New Cratylus, and Varronianus, have won for 
 
524 THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS. 
 
 him a first-rate reputation among the classical scholars and philo 
 logers of the century. Dr. Donaldson, who resided latterly at Cam- 
 bridge, died in the year 1861. 
 
 HENRY ROGERS, a professor in the Independent College at 
 Birmingham, is celebrated as the author of The Eclipse of Faith, 
 or a Visit to a ReKgiovt Sceptic. This work, published in 1852, 
 deals with all the controversies and new questions in theology 
 that have arisen in England or Germany during the last twenty 
 years. It is a reply to Newman's Phases of Faith. A Reply and 
 Defence have been exchanged between the rival champions since 
 the publication of the " Eclipse." Mr. Rogers has contributed 
 largely to the Edinburgh Renew ; and many of his essays have 
 been republished. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 RALPH WARDLAW. (1779-1853) Dalkeith Independent minister at Glasgow 
 
 Discourses on the Socinian Controversy. 
 JOHN BIRD SUMMER. (1780-1862) Kenilworth Archbishop of Canterbury 
 
 St. Paul's Epistles; Records of Creation (second Burnett prize); Evi- 
 dences of Christianity. 
 THOMAS HARTWELL HORNE. (1780-1862) London Episcopal minister and 
 
 librarian in the British Museum Introduction to the Study of the 
 
 Scriptures. 
 JOHN BROWN. (1785-1859) minister of the United Presbyterian Church in 
 
 Edinburgh Commentaries upon Romaris, Galatians, First Peter, &c. 
 HUGH M'NEILE. (1795 still living) Ballycastle, Antrim rector of St. Jude's, 
 
 Liverpool a celebrated pulpit orator. 
 JULIUS HARE. (1795-1855) archdeacon of Lewes a leader of Broad Church 
 
 party sermons on Victory of Faith and Mission of the Comforter; Life 
 
 of John Sterling ; Niebuhr's Rome, (trans.) 
 ROBERT CANDLISH. (still living) minister of Free St. George's, Edinburgh 
 
 Lectures on Genesis ; Scripture Characters ; The Atonement ; Reason and 
 
 Revelation, &c. 
 JOHN KITTO. (1804-1854) Plymouth deaf Pictorial Bible; Cyclopedia of 
 
 Jjiblical Literature.; Daily Lille Readings. 
 RICHARD CHEVENIX TRENCH. (1807 still living) Archbishop of Dublin 
 
 Justin Martyr, and other poems; Notes on the Parables and Miracles ; 
 
 Synonyms of the Xew Testament; Study of Words; English Past and 
 
 Present. 
 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. (1809 still living) Liverpool present Prime 
 
 Minister Homer and the Homeric Age. 
 
 SIR HENRY HAWLINSON. (1810 still living) Chadlington, Oxfordshire- de- 
 cipherer of Assyrian inscriptions Outline of the History of Assyria. 
 
TRAVELLEES AND GEOGRAPHERS. 525 
 
 HENRY ALFORD. (1810 still living) London Dean of Canterbury edition of 
 
 the Greek Testament; Sermons and Poems. 
 
 WILLIAM ARCHER BUTLER. (1814-1848) Annerville, near Clonmel Professor 
 of Moral Philosophy, Trinity College, Dublin Sermons; Lectures on 
 Ancient Philosophy. 
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY. (1815 still living) A Iderley Dean of West- 
 minster Discourses on Corinthians ; Life of Dr. Arnold; Memorials of 
 Canterbury. 
 ROBERT ANCHOR THOMPSON. (1821 still living) Durham once curate of 
 
 Louth in Lincolnshire first Burnett Prize Essay. 
 
 JOHN TULLOCH. (1822 still living) Tibbermuir in Perthshire Principal of 
 St. Mary's College at St. Andrews Theism, (second Burnett Prize) ; 
 Leaders of the Reformation ; English Puritanism. 
 JOHN CAIRD. (1823 still living) Greenock Professor of Divinity at Glasgow 
 
 Sermons, (Religion in Common Life). 
 
 NORMAN MACLEOD. minister of Barony Church, Glasgow eloquent preacher- 
 editor of Good Words. 
 
 The leaders of the Tractarian party in the Church of England (so called from 
 the publication of Tracts for the Times, between 1832 and 1837) were EDWARD 
 PCSEY and JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, the latter of whom wrote also an Essay on 
 the Development of Christian Doctrine. Mr. NEWMAN has since become a 
 member of the Roman Catholic Church. His brother, FRANCIS NEWMAN, Latin 
 Professor in University College, London, is author of a sceptical work, The 
 Phases of Faith, to which Henry Rogers replied in "The Eclipse of Faith." 
 The well-known volume, Essays and Revises, written by seven Oxford men, 
 among whom BENJAMIN JOWETT is the leading name, represents a free-thinking 
 section of the Church of England. J. FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, a Cam- 
 bridge man, lately Professor of Divinity in King's College, London, and well known 
 for his association with Kingsley and others in efforts to raise the educational 
 standard of the working classes, is the author of Theological Essays, The Reli- 
 gions of the World, and several other able works, which contain opinions at 
 variance with the tenets of the Church of England, their "liberalism" some- 
 times going the length of heterodoxy. These opinions led to the removal of 
 Mr. Maurice from his chair. JAMES MARTINEAU, a Unitarian minister in 
 Liverpool, has produced some most eloquent works, among which may be named 
 Studies in Christianity, and the Rationale of Religious Inquiry. 
 
 Cardinal WISEMAN, born at Seville in 1802, represented theology from the 
 Roman Catholic point of view. He published an interesting contribution to 
 general literature, entitled Recollections of the Last Four Popes. 
 
 TRAVELLERS AND GEOGRAPHERS. 
 
 SAMUEL LAING, of Papdale in Orkney, is the author of A Resi- 
 dence in Norway (1834-36) ; A Tour in Sweden (1838) ; Notes of 
 
526 TRAVELLERS AND GEOGRAPHERS. 
 
 a Traveller (1854). This agreeable writer is a younger brother of 
 the Scottish historian already named. 
 
 DAVID LIVINGSTONE, born about 1817, at Blantyre in Lanark- 
 shire, has travelled much in Africa as a missionary. His work, 
 Missionary Travels in South Africa, a valuable repertory of facts 
 concerning that region, was published in 1857. The basin of the 
 Zambezi has been the chief scene of his explorings, and his chief 
 discoveries have been the Victoria Falls and Lake Nyassa. In 
 1864 he published an account of his second expedition. He is 
 now returning from a third expedition, to the great joy of his 
 countrymen, who some time ago received a report of his death. 
 
 AUSTEN HENRY LA YARD, born in 1817 in Paris, is distin- 
 guished as the author of two works, Nineveh and its Remains 
 (1848) ; and Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon 
 (1853), describing his successful excavations, especially at the 
 former place. Sculptured bulls and lions, with wings and human 
 heads, stand, amid many other similar works of ancient art, in 
 the hall of the British Museum, as trophies of Mr. Layard's toil. 
 For a time he took a prominent part in politics as member for 
 Aylesbury, and under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He has lately 
 returned to political life. 
 
 RICHARD FORD (1796-1858) wrote Murray's Hand-Book for 
 Spain, and also a work entitled Gatherings from Spain (1846), 
 which together form the best authority we have on the modern 
 condition of that romantic land. 
 
 GEORGE BORROW, born near Norwich about 1800, when travel- 
 ling in Spain as the agent of the Bible Society, gathered materials 
 for a work descriptive of his personal adventures which he called 
 The Bible in Spain (1844). Few books possess more vivid in- 
 terest. Gipsy life has an especial attraction for his pen. His 
 other works are Zincali, or the Gipsies in Spain, published before 
 his chief book ; Lavengro, or the Scholar, the Gipsy, and tlie Priest ; 
 and a sequel to this, called The Romany Rye. 
 
 ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE, born in 1802 at Taunton, 
 having passed through Trinity College, Cambridge, studied law 
 at Lincoln's Inn. His book, Kothen, descriptive of his travels in 
 
TRAVELLERS AND GEOGRAPHERS. 527 
 
 the East, which was published in 1850, is remarkable for its 
 thought and eloquence. Mr. Kinglake is the author of a History 
 of the Crimean War, courageous and brilliant, but in the later 
 volumes too minute in detail. 
 
 SIR JAMES EMERSON TENNENT, born in 1804 at Belfast, is a 
 merchant's son. Elected member for his native town in 1832, he 
 devoted himself to political life, making literature his recreation. 
 His books on Modern Greece, Belgium, and Wine are well known; 
 but his great work is Ceylon, for which he collected materials 
 during his five years' residence in the island as Secretary to the 
 Colonial Government. He has been since 1852 one of the joint 
 Secretaries to the Board of Trade. 
 
 JOHN BANNING SPEKE, a captain in the Indian army, explored 
 (1857-62) the basin of the Upper Nile, having started from 
 Zanzibar. He fixed the true position of the Mountains of the 
 Moon, and in 1858 discovered the vast lake Victoria Nyanza. A 
 brother officer named Grant accompanied him on his travels, and 
 aided him in the preparation of his Journal. Speke was killed 
 near Box in Wiltshire, in 1864, by the accidental discharge of his 
 own gun. He was then only thirty-seven years of age. 
 
