/'^!t (Ifornell Uniueraitg Siihrarg itiiata. S?sm fork FROM THE BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY COLLECTED BY BENNO LOEWY 1854-1919 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERStTY _ Cornell University Library PR 5584. W23 1890 In Tennyson land, being a brief account o 3 1924 013 560 713 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013560713 IN TENNYSON LAND. (^ IN TENNYSON LAND BEING A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE HOME AND EARLY SURROUNDINGS OF THE POET LAUREATE AND AN ATTEMPT TO IDENTIFY THE SCENES AND TRACE THE INFLUENCES OF LINCOLNSHIRE IN HIS WORKS JOHN CUMING WALTERS Cotne forth, I charge thee, arise^ Thou of the Tnany tongues, the myriad eyes ! CojnefrofK the woods thai belt the gray hillside. The seven elms f the poplars four That stand beside -my father's door. O ! hither lead thy feet ! Ode to Memory. The poet hath the child^s sight in his breast, And sees all new. What oftenest he has viewed He vievjs with the first glory. Mrs. Browning. ^WITH T"WELVE PLATKS. LONDON GEORGE REDWAY 1890 PREFACE. The object of this little volume is, I hope, clear ; and it will be attained if, while interesting a few in " Tennyson Land," it excites a deeper interest in the poet's work. To myself it is a memento of an enjoyable holiday, and of the forming of new ties of friendship among those whose pride it is to dwell in the poet's land and to assist in any effort, however humble, to arrive at a true understanding of his poems. My thanks are due to many such. Mr. C. J. Caswell, of Horncastle, has provided me with photo- graphs, by means of which this volume is illustrated ; the Rev. W. W. Hopwood, head-master of Louth Grammar School, Mr. C. M. Nesbitt, Mr. J. William Wilson, and Mr. Wilson C. Forman, of Louth, have individually sup- plied me with facts of interest, and allowed me to examine documents in their private possession. Mr. Clarence James, also of Louth, kindly permitted me to make use of his picture of Somersby Brook ; while Mr. Wilson gave me the privilege of utilising his sketch of Louth Grammar School as it appeared fifty years ago. It will be observed that I have, as often as possible, given descriptions of scenery and made allusions to persons and customs in the poet's own words. The reason will be obvious. October, 1889. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE poet's palette. Tennyson as an artist — Specimen pictures — His range of style — Love of England — An early effort — The pleasures of memory i — 8 CHAPTER II. CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. Tennyson's allusions to cathedrals — General aspect of Lincolnshire — A night view — "The Dying Swan" — "The Gardener's Daughter" — Locksley Hall : where is it?— "Sixty Years After"— "The May Queen"— "The Lord of Burleigh " — " The Northern Farmer " and other dialect poems — Lincolnshire types of character — Country sounds and sights ... 9 — 31 CHAPTER III. AT LOUTH — TENNYSON'S SCHOOL-DAYS — THE " POEMS BY TWO BROTHERS." Tennyson's grand-parents— Louth Vicarage — The poet's boyhood — School- life — His brothers — Publication of " Poems by Two Brothers " — A peep at the original manuscript — Tennyson's remuneration . .^ ... 32 — 46 CHAPTER IV. ON THE WAY TO SOMERSBY. Lincolnshire lanes— How poems are suggested — Familiar sights — In the' poet's land — Lincolnshire and the seasons 47 — 54 CHAPTER V. AT SOMERSBY. Situation and character of the hamlet — Arthur Hallam's visits — The Rectory and the lawn — Date of the poet's birth and baptism — Mrs. Tennyson — "The owd Doctor" — Mournful reminiscences — The Moated Grange — St. Margaret's Church — " The quiet sense of something lost " ... 55 — 69 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. THE BROOK. The voice of the brook— Its course traced— Katie Willows—" The Miller's Daughter "— " Maud " — The poet's affection for the brook . . . 70—77 CHAPTER VII. SOMEKSBY REVISITED : HOLYWELL GLEN. The nature of the Glen— " The Lover's Tale "—Scene of "Maud"— Influence of the woods upon the poet's mind 78—84 CHAPTER VIII. AT MABLETHORPE : TENNYSON'S SEA-PICTURES. Tennyson's holiday haunt — " The Lover's Bay " — Descriptions of the sea — A disillusion 85 — 90 CHAPTER IX. THE LOVE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. Tennyson's sympathetic touch with nature — Miss Jean Ingelow's poems — C harles Dickens and Lincolnshire — Conclusion 91 — 1 03 APPENDIX. POEMS RELATING TO LINCOLNSHIRE AND LINCOLNSHIRE CHARACTER. 104 — 105 Index 107 — 108 IN TENNYSON LAND. CHAPTER I. THE poet's palette. To thee the laurel leaves belong, To thee our love and our allegiance, For thy allegiance to the poet's art. Longfellow' s " Wapentake" It has been well said that the impression left on the mind of the reader of Tennyson's poems is, that he has been looking at a gallery of pictures. The luxuriousness of description and the truth of minute detail at once excite the imagination and satisfy the sense. The reader is transported into a poet's dreamland, where Far-renownbd brides of ancient song People the hollow dark, like burning stars ; where noble knights and mighty heroes are gathered ; and where, as in the dreamy " Recollections of the Arabian Nights," there comes the momentary apparition of sylphide forms, with the quick transition of varied lights, and the fall and fading of arabesque shades upon a phantom background of romance. Lord Tennyson is pre-eminently an artist, and whether he speak of convent roofs whereon the deep snow sparkles to the moon, of streams which B 2 THE POET'S PALETTE. seem a downward smoke slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, of the dark blue sphere overhead distinct with vivid stars inlaid, of silvery gossamers that twinkle into green and gold, or of any of the thousand excellencies and varieties of nature, his touch is always true, and he paints the scene in brightest, purest colours, and presents it, all-glowing and all-perfect, to the eye. The richness of his pictures is tempered by their chasteness and delicacy. They are too dainty to dazzle, and " made so fairily well " that their splendour steals upon us rather than strikes with blinding flashes. Just as the thin subtile lotos-music of the songs haunts the memory, so the rare beauty of the pictures ever yields delight in contemplation. And Lord Tennyson not only robes truth in radiant garments, but to fancy he gives a mystic, shadowy glory, tinged at times with awe. Poetry such as he has written is living art. It vivifies thought and imagination. It lifts a curtain, and we perceive, — though from afar, — pictures with dream-like hues, suffused with gold, or slumbering in soft mysterious beauty, or shining with starry light, or subdued by long, dim shadows. Thus the poet, with his soft syllables, spreads before us the matchless panorama upon which his eyes have gazed, and " gives to forms and images a breath and everlasting motion." He casts a glamour over most that he touches ; he weaves a charm around a homespun theme, and finds a glittering vesture for an antique form. Tennyson can give us a picture in crystal, like " Requiescat," or in flame, like " Fatima." Sometimes we only catch a glimpse, through a gossamer-veil, of wonder and rarity, — How faintly-flush'd, how phantom-fair. Was Monte Rosa, hanging there A thousand shadowy-pencill'd valleys And snowy dells in a golden air. Or, perhaps, through the " silver-misty morn " there are only fragments showing in the light : — THE POET'S PALETTE. 3 At times the summit of the high city flash'd ; At times the spires and turrets half-way down Prick'd thro' the mist. But oft-times the revelation is clear and complete, and we behold every swell and dimple, every change and quiver, and feel the influence of all. Even the thread-like lines are traced with exquisite minuteness. What can be more subtle than the description of evening in one of the English idyls? — We rose And saunter'd home beneath a moon, that, just In crescent, dimly rain'd about the leaf Twilights of airy silver, till we reach'd The limit of the hills ; and as we sank From rock to rock upon the glooming quay The town was hush'd beneath us : lower down The bay was oily calm ; the harbour-buoy. Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm, With one green sparkle ever and anon Dipt by itself, and we were glad at heart. But if this is limned by the artist, does not what fol- lows appear to be hewn by the statuary ? I quote from " Geraint and Enid ": — He looked and saw that all was ruinous. Here stood a shatter'd 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 gray walls with hairy-fibred arms. And suck'd the joining of the stones, and look'd A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove. The two pieces well exemplify Tennyson's range of style. Nothing is too small, nothing is too great, for his canvas. B 2 4 THE POET'S PALETTE. He can paint the heart of the snowdrop, with its pure lines of green streaking the white of the inner leaves, and the lordly pleasure-house, with its deep-set windows, stained and traced, its ranged ramparts, and its sounding corridors. The Laureate of the Victorian era is a poet of transcendant power, whose productions have an Homeric breadth and grandeur that have never before been attained by an English writer, and whose majestic utterance of royal truths is surpassed only by the lofty rhetoric of Shakespeare and Milton. Above all, he is entirely our own, English and English-loving. He delights to wander along English lanes and across the meadowland and moors ; he loves the hedgerows and the rivers, the woods of pine and larch, the lakes and pools where water-lilies start and slide, the gardens where lilacs bloom and " momently the twinkling laurel scatters silver lights," the brooks, the sea, the sands, and the men : — English natures, freemen, friends, Thy brothers and immortal souls. He has made us English songs, told us English stories, and found us English heroes ; he has shaped our country's legends and traditions into glorious idyls luminous with golden meaning and ringing with valiant thought. The style is English too, because it is his own, and its force, its concentrated strength, its compactness and vigour, con- tribute to the merit which that style possesses. His simple phrases are bright with thought, and a wealth of imagery lies jewel-like in the casket of choicest words. And here we see the triumph of poetry over art. Art portrays beauty, but poetry has its vistas of glory, its vastness of view, its resources of suggestion. Art has its abiding reality, poetry its attendant dreams ; the one is for the contemplation of the mind, the other for its expansion. The poet has more domains than one under his dominion ; art and music are tributary to him. The THE POET'S PALETTE. 5 most casual reader of Tennyson's works at once recog- nises how this may be. For the pictures he fashions sway in a wind of melody, and the scenery is unveiled while a symphony of rhymes flows on. It cannot be claimed for Lord Tennyson that he is an interpreter : he observes, and he chronicles ; he does not explain. His poems' are an exhibition : we behold and learn. His symbols are never hard to understand. For us, as for him, the stream runs with an inner voice ; the mellow preludes of the winds breathe of freedom ; the dark woods whisper of despair. The lad of five, who exclaimed, " I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind," had a mind of receptivity and percipience ; external circumstances stirred it as a wind stirs water. How quickly his power grew, and how quickly the boy seized upon the fleeting thoughts borne forward by the instruments of nature, we can dis- cover by referring to a little poem in " The Poems by Two Brothers," when that same voice in the wind had been heard with more distinctness. Methinks, upon your moaning course I hear the army of the dead ; Each on his own invisible horse, Triumphing in his trackless tread. For when the moon conceals her ray, And midnight spreads her darkest veil, Borne on the air, and far away, Upon the eddying blasts they sail. Then, with their thin and feeble bands Along the echoing winds are roll'd ; The bodiless tribes of other lands ! The formless, misty sons of old ! These boyish verses (which I take to be the Laureate's) reveal how the surroundings of his early life were forming the nature of the poet. The same influences afterwards 6 THE POET'S PALETTE. produced " Oriana " and " Locksley Hall "; later still they produced " Enoch Arden " and " Maud." The winds, the waves, and the woods are always in Tennyson's poems. He seldom gives us a house, or a chamber, or a court ; or if he does, the house overlooks the sea, or the beat of the waves is heard close by, or the wood (with the streamlet passing through it) lies adjacent. However varied, how- ever mixed with fancied forms and foreign images, the scenes belong to the poet's home, and these sounds are the echo of what he heard in his youth. First emotions are life-emotions ; however the current flows the source is the same. The poet is the product of his land and his time. The associations of youth enter into his composi- tion, tinge his thought, and mould his mind. Every man's work has its complexion, and that of Tennyson's poems is a Lincolnshire complexion. The home of childhood is the soil in which genius strikes root and puts forth blossoms ; transplant it where you will, you cannot change the tint of the flowers. IVlemories are a warm and genial summer-tide which favours the efflorescence of fancy ; and as the heliotrope turns to the sun and expands under his rays, so the mind turns to the consecrated place where her first petals unfolded. The poet steals fire from " the fountains of the past" to glorify the present, and finds delight in remembering — The peerless flowers which in the rudest wind Never grow sere. When rooted in the garden of the mind. Because they are the earliest of the year. There is a charm about the places where the poet's capacity was first exercised, where thought articulated into speech, where speech gushed into poetry. Ruskin has said that Turner's drawing of hills, even when he had to repre- sent the stupendous masses of the Alps, was to the last influenced by the forms of hill he learned to draw in THE POET'S PALETTE. 7 YorksHire in his youth. And what is Tennyson's admis- sion ?— Well hast thou done, great artist Memory, In setting round thy first experiment With royal frame-work of wrought gold ; Needs must thou dearly love thy first essay, And foremost in thy .various gallery Place it, where sweetest sunlight falls Upon the storied walls ; For the discovery And newness of thine art so pleased thee, That all which thou hast drawn of fairest Or boldest since, but lightly weighs With thee unto the love thou bearest The first-born of thy genius. Artist-like Ever retiring thou dost gaze On the prime labour of thine early days. Upon w^hatever the poet has seen and loved he sets the royal signet of his muse. We can read Tennyson's poems, and follows him vs^herever he has been. The low dunes of Lincolnshire, the happy valleys of Kent — " half in light, and half far shadowring from the west," — the crags of Corn- wall water-lapped, Tintagil, — " half in sea, and high on land, a crown of towers," — the valley of Cauteretz, where the stream flashes white, the Isle of Wight, where " the hoary channel tumbles a billow on chalk and sand," Milan, with its "giant windows' blazon'd fires" — all these have their memorial in stanza and rhyme. But it is homeward that the poet oftenest turns his eyes, and, like Enid, "lets his fancy flit across the past, and roam the goodly places that he knew." He does so as if half- yearningly ; as if, too, so powerful a fascination held him, that even in his most trans- ported moments, the visions of Lincolnshire sixty or seventy years ago rose before him. Far off in his southern home the poet hears the Norland winds pipe down the sea, or looks athwart the glooming flats like lone Mariana, or sees a tract of sand, — 8 THE POET'S PALETTE. And some one pacing there alone, Who paced for ever in a glimmering land, Lit with a low large moon. His fancy flies to the dreary moorland and the barren shore, to the beach whereabout he wandered nourishing a youth sublime, to the witch-elms and towering sycamores of quiet Somersby, to the land of becks, and knolls, and ridged wolds. Thither let us accompany him with his words to guide us identifying as far as possible those places he has known, those scenes he has depicted, and those haunts he loved, and discovering the visible links to the home of his youth that he has strengthened by connexion with his imperishable verse. Poetry is the perfect registry of truth. And it is more. It is the mysterious deep upon whose surface the face of nature is reflected, and in whose unfathomed bed pearls of thought and fancy lie. We can only strive to see what Nature showed, and with what she endowed the Laureate when, a boy, he wandered about the Lincolnshire lanes, through the Lincolnshire woods, and over the long dun wolds, whence he could catch a glimpse of " crowded farms and lessening towers," and the distant heaving sea. CHAPTER II. CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. Thou comest not with shows of flaunting vines Unto mine inner eye, Divinest Memory ! Thou wert not nursed by the waterfall Which ever sounds and shines A pillar of white light upon the wall Of purple cliffs, aloof descried. Ode to Memory. It was a bright rosy noon in early Autumn when I entered the straggling ancient city of Lincoln. The rays of the setting sun fell redly upon the triple-towered cathe- dral, enthroned upon a hill and overlooking the long narrow streets and dwarfish houses. An hour or two later, while the west was full of purple flakes, a mellow light reflected upon the majestic fane, gave it an almost aerial appearance, and called to mind the towers of Ilion, which rose like a mist while Apollo sang. Those who understand the delicacy of proportion and have seen — say at Milan — how symmetry triumphs over bulk, will not deem this simile extravagant. Lincoln cathedral was in all likelihood the first structure of note that Tennyson saw. At all events he became early impressed with the thought of its grandeur, its vastness, its wonders, and its mysteries. It was probably he who wrote those lines in " The Poems by Two Brothers," which give expression to the intense desire of one whose fancy has been fired and whose amazement has been stirred by the scene. lo CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. Give me to wander at midnight alone, Through some august cathedral, where, from high. The cold clear moon on the mosaic stone Comes glancing in gay colours gloriously, Through windows rich with glorious blazonry, Gilding the niches dim, where, side by side, Stand antique mitred prelates, whose bones lie Beneath the pavement, where their deeds of pride Were graven, but long since are worn away By constant feet of ages day by day. Those who are intimate with the Laureate's writings will scarcely need reminding of how the feeling of reverence and awe for such temples is again and again displayed. The " minster towers " and the " windy clanging of the minster clock " are alluded to in " The Gardener's Daughter " ; and in " A Dream of Fair Women" the emotion occasioned by the apparition of beautiful heroines is explained in an admirable image, which again recalls the holy place : — As one that museth where broad sunshine laves The lawn by some cathedral, thro' the door Hearing the holy organ rolling waves Of sound on roof and floor Within, and anthem sung, is charm'd and tied To where he stands, — so stood I. This was the realisation of the poet's youthful wish to hear — Wild heavenly voices sounding from the choir And more than mortal music, and enables us to guess not only at the authorship of the earlier poem, but also to trace the duration of the poet's sensibility to an early influence. There is a settled prejudice that Lincolnshire, with its low dunes, shallow streams, and glooming flats, is a dreary county — A flat malarian land of reed and rush, CHAR A CTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 1 1 where north winds sweep and an angry sea drives far inland, and where morning ever steps with " misty feet " and evening follows with "sallow-rifted glooms." It is well that the visitor should be prepared for the dark marsh- land ; yet to him, as to the lover Julian, Lincolnshire should be — A land of promise, a land of memory, A land of promise flowing with the milk And honey of delicious memories ; a land, too, that has been redeemed, and is no longer the waste uninteresting swamp it was. Those who say it is a flat and prosaic county, — a region of vast grassy plains and tangled watercourses, with only a few willow, ash, and poplar trees to relieve the level expanse, — know nothing of the ridged wolds and broken cliffs of the Uplands, and even mistake the character and aspect of the marshes in the Lowlands. A sombre land it is truly when low- drooping clouds "make a chequered work of beam and shade across the hills," or when night trails her shadows across the far-extending fields ; a dreary land, too, when the year is dying, and — A blanket wraps the day, When the rotten woodland drips. And the leaf is stamp'd in clay ; still drearier when the frosty fingers of Winter strip the trees, and the air builds up everywhere an " under-roof of doleful gray." But not a wilderness assuredly. There is a certain luxuriance about the marsh-land which redeems it from utter desolateness, and in many parts it is inviting. Here it is that ash and larch and lime and chestnut and sycamore flourish ; here are " heath and hill and hollow lined and wooded to the lips"; here, at sundown, " faint, rainy lights are seen moving in the leavy beech " ; here in Spring, — 12 CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. The sappy field and wood Grow green beneath the showery gray, And rugged barks begin to bud, And thro' damp holts new-flush'd with may, Ring sudden scritches of the jay ; and in Summer the elms display " their broad-curved branches, fledged with deepest green, new from its silken sheath." The flat land is not a waste, nor is the quiet landscape without interest. What it was not so very long ago we learn from the words of the dying Northern Farmer : — Theer warn't not feead for a cow ; Nowt at all but bracken an' fuzz, an' loook at it now — Warnt worth nowt a haacre, an' now theer's lots o' feead, Fourscoor yows upon it an' some on it doon i' seead. In its Autumn livery of green and gold, with specks of red here and there, the country presents by day a scene of subdued beauty, which by night becomes weird and mourn- ful. Then, indeed, the moorland is drear and dark ; the wind rides over the wolds and dunes ; the trees sigh and shake their spectral arms. It was under these conditions that the boy-poet most loved to view the country. He took long walks at midnight where " dark valleys wind forlorn," and when the sough of the reeds made fantastic music in his ears. The night, with its wild cries and strange shapes, with its mysterious revelations and its still more wondrous veil, kindled the flame of imagination and strengthened the poetic impulse. Here is a picture, almost Dantesque in its gloom, which (allowing for an exuberant fancy) may be taken as a fair description of Lincolnshire by night : — • 'Tis midnight o'er the dim mere's lonely bosom, Dark, dusky, windy midnight : swift are driven The swelling vapours onward : every blossom Bathes its bright petals in the tears of heaven. CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 13 Imperfect, half-seen objects meet the sight, The other half our fancy must portray ; A wan, dull, lengthened sheet of swimming light Lies the broad lake : the moon conceals her ra)', Sketch'd faintly by a pale and lurid gleam Shot thro' the glimmering clouds : the lovely planet Is shrouded in obscurity ; the scream Of owl is silenced ; and the rocks of granite Rise tall and drearily, while damp and dank Hang the thick willows on the reedy bank. Beneath, the gurgling eddies slowly creep. Blacken' d by foliage ; and the glutting wave. That saps eternally the cold gray steep. Sounds heavily within the hollow cave. There is not a touch of colour anywhere to relieve the darkness which is almos.t horrible in its intensity. Such scenes must have had a saddening eiTect upon the sensitive mind of the poet, and the despondent tone that can be detected so often in his works is doubtless to be directly attributed to these influences. Shadows lying upon the mind in youth exclude some part of the sunshine that nature heeds if it is ever to be bright. The flower that is early chilled no warmth of after-time can fully expand, and the spirit nursed in gloom will never quite open to the light. This has made Tennyson essentially a poet of sadness and sympathy ; a strain of pessimism also mingles with his sorrow. Only a dweller in East Anglia would have given us that simile of " poor Fancy," — Sadder than a single star That sets at twilight in a land of reeds. How often the boy, the man, must have felt the pathos of that picture before the power came upon him to turn it into imagery. We can fancy the poet alone in some shadow-haunted lane when day is waning in the arms of night, gazing upward at the darkling sky, seeing a single star glistening in that dark expanse, and feeling — how pas- 14 CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. sionately ! — that nature revealed nothing more melancholy to the human eye in all her array of tremulous night- pictures. Happily, we get another and a brighter view in a later poem, when the watcher sees — The white and glittering star of morn Part from a cloud of snow, and by and by Slip into golden cloud. But, as a rule, Tennyson describes the sad view of nature. He lived where it was common to see — The tearful glimmer of the languid dawn On those long, rank, dark wood-walks drench'd in dew Leading from lawn to lawn ; where he would often watch the slow process of decay as the yellow woods waned, or as the beech " gathers brown '' and the maple " burns itself away." Saddest of all is that cold, cloudy picture of Lincolnshire presented with such detail in the poem of " The Dying Swan." The plain was grassy, wild and bare, Wide, wild, and open to the air. Which had built up everywhere An under-roof of doleful gray. With an inner voice the river ran, Adown it floated a dying swan. And loudly did lament. It was the middle of the day. Ever the weary wind went on, And took the reed-tops as it went. This is a wonderfully truthful sketch, and I shall not forget how the minor music of the lines recurred to me as I wandered down the road leading to Somersby one morning, when the sky was full of rain-clouds, when a dull vapour enshrouded the distant hills, and the weary wind fitfully coming across the fields, — Took the reed-tops as it went. CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. iS The lines could only have been written by one who had seen the rushes shiver, heard the complaining voice of the river, and seen the plain lying sunless and bare. In " The Dying Swan " we get a mixture of imageries, but Lin- colnshire supplies most of the figures in the scene — One willow over the river wept, And shook the wave as the wind did sigh ; Above in the wind was the swallow, Chasing itself at its own wild will, And far thro' the marish green and still The tangled water-courses slept. Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow. Then the " awful jubilant voice " of the swan rises like the acclamation of a mighty people, and fills the whole place with " a music strange and manifold," — The creeping mosses and clambering weeds. And the willow-branches hoar and dank, And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds, And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank, And the silvery marish-flowers that throng The desolate creeks and pools among. Were flooded over with eddying song. This marvellous accumulation of effects is drawn en- tirely from the stores of nature, and adapted, as only the true poet could adapt what was familiar to him, to give intense realism to the poem. The theme is mournful, the scene is gloomy ; and who knows but that the actual sight of the latter suggested the subject and tone of the former ? There is almost a companion picture to " The Dying Swan " to be found in that " Song," wherein a typical Lincolnshire garden is described. Here we find every- thing in course of decay. The bowers are " yellowing," the flowers are mouldering, and their long stalks are bowed — The air is damp, and hush'd, and close. As a sick man's room when he taketh repose An hour before death ; 1 6 CHARACTERISTICS OF IINCOLNSHIRE. the leaves are rotting ; the roses emit a faint dying per- fume ; and a spirit haunting the bowers is heard to sob and sigh and talk. Then comes the mournful refrain, — Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly ; Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. Seldom as Tennyson has turned his eyes on the sunny side of Lincolnshire, there are times when he appears to revel in describing its beauty and recalling its triumphs. First we get that wonderful view of its aspect in the utter quietude of morning : Calm and deep peace on this high wold, And on these dews that drench the furze, And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold : Calm and still Hght on yon great plain That sweeps with all its autumn bowers. And crowded farms and lessening towers. To mingle with the bounding main. Then we behold the same scene storm-swept : the night is come, and is full of sublime terror, — The winds begin to rise And roar from yonder dropping day ; The last red leaf is whirl'd away. The rooks are blown about the skies ; The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd, The cattle huddled on the lea ; And wildly dash'd on tower and tree The sunbeam strikes along the world. We see it all as vividly as the poet once in a " less than momentary thunder-sketch " found revealed to him all the awful grandeur of a storm among the Welsh hills. But after all, the brightest, sweetest picture of Lincolnshire is CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 17 painted in that sumptuous idyl, " The Gardener's Daughter." In the poet's own words it may be described Hke the ideal that Eustace the artist sought : — A certain miracle of symmetry, A miniature of loveliness, all grace Summ'd up' and closed in little. The colouring is fresh and pure and bountiful, and reveals the summer aspect of the land seen not only by the poet but the lover. To the Laureate's description we can only apply his own words again, — "'Tis not your work, but Love's .... a more ideal Artist he than all." The locality is the vale of the Witham. The very words that frame the scene appear to sparkle with a pearly brightness of their own : — Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love. News from the humming city comes to it In sound of funeral or of marriage bells ; And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear The windy clanging of the minster clock ; Although between it and the garden lies A league of grass, wash'd by a slow broad stream, That, stirr'd with languid pulses of the oar, Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on. Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge Crown'd with the minster-towers. The fields between Are dewy fresh, browsed by deep-udder'd kine. And all about the large lime feathers low. The lime a summer home of murmurous wings. All the land in flowery squares. Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind. Smelt of the coming summer, as one large cloud Drew downward : but all else of heaven was pure Up to the Sun. The steer forgot to graze, And, where the hedge-row cuts the pathway, stood, C 1 8 CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. Leaning his horns into the neighbour field, And lowing to his fellows. Ere an hour had pass'd, We reach'd a meadow slanting to the North ; Down which a well-worn pathway courted us To one green wicket in a privet hedge ; This, yielding, gave into a grassy walk Thro' crowded lilac-ambush trimly pruned. The garden stretches southward. In the midst A cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade. The garden-glasses shone, and momently The twinkling laurel scatter'd silver lights. Over many a range Of waning lime the gray cathedral towers, Across a hazy glimmer of the west, Reveal'd their shining windows. Such is the picture, a vignette of poesy : every gossa- mer-line traced, every delicacy of colour caught ; the image in all its purity and perfection purely and per- fectly reflected. Might we not say of the artist as he, in his poet-capacity, said of " imperial Eleanore ~" ? — The oriental fairy brought. At the moment of thy birth, From old well-heads of haunted rills, And the hearts of purple hills. And shadow'd coves on a sunny shore, The choicest wealth of all the earth. For though Tennyson's touch is so true, he seems at times to find nature itself scarcely bright enough, and he adds a hue, a gloss, that can only be found in romance. Who is it that does not emerge with " dazed vision " from the contemplation of Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold and the pavilion of the Caliphat ? It is the same with the vale of Ida, and with the land " in which it seemed always after- noon." He loves to give the real a look of enchantment, CHARACTERISTICS OF IINCOLNSHIRE. 19 and to let the ray of fancy play about the image of truth. Yet, wheij a simple outline is required, how sharply and how firmly Tennyson limns it ! Here is the plain, precise picture of Audley Court and the approach to it : — By many a sweep Of meadow smooth from aftermath we reach'd The griffin-guarded gates, and pass'd thro' all The pillar'd dusk of sounding sycamores, And crossed the garden to the gardener's lodge. With all its casements bedded, and its walls And chimneys muffled in the leafy vine. Audley Court could not escape recognition with this de- scription before us. Would that the pen-photograph of " Locksley Hall " were but half as clear, and the doubts as to where and what that Hall is would be speedily set at rest. It is by means of this poem that Tennyson makes many friends and finds many readers. Yet it is the poem that deludes us most, for we have to learn that the poet knew no Cousin Amy, that his passion was simu- lated, and that probably there was never a Locksley Hall. In the two poems— "Locksley Hall" and " Sixty Years After'' — a very vague and incomplete outline sketch of the Hall is given, and there is only the slightest clue to the identity of the particular place, if any, to which the poet refers : — Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call. Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall ; Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts. And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts. Then follows the reference to an " ivied casement," and the propinquity of the beach is impressed upon us in more than one succeeding verse ; but that is all. In " Sixty Years After" the following touches are added to the picture : — C 2 20 CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. In the hall there hangs a painting — Amy's arms about my neck — Happy children in a sunbeam sitting on the ribs of wreck. Yonder, in that chapel, slowly sinking now into the ground, Lies the warrior, my forefather, with his feet upon the hound. Cross'd ! for once he sail'd the sea to crush the Moslem in his pride ; Dead the warrior, dead his glory, dead the cause in which he died. Yet how often I and Amy in the mouldering aisle have stood. Gazing for one pensive moment on that founder of our blood. There again I stood to-day, and where of old we knelt in prayer. Close beneath the casement crimson with the shield of Locksley — there. All in white Italian marble, looking still as if she smiled. Lies my Amy . .... In this gap between the sandhills, whence you see the Locksley tower, Here is Locksley Hall, my grandson, here the lion-guarded gate. Yonder lies our young sea-village — Art and Grace are less and less : Science grows and Beauty dwindles — roofs of slated hideousness ! There is one old hostel left us where they swing the Locksley shield, . That casement where the trailer mantles all the mouldering bricks — It will be seen from these extracts that the picture is much clearer and the colouring more elaborate than in " Locksley Hall." But still the description lacks particu- larity. Between the publication of " Locksley Hall" and the sequel, Lord Tennyson had formally denied the cor- poreity of " Cousin Amy." Is it then likely that in the second poem he would associate non-entity, on the one hand, with a reality on the other hand ? I think not. CHAR A CTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 2 1 The " lion-guarded gate " is a clue, but in " Lady Clara Vere de Vere " a like detail is mentioned, which goes to prove that instead of a particular place the poet only had a particular item in his mind. " The lion oh [the] old stone gates " may be seen at Scrivelsby Court. Another clue, slightly more important, is to be found in the al- lusion to "the warrior, my forefather, with his feet upon the hound, cross'd." This figure may be seen in Harring- ton Church, but like figures may be seen, too, at Spilsby and Halton Holegate in the vicinity. Langton Hall, the home of the Langtons for some generations, is in the position described in " Locksley Hall," but otherwise scarcely corresponds with the description. The Locks- leys, we learn from the poem, were " lords and masters " in their part, and in this respect they resemble the Lang- tons ; but perhaps it would be considered too much like Fluellen's famous comparison of Monmouth and Mace- donia were I to go a point further and say that there is just a little resemblance between the names Langton and Locksley. The claim of the mansion at Saltfleet to be the original Locksley Hall may be dismissed without a word ; but the old hall at North Somercotes appears to have supplied at least one detail for the poet's picture. On the authority of the late Rev. Dr. Wood, Tennyson is said to have actually written part of the poem in its ivied casement — the ivied casement he apostrophised — • Mfiny a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the west. I am indebted to a correspondent for the suggestion that, if this be so, the chapel slowly sinking in the ground may well be near Bayons Manor (Tealby), which is nearly due west from Somercotes, and the hills there, though seventeen miles distant, would be visible over the flat marshland. 22 CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. It will be seen, however, that the subject invites much speculation, and unless later researches prove more suc- cessful than those in the past, the only possible conclusion at which we can arrive is, that the poet's picture was drawn with no regard for absolute fidelity to any one of these models, and that he combined several distinct impressions in the preparation of the complete scene. The picture of the old hall at Langton which accompanies these lines, is not without interest apart from this particular subject. Forty-five years ago the building that Tennyson must often have seen was destroyed by fire, and a new hall, dating from 1866-7, "ow stands on the site. Dr. Johnson visited his friend Bennet Langton in the Hall " that is no more." There are many who will be glad of the opportunity of tracing what resemblance the old Hall bore to the house on the moors which the passionate lover would fain have seen stricken with the fury of the storm : — Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt, Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt. Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain, or hail, or fire, or snow; For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go. That Locksley Hall is in Lincolnshire the internal evidence of the two poems abundantly proves. The " sandy tracts," the " hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts," the " dreary moorland " and the " barren shore," are local touches that cannot be misconceived. Then the man who " drain'd the fen " must have laboured in the east counties ; and who that has travelled in East Anglia is not familiar with the old church sinking into the ground .'' In some places, near the coast, only a sturdy spire, or, more likely, a square tower, marks the spot where once, per- chance, were house and tree and field. We find the thought that constantly rises in, or is enforced upon, the mind of the wanderer in Lincolnshire in those impressive lines in " In Memoriam " : — CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 23 There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen ! There where the long street roars, hath been The stillness of the central sea. The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands ; They melt Uke mist, the soUd lands. Like clouds they shape themselves and go. It may be added here that " Locksley Hall," — which, unlike most of the Laureate's poems, has escaped revision and appears now, with the exception of a verbal alteration or two, just as it was originally printed, — was the result of six weeks' continuous labour. But although it was so often cast into the mould, it bears very little evidence of being an artificial production. The sorrow and bitterness, the scorn and passion, burst tumultuously from a heart that is mad with suffering and despair, and the final calm and resolution follow in perfect sequence as the violence spends itself in these fierce blusterings and frenzied out- cries. It was prophesied by Dr. A. H. Japp that the day would come when, if the poet " ever again wrote on a kindred theme, it would test at once his insight and fuller experience whether he would conduct his hero to a more worthy goal." " Sixty Years After " is less a palinode than a development of " Locksley Hall." It fittingly completes the earlier poem. The harmony is unbroken, for the coda catches up the notes of the olden theme and continues it anew, so that the two pieces form one rich complete diapason in which is expressed purity of purpose united with passionate hope and yearning. " Locksley Hall " will always be read, because it is so thoroughly human in sen- timent and emotion. The hero secures sympathy and compassion in spite of his fury and false reasoning, his dogmatism, and his headstrong deeds. As a piece of declamation, what is to be compared with it t But the sequel is still better. In the serenity and wisdom of age 24 CHARACTERISTICS OF IINCOINSHIRE, the poet sees his danger and repents his rashness. The old man disowns the young ; he remodels his philosophy and is reconciled to fate. The two poems are a noble work, and have a perennial interest and attraction. One of the most Lincolnshire pieces, a true product of the soil, is that lovely home-spun drama," The May Queen." The allusions there cannot be mistaken ; the very flowers declare to what part of the country the poem belongs : — The honeysuckle round the porch has wov'n its wavy bowers, And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet, cuckoo-flowers; And the wild marsh-marigold shines like fire in swamps and hollows gray, And I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May. All the valley, mother, 'ill be fresh and green and still, And the cowslip and the crowfoot are over all the hill. And the rivulet in the flowery dale 'ill merrily dance and play, For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May. In Part Two there are signs that the May Queen may not have lived far from the poet's own home.* Here we get a view of the land as seen from the highway leading to Somersby : — The building rook 'ill caw from the windy tall elm-tree, And the tufted plover pipe along the fallow lea. When the flowers come again, mother, beneath the waning light. You'll never see me more in the long gray fields at night ; When from the dry dark wold the summer airs blow cool On the oat-grass and the sword-grass, and the bulrush in the pool. In dealing with the local tradition of the wooing of the Lord of Burleigh, the poet has not taken advantage to any great extent of the opportunity of sketching the scenery round about " Burleigh-house by Stamford-town." That is * Maypole dancing took place at Horncastle up to fifty years ago. CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 25 a thoroughly characteristic scene, however, of which a passing glimpse is afforded : — They by parks and lodges going See the lordly castles stand : Summer woods about them blowing Made a murmur in the land. And, again, — Parks with oak and chestnut shady, Parks and order'd gardens great. Ancient homes of lord and lady. Built for pleasure and for state. Then we get a sketch of the home to which the Lord of Burleigh brought his bride : — A gateway she discerns With armorial bearings stately, And beneath the gate she turns ; Sees a mansion more majestic Than all those she saw before : and the rest is left to the reader's fancy. Tennyson's two poems on " The Northern Farmer " deal more with Lincolnshire characters than with scenery. Both men are types rather than individuals, though old John Baumber was familiar enough to the poet's sight. A York- shireman by descent, he was a resident in the Lowlands ; his grandson still lives in the county, not many miles from the old grange inhabited by the farmer. The man who "stubb'd Thurnaby waaste " might have been sire to him who heard the refrain, "Proputty, proputty, proputty," in the cantering of his horse, and who in his worldly wisdom had discovered that "a man mun be eather a man or a mouse." The Northern Farmer of half a century ago was a sturdy, unsentimental, money-making labourer, who could afford to pity the parson and despise the governess.* The farmer * The Northern Farmer. — Of John Baumber, the Northern Farmer (who is well remembered in Lincolnshire), several curious stories are told. He 26 CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. of the poem is an egoist of the most pronounced type, who would subdue all natural emotions and check all heartborn impulses ; he has an unbounded love of self and belief in gold ; and he strives to indoctrinate his own son with the cruel dogma that " luvv " is folly, and " munny " is for worship. Thou'U not marry for munny — thou's sweet upo' parson's lass — Noa — thou'll marry for luvv — an' we boath on us thinks tha an' ass. The burden of his lay is, " Proputty, proputty sticks, an' proputty, proputty graws." As for "parson's lass," who " mun be a guvness, or summat," she is not good enough to be the wife of the lad who is to inherit the land from " wheer Wrigglesby beck comes out by the 'ill," to the brig. He points the moral of the parson's misfortunes — "fur, Sammy, 'e married for luvv" ; and he boasts of his own shrewdness in taking to wife a woman " wi' lots o' munny laaid by, an' a nicetish bit o' land." Probably the race of the Northern Farmers is not quite extinct yet ; the middle-class farmer of to-day is a man with a narrow appears to have been a most eccentric character, and according to the Rev. Drummond Rawnsley, he was a conspicuous and noteworthy type of the past. " That Lord Tennyson saw him there is no doubt ; but he has long been in his grave, and a more refined heir stalks about his fields. The present Lincoln- shire farmer goes to market in a gig, or more commonly by rail. But though the outward man has perished, not so has his teaching. Not to marry the governess ; to look out for a wife with a dowry ; the value of money ; how the having it makes 'a good un,' the want .of it the thief; these are the sen- timents by no means obsolete, not confined to one class, or one county, or one age." There are still men in Lincolnshire who remember how John, who relished a joke, especially if it were at any one else's expense, once met " Squoire," who noticed the stocks then standing near the church, and opined that they "were not fit to hold a man." " Try them yersen, Squoire," said Baumber. The Squire put his legs through to try them, and John complacently locked him in. Tennyson evidently made a close study of this remarkable character ; and we may note «« passant that the Laureate's humour is seen to special advantage in this poem. In the dramas it seems forced, and is not always amusing. Stedman says the "Northern Farmer " ballads are the best English dialect studies of our time. CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 27 creed, and he is apt to make great distinctions between tliose who have " proputty " and those who have " nowt." In " The Promise of May," the Laureate has given us another sketch of a Hke character in the person of Farmer Dobson, — a man who, though not bad-hearted, is full of prejudices, and by nature blundering and obstinate. His conversation with the schoolmaster, Wilson, after Edgar's encounter with him, shows his close resemblance to the Lincolnshire original : — Dobson. ' Good daay then, Dobson ! ' Civil- spoli;en i'deed ! Why, Wilson, tha 'eard 'im thysen — the feller couldn't find a Mister in his mouth fur me, as farms five hoonderd haacre. Wilson. You never find one for me, Mr. Dobson. Dobson. Noa, fur thou be nobbut schoolmaster. The " Village Wife," who tells the story of the entail, is another of Tennyson's successful Lincolnshire portraits. Had the old village gossip and scandal-monger been matched with the worldly-minded farmer, it had been no ill-mating. She despises books and book-lovers : " Boooks, as thou knaws, beant nowt." But she has an excellent mind for business. Hear her praise the produce of her dairy : — Butter I warrants be prime, an' I warrants the heggs be as well, Hafe a pint o' milk runs out when ya breaks the shell. She softens her reproaches when she remembers the trade she did with " The Squire an' 'is gells " ; — Boooks, es I said afoor, thebbe neyther 'ere nor theer ! But I sarved 'em wi' butter an' heggs fur huppuds o' twenty year. There is much unconscious humour in the character, too, and it is rather remarkable that only in these dialect poems (not forgetting, however, " Amphion," and " Will Water- proof's Lyrical Monologue") the Laureate is seen to advantage in this respect. What could be more whimsical 28 CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. than the woman's laconic comment on the fact that her " darter " had " died o' the fever at fall " ?— An' I thowt 'twur the will o' the Lord, but Miss Annie she said it wur draains. The woman's inquisitiveness and love of scandal gives the poet another opportunity of which he is not slow to take advantage. The old wife is anxious to know all about the new Squire, and, no doubt, considers she is very subtle in extracting information from her visitor : — What be the next un like ? can tha tell ony harm on 'im, lass ?^ Naay, sit down — naw 'urry — sa cowd ! — hev another glass ! Straange an cowd fur the time ! we may happen a fall o' snaw — • Not es I cares fur to hear ony harm, but I likes to knaw. I shall refer elsewhere to the " Old Squire " himself whom this feminine critic held to be so great an object of pity; as for the woman, her speech alone betrays her to belong to the east counties. So it is with the spinster who named her cats after her " sweet-arts ' ; and the place where she dwelt is localised by its proximity to the "farm by the beck, an' the windmill oop o' the croft," — perhaps the identical farm and mill mentioned by the Northern Farmer to his son. The " Northern Cobbler " was a member of the same society. Lincolnshire, also, lays claim to those two mighty scions of nobility. Lady Clara Vere de Vere and Sir Walter Vivian, of Vivian Place. The former has been rather un- reasonably affirmed to belong to the Dymoke family on account of her " long descent," and because at Scrivelsby Court, the residence of the Dymokes (hereditary champions of England), there is a " lion on the old stone gates." Sir Walter Vivian has been thought to be the father of Pro- fessor Lushington, and the Prologue to " The Princess " is alleged to contain a description of an actual event.* Dubious as these points are, however, there is one Lincoln- * Vivian Place. — Some time ago the following brief note was printed in g. literary periodical from a provincial correspondent ; — " I have every reason to CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 29 shire lady to whom reference is thrice made by the poet, and whose identity admits of no dispute. I refer to Lady Tennyson, the poet's wife. Her maiden name was Emily Sellwood ; she was the daughter of a Horncastle lawyer, and the niece of that famous Lincolnshire man Sir John Franklin. Her mother died at an early age, and her tombstone may be seen in Horncastle church. Lady Tennyson is mentioned in " The Daisy," and in that beautiful dedicatory poem beginning : — Pear, near, and true, — no truer Time himself Can prove you, the' he make you evermore Dearer and nearer. It was to his wife that Lord Tennyson dedicated also the dramatic monologue " Sixty Years After," and Lady Tennyson is known to have supplied the music to the Laureate's patriotic poem, " Hands All Round." Miss Sell- wood was one of three sisters, and up to the time of her marriage lived with them in a gloomy but substantial house overlooking the Market-square in Horncastle. Her father was a good specimen of the old-fashioned family lawyer, and one who knew him told me that it was highly probable he had his doubts about the desirability of marrying his daughter to one with such an unsubstantial calling as a poet. Lady Tennyson's ill-health, however, has been the only shadow cast across the poet's long and happy married life. She is doubtless the " Edith " in " Sixty Years After." Her sisters are still living, and one of them still resides in Lincolnshire. Not only do we find Lincolnshire scenes and Lincoln- shire characters in the works of the Laureate, but the sounds also of Lincolnshire are recalled to us. He tells us in one of the " Idyls of the King " : — believe that the mansion referred to in Tennyson's ' Princess ' belongs to the Lushington family, and is near ^laidstone. I was present at a fete of the Maidstone Mechanics' Institute, and took part in several of the experiments referred to, and the description exactly agrees with what occurred." 30 CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. Out of town and valley came a noise, As of a broad brook o'er a shingly bed Brawling, or like a clamour of the rooks At distance, ere they settle for the night. With these sounds Tennyson was most familiar from his youth. In other poems we hear the windy clamour of the daws, the curlews that call, and the great plover's human whistle ; then the skimming swallows, the careful robin that " eyes the delver's toil," and a host of other birds are uncaged, while the nightingale's praise lies enshrined in an exquisite simile : — 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 gemm'd with green and red, And he suspends his converse with a friend. Or it may be the labour of his hands. 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." In " The Princess " we get two other reminiscences of the poet's land, and the music he describes can be heatd again in the music of the words : — Overhead The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end ; and, — The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees. I can only add a word as to the language in the Lincoln- shire poems, — the old expressive Doric language that is fast dying out. In East Anglia the country people are somewhat primitive, and not only do old-fashioned customs CHARACTERISTICS OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 31 survive among them, but in ordinary conversation they use a number of old-time words which the average Cockney would utterly fail to comprehend. The Laureate's poems in dialect will do much in years to come to render the vernacular of the county of more than passing interest. It is remarkable, also, to note how many words almost peculiar in their common usage to the district the poems of Tennyson have familiarised us with. There is scarcely a piece which does not contain a reminder of the poet's home. It may "flash out in a single word or lurk in a similitude. A breath of Lincolnshire lingers about the pictures of Camelot ; a fragmentary reminiscence of the place even stirs in the Galatian tragedy of " The Cup," when Camma sings of the Moon on the field and the foam, Moon on the waste and the wold. In how many miscellaneous poems we find the thread that connects them with the land where the poet first tried his muse, with the scenery that first suggested imagery or themes. We are soon accustomed to the repetition of words like — ridge, grange, slope, shard, moor, mere, copse, trench, dyke, wattled, beck, flats, gorge, quarry, thicket, dune, fen, reed, creek, cove, holm, barrows (mounds), wold, &c. Be the poet's theme what it may these notes, the earliest he heard, are sure to throb in it. Though Lord Tennyson has made no open confession, like Byron, as to his feelings for the home of his youth, it is easy to find evidence throughout his poems of the deep love with which he is inspired for all that is associated with, or reminds him of, his early days. A golden thread runs through his works, and it is spun from the glowing thought of home. I^ull'd echoes of laborious day Come to him, gleams of mellow light Float by him on the verge of night. CHAPTER III. AT LOUTH— TENNYSON'S SCHOOL-DAYS — THE "POEMS BY TWO BROTHERS." The folded annals of my youth. The Gardener's Daughter. Thro' this midnight breaks the sun Of sixty years aiyay, The light of days when life begun, The days that seem to-day. Prefatory Poem. I AM aware of no allusions, direct or incidental, in any of the Laureate's poems to his school-days. It is recorded that his education was begun at " Cadney's " village school,* but it is more likely that at home he received the neces- sary preparation for entering the Grammar School at Louth. Seven sons of Dr. Tennyson — ^Frederick, Charles, Alfred, Edward, Horatio, Arthur, and Septimus — were in turn pupils at this school, — a foundation of King Edward VI., and probably the leading educational establishment in the county at that time. Dr. Tennysbn himself came up from Somersby on each occasion to " enter " the boys' names on the books, and Mrs. Tennyson, in order to be * Cadney's Village School. — There is no doubt that Tennyson received the first part of his education at a little school in Somersby. There is still living at Bag Enderby a Mr. Clark, who remembers being employed to teach the young Tennysons arithmetic, after the Doctor had quarrelled with Cadney and withdrawn his sons from the school. The site of the school was in the hollow of the Glen. The place was destroyed by fire many years ago, and Clark, the boy-schoolmaster, now 82 years old, is probably the only living person, besides the poet, who remembers it. AT LOUTH. 33 with her children, lodged near the school. She was a native of the town', her father, the Rev. Stephen Fytche (or Ffytche) being Vicar of Louth. He died in 1799, and he and his wife are buried in the churchyard. It was probably to his grandmother that one of the young poets referred in the " Poems by Two Brothers ": — Yon church, whose cold gray spire appears In the black outline of the trees, Conceals the object of my tears. Whose form in dreams my spirit sees. There in the chilling bed of earth. The chancel's letter'd stone above — There sleepeth she who gave me birth, Who taught my lips the hymn of love. The spire of Louth Church is its most distinctive .feature, and so far the allusion is pretty clear, especially as very few of the north Lincolnshire churches have spires at all. " She who gave me birth " could not have been intended by the poet to mean his mother, who was alive ; but the grandmother is referred to in another of these early poems — There on her bier she sleeps ! E'en yet her face its native sweetness keeps ; and there is no doubt that her death had seriously im- pressed the family. Nevertheless, it may be remarked here, the young poets appear sometimes to have imagined losses for poetic purposes ; for, in their first volume, one of them laments the loss of his "sire," and sisters and brothers lying "beneath the tombstone" are also occasionally mourned. The vicarage of Louth, in the time of the Rev. Stephen Fytche, was a long, low-roofed house surrounded by trees. A sketch of it— one of the only two extant — was made by Mr. J. W. Wilson over sixty years ago, and shows that it D 34 AT LOUTH. was pleasantly situated and of a commodious size. The roof was thatched, and just below it six small windows can be seen — there were probably two to each room. After Mr. Fytche's death, his widow removed to Westgate- place, but her grandchildren, the Tennysons, were quite young when she died. Little is known of the Fytche family, and this rather reminds us of Hepworth Dixon's remark anent the ancestors of " those who stand in the foremost rank of Englishmen." " Who,'' he asked, " can name the grandfather of any of them ? Their fathers' names are scarcely known ; their mothers' not always. Of the antecedents of these men we know as little as of the foundations of Snowdon, Helvellyn, or the Surrey Hills." In spite of all that has been written about his Norman descent, this applies in the main to Lord Tennyson. Of Tennyson's boyhood we know little, and even the traditions of that time are scant and unreliable. The Laureate has only on rare occasions taken the world into his confidence ; he has lived his poet-life apart, seeking little or no society, and having no intercourse with the outer world. Never was a famous man more timorous of fame. Tennyson has all the sensitiveness of the recluse ; few have disturbed his solitude, and by his own hand the veil that shrouds him from the world will never be up- lifted. His brothers were of a like type, choosing to live severe esoteric lives, and each believing with the Laureate the " wiser choice " to be — A life that moves to gracious ends, Thro' troops of unrecording friends, A deedful life, a silent voice. Lord Tennyson's only surviving school-fellow, Mr. J. W. Wilson, one of the most honoured citizens of Louth, who has been for fifty years associated with the public life and progress of that town, tells me that he remembers TENNYSON'S SCHOOL-DAYS 35 Alfred Tennyson being in the school, but he never knew him associate with the other lads, or take part in their sports. His sole friend was his brother Charles. The two were inseparable, and were in the habit of taking long walks together and rigidly excluding themselves from all other companionship. It was Charles who understood the poetic sensibility of the younger brother, who gave him suggestions, and who saw his first lines written on a slate while the rest of the family were at church. The two boys were grave beyond their years, but not otherwise remarkable. They displayed no particular talent in their classes, and though tall and stalwart, they indulged in no course of exercise, and in the pla3rground were unknown. The only incident hitherto chronicled relating to this period of their history is, that they took part in a pro- cession for the proclamation of the coronation of King George the Fourth. As a matter of fact, they were both so young at the time they entered Louth Grammar School, that it would have been extraordinary indeed had they excited any particular curiosity or attention. It is com- monly supposed that Alfred Tennyson remained at school until he was ripe for college, and that it was whil.e he was still a pupil he published, in conjunction with Charles, the " Poems by Two Brothers." I was prepared to find this so myself, but on my examining the school registers some very different facts were disclosed. Charles Tennyson entered the school at Christmas, 181 5, being at that time aged seven years and a half Alfred entefed a year later, and was then of that age too, the date of his birth being August Sth, 1809. He left school at the Christmas term of 1820 ; Charles stayed six months longer. Thus Alfred was only turned eleven, and Charles was only thirteen, when their connexion with Louth Grammar School ended. It is believed they were in the top form when they left, which would prove either that they were forward for their age, or that the education they received was only elementary. The Rev. J. Waite was D 2 36 TENNYSON'S SCHOOL-DAYS. the head-master, and Mr. Dale was his assistant, and they appear to have conducted the school on the good old- fashioned lines of teaching the young idea how to shoot with the aid of frequent birchings. There is now in the school-room a chair, dated, though not dating from, 1552, impressed with the governors' seal, which represents a master with a rod in his upraised hand and a boy crouching before him. In the time of the Tennysons this scene was often viewed under realistic circumstances. Poetry was certainly not cultivated there, and it cannot be said that the conditions were favourable for developing the poetic faculty. The school was rebuilt in 1869, and contains little now to remind one of what it was as the Tennyson brothers knew it. An ancient statue of King Edward VI. can still be seen in the porch, but that is all. The sketch of the school, as it appeared in Tennyson's time, is from a sepia drawing by Mr. Wilson. The building is seen from Westgate, up School House Lane. The pre- sent structure bears no resemblance to it, and the statue has been displaced. Formerly the figure of King Edward was placed over the door leading to the " Bedehouses " occupied by old women who had to endure the schoolboy- racket above them as well as they could. The " Bede- houses," — which are the residences of "twelve poor persons,'' who, by the charter of King Edward VI., dated September 21, 1551, are to be "sustained, fed, and maintained out of the revenues of the charity for ever," — have been rebuilt, as well as the school ; but it is not known that Lord Tennyson has ever seen the alterations that have been made during the last twenty or thirty years. Mr. Waite died January 18, 1872, aged 91, and the Rev. W. W. Hopwood (whose courtesy in affording me facilities for obtaining these facts I must here acknowledge) is the present master. Mr. Waite, in spite of his being some- what harsh as a master, was held in great personal esteem, and on his retiring some years before his death from the -- "^ ' ■t'SlNV, (35^.^iUi^%"oa6t°%«''r^^!) TENNYSON'S SCHOOL-BAYS. 37 position of principal, a number of scholars, past and pre- sent, entertained him to dinner. None of the Tennyson family, however, were present, although invitations had been sent to the Laureate and others. In fact, the brothers appear to have taken little interest in the school after their several departures. Frederick, the eldest, occasionally went to see his two younger brothers there, and both he and Charles contributed volumes of their own poems to the present school library. Frederick Tennyson wrote a number of high-class lyrics to which he gave the title of " Days and Hours" ; and in 1854 he presented a copy of the book to the Library, with the inscription on the fly- leaf:— " Presented to the Library of King Edward's School at Louth, Lincolnshire, by the Author, Frederick Tennyson. " Of this brother little is known. He is still living in retirement at Jersey, and is reported to have by him a quantity of MS. poetry, which he has refrained from pub- lishing lest he should appear to compete with his better- known brother. That he is a genuine poet his one volume distinctly and abundantly proves, and his scholarship is attested by the fact that at Cambridge he obtained the prize for a Greek Sapphic Ode on " Egypt." He married an Italian lady, who is now dead. A question has often been raised relating to the Laureate's supposed belief in spiritualism, and his opinions may have been partially formed by conversation with the elder brother, who is a confirmed spiritualist. Lord Tennyson, in "In Memoriam," speaks of his susceptibility to the influence of the dead in a few verses of a remarkable character : — Word by word, and line by line, The dead man touch'd me from the past, And all at once it seem'd at last The living soul was flash'd on mine. 38 TENNYSON'S SCHOOL-DAYS. All the brothers appear to have been more or less im- pregnated with mysticism ; and a letter, written by the Laureate in 1874, throws a vivid light on the subject* Therein he speaks of having a '" waking trance," the nature of which may perhaps be divined from the sensations described in the twelfth section of " In Memoriam." The Rev. Charles Tennyson-Turner, which name the second son took with the property he inherited, achieved notoriety as a sonneteer. Wordsworth at first thought he was the better poet, but afterwards he confessed " Alfred was the true one." In the School Library a volume of poems by the Vicar of Grasby can be seen with the fol- lowing autograph note : — " Presented to the Library of King Edward's Grammar School, Louth, Lincolnshire, in memory of my schooldays under the head-mastership of the Rev. J. Waite, By the Author. May 22nd, 1865." * Tennyson's Spiritualism. — This letter has been seldom published, and it is worth giving here. Tennyson wrote from Farringford, May 7, 1874 ; the recipient of the letter was a gentleman who had communicated to him some strange experiences he had had when recovering from the effects of anaesthetics. The letter is as follows : — " I have never had any revelations through anaesthetics, but a kind of waking trance (this for lack of a better name) I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has often come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently till, all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were^ seeming no extinction, but only the true life. " I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state is utterly beyond words ? " " This is not a vulgar table-tipping Spiritualism," a commentator adds, " It is the most emphatic declaration that the spirit of the writer is capable of transferring itself into another existence, not only real, clear, simple, but also infinite in vision and eternal in duration. For, he continues, that when he comes back to ' sanity,' he is ' ready to fight for the truth ' of his experience, and that he holds it (the spirit whose separate existence he thus repeatedly tests) ' will last for eons and eons.'" TENNYSON'S SCHOOL-BAYS. 39 This brother, who had been the first to recognise that Alfred was a poet, died at Malvern in 1 879 ; he is still spoken of lovingly in Lincolnshire. The Laureate's " Prefatory- Poems to my Brother's Sonnets," was written immediately after Charles's death, and is a touching tribute to the man and the poet. Thou hast vanish'd from thine own To that which looks like rest, True brother, only to be known By those who love thee best. Thou art silent underground. And o'er thee streams the rain, True poet, surely to be found When Truth is found again. But the bereaved brother found his thought wandering back to their early days " when life began, the days that seem to-day " — When all my griefs were shared with thee. As all my hopes with thine. The warmth of their attachment through life can be estimated from these words, and from the concluding expression of hope : — As all thou wert was one with me. May all thou art be mine. The beautiful allusions to this brother in " In Memoriam " will be readily recalled. Of the other brothers, Horatio is best known, and is often found journeying about the old home ; Arthur has travelled considerably, but has bad health ; of Edward there is no record, but there is a rumour which I hesitate to repeat. There are four volumes (first editions) of the Laureate's poems at Louth School, with inscriptions also — in another hand. Efforts were made some time ago to get Lord Tennyson to attend a prize distribution, but without success. Only four other Grammar School pupils at Louth after- wards obtained public distinction. One was Mr. Frederic 40 THE "POEMS BY TWO BROTHERS:' Flowers, the well-known London Stipendiary, and another, Edward Eyre, Governor of Jamaica ; but neither was contemporary with the poet. Eyre's biographer, however, has recorded that the fame of Alfred and Charles Tennyson, as poets, was traditionary in the school when he was there ; and it is indisputable that the pride in claiming them as " our boys " was left entirely to those who came after them. The two other celebrities were Hobart Pasha and the Rev. F. F. Goe, Bishop of Melbourne. It was not until 1828 that the brothers went to Cambridge, and it is difficult to ascertain how they were engaged during the intervening period of seven or eight years. A line or two in " Locksley Hall " may supply a clue ; my own idea is that the boys were allowed to " run wild," — that is, they had no settled course of life. There was nothing vicious in their natures, and consequently there was no need to impose restraints. Those who knew him tell me that it is scarcely likely that Dr. Tennyson himself took any great part in the training of his children. He was a man of a decidedly philosophical bent, but, like so many with great minds, he forgot the slight detail of giving his sons an object in life. "They were always running about from one place to another," an old resident informed me, " and every one knew them and their Bohemian ways. They all wrote verses, they never had any pocket-money, they took long walks at night-time, and they were decidedly exclusive." Many a time has Alfred been met miles away from home hatless and quite absorbed, sometimes only realising his situation when his further journeying was prevented by the sea. This habit has always clung to the Laureate, and he makes reference to it himself in " In Memoriam." Doubtless some part of his time was spent at Louth, where, as has already been stated, his mother lodged. The house in which she lived with a maiden sister. Miss Mary Anne Fytche, can still be seen, and is the property of Mr. Wilson, the schoolfellow of Alfred Tennyson already THE ''POEMS BY TWO BROTHERS." 41 referred to. It is situated in Westgate Place, then known as Harvey's Alley ; the exterior is neat, and there is a small garden in front. At the bottom of the Alley the River Lud passes ; the Church stands just across the road. At the end of the garden there was a large mound near the trees, and often of an evening little Alfred Tennyson could be seen stealing out to watch the owls flit down from the belfry, and listen to their " tuwhit, tuwhoo." All this time the poet's mind was being stored with fancies, and nature was scat- tering seed on the genial soil. The sights and sounds of the place were Unto him companionship ; they spake A mutual language, clearer than the tone Of his land's tongue, and before leaving Louth the early emotions of the boy's heart had throbbed into verse. The "Poems by Two Brothers" were published in 1827, and the " Advertisement " was written in March. During their School-days Charles and Alfred had occasionally exercised the muse, but hitherto they had published nothing. An old nursery-legend runs to the effect that Alfred always declared that when he became a man his profession would be poetry. By the time he was eighteen he and his brother had written a fair quantity of verse. They had wandered about the country, dipped into books, taken a small survey of the world, obtained " views " of life, and had opinions on many mighty matters. The story of how they came to decide on submitting their poems to a printer is slightly apocryphal ; but the current tradition is that it was due to the suggestion of none other than Dr. Tennyson's coachman. Alfred Tennyson, finding that time hung heavy on his hands, was seized with a longing to visit the Lincolnshire * Churches, many of which are of high historical interest. But " the eternal want of pence " made the projected tour impossible. By some means or other the old servant 42 THE "POEMS BY TWO BROTHERS:' learned of Alfred's disappointment He must have been a man of resource, for after some cogitation he exclaimed, " Why, Master Alfred, you are always writing poetry — why don't you sell it ? " The idea surprised but pleased the young man ; he consulted Charles, and when next the coachman drove to Louth, a collection of poems in manu- script went with him and was deposited at the shop of J. Jackson, who occasionally published books by arrange- ment with a London firm. As to whether this story should or should not be accepted I say nothing, but that the manuscript was left in Jackson's hands and ultimately purchased by him is a matter of history. Consequently, in 1827, a small drab volume, entitled " Poems by Two Brothers," and priced at seven shillings, made its appearance, and a critic in the Gentleman's Magazine the following July declared that it contained some very promising verse. The original MS. of the " Poems by Two Brothers," together with a number of documents relating to the publication, is in the hands of the trustee of the late Mr. Jackson's property, a gentleman to whom I am greatly indebted for the privilege of possessing myself of the following facts concerning this highly interesting and historical relic. Everything connected with the life and work of the Laureate is treasured by those who have felt the spell of his influence, and I make no apology there- fore for setting down what to the general reader may appear but trivial details. The manuscript of the " Poems by Two Brothers " consists of 177 pages, most of the sheets being of note- paper size. The close " screwy " caligraphy, looking more like Greek than English (for which not only the Laureate but his brothers also are equally remarkable), is here con- spicuous ; in some cases, contrary to the stern edict of the printer's office, it covers both sides of the paper. The manuscript is in good condition, the edges only being a little brown and ragged with age. Most of the poems THE "POEMS BY TWO BROTHERS." 43 are in the handwriting of the respective authors, but a few are in a feminine hand, having been copied probably by a sister or the mother. The vexata qucsstio of individual authorship will, in consequence, never be set at rest, unless that wandering copy of the poems which originally be- longed to Charles, and left the hands of a friend of mine seven years ago, should be discovered : the poems therein had been marked " C " and " A," most likely by Charles himself But the MS., for the reason just stated, is of little assistance in this direction. There were special reasons why I should not examine the pages one by one with that minuteness I could have wished, but what attention I bestowed sufficed to convince me that nothing definite on this point could be ascertained. From a printer's point of view the " copy " is decidedly poor. Not only is it " backed," but various pages are dis- figured by rude schoolboy sketches ; the corrections are numerous, and not neatly made. On some pages verses are struck out by heavy black lines, radiating in all directions ; there is considerable " over-running " ; and as much as possible is crushed on to the pages as if the supply of paper was strictly limited. On a few pages the verses are written downwards and crosswise, and on one small folio the poet managed to crowd no fewer than ninety-one lines, — viz., the whole of the poem, "Remorse," and a six-line verse of the preceding poem. Needless to say the lines were all askew, and the oddly-formed letters were most difficult to decipher. The credit of this remark- able achievement belongs, I think, to Alfred. The printer's directions are written in red ink, and, in not a few instances, he had to undertake the delicate duty of revision also. The spelling and punctuation of both the poets were, to say the least, irregular, and Mr. Jackson appears to have objected to the use of the contractions which Tennyson has always affected. It was originally the intention of the authors to allow their initials, "C. T." and " A. T." to appear on the title- 44 THE "POEMS BY TWO BROTHERS:' page and at the end of the short preface. But, perhaps they feared that "searching microscope of scrutiny" of which they speak in the introductory stanzas ; or perhaps, like Gareth, they said : " Let be my name until I make my name! My deeds will speak : it is but for a day"; — at all events, while the printer was preparing the book for publication, he received a note reminding him that it was no part of the agreement that their initials should be used, and they had therefore decided to erase them " as they will not assist the sale of the book any more than if there was no signature at all." Perhaps Mr. Jackson thought so, too ; anyhow he raised no objection, and when the book was issued it was left to rumour alone to declare who the " Two Brothers " were. The contract with the printer was that the authors should receive .