ROSSETTI'S LIVES *7T of FAMOUS POETS fyxmll mmvmty fftmg BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT Fl^TD THE GIFT OF ••**•■ • ~;f « Henrg W. Sage 1891 M/flU- Date Due UAYl 6 IMS m f 2 9 19SS !kPPiy\ r 1 ^ to ^ ®yh X "fTBOfi * w ** RW Wr ^^pg^w?** 8 * It - gSESHS / ?R s WILLIAM SHAKSPEKE. Good frend forIe^.vs sake forbeare, to dlgfg tie dv5t encloasej) ieare: Ble£t BE Y MAN Y SPARES TIES STONES, AND CVR&T BEHEYM0VE5 MY BONES INSCRIPTION ON SHAKSPEBE S TOME. The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013263938 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. EY WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI. A COMPANION VOLUME TO THE SERIES MOXON'S POPULAR POETS WARD, LOCK, AND Co., LONDON : WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C. NEW YORK : BOND STREET. (Right of Translation Reserved.) "&<$> 4k- A. w]\*i° COWAN AND CO., STEATHMORE PRINTING WOBKS. -*^ ^ INSCRIBED TO TWO BELOVED MEMORIES. OLIVER MADOX-BROWN, WRITER AND PAINTER, DIED 5 NOVEMBER 1874, AGED 19. MARIA FRANCESCA ROSSETTI, WRITER AND SISTER OF THE POOR, DIED 24 NOVEMBER 1876, AGED 49. T PREFACE. It is due to the reader that I should explain a little of the origin of this book, and its limitations. The series of works named Moxon's Popular Poets has been before the public for some years past : I began editing it in 1869. Each volume in that series contains a Prefatory Notice written by me — mainly biographical and partly critical. When the issue was completed two or three years ago, some of my acquaintances were so far satisfied with these Notices as to think that they would make a serviceable and readable little volume, if put together in a collected form : the public will decide whether this opinion was right or wrong. For me, as the writer, it was not unnatural to hope that the opinion might prove to be right ; and, the publishers having readily assented to my proposal on the subject, on the understanding that seven other lives should be added to those already issued in the several volumes, the present book is the result. The original notices have, in each instance, been carefully revised, and, where necessary, enlarged or modified. The authors re-edited by me in Moxon's Popular Poets are all of widely diffused reputation. Of most of them the place in our literature is firmly fixed ; all of them are constantly read, and by all classes of people. It was thought desirable that the authors now added to the list should be as nearly as possible of the same order : the seven British Poets, not included in the published series, who stand foremost for general fame and #- PREFACE. continual perusal. The seven thus selected are Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Butler, Diyden, Gray, and Goldsmith. In order to keep up in the reader's mind a tolerably clear conception of the main stream of British poetry, apart from the writers specially dealt with, I have added, in chronological sequence, the names of other poets of celebrity, with the dates of birth and death so far as ascertainable : these names appear in successive lists inserted here and there between any pair of the poets about whom I have written, according to date of birth. Beyond this I have not attempted to carry the survey of our poetry as a whole. I am not aware that any book, closely corresponding to mine in scope and treatment, is in the hands of the public already. My attempt amounts to something like an en- deavour to produce a supplement, suitable for readers of the present day, to Johnson's Lives of the Poets — if indeed I may say so without an appearance of presumption, and without raising a comparison damaging to my own very modest pre- tensions here. Receding from any question other than that of the relative scale of treatment, I may observe that, of John- son's Lives, several (as indeed most of my readers will know) are written with much more amplitude than mine ; while several others are still shorter. Johnson gives fifty-two Lives: the earliest writer in date of birth being Waller, 1605; and the latest, Akenside, 1721. Only six of the poets treated of by Johnson— Milton, Butler, Dryden, Pope, Thomson, and Gray — reappear in the present volume ; some of his others are now totally — or all but totally — forgotten. Without affecting excessive or exhaustive research, I can honestly aver that I have taken pains to condense into my book numerous facts, and to give them with accuracy — if not, and by the very nature of the undertaking it is not, with any great degree of fullness. As a general rule, where the writer produced works in prose as well as poetry, I have advisedly 4* ; 4* PREFACE. abstained from attempting any serious analysis of the prose. That I must have fallen into some errors of fact — not to speak of opinion — I am but too well aware. A Chaucer expert, I cannot conceal from myself, is