 SIR SAMUEL WHITE BAKER, born in 1821 in Worcestershire, 
 undertook the exploration of the Nile by ascending its current. 
 His brave wife accompanied him. In 1864 he discovered a very 
 large lake, to which he gave the name Albert Nyanza. Baker 
 tells the story of his explorations with much more graphic power 
 and elegance than either Speke or Livingstone has displayed. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 To the list of travellers in Spain, headed by Ford and Borrow, the name of . 
 HKNRY DAVID INGLIS (1795-1835), sou of a Scottish advocate, who wrote under 
 the name of Derwent Conway, deserves to be added. Mr. Inglis also published 
 travels in Northern Europe, France, and Ireland. 
 
 Sir JOHN BOWRINQ (born in 1792 at Exeter), otherwise famous as a translator, 
 has written an account of Siam. ELIOT WARBURTON (1810-1852), an English 
 barrister who was burned in the Amazon, has left, besides some novels and 
 memoirs, an eloquent book of Eastern travel, The Crescent and the Cross (1846). 
 China has been "done" and described by JOHN FRANCIS DAVIS, Chief Superin- 
 
528 TRAVELLERS AND GEOGRAPHERS. 
 
 tendent there, and WINOKOVB COOKE, Special Correspondent of the Times; and 
 Japan by LAURENCE OLIPHANT, Secretary to Lord Elgin. The Rev. JosiAa 
 PORTER, now a Professor of Biblical Criticism in Belfast, is author of Five rears 
 in Damascus, and Murray's Hand-book for Palestine and Syria. Captain 
 SHKRARD OSBORNK, author of Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal, has since 
 written A Cruise in Japanese Waters. 
 
 Arctic travel and discovery, during this period of English literature, are repre- 
 sented by many eminent names, among which those of Dr. RAE, Sir ROBERT 
 M'CLDRK, discoverer of the North-West Passage, and Sir LEOPOLD M'CLINTOCK, 
 commander of the Fox, are promiueut. Sir FRANCIS HEAD (born 1793), for 
 some time Governor of Upper Canada, wrote a popular work upon the Pampas 
 and the Andes (1826) ; and a Yorkshire Squire, CUARLES WATERTON (born 1782), 
 has depicted his wonderful adventures and toils in Wanderings in South 
 America, the North- West of the United States, and the Antilles. 
 
 Murray's Hand-books, some of which have been already named, form in them- 
 selves a most valuable geographical library. They are not the work of mere 
 compilers, but, in nearly every case, of men who can describe clearly and grace- 
 fully what they have seen and heard in the land of which they write. 
 
APPENDIX ON AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 NOVELISTS. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC WRITERS. 
 
 William Bryant. 
 
 Washington Irving. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 Lydia Sigourney. 
 Henry Longfellow. 
 
 James F. Cooper. 
 Thomas Haliburton. 
 
 Supplementary List, 
 
 Nathaniel Willis. 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 
 THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 Edgar Allan Poe. 
 
 Harriet B. Stowe. 
 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 HISTORIANS. 
 
 Supplementary List 
 
 Jonathan Edwards. 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 William Prescott. 
 
 ESSAYISTS AND CRITICS. 
 
 
 George Bancroft. 
 
 William Channing. 
 
 TRAVELLERS. 
 
 George Ticknor. 
 
 |/ftalph Emerson. 
 
 John L. Stephens. 
 
 John L. Motley. 
 
 Edward Everett. 
 
 Edward Robinson. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 * Supplementary List 
 
 UPON the opposite shores of the Atlantic a branch of our litera- 
 ture is flourishing in green and vigorous youth. We subjoin a brief 
 view of American writers and their works, following the plan 
 which has been adopted in the foregoing chapter. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, who divides the crown of American 
 poetry with Longfellow, was born in 1794, at Cummington in 
 Massachusetts. At first a lawyer, he afterwards devoted himself 
 to journalism. His poem called Thanatopsis (a view of death) is 
 full of Wordsworth's clear and pensive beauty of expression. 
 Tlie Ages Lines to a Waterfowl Green River The Yellow Violet 
 and The Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood, are among his 
 finest poems. 
 
 LYDIA HUNTLY SIGOURNEY, bom in 1791, at Norwich in Con- 
 necticut, is the Mrs. Hemans of American poetry. As Miss 
 Huntly she appeared before the public in 1815. Four years 
 later she married a merchant of Hartford. The delicate pathos 
 
 (15) 34 
 
530 
 
 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 of The Dying Infant, The Emigrant Mother, and To-morrow, is 
 worthy of all praise. Pocahontas is her most elaborate poem. 
 Mrs. Sigourney died in 1865. 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, born in 1807, at Portland in 
 Maine, has been since 1835 Professor of Modern Languages and 
 Belles -Lettres in Harvard College, Cambridge. He first appeared 
 as a poet in 1840, when he published Voices of the Night. The 
 study of European literature, especially that of Germany, has had 
 a powerful influence upon his mind. Tennyson is the English 
 writer whom he most resembles. His chief works, verse and 
 prose, are as follows : 
 
 Voices of the Night. 
 
 Poems on Slavery. 
 
 The Spanish Student, a play. 
 
 The Belfry of Bruges. 
 
 Evangeline (in English hexameters). 
 
 The Sea-side and the Fire-side. 
 
 The Golden Legend (mediaeval). 
 
 Hiawatha, an Indian tale. 
 
 The Courtship of Miles Standish. 
 
 VERSE Cant* 
 Dante translated. 
 New England Tragedies. 
 
 PROSE. 
 
 Outre- Mer, or Sketches from Beyond 
 
 Sea. 
 
 Hyperion, a Romance. 
 Poets and Poetry of Europe. 
 Kavanagh, a Tale. 
 
 Many translations, from Spanish, German, Swedish, Danish, 
 and Anglo-Saxon, attest the linguistic power and poetic skill of 
 this favourite author. On this side of the Atlantic Longfellow 
 and Washington Irving are as well known as Tennyson and Gold- 
 smith. 
 
 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS, born in 1817 at Portland, has 
 written poetry and prose with grace and lightness. There is 
 something of Leigh Hunt about his pen. He was the editor of the 
 New York Mirror. Some of his Scriptural pieces, such as The 
 Leper, The Daughter of Jairus, and The Shunamite Mother, are 
 very beautiful. Melanie and Lord Ivon and his Daughter afford 
 good specimens of his romantic style. But such sweet, natural 
 lyrics as Better Moments, and Lines to a City Pigeon, surpass his 
 more laboured works. In prose he produced various clever, read- 
 able, gossipy books, Pencillings by the Way Inklings of Adven- 
 ture Loiterings of Travel, <frc. Willis died in 1867. 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 531 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE, author of that exquisite piece of mystery 
 and music, The Raven, was born in 1811 at Baltimore. Annabel 
 Lee, a tender lament for his dead wife, is one of the sweetest lyrics 
 in the language. His prose tales are full of wild and absorbing 
 interest. Reckless intemperance brought his short life to a close 
 in 1849. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 JOHN PIERPONT. (1785) Litchfield, Connecticut Airs of Palestine; Lyrics, 
 RICHARD DANA. (1787) Cambridge, Massachusetts The Buccaneer ; Thoughts 
 
 on the Soul ; also noted as an Essayist. 
 CHARLES SPRAGTTE. (1791) Boston a bank cashier Curiosity; The Brothers; 
 
 The Family Meeting. 
 
 JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. (1785) Kensington, Connecticut Lyric Poems. 
 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. (1795) Guilford, Connecticut Fanny; Alnwicl 
 
 Castle ; Marco Bozzaris. 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. (1819) Boston author of many serious poems 
 
 (Rhcecus, Prometheus, &c.), but better known for the Papers of Hosca 
 
 Biglow, abounding in Yankee fun and shrewd sarcasm. 
 
 Southey gave great praise to Zophiel, or the Bride of Seven, by MARIA BROOKS. 
 CHARLES HOFFMAN, author of The Vigil of Faith; and JOHN GREENLEAF WHIT- 
 TIER, a Quaker poet, may be added to this list. 
 
 HISTORIANS. 
 
 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT, born in 1796, at Salem in Mas- 
 sachusetts, is the chief of American historians. An accident at 
 college the throwing of a crust deprived him almost wholly of 
 one eye. Thus situated, he began a career of literary toil which 
 resulted in the production of four great historical works, The 
 Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, The Conquest of Mexico, The 
 Conquest of Peru, and The History of Philip II., all of which 
 have been remarkably successful. The sight of his single eye 
 failing, he was for several years unable to read. He died of a 
 paralytic stroke in 1859. 
 
 GEORGE BANCROFT, born in 1800, at Worcester in Massa- 
 chusetts, is the author of the principal existing History of the 
 United States. He was for three years (1846-49), Minister for 
 the States at the British Court. 
 
532 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 GEORGE TICKNOR, born in 1791 at Boston, preceded the poet 
 Longfellow in the chair of Modern Literature at Harvard. A 
 History of Spanish Literature from his pen ranks, for learning, 
 sound criticism, and literary merit, with the very highest works of 
 its class. 
 