^lo for the copyright of their poems, and this sum has always been declared to have been the actual amount paid. In a letter of acceptance the brothers remarked that they did not think ;£'io "too high a price" ; nevertheless, they closed with the terms. Whether the sale of the book justified it, or whether Jackson in simple generosity was moved to it, I cannot say ; but on the best possible authority, exclusive of documentary evidence, I am able to declare that £20 was the actual sum paid to Alfred and Charles Tennyson for their volume. For- tunately Mr. Jackson retained the MS., and at some future time — not in the Laureate's lifetime — it will be put up for sale. The value at which it will be estimated cannot now be conjectured. The MS. lies in a strong box, and is seldom brought out into the light ; I esteem myself greatly privileged to have had it put in my hands.* * Tennysonian MSS. —Some idea of the value of Tennysonian manuscripts may be derived from the fact that the poet's autograph alone is estimated to be worth £2. ids. Last June, when a quantity of manuscript poems was put up for sale by auction, some of the prices were truly astonishing. The dedicatory verses, "To the Queen," were bought for ^30 ; the poem, "The Daisy" (four and a half pages octavo), for £21^. los. ; " The Letters " (two THE ''POEMS BY TWO BROTHERSr 45 I have compared some of the poems as originally written with them as they were printed, and find that they were carefully revised. Thus we get the earliest indication of the poet's scrupulousness in correction — a habit that in later times has become akin to that of Virgil, who — Would write ten lines, they say, At dawn, and lavish all the golden day To make them wealthier in his readers' eyes. As is well known, the Laureate and his brother in after- days never cared to acknowledge the booklet with which, in their own words, they "emerged from 'the shade' and courted notoriety." I have read all the hundred and two poems many times, but I confess that I have derived but slight satisfaction from the task. We should be sorry to lose these trifles now, though we should not have regretted it had they shared the fate that many a better poem of the Laureate's manhood has done. First flights are seldom successful, no matter how great the desire to soar or how ambitious the attempt. " Hsec nos novimus esse nihil " was the motto of the " Two Brothers " ; but in this later light we know that in that book, obscurely published and sent silently into the world, there were the first outbursts of a true poetic soul ; that in that soul music in all its sweetness, and power, and grandeur was surging like a full tide ; that those poems which he thought to be " nothing " formed but a prelude to works of higher range and deeper tone — the foretaste of beauty afterwards to be developed, the tentative scraps of melody in fuller times to swell into rich and mighty chords vibrating from the deeps of thought and pealing with the majesty of organ tones. pages octavo) for £,\%. los. ; "Stanzas to the Rev. F. D. Maurice" (two pages octavo) for £,2t,; "The Brook" (eight pages octavo) for £^\; and " Maud" (sixteen pages quarto and four and a half pages octavo) for ;flli. At this rate the manuscript of the ' ' Poems by Two Brothers, " apart from its special and peculiar value in the eyes of collectors, would be worth more than i'l.ooo. 46 THE ''POEMS BY TWO BROTHERS." Harvey's Alley is only changed in name, and Jackson's shop, with the old signboard over the entrance, can be seen in the centre of the town. The poet never goes to Louth, although some years ago he was a frequent visitor at Thorpe Hall, in the vicinity. But many a tradition of his youth lingers about the place. There is much to endear it to pilgrims in Tennyson Land. CHAPTER IV. ON THE WAY TO SOMERSBY. A sleepy land, where under the same wheel The same old rut would deepen year by year. Aylmer's Field. SoMERSBY lies about six miles north-east of Horncastle ; as the crow flies the distance would be much less. The long road winds through green and undulating country, dotted here and there by snug homesteads and windmills. Curious as it may seem, it was while walking along such a road that Tennyson wrote that loveliest of sea-lyrics, " Break, break, break." It is almost inexplicable that a poem which presents us with a picture in sombre gray of waves monotonously falling at the foot of the crags should have been created amid green pastures and avenues of trees. Yet, the poet Young wrote his " Ode to Sunrise " by candlelight, and James Montgomery said he could describe sylvan scenes best when looking out of a back window upon gloomy courts where never even a wild weed grew. Barry Cornwall had never seen the ocean when he wrote the " Sea " ; Moore was never in the East, yet he wrote " Lalla Rookh" with plenty of "local colour"; and Schiller had not seen Switzerland when he wrote "William Tell." Perhaps, then, we should not marvel that —mayhap in some part of this road to Somersby^ — a thought long since stored away in the poet's heart found that mysterious sympathy or association which set it vibrating, and quickened 48 ON THE WA Y TO SOMERSB Y. into speech : just as a word, a touch, or a glance sometimes restores to memory the wandering spark of knowledge from the shadowland of oblivion. That Tennyson should have written such a poem as " Break, break, break " in a Lincolnshire lane is, however, only one more proof that we unconsciously receive im- pressions and store away ideas which await a fitting moment to be reproduced. It is a curious fact that feeling should so seldom flow into words when new and most intense. In this particular poem Tennyson appears to be addressing the sea, and for a long time it was popularly supposed that Salt House Beach, near Clevedon Church, where lie the remains of Arthur Henry Hallam, was the scene described. And so it may have been, although the poet has declared that " the poem was made in a Lincoln- shire lane at five o'clock in the morning." It would be interesting to follow up the subject and discover, if possible, under what circumstances other poems were inspired and composed. We learn from the poet himself that it was at Torquay that he saw " A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight," that in the Pyrenees he saw a water- fall " slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn," that from the top of Snowdon he beheld " a great black cloud drag inward from the deep," and that in the New Forest a wind arose and shook " the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks of the wild wood together." Lord Tennyson told an Australian visitor a few years ago that the line in '■ Locksley Hall " — " Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change " — was suggested by the first railway journey he ever made. He had been on a Conti- nental tour with Arthur Hallam, the story goes, and when the two friends arrived in Liverpool they travelled to Manchester on the new line after nightfall. Tennyson could not exactly see the form of the railway as he was moved along, but the novel experience brought the idea into his mind which is embodied in the well-known phrase. ON THE WAY TO SOMERSBY. 49 Almost immediately after leaving Horncastle the scene becomes entirely rural ; the landscape widens, to left and right are clusters of dark green trees, while in the distance is seen in misty outline a low-crowned hill. Coming to the church, where the road leads to Spilsby, we take a sharp turn to the left, and a delightful prospect at once opens out. Instead of " wide flats, where nothing but coarse grasses grow," such as Lancelot saw when his madness " whipt him into waste fields far away," the country exhibits every variety of woodland-slope and hill across the dark- green fields. The road rises at this point, and on reaching the top of the acclivity we see the Spilsby road winding away to the right, and the whole scene is bounded by a line of hills. Soon afterwards a great bend in the lonely road again changes the view, and shuts out for a time the sight of every house. A bluish haze hung about the dis- tant wolds, bringing to mind the poet's picture of " misty woods on sloping greens." Now and then a family of rooks rose in a black mass from the trees that skirted the high- way, and filled the air with clamour. The road curves and rises continually, and it is only with difficulty that we can learn our direction from the half-illegible finger-posts that stand at the crossings. A narrow lane to the right, and another turn to the left, bring us to where stands a lonely bright-white house, and just beyond here the road d tortu bends almost backward, and then leads to the tiny hamlet of Ashby Puerorum. We are now within sight of the poet's birthplace, and all around are the evidences of our being in the region most familiar and most dear to the poet's eye. O, the woods and the meadows, Woods where we hid from the wet, Stiles where we stayed to be kind, Meadows in which we met ! Here are the " thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds, upon the ridged wolds"; yonder are the "windy grove" E so ON THE WAY TO SOMERSBY. and " haunts of hern and crake," and " the dewy tassell'd wood "; and all around, on tree and hedge, Autumn was laying " a fiery finger on the leaves." One looks in vain hereabout for " cluster'd marish- mosses'' or "glooming flats," for all is brightness and variety, and the scene includes the Hoary knoll of ash and haw- That hears the latest linnet trill, The quarry trench'd along the hill, And haunted by the wrangling daw. But the poet's trees are everywhere. Here may be seen the '■ wet-shot alder " — (" wet-shot " in the local vernacular meaning wet-shod, a term applied to anything that rises from marshy ground), — and here are " little copses climb- ing " from the vales, and " many a cloudy hollow." The Laureate has a great fondness for "the windy tall elm- tree," and all about the sinuous landscape the strong and straight pilasters are seen rising in stern grandeur, and the " black republic '' of rooks is enthroned on " the broad curved branches." The elm is seen in all its perfection in the Autumn when the leaves, once " a fringe of clearest green," are turning red and gold ; but in the Winter, when the naked boughs stand out gauntly against a cold gray sky, it is an impressive sight. The large lime, haunted by bees, the gouty oak, " stubborn-shafted," and the " perky larches and pine," spring up and flourish on " the sullen purple moor " and make the glory of the autumnal wood- lands. And at night you may enter some fragrant avenue where the " pillar'd dusk of sounding sycamores " induces serenity and lends Hearts and spirits wholly To the influence of mild-minded melancholy. It were an easy task living here, where nature is seldom disturbed, to trace the changes of the year as it "with ON THE WAY TO SO MERSEY. 51 blade and sheaf clothes and re-clothes the happy plains." First to mark the coming of Spring, when Fades the last long streak of snow, And burgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thick By ashen roots the violets blow, — wfhen the woodland rings loud and long, the distance takes a lovelier hue, new lights dance on lawn and lea, and happy birds change their sky, — when in the breast Spring wakens too, and the regret of life Becomes an April violet, And buds and blossoms like the rest. Then the Summer, " crisp with shining woods," when the greenery of the trees is " new from its silken sheath," and clouds are racing above and winds and lights and shadows cannot be still ; when " some bearded meteor, trailing light " moves, through the purple night, " below the starry clusters bright." Autumn, following, imparts a hectic flush to the whole of the landscape. Life grows more subdued ; Faint shadows, vapours lightly curl'd. Faint murmurs from the meadows come, Like hints and echoes of the world To spirits folded in the womb. And even while you hear the " sweep of scythe in morning dew,'' the approach of Winter is heralded by flying gusts that "tumble half the mellowing pears"; soon the dark- ness comes on, and the year is over. Here rests the sap within the leaf. Here stays the blood along the veins. Every student of Tennyson's works must have noticed his sensitiveness to the seasons. Living, as he did, a solitary life in an all but deserted spot, he could not avoid being impressed with the glory or the sadness of nature's aspect, and the alternate shine and shadow fed his mind with those E 2 52 ON THE WAY TO SOMERSBY. thoughts and feelings which find frequent expression in his poems. In the " Choric Song " of the " Lotos-Eaters " there is a verse in which the work of the year appears to be summarised, the conclusion being that awful and de- spondent one, — Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last ? The reasoning is very characteristic, and reminds one of that earher effort, " All things must die." Lo ! in the middle of the wood. The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud With winds upon the branch, and there Grows green and broad, and takes no care, Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon Nightly dew-fed ; and turning yellow Falls, and floats adown the air. Lo ! sweeten'd with the summer light. The full-juiced apple, waxing over mellow. Drops in a silent autumn night. All its allotted length of days, The flower ripens in its place. Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil. " All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave in silence," sing the Lotos-eaters, and it is from nature that they reason and despair. The surroundings of the poet must have had much to do with the inspiration of this poem. As it is, though purely imaginative, and, in a measure, didactic, it contains allusions to what the poet saw around his home ; and those who have travelled about this silent country, along the untrodden roads, in the uninvaded glens, and across the lonely wolds, will have felt that the actual lotos-land may not have been very far away. These pastures, the hills and valleys, the " silent woody places," were the poet^s school. He saw them under varying aspects, and how well he observed nature and her ON THE WAY TO SOMERSBY. 53 work let the truth of minute detail in his poems testify. Tennyson makes no mistakes in his allusions and in his statements of fact. Quickly detecting, closely examining, he discovers the wonders of the snowdrop just as he beholds the glory of a mountain. All the mystery and all the charm he requires for pictures are supplied in nature's handiwork. It is because of his exactness that he has so much power ; his accuracy gives an exquisite iinish to his descriptions, and though his range of landscape be limited, every view he gives is perfect, lacking nought. Might he not have been thinking of himself when he drew the portrait of Edwin Morris ? — I call'd him Crichton, for he seem'd All-perfect, finish'd to the finger-nail. Was he not A full-cell'd honeycomb of eloquence Stored from all flowers ? Poet-like he spoke : " My love for Nature is as old as I." Tennyson absorbed facts and they crystallised into pearls of imagery. No dilatory mind, no chance spectator, could have thought and talked so learnedly and withal so enchantingly of little things ; — of The foxglove spire. The little speedwell's darling blue. Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew, Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire. We feel that Tennyson is master of his subject, and that he is a teacher because he is a student. Poet he would have been had he been born amid the looms of Lancashire or the foundries of Staffordshire ; but he is the truer and greater poet because he heard the swelling song of the lintwhite and the voices of mavis and throstle, because he dwelt near " slumbrous waves " and " babbling runnels," and " grassy plains." Such are the reflections that crowd upon the traveller in the poet's land. Meanwhile we are approaching Somersby. 54 ON THE WAY TO SOMERSBY. A straggling labourer stares at the stranger in the road, and a cottager is heard calling to her child, — " Wheer 'asta bean saw long?" — quite unconscious that the phrase has become classical. In answer to a question, these villagers confess that they know nothing of the poet, "but there was th' owd Doctor Tennyson who died a long time ago." Proceeding some way we come to a steep incline leading direct to a shady arbour formed of trees on either side ; the road, narrow just here, is thickly strewed with shadows spaced by " tremulous isles of light.'' And right before us is the bridge beneath which the ever-flowing brook chatters and runs. Another turn has yet to be made, and then moving downward through the grove-like road we reach the heart of the little village. Calm and deep peace are in the wide air ; the leaves redden to the fall ; the chest- nut patters to the ground ; and here stands a low white house. This is the place.* * Somersby can be approached, as the traveller elects, either by Horncastle, or Alford, or Spilsby. The last-named town is noted as the birthplace of Sir John Franklin, the Arctic explorer, a bronze statue to whom has been erected in the Market-place. His sister was the mother of Miss Emily Sellwood, now Lady Tennyson. The house in which Franklin was born has become " The Franklin Carriage Factory." The Spilsby road leads first to Partney, where "the brimming river " and the mill are, next to the square-towered church, the most conspicuous features. The road then leads through Sausthorpe. Dr. Johnson delighted in the country hereabout, and has left on record the pleasure to be derived from the walks that could be taken from one thorp to another. Harrington Hall is not far away. It dates from the time of the second James. Conspicuous here, too, is the Spilsby sandstone with which the poet's eyes must have soon become familiar, and which probably prompted that mournful suggestion of nature's seeming wantonness : — From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, " A thousand types are gone. I care for nothing, all shall go." Bag Enderby is the next place reached, but neither the place itself, nor the church, of which Dr. Tennyson was at one time rector, is in any way remark- able. " The church," says a recent writer, " has a very ancient oaken door studded with great headed iron nails to the woodwork. Inside the church there is a remarkable stone font, and the monumental brass of Albini de Enderby. At a bend in the road is a gigantic elm, with one of its great limbs procumbent and forming a convenient seat. " CHAPTER V. AT SOMERSBY. An English home — gray twilight pour'd On dewy pastures, dewy trees, Softer than sleep — all things in order stored, A haunt of ancient Peace. The Palace of Art. SOMERSBY lies within " the circle of the hills." It is a drowsy little nook situated among the Wolds, pastoral and remote, where the din of the busy world beyond never echoes and the "large excitement" of the times is un- known. The parish consists of six hundred acres, and here dwell some forty simple old-world people in half a score huts " at random scatter'd, each a nest in bloom," raised upon " low knolls that dimpling die into each other." It might almost be the place where Sir Aylmer-Aylmer abode, were there not a few touches in the poem " Aylmer's Field," in which that important baronet figures, pointing more directly to Kent : — Little about it stirring save a brook ! Where almost all the village had one name ; Where Aylmer foUow'd Aylmer at the Hall And Averill Averill at the Rectory Thrice over ; so that Rectory and Hall, Bound in an immemorial intimacy. Were open to each other. 5 6 AT SOMERSBY. There may be many villages to which such a description may apply, but of Somersby it seems scarcely a disguise. For is not the name of the Squire of Somersby Burton — Burton ? and is not the intimacy between Rectory and Hall so close, that for many years now the old Rectory down the road has been turned into a farm, and the Hall of former years made the Rectory ? Did not the Laureate's mother hereabout exercise her charity like the gentle Edith ?— Not sowing hedgerow texts and passing by, Nor dealing goodly counsel from a height That makes the lowest hate it, but a voice Of comfort and an open hand of help. The story of " Aylmer's Field " belongs to the " land of hops and poppy-mingled corn," but' may not a memory or two of the old Lincolnshire, home have supplied here and there a tint, as a well-loved face may beam in a picture of imagined things } The world knows so little of its greatest men that no one need wonder there has been uncertainty and confusion as to the name and locality of Tennyson's birthplace.* An American " doing " England in a month sometimes journeys down, looks at the house from the road, chips a bit of stone from the church, and departs. A few enthusiasts have been known to go to Somerby, some leagues off, and * Somersby. — Names ending in by are very common in Lincolnshire, — Scrivelsby, Revesby, Enderby, &c. Thorpe is also a common termination. The meaning of Somersby is rather obscure. It was originally called Sumer- debi, which is said to be identical with Sumarlithi, meaning summer sailor or viking. A local antiquary expresses the belief that owing to its favourable situation it was called Summer-town, of which the present name is a corrup- tion. Somersby history dates back to the Conqiiest, when it was in the possession of one Gozelin, the son of Lambert. It is mentioned in the Doomsday Book as being cultivated by eleven farmers, and containing a mill worth twenty pence yearly. In modern times the land, which was formerly somewhat neglected, has been brought under cultivation again, and now " long fields of barley and of rye clothe the wold and meet the sky." Students of the poems will remember what the Northern Farmer said about " Stubbing Thurnaby waaste." AT SOMERSBY. 57 return disappointed. But, either on account of the distance and difficulty, or from pure lack of interest, the thousands of Tennyson-readers have made no attempt whatever to see The well-beloved place Where first he gazed upon the sky. Who would forget the bright breezy morning in Autumn when the picture so vividly described in " In Memoriam," and so often seen in fancy, as through a veil, burst upon the sight, clear, real, and complete ? The gray old grange, the lonely fold, The low morass and whispering reed. The simple stile from mead to mead, The sheepwalk up the windy wold. The sight will certainly be remembered by me. Expect- ation had been set aglow as 1 walked along the quiet road and when, a mile away, I had caught sight of the red point of Somersby Top. But it would be impossible to describe the sensation of the moment when, through a dark curtain of full-leaved trees, I. had the first glimpse of that pic- turesque white house ever to be associated with the Lau- reate's name and fame. A hundred memories quickened at the sight. All around were the " meadows breathing of the past"; there were the "woods that belt the gray hill-side"; and here was the lawn where friends had gathered while a guest or happy sister " flung a ballad to the moon." It was here that Arthur Hallam wandering down, and seeing the Witch-elms that counterchange the floor Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright, found the shadows fair. And shook to all the liberal air The dust and din and steam of town. Here, fresh from " brawling courts and dusty purlieus of S8 AT SOMERSBY. the law," he " drank the cooler air," and marked " the landscape winking thro' the heat"; here that All in circle drawn About him, heart and ear were fed To hear him, as he lay and read The Tuscan poets ; here that he spent " all-golden afternoons " or walked with his friend " immantled in ambrosial dark " ; and here that they lingered while bats went round in fragrant skies, and their songs pealed From knoll to knoll, where, couch'd at ease, The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field. There are times when reality is hard to realise, when it is impossible to grasp the knowledge or the meaning within reach ; and I find it easier to look back now and comprehend what I saw, than I found it then to see and to comprehend. With these thronging recollections, — with the scene before me linked with names and phantoms of the past, — I seem'd to move among a world of ghosts, And feel myself the shadow of a dream. To those who love Tennyson as a friend and revere him as a master it is something only to have seen that on which his eyes have dwelt, and to have gazed upon some part of the visible scene which enters unawares into the poet's mind "with all its solemn imagery, its rocks, its woods, and that uncertain heaven received into the bosom of the lake." For, whether unconsciously or of set purpose I cannot tell, but the solemn imagery drawn from this place is presented again and again in the Laureate's poems. When a boy he had walked at midnight while by the soft, shadowy moonbeam slept " the wide meer serenely pale"; the breeze, "with incense fraught of glowing fruits and AT SOMERSBY. 59 spangled flowers," breathed through "each lavish wood- walk," and bore to him thoughts of tranquil life apart from the world where " eager sons of interest press." " The Walk at Midnight " is the title of one of the " Poems by- Two Brothers," and we get in one of the verses a revelation of the state of the young poet's mind : — The whispering leaves, the gushing stream, Where trembles the uncertain moon, Suit more the poet's pensive dream. Than all the jarring notes of noon. Long afterwards, when he had known " such a friendship as had master'd time," when every pulse of wind and wave recalled his " old affection of the tomb," and when he and his friend communicated no more "in dear words of human speech," the scenes were dearer still, for the memory of the dead clung about them, — Each has pleased a kindred eye, And each reflects a kindlier day. What a glimpse of the comforts of the old home we get in those exquisite opening verses of the ninety-fifth sec- tion of " In Memoriam " I What a charm, too, we find in all the surroundings ; and how tenderly the poet recalls the little party of brothers, sisters, and friends that towards one evening lingered on the lawn : — For underfoot the herb was dry ; And genial warmth ; and o'er the sky The silvery haze of summer drawn ; And calm that let the tapers burn Unwavering : not a cricket chirr'd : The brook alone far-off was heard. And on the board the fluttering urn. Most people are • now familiar with the story attached to the closing lines of this part of the poem — Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie's excellent article on the Poet Laureate, from which 6o AT SO MERSEY. I now venture to quote, having been widely read. She says, — "Was it not a happy sister herself who in after days once described how, on a lovely summer night, they had all sat up so late talking in the starlight that the dawn came shining unawares ; but the young men, instead of going to bed, then and there set off for a long walk across the hills in the sunrise, — And suck'd from out the distant gloom, A breeze began to tremble o'er The large leaves of the sycamore, And fluctuate all the still perfume, And gathering freshlier overhead, Rock'd the full-foliaged elms, and swung The heavy-folded rose, and flung The lilies to and fro, and said ' The dawn, the dawn,' and died away ; And East and West, without a breath, Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, To broaden into boundless day." What an animated, pulsing picture of coming light and newly-stirred life ! You cannot see the " large leaves of the sycamore " that stood on the lawn now, neither can you count all the elms and poplars that the poet remem- bered standing before his father's door. The trees are not as they were, but the holly hedge planted by the old Doctor flourishes amain, and the chestnuts from lusty trees drop all about it. But there is no mistaking the pic- turesque and semi-ecclesiastical house. It is the ideal home of a poet, bright and pleasant in aspect and quaint in struc- ture. The roofs are tiled and steep, and the external view of the dining-room, with its long-pointed stained glass windows, leads one to suppose that it was originally in- tended for a private chapel. The Rectory is really made up of two houses lying adjacent, and hence its rambling appearance. For situation the place could not be excelled. It nestles among the wolds and yet does not lie too low AT SOMERSBY. 6i down ; far away stretch the dark green meadows, and myriads of trees deck and diversify the landscape. On the shoulders of the hills rest clusters of noble trees, and tiny streams glisten down the slopes. Little wonder that the London student was glad to enjoy the deep peace and the solemn beauty of this old-world place. The . pity of it is that the ripening flower of life was closed so soon ; that the wondrous promise of youth was unfulfilled ; that the blossom fell before the fruit was timed to fall. To the world his death was loss ; to the poet it was almost the doom of pleasure and the banishment of hope : — Thou and I have shaken hands ; Till growing winters lay me low. My paths are in the fields I know, And thine in undiscover'd lands. There is one living still near Somersby Rectorj' who re- members the news of Hallam's death being brought to the family, and who helped to revive the swooning sister of the poet : That remorseless iron hour Made cypress of her orange-flower. The room in which Tennyson was born overlooks the lawn ; the church, of which his father was rector, stands on a slight eminence opposite the house. Here Alfred was baptised on August 8th, 1809, as the parish register (volume two, 173 s) shows. Let me here set at rest one doubt as to the day on which the poet was born. The entry distinctly records that the day was August Sth. Edgar Poe and Mrs. Browning, his ardent admirers, were both born in the same year. Of his mother Lord Tennyson has certainly left us one portrait. She was a woman of considerable intellect, highly poetical, and devoted to good and chari- table deeds. Her eyes were remarkably luminous, and her nature was wholly emotional ; it is doubtless from her that the sons inherited most of their poetical disposition. 62 AT SOMERSBY. Lord Tennyson's loving remembrance of her is revealed in " The Princess ":— One, Not learnfed, save in gracious household ways, Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise, Interpreter between the Gods and men, Who look'd all native to her place, and yet On tiptoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce Sway'd to her from her orbits as they moved, And girdled her with music. Happy with such a mother, his " faith in womankind beats with his blood "; and in another poem he has touched on the sweetness of infancy when the child knows " nothing beyond his mother's eyes." Surely this is a home-picture too : — With brows Propt on thy knees, my hands upheld In thine, I listen'd to thy vows, For me outpour'd in holiest prayer — For me unworthy — and beheld The mild deep eyes upraised, that knew The beauty and repose of faith. And the clear spirit shining thro'. Of the father* we learn little in the poems, although there is a loving reference to him in the " Lines to J. S." One *Dr. G. C. Tennyson. — Several accounts have been given of "th'owd Doctor," as he was locally called. His erudition was of no ordinary character, but it must have been lost on the Lincolnshire people. He built the dining-room with its ecclesiastical windows, and he removed the shaft of an ancient cross from Bag Enderby churchyard in order to place a dial on it at Somersby. His memory only survives through these two acts. Bayons Manor, his native place, and associated in many ways with the Tennyson family, is in the parish of Tealby, " the name being a corruption of Bayeux, having at the Conquest been assigned to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. This Odo, in his day, was reputed the wisest man in England ; he intended to purchase the AT SO MERSEY. 63 of the two brothers, in their first volume, imagines the effect of his death : — Why lowers my brow, dost thou inquire ? Why burns mine eye with feverish fire ? With hatred now, and now with ire ? In early youth I lost my sire. It is not improbable that a glimpse of his character is given in " The Village Wife ; or, the Entail," where the " owd Squire" is represented as a "Varsity scholard, an' niver lookt arter the land," " hallus aloan wi' 'is boooks," — An' 'e niver runn'd arter the fox, nor arter the birds wi' 'is gun, An' 'e niver not shot one 'are ; but, to the indignation of the old villagers, he Bowt little statutes all-naakt an' which was a shaame to be seen ; But 'e niver loookt ower a bill, nor 'e niver not seed to owt. According to this sibyl he spoiled his chances of success in the world by dabbling in authorship, — " 'E'd wrote an owd book, his awn sen, sa I knaw'd es 'e'd coom to be poor." Worse than this, he bought rare books at fancy prices, and collected curios of all sorts : — An' 'e gied — I be fear'd fur to tell tha 'ow much — fur an owd scratted stoan, An' 'e digg'd up a loomp i' the land an' 'e got a brown pot and a boan, An' 'e bowt owd money, es wouldn't goa, wi' good gowd o' the Queen. How could he expect to prosper, — especially when his family made such great demands on his purse? "'E papal crown, and in 1082 was in the act of leaving this country for the pur- pose, when William heard of it and promptly arrested him with his own kingly hands, and sent him to prison in Normandy." Bayons Manor, the seat of the Tennyson-D'Eyncourts, is a most interesting example of the feudal manorial style of building. 64 AT SOMERSBY. smiled an' 'e smiled till 'e'd gotten a fright at last "; and his books were sold for what they would fetch (not much, for " the lasses 'ed teard out leaves i' the middle to kindle the iire"); then his son was killed, and "feyther an' son was buried togither, an' this wur the hend." Dr. Tennyson answers not a little to this portrait, and the story itself might well have been true had he not been blessed with a family of exceptional talent and virtue. Dr. Tennyson was buried in Somersby Churchyard, and his tombstone is conspicuous just where the ground rises beyond the front of the church. The inscription is almost illegible, but it only records that the Reverend George Clayton Tennyson, LL.D., eldest son of George Tennyson, Esq., of Bayons Manor, Rector of this Parish, of Bag Enderby and Benniworth, and Vicar of Great Grimsby in this county, departed this life on the i8th day of March, 183 1, aged 52 years. The mother lived to be eighty-four, and for several years after her husband's death continued to reside at the Rectory. The time came, however, when the family had to remove elsewhere and " live within the stranger's land." Tennyson's concluding reference to his father and to his home is extremely pathetic. A Christmas came when he heard " a single peal of bells " waking " a single murmur in the breast " that " these were not the bells he knew." Like strangers' voices here they sound. In lands where not a memory strays, Nor landmark breathes of other days, But all is new unhallow'd ground. Our father's dust is left alone And silent under other snows : There in due time the woodbine blows. The violet comes, but we are gone. That the poet bitterly felt the parting from his early home is attested by these plaintive lines in " In Memoriam ": — AT SOMERSBY. 65 We leave the well-beloved place Where first we gazed upon the sky : The roofs that heard our earliest cry, Will shelter one of stranger race. Sweet and mournful memories of the days he had passed there, of the friend he had met and lost, rose like " spirits of a diverse love " contending for " loving masterdom." He remembered that here his boyhood sang " its matin song," and heard " The lov/ love-language of the bird in native hazels tassel-hung." He remembered that here he had " stayed in after-hours with his lost friend among the bowers," — " And this hath made them trebly dear." But change is inevitable. The stranger comes, and the time of farewells is nigh : — I turn to go : my feet are set To leave the pleasant fields and farms ; They mix in one another's arms To one pure image of regret. If the internal evidence can be relied upon, these were the last lines Tennyson wrote in Somersby Rectory. Next to the place of his birth, and partitioned from it by a rbw of dark-leaved trees, stands the old House* designed by Vanbrugh, the reputed residence of John Baumber, the Northern Farmer. It is now occupied by one of the tenant farmers. In Lincolnshire such places are commonly designated granges, and it is by that name that Tennyson * The Moated Grange. — By some this is erroneously thought to have been the old Manor House of Somersby. An esteemed correspondent writes to me on this point as follows: — "The Grange is not the Manor House; the Burtons being both lords of the manor and patrons of the living, the Rectory and the Manor House merged into one. The original Rectory stood on the site now occupied by the cottage west of the present Manor House." The Grange is, however, a far superior building. Compton Wynyates, in Warwick- shire, is said to have all the characteristics of the Moated Grange, but this is doubtless a coincidence, which, after all, need not occasion surprise. A writer on the subject of "Locksley Hall," — with what reason I know not, — has ex- pressed the opinion that its original can be found in the Moated Grange. I noticed nothing myself to warrant such a conclusion. F 66 AT SOMERSBY. invariably refers to this house in Somersby. In the pro- spect from the hill-top he saw " the gray old grange," and in the " hourly-mellowing change " of summer he saw " the thousand waves of wheat, that ripple round the lonely grange." But it is in the poem of "Mariana" that we discover how deeply impressed he was with the haunted look of its dark damp walls, its crumbling turrets, and its dry, weedy moat. It is a weird place, and from the road it appears to stand in bleak isolation. No wonder that from its black brooding shadows the poet wove a drear romance, — a tale of utter weariness and long despair ; that when the wind stirred aind the gray morn broke, the phantom of forlorn Mariana moved before his eyes and her wailing cry rang in his ears — " He cometh not,'' she said ; She said, " I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead." What a picture it is ! As I stood before it a heavy cloud loomed just above the roof, and made the old place more than ever dark and forbidding. Withered leaves were strewn about the grounds, the remains of the old fosse were overgrown with tangled creepers, a blackish-green moss crusted the lower walls, while the patchy parts above seemed to be crumbling slowly away. The sense of deso- lation was complete. A deathly stillness reigned without ; The broken sheds look'd sad and strange ; Unlifted was the clinking latch ; the clouds thickened about the weathered gables, and the wind sighed drearily among the gloomy trees. It was indeed the moated grange where never hope entered, where blighted love dwelt, and where, at sunset, Mariana's dirge deepened to despair : — " He will not come'' she said. I have read of another Moated Grange in the Midlands AT SOMERSBY. 