likely to find me at fault in Chaucer; a Milton expert, in Milton; a Coleridge expert, in Coleridge; and so on. To this I must resign myself; content if my small contribution to an understanding and love of our Poets should be found, in its entirety, to meet something of a public want, and to meet it without doing grave discredit to so exalted — I might say so national and sacred — a cause. W. M. ROSSETTI. Jannqry 1878. •H&- V CONTENTS. PAGE Preface Poets born before Chaucer 2 Geoffrey Chaucer 3 Poets born between Chaucer and Spenser 1 20 Edmund Spenser 21 Poets born between Spenser and Shakespeare 34 William Shakespeare 35 Poets born between Shakespeare and Milton 64 John Milton 65 Samuel Butler 81 Poets born between Butler and Dryden 90 John Dryden 91 Poets born between Dryden and Pope 108 Alexander Pope 109 Poets born between Pope and Thomson 134 James Thomson .. 13s Poets born between Thomson and Gray 146 Thomas Gray 147 Poets born between Gray and Goldsmith 160 Oliver Goldsmith 161 Poets born between Goldsmith and Cowper 176 William Cowper 177 * xii CONTENTS. PAGE Poets born between Cowper and Burns 188 Robert Burns 189 Poets born between Burns and Wordsworth 202 William Wordsworth 203 Walter Scott 219 Poets born between Scott and Coleridge 236 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 237 Poets born between Coleridge and Campbell 256 Thomas Campbell 257 Poet born between Campbell and Moore 272 Thomas Moore 273 Poets born between Moore and Byron 286 Lord Byron '. 287 Poet born between Byron and Shelley 308 Percy Bysshe Shelley 309 Poet born between Shelley and Mrs. Hemans 330 Felicia Dorothea Hemans 331 John Keats 349 Poet born between Keats and Hood 362 Thomas Hood 363 Poets born between Hood and Longfellow 382 • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 383 Index 393 if ***- POETS BORN BEFORE CHAUCER. Caedmon j from ? arl y,' j n the 7th century t0 ( circa ooo. King Alfred from 84910901. LAYAMON wrote c. 1205. Orm (or Ormin) wrote c. 1205. TH °Rh S m S ERCILD0UNE (Ule j wrote c. 1280. Robert of Gloucester wrote c. 1300. Robert deBrunne (or Manning) wrote 1338. John Barbour from c. 1320 to c. 1395. John Gower from ^1325 to 1408. William Langland wrote c. 1362. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. Up to the time of Chaucer, and of his older contemporary William Langland, the author of the Vision of Piers Plough- man, there was not a single authentically great writer in the English tongue, whether in poetry or in prose. Scholars and antiquarians will cite various authors whom they view with predilection, Caedmon more especially, and this not without reason ; but not one was of the rank of those men who found a literature, who raise a language from the spoken and written to the literary condition, who give it a name and a place among the languages which promote, and which partly constitute, civi- lization. Chaucer achieved this glory for his country, and for himself. Along with him we have just now named William (more commonly, but without warrant, called Robert) Lang- land; not indeed as indicating that Langland shares with Chaucer in so great a splendour, but in order that we might not leave unmentioned the writer who, before Chaucer's prime, and in so close proximity to him and to the influences which moulded him, had already succeeded in distancing all predeces- sors, and in leaving a lasting bequest to his posterity of English readers, and to ours. Of the life of Geoffrey Chaucer several particulars have been put on record from time to time by successive enquirers : un- fortunately it happens that what one man propounds as a fact, or advances as an ingenious suggestion, is found by another to <&<>>■ ■if -+ LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. be fictitious or gratuitous. The most recent investigations 1 have been amongst the most cautious, and the richest as well as safest in results. For Chaucer's birth two widely severed dates have been assigned — 1328, and 1340 or thereabouts. For the first there is no authority, worthy to be so called. For the second there is the authority of Chaucer himself, who, having to make a deposition in 1386 as a witness in a cause of chivalry between Lord Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor, averred that he was then " forty years old and upwards ", and had borne arms for twenty-seven years. Considering that, if born in 1328, he would in 1386 have been fifty-eight, it is difficult to suppose that he would under those conditions have called himself "forty years old and upwards"; and difficult consequently to imagine that he really was born in or about 1328. The force of this objection is indeed to some extent diminished by the fact that other witnesses in the same cause were equally and prove- ably loose in stating their ages — loose to the extent of ten or even twenty