 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY has won a high place among historians 
 by his Dutch Republic and United NetJierlands, on the latter of 
 which he is at present engaged He excels in vivid and pictorial 
 description. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 Jons WINTUROP. (1587-1649) one of the Pilgrim Fathers Governor of Mas- 
 sachusetts Diary of Events in that colony down to 1644. 
 
 COTTOIT MATHER. (1663-1728) a Puritan minister at Boston MaijnaUa 
 Chri&ti Americana, an Ecclesiastical History of New England. 
 
 JARED SPARKS. (1794) editor of the Library of American Kiography 
 author of a Life of Washington, and an edition of Franklin's Work*. 
 
 RICHARD HILDRETH. (1807) Deerfield, Massachusetts History of the d.itcd 
 Stales; Japan as it Was and Is. 
 
 Among various local histories, containing much valuable material, we may 
 mine Maine, by WILLIAMSON ; Virginia, by CAMPBELL ; Georgia, by STEVENS ; 
 Kentucky, by MAN* BUTLER; and the Indian Tribes, by M'KKNKKY ami 
 HALL. 
 
 WRITERS OF FICTION. 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING, born in 1783 at New York, was the scion 
 of an old Orkney family. His father was a merchant. The liter- 
 ary career of this Goldsmith of the States began in 1807, the year 
 after his admission to the bar, by contributions to Salmagundi, 
 a humorous serial of short life. Then came that queer, delightful 
 burlesque of old Dutch and Swedish colonist life, called The His- 
 tory of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker. The management 
 of a branch of Irving Brothers, in Liverpool, being confided to him, 
 he crossed the Atlantic for the second time in 1815. But the 
 house failed, and the young merchant turned author by profes- 
 sion. It was up-hill work at first; but Scott having pronounced 
 n most favourable opinion upon The Sketch-book, which was sub- 
 
LlTERATtl&E. 5oo 
 
 mitted to him, the road to fame and fortune was opened at once 
 to Geoffrey Crayon, Gent"., as the author styled himself. 
 A list of Washington Irving's works is subjoined : 
 
 Salmagundi ... ... ... ... ... 1807-8 
 
 History of New York ... ... ... ... 1809 
 
 Sketch-book of Geoffrey Crayon ... ... ... 1819-20 
 
 Bracebridge Hall ... .. ... ... 1822 
 
 Tales of a Traveller ... ... ... ... 1824 
 
 Life of Columbus ... ... ... ... 1828 
 
 Conquest of Granada ... ... ... ... 1829 
 
 Companions of Columbus ... ... ... 1831 
 
 Talcs of the Alhambra ... ... ... ... 1832 
 
 Tour on the Prairies ... .. ... ... 1835 
 
 Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey ... ... ... 
 
 Astoria, Beyond the Rocky Mountains ... ... 1836 
 
 Captain Bonneville ... ... ... ... 1837 
 
 Life of Goldsmith ... ... ... ... 1849 
 
 Mahomet and his Successors ... ... ... 1850 
 
 Wolfert's Roost ... ... ... ... 1855 
 
 Life of Washington ... ... ... ... 1855-7 
 
 Whatever his subject an English manor-house, with bright fires 
 and Christmas snow a drowsy Dutch farm-steading in Sleepy 
 Hollow a moonlit court in the Alhambra the great Italian sailor 
 the sweet-souled Irish author the simply noble American general 
 we are charmed by the poetic graces of his fancy and the liquid 
 music of his style. For several years he resided at Madrid, collect- 
 ing materials for his Spanish works. In 1830, while in England, 
 he received one of two gold medals conferred by George the Fourth 
 for historical eminence, Hallam receiving the other. His later life 
 was spent at a pleasant seat Sunnyside, by the Hudson. There 
 he died in November 1859. 
 
 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, born in 1789, at Burlington in New 
 Jersey, entered, after six years of naval life, upon his brilliant career 
 as a writer of fiction. Residing on the borders of Otsego Lake, 
 a district thick with game and then uncleared, he wrote his first 
 novel, Precaution. In two walks he has been eminently success- 
 ful Indian novels and Naval -novels. Among the former, The 
 Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Path-finder, and The Deer- 
 
534 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 slayer, are the best ; among the latter, The Pilot, with its noble 
 character of Long Tom Coffin, stands first. Of his tales founded 
 on the history of the American War, The Spy is most popular. 
 Cooper died in 1851. 
 
 THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON, a Nova Scotian judge, born 
 about 1800, is well known as the author of the papers signed Sam 
 Slick, illustrative of Yankee life and humour. The Clockmaker, 
 The Attache, The Old Judge, Letter-Bag of the Great Western, and 
 The Season- Ticket, are his chief works. Judge Haliburton latterly 
 resided in England, where he died in 1865. He also wrote an 
 Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia. 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, born about 1807, at Salem in Mas- 
 sachusetts, was one of the finest American novelists. His first 
 acknowledged work was Twice-Told Tales (1837). Then came 
 Mosses from an old Manse (1846) ; The Scarlet Letter (1850) ; 
 The House of the Swn (,'(>! (1851), his best novel ; and The 
 Blitliedale Romance (1852). His taste for psychology deeply tinged 
 his works, the chief of which belong somewhat to the Weird school 
 of fiction. The beauty of his language and the rich quaintness of 
 his humour possess irresistible attractions. For a year Mr. Haw- 
 thorne was Surveyor of Customs at Salem ; and for some time he 
 held the American Consulship at Liverpool. He died in 1864. 
 
 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, the world-renowned authoress of 
 Uncle Tom's Cabin, was born at Litchfield in Connecticut, the 
 daughter of Lyman Beecher, an eminent Congrcgationalist minister. 
 Th c Mayflower was one of her earlier works. " Uncle Tom" appeared 
 in 1850, in the columns of a weekly paper, TJie Washington National 
 Era. Its astonishing success was owing partly to its subject, but 
 not a little to its graphic power. A Key followed the work, 
 supplying ample evidence of its truthfulness. Mrs. Stowe then 
 visited Europe, recollections of her tour appearing in Sunny 
 Memories of Foreign Lands. None of her later works Dred, The, 
 Minister's Wooing, The Pearl of Orr's Island have come up to 
 " Uncle Tom" in power or popularity. AgneS of Sorrento (in the 
 "Cornhill") is said to be from her pen. 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 535 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 CHARLES BROOKDEN BROWN. (1771-1810) Philadelphia Wieland; Ormond', 
 Arthur Mervyn; Edgar Huntly. 
 
 JAMES KIRKB PAULDING. (born 1779) associated with Irving in Salmagundi 
 John Butt and Brother Jonathan; Tlie Dutchman's Fireside; West 
 ward Ho/ 
 
 JAMES HALL. (born 1793) Philadelphia a judge in Illinois Letters from 
 the West ; Wilderness and War-Path. 
 
 JOHN P. KENNEDY. (born 1795) Virginia (1) follower of Irving Swallow 
 Barn ; Horse-Shoe Robinson. 
 
 WILLIAM WARE. (born 1797) Massachusetts Unitarian clergyman Fall of 
 Palmyra ; Probus, or Rome in the Third Century. 
 
 KOBERT M. BIRD. (1803-1854) Newcastle, Delaware a doctor of medicine 
 Calavar and The Infidel (Mexican romances); Nick of the Woods; Hawks 
 of Hawk Hottoio. 
 
 WILLIAM SIMMS. (born 1807) planter of South Carolina Guy Rivers; Beau- 
 champ ; Wigwam and Cabin. 
 
 T. B. THORPE. (torn 1815) Westfield, Massachusetts Mysteries of the Back- 
 woods; Big Bear of Arkansas. 
 
 Our list must close with the names of Miss SEDGWTCK (Hope Leslie) ; Miss 
 LOTHROP (Dollars and Cents) ; Miss WARNER (The Wide Wide World and 
 Queechy); Mrs. KIRKLAND (New Home and Forest Life) ; and SAMUEL GOODRICH 
 (Peter Parley), author of an immense number of tales and educatioual works. 
 
 ESSAYISTS, CRITICS, AND ORATORS. 
 
 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, born in 1780, at Newport in 
 Rhode Island, though ranking high amongst theologians, finds a 
 fitter place among the most eloquent American Essayists* After a 
 distinguished career at Harvard College, he lived for a while as a 
 tutor in Virginia, and in 1803 was ordained minister of a Uni- 
 tarian church in Boston. National Literature, Milton, Napoleon, 
 Fenelon, Self -Culture, The Elevation of the Labouring Classes, are 
 among the subjects he has written and lectured upon. Brilliant 
 and original thoughts, clothed in language of rare fire and beauty, 
 characterize all the works of this eminent man. Discourses on the 
 Evidences of Revealed Religion form his chief theological work. 
 One of his strongest feelings was hatred of the Slave-Trade ; 
 
536 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 and his last public utterance was upon the emancipation of 
 British slaves in the West Indies. He died of typhus fever in 
 1842. 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT, born in 1794, at Dorchester near Boston, 
 originally a Unitarian minister, became Governor of Massachusetts, 
 "American minister in London (1841-46), and Secretary of State 
 for the United States. His literary fame rested on his Orations 
 and Speec/tes. He wrote largely for the North American Review, 
 which he edited for four years (1820-24). Everett died in 1865. 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, born in 1803 at Boston, became, after 
 studying at Harvard, minister of a Unitarian church. This con- 
 nection soon ceasing, he buried himself at Concord, to study and 
 to write. He has spoken to the public principally through lectures, 
 afterwards collected and published. His chief work is Represen- 
 tative Men, embracing strikingly eloquent estimates of Montaigne, 
 Goethe, Plato, Swedenborg, Shakspere, and Napoleon. 
 