67 standing among- a motley group of buildings, gray and red, where, a tiny river babbles to the valley, and where the ruined ivy-covered tower of a church helps to form the scene. But it is in the fen-land by night, when the far-stretching meadows become " glooming flats," it is when the bats flit about the ancient thatch with other " filmy shapes that haunt the dusk," that the lonely grange is seen which holds the spectre visible to the poet's inner eyes. The church (St. Margaret's) is disappointing. It is small, old, and stunted, and bears many traces of having been recently restored. The exterior is in no way imposing. An ancient cross (14th century) in a fair state of preservation, bearing figures of the Virgin crowned and with a lily in her hand, and the Crucifixion, stands a little to the right of the porch. The churchyard is covered with long rank grasses, and some of the tombstones are half hidden by trailers and weeds. Parasites twine about the railings round Dr. Tennyson's grave ; the stone itself will soon be covered with ivy. The interior of the church is new and mean, the pulpit poor, and the pews uninviting. The walls are pierced with small windows, none alike in shape or size. The stonework of the tower exudes a clammy moisture, and the unwholesome smell of the dampness charges the whole atmosphere. There is a small marble monument near the pulpit, and in the chancel (which, oddly enough, is not in the centre of the nave) a small brass, with kneeling effigy, in memory of George Little- bury, and dated 161 2. In the porch near the massive wooden door is a stoup, and over the porch is a dial with the motto, " Time passeth," running transversely, and the date 1751. The tower is said to contain two of the finest mediaeval bells in the county. The present rector, unlike ■ Dr. Tennyson, is non-resident. The church was repaired in 1833, restored in 1865, and fitted up with open benches by the late rector at a cost of .£'500. The living is valued at ;£'220. Lord Tennyson has nowhere in his poeras F 2 68 AT SOMERSBY. alluded directly to the church, but in " In Memoriam " he makes a pleasing reference to the Lincolnshire custom of bell-ringing at Christmas-time : — The Christmas bells from hill to hill Answer each other in the mist. Four voices of four hamlets round, From far and near, on mead and moor. Swell out and fail, as if a door Were shut between me and the sound. Each voice four changes on the wind, That now dilate, and now decrease, Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace. Peace and goodwill, to all mankind. Somersby Church, doubtless, had one of these pealing- voices ; and it may have been the " cold baptismal font " seen on entering, round which the poet bade his friends entwine the holly boughs " for Use and Wont.'^ The inhabitants of Somersby know little of him who has done for that village what Roman Virgil did for Mantua ; he is only a name to them that the wind of fame has wafted to their ears. Tityrus, " piping underneath his beechen bowers," knew as little perhaps of the singer of Ilion's lofty temples. Lord Tennyson does not go to Somersby now, but his brother Horatio sometimes comes to look at the old Rectory and wander about the familiar lanes. But with the poet remains the quiet sense of some- thing lo.st; he would have no backward fancy "wake the old bitterness again'' ; nor care to see the " meadows breathing of the past, and woodlands holy to the dead." It was evening when I left Somersby. The distant hills were shrouded in mist, the long white road was deserted, and the trees " laid their dark arms about the fields." The coming gloom, the cry of some stray bird, the whispering wind in the trees, the chatter of the brooks — all so influenced the emotions that I could almost have AT SOMERSBY. 69 said of the poet, as he of his. friend, "the living soul was flash'd on mine." Some way down the road I paused and looked across the sloping land ; but the night had fallen so quickly that the far-off hills and Somersby Top were mixed in indistinguishable gloom. The heavens between their fairy fleeces pale Sow'd all their mystic gulfs with fleeting stars. CHAPTER VI. THE BROOK. Rivulet crossing my ground. I heard no sound where I stood, But the rivulet on from the lawn Running down to my own dark wood. Maud. The brook, or beck, that " prattled the primrose fancies of the boy," is crossed by the road to Somersby. The " tinkling fall " is heard with great distinctness on either side of the bridge, to which a gentle declivity in the road leads. For just there the waters meet: a thin vein coursing the meadow land delivers its tiny tribute to the greater, bearing its winding waters to the heart-ocean that throbs beyond. A stone tablet on the bridge bears a name and date. And there, too, is the remnant of the old bridge of wood, THE BROOK. 71 which in the poet's time was half in ruins, and which, moss-covered and tottering in mid-stream, Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam Beyond it, where the waters marry. All the baby-bustle of the eager little brook which chatters, chatters as it flows to join the brimming river, is evident from this station. The waters "wind about, and in and out," twist around the black joists imbedded in the sands, " slip, and slide, and gloom, and glance," pass beneath the narrow archway, and out again " curve and flow," until lost among fern and cress arid " brambly wildernesses." The art of poetry could go no further than in giving us this brook-music, this haunting song of rippling waters, this laughing melody of the runlet-voice : — I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles ; I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles. Is not this the very witchery of the refrain, the repetition of the tripping notes and the murmurous echo of the susurrant whisperings ? I steal by lawns and grassy plots,_, I slide by hazel covers ; I move the sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers. I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses ; I linger by my shingly bars ; I loiter round my cresses. And there is always a cry of glee in the voice of the brook, for as it slips between the ridges, hurries by the hills, bickers down a valley, and sets the fairy forelands with willow- weed and mallow, it has a triumph of its own : — For men may come, and men may go, But I go on for ever. 72 THE BROOK. Perhaps there is not just such another brook in the world for scenery as that which Lawrence Aylmer, " seated on .a style in the long hedge," beheld while rolling in his mind old " waifs of rhyme." Rising not far from Somersby it trickles over " matted cress and ribbed sand," dimples in " the dark of rushy coves," and leads to enchanted dells and odorous dusky woods, drawing into its " narrow, earthen urn, in every elbow and turn, the filter'd tribute of the rough woodland." It winds round to the Rectory garden, and on to Stockworth, where it meets " the dark round of the dripping wheel" of the mill. It is the "pastoral rivulet" that bore to the poet a gracious memory of his friend, Arthur Hallam, who knew it as it Swerves To left and right thro' meadowy curves, feeding " the mothers of the flock." Of the twenty thorps it hurries by, and the many bridges it flows under, I can say nothing, but I know it meets the sea where the sallow dunes of Lincolnshire lie at a spot called Gibraltar Point.* The land it waters presents every variety of verdure and foliage. I have seen the brook where tall straight trees mark its course, where the thick coppice spreads, where the budded peaks of the wood rise, and where lie the flat grassy fields. Looking over one of the latter the white home- * Somersby Beck. — The brook originates in the springs just above Tetford. "It has a sandy bottom," writes the Rev. Drummond Rawnsley, "where shoals of small fish delight to disport themselves. And it may be that it was here that Mr. Tennyson took his simile in Enid, where the panic-stricken followers of false Limours vanish at the charge of Geraint : — * Like a shoal Of darting fish, that on a summer morn [Adown the crystal dykes at Carhelot], Come slipping o'er their shadows on the sand ; But if a man who stands upon the brink But lift a shining hand against the sun. There is not left the twinkle of a fin Betwixt the cressy islets white in flower.' " THE BROOK. 73 stead known as Philip's Farm came into view, and I did not wonder that gazing thereupon the poet saw a vision of Katie Willows, a maiden of our century and a daughter of those meadows — Straight, but. as lissome as a hazel wand, Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell Divides threefold to, show the fruit within. It was of her that the brook chattered, and of her father, old Philip, who chattered more than brook or bird : — All about the fields you caught His weary day-long chirping. But " men may come and men may go," says the brook. Poor Philip, of all his lavish waste of words Remains the lean P. W. on his tonib, while Katie, with her lover, walks by " the long wash of Australasian seas, far off." Was there ever a Philip, or a Katie, we wonder ? There stands the farm, but the poem relates to olden days, and it would be hard to trace the real name and fate of those who must long since have passed away. What other tale did the chattering brook tell ? It told the tale that charmed a royal ear — that pure and perfect idyl, "The Miller's Daughter." The waters rippled on in sunlight and shadow to the mill, bearing with them the poet's fancy, which there created the image of Alice and of her father, the wealthy miller. Who that knew him could forget The busy wrinkles round his eyes ? The slow wise smile, that round about His dusty forehead drily curl'd, Seem'd half within and half without, And full of dealings with the world? 74 THE BROOK. It is a charming story. The " long and listless boy late- left an orphan of the squire " dwelt in the old mansion " mounted high," and " had no motion of his own " until the vision of the miller's daughter flashed upon him, and Love possess'd the atmosphere, And fill'd the breast with purer breath. Here, while angling in the higher pool, he saw the chestnuts when their buds were glistening to the breezy blue ; here, from the bridge, he saw the idle swaying of the long mosses in the stream, and observed The tall flag-flowers when they sprung Below the range of stepping-stones. Or those three chestnuts near, that hung In masses thick with milky cones. Here it was also that he Lean'd to hear The milldam rushing down with noise. And see the minnows everywhere In crystal eddies glance and poise. And here, above all, it was that a vision caught his eye, — " the reflex of a beauteous form, A glowing arm, a gleaming neck," — and instantly love came and " dispelled the fear that I should die an early death." The poet lingers over his descriptions, and his picture is one of the most complete that could be presented. He speaks of The brimming wave that swam Thro' quiet meadows round the mill, The sleepy pool above the dam. The pool beneath it never still. The meal-sacks on the whiten'd floor, The dark round of the dripping wheel, The very air about the door Made misty with the floating meal. There are three mills in the vicinity, one at Stockworth, one at Aswardby, and the third at Tetford ; the same stream passes by them all. Stockworth mill was most likely in THE BROOK. 75 the poet's mind when he was writing this poem. It is there that " the dark round of the dripping wheel " can be seen ; the wheel at Tetford is, and probably always has been, enclosed. The church at Tetford has no spire, nor has any other church within a radius of ten miles of that place. Most of them have large square towers, the one exception in the district being at Sausthorpe, but the church there was a small antique structure until it was rebuilt in 1844, — twelve years after " The Miller's Daughter " was published. The local touches in the poem are very precise. We are told of " the white chalk-quarry from the hill," which " gleam'd to the flying moon by fits," — a reference to the extensive excavations thereabout,* — and we get a charac- teristic view of the country in the lines, — Oft in ramblings on the wold, When April nights began to blow. And April's crescent glimmer'd cold, I saw the village lights below. At the close the picture becomes lurid ; the sunset, south and north, "winds all the vale in rosy folds"; in the back- ground stands " the old mill across the wolds " with the last light of day flaming upon it ; even " the sullen pool below " becomes bright and red, and the miller's daughter sees that her " narrow casement glass " shines as with fire. It was this poem which first attracted the attention of Prince Albert and the Queen to the poet and led indirectly to his being afterwards chosen to succeed Wordsworth as the Laureate. It was this idyl and others in the volume of 1832 which caused one of the leading American critics to recognise Tennyson's " command of delicious metres, the rhythmic susurrus of stanzas whose every word is as needful and studied as the flower or scroll of ornamental architecture — yet so much an interlaced portion of the whole, that the special device is forgotten in the general excellence ; the eiifect of colour, of that music which is a * The " white chalk quarry " at Tetford can be seen from Stockworth Mill, and the " old mansion mounted high " is not far away. 76 THE BROOK. passion in itself, and of the scenic pictures which are the counterparts of changeful emotions." Another critic has ranked the poem second only to " Enoch Arden," and every reader, whether agreeing with this or not, must have felt the fascination of the piece. " The Miller's Daughter " is one of Tennyson's most unaffected poems. It was ridiculed by the Quarterly reviewer, but that no more detracted from its popularity than it estimated it at its proper merit. Several lines have been revised since the poem first appeared, and it is not altogether without appropriateness to describe it in the poet's words as one of those trifles — Which true love spells,— True love interprets — right alone. His light upon the letter dwells, For all the spirit is his own. The brook chattered on, and the listener interpreted its secret tongue and wove stories about the places from which it came and whither it flowed. As it grew from rivulet to river he saw it barge-laden and noticed " the sparkling flint beneath the prow"; perchance, too, the beck was one of the vocal streams that Through many a lilied row Down-carolling to the crispbd sea. Low-tinkled with a bell-like flow Atween the blossoms, " We are free." And surely it was this " dark and dimpled beck " that brought the rose " on a blushing mission " to the lover of Maud, Saying in odour and colour, " Ah, be Among the roses to-night " ; — this same brook that had "rippled on in light and shadow to the ballad that she sang." But time after time we hear its crinkling melody and its happy voice. Just as you may stand on a hill-top and see far away in the distance tiny THE BROOK. 77 threads of silver glistening, marking the course of the stream flowing through the land, so in Tennyson's poems the little beck " sparkles out " here and there, and shows how the poet's memory flashes back to the old home and its natural beauties. We know how eagerly he listened to its speech and how well he learnt to understand its music. The blitheness of the brook becomes contagious, and that is why its ripple breaks out in many a line and its whisperings become bright little stories suited for a poet's theme. Standing on the bridge, with the incessant cawing of the rooks in the air, hearing the chime beneath the bridge while the netted sunbeam dances against the sandy shallows, you can let the memory of these things steal upon you ; and as one who " feels a glimmering strangeness in his dream " the phantom-faces of Alice the Miller's Daughter, of Katie Willows, a daughter of these meadows, of Maud " with her exquisite face — in the light of her youth and her grace," — may float before your eyes. The spell of the brook with its haunting, bewitching music is irresistible. For no necromancy is so potent as the voice of nature, and to the poet such a voice must have had the all-alluring fascination that the sirens of Capreae exerted upon those who in old times crossed the mysterious seas. CHAPTER VII. SOMERSBY REVISITED : HOLYWELL GLEN. The silent woody places By the home that gave me birth. Maud. Here are cool mosses deep, And thro' the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. Choric Song. A FURLONG or more beyond Somersby Church there is a small plantation to which the old monkish name of Holywell Glen has been given. It is a wild and beautiful spot, 'where, as Cowper says, meditation might think down hours to moments. Hither many times in his youth the poet came, sometimes when it was white with snowdrops, sometimes when overhead The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end, and sometimes when the leaves were reddening to the fall, and the " flying gold of the woodlands drove through the air." As far as the sight can penetrate are trees, — larch and spruce and ash and beech and sycamore, — and the great hollow is strewn with leaves. The interlacing branches above, breaking out into verdure, make a roof of twinkling emerald ; but down in the hollow there is a shadowy gloom. In the gorge a thin stream glistens. It issues from the throat of a cavern of a rock ; its shallow bed is half-choked SOMERSBY REVISITED: HOLYWELL GLEN. 79 with rotting herbage, and is crossed again and again by fallen and inclining trees.* This is the home of the clanging rookery, and the harsh cawing prevents a moment's silence. Here and there a bare forehead of rock stands out and overlooks the gorge, with nothing perhaps but a twisted root, like a swollen vein, protruding on its front. But from the red-ribbed verge start slender trees which form the border of the glen. It was the lover of Camilla, seeing such a sight, who spoke of Huge blocks, which some old trembling of the world Had loosen'd from the mountain, till they fell Half digging their own graves. * Holywell Glen. — This place was first described, by Howitt in his "Homes and Haunts of British Poets." Over the gateway there was an inscription: — "A medley of Virgil and Horace." A local student gives the following additional particulars: — "A series of steps led down into the well, a post was fixed in front of it, and a cross-bar extended thence to the rock. On the cross-bar was a ring with a rope attached, so that the bather might safely descend into the well and enjoy the healing virtues of the stream which rushed from the rock. Geologists say that the wold villages are so closely placed on account of the superior quality of the water which springs up where- ever-the Spilsby sandstone meets the Kimmeridge clay." Susan Epton (Mrs. Thompson), Miss Emily Tennyson's maid, tells me that she can remember the time when visitors came in scores to ' ' take the waters " in the Glen. Mr. Russell Lowell must have had some such place in his mind when he wrote that wonderful account of a forest and dell in " A Legend of Brittany." I venture to quote the two verses containing the description : — Deep in the forest was a little dell High over-arched with the leafy sweep Of a broad oak, through whose gnarl'd roots there fell A slender rill that sung itself asleep, Where its continuous toil had scoop'd a well To please the fairy folk ; breathlessly deep The stillness was, save when the dreaming brook From its small urn a drizzly murmur shook. The wooded hills sloped upward all around With gradual rise, and made an even rim, So that it seem'd a mighty casque unbound From some huge Titan's brow to lighten him. Ages ago, and left upon the ground, Where the slow soil had moss'd it to the brim. Till after countless centuries it grew Into this dell, the haunt of noontide dew. 8o SOMERSBY REVISITED: HOLYWELL GLEN. Such a conclusion to those who have stood in Holywell Glen is well-nigh irresistible. It seems as if rocks and land had, in some far period of the world's history, been whirled down by a hurricane and left thus in imposing confusion. Or might it not have been Amphion's fiddling in the timber that made the mountain " stir its bushy crown," and caused all the change ? Like some great landslip, tree by tree, The country-side descended. It was noon when I entered Holywell Glen, and the sun stood right above the tremulous tree-tops. The gold light trickled through the tiny interstices and seemed to dissolve in airy radiance overhead. The serenity below was unbroken save for the " runlet tinkling from the rock" ; there was no motion in the air ; a spell of " calm and deep peace " lay over the place like an enchantment. At such a time to such a spot must Julian and Camilla have stolen to hold "low converse sweet, in which their voices bore least part," seeing the " cavern-mouth half-overtrailed with a wanton weed," and musing over the legend that time has woven about it : — Thence one night, when all the winds were loud, A woful man (for so the story went) Had thrust his wife and child If you go far in (The country people rumour) you may hear The moaning of the woman and the child, Shut in the secret chambers of the rock. I, too, have heard a sound, — perchance of streams Running far on within its inmost halls, The home of darkness. Coming down to the level of the stream and looking upward we behold a wondrous picture in brown and green, — that shaded brown and mossy green which Nature SOMERSB Y RE VISITED : HOL YWELL GLEN. 8 1 alone can paint. It is at once sombre and rich, the lovely tints are exquisitely blent, " a million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime," and All the haunted place is dark and holy. " Maud," the most tender, the most passionate, of all the Laureate's poems, is a drama drawn from the dusky woods. The gust and fury, the sweetness and calm, the pathos and solemnity, are all the inspiration that descends upon the worshipper in Nature's temple. For Nature loves her worshippers, and to them she yields the secrets of her treasury and concedes her wealth of golden lore. The communing spirit soon learns the mysteries breathed by winds to hooded trees, and catches the meaning of whisperings to the fluttered leaves. The stream tells its tale to the banks, and secrets are exhaled from the hearts of the flowers. But in a gloomy wood, with its innumerable tongues, what poet is there who would not hear in the murmurs a tale of vain love and long regretting — the world's first story of love and death ? Tennyson betook himself to these moody deeps, and " Maud " was the tale the woods told in the fall of the year when dark days prevail and there are only chance hours of sunshine and joy. He saw the legend-haunted cave, heard the moaning winds, and gazed upward at the rocks. Then the "dreadful hollow " which " grides and clangs its leafless ribs and iron horns " echoed of death ; the rock that fell with a suicide could be distinguished ; and the heath in the fields above suggested the spilling of blood. Gradually the wood gave forth the story, and the spirit, Maud, was evolved with a dark reality of Manhood as attendant. She comes from another stiller world of the dead, Stiller, not fairer, than mine. The lover's description of his home " half-hid in the G 82 SOMERSBY REVISITED: HOLYWELL GLEN. gleaming wood " exhibits somewhat painfully the morbid effect that solitude in such a place has upon the mind :— I hear the dead at mid-day moan, And the shrieking rush of the wainscot mouse, And my own sad name in corners cried. When the shiver of dancing leaves is thrown About its echoing chambers wide, Till a morbid hate and horror have grown Of a world in which I have hardly mixt. And a morbid eating lichen fixt On a heart half-turn'd to stone. Both in " The Lover's Tale " and in " Maud " brooding, dissatisfied, despairing Self stands striving to grasp ethereal beauty evoked from the wilds of nature, and in each case the human sorrow is the man's, and the phantom towards which he yearns fades away. There is a sonnet, now sup- pressed, in which the positions are clearly defined : — Yet my lonely spirit follows thine. As round the rolling earth night follows day : But yet thy lights on my horizon shine Into my night when thou art far away. I am so dark, alas! and thou so bright. When we two meet theris never perfect light. The burden of the lover is always sorrow — sorrow not only for himself, but mixed with tenderest pity for those who have shared his hopeless love : — Alas for her that met me, That heard me softly call. The drama of " Maud " closes, but it does not end. There is silence, but we cannot say there is cessation. It is the sinking of a dream, the fading of light, the imperceptible dying-away of notes ; a-veil has fallen, but the Spirit and the Man are still there. Maud is only like a rainbow-light rising from the tempest-tears of grief; to the lover ulti- SOMERSBY REVISITED: HOLYWELL GLEN. 83 mately she becomes one " of a band of the blest " telling of hope for him and the world. And it was but a dream, yet it yielded a dear delight To have look'd, the' but in a dream, upon eyes so fair, That had been in a weary world my one thing bright. " Maud " is an ideal English love-tale. Everything in the poem is English — character, scenery, and feeling. Maud herself is a type of English beauty, stately and proud at first ; winsome and tender when once her heart is touched. Her brother is a type of the hot-headed, im- pulsive, but not bad-hearted, young Englishman who may be met everywhere ; a man of no particular intellect and despising sentiment, yet capable of some gentleness • " rough, but kind," as his sister said, and for proof told her lover that — When she lay Sick once, with a fear of worse, He left his wine, and horses, and play, Sat with her, read to her, night and day. And tended her like a nurse. The " new-made lord " is British material, too ; and it will be remembered that his " gewgaw castle " was placed in the moorland " amid perky larches and pine." And often a clearer touch and a bolder line define the very spot in which the drama was played out. I have not been able to learn that any incident in the poet's life, or that any occurrence in his time in " the dark wood," suggested the tragic portions of " Maud." The scenery alone is re- sponsible for them. Such, then, I take to be the genesis of " Maud," and I look upon Holywell Glen as the place whence the effluence reached the poet's soul and impregnated his nature. I had one intimation of the effects which could be produced there, for a moment while I stood among the trees the sky became overcast, and immediately all the elements of storm were in fiercest conflict. The wind swept among G 2 84 SOMERSBY REVISITED: HOLYWELL GLEN. the multitudinous branches as if they were the chords of some vast instrument, and from the heart of the wood rose an untoned melody deepening to a roar. The trees shook mightily, torn and scattered leaves whirled along the hollow, and a semi-darkness floated down. That swift and startling change from calm to tumult, and the no less sudden subsidence again of tumult to calm, ■ wrought an impression upon me which will never be effaced. CHAPTER VIII. AT MABLETHORPE : TENNYSON'S SEA-PICTURES. . . . . Came and paced the shore, Ran in and out the long sea-framing caves, Drank the large air, and saw . . . the sea. Sea DreaTns. There were many reasons for my choosing to spend a day at Mablethorpe. It is here that Tennyson obtained his first view of the sea, here about the beach that he wandered when loud the Norland whirlwinds blew, building up a story of Locksley Hall that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts. And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts, or hearing in the blast the music of an ancient song, echoing " Oriana." There is a road here named after the poet, and a pretty white house with blowing flowers and graceful trees before it which is pointed out as the place in which the family were accustomed to live in the summer months. By the courtesy of Mr. C. M. Nesbitt, to whom this charming place belongs, I was allowed to see the room the poet occupied, and I was pleased to find on entering that most appropriately Millais' portrait of Tennyson was hung in the most conspicuous position, while a relic from Thorpe Hall stood in one of the corners. It is highly probable 86 AT MABLETHORPE : SEA-PICTURES. that this is the very "lowly cottage" referred to in the " Ode to Memory "— Whence we see Stretch'd wide and wild the waste enormous marsh, Where from the frequent bridge, Like eijnblems of infinity, The trenched waters run from sky to sky. It is a curious house, reached by a little bridge across the stream, long and low-roofed, with four rooms leading into each other above and below. It is a peaceful spot, too ; nothing could be heard but the roll of the in-coming tide and the swish of scythes in the fields. Standing behind the " heapM hills that mound the sea " and hearing that water-lullaby one might well pause and ask — Is that enchanted moan only the swell Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay ? Mablethorpe, the day I spent there, might almost have been the ideal " Lover's Bay" described by Julian. Seen from the topmost cliff, Filling with purple gloom the vacancies Between the tufted hills, the sloping seas Hung in mid-heaven, and half-way down rare sails, White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky. The sands stretch either way as far as the eye can see, and I walked along them for miles meeting no one. For Mablethorpe is an out-of-the-world place, its sand-built ridges and the heaped hills that mound the sea seldom visited, and, save to a few, unknown. It was a perfect day, balmy as summer ; the shoaling sea, " like a splendid silk of foreign loom," played from the loveliest of blues into green ; a day such as the memory recalls with fondness and dwells upon with tremulous delight. It was a 'day for dreaming of mermen andmermaidens "sitting alone, singing alone, under the sea," hiding and seeking "on the broad sea- wolds in the crimson shells," darting away to the '' purple AT MABLETHORPE: SEA-PICTURES. 87 twilights " below and calling aloud in " dreamy dells." Here on the sunlit sands the " crisping ripples " came, and "tender curving lines of creamy spray" were wasting at my feet. Tennyson must have loved to wander beside the sea on these rare days, absorbing the scene to its minutest details : The semi- circle Of dark-blue waters and the narrow fringe Of curving beach — its wreaths of dripping green — Its pale pink shells .... . the pleasure-boat that rock'd Light green with its own shadow, keel to keel, Upon the dappled dimplings of the wave, That blanch'd upon its side. And when the night descended he would go forth again and watch the shadows deepen, " till all the sails were darkcn'd in the west, and rosed in the east"; he saw, as only can be seen in that part of England, " the charmed sunset linger low adown in the red west " while the moon shone silverly in the blue-gray east ; and he beheld that rarer sight (superbly described with marvellous precision) : The crest of some slow-arching wave, Heard in dead night along that table-shore. Drops flat, and after the great waters break Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves, Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud, From less and less to nothing. Once, at Cromer, I saw all this, and but for Tennyson's words I should have deemed the scene beyond the power of language to describe. There is no doubt that on the flat Lincolnshire coast the poet would have opportunities of watching the action of the tide, and it has certainly furnished him with one of the most vivid pictures that the " dead night " reveals. Tenny.son's love of the sea is evinced in many of his poems. In the poem, " On Sublimity," in " Poems by 88 AT MABLETHORPE: SEA-PICTURES. Two Brothers," he confesses his delight in the storms that make the ocean rage. I love your voice, ye echoing winds, that sweep Thro' the wide womb of midnight, when the veil Of darkness rests upon the mighty deep, The labouring vessel, and the shatter'd sail — Save when the forked bolts of lightning leap On flashing pinions, and the mariner pale Raises his eyes to heav'n. Oh ! who would sleep What time the rushing of the angry gale Is loud upon the waters ? Hail, all hail ! Tempest and clouds and night and thunder's rending peal ! Such scenes are not infrequent in the dark months round about that coast. Tennyson has seen the sea there under all aspects — in calm and storm, by moonlight and sunlight, buffeted by winds or gently undulating beneath a cloudless sky. He has heard the deep " moan round with many voices," and lain listening to " the voice of the long sea- wave as it swell'd now and then in the dim-gray dawn." He has found — A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand, Left on the shore ; that hears all night The plunging seas draw backward from the land Their moon-led waters white. He has seen, too, the "bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea," the spangle that " dances in bight and bay," the " rainbow that hangs on the poising wave," the " liquid azure bloom of a crescent sea," and " the wide-wing'd sunset of the misty marsh." In the sea the poet finds sympathy for his various emotions ; to the lover it is the " silent sapphire-spangled marriage-ring of the land"; to the visionary, chasing shapes of beauty come swift as. When to land Bluster the winds and tides the self-same way, Crisp foam-flakes scud along the level sand. Torn from the fringe of spray. AT MABLETHORPE : SEA-PICTURES. 89 In the " Coming of Arthur " we learn of two who — Watch'd the great sea fall, Wave after wave, each mightier than the last. Till last a ninth one, gathering half the deep And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged Roaring, and when the babe rode on this wave to Merlin's feet the fringe of that great breaker swept up the strand. A picture more weird, and mixed with flashing images, in which a great wave swells and breaks, can be found in " Sea- dreams "*; while an incident of which the Laureate has told us he was an actual spectator while on the North Sea is described in " Lancelot and Elaine " when the combined attack on the knight is made. As a wild wave in the wide North Sea, Green-glimmering towards the summit, bears, with all Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies, Down on a bark, and overbears the bark. And him that helms it, so they overbore 1 Sir Lancelot and his charger. The poet was early accustomed to a fierce and rapacious sea, to piping winds, and to belching clouds ; the ocean- roar had sounded in his ears, and the " scream of a madden'd beach dragged down by the waves.'' He has described * The scene may not belong to Lincolnshire, but it is described so vividly that we cannot but regard it as having been actually witnessed : — A full tide Rose with ground-swell, which, on the foremost rocks Touching, upjetted in spirts of wild sea-smoke, And scaled in sheets of wasteful foam, and fell In vast sea-cataracts. As a contrast to this, notice that exquisite picture of the sea when the tide is low and the waves roll up a quiet cove : — ■ And lying still Shadow forth the bank at will : Or sometimes they swell and move, Pressing up against the land With motions of the outward sea. 90 AT MABLETHORPE: SEA-PICTURES. with all fidelity the features of the coast — " All sand and cliff, and deep in-running cave"; and turned into striking metaphor the ceaseless wonders of the shore. Tennyson is the poet of sadness, even of melancholy, and no more fitting cradle-land could have been found for him than where all " crisped sounds of wave and leaf and wind flatter the fancy," and where Nature comes with tearful glimmer and many sighs. It was at Mablethorpe that the young poet built up the towers of fancy to the murmur of waves and the radiance of coming and departing days. Here the dim shadows of dreams took hue and form, beautiful women and heroic men came with the vision of the sea and the sands. Wondrous voices called to him from an un- known world, and far beyond his ken were enchanted lands where fairies revelled and giants abode. But soon came the age of disillusion. The fabrics of romance crumbled at the first touch of experience, and the pleasure-palaces of fancy became only black cloud and bleak shadows. The world puts on a glory for youth, and age strips it bare again. Knowledge expounds, and the wonder flies ; the halcyon hours flash by, and the cold material days darken upon the sight. Must it not have been with thoughts like these that Alfred Tennyson, grown to man's estate, and standing again on the old beach, wrote : — Here often, when a child, I lay reclined, I took delight in this locality. Here stood the infant Ilion of the mind, And here the Grecian ships did seem to be. And here again I come, and only find The drain-cut levels of the marshy lea — Gray sandbanks and pale sunsets, — dreary wind, Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea ! CHAPTER IX. THE LOVE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. Perchance the living still may look Into the pages of this book, And see the days of long ago Floating and fleeting to and fro, As in the well-remembered brook They saw the inverted landscape gleam, And their own faces like a dream Look up upon them from below. Longfellow. The traveller in the poet's land becomes more and more impressed, as his own knowledge increases, with Tennyson's exquisitely sympathetic touch with nature. He finds how well he has observed, and little by little he sees — or rather estimates — how much. The landscape everywhere is forming pictures which, in a flash, bring to memory the words that fitly enshrine them. Calmly and reverently the poet has won the secret of grasses, flowers, and trees, of " agaric, moss, and fern " ; his heart has throbbed with the heart of the woods ; his eyes have peered into the mysterious chambers of Nature's endless gallery. He has read truths in the lines and colours, and drunk in beauty with the radiance and charm, that exist everywhere : To some full music rose and sank the sun, And some full music seem'd to move and change With all the varied changes of the dark. 92 THE LOVE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. The glamourous light of romance plays about the pic- tures, or the serener ray of human love gives them their soft, pure lustre. Above all, we cannot but notice Tenny- son's satisfaction with all that is visible — the satisfaction of the artist with his model, of the poet with his reve- lation. He does not tire of the scene, though at times his — Spirits falter in the mist And languish for the purple seas. Then he takes refuge in the enchanted palaces that Fancy rears, and forsakes reality for luxurious dreams. But even at such times memory, like a wind, wafts to him images of what he knew and loved, and hence the con- tinuous presence of the familiar scenes and the recurrence of olden melodies. Lincolnshire has given tone to another poet spiritually akin to the Laureate. Miss Jean Ingelow instinctively seized upon the salient features of the district in which she dwelt, and exercised her poetic faculty in faithful de- lineations of them. Tennyson has had many imitators, but in Miss Ingelow's poems we find, not imitation, but unconscious similarity. The brushes of these artists have been laid upon the same palette^ and have held the same colours ; in early life they gazed upon the same panorama and traced the same effects ; to each like sub- jects were suggested and like objects became their models. In the sequel we see that they have produced companion pictures, by the aid of which we can observe where the lines are most rigidly correct and where the deviations from the original are most marked. But there are no sharp contrasts in the works of the two. We find that their pictures have the same subdued tints, the same bright glimpses. The grouping of the trees, the sparkle of the waters, the undulating stretch of the land, are identical throughout. The ope picture confirms the truth of the other. It is only in the treatment of details that THE LOVE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 93 there is difference. Miss Ingelow's style is her own. The verdict of the world has promoted her far above the ranks of the minor bards, and pronounced her a poet of original power. But, as with Tennyson, the home- influence is strong with her ; and if it were a matter of words alone the kinship of the two poets would be made apparent. The soft low wolds, the brattling beck, the languid rivers, the level sands, the land-locked sea, are frequent phrases on her lips. In that burst of old-world music, "The High Tide," she names Mablethorpe and En- derby, and gives that striking description of the country — Alia fresh the level pasture lay. And not a shadow mote be scene, Save where full fyve good miles away, The steeple towered from out the greene. Could we be shown a clearer picture of the low land? Equally successful is the view of the heart of Lincolnshire as Tennyson himself would have painted it — A dappled sky, a world of meadows, Circling above us the black rooks fly Forward, backward ; lo, their dark shadows Flit on the blossoming tapestry — Flit on the beck, for her long grass parteth As hair from a maid's bright eyes blown back ; And, lo, the sun like a lover darteth His flattering smile on her wayward track. The description of the beck in the second verse happily exemplifies the meaning of the remark that Miss Ingelow's illustrations form companion pictures to Tennyson's. They are unlike but akin, and the image of the long grass on the sides of the beck, parted like "hair from a maid's bright eyes blown back," well accords with that other image of a half-ruined bridge forming an eyebrow for the gleam, the sparkling eye, beneath. 