 Supplementary last. 
 
 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. (1757-1804) island of Nevis a lawyer and statesman 
 of the Revolution The Federalist, to which Madison and Jay also contri- 
 buted. 
 
 ALEXANDER EVERETT. (1790-1847) Boston elder brother of the orator- 
 diplomatist Europe; New Ideas on Population ; America ; Essays. 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. (born 1809) Cambridge, Massachusetts Professor 
 of Anatomy at Cambridge lives now at Boston Poems ; Autocrat at 
 the Breakfast -Table (essays). 
 MARGARET FULLER. (1810-1850) Cambridge, Massachusetts Marchesa 
 
 D'Ossoli Woman in the Nineteenth Century ; Summer on the Lakes. 
 HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN. (born 1813) Thoughts on the Poets; Charac- 
 teristics of Literature; Diary of a Dreamer; New England Philo- 
 sophy. 
 RUFUS GRISWOLD. (1815-1857) Benson, Vermont Baptist minister Curia- 
 
 sitics of American Literature ; Poets and Prose- Writers of A mcrica. 
 The Lectures of HENRY REED (drowned in the wreck of the Arctic) upon Eny 
 lish Literature, and of EDWIN WHIPPLE, upon Suly'ects connected with Litera- 
 ture and Life, are fine specimens of eloquent and accurate criticism. THEODORR 
 PARKER, a Unitarian minister, has written Essays upon German Literature, 
 Labour, and the Labouring Classes. DANIEL WEBSTER (1782-1852), HENRY 
 CLAY (1777-1852), and JOHN CALHOUN (1782-1850), are the leading names in 
 American oratory. NOAH WEBSTER'S English Dictionary, and ANTHON'S Edi 
 tions of the Classics belong to this section. 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 537 
 
 SCIENTIFIC WRITERS. 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, born in 1706 at Boston, began life as a 
 printer's boy. Steadily he rose by native genius, conjoined with 
 industry and prudence, to a foremost place among his countrymen. 
 Poor Richard's Almanac, a repertory of Proverbial Philosophy for 
 the poor, begun in 1732, lasted for twenty-five years. This col- 
 lection is otherwise known as The Way to Wealth. He won great 
 fame by his scientific researches, especially into the laws of Elec- 
 tricity, the results of which are embodied in various letters and 
 papers. He wrote also numerous Essays, Historical, Political, and 
 Commercial, and an Autobiography of great value. His Letters, 
 too, have been published. In all the great political movements of 
 the Revolution he took a leading share; but the crown of his 
 statesmanship was won when, as Minister Plenipotentiary at the 
 court of France, whither he went in 1776, he secured the aid of 
 French bayonets and cannon for the struggling Americans. He 
 died in 1790. 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. (1780-1851) son of a French admiral settled in Louis- 
 iana travelled much Birds of America. 
 
 HENRY CAREY. (born 1793) Philadelphia a publisher The Credit System; 
 Past, Present, and Future; Harmony of Interests; The Slave Trade. 
 
 ORVILLE DEWEY. (born 1794) Sheffield, Massachusetts Unitarian minister 
 Moral Views of Commerce, Society, and Politics; The Old World and 
 the New. 
 
 MATTHEW F. MAURY. (born 1806) Virginia captain in United States Navy 
 Physical Geography of the Sea. . 
 
 THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS. 
 
 JONATHAN EDWARDS, born in 1703, at East Windsor in Con- 
 necticut, ranks highest among American divines. He was licensed 
 as a Congregationalist minister in 1722. The honourable office of 
 President in the College of New Jersey, Princeton, was conferred 
 on him in 1757, but in the following year he died of small pox. 
 His principal work, The Freedom of the Will, is a master-piece of 
 
533 AMERICAN LITERATURE. 
 
 metaphysical reasoning. Treatises from his pen upon The History 
 of Redemption, True Virtue, God's Chief End in the Creation, 
 Original Sin, and the Religious Affections, also display great power 
 of thought, " warm piety, and profound acquaintance with the 
 Scriptures " 
 
 Supplementary List. 
 
 JOHN WITHERSPOON. (1722-179-i) Scotland President of Princeton College 
 
 Ecclesiastical Characteristics. 
 TiMoiuYDwiGHT. (1752-1817) Northampton, Massachusetts Congregational 
 
 minister, army chaplain, President of Yale College (1795-1817) History, 
 
 Eloquence, and Poetry of the Bible ; Theology Explained and Defended 
 
 (chief work) ; Poems. 
 CIIARLES HODGE. (born 1797) Philadelphia Professor of Biblical Literature 
 
 at Princeton Commentaries on Romans, Ephesians, First Corinthians; 
 
 History of tlie Presbyterian Church in the States. 
 A LBKRT BARNES. (born 1798) Philadelphia Presbyterian minister Notes on 
 
 the Gospels and other Commentaries. 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON ALEXANDER. (1809-1860) Philadelphia Professor in Prince- 
 ton College chief works upon Isaiah and the Psalms associated with 
 
 Dr. Hodge in a Commentary on the New Testament. 
 UENRY WARD BEECHER. (born 1813) Litchfield, Connecticut-Congregationalist 
 
 minister brother of Mrs. Stowe Lectures; Star Papers; Life- Thoughts. 
 
 TRAVELLERS. 
 
 JOHN LLOYD STEPHENS, born in New Jersey in 1805, published 
 in 1836-37 Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Yuca- 
 tan, and Central America. Italy, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Ger- 
 many, and France came also within the limit of his wanderings. 
 Overtasking his strength in surveying the Isthmus of Panama with 
 a view to the connection of the oceans by a railway, he died in 
 1852, at the age of forty-seven. 
 
 EDWARD ROBINSON, born in 1794, at Southington in Connec- 
 ticut, before entering on his duties as Professor of Biblical Litera- 
 ture in the Union Theological Seminary at New York, spent two 
 years in the Holy Land and the surrounding countries, which on 
 his return he described in Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount 
 Sinai, and Arabia Petrcea (1841). This learned and valuable work 
 obtained for him the gold medal of the Geographical Society. 
 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 5S9 
 
 Among American travellers of the last century, we maj name JOHN BARTRAM 
 (1701-1777), who described East Florida; JOHN WOOLMAN (1720-1772), a Quaker, 
 in whose Journal of a Tour in England Charles Lamb delighted; JONA- 
 THAN CARVER (1732-3780), who explored the interior of North America, trying 
 to reach the Pacific ; and JOHN LEDYARD (1751-1789), who travelled both in 
 frozen Siberia and burning Africa, dying at Cairo. 
 
 TIMOTHY FLINT, the novelist (1780-1840) contributed to this branch of Ameri- 
 can literature The Geography and History of the Mississippi Valley HENRY 
 SCHOOLCRAFT (born 1793), Tours in Missouri, Arkansas, and the Copper Region 
 of Lake Superior, besides various important works upon the lied Race in 
 America and CHARLES WILKES, of the United States Navy, A Narrative of 
 (he United States Exploring Expedition, giving an account of travels in Chili, 
 Peru, and the South Seas. 
 
 CALEB CUSHING'S Reminiscences of Spain; GEORGE CHEEVER'S Pilgrim in 
 the Shadow of Mont Blanc and Pilgrim in the Shadoio of the Jungfrau; 
 BAYARD TAILOR'S Sketches in tlieEast; J. T. HEADLEY'S Letters from Italy, 
 tlie Alps, and the Rhine, are among the most readable books of late American 
 travel. 
 
INDEXES. 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 ACAMAPICH, reign of, 12. 
 
 Altars and cairns, 10. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon literature, latter days of, 27. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon verse, 18, 20. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon prose, 21. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon writers, 18. 
 
 Anglo-Norman writers, 28. 
 
 "Annals," the, 16. 
 
 Arthur, stories of King, 32. 
 
 Author life, phases of, 294. 
 
 Authors, courtly, of the Restoration era, 219. 
 
 BALLAD, origin of the, 1C. 
 
 Bards, Welsh, 17. 
 
 "Beowulf," the epic, 19. 
 
 Bible, Wycliffe's translation of the, 50, 51 ; 
 Cranmer's, 88 ; Coverdale's, 99 ; the 
 Geneva, 137 ; the Bishop's, 137 ; King 
 James's, 137 ; proposed change, 138 ; 
 Hallam's criticism, 138 ; English of the, 
 139; burning of the, 135; the chained, 13C. 
 
 Book, the first, 9, 
 
 Book, the tree and the, 9. 
 
 Book-making, first steps in, 10. 
 
 Book-binding, 75. 
 
 Book-room, an ancient, 12. 
 
 Books, leather, 10. 
 
 Books in Greek and Roman days, 11. 
 
 Booksellers' shops, 299. 
 
 Britons, conjecture concerning ancient, 15. 
 
 " Brut," Layamon's, 34. 
 
 CAIRNS and altars, 10. 
 
 Castle hall, picture of a, 36. 
 
 Cavaliers their dress, 176 ; their wild life, 
 
 177 ; their gallantry in the field, 177 ; 
 
 their writings, 178. 
 
 Celtic writers, 16. 
 Charles II., the court of, 219. 
 Chronicle, the Saxon, 23. 
 Chronicles, the, 30. 
 Comedy and tragedy, 103, 3GO. 
 Conquest, effects of the Norman 28. 
 Contrast, a literary, 259. 
 Copyist, picture of a, 41. 
 Cords, knotted, 10. 
 
 Cortez, how Montezuma was informed 
 of, 13. 
 
 DEBATES, Parliamentary, 255. 
 Dedications, 299. 
 
 ENCYCLOPAEDIAS, the, 258. 
 
 FRENCH influence in the court of Charles 
 II., 220. 
 
 GAZETTE, the LONDON, 254. 
 
 Gesta, the, 32. 
 
 Gleeman, the Anglo-Saxon, 18. 
 
 HACKS, Grub Street, 295 ; extract from 
 Macaulay on, 296 ; success of a few, 298. 
 Hall, the great man's, 299. 
 Hieroglyphic painting, a, 14. 
 Hieroglyphics, 13. 
 
 ILLUMINATIONS, 41. 
 Interludes, the, 103. 
 
 LATIN writers among ancient Britons, 17. 
 Latin works of Anglo-Saxons, 22. 
 Latin writers of Norman times, 30. 
 Literary life in the eighteenth century, 294. 
 
542 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Literary profession, influence of Walpole 
 on the, 294. 
 
 MACHINE, Kttnig's, 435 ; success of, in 
 Printing House Square, 435 ; Cowper 
 and Applegath's, 436 ; Hoe's, 439 ; in- 
 fluence of the printing, 440. 
 
 Magazines, the, 258. 
 
 Managers, waiting on, 298. 
 
 Manuscripts, Irish, 10. 
 
 Metre, English, 358. 
 
 Minstrel, the Anglo-Saxon, 18. 
 
 Minstrel and the monk, the, 35. 
 
 Minstrel, honour to the, 30 ; other names 
 of the, 30 ; application of the word, 37. 
 
 Minstrels, classes of, 30 ; their dress, 37 ; 
 decay of the craft, 38 ; modern, 38. 
 
 Minstrelsy, 38. 
 
 Miracle plays, or mysteries, 101. 
 
 Monk, the, 40. 
 
 Moralities, the, 102. 
 
 NEWSLETTER, the, 254. 
 
 Newspapers, earliest, 253. 
 
 Newspapers and serials, 253. 
 
 New Testament, Tyndale's translation of 
 
 the, 85. 
 Norman-French writers, 32. 
 
 OBJECTIVE and subjective, 302. 
 " Ormulum," the, 34. 
 
 PAPERS of the Civil War, 253. 
 
 Papyrus, the, 11. 
 
 " Paraphrase of Caedmon," the, 19; extract 
 
 from, 20. 
 
 Parchment and vellum, 11. 
 Periodical literature, when foundation of, 
 
 laid, 257. 
 
 Periodical writers, 258. 
 Phonetics, 15. 
 Picture, a sad, 220. 
 
 Picture-writing, 12 ; of old Mexico, 12. 
 Play, miracle, 101. 
 
 Plays and players of Old England. 101. 
 Poems, epic, 300; dramatic, 300; lyric, 301. 
 Poems of Ossian, the, 16. 
 Poet, passage from MacaiUay on word, 290. 
 Poetry and criticism, notes on, 358. 
 Poetry and prose, 358. 
 Poetry, inverted order of words in, 359 ; 
 
 high language of, 359 ; use of figures in, 
 
 359 ; essence of, 359. 
 Poetry of the Saxons, 38. 
 
 Poetry, Latin, of the Norman times, 80. 
 
 Poison, the, too strong, 221. 
 
 Prayer, the Book of Common, 88. 
 
 Press, liberty of the, 255. 
 
 Press, the newspaper, 250. 
 
 Press, the old, 434 ; the Stanhope, 434. 
 
 Printers of Westminster, the old, 71. 
 
 Printers, old, at work, 74.' 
 
 Printing, invention of, 72. 
 
 Printing by steam, 434. 
 
 Prose, Anglo-Saxon, 2L 
 
 " Psalter of Cashel," the, 10. 
 
 Puritans and Cavaliers their influence 
 
 upon English literature, 176. 
 Puritans their habits, 178 ; their hatred 
 
 of amusement, 179 ; their sincerity, 179 ; 
 
 their great literary names, 179. 
 
 REPORTING, early, 255. 
 
 Reviews, the, 257. 
 
 Romance, English metrical, Dr. Cncik's 
 
 summary of, 40. 
 Romance, nature of the, 32. 
 Romance, the Norman, 29. 
 Romance tongues of France, 29. 
 Romances relating to King Arthur, 32. 
 
 SCHOOLS, poetic, 361. 
 
 Scriptorium, the, 41. 
 
 Semi-Saxon writers, 34. 
 
 Shameless conduct, 220. 
 
 Stage, the old, 104 ; its scenery, 104 ; the 
 
 audience, 105 ; social position of the 
 
 players, 106. 
 
 THEATRES at the Restoration, 221. 
 
 " Times," the, 255 ; printed by steam, 435 ; 
 announcement in, 435 ; statistic* of, 
 437 ; scene in the printing-house of, 437. 
 
 Tragedy and comedy, 104, 360. 
 
 Triads, the Welsh, 17. 
 
 UNITIES, the three, 361. 
 
 VELLUM and parchment, 11. 
 Verse, Anglo-Saxon, 18, 20. 
 Vice, spread of, 220 ; what Burke said of 
 it, 222. 
 
 WRITERS, Anglo-Norman, 28. 
 Writers, life of well-to-do, in days of Wal- 
 pole, 295. 
 
 Writers, periodical, 258. 
 Writing materials, ancient, 11. 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 543 
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 A'BECKETT, GILBERT ABBOTT, 505. 
 
 Abercromby, John, M.D., 431. 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 260. 
 
 Ainsworth, William Harrison, 514. 
 
 Aird, Thomas, 501. 
 
 Akenside, Mark, 351. 
 
 Alcuin, 24. 
 
 Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury, 23. 
 
 Alexander, Joseph Addison, 538. 
 
 Alford, Henry, 525. 
 
 Alfred the Great, 21. 
 
 Alfric the Grammarian, 22. 
 
 Alison, Archibald, 429. 
 
 Alison, Sir Archibald, 506. 
 
 Allingham, William, 504. 
 
 Anthon, Charles, 536. 
 
 Arblay, Madame D' (Frances Burney), 424. 
 
 Arbuthnot, John, 251. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 504. 
 
 Arnold, Thomas, 506. 
 
 Ascham, Roger, 108. 
 
 Audubon, John James, 537. 
 
 Austen, Jane, 426. 
 
 Aytoun, William Edmondstoune, 502. 
 
 BACON, FRANCIS, Viscount St. Albans, 155. 
 
 Bailey, Philip James, 502. 
 
 Baillie, Joanna, 421. 
 
 Bain, Alexander, 522. 
 
 Baker, Sir Samuel White, 527. 
 
 Bale, John, Bishop of Ossory, 100. 
 
 Bancroft, George, 531. 
 
 Banim, John, 518. 
 
 Barbour, John, 68. 
 
 Barclay, Alexander, 96. 
 
 Barclay, Kobert, 250. 
 
 Barham, Richard, 420. 
 
 Barnes, Albert, 538. 
 
 Barrow, Isaac, 217. 
 
 Barrow, Sir John, 432. 
 
 Barry, Gerald (Giraldus Cambrensis), 31. 
 
 Bartram, John, 539. 
 
 Baxter, Richard, 232. 
 
 Bayly, Haynes, 503. 
 
 Beattie, James, 353. 
 
 Beaumont, Francis, 168. 
 
 Beckford, William, 426. 
 
 Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, 505. 
 
 Bede, the Venerable, 23. 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 538. 
 
 Bellenden, John, 98. 
 
 Belzoni, John Baptist, 432. 
 
 Benedict, Abbot of Peterborough, 31. 
 
 Bennett, William, 504. 
 
 Bentley, Richard, 251. 
 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 429. 
 
 Beowulf, 19. 
 
 Berkeley, George, Bishop of Cloyne, 292. 
 
 Berners, Lord, 98. 
 
 Bird, Robert M., 535. 
 
 Blackie, John Stuart, 433. 
 
 Blackstone, Sir William, 356. 
 
 Blair, Hugh, 356. 
 
 Blair, Robert, 291. 
 
 Blessington, Countess of, 427. 
 
 Bloomfleld, Robert, 420. 
 
 Bolingbroke, Viscount, Henry St. John, 292. 
 
 Borrow, George, 526. 
 
 Boswell, James, 357. 
 
 Bowles, William L., 419. 
 
 Bowring, Sir John, 433, 527. 
 
 Boyle, Robert, 216. 
 
 Brewster, Sir David, 518. 
 
 Brimley, George, 512. 
 
 Bronte, Charlotte, 516. 
 