94 THE LOVE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. Almost an echo of Tennyson's music is the expression — The careless beck is a merry dancer Keeping sweet time to the air she sings ; and it is heard again in — A rose-flush tender, a thrill, a quiver, When golden gleams to the tree-tops glide ; A flashing edge for the milk-white river. The beck, a river — with still sleek tide. Broad and white, and polished as silver. On she goes under fruit-laden trees. Still more pisrceptible is this in the concluding portion of that delightful lyric, "The Letter L," vi^here the apostrophe of the leaping brook is — The busy beck, that still would run And fall, and falter its refrain ; And pause and shimmer in the sun, And fall again. Miss Ingelow has not Tennyson's power of close and keen analysis ; her lines are not so delicately limned and her colours are not so daintily spread, as his. But some- times she seems to have acquired, if only for a moment, the magic touch ; as when she is conveying the idea that Nature's pulse is slow — And leisurely the opal murmuring sea Breaks on her yellow sands. The two lines are inspiration for an artist. In " A Lily and a Lute" we read of the " land-locked sea" with which Tennyson has made us acquainted in " The Palace of Art"; and Miss Ingelow's poem tells also of " the swell of some long wave Setting in from unrevealed countries," — resem- bling "the swell of the long waves" which became an " enchanted moan " in the ears of the lover of " Maud." THE LOVE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 95 Seeing what he saw, hearing what he heard, learning much that he learnt. Miss Ingelow finds subject and sug- gestion just as Tennyson found them. As they passed down the Lincolnshire lanes pleasant sounds haunted their ears that both have remembered — Sheep-bells chiming from a wold, And bleat of lamb within its fold, Ecstatic chirp of wingfed thing, Bubbling of the water spring. In " Scholar and Carpenter " we not only get a scene on which our eyes appear to have dwelt before, but we find allusions that almost seem to have strayed from one of the Laureate's poems. Ever with the lane I went Until it dropped with steep descent, Cut deep into the rock, a tent Of maple branches roofing it. Adown the rock small runlets wept,* And reckless ivies leaned and crept, And little spots of sunshinef slept On its brown steeps and made them fair ; And deeper down, hemmed in and hid From upper light and life amid The swallows gossiping, I thrid Its mazes, till the dipping land Sank to the level of my lane : That was the last hill of the chain. And fair below I saw the plain That seemed cold cheer to reprimand. * " The runlet tinkling from the rock." — In Memoriam. t Tennyson was once asked the meaning of the phrase, " Dash'd with wandering isles of light." He said they were "spots of sunshine coming through the caves." , 96 THE LO VE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. Half-drowned in sleepy peace it lay, As satiate with the boundless play Of sunshine on its green array. And clear-cut hills of gloomy blue To keep it safe rose up behind, As with a charmfed ring to bind The grassy sea,* where clouds might find A place to bring their shadows to. Tennyson-readers will think of " The Gardener's Daughter" and " The Miller's Daughter" when they read the follow- ing stanzas from Miss Ingelow's " Four Bridges." There I see those wooden bridges wide That cross the marshy hollow ; there the stile In reeds imbedded, and the swelling down. And the white road toward the distant town. And round about them grows a fringe of reeds. And then a floating crown of lily flowers, And yet within small silver-budded weeds ; But each clear centre evermore embowers A deeper sky, where, stooping you may see The little minnows darting restlessly, f Then follows talk of green whispering rushes, of polished pools " like lanes of water reddened by the west," of the neighbouring copse, the dusk fields, "the little curlews creeping from the sedge" ; of — The lane with maples overhung, that bends Toward her dwelling ; the dry grassy moat. Thick mullions, diamond-latticed, mossed and grey. And walls banked up with laurel and with bay. Many a bleak picture has Tennyson sketched, and many a sad wail resounds in his winter pieces, but is there any- * Tennyson, on the contrary, calls the sea " the silent sapphire-spangled marriage-ring of the land." t Compare with verse 7 of " The Miller's Daughter." THE LOVE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 97 thing in "The Dying Swan" to equal these lines from " The Dreams that Came True" ? — The sweep And whistle of the wind along the mere Through beds of stiifened reeds and rushes sere. Or, is the lament in "The Lady of Shalott" more pathetic than the conclusion of " The High Tide " ? — I shall never see her more Where the reeds and rushes quiver, Shiver, quiver ; Stand beside the sobbing river, Sobbing, throbbing, in its falling To the sandy lonesome shore. Pictures of morning and evening are painted with a master^hand, and afford us a delightful view of the low- lands. Here is the painting of Lincolnshire when the day is opening : — The field with light aglow ; How fresh its boundary lime-trees show. And how its wet leaves trembling shine ! Between the trunks come through to me The morning sparkles of the sea Below the level browsing line. And here is the painting of Lincolnshire when the night is slowly falling : — The light grew dim. And through the lilac branches I could see. Under a saffron sky, the purple rim O' the heaving moorland. The resemblance of all these scenes to scenes depicted by the Laureate signifies that the poetic nature is similarly impressed by like surroundings and influences. I do not believe for one moment that Miss Ingelow's writings owe anything to the spell of the master ; but it is at least interesting to notice how these two poets often choose the H 98 THE LOVE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. same words in which to clothe their ideas, use the same tints for their pictures, sing in the same key, and alight on the same theme. Miss Ingelow would have done much for her county had Tennyson never lived. The pensive quietude that pervades her poems, the sense of loneUness that so often makes itself felt, the sombre tinge that shades almost every scene, the undercurrent of melancholy that mingles with the songs — all these are attributable to such monition as the mind derives from natural environment, and such as inspired Tennyson with his sombre similitudes and his plaintive music. Nature produces like emotions in the hearts of her pupils, and it is more than ordinarily interesting to witness the results of her operation upon the perception of two of her most favoured worshippers. Sir Walter Scott, as might well be expected, found the marshland uninteresting. His was not the eye to see beauty in " the level waste, the rounding gray," or to view with delight the dusky meadowland and the quiet wolds. But Charles Dickens was more appreciative, and his descriptions of Chesney Wold, Sir Leicester Dedlock's " place '' in Lincolnshire, are well worthy of consideration. The writer of " Bleak House " positively seems to enjoy the excess of dreariness that besets the country in the wet season. Here is his opening scene : " The waters are out in Lincolnshire. An arch of the bridge has been sapped and sopped away. The adjacent low-lying ground, for half a mile in breadth, is a stagnant river, with melancholy trees for islands in it, and a surface punctured all over, all day long, with falling rain. The weather, for many a day and night, has been so' wet that the trees seem wet through, and the soft loppings and prunings of the woodman's axe can make no crash or crackle as they fall. The deer, looking soaked, leave quagmires as they pass. The shot of a rifle loses its sharpness in the moist air, and its smoke moves in a tardy little cloud towards the green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a background for the falling rain. The view from my Lady Dedlock's own windows is THE LOVE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 99 alternately a lead-coloured view and a view in Indian ink. On Sundays, the little church in the park is mouldy ; the oaken pulpit breaks out into a cold sweat ; and there is a general smell and taste as of the ancient Dedlocks in their graves " {cap. ii.). That is no fancy picture, and there is no gainsaying the fact that Lincolnshire at its worst is hard to beat for utter dreariness. But notice the change when it has " left off raining at last, and Chesney Wold has taken heart." Then — " The clear cold sunshine glances into the brittle woods, and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves and drying the moss. It glides over the park after the moving shadows of the clouds, and chases them, and never catches them at all, all day. . . . The rooks, swinging in their lofty houses in the elm-tree avenue, seem to discuss the question of the occupancy of the carriage as it passes underneath ; some agreeing that Sir Leicester and my Lady are come down ; some arguing with malcontents who won't admit it ; now, all consenting to consider the question disposed of ; now, all breaking out again in violent debate, incited by one obstinate and drowsy bird, who will persist in putting in a last contradic- tory croak " {cap. xii.). And here is a typical view of town and country : " It was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully, the larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild flowers, the trees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields, with a light wind blowing over them, filled the air with such delicious fragrance. Late in the afternoon we came to the market-town where we were to alight from the coach — a dull little town, with a church spire, and a market-place, and a market-cross, and one intensely sunny street, and a pond with an old horse cooling his legs in it, and a very few men sleepily lying and standing about in narrow little bits of shade. After the rustling of the leaves and the waving of the corn all along the road, it looked as still, as hot, as motionless a little town as England could produce " {cap. xviii.). Later on we get a pen-photograph of Lawrence Boythorn's H 2 loo THE LOVE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. house, and travellers through Lincolnshire might often feel that they were on the point of identifying it. He lived, we are told, "in a pretty house, formerly the Parsonage house, with a lawn in front, a bright flower- garden at the side, and a well-stocked orchard and kitchen- garden in the rear, enclosed with a venerable wall that had of itself a ripened and ruddy look. But, indeed, everything about the place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance. The old lime-tree walk was like green cloisters, the very shadows of the cherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy with fruit, the gooseberry bushes were so laden that their branches arched and rested on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries grew in like profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on the wall. . . All kinds of wholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighbouring meadows where the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay. Such stillness and composure reigned within the orderly precincts of the old red wall, that even the feathers hung in garlands to scare the birds hardly stirred ; and the wall had such a ripening influence that where, here and there high up, a disused nail and scrap of list still clung to it, it was easy to fancy that they had mellowed with the changing seasons, and that they had rusted and decayed according to the common fate" {cap. xviii.). And then we find that bewitching scrap of generalisation of the beauties of the land : " O, the solemn woods over which the light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if Heavenly wings were sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air ; the smooth green slopes, the glittering waters, the garden where the flowers were so symmetrically arranged in clusters of the richest colours, how beautiful they looked ! The house, with gable and chimney, and tower and turret, and dark doorway, and broad terrace-walk, twining among the balustrades of which, and lying heaped upon the vases, there was one great flush of roses, seemed scarcely real in its light solidity, and in the serene and THE LOVE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. loi peaceful hush that rested on all around it. That, above all, appeared the pervading influence. On everything, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old oaks, fern, moss, woods again, and far away across the openings in the prospect, to the distance lying wide before us with a purple bloom upon it, there seemed to be such undisturbed repose " (cap. xviii.). In this passage we find odd lines from " Maud " unconsciously interwoven, and it bears the memory back to words and phrases of the poet's. And in succeeding chapters when we read of gnarled and warted elms, and of umbrageous oaks, " standing deep in the fern and leaves of a hundred years " ; or of the woods where you may see " the light striking down among the transparent leaves, and sparkling in the beautiful interfacings of the shadows of the trees, while the birds. poured out their songs, and the air was drowsy with the hum of insects "; and where you could look " through a green vista supported by thousands of natural columns, the whitened stems of trees, upon a distant prospect made so radiant by its contrast with the shade, and made so precious by the arched perspective through which it was seen, that it was like a glimpse of the better land": we feel that Charles Dickens might even have spent a day in Holywell Glen and have carried away these impressions of it. Finally, we have that view of the fall of night over the Lincolnshire landscape, which also bears with it a reminiscence of the poet's picture : " All that prospect, which from the terrace looked so near, has moved solemnly away, and changed into a distant phantom. Light mists arise, and the dew falls, and all the sweet scents in the garden are heavy in the air. Now, the woods settle into great masses, as if they were each one profound tree. And now the moon rises, to separate them, and to glimmer here and there in horizontal lines behind their stems, and to make the avenue a pavement of light among high cathedral arches fantastically broken " {cap. ix. zwl. ii.). I02 THE LOVE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. Again, the same influences registered like impressions upon contemplative minds. I have not attempted to do more than draw attention to a curious fact ; it is beyond the scope of this book to deal exhaustively with the subject. In " Here ward the Wake" further illustrations could be found, and doubtless the searcher after other examples would be well rewarded for his labour. For the present the instances given above may suiifice. They simply show that Tennyson is a safe guide, and that all he has written of Lincolnshire is truthful in detail just as it is perfect in language. Why has not Somersby been invaded.' Why are no pilgrims met along the highway or seen about the Rectory grounds ? Perhaps it is for the same reason that Words- worth delayed visiting Yarrow. Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown ! It must, or we shall rue it ; We have a vision of our own ; Ah ! why should we undo it ? That may suffice for the present ; assuredly it will not be urged after a while. Years hence the poet's friends and pupils will seek that remote hamlet and gaze with tender, reverent eyes upon the spot where the boy-poet roamed, where the brothers communed, where the friend came, where the father lies. Is it not a glory to have been where such a master has stood, to have regarded what he has deemed worthy of his song, to have found what he remembered in after years with such love and delight, to have touched and known what he celebrates in living words ? The hills, the woods, the streams, the fields — are they not dear to us for the sake of him who drew from them all truths divine that added to the beauty of life and extended the bounds of thought ? These were the well-spring at which the poet drank, and the pure waters became a perpetual fountain of the soul gushing forth in music, rising in beauty ; now touched by the wind into rage, now smitten by the sunlight THE LOVE OF LINCOLNSHIRE. 103 with splendour. No shrine so swe6t, so fair, as that hallowed with such memories ! As we gaze, the softening , mist of a dream glorifies the scene, and swelling desire bears away thought and uplifts the soul. What matters it that "from the garden and the wild a fresh association blows"? This is still his land, and until a greater than he arise his name and fame will make it known. Never may the poet's own fears be realised ! — never may the garden bough sway unwatched ; never may the sunflower " ray round with flames her disk of seed unloved " ; never may the brook, forgotten, babble down the plain! Never, ah, never, may the poet's memory fade from all " the circle of the hills ! " But as long as his words live how can that English home be forgotten ? Tennyson has done his utmost to preserve what his youth held dear. We take his pictures, and we know that they will endure. And gazing on them we find that the master-hand has drawn with subtle skill and faithfulness the native place, deter- mined to perpetuate its beauties and enshrine its hallowed traditions. It was with such thoughts that I turned from Somersby, and it is with such convictions that I brought my pilgrimage to an end. Kingsley was expressing the feelings of us all when he wrote : " What endears Tennyson to me is his hand- ling of the every-day sights and sounds of nature. Brought up in a part of England which possesses not much of the pic- turesque, and nothing of that which the vulgar call sublime, he has learnt to see that in all nature, in the hedgerow and sandbank, as well as the Alp peak and the ocean waste, is a true sublimity, a minute infinite, an ever-fertile garden of poetic images, the roots of which are in the unfathomable and the eternal as truly as any phenomenon which astonishes and awes the eye." In these few pages I have striven to illustrate this, and my tribute to his charm and power, however un^yorthy, I lay at the master's feet. APPENDIX. POEMS RELATING TO LINCOLNSHIRE AND LINCOLNSHIRE CHARACTER. Fro7n "Poems by Two Brothers" (1827). Midnight. First part. On the Death of my Grandmother. The Walk at Midnight. On Sublimity. From " The Lover's Tale" (1828). Descriptions of wood, caverns, and sea. From '■^ Poems" (1830). Mariana. The Owl. Ode to Memory. Song : " A Spirit Haunts." The Dying Swan. Oriana. Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind (Reference to poet's mother). From "Poems" (1832). The Miller's Daughter. The Palace of Art (Verses 22 and 63). (?) Lady Clara Vere de Vere. The May Queen. The Lotos-Eaters (several casual references). A Dream of Fair Women (a reference). From " English Idyls " (1842). Locksley Hall. (?) Audley Court. The Gardener's Daughter. APPENDIX. 105 From " The Princess''^ (1847). Prologue and Conclusion. Sketch of Sir Henry Vivian. Portrait of Poet's Mother. From "In MeTtwriam" (1850). Parts II, 15, 28, 30, 79, 89, 91, 95, 100, loi, 102, 104, 105. From ''Maud" (1855). Parts I, 4, 5, 9, 12, 14, 18, 21, 22 (mainly inferential). The Brook. Miscellaneous. The Northern Farmer. The Northern Cobbler. The Village Wife ; or. The Entail. Locksley Hall Sixty Years After. The Lord of Burleigh. Sonnet : " Check every Outflash.'' Lines : " How Often When a Child" (a discarded poem). From " Idyls of the King." There are numerous allusions to Lincolnshire in this series of poems ; they will be found chiefly in similes. INDEX. Artist, Tennyson as an, i Ashby Puerorum, 49 "Audley Court," yaoW, 3, 19 Aylmer-Aylmer, Sir, 55 Aylmer, Lawrence, 72 Baptism, Tennyson's, 61 Baumber, John, 25 Bayons Manor, 21 Beck, Somersby, 70, 74 Bridge of, 71 course of, 72, and note and " Maud," 76 Bedehouses at Louth, 36 Birds of Lincolnshire, 30 Birthplace, Tennyson's, 61 Boythorn's, Lawrence, home in Lin- colnshire, 100 " Break, break, break, "how written, 47 "Brook, The," quoted, 71, 73 Cadney's Village school, 32 Cathedrals, Tennyson's allusions to, 10 Chesney Wold, 98 Church, Somersby, 67, 68 " Coming of Arthur, The,'' quoted, 98 Complexion, The, of Tennyson's poetry, 6 Cousin Amy, 20 "Daisy, The," quoted, 2 "Day Dream, The," quoted, 14 Doric language, 30 " Dreadful hollow. The," 80 " Dream of Fair Women, A," quoted, 10, 88 " Dying Swan, The,'' quoted, 14 Edwin Morris, 53 England, Tennyson's love of, 4 FfiTE, The, in " The Princess," 28, note Fytche, Rev. Stephen, and his wife, 33 Garden, a Lincolnshire, 15 " Gardener's Daughter, The," 17 " Geraint and Enid," qztoted, 3 Grandparents, Tennyson's, 33 Grasby, 38 Hallam, A. H., visits Somersby, 57 death of, 61 Halton Holegate, 21 Harrington Church, 21 Hall, 52, note Harvey's Alley, 41 Holywell Glen, 78, 79, note noon in, 80 ■ the scene of " Maud," 81 Humour, Tennyson's, 27 " In Memoriam," quoted, 16, 23, 50, 51, 58, 59, 60, 64, 65, 68 Ingelow, Miss Jean, and Lincolnshire scenery, 93 " Ivied Casement," The, 21 Jackson, J. , of Louth, 42, 43 Kingsley's, Canon, Eulogy of Tennyson, 103 " Lady Clara Vere de Vere,'' 28 " Lancelot and Elaine," quoted, 89 Langton Hall, 21, 22 ^ Lincoln Cathedral, 9 Lincolnshire, general view of, 11, 49, 99 by night, 12, 13, 97, loi poets of, 92 morning in, 16 Locksley Hall, 19, 48 " Lord of Burleigh, The,'' 24 " Lotos-Eaters, The," quoted, 79, 80, 86 Louth Church and Vicarage, 33 Grammar School, 32, 36 Love of home, Tennyson's, 3 1 "Lover's Tale, The," quoted, 79, 80, 86 io8 INDEX. Mablethorpe, 85 Tennyson's house at, 85 the coast at, 86, 87 descriptions in poems, 86, 87, Manuscript of the "Poems by Two Brothers," 42 value of Tennysonian, 44,' note " Maud" and Holywell Glen, 81 ■ quoted, 82, 83 a drama of the woods, 83 English types in, 83 the genesis of, 82 " May Queen, The," 24 Mill, Stockworth, 74 " Miller's Daughter, The," 73 the Queen and, 75 eulogy of, 75 local character of, 74, 75 Moated Grange, The, 65 and note the residence of the Northern Farmer, 65 Mariana and, 66 Morning in Lincolnshire, 16 Music of Lincolnshire, 3 North Somercotes, 21 " Northern Cobbler, The," 28 " Northern Farmer, The," original of, ZS " Ode to Memory," The, quoted, 6, 7, 86 " Palace of Art," The, quoted, 8, 88 Philip's Farm, 73 " Poems by Two Brothers," Tae., quo- tations from, 5, 10, 12, 33, 59, 88 history of, 41 story relating to, 41 the MS. of, 42 individual authorship in, 43 original intentions concerning, 44 price of, 44 publication of, 42 " Prefatory Poem," quoted, 39 " Promise of May," The, 27 Prophecy concerning " Locksley Hall, " 23 Qdeen, The, and Tennyson, 75 Rectory, Somersby, 57, 60 Revision of poems, Tennyson's, 45 Roads to Somersby, 47, 49, 54, note Saltfleet, 21 Scrivelsby Court, 21 School, the Tennysons at, 35 Schoolfellows, Tennyson's, 34, 40 Sea, Tennyson and the, 87 the, and its influence on the poet, 90 Sellwood, The, family, 29 " Sixty Years After," 20 Somersby, 55, 56, note party at, 59 Tennyson leaves, 65 evening at, 69 the attractions of, 102 church at, 67, 68 Sonnets, suppressed, 82, 90 " Spinster's, The, Sweet-arts," 28 Spiritualism, Tennyson's, 37 ■ letter on, 38, note Stockworth Mill, 74 Storm in Lincolnshire, 16 Suggested, how poems are, 48 Tennyson, Dr. G. C, 26, note, 40, 62, note references to, in poems, 63 his tomb, 64 Tennyson, Lord, birth and baptism of, 61 ■ School-days of, 35 at Louth, 32 his " youth sublime," 40 joint author of " Poems by Two Brothers," 41 at Mablethorpe, 85 his love of England, 4, 31 spiritualism of, 37 leaves Somersby, 65 and A. H. Hallam, 57 and "Cousin Amy," 20 favourite expressions of, 30 ■ revises poems, 45 Frederick, 37 Horatio, 39, 68 Arthur, 39 Edward, 39 Tennyson-Turner, Charles, 35, 38 Tennyson, Lady, 29 Tennyson, Mrs., 40, 61 references to, in poems, 62 Trees, Lincolnshire, 50 " Village Wife, The," 27. Vivian, Sir Walter, original of, 28 Waite, Rev. J., of Louth, 35, 36 Willows, Philip and Katie, 73 Wordsworth's opinion of Tennyson, 38 " Youth sublime," The, of Tennyson, 40 15 York Street, Covent Garden, London, October 1889. Mr Redway's Publications New and Forthcoming Works George Redway's Publications. Demy Svo, white cloth, gilt, Jj. In Tennyson Land : Being a Brief Account of the Home and Early Sur- roundings OF THE Poet Laureate, and an Attempt TO Identify the Scenes and Trace the Influences of Lincolnshire in HIS Works. By J. CUMING WALTERS. Illustrations by F. G. Kitton, Contents : — Tennyson as an Artist — Specimen Pictures — His Range of Style — Love of England — An Early Effort — The Pleasures of Memory — Tennyson's Allusions to Cathedrals — General Aspect of Lincolnshire — A Night View — " The Dying Swan " — " The Gardener s Daughter" — Locksley Hall: where is it? — "Sixty Years After"— "The May Queen" — ** The Lord of Burleigh " — " The Northern Farmer " and other Dialect Poems — Lincoln- shire Types of Character — Country Sounds and Sights — Tennyson's Grand-parents — Louth Vicarage — The Poet's Boyhood — School-Life — His Brothers — Publication of "Poems by Two Brothers" — A Peep at the Original Manuscript — Tennyson's Remuneration — Lincoln- shire Lanes — How Poems are Suggested — Familiar Sights — In the Poet's Land — Lincoln- shire and the Seasons — Situation and Character of the hamlet — Arthur Hallam's Visits — The Rectory and the Lawn — Date of the Poet's Birth and Baptism — Mrs Tennyson — *' The Owd Doctor " — Mournful Reminiscences — The Moated Grange — St Margaret's Church — *' The Quiet Sense of Something Lost " — The Voice of the Brook — Its Course Traced — Katie Willows—" The Miller's Daughter "— " Maud"— The Poet's Affection for the Brook —The Nature of the Glen—" The Lover's Tale "—Scene of " Maud "—Influence of the Woods upon the Poet's Mind — Tennyson's Holiday Haunt — "The Lover's Bay" — De- scriptions of the Sea — A Disillusion — ^Tennyson's Sympathetic Touch with Nature — Miss Jean Ingelow's Poems — Charles Dickens and Lincolnshire — Conclusion. Appendix : — Poems relating to Lincolnshire and Lincolnshire Character. This work is choicely illustrated by drawings from photographs and sketches taken specially for the Author. The pictures include representations of — SoMERSBY Rectory. I The Brook. The Moated Grange. | The Mill. Louth Grammar School. Tennyson's Birthplace. A few Large Paper copies, with the Illustrations printed on Japanese paper, may be had at special prices from the principal booksellers. George Redway's Publications. In Crown %vo. Cloth, "js. 6d. Practical Heraldry ; Or, an Epitome of English Armory. SHOWING How, AND BY Whom Arms may be Borne or Acquired, How Pedigrees may be Traced, or Family Histories Ascertained. By CHARLES WORTHY, Esq., Formerly of H.M. 82nd Regiment, and sometime Principal Assistant to the late Somerset Herald ; Author of "Devonshire Parishes," &c., &c. With 124 Illustrations from Designs by the Author. Prospectus giving full contents may be had on application. " A useful and compendious guide to the fascinating study of Heraldry. Orderly, lucid, and amply illustrated from designs by the Author, It justifies its claim to be a practical treatise." — Notes and Queries. " Mr Worthy's Manual is addressed to the general reader, and explains the terms and rules of Heraldry in clear, non-technical language. It gives useful information about the sources of genealogies and the best methods of tracing them. " — Scotsman. " It was a happy thought of Mr Worthy to combine a treatise on Heraldry with an account of how to trace a Pedigree, and how to read an ancient record. Knowledge of the Science is to be obtained by the perusal, and such knowledge Mr Worthy is fully competent to give." — Saturday Review. " Mr Worthy, known as the Author of Notes on ' Devonshire Parishes,' and who at one time assisted the late Somerset Herald, has issued a useful and practical work on a subject with which he is obviously well acquainted." — Athenaum, "In addition to what is found in ordinary text books on the subject, Mr Worthy has some valuable notes on pedigrees and wills, with instructions as to how to trace a Pedigree." — Court Circular. " Mr Worthy's exposition of the science of Heraldry is, on the whole, the best we know for clearness and compactness." — The Beacon (Boston, Mass., U.S.A.) " Mr Worthy, in the volume just prepared, appears to have made a suc- cessful effort to compile a practical work containing information of interest to a large section of the community. The volume is well worthy of perusal ; and his personal qualifications, he having been sometime principal Assistant to the late Somerset Herald, are such as to satisfy the reader of his general accuracy. " — Morning Post. " We have here a most useful book, and now that the study of Heraldry and the tracing of ancestry have become so general, a book which ought to be found in every gentleman s library. Mr Worthy is no mean authority on the George Redway's Publications. subject, for in addition to a long and general practical experience, he held the position of principal Assistant to the late Somerset 'Rex&M."— Western Antiquary. " The book takes the form of a handy volume of about 250 well printed pages, and is one that by arrangement and index is rendered easy for consul- tation."— 7%e Field. " Mr Worthy introduces a host of historical matter as to the origin of vari- ous coats of arms, seals, liveries, and the like, and by thus investmg his sub- ject with the elements of personal history, he has rendered his volume as interesting as it is useful. "^ — Court Journal, " Meets in a very efficient and satisfactory manner the long felt need of a simple, trustworthy, and readable treatise on the subject. Of Mr Worthy's qualifications for the task, nothing need be said : himself a member of a very ancient family, claiming descent from the Dukes of Normandy and from Charlemagne, he is a thorough master of his subject, and he maybe accepted not only as a competent but a very agreeable Mentor."— y<7^» Bull. " A lucid and very interesting introduction to one of the most fascinating of antiquarian sciences." — TAe Sun (New York). 2 Vols. Demy Svo, Cloth, 2$s. The Philosophy of Mysticism (PHILOSOPHIE DER MYSTIK). By dr carl DU PREL. Translated from the German by C. C. Massey. Contents : — Introduction — Science: Its Capability of Development — On the Scientific Importance of Dream — Dream a Dramatist — Somnambulism — Dream a Physician — The Faculty of Memory — The Monistic Doctrine of the Soul. Extracts from a lengthy notice (over two columns) in the Spectator, Sept. 14: — "The book, we may say at once, has been thoroughly well translated by Mr C. C. Massey — whose version of a good many passages we have compared pretty closely with the original — and the English reader will find in it abundant subject for thought. , . . Taken for what it is, and with the reserves already indicated, this truly original, truly attractive book may with a good conscience be recommended to an English public Not the least of its merits is its fertility of suggestion of practical problems in introspective psychology — observations which the reader may make upon the one thing — namely, consciousness — which is always with him in waking hours, and of which he can infuse more than he perhaps supposes into the dim experiences of sleep." " In the present work, which fills two sturdy volumes, he [Baron Du Prel] ventures into the re^on of dreams, and carefully and lucidly examines, as far as they can be examined by the light of science, the state of the dreamer, the somnambulist, and the clairvoyant." — Pall Mall Gazette. " These volumes, admirably translated, are a most valuable addition to the bibliography of a subject which is now engaging the attention of both scientists and thinkers of all classes." — American Bookseller. George Redway's Publications. " We commend the book to all students of psychology. It should be added that the translation has been well done, and, unlike many from the German, is exceedingly readable, save in the more subtle philosophical portions, even to the ordinary reader." — Nonconformist and Independent, " We could wish to follow up his fascinating speculations further in their bearings on the questions of xmmortality, ethics, and all the most im- portant problems of the world. Du Prel's speculations differ from all others of the kind in this, that they purport to rest upon a basis of demonstrable facts. Whether these facts are genuine is a question worthy of more atten • tion than it has hitherto received. He has the further advantage of being well equipped scientifically as well as metaphysically. Darwin and the scientists are as familiar to him as Kant, Schopenhauer, and Hartmann. Whether he has succeeded in pointing out a new path of psychological investigation it would be too soon to say definitely. But he has produced a very remarkable and striking book, and all who take an interest in these questions will do well to read it in Mr Massey's excellent translation." — Literary World. " If the members of the Psychical Society have not already mastered the ' Philosophie der Mystik ' of Baron Carl du Prel, doctor of philosophy, they have to hand a translation by C. C. Massey, in two volumes, which they can ill afford to neglect. This philosophic treatise on dream phenomena deals with Mysticism not as something unknowable, or isolated from experience, but as organically related with 'the totality of things.' The dream-life, our author undertakes to show, is as worthy of study as the waking life. . . . Dr du Prel's work teems with illustrations, derived from innumerable sources, of the wonders of somnambulism and clairvoyance, of the restorative virtue of the somnambulist's sleep, the health-prescriptions and cures of the clairvoyant, many of which must put the best physician to the blush. Of ' evidence,' in fact, there is more than sufficient to illustrate the dualism of consciousness, and to exercise alike the open-minded and the credulous." — Saturday Review. "The exceedingly difficult and interesting questions relating to memory are discussed with great ability on the line of this double consciousness. The apparent permanence of all impressions — as shown by the reproduction of the most distant, complicated, and improbable in sleep or trance — the extraordi- nary gaps in the life of a somnambule, caused by the double state, are described most carefully." — Scots Observer. "Mr C. C. Massey has sensibly enriched the student of transcendental philosophy by translating Du Prel's 'Philosophy of Mysticism.' . . . This translation, a piece of excellent work in a somewhat difficult field of labour, will be welcome to every one who is interested in the collateral development of German transcendental philosophy." — Scotsman. " Speculations ingenious and far-reaching. . . . We thank Mr Massey for the general clearness of his rendering and for his lucid and persuasive introduction. . . . We cannot help feeling some interest and sympathy in the Baron's futile ingenuities and innocently boastful eclecticism : he is so bitter an opponent of narrow eighteenth century Aufkldrung, and himself such a charming type of nineteenth century Aufkldrung ; he has read and misunderstood so much ; he is so guilelessly persuaded he possesses the winnowing fan that can sift the true from the false in the beliefs of all ages ; he is altogether so superior, so lucid and unbiassed an intellect, a pupil in all schools, and the judge of all." — Athenmum. George Redway's Publications. Tenth Thousand. i2mo, Cloth, is. The Grammar of Palmistry. By KATHARINE ST. HILL. With Eighteen Illustrations. , Contents :— On the Outline and Mounts— On the Lines— On the Palm of the Hand and Lesser Lines— On Signs of Illness, Temper, and on Special Qualities — On Reading the Hands (.Examples)— The Hands of Distinguished Persons— Glossary of Terms. " The little manual is quite the best that we have seen on the subject. . . . The expression of the soul through the body — and this is one method of it — is worth careful study." — Light. "Those who provide themselves with the 'Grammar of Palmistry' will not require the services of a fortune-teller, but will be able — or may persuade themselves that they are able — by examining their own hands, after the manner prescribed in this little volume, to foretell their future fate. . . . The little book contains much interesting matter. The ' portraits ' of the hands of several distinguished persons — the names of whom, however, are not given— are worthy of being studied. The text is illustrated by what may be termed descriptive drawings." — Glasgow Herald. " The subject is one which is not without vogue in these days, and the little volume under notice enunciates clearly the principles of the science. The writer has endeavoured to disengage palmistry from the canons of necromancy and superstition with which old authors habitually mix it up. To enable the reader to grasp with greater facility the principles laid down, the book contains some twenty illustrations." — Morning Post. In demy 8»(j, Oriental Cloth, los. 6d. The Indian Religions • Or, Results of the Mysterious Buddhism. Concerning that also which is to be understood in the Divinity of Fire. By HARGRAVE JENNINGS, author of the " rosicrucians, their rites and mysteries," etc. This is probably the last work which will be published by that eminent Oriental scholar, Mr Hargrave Jennings, author of " The Rosicrucians." It is full of interest to those who study Buddhism, and also contains a store of curious learning on such matters as the following :— History of the Magi. Astronomy of the Mind. Symbolism and the Supernatural. Templars and the Fire Philosophy. Magnetic Speculations. Symbolism of Colours. Rosicrucians and Buddhists. Brahminism and Transcendentalism. Theory of Caste, &c., &c. Analysis of Contents (pp. 8) may be had on application. George Redway's Publications. Demy Soo, Cloth extra, Js. 6d. Bacon, Shakespeare, and the Rosicrucians. By W. F. C. wigs ton. With Two Plates. Contents :— Chapter I.