 Brooks, Maria, 531. 
 
 Brooks, Shirley, 505, 518. 
 
 Brough, Robert B., 505. 
 
 Brougham, Henry Lord, 429. 
 
 Brown, Charles Brockden, 535. 
 
 Brown, Frances, 504. 
 
 Brown, Thomas, 430. 
 
 Brown, John, D.D., 524. 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, 215. 
 
 Browne, William, 170. 
 
 Browning, Elizabeth (Miss Barrett), 501. 
 
 Browning, Robert, 502. 
 
 Bruce, James, 432. 
 
 Bruce, Michael, 419. 
 
 Brunton, Mary, 426. 
 
 Bryant, William Cullen, 529. 
 
 Brydges, Sir Egerton, 429. 
 
 Buchanan, George, 112. 
 
 Buckingham, Silk, 432. 
 
 Buckland, William, 521. 
 
 Buckle, Henry Thomas, 508. 
 
 Bunyan, John, 227. 
 
 Burckhardt, John Lewis, 432. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, 375. 
 
 Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop of Salisbury, 249. 
 
 Burnet, Thomas, 248. 
 
 Burney, Frances (Madame D'Arblay), 424. 
 
544 
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 Burns, Robert, 369. 
 
 Burton, John Hill, 509. 
 
 Burton, Robert. IT.i. 
 
 Butler, Mann, 532. 
 
 Butler, Samuel, 223. 
 
 Butler, William Archer, r,2.'i. 
 
 Byron, Lord (George Gordon), 380. 
 
 CAEDMON,. 19. 
 
 Caird, John, D.D., 525. 
 
 Calhoun, John, 53d 
 
 Camden, William, 172. 
 
 Campbell, Charles, 5:J2. 
 
 Campbell, Lord, 508. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, 410. 
 
 Candlish, Robert S.. D.D., 524. 
 
 Carew, Thomas, 170. 
 
 Carey, Henry, 537. 
 
 Carleton, William, 513. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 404. 
 
 Carruthers, Robert, 509. 
 
 Carver, Jonathan, 539. 
 
 ( .u-y. Henry Francis, 433. 
 
 Cavendish. George, 100. 
 
 Caxton, William, 71. 
 
 Chalmers, George, 424. 
 
 Chalmers, Thomas, D.D., LL.D , f.22. 
 
 Chamberlayne, William, 214. 
 
 ( "numbers. Robert, 509. 
 
 Channing. William Ellery, 533. 
 
 Chatterton, Thomas, :;..!. 
 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey. 
 
 Cheever, George, 53!). 
 
 Cheke, Sir John, 100. 
 
 Churchill, Charles, 353. 
 
 Clapperton, Lieutenant Hugh, 432. 
 
 Clare, John, 503. 
 
 Clarke, Adam, 431. 
 
 Clarke, Edward, 432. 
 
 Clarke, Mary Cowden, .-,12. 
 
 Clarke, Samuel, 2n2. 
 
 Clay, Henry, 536. 
 
 Cobbett, William, 427. 
 
 Coleridge, Derwent, 503. 
 
 Coleridge, Hartley, 503. 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 441. 
 
 Coleridge, Sara, 503. 
 
 Collier, John Payne, 512. 
 
 Collins, AVilkie, 505, 516. 
 
 Collins, William, 3r.l. 
 
 Colman, George, 421. 
 
 Colman, George (the younger\ 421. 
 
 Columbanus, St., 17. 
 
 Combe, George, 431. 
 
 Combe, William, 420. 
 
 Congreve, William, 251 
 
 Cook, Eliza, 504. 
 
 Cooke, Wingrove, 528. 
 
 Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Earl of Shaftes- 
 bury, 291. 
 
 Cooper, James Fenimore, 533. 
 
 Cotton, Charles, 214. 
 
 Coverdale, Miles, Bishop of Exeter, 99. 
 
 Cowley, Abraham, 213. 
 
 Cowper. William, 379. 
 
 Coxe, William, 424. 
 
 Crabbe, George, 393. 
 
 Craig^Isa, 504. 
 
 Cranmer, Thomas, Archbisliop of Canter- 
 bury, 87. 
 
 Crashaw, Richard, 171. 
 
 Croker, John Wilson, 420. 
 
 Croly, George, 420. 
 
 Crowe, Catherine, 518. 
 
 Crowe, Eyre, 509. 
 
 Cudworth, Ralph, 215. 
 
 Cumberland, Richard, 421. 
 
 Cunningham, Allan, 420. 
 
 Cushing, Caleb, 539. 
 
 DALRYMPLK, DAVID (Lord Hailes\ 424. 
 
 Dana, Richard, 531. 
 
 Daniel, Samuel, 167. 
 
 Darwin, Erasmus, 352. 
 
 Dasent, George Webbe, 433. 
 
 Davenant, Sir William, 212. 
 
 Davis, John Francis, 527. 
 
 Davy, Sir Humphry, 430. 
 
 Defoe, Daniel, 250. 
 
 Dekker, Thomas, 173. 
 
 Denham, Sir John, 213. 
 
 Dewey, Orville, 537. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 480. 
 
 Dillon, Wentworth,EarlofRoscommon,246. 
 
 D'Israeli, Isaac, 429. 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, 514. 
 
 Dixon, William Hepworth 509. 
 
 Dobell, Sydney, 502. 
 
 Doddridge, Philip, 354. 
 
 Donaldson, John William, 523. 
 
 Donne, John, 168. 
 
 Douglas, Gavin, 95. 
 
 Drayton, Michael, 1G7. 
 
 Drummond, William, of Hawthornden, 169. 
 
 Dryden, John, 236. 
 
 Dunbar, William, 04. 
 
 Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 20. 
 
 Dwight, Timothy, 538. 
 
 Dyce, Alexander, 512. 
 
 Dyer, John, 29L 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 545 
 
 EDGEWORTH, MARIA, 425. 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 537. 
 Eliot, George (Miss Evans), 517. 
 Ellesmere, Lord, 433. 
 Elliott, Ebenezer, 420. 
 Ellis, Henry, 432. 
 Ellis, Sarah, 511. 
 Elyot, Sir Thomas, 98. 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 536. 
 Erigena (John Scotus;, 25. 
 Eustace, John C., 432. 
 Evelyn, John, 215. 
 Everett, Alexander, 53(5. 
 Everett, Edward, 53(5. 
 Exeter, Joseph of, 30. 
 
 FABIAN, ROBERT, 98. 
 
 Falconer, William, 353. 
 
 Faraday, Michael, 521 
 
 Farquhar, George, 252. 
 
 Ferguson, Adam, 357. 
 
 Fergusson, Robert, 419. 
 
 Ferrier, James, 522. 
 
 Ferrier, Mary, 426. 
 
 Fielding, Henry, 311. 
 
 Finlay, George, 509. 
 
 Fisher, John, Bishop of Rochester, 98. 
 
 Fletcher, Giles, 169. 
 
 Fletcher, John, 168. 
 
 Fletcher, Phineas, 169. 
 
 Flint, Timothy, 539. 
 
 Foote, Samuel, 356. 
 
 Forbes, James David, 522. 
 
 Ford, John, 170. 
 
 Ford, Richard, 526. 
 
 Forster, John, 507. 
 
 Forsyth, Joseph, 432. 
 
 Fortescue, Sir John, 70. 
 
 Foster, John, 427. 
 
 Fox, John, 100. 
 
 Francis, Philip, 432. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 537. 
 
 Franklin, Sir John, 432. 
 
 Fraser, James B., 432. 
 
 Freer, Martha, 509. 
 
 Frere, J. Hookham, 420. 
 
 Froude, James Anthony, 508. 
 
 Fuller, Margaret, 580. 
 
 Fuller, Thomas, 181. 
 
 GALT, JOHN, 425. 
 Garrick, David, 355. 
 Gaskell, Elizabeth, 517. 
 Gauden, John, 214. 
 Gay, John, 290. 
 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 31. 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, 363. 
 
 Gifford, William, 419. 
 
 Gildas, 17. 
 
 Gilflllan, George, 512. 
 
 Gladstone, William Ewart, 524. 
 
 Gleig, George, 518. 
 
 Gloucester, Robert of, 39. 
 
 Godwin, William, 426. 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 334. 
 
 Goodrich, Samuel (Peter Parley), 535. 
 
 n, George (Lord Byron \ 386. 
 ore, Catherine, 518. 
 Gower, John, 61. 
 Grahame, James, 419. 
 Grant, James, 518. 
 Grattan, Thomas C., 427. 
 Gray, Thomas, 321. 
 Green, Robert, 166. 
 Griffin, Gerald, 518. 
 Griswold, Rufus, 536. 
 Grote, George, 506. 
 Guthrie, Thomas, D.D., 523. 
 
 HAILES, Lord (David Dalrymple\ 424. 
 
 Hakluyt, Richard, 172. 
 
 Haliburton, Thomas Chandler, 534. 
 
 Hall, Anna Maria, 518. 
 
 Hall, Basil, 532. 
 
 Hall, Captain Basil, 432. 
 
 Hall, Edward, 98. 
 
 Hall, James, 535. 
 
 Hall, Joseph, Bishop of Norwich, 173. 
 
 Hall, Robert, 431. 
 
 Hallam, Henry, 423. 
 
 Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 531. 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 536. 
 
 Hamilton, Elizabeth, 426. 
 
 Hamilton, sir William, 519. 
 
 Hanna, William, LL.D., 509, 522. 
 
 Hannay, James, 516. 
 
 Hare, Julius, 524. 
 
 Harry, Blind, 70. 
 
 Hawes, Stephen, 96. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 534. 
 
 Hazlitt, William, 427. 
 
 Head, Sir Francis, 528. 
 
 Headley, J. T., 539. 
 
 Heber, Reginald, Bishop of Calcutta, 417. 
 
 Helps, Arthur, 511. 
 
 Hemans, Felicia, 417. 
 
 Henry of Huntingdon, 31. 
 
 Henry, Matthew, 251,^ 
 
 Henryson, Robert, 94. 
 
 Herbert, George, 171. 
 
546 
 
 INDEX OP AUTHORS. 
 
 Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, 174. 
 
 Herrick, Robert, 170. 
 
 Herschel, Sir John, 430. 
 
 Hervey, Thomas Kibble, 504. 
 
 Heywood, John, 97. 
 
 Hildreth, Richard, 532. 
 
 Hobbes, Thomas, 174. 
 
 Hodge, Charles, 538. 
 
 Hoffman, Charles, 531. 
 
 Hogg, James, 415. 
 
 Holcroft, Thomas, 4-J1. 
 
 Holmes, Alexander Wendell, 536. 
 
 Home, Henry (Lord Kames), 293. 
 
 Home, John, 352. 
 
 Hood, Thomas, 600. 
 
 Hook, Theodore, 42G. 
 
 Hook, Walter Farquhar, 500. 
 
 Hooker, Richard, 12'J. 
 
 Hope, Thomas, 42<i. 
 
 Home, Richard Henry, 504. 
 
 Home, Thomas Hartwell. f.24. 
 
 Houghton, Lord (K. M. Milnes\, :,.H. 
 
 Hovedon, Roger of, ::i. 
 
 Howard, Henry, Earl of Survey, 90. 
 
 Howell, James, 17.">. 
 
 Hmvitt, WUliam, 512. 
 
 Hughes, Thomas, 518. 
 
 Hume, David, :;_':.. 
 
 Hume, Mary, 504. 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, 417. 
 
 Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 190. 
 
 IXCHBALD, F.LIZAHKTH, 42ii. 
 
 Inglis, Henry David, 4:'.2. 527. 
 Ingulf us, Abbot of Croyland, 30. 
 Innes, Cosmo, 509. 
 Irving, Edward, 431. 
 Irving, Washington, 532. 
 
 J \MI:S I., King of Scotland, <!4. 
 
 James I., King of England. 17:5. 
 
 James, George Payne Rainsford, 513. 
 
 Jameson, Anna, 510. 
 
 Jeffrey, Francis Lord, 428. 
 
 Jerrold, Douglas, 513. 
 
 Jewsbury, Geraldine, 518. 
 
 John of Salisbury, 28. 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 343. 
 
 Jones, Sir William, 419. 
 
 Jonson, Benjamin, 1<;2. 
 
 Joseph of Exeter, 30. 
 
 Jowett, Benjamin, 525. 
 
 " Junius,"357 
 
 KAMES, Lord (Henry Home'. 2i>r.. 
 
 Keats, John, 419. 
 
 Keble, John, 420. 
 
 Kendal, 40. 
 
 Kennedy, John P., 535. 
 
 Kinglake, Alexander AVilliam, 526. 
 
 Kingsley, Charles, 515. 
 
 Kirkland, Mrs., 535. 
 
 Kitto, John, 524. 
 
 Knight, Charles, 508. 
 
 Knowles, Sheridan, 408. 
 
 Knox, John, 100. 
 
 LAINO, MALCOLM, 424. 
 
 Laing, Samuel, 525. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 428. 
 
 Lander, Richard, 432. 
 
 Landon, Letitia Elizabeth, 501. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 428. 
 
 Langtoft, 3!). 
 
 Langton, Stephen, 33. 
 
 Lardner, Dionysius, 521. 
 
 Latimer, Hugh, Bishop of Worcester, 99. 
 
 Layamon, 34. 
 
 Layard, Austen Henry, 520. 
 
 Ledyard, John, 539. 
 
 Lee, Sophia and Harriet, 420. 
 
 Leland, John, 99. 
 
 Lemon, Mark, 505. 
 
 Leslie, Sir John. :.22. 
 
 Lever, Charles, 515. 
 
 Lewes, George Henry, 507. 
 
 Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 509. 
 
 Lewis, Matthew Gregory, 42<i. 
 
 Leyden, John, 420. 
 
 Lingard, John, 422. 
 
 Livingstone, David, 520. 
 
 Locke, John, 243. 
 
 Lockhart, John Gibson, 507. 
 
 Logan, John, 419. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wads worth, 530. 
 
 Longlande, Robert (or William \ 07. 
 
 Lothrop, Amy, 535. 
 
 Lovelace, Richard, 213. 
 
 Lover, Samuel, 518. 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, 531. 
 
 Lydgate, John, 09. 
 
 Lyell, Sir Charles, 521. 
 
 Lyndsay, Sir David, 97. 
 
 Lytton, Sir Edward Bulwer, 514. 
 
 MACAULAY, Lord THOMAS BABixc,TON,4Cl. 
 Macdonald, George, 517. 
 Mackay, Charles, 504. 
 Mackenzie, Henry, 424. 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 422, 522. 
 
INDEX OP AUTHOKS. 
 
 547 
 
 Macleod, Norman, D.D., 525. 
 
 Maclure, Sir Robert, 528. 
 
 Macpkerson, James, 16, 353. 
 
 M'Carthy, Denis Florence, 433, 504. 
 
 M'Clintock, Sir Leopold, 528. 
 
 M'Cosli, James, 522. 
 
 M'Crie, Thomas, D.D., 422. 
 
 M'Culloch, J. Ramsay, 431. 
 
 M'Kenney, James, 532. 
 
 M'Neile, Hugh, 524. 
 
 Maginn, William, 512. 
 
 Malcolm, Sir John, 432. 
 
 Malmesbury, William of, 31. 
 
 Mandeville, Sir John de, 44. 
 
 Mannyng, Robert, 39. 
 
 Mansel, Henry L., 522. 
 
 Mantell, Gideon, 521. 
 
 Mapes (or Map), Walter, 30. 
 
 Marlowe, Christopher, 1C7. 
 
 Marryat, Frederick, 512. 
 
 Marsh, Anne, 518. 
 
 Marston, Westiand, 505. 
 
 Martin, Theodore, 433. 
 
 Martineau, Harriet, 511. 
 
 Martineau, James, 525. 
 
 Marvell, Andrew, 216. 
 
 Mason, William, 352. 
 
 Massey, Gerald, 504. 
 
 Massinger, Philip, 169. 
 
 Masson, David, 508. 
 
 Mather, Cotton, 532. 
 
 Mathews, Henry, 432. 
 
 Maturin, Charles R., 421. 
 
 Maurice, J. Frederick Denison, 525. 
 
 Maury, Matthew F., 537. 
 
 Harwell, William H., 518. 
 
 Mayhew, Henry, 505. 
 
 Merivale, Charles, 509. 
 
 Merlin, 17. 
 
 Mickle, William, 433. 
 
 Mill, James, 423. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 521. 
 
 Miller, Hugh, 520. 
 
 Milman, Henry Hart, 503. 
 
 Milnes, R. Monckton (Lord Houghton), 504. 
 
 Milton, John, 194. 
 
 Minot, Laurence, 67. 
 
 Mitchell, Thomas, 432. 
 
 Mitford, Mary, 420. 
 
 Mitford, William, 424. 
 
 Moir, David Macbeth, 501. 
 
 Monmouth, Geoffrey of, 31. 
 
 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 293. 
 
 Montgomery, James, 415. 
 
 Moore, John, 426. 
 
 Moore, Thomas, 415. 
 More, Hannah, 420. 
 More, Henry, 248. 
 More, Sir Thomas, 78. 
 Morell, J. D., 522. 
 Morgan, Lady, 426, 432. 
 Morier, James, 426, 432. 
 Motherwell, William, 503. 
 Motley, John Lothrop, 532. 
 Muirhead, James, 509. 
 Muloch, Dinah Maria, 516. 
 Murchison, Sir Roderick, 519. 
 Mure, William, 523. 
 
 NAPIER, WILLIAM, 423. 
 Nennius, 17. 
 Newman, Francis, 525. 
 Newman, John Henry, 525. 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 266. 
 Nicoll, Robert, 504. 
 Norton, Caroline, 501. 
 
 OCCLEVE, THOMAS, 69. 
 Oliphant, Laurence, 528. 
 Opie, Amelia, 426. 
 Ormin (or Orm), 34. 
 Osborne, Sherard, 528. 
 Ossian, 16. 
 Otway, Thomas, 247. 
 Ousely, Sir William, 432. 
 Owen, John, 248. 
 Owen, Richard, 521. 
 
 PALEY, WILLIAM, 357. 
 
 Palgrave, Sir Francis, 507. 
 