— John Heydon— The Roslcrucian Apologist — His Family — And Character — Identity of Bacon's " New Atlantis " with Heydon's "Land of the Rosicrucians" ^Bacon's Hand to be traced in the famous Kosicrucian Manifestoes — Discovery of his Initials among the Members of the Fraternity — Proofs that the antedating of the Origins of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood was a Splendid Fraud. Chapter II. — The Prophecy oiPara- celsus — A Stage Player one of the greatest impostors of his age, probably Shakespeare — Description of the Rosicrucian Manifestoes — Lord Bacon as Chancellor of Parnassus — Meeting of the Rosicrucians in 1646 at Warrington, at a Lodge, in order to carry out Lord Bacon's Ideas — Adoption of his Two Pillars, etc. , etc. "A most remarkable book. Like its predecessor, 'A New Study of Shakespeare,' one cannot open it without learning something. . . . But all the same the book is a curiosity, and no Sha,kespeare-Bacon library SHOULD BE WITHOUT IT." — Shaksfeariana (New York). " A noteworthy attempt has been made to fix the disputed authorship of the Shakespearian, and likewise of other writings, upon a set of literary eccentricities who existed in Shakespeare's time under the name of ' Rosi- crucians,' after one Christian Rosenkreuz, a German noble of the fifteenth century. The fame of this curious literary ' sect ' has just been revived by Mr W. F. C. Wigston. He endeavours to show that there existed in Shakespeare's day a learned college of men who wrote in secret, among whom were Lord Bacon, Sir Philip Sydney, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson, and that these together concocted the plays." — Westminster Review. " If Mr Donnelly's 'great cryptogram' should turn out to be a real dis- covery, we do not see why Mr Wigston's should not be so too. We fully believe that the two theories must stand or fall together." — Notes and Queries. Opinion of James Hughan, author of many Masonic books, and reputed to be the highest Masonic authority in England : — " MY Dear Sir, — I have care- fully read your able article in the journal of the Bacon Soc. with great interest, and much appreciation. Prima facie, the case is made out, it appears to me, but beyond that I cannot go ot present ; but the evidence is so remarkable, as well as curious, that no one of a thoughtful mind could possibly refuse your claim to consideration. The New Atlantis seems to be, and probably IS, THE KEY to the modern Rituals of Free-masonry. Your noble volume on Bacon, Shakespeare, and the Rosicrucians, does much to clear the way." George Redway's Publications. Crown Zvo, Cloth, $s. Problems of the Hidden Life. Being Essays on the Ethics of Spiritual Evolution. By pilgrim. Contents : — Dedication — An Aid to Right Thought— The Narrow Way — Orthodoxy and Occultism — The Goad of the Senses — Content and Satisfaction — Love's Aim and Object— The Two Pathways— Sir Philip Sidney— The Higher Carelessness— The Dark Night of the Soul — The Great Quest — Detachment — Meditation and Action — Death — Selflessness. " We have no hesitation in saying these essays by an anonymous writer are thoughtfully written, and although, of course, we do not pretend to agree with the author's views, he states them with an earnestness and moderation which command our attention and respect." — Literary World. " The book will be interesting to those who are acquainted with Indian philosophy. The student who cares only for the attainment of felicity among the Devas travels on the paths of 'Gnana,' 'Karma,' and ' Bhahti.' Then follow rules for the 'Narrow Way.' The Christian Church is supposed to represent but ' one facet of the divine jewel of Truth, ' compared with ' the all embracing Catholicity of the Occult Wisdom.'" — Literary Churchman. l2mo. Cloth, price \s. Handbook of Cartomancy, Fortune-Telling, and Occult Divination. Including Cagliostro's Mystic Alphabet of the Magi, the Golden Wheel op Fortune, and The Oracle OF Human Destiny. By grand orient. With 2 Plates. The St James' Gazette, in an article entitled "Books on the Black Arts," says that "'Grand Orient,' in his 'Handbook of Cartomancy,' recommends a method of consulting the mystical wheel of Pythagoras which is apt to give very curious results. " " We have cheap science nowadays, cheap literature, cheap groceries, cheap everything, and why should not we have cheap magic as well? ' Grand Orient ' at any rate thinks we should, and for the sum of one shilling has provided the public with a 'Handbook of Cartomancy, Fortune-telling, and Occult Divination,' which among other things lays bare the Oracle of Human Destiny, Cagliostro's Mystic Alphabet of the Magi, and the Golden Wheel of Fortune. By one or other of these methods the future may be made to yield up its secrets." — Literary World. "A generous shilling's worth of amusement may easily be had out of the preternaturally solemn little volume." — The Lantern. George Redway's Publications. ' ' The literature of Occultism, esoteric and practical, is now in the full flush of its renaissance. That literature has always been vast and widely distributed, although it has in the main been confined to the Latin tongues. English is the only non-Latin language which has any considerable body of books upon alchemy and astrology (to take the nobler arts of Occultism), and upon magic and divination among the lesser and baser of those arts. Mr Redway has for some years been the high priest who, as modern mystics would say, opens wide ' the door of the closed palace of the king. ' He has just given us two more books in a department of Occultism which has of late become more vulgarised than any other. The secret arts of the diviner have been revealed to all the world. . . . Still there is a pleasing variety about ' Grand Orient's ' little book which is very engaging. He will show you how to divine your future in dozens of different ways. But his chief reliance is in the Pythagorean Wheel, which is unluckily rather skittish." — Scois Observer. \2mo. Cloth, price 2S. A Buddhist Catechism; Or, Outline of the Doctrine of the Buddha Gotama, in the form of Question and Answer. Compiled from the Sacred Writings of the Southern Buddhists FOR the use of Europeans, with Explanatory Notes. By SUBHADRA BHIKSHU. The Author thinks it has at length become incumbent on the Buddha's disciples to put forth a work suited to the intelligent appreciation of educated English readers, in which shall be set forth the sublime doctrine of the Buddha Gotama, not as a bygone system, but as a living source of pure truth accessible now to all who are athirst for spiritual knowledge. Demy %vo, pp. xi and 272, Cloth, Js. 6d. Gilds, Their Origin, Constitution, Objects, and Later History. By the Late CORNELIUS WALFORD, F.LA., F.S.S., F.R.H.S., Barrister-at-Law. Contains a Geographical Survey of the Gilds of Berks, Cambridge, Derby, Devon, Gloucester, Hants, Hereford, Kent, Lancashire, Lincoln, Middlesex, Norfolk, Northum- berland, Oxford, Salop, Somerset, Warwick, Yorks. lo George Redway's Publications. About ^oo pp.. Demy Si/o, Cloth, price \%s. The Development of Marriage and Kinship. By C. STAN I land WAKE, AUTHOR OF "SERPENT WORSHIP," ETC. Contents: — Preface. Introduction — Sexual Morality. Chapter I. Primeval Man. II. Supposed Promiscuity. III. Primitive Law of Marriage. IV. Group Marriage. V. Polyandry. VI. Polygyny. VII. Monandry. VIII. The Rule of Descent. IX. Kin- ship through Females. X. Kinship through Males. XI. Marriage hy Capture. XII. Monogamy. " The volume is a closely reasoned argument on a complicated and interesting subject, and will add to the reputation Mr Wake has already earned by his writings on anthropology. Portions of it have, we think, already appeared in English and foreign scientific journals and transactions, and this leads here and there to some repetition ; but the work in its present form is consecutive and well arranged. It is easier reading than some earlier books on the same subject. . . . Mr Wake concludes his study of these difficult, but interesting questions by a chapter on modern civilized systems of monogamy, and on Christian ideas relating to marriage and celibacy." — The Athenccum. "On the very complicated and unintelligible Australian marriage laws Mr Wake is well worth reading." — Saturday Review. ' ' A fund of valuable information in regard to savage usages all over the world. ... Mr Wake gives a useful summary of the valuable investigation conducted by Mr Lorimer Fison and Mr Howett into the Australian system of group-marriage. " — Literary World. " The supply of facts being so meagre, it is as a handsome contribution to those in regard to marriage and kinship that Mr Wake's present book is chiefly valuable. We say chiefly, because his deductions, to which the book naturally owes its interest, are given so guardedly and candidly, and with such full recognition of the necessity of further knowledge as to open the door to further inquiry rather than close it, as theories too often tend to do."— • Scots Observer. " Brimful of curious information ; a work that all interested in genealogical questions will welcome, and which such as are not specialists will find much pleasure in studying." — Rev. C. H. Evelyn White in The East Anglian or Notes and Queries, S^c. " We shall not pretend to decide upon the correctness of any par- ticular theory ; but there need be no hesitation in saying that this work, in which sexual relations are considered in all their different forms of poly- andry, polygyny, monandry, and monogamy, and the curious group mar- riages of the Australian aborigines and the Hawaiians, gives ample evidence that the author has made a thorough study of the subject in the light of the most recent researches, and has spared no pains in the collection of facts. His work is certainly a valuable contribution to the study of a very interesting and important subject." — Scotsman. " Regarded as a mere storehouse of curious information as to the mar- riage customs which have at different times prevailed among different races, there is a great deal which is interesting in the volume before us." — /ohn Bull. George Redway's Publications. 1 1 Demy %vo, pp. 315, Cloth, \os. td. Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers. Based on Materials Collected in 1815, and Supplemented BY Recent Researches. With a Philosophical Demonstration of the True Principles of THE Magnum Opus, or Great Work of Alchemical Re-Con- struction, AND some Account of the Spiritual Chemistry. By ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE. To which is added a Bibliography of Alchemy and Hermetic Philosophy. Lives of the Alchemists : — Geber — Rhasis — Alfarabi — Avicenna — Morien — Albertus Magnus — Thomas Aquinas — Roger Bacon — Alain of Lisle — Raymond LuUy — Arnold De Villanova — Jean De Meung — The Monk Ferarius — Pope John XXII. — Nicholas Flamel — Peter Bono — ^Johannes De Rupecissa — Basil Valentine — Isaac of Holland — Bernard Tr^visan — Jofaja Fontaine — Thomas Norton — Thomas Dalton — Sir George Ripley — Picus De Mirandola — Paracelsus — Denis Zachaire — Berigard of Pisa — Thomas Charnock — Giovanni Braccesco — Leonardi Fioravanti — John Dee — Henry Khunrath — Michael Maier — Jacob Bohme — ^J. B. Van Helmont — Butler— jean D'Espagnet — Alexander Sethon — Michael Sendivogius — Gustenhover — Busardier — Anonymous Adept — Albert Belin — Eirensus Philalethes — Pierre Jean Fabre— John Frederick Helvetjus — Guiseppe Francesco Borri — ^John Heydon — Lascaris — Delisle — ^John Hermann Obereit — ^Travels, Adventures, and Imprisonments of Joseph Balsamo. " The chapter about Flamel is one of the most interesting in the book, but the longest and most enthralling is that containing a full account of the career of the infamous Cagliostro, whom Carlyle has immolated. This is really a romance of the highest interest. . . . There is abundance of interest in Mr Waite's p^es for those who have any inclination for occult studies, and although he founds his work upon a book which was published in 1815 by an anonymous writer, yet he adds so much fresh matter that this is practi- cally a new work. A valuable feature for students is the alphabetical cata- logue which Mr Waite has prepared of all known works on hermetic philosophy and alchemy. " — Glasgow Herald. " Mr Waite has undoubtedly bestowed a vast amount of patient and laborious research upon the present work, inspired by the double conviction that the original alchemists had in fact anticipated and transcended the highest results of chemistry in the metallic kingdom, and had discovered in the twilight of the Middle Ages the future development of universal Evolution. The biographical sketches of the alchemists, both true and false, are curious reading, and the alphabetical catalogue of works on Hermetic Philosophy is surprisingly suggestive of ages when leisure was less scarce, and literature scarcer, than in modem days." — Daily News. " The alchemists more popularly known, such as Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Raymond Lully, Flamel, Paracelsus, and Basil Valentine are dealt with fairly and fully, and the travels and adventures of Joseph Balsamo, alias Cagliostro, with his somewhat peculiar developments of Egyptian Free- masonry, are excellent and interesting reading. . . . Such an intelligent study 1 2 George Redways Publications. of the subject must bring into relief the infinite possibilities which are con- tained in a combination of psychical insight with physical knowledge. " — Light. "The lives of the philosophers themselves are interesting and curious reading ; the stories of LuUy, Flamel, Valentine, Trevisan, and Zachaire are full of glimpses of mediaeval times. To us, the most instructive and valu- able of the lives is that of the prince of impostors, Joseph Balsamo, or Comte de Cagliostro, who died at the end of the last century." — Spectator. "The old alchemists . '. . may, however, with justice be regarded as the first experimentalists in analytical chemistry, and on this account are entitled to the gratitude of subsequent generations. The lives of the princi- pal alchemists are briefly recorded, and their works mentioned. Amongst them are such familiar names as Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Paracelsus, Helvetius, and Delisle. The volume also contains an alphabetical catalogue* of works on hermetic philosophy and alchemy. " — Morning Post. "A curiously interesting book which well deserves a place in the already extensive catalogue of remarkable books published by Mr Redway. Mr Waite has certainly not spared himself in the preparation and production of his work. . . . The narratives are in most cases romantic enough to interest the general reader, and will be more than acceptable to the mystic and occultist." — Liverpool Daily Post. " A perfect storehouse of alchemystical lore. The lives of the princi- pal alchemists are pleasantly and fluently told. . . . Then there is an essay on the true principles of the magmim opus of the alchemists, and an account of the so-called spiritual chemistry. Finally there is a bibliography of alchemy and hermetic philosophy. . . . There is doubtless something in Mr Waite's contention that modern psychical research tends to verify the alchemists' hypothesis of development in its extension to human intelligence. It is in accordance with the fitness of things that these ancient seekers after knowledge should have found in an age which is disposed to treat them with scant courtesy a conscientious, not to say enthusiastic, biographer, and apologist. " — Manchester Examiner. Price 6d. Catalogue Of a Portion of The Valuable Library of the late Walter Moseley, Esq., of Buildwas Park, Shrewsbury, and other Important Books and Manuscripts Relating to Occult Philosophy and Archaeology ; em- bracing Collections of Works on Astrology and Divination, Spiritualism and Mesmerism, Alchemy AND Magic, Theosophy and Mysticism, Ancient Reli- gions and Mythology, Freemasonry and the Rosi- CRUciAN Mystery, Demonology and Witchcraft, Ghosts and Visions, in the English, French, German, Italian, and Latin Tongues. George Redway's Publications. 1 3 2 Vols. Demy %vo, pp. 791, Cloth, price 21s. The White King ; Or, Charles the First, Men AND Women, Life and Manners, Literature and Art OF England in the First Half of the 1 7th Century. By W. H. DAVENPORT ADAMS. Contents of Vol. I.: — Personal History of Charles I. — Some of the. Royal Children : Princess Elizabeth, Duke of Glducester, Princess Mary, and Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans — The Court of Charles I. : Philip, Earl of Pembroke, The Countess of Carlisle, Sir Kenelm Digby — A King's Favourite : George Villier.s, Duke of Buckingham — Notes — A Moderate Statesman : Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland— rAn Absolute Statesman ; The Earl of Strafford — A Philosopher of the Reign of Charies I. : Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury — Glimpses of Life and Manners : The Strafford Letters — Appendix — Notes and Corrections — Index to Vol. I. Content;^ of Vol. II. : — Three Noble Ladies ; Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, Lady Anne Fanshawe, Mrs Hutchinson — The Arts in England during the Reign of Charles I. : i. Music; 2. The Drama; 3. Painting and Architecture — Literature in the Reign of Charles I. : i. The Courtly Poets ; 2. The Serious Poets — Men of Letters in the Reign of Charles I. — Appendix — Notes and Corrections — Index to Vol. II. "These two volumes belong to the gossip of history, they are essentially personal, and throw light upon much that is merely suggested in grave records. Mr Adams relates with vivacity, yet always with a careful regard of historical truth. . . . The scope of Mr Adams's work is comprehensive. He has carried it out with an intelligent thoroughness worthy of praise. Taken all in all, from the-point of view of the general reader, his book is a satisfac- tory study in the intimate history of one of the gravest, yet also one of the most romantic cycles of our national life." — Morning Post. "A peculiarly personal, and therefore interesting and readable book, while many of the pictures of social life and notable people are admirably vivid. Mr Adams has devoted special care to a narrative of the great Trial, and his chapters on the arts in England of that period are full of interest, those on the drama being quite worthy of preservation as a text-book for those seeking information of that particular kind. The author of ' The White King ' has unquestionably done his work with a thoroughness which stamps it as a labour of love, and the two entertaining and instructive volumes are creditable alike to his industry and discrimination." — Court Journal. " There is both judgment and eloquence in this story of the eventful life of the White King. . . . Like this popular writer's previous publications, this en- tertaining book is not meant to supersede history proper ; it is rather an artistic clothing of the skeleton work of others, a graceful investing of dry details with circumstantiality, beauty, and realism. Nowhere is there to be found so ample and so faithful an account of the unfortunate Charles Stuart's doings and principles. ... It needs a master hand, like Mr Davenport Adams, to evolve order from confusion, to define the one central figure, the King, around whom all, friends and foes, consciously or unconsciously revolved, and to demonstrate the influence and counter-influence of himself and his immediate surroundings on all England." — Whitehall Review. 14 George Redways Publications. Second Edition. Crown %vo. Cloth, price (ss. Dreams and Dream-Stories. By anna bonus KINGSFORD, m.d. of paris ; president of the hermetic society ; part author of " the perfect way ; or, the finding of christ." Editf.d by Edward Maitland. " Charming stories, full of delicate pathos. . . . We put it down in won- derment at how much it outstrips our great, yet reasonable expectation, so excellent and noteworthy is it ; a book to read and to think oy^x."— Vanity Fair. " Curious and fascinating to a degree ... by certainly one of the most vivid dreamers, as she was one of the brightest minds, of her generation. . . . A curiously interesting volume." — Court Journal. "Wonderfully fascinating . . . with invention enough for a dozen romances and subjects for any number of sermons." — Inquirer. " More strange, weird, and striking than any imagined by novelist, play- wright, or sensational writer ... for the marvellous, the beautiful, and the vraisemblable, having Hawthorne's marvellous insight into the soul of things." — Lucifer. " The preface is as singular as the stories themselves." — Literary World. " All who knew Mrs Kingsford will remember that she was not only an Idealist, but an exceptionally gifted woman. ... It is given to very few writers, even when broad awake, to tell such weird and striking stories in such lucid and admirable style." — Lady's Pictorial. Crown ivo. Cloth, ()S. THE NEW AMERICAN NOVEL. The Stalwarts; Or, Who were to Blame? By FRANCES MARIE NORTON, THE ONLY SISTER OF CHARLES J. GulTEAU. "The English reader will appreciate the excellent sketches of a settler's life in the far West, which form an important part of the book, and throw curious side lights on some phases of existence on the other side of the Atlantic." — Morning Post. " The murder of President Lincoln and the plots and counterplots of American politics are interwoven with many bright and evidently faithful descriptions of life in the Eastern villages, the Western prairies, and the great cities of America. We cannot help wishing that the author had spared us the political incidents and contented herself with the family histories she relates so well. ... A high tone pervades the book, but while the women, with but one exception, are self-sacrificing, devoted, pure and pious, the men are very poor creatures and in every way unworthy of their feminine belongings." — Literary Churchman. George Redway's Publications. 1 5 Second Edition. Demy 800, about Soopp., Zs. 6d. Christian Science Healing, Its Principles and Practice, with full Explanations for Home Students. By FRANCES LORD, CO-TRANSLATOR OF FROBEL's "MOTHER'S SONGS, GAMES AND STORIES." Contents: — The Twelve Lectures which usually constitute "A Course of Instruction in Christian Science" — A Simple Flan for Treatment (also arranged for use during six days) — General Directions on Healing — The Healer's Self-Training — Teaching — Books — Ough Christian Science Work ever to be paid for ? — Home-Healing (Character and Conduct)— Circumstances — Children and Education — ^A simple Account of the Doctrine of Karma or Re-incarnation — A short Abstract of the Bhagavad Gita. "There can only be one opinion about the work before me. A high moral tone, a lofty spirituality, a devout enthusiasm and large-hearted benevolence, are the characteristic features of the volume. I confess that in this age of materialism, gross and refined, it is refreshing to read a book, the supreme purpose of which is the bold assertion of the supremacy of spirit. Without professing to agree with all or even any of its conclusions, I have read the work with growing interest. " The vital part of Christian Science appears to be the denial of sin and disease, as real entities in the world. And here the gifted authoress, I think, is perfectly right. Hell, sin, and disease have no Divine authority for their existence. ' They are the creations of man's fallen nature. There is but one life in the universe — God. The Christian scientist not only, however, denies the reality of sin and disease — which in a certain sense, is true — but goes a step further, and avers that they can be denied away — denied out of existence altogether. " While I believe there is a considerable amount of error mixed with truth in this volume, I still think it will do great good iij directing attention to the source of all disease, and in its continual insistence on a life of truth and purity. It only remains for me to say that it is written in a very charming style." — Rev. P. Ramagb in The Dawn, a New Church Home JoumcU. Crown 8vo, Cloth, with Frontispiece, price 6s. Lesbia Newman. A Novel. By henry RORERT S. DALTON. " TViere is so much life in the book,, it is sometimes so really clever, and it has such a fascination of audacity about it, that one gets along over the vicious chapters in hope that they will be redeemed." — Inquirer. 1 6 George Redwa^s Publications. Demy %vo. Cloth, 5j. The Influence of the Stars. A Treatise on Astrology, Chiromancy, and Physiognomy. By ROSA BAUGHAN. to which is added a treatise on the astrological Significance of Moles on the Human Body. Illustrated with a Facsimile of the Mystical Wheel of Pythagoras, and other Plates. " Difficult as it may seem in this age of realism to attach any im- portance to what are generally considered accidents of birth, the fact that for many centuries every peculiarity of form or character was ascribed to astral influence by the most learned men of the time, may entitle the believers in astrology to an impartial hearing. The author of ' The Influence of the Stars' is evidently a firm believer in this and other occult sciences, and should she fail to convert her readers to her way of thinking the fault wil not be hers." — Morning Post. "Full of wonder, mystery, and suggestion. . . . Miss Baughan's volume is decidedly entertaining and instructive. Her researches have been deep, and she brings a mass of almost unique information into her pages for the reader to digest. . . . The book is got up in Mr Redway's well- known style, and is quaintly illustrated." — Birmingham Daily Gazette. "Miss Baughan's book is distinctly interesting." — Graphic. " Miss Baughan's book (Mr Redway should be praised for its not inelegant saffron binding) is not confined to palmistry. She has something to say abouti astrology and a good deal about physiognomy. . . . Upon chiromancy Miss Baughan discourses with the depth and subtlety which one expects from ladies when they take up with mysticism. Great high priestess of the art though she be, she cannot tell much about chiromancy that is not known to every haunter of tea-tables. But at least she makes her meaning clear, which is more than can be said of most feminine mystics." — Scots Observer. BY A NEW WRITER. Reggie Abbot: An Historical Romance. By nelson PROWER. George Redway's Publications. 1 7 ESSAYS IN THE LITERATURE OF ALCHEMY. Small ^0, White Cloth, \os. 6d. The Magical Writings of Thomas Vaughan. {EUGENIUS PHILALETHES.) A Verbatim Reprint of his First Four Treatises : Anthroposophia Theomagica, Anima Magica • Abscondita, Magia Adamica, The True Ccelum Terr^. With the Latin Passages Translated into English, and with a Biographical Preface and Essay on the Esoteric Literature of Western Christendom. By ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE. " Some of Vaughan's reflections remind us of Jacob Boehm, but the Welsh mystic is, as a rule, more easily followed than his German brother. Indeed, with a few exceptions, the sense is clear enough to make the volume agree- able reading even to the uninitiated. . . . The seventeenth century was an age of plain speaking, and Vaughan, when differing from anyone, some- times uses terms more forcible than elegant. Mr Waite supplies some interesting information about the history of occultism in his ' Introductory Lecture on the Esoteric Literature of the Middle Ages, and on the Underlying Principles of Theurgic Art and Practice in Western Christendom.'" — Glas- gom Herald, I vol., about los. Life and Writings of Jacob Behmen. By DR FRANZ HARTMANN. author of "life and writings of PARACELSUS," ETC. Writing only a few months ago, Mr Arthur Lillie said : " It is a pity Bohme's works are so scarce, for his philosophy, though clothed in somewhat obscure language, is really fine. Seen from the standpoint of Bohme, all the mythologies of the past become part of a vast science. The publisher long ago sought to meet this want of a populai: summary of Bohme's philosophy, but it was difficult to find anyone competent to under- take such a task. Dr Franz Hartmann however at length was persuaded to furnish a work which should be a pendant to his admirably succinct account of the teachings of Paracelsus. 1 8 George Redway's Publications. THE ORIGINAL WORK ON PRACTICAL MAGIC. Crown i^o. Cloth, Leather Back, Gilt Top, z^s. The Key of Solomon the King. {CLAVICULA SALOMONIS.) Now FIRST Translated and Edited from Ancient MSS. IN THE British Museum, Bv S. LIDDELL MACGREGOR MATHERS. AUTHOR OF "THE KABBALAH UNVEILED," "THE TAROT," ETC. With Plates. This celebrated Ancient Magical work, the foundation and fountain head of much of the Ceremonial Magic of the Mediaeval Occultists, has never before been printed in English, nor yet, in its present form, in any other language, but has remained buried and inaccessible to the general public for centuries. It is true that in the seventeenth century, a very curtailed and incomplete copy was printed in France, but that was far from being a reliable reproduc- tion, omng to the paucity of the matter therein contained, the erroneous drawing of the Pentacles and Talismans, and the difficulty experienced at that time in obtaining reliable MSS. wherewith to collate it. There is a small work published in Italy bearing the title of the "Clavicola dl Salomone Ridotta," but it is a very different book to this, and is little better than a collection of superstitious charms and receipts of Black Magic, besides bearing a suspicious resemblance both to the " Grimorium Verum," and the " Grim- oire of Honorius." , Among other authors both Eliphas L^vi and Christian mention the "Key of Solomon " as a work of high authority, and the former especially refers to it repeatedly. The Key of Solomon gives full, clear, and concise instructions for Talis- manic and Ceremonial Magic, as well as for performing various Evocations ; and it is therefore invaluable to any student who wishes to make himself acquainted with the practical part of Occultism. Besides Seals, Sigils, and Magical Diagrams, nearly 50 Pentacles or Talis- mans are given in the Plates. George Redway's Publications. 19 Crown Svo, cloth, price 4s. 6d. Paul of Tarsus. By the Author of "Rabbi Jeshua." " ' Paul of Tarsus,' by the author of ' Rabbi Jeshua,' is a work of very considerable ability. . . . Literary facility, brilliancy of word-painting, wealth of what it is the fashion to call ' local colour,' this book undoubtedly possesses." — Literary World, ' ' The writer has carefully studied the history and characteristics of the time, and in an artistic, although very compressed form, and with GREAT literary BEAUTY, he creates the historic surroundings and the atmosphere of his hero." — Nonconformist and Independent. " Whoever the author of this work may be, and speculation has been rife as to whether it should be assigned to a distinguished Eastern explorer or to the late head-master of the City High Schools, it is certain that he is thoroughly at home in the details of Oriental life, and capable of presenting a life-like picture of the beginnings of Christianity stripped entirely of super- naturalism. The book as we say has vraisemblance. The writer carries us through the scenes of Paul's life and journeys, and fills up the background with such local colouring and scholarship that the readers are apt to forget how much is purely conjectural. . . . We commend the work, not as a contribution to the history of Paul of Tarsus, but as a picture of the times in which Christianity emerged." — Freethinker. " This is a beautiful book. ... It is a book of fascinating freshness and vigour. ... It is most eloquently written, with great charm of style, and one devours it with that eager zest with which he devours a great imaginative work." — Birmingham Daily Post. " Those who have read ' Rabbi Jeshua ' will know what to expect in ' Paul of Tarsus,' from the pen of the same anonymous author. The work is most readable, though it is not at all like the popular biographies of the Apostle which appear in so great numbers. The authors of these are generally careful to show their erudition. The author of this work seems to be careful to hide his, great and evident though it be. The justice of its local colour through- out, and the vividness of the pictures of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Rome, bespeak a scholar ; while the charming style of the work, its simplicity and directness, show a writer of no mean literary skill. " — Scotsman. "A remarkable book. . . . The author has realised in his own mind a picture of Paul which, whether true or false, is vivid, and this he has repro- duced in a style of unusual brilliance and power." — Manchester Guardian. "The author has knowledge, imagination, and marked literary facility, and the result of these combined gifts is found in sketches which are rich in light, colour, life, and picturesqueness. " — Manchester Examiner. " Among those strange people who regard ' Robert Elsmere ' as embody- ing in an attractive form the main teachings of Christianity, ' Paul of Tarsus ' may find favour for its merely literary excellence, which is undeniable." — Morning Post. " A considerable sensation was created seven or eight years ago by the publication of ' Rabbi Jeshua, ' a brilliant rhetorical study of the life of Jesus 20 George Redway's Publications. by one who regarded Him as no Messiah, but as a pure-minded and high- souled enthusiast. The anonymous author now comes forward with a similar study. He fairly warns those ' whose hearts are firmly fixed in tie lessons of their childhood,' and 'pious souls ' who do not want their faith disturbed, to stop at the preface. . . . The ^reat value of the work lies in its wonderfully vivid pictured of the social, religious, and political life of the times— pictures composed of skilfully grouped hints derived from a wide reading of contemporary, classical, and Talmudic literature." — Christian World. " Such books as these, being diplomatic intermediaries between extreme agnostics and extreme dogmatists, can do nothing but good." — Truth. A Magnificent Folio Edition of Goethe's Faust. From the German by John Anster, LL.D., WITH AN Introduction by Burdett Mason. Illustrated by FRANK M. GREGORY. Mr Redway has the honour to announce is. publication by him of the most magnificent edition of this immortal work yet produced. The size is grand folio, 2oJ by IS| inches. The text is by Dr John Anster, who was the earliest translator of Faust into English. His version, first published in 1835, gave pleasure to Coleridge, and is liked in Germany. The illustrations (eighteen in black and white, ten in colour) form the special attraction of the volume. The charm of these illustrations is due hardly less to the artists who reproduced them than to Mr Frank Gregory, from whose wonderful drawings they were made. The new photo-aquarelle process has enabled us to embellish each copy of the book with a set of illustrations in colour, which an expert alone could determine were not actual water-colour paintings. Mr Gregory, an American artist of undoubted genius, and secretary of the famous Salmagundi Club of New York, took up his residence in Germany in order to accomplish satisfactorily the work he had undertaken of illustrating Faust. He visited the scenes of Goethe's life and the supposed scenes of the Faust legend. His models of Marguerite, Mephisto and Faust were of course found in Germany ; the elaborate costumes were kindly lent by the manage- ment of the Munich theatre, and all the accessories carefully supervised by those to whom Fattst has been a life-long study. The result is a splendid example of the bookmaker's art which should be in the hands of every connoisseur. The entire edition (265 copies) has been produced in Germany, with the exception of the binding, which is the work of Messrs Bum & Co., London, from a striking design supplied by the artist. George Redway's Publications. 2 1 I vol., about Js. 6d. The Occult Sciences. A Cyclopedia of Transcendental Doctrine and Experiment, in Four Parts, Embracing Chapters on Theosophy, Mesmerism, Spiritism, Faith Healing, the Mystics, the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, Divination, Astrology, and Alchemy. Written by Mr Waite, assisted by writers eminent in their own departments of study, this volume presents to the general reader an outline of every branch of occult science now studied. Facts are given profusely, opinions but spar- ingly. Vexed questions have been, treated with respect for the views of ex- perts who, equally eminent, differ. This single volume will serve many as well as a Library ; others who wish to probe deeper into the mysteries of occult lore, will find themselves directed to those large and expensive works which the editor has throughout consulted. 612 Pages, Large %vo, with Plates, \<^s. The Hidden Way across the Threshold ; Or, The Mystery which hath been hidden for Ages and from Generations. An Explanation of the Concealed Forces in every Man to open the Temple of the Soul, and to Learn the Guidance of the Unseen Hand. Illustrated and made plain with as few Occult Phrases as possible. By J. C. STREET, A.B.N. This is a very extraordinary book. Its reputed author is known to be incapable of producing such a work, and the explanation of its appearance has been thus given by a lady who is well acquainted with him : — " His book is a mere compilation of noble sayings, scrawled down out of books and from the lips of the adepts with whom he certainly has associated, and who have taught him some secrets." This lady, one of the most cultured women of our time, has been content to become the pupil of an illiterate man, who, a few years ago, occupied a humble position in a drapers' shop, because he is known to be the medium of higher teachers. The book which bears his name has thus a peculiar interest for students of the "occult." 2 2 George Redway's Publications. I •sol. , about "js. 6d. A Walk from London to Fulham. By the Late THOMAS CROFTON CROKER, F.S.A. Revised and Enlarged by G. W. RED WAY, F.R.Hist.S. With nearly 200 Illustrations. The copjfright of Mr Croker's charming work, published by his son in i860, having fallen into my hands, I have determined to reissue the book vfith such alterations in the text as the lapse of thirty years has rendered necessary ; and with such large additions as will be involved by the extension of the ' Walk ' to Hyde Park Corner and Knightsbridge, Kensington Gore and Old Bromp- ton, — places Mr Croker did not visit in i860. It will be my aim to eschew the ' dryasdust ' element that so often prevails in works of this kind, and to give information that shall be absolutely trustworthy about objects of interest by the way. THE LATEST WORK ON CHIROMANCY. Crown ivo, with 12 plates. Cloth, 2s. 6d. Palmistry And Its Practical Uses. With Chapters on Astral Influences, and the Use of THE Divining Rod. Illustrations, Bible References, &c. By LOUISE COTTON. 1 vol., about 2s. 6d. Vegetarianism. By Rev. JOHN H, N. NEVILL. An attempt to popularize some of the teachings of Biology, and to show that abstinence from flesh-eating is really enforced by the teachings of generally accepted science. George Redway's Publications.^ 23 Just published, small if o, ■^tp pp., price "js. 6d. A NEW POSTHUMOUS WORK OF DR ANNA KINGSFORD, FORMING A COMPANION BOOK TO "THE PERFECT WAY." Clothed with the Sun, Being the Book of the Illuminations of Anna (Bonus) Kingsford. with preface, notes, and appendix, exegetical and biographical. Edited by EDWARD MAITLAND. " A worthy companion to ' The Perfect Way ' as a lasting monument to Mrs Kingsford's wonderful genius, great spirituality, and marvellous lucidity of insight into the ' hidden things of Nature and Religion.' " — Lucifer. " Of surpassing interest to the psychologist, who, it seems to us, will regret that Mr Maitland has not taken advantage of the opportunity of prefixing to the present volume a biographical sketch of a singularly gifted woman. That Mrs Kingsford was a seer of the rarest lucidity and inspiration it would be easy to demonstrate. Rarely has the faculty of mental vision been so mar- vellously developed. Her book of ' Dreams and Dream-Stories ' contain.1 overwhelming evidence of some of the highest qualities of the poet ; nor did she lack the power of adequate and beautiful expression. Of her in her character of prophetess and ' foremost herald of the dawning better age ' — an age when the falsifications and corruptions of Christianity will have been replaced by the restoration of the great original truths of the primitive gospel — we must confess ourselves by no means qualified to speak. . . . " Apart from these highest purposes which the volume is meant to serve, there is much that is interesting to an ordinary mortal, though, as has been indicated, it is in the main of a personal description. One is intrigui by Mrs Kingsford herself, rather than concerned about her doctrines ; and yet some of these — see, for example, the very first chapter ' concerning the three veils between man and God ' — are presented in so poetic and luminous a manner that, allowing always for varieties of interpretation, one cannot but be struck by their truth. . . . The appendix contains an account, all too short for the attention the subject awakens, of the overtures made to Mrs Kingsford and the editor of the late Laurence Oliphant as the representative of that arch-mystic Thomas Lake Harris. We have made no attempt to give any indication of Mrs Kingsford's views on the more serious subjects of which she speaks; they can be properly learned from the volume alone." — Glasgow Herald. " The pure, sublime, and raptly abstract Anna Kingsford, being dead, yet speaketh. The pale, thin lady, the recondite student, the illumined seer, who yet occasionally on public platforms grasped the problems of exoteric life by the horns, has been gathered to her rest, the excalibar blade of the spirit having worn out its somatic sheath ; but the visions that came to her by day and the dreams that visited her by night are by a loving hand unfolded before us. Happy was this gentle seer of visions and dreamer of dreams that her E 24 George Redway's Publications. kindred spirit, Edward Maitland, survived her to perform her literary obse- quies with affection and fidelity. . . . Not merely is it claimed for the writer of this extraordinary volume that she beheld with supersensuous vision the arcana covered by the timal conception of the Now, but that the Past lay be- fore her as an open book, and that on its pages she could trace clearly the evolutionary history of her own previous existence on all the plains of purga- torial Karma. Such a claim was, perhaps, never before so gravely made by any human being. A writer who claims to definitely trace back the egoism of her own ego through all the countless seons of cosmogenesis, at the bare contemplation of which the brain absolutely reels, is certainly endowed vfith faculties possibly denied to every other individual of the human race. — Agnostic Journal. Vols I. and II., ^o. Cloth, 2\s. each. Vol. III. in preparation. Subscribers^ names are now being received. Devonshire Parishes. By CHARLES WORTHY, Esq. " A very painstaking and pleasant volume [Vol. I.] which will be read with great interest by the topographer and genealogist." — Vanity Fair. " In this volume [Vol. II.] Mr Worthy has given us the rest of his account of certain parishes in the Archdeaconry of Totnes, and the work, as a whole, forms a respectable addition to the number of our local histories. Records of this kind are often the means of ensuring the preservation of valuable objects. Mr Worthy has devoted considerable space to tracing the descents of manors and to the genealogies of the families which held them. " — Saturday Review, July 6th, 1889. With 8 illustrations, Cloth, price ys. 6d. The Light of Egypt ; Or, the Science of the Soul and the Stars. This anonymous work is of American origin. It has been the subject of some controversy owing to the fact that it contains all the teaching which its author formerly imparted to pupils for a fee of 100 dollars. The pupils now complain that it is placed before the public for a few shillings. The author alleges that he has felt bound to try and check, by the publication of this book, the spread of " the subtle, delusive dogmas of Kanna and Re-incarna- tion as taught by the sacerdotahsms of the decaying Orient." George Redway's Publications. 25 Crown 8710, pp. viii. and 446, Cloth extra, 'js. 6d. The Real History of the Rosicrucians. Founded on their Own Manifestoes, and on Facts AND Documents Collected from the Writ- ings OF Initiated Brethren. By ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE. With Illustrations. ' Contents: — Mystical Philosophy^ in Germany — The Universal Reformation — Fama Fratemitatis — Confession of Rosicrucian Fraternity — Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz — Rosicrucianism, Alchemy, and Ma^ic — The Case of Johann Valentin Andreas — Progress of Rosicrucianism in Germany — Rosicrucian Ajjologists: Michael Maier, Robert Fludd, Thomas Vaughan, John Heydon — Rosicrucianism in France — Rosicrucians and Freemasons — Modem Rosicrucian Societies, &c. " We desire to speak of Mr Waite's work with the greatest respect on the points of honesty, impartiality, and sound Scholarship. Mr Waite has given, for the first time, the documents with which Rosicrucianism has been con- nected in extenso." — Literary World. " There is something mysterious and fascinating about the history of the Virgin Fraternity of the Rose." — Saturday Review. " A curious and interesting story of the doings of a mysterious association in times when people were more ready to believe in supernatural phenomena than the highly-educated, matter-of-fact people of to-day." — Morning Post. "... The work not only of a refined scholar, but of A man who knows WHAT HE is writing ABOUT, and that is a great deal more than can be said for other books on the same topic. . . . Much that he has to tell us has the double merit of being not only true, but uevi."—John Bull. " Mr Waite's book on ' Rosicrucianism ' is a perfect contrast to the one which we noticed a month or two back. The latter is a farrago of ill-digested learning and groundless fancies, while the former is, at all events, an honest attempt to discover the truth about the Society of the Rosy Cross. . . . The study of ' Occultism ' is so popular just now that all books bearing on such topics are eagerly read ; and it is a comfort to find one writer who is not ashamed to confess his ignorance after telling us all he can discover." — West- minster Review. "Mr Waite is A great authority on esoteric science and its literature. Those who have read his extremely interesting work upon the writings of Eliphas Levi, the modern magician, will expect in his ' History of the Rosicrucians ' a treatise of more than ephemeral importance, and they will not be disappointed. . . ." — Morning Post. " Some of the most interesting chapters in the book are devoted to an account of the four great apologists for Rosicrucianism : Robert Fludd, Michael Maier, Thomas Vaughan, and John Heydon. Each of these 26 George Redway's Publications. chapters contains much curious matter, very metaphysical and very transcen- dental, but worth being studied by those who appreciate the influence which the many forms of occultism have exercised upon civilisation." — St James's Gazette. " To many readers the most fascinating pages in ' The Real History of the Rosicrucians ' will be those in which the author reprints Foxcroft's 1690 translation of Tie Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosencteutz, which had originally appeared in German in 1616. This strange romance is full OF WONDERFUL THINGS." — Saturday Review. "We would recommend Mr Waite's very painstaking volume to all who may be desirous to get to the back of the Rosicrucian mystery. ... So much nonsense has been talked and written about this imaginary order that it is quite refreshing to find a writer competent and willing to reduce the legend to its true proportions, and show how and when it had its origin." — Knowledge. " We have rarely seen a work of this description that was so free from all attempts at the distortion of facts to dovetail with a preconceived .... His style is perspicuous. . . . The most interesting portions of the book are those where the author is willing to speak himself. ... To those students of occultism, whose palates, undebauched by the intellectual hashish of the rhapsodies of mysticism and the jargon of the Kabala, can still appreciate a plain historical statement of facts, we gladly commend the book." — Nature, " ' The Real History of the Rosicrucians ' is a very learned book that will be read with deep interest by every one who has the slightest knowledge of the subject." — Court Journal, " Mr Waite's painstaking and well written book is one to be THANKFUL FOR. . . . The Subject has too long (and never more than at the present) been the property of pseudo-learned mystery-mongers. . . . But scant justice can be done to a book like Mr Waite's in a short notice such as this, and therefore all that remains possible is to draw the attention of all interested in such literature to the careful chapters on the English mystics — Fludd, Vaughan, and Heydon — and to emphasise the estimate with which we sommenced. " — Manchester Examiner. "There was need of a clear and reliable book on the subject. This need Mr Waite has supplied. He is a cultured writer, and has mastered the entire literature of his subject, the most of which is in the German language. His 'Real History' cannot fail to interest any curious reader. . . . The author is not a Freemason, and speaks slightingly of our fraternity ; but he has undoubtedly produced THE MOST reliable BOOK which has yet appeared in the English language on Rosicrucianism, and it will deservedly attract the attention of all scholars and curious readers who are interested in the subject." — Keystone (New York). "(Mr Waite has done an excellent service in reprinting in this handsome volume translations of the chief documents bearing on the secrets of the Rosy Cross. " — Literary World (Boston). " Mr Waite is not a trader upon the ignorance and curiosity of readers. . . . His own book is simply the result of conscientious researches, whereby he succeeded in discovering several unknown tracts and manuscripts in the library of the British Museum ; and these, with other impqrtant and avail- able facts and documents, ... he now publishes, summarised or in extenso, according to their value, and thus offers for the first time in the literature of the Subject, THE Rosicrucians represented by themselves." — Phila- delphia Press. George Redway's Publications. 27 3 vols. Crown 8tio, Cloth, 6s. per vol., SOLD separately. Dreamland and Ghostland : An Original Collection of Tales and Warnings from the Borderland of Substance and Shadow. Embracing Remarkable Dreams, Presentiments, and Coin- cidences, Records of Singular Personal Experience BY various Writers, Startling Stories from Individual AND Family History, Mysterious Hints from the Lips OF Living Narrators, and Psychological Studies, Grave and Gay. " It is a remarkable fact that men and women do like ghost stories. They enjoy being thiilled, and many of them read with avidity tales which deal with things out of the ordinary physical ken. In these three volumes THEY MAY SUP FULL OF THESE DELIGHTS." — Scotsman. " There is ■ plenty of amusing reading of this sort to be found in these volumes, both for believers and disbelievers in the supernatural." — Court Journal. " Volumes which will test the credulity of the reader to the utmost, and the commencement of one of the stories might very well have served for the motto for the whole collection : ' It is almost useless to tell you the story, because I know you will not believe it. ' We do not say for a moment that we disbelieve all the stories told here." — Court Circular. "The psychological student would be wise to exercise a certain amount of caution. The general reader who likes ghost-stories and dream-stories for their own sake, in the straightforward old fashion, will find plenty of enter- tainment in these three volumes, and, thanks to the variety of sources from which the contents are drawn, no sort of monotony." — Graphic. , ' ' The great novelty of the work is that the author has so arranged and trimmed the chain of narratives as to make them read like a three volume novel. ... In truth, it is a novel in which the characters tell their own stories in their own way, and in their own \aTigua.ge."~Christian Union. " Should be specially relished these winter nights." — The World. " Stories of the weird and eerie complexion which so many like to cultivate of a winter's night." — Globe. " There is nothing that is in any way unhealthy in character. Those, therefore, who have a taste for the mysterious and the curious will find in ' Dreamland and Ghostland ' A real treat. The narratives are at once both grave and gay, with touches of strangeness as to miraculous incidents and supernatural occurrences. But from first to last there is a rationalism as well as a piquancy in the records that make them instructive reading. Indeed, we believe that there is not a better work of its kind, so varied, so enchanting, and so well edited ; or one that may be read with such profit," — Christian Union. 28 George Redway's Publications. Large Crown 8vo, the Cover emblazoned and floriated with Stars and Serpents and Sunflowers, and the Arms of France and of Navarre. Gilt top, los. 6d. The Fortunate Lovers. Twenty-seven Novels of the Queen of Navarre. Translated From the Original French by ARTHUR MACHEN. Edited and selected from the " Heptameron," with Notes, Pedigrees, and an Introduction, by A. MARY F. ROBINSON. With Original Etching by G. P. Jacomb Hood. " After Boccaccio's, these stories are perliaps the best of their kind." — Scotsnmn. " Miss Robinson's notes, and more especially her ably written introduction, which is practically a biography of Margaret of Angoul6me, will enable readers to appreciate the 'personalities' in the stories more keenly than would otherwise be possible. " — Scotsman. "These tales of old-world gallantry cruelly depict certain phases of the life of an age as brilliant as it was corrupt, and must ever prove attractive to the antiquarian and the scholar. Mr Machen well preserves the incisive and quaint tone of the original text." — Morning Post. "A REALLY CHARMING WORK OF ART AND OF LITERATURE. " — Athenceum, " Super-realistic as the love-stories now and then are, according to our notions of modesty, they have, one and all, a wholesome moral, and go far to throw light on an interesting period in the history of France. Handsomely bound and 'got up,' and furnished with a charming etching by Mr Jacomb Hood as frontispiece, the volume may well be recommended to all readers, and particularly to all students of history." — Pall Mall Gazette, " The ' Heptameron ' is itself, and independent of externals, an exceedingly pretty book, ... a book of interesting and rather puzzling authorship, and lastly, one which strikes the key-note of a certain time better almost than any other single work." — Athenceum. ' ' No reader can resist the charm of these old-world stories. . . . Miss Robinson has exercised a sound and judicious discretion . . . without sacri- ficing too much of the large utterance and the rich aroma of the originals." — Daily News. "The book may be recommended to all who wish to understand that singular mixture of piety and voluptuousness which distinguishes the French Renaissance. " — Athenceum. " The book is not quite one for indiscriminate presentation, but it is exceed- ingly well done, and is beautifully printed and bound." — Glasgow Herald. " We owe her [Miss Robinson] thanks for having put in a worthy form George Redwa^s Publications. 29 before a new public a work to a great extent forgotten, and most assuredly not deserving foi^etfulness." — Athencntm. "Nothing can be better than the introductory chapter, and the notes and genealogical tables show that care for minute accuracy which is the fashion of the present day, and a very good fashion too." — Westminster Review. " A book that people who like to saunter along the by-paths of history will revel in. As, at the present time, there are thousands of people who only care to read the gossip and scandal in 'society journals,' so there are readers of history who chiefly delight in the gossip and scandal of bygone days. From such people ' The Fortunate Lovers is certain to meet with a hearty welcome, while even the more serious students of history will rise itom its perusal with a fuller and better knowledge of the times it deals with." — Literary World. " Many of the stories are not particularly edifying. . . . Has a distinct value as a contribution to historical literature." — Court Circular. Crown %vo, pp. viii. and 260, Cloth gilt, 6j. Charles Dickens and the Stage. A Record of his Connection with the Drama as Playwright and Critic. , By T. EDGAR PEMBERTON. With New Portraits, in Character, of Miss Jennie Lee, Mr Irving, and Mr Toole. Contents :— The Stage in his Novels — Dickens as a Dramatist— Dickens as an Actor — Adaptations and Impersonations— The Stage in his Speeches— The Stage in his Letters — Dickens as a Dramatic Critic. "The book is readable, as anything about Dickens is sure to be." — Scotsman. " A CHARMING WORK. Mr Pemberton has spared no pains to look up all sorts of details, and has added a full and excellent index." — Birmingham Post. " He has done his work so completely that he has left little or nothing for anyone who should desire to follow in his steps." — Literary World. "Brimful of anecdote and reminiscences of a generation now passing away, the book is stimulating as well as useful." — Publisher's Circular. " An example of book-making that will not be viewed with disfavour by lovers of Dickens. . . . The book shows diligent research in many directions." — Saturday Review. 30 George Redway's Publications. Crown %vo, pp. xiv. and 360, Cloth, ^s. 6d, Posthumous Humanity ; A Study of Phantoms. By ADOLPHE D'ASSIER, member of the bordeaux academy of science. Translated and Annotated by Henry S. Olcott, President OF THE ThEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. Contents : — Facts Establishing the Existence of the Posthumous Personality in Man — Its Various Modes of Manifestation — Facts Establishing the Existence of a Second Personality in the Living Man — Its Various Modes of Manifestation — Facts Establishing the Existence of the Personality in Animals, and concerning a Posthumous Animality — Fluidic Form of Vegetables — Fluidic Form of Gross Bodies — Character of the Posthumous Being — Its Physical Constitution — Its Aversion to Light — Its Reservoir of Living Force — Its Ballistic — The Nervous Fluid — Electric Animals — Electric Persons — Electric Plants — The Mesmeric Ether and the Personality which it Engenders — The Somnambule — ^The Sleep-talkei^The Seer— The Turning-table— The Talking-table— The Medium— Miracles of the Ecstatics — Prodigy of Magic — The Incubus — The Obsessing Spirit— Causes of the Rarity of the Living Phantom — ^Causes of the Rarity of the Trans-sepulchral Phantom^ Resemblance of the Spiritistic Phenomena to the Phenomena of the Posthumous Order — Lycanthropy — Glance at the Fauna of the Shades — Their Pre-occupations — How they Prolong their Existence — The Posthumous Vampire. Truth says : — " If you care for GHOST STORIES, DULY ACCREDITED, ex- cellently TOLD, AND SCIENTIFICALLY EXPLAINED, you should read the translation by Colonel Olcott of M. Adolphe d'Assier's ' Posthumous Humanity,' a study of phantoms. There is no dogmatism so dogged and offensive as that of the professed sceptic— of the scientific sceptic especially — who ex vi termini ought to keep the doors of his mind hospitably open ; and it is refreshing, therefore, to find such scientists as Wallace, Crookes, and M. d'Assier, who is a Positivist, in the ranks of the Psychical Research host. For my own part, though I have attended the seance of a celebrated London medium, and there convinced myself beyond all doubt of his imposture, I no more think that the detection of a medium fraud disposes of the whole question of ghosts, &c. , than that the detection of an atheist priest disposes Of the whole question of Christianity. Whatever view you take of this con- troversy, however, I can promise you that you will find the book interesting at least if not convincing. " "This collection of hopeless trash . . . Col. Olcott's notes are beneath contempt ... a more piteous literary exhibition than the entire volume has rarely come under our notice." — Knowledge \i\. " An interesting and suggestive volume." — New York Tribune. " The book is written with evident sincerity." — Literary World. " There is no end to the wonderful stories in this book." — Court Circular. "The book may be recommended to the attention of the marines." — Scotsman. " A book which will be found very fascinating by all except those persons who have neither interest nor belief for anything bnt what they can under- stand. " — Manchester Examiner. George Redway's Publications. 3 1 " The subject is treated brilliantly, entertainingly, and scientifi- cally." — New York Cofii. Advertiser. "Though this is a good deal to say, Mr George Redway has hardly published a more curious book." — Glasgow Herald. "The ghostly will find much comfort in the book." — Saturday Revierw. ' ' The book has an interest as evidence of that study of the occult which is again becoming in a certain degree fashionable. " — Manchester Guardian. Demy Svo, pp. xiv. ^nd 307, Cloth, "js. 6d. The Life, Times, and Writings of Thomas Cranmer, D.D., The First Reforming Archbishop of Canterbury. By CHARLES HASTINGS COLLETTE. Dedicated to Edward White, 93RD Archbishop of Canterbury. Contents ; — Cranmer at the University of Cambridge — Cranmer's Participation in tlie Proceedings of the Divorce of Henry Vlll. from Catherine — His Second Marriage as a Priest — His Oaths on Consecration as an Archbishop — The Fate of Anne Boleyn : Henry's Marriages with Jane Seymour. Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Farr, and Cranmer's alleged Participation in these Acts — Henry VIII. 's Political and Social Reforms under Cranmer's alleged Guidance — Persecutions, and Cranmer's alleged Par- ticipation in them — The Progress of the Reformation under Henry VIII. and Edward VI. — Cranmer's Fall and Martyrdom — His alleged Recantations-^His Writings-^John Fox, the Martyrologist — The Beatification of Bishop Fisher, the Chancellor More, and others, as Martyrs. " Mr Collette brings to his task both breadth and depth of knowledge, and a desire to be scrupulously free from prejudice."- — GMe. " He is animated by an anti-Papal spirit. . . . nevertheless, his book is readable. " — Scotsman. " No future student can afford to neglect his work." — British and Colonial Printer. "His book deserves to be read, and his pleadings should be well con- sidered." — Anglican Church Magazine. " He has stated his evidence with a fulness and FAIRNESS beyond CAVIL. " — Daily News. "Mr Collette avoids bitterness in his defence, and, does not scruple to blame Cranmer when he thinks blame is deserved." — Glasgow Herald. "On the whole, we think that we have in this book a just and impartial character of Cranmer. " — Record. "This book is a valuable contribution to the literature concerning a period which to the lover of religious liberty is of the deepest interest. . . ._ it is a work of research of learning, of sound and generally of impartial judg- ment." — Rock. 2,2 George Redway' s Publications. Post 8vo, with Plates, pp. viii. and 359, Cloth gilt, los. 6d. KABBALA DENUDATA, The Kabbalah Unveiled. Containing the Following Books of the Zohar:- 1. The Book of Concealed Mystery. 2. The Greater Holy Assembly. 3. The Lesser Holy Assembly. Translated into English from the Latin Version of Knorr Von Rosenroth, and Collated with the Original Chaldee and Hebrew Text, By S. 'L. MACGREGOR MATHERS. The Bible, which has been probably more misconstrued than any other book ever written, contains numberless obscure and mysterious passages which are utterly unintelligible without some key wherewith to unlock their meaning. That key is given in the Kabbala. "A translation which leaves nothing to be desired." — Saturday Review. " Mr Mathers has done his work with critical closeness and care, and has presented us with a book which will probably be welcomed by many students. In printing and binding the volume is all that could be desired, and the diagrams are very carefully drawn, and are calculated to be very useful to all who are interested in the subject." — Nonconformist. "We may add that it is worthy of perusal by all who, as students of psychology, care to trace the struggles of the human mind, and to note its passage from animalism through mysticism to the clearness of logical light." — Knowledge. " Mr Mathers is certainly a great Kabbalist, if not the greatest of out time. " — Athenaum. The Kabbalah is described by Dr Ginsburg as " a system of religious philosophy, or more properly of theosophy, which has not only exercised for hundreds of years an extraordinary influence on the mental development of so shrewd a people as the Jews, but has captivated the minds of some of the greatest thinkers in Christendom in the i6th and 17th centuries." He adds that " IT claims the greatest attention of both the philosopher AND theologian." George Redway's Publications. 33 Crown i^o, wrapper, is. JOURNAL OF THE WAGNER SOCIETY. The Meister. Edited by W. ASHTON ELLIS. Cont^ns translations from the literary works of Richard Wagner; extracts from letters that have passed between the Poet-Composer and other men who have left their mark_ upon the art life of the day ; original articles and essays explanatory of the inner meaning of Wagner's dramas; articles upon kindred topics of aesthetics, metaphysics, or social questions — in this category, reference to the works of Liszt and Schopenhauer will naturally take a prominent position; notes upon the course of events in Eturope and America hearing upon Wagner's dramas, &c., &c. Third Edition, revised and enlarged. Crown 8vo, etched Frontispiece and Woodcuts, pp. 324, Cloth gilt, "js. 6d. Magic, White and Black; Or, The Science of Finite and Infinite Life. Containing Practical Hints for Students of Occultism. By FRANZ HARTMANN, M.D. Contents : — The Ideal— The Real and the Unreal— Form— Life— Harmony— Illusion- Consciousness — Unconsciousness — Transformations — Creation — Light, &c. The Saturday Review says: — "In its closely-printed pages students of occultism will find hints, ' practical ' and otherwise, likely to be of great service to them in the pursuit of their studies and researches. ... A book which may properly have the title of Magic, for if the readers succeed in practically following its teaching, they will be able to perform the greatest of all magical feats, the spiritual regeneration of Man. Dr Hartmarm's book has also gone into a third edition, and has developed from an insignificant pamphlet, ' written originally for the purpose of demonstrating to a few inexperienced inquirers that the study of the occult side of nature was not identical with the vile practices of sorcery,' into 'a compendious volume, com- prising, we are willing to believe, the entire philosophic system of OCCULTISM, There are abundant evidences that the science of theosophy has made vast strides in public estimation of late years, and that those desirous of experimenting in this particular, and in many respects fascinating, branch of ethics, have leaders whose teaching they can follow with satisfaction to themselves." The Scotsman says : — " Any one who studies the work so as to be able to understand it, may become as familiar with the hidden mysteries of nature as any occult philosopher ever was." 34 George Redway's Publications. ¥") PP- 37i Cloth extra, y. 6d. The ivoodcuts coloured by hand, $s. Issue limited to 400 copies plain and 60 coloured. The Dance of Death, In Painting and in Print. By t. tyndall wildridge. With Woodcuts. Probably few subjects have excited more conjecture or given rise to more mistakes than the " Dance of Death." The earliest painting of the Dance is said to be that at Basel in 1 43 1. The first printed edition was published about 1485. The blocks illustrating Mr Wildridge's work are a series found in a northern printing office many years ago. They seem to be of considerable age, and are somewhat close copies of Holbein's designs so far as they go, but in which of the hundred editions they originally appeared has not to the present been ascertained. Fcap. Svo, pp. 40, Cloth limp, is. 6d. Light on the Path. A Treatise written for the Personal Use of Those who ARE Ignorant of the Eastern Wisdom, and who Desire to Enter within its Influence. Written down by M. C. New Edition, with Notes by the Author. " So far as we can gather from the mystic language in which it is couched, ' Light on the Path ' is intended to guide the footsteps of those who have dis- carded the forms of religion while retaining the moral principle to its fullest extent. It is in harmony with much that was said by Socrates and Plato, although the author does not use the phraseology of those philosophers, but rather the language of Buddhism, easily understood by esoteric Buddhists, but difficult to grasp by those without the pale. ' Light on the Path ' may, we think, be said to be the only attempt in this language and in this century to put practical occultism into words ; and it may be added, by way of further explanation, that the character of Gautama Buddha, as shown in Sir Edwin Arnolds' ' Eight of Asia,' is the perfect type of the be- ing who has reached the threshold of Divinity by this road. That it has reached a third edition speaks favourably for this multum in parvo of the science of occultism ; and ' M. C may be expected to gather fresh laurels in future." — Saturday Review. George Redway's Publications. 35 l^mo, pp. 60, Cloth gilt, \s. 6d.; with pack o/j8 Tarot Cards, ^s. FORTUNE TELLING CARDS . The Tarot ; Its Occult Signification, Use in Fortune Telling, and Method of Play, &c. By S. L. MACGREGOR MATHERS. "The designs of the twenty-one trump cards are extremely singular ; in order to give some idea of the manner in which Mr Mather uses them in fortune-telling it is necessary to mention them in detail, together with the general significance which he attaches to each of them. The would-be carto- mancer may then draw his own particular conclusions, and he will find con- siderable latitude for framing them in accordance with his predilections. It should further be mentioned that each 61 the cards when reversed conveys a meaning the contrary of its primary signification. No. I is the Bateleur or Juggler. The Juggler symbolizes Will. 2. The High Priestess, or female Pope, represents Science, Wisdom, or Knowledge. 3. The Empress, is the symbol of Action or Initiative. 4. The Emperor, represents Realization or Development. S . The Heirophant or Pope, is the symbol of Mercy and Beneficence. 6. The Lovers, signify Wise Disposition and Trials sur- mounted. 7- The Chariot, represents Triumph, Victory over Obstacles. 8. Themis or Justice, symbolizes Equilibrium and Justice. 9. The Hermit, denotes Prudence. lo. The Wheel of Fortune, represents Fortune, good or bad. II. Fortitude, symbolizes Power or Might. 12. The Hanged Man — a man suspended head downwards by one leg — means Devotion, Self- Sacrifice. 13. Death, signifies Transformation or Change, 14. Temper- ance, typifies Combination. 15. The Devil, is the image of Fate or Fatality. 16. The Lightning-struck Tower, called also Maison-Dieu, shows Ruin, Dis- ruption. 17. The Star, is the emblem of Hope. 18. The Moon, symbolizes Twilight, Deception and Error. 19. The Sun, signifies Earthly Happiness. 20. The Last Judgment, means Renewal, Determination of a matter. 21. The Universe, represents Completion and Reward, o. The Foolish Man, signifies Expiating or Wavering. Separate meanings, with their respective converses, are also attached to each of the other cards in the pack, so that when they have been dealt out and arranged in any of the combinations recommended by the author for purposes of divination, the inquirer has ONLY TO USE THIS LITTLE VOLUME AS A DICTIONARY IN ORDER TO READ HIS FATE." — Saturday Review. 36 George Redway^s Publicaiions. Crown %vo,pp. iv. andz^d, Cloth (Cheap Edition), 3s. 6d. A Professor of Alchemy {DENIS Z AC H AIRE). By PERCY ROSS, AUTHOR OF " A COMEDY WITHOUT LAUGHTER." " A clever story. . . . The hero is an alchemist who actually succeeds in manufacturing pure gold." — Court Journal. " Shadowy and dream-like." — Athenaum. "An interesting and pathetic picture." — Literary World. "The story is utterly tragical, and is powerfully told." — Westminster Review. ' ' A vivid picture of those bad old times. " — Knowledge. " Sure of a special circle of readers with congenial tastes." — Graphic. " This is a story of love — of deep, undying, re6ning love — not without sug- gestions of Faust. The figure of Berengaria, his wife, is a noble and touch- ing one, and her purity and sweetness stand out in beautiful relief from the gloom of the alchemist's laboratory and the horrors of the terrible Inquisition into whose hands she falls. The romance of the crucible, however, is not all permeated by sulphurous vapours and tinged with tartarean smoke. There is often a highly dramatic element." — Glasgow Herald. Fcap. Sot, pp. 56, Cloth limp, is. The Shakespeare Classical Dictionary ; Or, Mythological Allusions in the Plays of Shakespeare Explained. For the Use of Schools and Shakespeare Reading Societies. By H. M. SELBY. ' ' A handy little work of reference for readers and students of Shakespeare. " -School Board Chronicle. " The book presents a great deal of information in a very small compass." -School Newspaper. George Redway's Publications. 2)7 " Will be found extremely useful by non-classical students of Shakespeare, . . . and even to the classical student it will convey much useful information." — Educational Times. " Will be greatly appreciated in the class-room." — Glasgow Herald. "Carefully compiled from more authoritative books of reference." — Scots- man. "The unlearned reader is thus enabled to increase very greatly his enjoy- ment of Shakespeare." — Literary World. " We have tested the book by looking for several of the obscurest mythological names mentioned by Shakespeare ; in each case we found the name inserted and followed by a satisfactory explanation." — The Schoolmaster. Demy %vo, pp. iv. and 299, Cloth gilt, los. 6d. Serpent Worship, And other Essays, with a Chapter on Totemism. By c. staniland wake. Contents: — Rivers of Life — Phallism in Ancient Religions — Origin of Serpent Worship — The Adamites — The Descendants of Cain — Sacred Prostitution— Marriage among Primitive Peoples — Marriage by Capture — Development of the "Family" — The Social Position of Woman as affected by "Civilization" — Spiritism and Modern Spiritualism — Totems and Totemism — Man and the Ape. " The most important of the thirteen essays discusses the origin of Serpent Worship. Like other papers which accompany it, it discusses its subject from a wide knowledge of the literature of early religions and the allied themes of anthropology and primitive marriage. . . . The remaining essays are written WITH MUCH learning AND IN A CAREFUL SPIRIT OF INQUIRY, happily free from the crude mysticism with which the discussion of these subjects has often been mixed up. They may be recommended to the attention of all interested in anthropology and the history of religion as interesting labours in this field of research and speculation." — Scotsman, October 31. " So obscure and complex are these subjects that any contribution, how- ever slight, to their elucidation, may be welcomed. Mr Wake's criticism of the systems of others is frequently acute. . . . Mr Wake is opposed to those who hold that kinship through females and the matriarchate preceded paternal kinship and the patriarchal family, and who connect the phenomena of exogamy and of totemism with the matriarchal stage of society, and with belief in a definite kinship of man with the remainder of the sensible universe. He looks upon female kmship as having existed concurrently with a quasi- patriarchal system." — Athenisum. "Able, and remarkably interesting."— GVax^ow Herald. 38 George Redway's Publications. Crown 8vo, fp. viii. and 632, Cloth gilt, 10s. 6d. In Praise of Ale ; Or, Songs, Ballads, Epigrams, and Anecdotes relating to Beer, Malt, and Hops. With some curious particulars concerning Ale-wives AND Brewers, Drinking-Clubs and Customs. Collected and Arranged by W. T. MARCHANT. Contents r^Introductory — Hist6ry — Carols and Wassail Songs — Church Ales and Observances — Whitsun Ales — Political — Harvest Songs — General Songs — Barley and Malt — Hops — Scotch Ale Songs — Local and Dialect Songs — Trade Songs — Oxford Songs — Ale Wives — Brewers — Drinking Clubs and Customs — Royal and Noble Drinkers — Black Beer — Drinking Vessels — Warm Ale — Facts, Scraps, and Ana. " Mr Marchant has collected a vaft amount of odd, amusing, and (to him that hath the sentiment of beer) suggestive and interesting matter. His volume (we refuse to call it a book) is A VOLUME TO HAVE. If only as a manual of quotations, if only as a collection of songs, it is a volume to HAVE. We confess to having read in it, for the first time in our lives, the right and authentic text of ' A Cobbler there was ' and ' Why, Soldiers, why ; ' and to have remarked, as regards the first, that our ancestors were very easily amused, and, as regards the second, that it has a curious air de famille with the triolet. These are very far from being Mr Marchant's only finds ; but that is all the more reason why we should linger upon them. " — Saturday Review. " A kind of scrap-book, crowded with prose and verse which is ALWAYS CURIOUS AND VERY OFTEN ENTERTAINING, and it may be read at random — beginning at the end, or in the middle, or at any page you like, and reading either back or forwards — almost as easily as the 'Varieties' column in a popular weekly print." — Saturday Review. "While, on the one hand, the book is, as nearly as possible, a complete collection of lyrics written about the national beverage, ... it abounds, on the other hand, in particulars as to the place which ale has held in the celebration of popular holidays and customs. It discourses of barley-malt and hops, brewers, drinkers, drinking clubs, drinking vessels, and the like ; and, in fact, approaches the subject from all sides, bringing together, in the space of 600 pages, A HOST OF CURIOUS AND AMUSING DETAILS." — Globe, April 9. "Mr Marchant is a staunch believer in the merits of good ale. In the course of his reading he has selected the materials for a Bacchanalian antho- logy which MAY ALWAYS BE READ WITH AMUSEMENT AND PLEASURE. His materials he has set in a framework of gossiping dissertation. Much curious information is supplied in the various chapters on carols and wassail songs, church ales and observances, Whitsun ales, harvest songs, drinking clubs and customs, and other similar matters. At snug country inns at whicli the traveller may be called upon to slop there should be, in case of a rainy hour in the day, or an empty smoke-room at night, a copy of a book which sings so loudly the praises of mine host and his wares, " — Notes and Queries. George Redways Publications. 39 " The memory of John Barleycorn is in no danger of passmg away for lack of a devoted prophet. The many songs, poems, and pieces of prose written In Praise of Ale form a fine garden for the anthologist to choose a bouquet from. . . . It is plainly AN ORIGINAL COLLECTION, made with diligence and good taste in selection. . . . Mr Marchant's anthology may be recom- mended to the curious as an interesting and carefully compiled collection of poetical and satirical pieces about beer in all its brews." — Scotsman. " The author has gone to ancient and modern sources for his facts, and has not contented himself with merely recording them, but has woven them into a readable history with much skill and wit. — American Bookseller. "Although its chief aim is to be amusing, it is sometimes instructive as well. . . , His stories may at times be a little long, but they are never broad." — Glasgow Herald. " What teetotallers would call A tippler's text-book . . . a collection of songs and ballads, epigrams and anecdotes, which may be called unique. " —Pall Mall Gazette. " Beer, however, in conjunction with mighty roast beef, according to Mr Marchant, has made England what it is, and accordingly he writes his book to show how the English have ever loved good ale, and how much better that is for them than cheap and necessarily inferior spirits or doctored wines. Be that as it may, we have here a collection of occasional verse — satires, epigrams, humorous narratives, trivial ditties, aiid ballads — valuable as illustrations of manners." — Literary World. Demy %vo. Cloth, red edges, Is. 6d. The Theological and Philosophical Works OF Hermes Trismegistus, CHRISTIAN NEOPLATONIST. Translated from the Original Greek, with Preface, Notes, AND Indices. By JOHN DAVID CHAMBERS, M.A., F.S.A., OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD, RECORDER OF NEW SARUM. OPINION OF THE AUTHORS OF " THE PERFECT WAY." " The book is most scholarly and learned, and of great value for its colla- tion of the Bible, Plato, and other Scriptures with the Hermetic, showing one system of thought as pervading them all. He comes to the conclusion — which we also entertain — that the so-called Hermetic books, while repre- senting, in part, ancient Egyptian doctrine, belong to an early Christian — or, perhaps, slightly prae-Christian — period, and are intended to show the identity of the outgoing and incoming systems, and bridge over the gap between them, if any. He omits the Virgin of the World, as belonging to some other school, and also the Asclepius, or Treatise on Initiation, so that the book does not supersede that which we translated and edited. The author, or rather editor, is not an occultist, but, barring this element, his work is a great addition to Hermetic literature." 