 Pardoe, Julia, 509. 
 
 Park, Mungo, 432. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 536. 
 
 Parkes, Bessie, 504. 
 
 Parley, Peter (Samuel Goodrich), 535. 
 
 Parnell, Thomas, 290. 
 
 Parry, Sir William Edward, 432. 
 
 Patmore, Coventry, 504. 
 
 Paulding, James Kirke, 535. 
 
 Penn, William, 250. 
 
 Pepys, Samuel, 218. 
 
 Percival, James Gates, 531. 
 
 Percy, Thomas, Bishop of Dromore, 352. 
 
 Philips, Ambrose, 289. 
 
 Philips, John, 247. 
 
 Phillips, Samuel, 512. 
 
 Pierpont, John, 531. 
 
 Pinkerton, John, 424. 
 
 Playfair, John, 522. 
 
 Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, 22. 
 
548 
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, 531. 
 Pollok, Robert, 420. 
 Pope, Alexander, 274. 
 Person, Richard, 431. 
 Porter, Anna, 427. 
 Porter, Jane, 427. 
 Porter, Josias, 528. 
 Porter, Sir Robert Ker, 432. 
 Praed, Winthrop Macworth, 504. 
 Prescott, William Hickling, 531. 
 Prior, Matthew, 247. 
 Procter, Adelaide, 604. 
 Procter, Bryan, 503. 
 Purchas, Samuel, 172. 
 Pusey, Edward, 525. 
 Pynson, Richard, 76. 
 
 QUARLES, FRANCIS, 171. 
 Quincey, Thomas de, 510. 
 
 RADCLIFFE, Ann, 420. 
 Rae, John, 528. 
 Ragg, Thomas, 504. 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 150. 
 Ramsay, Allan, 290. 
 Rawlinson, Sir Henry. ,V24. 
 Ray, John, 217. 
 Reach, Angus Bethune, 518. 
 Reade, Charles, 51& 
 Reade, John Edmund, 504. 
 Reed, Henry, 536. 
 Reid, Captain Mayne, 518. 
 Reid, Thomas, 355. 
 Ricardo, David, 430. 
 Richard I., 33. 
 Richardson. Samuel, 306. 
 Robert of Gloucester, 30. 
 Robertson, William, 320. 
 Robinson, Edward, 538. 
 Roger of Hoveden, 31. 
 Rogers, Henry, 524. 
 Rogers, Samuel, 414. 
 Roscoe, William, 421. 
 Rose, William, 433. 
 Ross, Sir John, 432. 
 Rowe, Nicholas, 280. 
 Ruskin, John, 511. 
 Russell, Lady Rachel, 249. 
 Russell, William Howard, 500. 
 
 SACKVILLE, CHARLES, Earl of Dorset, 24G. 
 Sackville, Thomas, Lord Buckhurst, 132. 
 Sala, George Augustus, 518. 
 Salisbury, John of, 2S. 
 Savage, Richard, 201. 
 
 Schoolcraft, Henry, 539. 
 Scoresby, William, 432. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 309. 
 Scotus, John (Erigena\ 25, 
 Sedgwick, Amy, 535. 
 Sedley, Sir Charles, 246. 
 Selden, John, 174. 
 Shakspere, William, 140. 
 Sheil, Richard Lalor, 505. 
 Shelley, Mary, 427. 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 418. 
 Shenstone, William, 351. 
 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 420. 
 Sherlock, William, 249. 
 Shirley, James, 171. 
 Sidney, Algernon, 216. 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 11(5. 
 Sigourney, Lydia Huntly, 529. 
 Simms, William, 535. 
 Skelton, John, 96. 
 Smedley, Frank, 518. 
 Smiles, Samuel, 509. 
 Smith, Adam, 356. 
 Smith, Albert, 518. 
 Smith, Alexander, 503. 
 Smith, Charlotte, 420. 
 Smith, James, 420. 
 Smith, Sydney, 427. 
 Smith, William, 521. 
 Smollett, Tobias, 316. 
 Somerville, Mary, 520. 
 Sotheby, William, 419. 
 South, Robert, 218. 
 Southey, Caroline, 503. 
 Southey, Robert, 447. 
 Southwell, Robert, 106. 
 Sparks, Jared, 532. 
 Speke, John Hanning, 527 
 Spencer, Herbert, 522. 
 Spencer, Hon. William R., 420. 
 Spenser, Edmund, 120. 
 Sprague, Charles, 531. 
 Sprat, Thomas, 249. 
 Stanhope, Earl, 509. 
 
 Stanhope, Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, 293. 
 Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, 5'2f.. 
 Staunton, Sir George Leonard, 4:5-2. 
 Steele, Sir Richard, 269. 
 Stephens, John Lloyd, 538. 
 Sterling, John, 512. 
 Sterne, Laurence, 355. 
 Stevens, Thaddeus, 532. 
 Stewart, Dugald, 429, 522. 
 Stillingfleet, Edward, Bishop of Worces- 
 ter, 248. 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 549 
 
 Stirling-Maxwell, Sir William, 500. 
 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 534. 
 Strangford, Viscount, 433. 
 Strickland, Agnes, 509. 
 Strype, John, 250. 
 Suckling, Sir John, 172. 
 Sumner, John Bird, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, 524. 
 
 Swain, Charles, 504. 
 Swift, Jonathan, 282. 
 
 TALFOURD, Sir THOMAS Noox, 504. 
 Taliesin, 17. 
 Tannahill, .Robert, 416. 
 Taylor, Bayard, 539. 
 Taylor, Henry, 505. 
 Taylor, Isaac, 523. 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, Bishop of Down, 185. 
 Taylor, Tom, 505. 
 Taylor, William, 433. 
 Temple, Sir William, 217. 
 Tennant, William, 420. 
 Tennent, Sir James Emerson, 527. 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 472. 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 487. 
 Thirl wall, Connop, Bishop of St. David's, 506. 
 Thorn, William, 503. 
 Thomas the Rhymer, 39. 
 Thompson, Eobert Anchor, 525. 
 Thomson, James, 301. 
 Thorpe, T. B., 635. 
 Tickell, Thomas, 290. 
 Ticknor, George, 532. 
 Tighe, Mary, 420. 
 
 Tillotson, John, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, 217. 
 Tooke, Home, 429. 
 
 Trench, R. C., Archbishop of Dublin, 524. 
 Trevisa, John de, 70. 
 Trollope, Frances, 425. 
 Trollope, Anthony, 517. 
 Trollope, Thomas Adolphus, 509. 
 Tuckerman, Henry Theodore, 530. 
 Tulloch, John, 525. 
 Tupper, Martin Farquhar, 504. 
 Turner, Sharon, 424. 
 Tusser, Thomas, 166. 
 Tyndale, William, 84. 
 Tytler, Patrick Fraser, 424. 
 
 UDALL, NICHOLAS, 97. 
 
 Ussher, James, Archbishop of Armagh, 174. 
 
 VANBRUGH, Sir Jolty, 251. 
 Vaughan, Henry, 213. 
 Vaughan, Robert, 508. 
 Vitalis, Ordericus, 31. 
 
 WAGE, Master, 33. 
 
 Waller, Edmund, 212. 
 
 Walpole, Horace, Earl of Orford, 355. 
 
 Walton, Izaak, 175. 
 
 Warburton, Eliot, 527. 
 
 Ward, R. Plumer, 426. 
 
 Wardlaw, Ralph, D.D., 524. 
 
 Ware, William, 535. 
 
 Warner, Miss, 635. 
 
 Warren, Samuel, 515. 
 
 Warton, Joseph, 352. 
 
 Warton, Thomas, 352. 
 
 Waterton, Charles, 528. 
 
 Watts, Alaric Alexander, 504. 
 
 Watts, Isaac, 289. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, 536. 
 
 Webster, Noah, 536. 
 
 Wesley, John, 354. 
 
 Whately, Richard, Archbishop of Dublin, 
 
 519, 522. 
 
 Whewell, William, 520. 
 Whipple, Edwin, 536. 
 White, Gilbert, 356. 
 White, Henry Kirke, 418. 
 White, James, 509. 
 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 531. 
 Wilkes, Charles, 539. 
 William of Malmesbury, 31. 
 
 Williamson, , 532. 
 
 Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 630. 
 
 Wilmot, John, Earl of Rochester, 246. 
 
 Wilson, Alexander, 431. 
 
 Wilson, George, 509. 
 
 Wilson, John, 509. 
 
 Wilson. Thomas, 172. 
 
 Winthrop, John, 532. 
 
 Wiseman, Cardinal, 525. 
 
 Witherspoon, John, 638. 
 
 Wolfe, Charles, 420. 
 
 Woolman, John, 539. 
 
 Worde, Wynkyn de, 76. 
 
 Wordsworth, William. 453. 
 
 Wotton, Sir Henry, 168. 
 
 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 97. 
 
 Wycherley, William, 249. 
 
 Wycliffe, John de, 46. 
 
 Wyntoun, Andrew, 69. 
 
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 I. EXTRACTS FROM LUCIAN ; some of the easier Dialogues 18 pp. 
 
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 Book XXIV. Priam begging Hector's dead body from Achilles 20C 
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 V. A SYNOPSIS OF SYNTAX 40 pp. 
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