40 George Redway^s Publications. Wrapper, price is. Journal of the Bacon Society. Published Periodically. Vol. I. {Parts i. to si.), pp. x. and 278, Swo, cloth, 6j. dd. The main objects for which this Society has been established are : — (a) To study the works of Francis Bacon, as Philosopher, Lawyer, Statesman, and Poet, also his character, genius, and life, his influence on his own and suc- ceeding times, and tlie tendencies and results of his writings ; (i) To investigate Bacon's supposed authorship of certain works unacknowledged by him, including the Shakespearian dramas and poems. Small %vo. White Cloth, 4r. dd. Through the Gates of Gold: A Fragment of Thought. By MABEL COLLINS. Contents ; — The Search for Pleasure — The Mystery of the Threshold — The Init Effort— The Meaning of Pain— The Secret of Strength. Crown ivo, pp. xii. and 666, Cloth, 10s. 6d. Myths, Scenes, and Worthies of Somerset. By Mrs E. BOGER. Contents : — Bladud, King of Britain ; or, The Legend of Bath — Joseph of Arimathea and the Legend of Glastonbury — Watchet, The Legend of St Decuman — Porlock and St Dubritius — King Arthur in Somerset — St Keyna the Virgin, of Keynsham — Gildas Badonicus, called Gildas the Wise, also Gildas the Querulous — St Brithwald, Archbishop of Canterbury — King Ina in Somerset, Ina and Aldhelm — St Con^ar and Congresbury— Hun, the Leader of the Sumorssetas, at the Battle of EUandune — King Alfred in Somerset, and the Legend of St Neot — St Athelm, Archbishop of Canterbury — Wulfhelm, Archbishop of Canterbury — ^The Landing of the Danes at Watchet — The Times of St Dunstan; His Life and Legends — Muchelney Abbey— Ethelgar, Archbishop of Canterbury — Sigeric or Siricius, Archbishop of Canterbury — Elfeah, Elph^ge, or Alphege, Archbishop of Canter- bury — Ethelnoth, or Agelnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury — Montacute and the IjCgend of Waltham Cross — Porlock, and Harold son of Godwin — Glastonbury after the Conquest, Bishop Thurstan — William of Malmesbury, called also " Somersetanus" — The Philo- sophers of Somerset in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries — The Rose of Cannington ; Joan Clifford, commonly called "Fair Rosamond" — John de Courcy — St .Ulric the Recluse, or St Wulfric the Hermit — Sir William de Briwere — Woodspring Priory, and the Murderers of Thomas k Becket — Richard of Ilchester, or Richard Tocklive or More— Halswell House, near Bridgewater— The Legend of the House of Tynte — Witham Priory and St Hugh of Avalon (in Burgundy) — William of Wrotham— Joceline Trotman, of Welfs George Redway's Publications. 4 1 — Hugh Trotman, of Wells— Roger Bacon — Sir Henry Bracton, Lord Chief Justice iii the Reign of Henry III. — William Briwere (Briewere, Bruere, or Brewer) — Bunster Cabtle, Sir Keginald de Mohun, Lady Mohun — Fulke of Samford — Sir John Hautville and Sir John St Loe— Sir Simon de Montacute — The Evil Wedding, Chew Magna and Stanton Drew — Robert Burnel — Somerton, King John of France — Stoke-under- Ham, Sir Matthew Gournay — Bristol (St Mary Redcline), The Canyges; Chatterton — Thomas de Beckyngton — The Legend of Sir Richard Whittington — The Legend of the Abbot of Muchelney — Sebastian Cabot — Taunton and its Story — Giles Lord Daubeney and the Cornish Rebellion, King Ina's Palace and South Fetherton — John Hooper, The Marian Persecution — The Paulets, Pawlets, or Pouletts, of Hinton St George — Richard Edwardes — Lord Chief Justice Popham— The Last Days of Glastonbury — William Barlow and the Times of Edward VI. — Robert Parsons, or Persons — Henry Cuff— Sir John Harnngton^ The Wadhams, Wadham College, Oxford ; Ilminster, Merrifield, Ilton — Samuel Daniel — Dr John Bull — Thomas Coryate, of Odcombe, in Somerset — John Pym — Sir Amias Preston — ^Admiral Blake — ^William Prynne — Sir Ralph, Lord Hopton — Ralph Cudworth — On Witches, Mrs Leakey, of Mynehead, Somerset — John Locke — Thomas Ken, D.D., some- time 'Bishop of Bath and Wells — Trent House, Charles II. and Colonel Wyndham — ^The Duke of Monmouth in Somerset — Prince George of Denmark and John Duddleston of Bristol — Beau Nash, with some Account of the Early History of the City of Bath— > Wokey or Ockey Hole, near Wells— Captain St Loe — The State of the Church in the Eighteenth Century, Mrs Hannah ^d Mrs Patty More and Cheddar — Dr Thomas Young — Edward Hawkins, Provost of Oriel and Canon of Rochester — Charles Fuge I^owdei^-A Tale of Watchet, The Death of Jane Capes — Captain John Hanning Speke — Cheddar Cheese, West Pennard's Wedding Present to the Queen, 1S39 — In Memoriam, 1811-1833. •*Mrs Boger is to be praised for her enthusiasm and zeal. She is of Somerset, and she naturally thinks it the wonder of England, if not of the world." — Literary World, " Every addition to the local collections of the myths and legends of our country districts is to be welcomed when it is as carefully made as Mrs Boger's laboriously compiled work, which teems with quaint STORIES, SOME OF WHICH Al^E EVEN BEAUTIFUL." — Westminster Review. *' This is the kind of book, we imagine, in which Thomas Fuller would have expatiated with delight. Less topographical than his ' Worthies,' it does what that delectable book did not profess to do ; it gives not only^ an account of the illustrious natives, but the legends, traditions, historical episodes, and general mefnorabilia which pertain to one famous county, Mrs Boger's book ranges from Bladud, King of Britain, B.C. 900, to Arthur Hallum, who died in 1833." — Notes and Queries, "Mrs Boger writes with such ability and enthusiasm. The work is one which will have an influence in limits far wider than the borders of Somerset, for FEW CAN READ IT WITHOUT PLEASURE, AND NONE WITHOUT PROFIT. , , . To read her book carefully is to master the hagiology of the county." — Morning Post. GEORGE REDWAY'S Classified Catalogue of Books, Relating TO Occult Philosophy and Archaeology; embrac- ing Collections of Works on Astrology, Mesmerism, Alchemy, Theosophy, and Mysticism ; Ancient Religions AND Mythology ; Oriental Antiquities ; Freemasonry and Secret Societies; Western Philosophy and Science. " It is certain that one branch at least of historical enquiry— that which deals with the oriein and development of religious belief throughout the world— is attracting to itself an increasing degree of attention and mteKit."— Quarterly Review, July, 1886. 42 George Redway's Publications. The Literature of Occultism and Archaeology: Being a Catalogue of Books on Sale relating to Ancient Worships, Astrology, Alcliemy, Animal Magnetism, Antliropology, Arabic, Assassins, Antiquities, Ancient History, Behmen and the Mystics, Buddhistn, Clarr- voyance, Cabeiri, China, Coins, Druids, Dreams and Visions, Dmnation, Divinmg Kod, Demonology, Ethnology, Egypt, Fascination, Flagellants, Freemasonry, Folk Lore, Gnostics, Gems, Ghosts, Hindus, Hieroglyphics and Secret Writmg, iierbals. Hermetic, India and the Hindus, Kabbala, Koran, Miracles, Mirabilanes, Magic and Magicians, Mysteries, Mithraic Worship, Mesmerism, Mythology,_ Metaphysics, Mysticism, Neo-platonism, Orientalia, Obelisks, Oracles, Occult Sciences, Phallic Worship, Philology, Persian, Parsees, Philosophy, Physiognomy, Palmistry and Hand- writing, Phrenology, Psychoneurology, Psychometry, Prophets, Rosicrucians, Round Towers, Rabbinical, Spiritualism, Skeptics, Jesuits, Christians and Quakers, Sibylls, Symbolism, Serpent Worship, Secret Societies, Somnambulism, Travels, Tombs, Theosophical, Theology and Criticism, Witchcraft. " Books on witchcraft, magic, and kindred subjects realize high prices, and a few years hence will be difficult to procure at all, unless, indeed, Mr Redway or some other astute purchaser cares to duplicate his stock while there is time, and keep it under lock and key, for the benefit of the next generation."— 7'A« Athenieum, Feb. 2, 1889. List of Books Chiefly from the Library of the late Frederick Hockley, Esq., Consisting of Important Works relating to the Occult Sciences, both in Print and Manuscript; NOW ON SALE AT THE PRICES AFFIXED, BY GEORGE REDWAY, York Street, Covent Garden, London. " The study of occultism is not without its charms; and, when an author has anything to say about magic and magicians, about alchemy or astrology, or any other black art, properly so called, he is justified in describing his book as a contribution to the literature of occultism. But the ravings of " illuminated " persons who have gone mad upon a diet of tetragrams, pentagrams, and pantacles soon pall, and the student turns joyously to the folios of the olden propers after the Philosopher's Stone. There he finds a treasure of delightful literature, m which amusement is artfully blended with instruction, and where moral maxims are scattered aboutthe pages which teach you how to subject your enemies to a horrible death. The old magicians in their books are ec^ual to any emergency. They will tell you how to raise the devil, and compel him to enrich you with hidden treasures ; how to bring the reluctant fair to your arnis; how to cast your own nativity; or, if you trouble about none of these things, and incline to lighter sports, they will give you a recipe for charming fish out of the water, or enable you to dream that you are in whatever you may deem to be the right paradise. With speculations about the why and the wherefore of things they will not trouble you. They prefer to dilate upon the wonders of black magic, and to gloat over the one hundred thousand pounds' weight of fine gold which a friend of Raymond Lully's made by alchemical means. These musty tomes, full of significant circles and magic triangles, of red dragons and black hens, embellished with portraits of the demoniacal hierarchy and drawings of the essential implements for evoking spirits, have a pleasant flavour of romance. The quaint Latinity and the odd jumble of tongues in which the conjurations are written are as fine in their way as anything that ever was printed in a folio. But it is needful to beware of the endless volumes of modern ravings about the so- called occult ; for that way madness \\&^." —Saturday Review^ April 23, 1887. George Redway's Publications. 43 Crown %vo, pp. 375, Clolh, "js. 6d. Theosophy, Religion, and Occult Science. By henry s. olcott, president of the theosophical society. With Glossary ok Eastern Words. Contents :— Theosophy or Materialism— Which!— The Theosophical Society and its Aims— The Common Foundation of all Religions— Thesophy : the Scientific Basis of Religion — Theosophy : its Friends and Enemies— The Occult Sciences — Spiritualism and Theosophy— India.: Past, Present, and Future— The Civilisation that India needs— The Spirit of the Zoroastrian Religion — the Life of Buddha and its Lessons, &c. The Manchester Examiner Aticnhes these lectures as "rich in interest AND suggestiveness," and says that "the theosophy expounded in this volume is at once a theology, a metaphysic, and a sociology," and concludes a lengthy notice by stating that " Colonel Olcott's volume deserves, and will repay, the study of all readers for whom the byways of speculation have an irresistible charm." Demy Svo, pp. xii. and 324, Cloth, \os. 6d. Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky. Compiled from Information supplied by Her Relatives and Friends, And Edited by A. P. SINNETT. With a Portrait Reproduced from an Original Painting by Hermann Schmiechen. Contents :— Childhood— Marriage and Travel— At Home in Russia, 1858— Mme. de JTelihowsky's Narrative — From Apprenticeship to Duty — Residence in America — Estab'- lished in India — A Visit to Europe, &c. Truth says : — " For any credulous friend who revels in such stories I can recommend ' Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky. ' I read every LINE OF the book WITH MUCH INTEREST." Theosophists will find both edification and interest in the book. 44 George Redways Publications. Post %vo, pp. viii. and 350, Cloth gilt, "Js. dd. The Blood Covenant, a Primitive Rite, And its Bearings on Scripture. By H. clay TRUMBULL, D.D. Contents -.—The Primitive Rite Itself.— (i) Sources of Bible Study— (2) An Ancient Semitic Rite— (3) The Primitive Rite in Africa— (4) Traces of the Rite in Europe— (5) World-wide Sweep of the Rite,— (6) Light from the Classics— (7) The Bond of the Covenant,— (8) The Rite and its Token in Egypt— (9) Other Gleams of the Rite. Suggestions and Perversions of the Rite. — (i) Sacredness of Blood and of the Heart — (2) Vivifying Power of Blood— (3) A new Nature through new Blood— (4) Life from any Blood, and by a Touch— (5) Inspiration through Blood— (6) Inter-communion through Blood — (7) Symbolic Substitutes for Blood — (8) Blood Covenant Involvings. Indications of the Rite in the Bible. — (i) Limitations of Inquiry — (2) Primitive Teachings of Blood — (3) The Blood Covenant in Circumcision— (4) The Blood Covenant Tested— (s) The Blood Covenant and its Tokens in the Passover — (6) The Blood Covenant at Sinai — (7) The Blood Covenant in the Mosaic Ritual— (8) The Primitive Rite Illustrated— (9) The Blood Covenant in the Gospels — (lo) The Blood Covenant applied. Importance of this Rite strangely undervalued — Life in the Blood, in the Heart, in the Liver — Transmigration of Souls — ^The Blood-rite in Burmah — Blood-stained Tree of the Covenant— -Blood- drinking— Covenant Cutting — Blood-bathing^Blood-ransoming — ^The Covenant-reminder —Hints of Blood Union — Topical Index — Scriptural Index. ' ' An admirable study of a primitive belief and custom — one of the utmost importance in considering the growth of civilisation. ... In the details of the work will be found much to attract the attention of the curious. Its fundamental and essential value, however, is for the student of religions ; and all such will be grateful to Dr Trumbull for THIS SOLID, instructive, and ENLIGHTENING WORK." — Scotsman. Square l6mo, Cloth, gilt edges, S^. The Art of Judging the Character of Individuals FROM their Handwriting and Style. With 35 Plates, containing 120 Specimens of the Handwriting of Various Characters. Edited by EDWARD LUMLKY. Contents, and List of Plates.— (i) Art of Judging the Character by the Handwrit- ing, now first translated from the French: a. Introduction ; b. Character of Men from the Handwriting ; c. Art of Judging Men by their Style {Plates i to 22)— {2) Account of alleged Art of Reading the Character of Individuals in their Handwriting, by Dr W. Seller {Plates 23, 24, 25)— <3) On Characteristic Signatures, by Stephen Collet, A.M. {Thomas Byierley) {Plates 26 to 32)— (4) Autographs, by Isaac D'lsraeli— (s) Hints as to Autographs, by Sir John Sinclair— (6) Characters m Writing, by Vigneul Marville {Dom Noel Dargonne)—{i) The Autograph a Test of Character, by Edgar A. Foe {Plates 33, 34)— (8) Of Design, Colouring, and Writing, by the Rev. J. Casper Lavater {Plate 35). George Redway's Publications. 45 Post Svo, pp. xiii, and 220, Cloth, 10s. 6d. The Life OP Philippus Theophrastus, Bombast of Hohenheim, KNOWN BY THE NAME OF Paracelsus. And the Substance of his Teachings concerning Cosmology, Anthropology, Pneumatology, Magic AND Sorcery, Medicine, Alchemy and Astrology, Philosophy and Theosophy. Extracted and Translated from his Rare and Extensive Works, and from some Unpublished Manuscripts, By FRANZ HARTMANN, M.D. Contents; — The Life of Paracelsus — Explanation of Terms — Cosmology' — Anthropology — Pneumatology — Magic and Sorcery — Medicine — Alchemy and Astrology — Philosophy and Theosophy — Appendix. St James's Gazette describes this as "a book which will have some per- manent value to the student of the occult," and says that "Students SHOULD BE GRATEFUL FOR THIS BOOK, despite its Setting of Theosophical Crown 8vo, pp. x. and 124, Parchment, (>s. The Raven. By EDGAR ALLAN FOE. With Literary and Historical Commentary by John H. Ingram. Contents: — Genesis — The Raven, with Varioriim Readings — History — Isadore — Translations : French — German — Hungarian — Latin — Fahricatlons — Parodies — Bihlio- graphy — Index. "An interesting monograph on Poe's famous poem." — Spectator. " There is no more reliable authority on the subject than Mr John H. Ingram. Much curious information is collected in his essay. The volume is well printed and tastefully bound in spotless vellum." — Publishers' Circular. 46 George Redways Publications. Cr gical Experiences of Eliphas Ldvi — Evocation of Apollonius of Tyana — Ghosts in Paris — The ^Magician and the Medium — Eliphas L^vi and the Sect of Eugene Vintras — The Magician and the Sorcerer — Secret History of the Assassination of the Archbishop of Paris ^NOTES. ' ' Of the many remarkable men who have gained notoriety by their profici- ency, real or imaginary, in the Black Arts, probably none presents a more strange and irreconcileable character than the French magician Alphonse Louis Constant. . . . Better known under the Jewish pseudonym of ^^liphas Levi Zahed, this enthusiastic student of forbidden art made some stir in France, and even in London. . . . His WORKS ON MAGIC are those of AN UNDOUBTED GENIUS, and divulge a philosophy beautiful in conception, if totally opposed to common sense principles There is so great a fund of learning and of attractive reasoning in these writings, that Mr Arthur Edward Waite has published a digest of them for the benefit of English readers. This gentleman has not attempted a literal translation in every case, but has arranged a volume which, while reproducing with sufficient accuracy a great portion of the more interesting works, affords an excellent idea of the scope of the entire literary remains of an enthusiast for whom he entertains a profound admiration. . . . The reader may with profit peruse carefully the learned dissertations penned by M. Constant upon the Hermetic art treated as a religion, a philosophy, and a natural science. ... In view of the remarkable exhibitions of mesmeric influence and thought reading which have been recently given, it is not improbable that the thoughtful reader may find a clue in the writings of this cultured and amiable magician to the secret of many of the manifestations of witchcraft that formerly struck wonder and terror into the hearts of simple folks. . . ." — The Morning George Redway's Publications. 5 1 " The present single volume is a digest of half-a-dozen books enumerated by the present author in a 'biographical and critical essay' with which he prefaces his undertaking. These are the Dogme et Ritual de la Haute Magie, the Histoire de la Magie, the Clef des Grands Mystires, the Sorcier de Mendon, the Philosophie Occulte, and the Science des Esprits. To attack the whole series — which, indeed, it might be difficult to obtain now in a complete form — would be a bold undertaking, but Mr Waite has endeavoured to give his readers the essence of the whole six books in a relatively compact compass. . . . The book before us is encyclopedic IN ITS RANGE, and it would be difficult to find a single volume which is better calculated to supply modern inquiries with a general conception of the scope and purpose of the occult sciences at large. It freely handles, amongst others, the ghastly topics of witchcraft and black magic, but certainly it would be difficult to imagine any reader tempted to enter thos,e pathways of experiment by the picture of their character and purpose that Eliphas L^vi supplies. In this way the intrepid old Kabbalist, though never troubling his readers with sublime exhortations in the interests of virtue, writes under the inspiration of an uncompromising devotion to the loftiest ideals, and all his phUosophy ' makes for righteousness. ' " — Mr A, P. Sinnett in Light. " We are grateful to Mr Waite for translating the account of how L^vi, in a lone chamber in London, called up the spirit of Apollonius of Tyana. This very creepy composition is written in quite the finest manner of the late Lord Lytton when he was discoursing upon the occult." — TTie Saturday Review. Demy \%ino, pp. vi. and 132, with Woodcuts, Fancy Cloth, is. John Leech, Artist and Humourist. A Biographical Sketch. By FRED. G. KITTON. New Edition, Revised. "In the absence of a fuller biography we cordially welcome Mr Kitton's interesting little sketch. " — Notes at^ Queries. C:: I "The multitudinous admirers of the famous artist will find this touching monograph well worth careful reading and preservation." — Daily Chronicle. "The very model of what such a memoir should be." — Graphic. 52 George Redway's Publications. ifo, with Frontispiece, pp. xxx. and 154, Parchment, los. 6d. THE HERMETIC WORKS . The Virgin of the World OF Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus. Now FIRST Rendered into English, with Essay, Introductions, and Notes, By DR anna KINGSFORD and EDWARD MAITLAND, AUTHORS OF " THE PERFECT WAY." Published under the auspices of the Hermetic Society. Essays on "The Hermetic Books," by E. M., and on "The Hermetic System and the Significance of its Present Revival," by A. K. " The Virgin of the World " is followed by " Asclepios on Initiation," the " Definitions of Asclepios," and the " Fragments of Hermes." " It will be a most interesting .study for every occultist to compare the doctrines of the ancient Hermetic philosophy with the teaching of the Vedantic and Buddhist systems of religious thought. The famous books OF Hermes seem to occupy, with reference to the Egyptian religion, the same position which the Upanishads occupy in Aryan religious literature. " — Theosophist, November, 1885. Imperial idmo, pp. 16, wrapper, printed on Whatmatis hand-made paper. 250 copies only, each numbered. 5j. A Word for the Navy. By ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. "Mr Swinburne's new patriotic song, ' A Word for the Navy,' is as fiery in its denunciation of those he believes- to be antagonistic to the welfare of the country as was his lyric with which he startled the readers of the Times one morning." — Athenceum. The publisher of this poem is also the sole proprietor of the copyright; it cannot therefore be included in Mr Swinburne's collected works. George Redway's Publications. 53 i^o, pp. 121, Illttstrated with a number of beautiful Symbolical Figures, Parchment gilt, price \os. 6d. ASTROLOGY THEOLOGIZED. The Spiritual Hermeneutics of Astrology and Holy Writ. Being a Treatise upon the Influence of the Stars ON Man and on the Art of Ruling Them by THE Law of Giiace. {Reprinted from the original of 1649.) With a Prefatory Essay on the True Method of Interpreting Holy Scripture, By anna bonus KINGSFORD. Illustrated with Engravings on Wood, Contents: — What Astrology is, and what Theology; and how they have reference one to another ^ Concerning the Subject of Astrology— Of the three parts of Man; Spirit, Soul, and Body, from whence every one is taken, and how one is in the other — Of the Composition of the Microcosm, that is Man, from the Macrocosm, the great World — That all kind of Sciences, Studies, Actions, and Lives, flourishing amongst Men on the Earth and Sea, do testify that all Astrology, that is, Natural Wisdom, with all its Species, is and is to be really found in every Man. And so all things, whatsoever Men act on Earth, are produced, moved, governed, and acted from the Inward Heaven. And what are the Stars which a Wise Man ought to rule. Touching a double Firmament and Star in every Man ; and that by the Benefit of Regeneration in the Exercise of the Sabbath, a Man may be transposed from a worse nature into a better — Touching the Distribution of all Astrology into the Seven Governors of the World, and their Operations and Offices, as well in the Macrocosm as in the Microcosm— Touching the Astrology of Saturn, of what kind it is, and how it ought to be Theologized — ^A Specifical Declaration, how the Astrology of Saturn in Man ought to be and may be Theologized. The St Jameses Gazette says : — ** It is well for Dr Anna Kingsford that she was not born into the sidereal world four hundred years ago. Had that been her sorry fate, she would assuredly have been burned at the stake for her preface to 'Astrology Theologized.' It is a very long preface— more than half the length of the treatise it introduces ; it contains some of the FINEST FLOWERS OF THEOSOPHICAL PHILOSOPHY, and of course makes very short work of Christianity." 54 George Redways Publications. Crown Svff, pp. tft, printed on Whatman's Handmade Paper, Vellum Gilt, 6s. Hints to Collectors Of Original Editions of the "Works of Charles Dickens. By CHARLES PLUMPTRE JOHNSON. Including Books, Plays, and Portraits, there are 167 items fully described. "This is a sister volume to the ' Hints to Collectors of First Editions of Thackeray,' which we noticed a month or two ago. As we are unable to detect any slips in his work, we must content ourselves with thanking him for the correctness of his annotations. It is unnecessary to repeat our praise of the elegant format of these books." — Academy. Crown %vo,pp. 48, printed on Whatman's Handmade Paper, Vellum Gilt, 6s. Hints to Collectors Of Original Editions of the Works of William Makepeace Thackeray. By CHARLES PLUMPTRE JOHNSON. " .... A guide to those who are great admirers of Thackeray, and are collecting first editions of his works. The dainty little volume, bound in parchment and printed on hand-made paper, is very concise and convenient in form ; on each page is an exact copy of the title-page of the work mentioned thereon, a collation of pages and illustrations, useful hints on the differences in editions, with other matters indispensable to collectors. . . . Altogether it represents a large amount of labour and experience." — Spectator. George Redway's Publications. 55 Large Crown ^o, pp. xxxii. atid 324, Cloth extra, Gilt Top, 10s. 6d. Sea Song and River Rhyme, From Chaucer to Tennyson. SELECTED AND EDITED BY ESTELLE DAVENPORT ADAMS. With a New Poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne. With Twelve Etchings. In general, the Songs and Poetical Extracts are limited to those which deal with the Sea and Rivers as natural objects, and are either descriptive or reflective. The Etchings are printed in different colours ; the headpieces are also original. " The book is, on the whole, one of the best of its kind ever published." — Glasgow Herald. "The editor has made the selection with praiseworthy judgment." — Morning Post, " Twelve really exquisite and delicately executed etchings of sea and river- side accompany and complete this beautiful volume." — Morning Post. " A special anthology, delightful in itself, and possessing the added graces of elegant printing and dainty illustrations." — Scotsman. "The volume is got up in the handsomest style, and includes a dozen etchings of sea and river scenes, some of which are exquisite," — Literary World. Crown %vo, pp. xl. and 420, Cloth extra, los. 6d, The History of the Forty Vezirs; Or, The Story of the Forty Morns and Eves. Written in Turkish by SHEYKH-ZADA ; Done into English by E. J. W. GIBB, M.R.A.S. The celebrated Turkish romance, translated from a printed but undated text procured a few years ago in Constantinople. "A delightful addition to the wealth of Oriental stories available to English readers. . . . Mr Gibb has considerately done everything to help the reader to an intelligent appreciation of this charming book." — Saturday Review. Sir Richard F. Burton says : — " In my opinion, the version is definite and final. The style is light and pleasant, with the absolutely necessary flavour of quaintness ; and the notes, though short and few, are sufficient and satisfactory." 56 George Redway's Publications. Complete in 12 Vols. £3 neti. The Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer. Edited by EDWARD WALFORD, M.A. and G. W. REDWAY, F.R.H.S. This illustrated periodical, highly esteemed by students of English antiquities, biography, folk-lore, bibliography, numismatics, genealogy, &c., was founded in 1882 by Mr Edward Walford, and completed in 1887 under the editorship of Mr G. W. Redway. Only some thirty COMPLETE SETS REMAIN, and they are offered at a very moderate price. Contents of Vols. XI. and XII. :— Domesday Book — Frostiana — Some Kentish Proverbs— The Literature of Almanadcs—" Madcap Harry" and Sir John Popham— Tom Coryate and his Crudities— Notes on John Wiflces and Boswell's Life of Johnson— The Likeness of Christ— The Life, Times, and Writings of Thomas Fuller— Society in the Elizabethan Age— Chapters from Family Chests— Collection of Parodies— Rarities in the Lodcer-Lampson Collection— A Day with the late Mr Edward Solly- The Defence of England in the i6th Century— The Ordinary from Mr Thomas Jenyn's Booke of Armes— A Forgotten Cromwellian Tomb— Visitation of the Monasteries in the Reign of Henry the Eighth— The Rosicrucians — The Seilliere Library— A Lost Work — Romances of Chivalry — Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland — The Art of the Old English Potter— The Story of the Spanish Armada — Books for a Reference Library — Myth-Land— Sir Bevis of Hampton — Cromwell and the Saddle Letter of Charles I. — Recent Discoveries at Rome— Fofk-Lore of British Birds— An old Political Broadside — Notes for Coin Collectors— Higham Priory— By^Ways of Periodical Literature— Memoir of Captain Dalton — A History of the Parish of Mortlake, in the County of Surrey — Historic Towns— Exeter— Traits and Stories of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese— The Pre- History of the North — The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman — The Curiosities of Ale— The Books and Bookmen of Reading — ^How to trace a Pedigree — The Language of the Law— Words, Idioms, &c„ of the Vulgar— The Romans in Cumbria— The Study of Coins — An Un-bowdlerised Boccaccio — The Kabbalah — The House of Aldus — Bookselling in Little Britain — Copper-plates and Woodcuts by the Bewicks— Excavations at Ostia — Sir Sages of Somerset — The Good Queen Bertha — The popular Drama of the Past — Relics of Astrolo^c Idioms — A Leaf from an Old Account Book — The Romance of a Gibbet— General Pardons — Thorscross or Thurscross (Yorkshire)— The Genesis of " In Memoriam " — The Influence of Italian upon English Literature — The Trade Signs of Essex— The Ancient Cities of the New World — The Legendary History of the Cross — History of Runcorn — The Rosicrucians ; their Rites and Mysteries^ Old Glasgow Families— The House of Aldus — Merlin, the Prophet of the Celts — A facetious Advertisement — Funeral Garlands — Bookselling on London Bridge— Millom Cumberland— A forgotten Children's Book of Charles Dickens— The Rothschilds; a Trilogy of the Life to come — The Beer of the Bible — Story of the Drama in Exeter — By- Ways of Periodical Literature — Reading Anecdotes — Tennysonian and Thadcerayan Rarities — ^The Origin and History of Change Ringing — More Vulgar Words and Phrases — The popular Drama of the past — Some Poems attributed to Byron — The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche — Sketches of Life in Japan — The first nine years of the Bank of England — The Brunswick Accession— History of the Bassandyne Bible — Peculiar Courts — Vulgar Etymologies — Nuremburg — Metal Pan-making in England — The Pews of the Past — Octocentenary of the Death of William the Conqueror — A Black Magician — The Allegorical Signification of the Tinctures in Heraldry^— The Purpose of the Ages — The Sieges of Pontefract Castle — A Life of John Colet — The History of Sport in Cheshire — Tom Coryat and his Crudities— The Tarot : an Antique Method of Divination — Law French— The Pews of the Past— Shropshire Folk-Lore— The Printed Book— St Mary Overies Priory Church, Southwark — Some curious passages from Baker's Chronicle — The resting-place of Cromwell — A Library of Rarities — Europe in the reign of James the Sixth— Myths, Scenes, and Worthies of Somerset— Herefordshire Words and Phrases — Chronicles of an Old Inn— Epitaphs — The Gnostics and their Remains— Collectanea- Meetings of Learned Societies — News and Notes— Obituary Memoirs— Correspondence — Vos Valete et Plaiidite. George Redway's Publications. 57 Large Demy Svo, pp. xx. and 268, Cloth, los. 6d. Sultan Stork; And other Stories and Sketches. By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. (1839-1844.) Now First Collected. To WHICH IS ADDED THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ThACKERAY, REVISED AND Considerably Enlarged. ContEuns two unpublished letters of A. C. Swinburne, Thaclceray's contributions to "The National Standard," " The Snob," also " Dickens in France," " Letters on the Fine Arts,', " Elizabeth Browniigge : A Tale," &c. " Thackeray collectors, however, have only to be told that none of the PIECES NOW PRINTED APPEAR IN THE TWO VOLUMES RECENTLY ISSUED by Messrs Smith, Elder, & Co., in order to make them desire their possession. They will also welcome the revision of the Bibliography, since it now presents a complete list, arranged in chronological order, of Thackeray's published writings in prose and verse, and also of his sketdies and drawings." — Daily Chronicle. " ' Sultan Stork' .... is undoubtedly the work of Mr Thackeray, and is quite pretty and fiinny enough to have found a place in his collected miscellanies. ' Dickens in France ' is as good in its way as Mr Thackeray's analysis of Alexander Dumas' 'Kean' in the 'Paris Sketch-Book.' . . . There are other slight sketches in this volume which are evidently by Mr Thackeray, and several of his obiter dicta in them are worth preserving. . . . We do not assume to fix Mr Thackeray's rank or to appraise his merits as an art critic. We only know that, in our opinion, few of his minor writings are so pleasant to read as his shrewd and genial comments on modern painters and paintings." — Saturday Review. "Admirers of Thackeray may be grateful for a Reprint of • Sultan Stork.' " — Athennmn. 58 George Redway's Publications. Demy &vo, pp. viii. and 68, Parchment, Js. 6d. Primitive Symbolism as Illustrated in Phallic Worship; Or, The Reproductive Principle. By HODDER M. WESTROPP. With an Introduction by General Forlong. " This work is a multum in parvo of the growth and spread of Phallicism, as we commonly call the worship of nature or fertilizing powers. I felt, when solicited to enlarge and illustrate it on the sudden death of the lamented author, that it would be desecration to touch so complete a compendium by one of the most competent and soundest thinkers who have WRITTEN ON THIS WORLD-WIDE FAITH. None knew better or saw more clearly than Mr Westropp that in this oldest symbolism and worship lay the foundations of all the goodly systems we call Religions. " — J. G. R. Forlong. "A well-selected repertory of facts illustrating this subject, which should be read by all who are interested in the study of the growth of religions." — Westminster Review. Fcap. %vo, 80 pp.. Vellum, \os. dd. Beauty and the Beast; Or, a Rough Outside with a Gentle Heart. A Poem. By CHARLES LAMB. Now FIRST Reprinted from the Original Edition of i8ii, WITH Preface and Notes by Richard Herne Shepherd. For three quarters of a century this charming fragment of Lamb's genius lay buried; even the author seems to have forgotten its existence, since we find no reference, either direct or indirect, to the little tale in Lamb's published correspondence, or in any of the Lamb books. The credit of a discovery highly interesting to all lovers of Charles Lamb is due to the industry and sagacity of Mr John Pearson, formerly of 15 York Street, Covent Garden. The publisher has now endeavoured to place the booklet beyond future chance of loss by reproducing one hundred copies for the use of libraries and collectors. George Redway's Publications. 59 l%mo, pp. xxvi. atid 174, Cloth extra, 2s. Wellerisms, From " Pickwick " and " Master Humphrey's Clock." Selected by CHARLES F. RIDEAL, And Edited, with an Introduction, by CHARLES KENT. Among the Contents are : — Sam Welter's Introduction — Old Weller at Doctor's Common^^ Sam on a Legal Case — Self-acting Ink — Out with It — Sam's Old White Hat — Independent Voters— Proud o' the Title— The Weller Philosophy— The Twopenny Rope— Job 'Trotter's Tears — Sam's Misgivings as to Mr Pickwick — Clear the Way for the Wheelbarrow — Unpack- ing the Lunch Hamper — Battledore and Shuttlecock — A True Londoner — Spoiling the Beadle — Old Weller's Remedy fpr the Gout — Sam on Cabs — Poverty and Oysters — Old Weller on Pikes — Sam's Power of Suction — Veller and Gammon-^Sam as Master of the Ceremonies — Sam before Mr Nupkins — Sam's Introduction to Mary and the Cook — Something behind the Door — Sam and Master Bardell — Good Wishes to Messrs Dodson & Fogg — Sam and his Mother-in- Law — The Shepherd's Water Rates — Stiggins as an Arithmetician — Sam and the Fat Boy — Compact and Comfortable — Apologue of the Fat Man's Watch — Medical Students — Sam Subpoenaed — ^Disappearance of the " Sausage " Maker — Sam Weller's Valentine — Old Weller's Plot — Tea Drinking at Brick Lane — The Soldier's Evidence Inadmissible — Sam's " Wision" Limited — A Friendly " Swarry" — The Killebeate — Sam and the Surly Groom — Mr Pickwick's Dark Lantern — ^The Little Dirty-faced Man— Old" Weller Inexorable — Away with Melancholy — Post Boys and Donkeys — A Vessel — Old Weller's Threat — Sam's Dis- missal of the Fat Boy— Is she a " Widder"?— Bill Blinder's Request— The Watch-box Boy. " . . . . The best sayings of the immortal Sam and his sportive parent are collected here. The book may be taken up for a few minutes with the certainty of affording amusement, and it can be carried away in the pocket. " — Literary World. " It was a very good idea . . . the extracts are very numerous . . . here nothing is missed." — Glasgow Herald. Demy Svo, pp. 99, with Protractor and 16 plates, coloured and plain. Cloth gilt, "js. 6d. ' Geometrical Psychology ; Or, The Science of Representation. An Abstract of the Theories and Diagrams of B. W. Betts. By LOUISA S. COOK. " His attempt seems to have taken a similar direction to that of George Boole in logic, with the difference that, whereas Boole's expression of the Laws of Thought is algebraic, Belts' expresses mind-growth geometrically ; 6o George Redway's Publications. that is to say, his growth-formulae are expressed in numerical series, of which each can be pictured to the eye in a corresponding curve. When the series are thus represented, they are found to resemble the forms of leaves and flowers." — Mary Boole, in " Symbolic Methods of Study." The Pall Mall Gazette, in a characteristic article entitled, " Very Methodi- cal Madness," allows that " Like Rosicrucianism, esoteric Buddhism, and other forms of the mystically incomprehensible, it seems to exercise a m^netic influence upon many minds by no means as foolish as its original inventor's." " This work is the result of more than twenty years' application to the dis- covery of a method of representing human consciousness in its various stages of development by means of geometrical figures — it is, in fact, the application OF MATHEMATICAL SYMBOLOGY TO METAPHYSICS. This idea will be new to many of our readers ; indeed, so far as we know, Mr Betts is the only man who has tried to work out a coherent system of this kind, though his work unfortunately remains imperfect. "— 7XeoJ«/A8>;, June 1887. 800, pp. 32, Wrapper, is. On Mesmerism. By a. p. SINNETT. Issued as a Transaction of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society, of which Mr Sinnett is President, this panaphlet forms an admirable INTRODUCTION to the Study of Mesmerism; LONDON: GEORGE REDWAY. WvA % fJ^,tJtiMiHUj//JjMjJjJ^/^i*4,