years. But, on the whole, it is safer to believe that Chaucer told the truth unprecisely than that he affirmed what would amount to a practical falsehood ; and I shall, without much hesitation, assume 1340 as near the right date of birth. His grandfather was Robert le Chaucer, of London, a collector of the wine-duties ; his father, John Chaucer, vintner, of Thames Street, London, where in all likelihood Geoffrey was born ; his mother, Agnes, heiress of Hamo de Copton, a citizen and moneyer (" monetarius ") of London. Geof- frey was probably the eldest son of the marriage. His sur- name is properly French — Chaucier, or Chaussier (or Le Chaussier, as one sometimes finds it), pointing to some an- cestral shoemaker or hosier. He received the education of a gentleman, and may perhaps have studied at Cambridge. He was versed in astronomy, and in the other sciences and scholarship of his time. It is probable that from 1357 to '.For which we owe a debt of special gratitude to Mr. F. J. Furnivall. ±* H- GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 1359 he was a page to the Countess of Ulster, wife of Lionel, third son of King Edward III. He is said to have been at first, but only for a brief while, a member of the legal pro- fession, and of the Inner Temple ; but this also is dubious. A record of that Inn of Court is cited showing that " Geoffrey- Chaucer " was fined two shillings for having beaten a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street. One need not discredit the story: but whether this Geoffrey Chaucer was the prospective author of the Canterbury Tales is a separate and undetermined question. Indisputably the poet was closely connected with Jbhn of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, another of the king's sons. In 1359 he served in the French war under Edward III., and was made prisoner by the enemy near " the town of Retters " (which is perhaps the village of Retiers, near Rennes in Brit- tany). Not long afterwards — in 1360 — he was ransomed, and returned to England, the king having paid ^16 as a part (not probably the whole) of the stipulated sum. In 1366, or pos- sibly even at an earlier date, he was an Esquire of the King, or " squire of less estate " ; and in the following year he is termed a Valet of the King's Chamber, with a stipend of twenty marks for life. At some time or other Chaucer married a lady named Philippa. The date and the person are both uncertain. Some biographers say that the marriage took place probably as early as 1360, and certainly before September 1366. It is seemingly in the latter year that Geoffrey Chaucer, and Philippa Chaucer a " damoiselle," . were set down for Christmas gifts from the king ; again, in September 1369, both of them were to have mourning for the queen. " Damoiselle " might be supposed to indicate an unmarried woman ; but this is not a necessary infer- ence, for at a much later date the term was still applied to wives as well as maids. Then, in 1372, we find a pension of £10 yearly granted by John of Gaunt to Philippa Chaucer for life. Certainly, at the first blush, one assumes that this Philippa *r A. ■<£-«*■ LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. Chaucer was already the wife of Geoffrey Chaucer the poet. Yet this is but a surmise : she may, it is said, have been the same p:rson, but not as yet married to Geoffrey, and may have borne the maiden name of Chaucer either as a fortuitous coincidence or as being Geoffrey's cousin. Possible, but hardly probable, were a not unnatural verdict on such a theory. Perhaps the chief reason for adopting this view — the view that Chaucer was not married to Philippa at the date when the latter is first recorded as Philippa Chaucer — is the assumption that the poet had, during eight years ending towards 1368, been in love with some other lady, as indicated in his Complaint to Pity, of which I make mention further on : but this, after all, is a little arbitrary, for we know nothing precise about that love-affair, and Chaucer may have been at once the husband of Philippa and the unaccepted gallant of a different lady. Apparent facts should not be strained or ignored to suit the requirements of morals ; a caveat which a candid biographer is continually forced by his predecessors to bear in mind. However this may be, the likely date of Chaucer's marriage has recently been put a good deal further on, and 13 June 1374 is proposed. That is the date of a document whereby John of Gaunt assigned ^10 per annum for life to the poet, in terms which modern enquirers consider to intimate that the latter had now quitted his patron's service. Philippa the wife of Chaucer, it used to be affirmed, was a maid of honour, daughter of Sir Payne Roet, a native of Hainault, and Guienne King of Arms. She was afterwards attached to the Duchess Constance, second wife of John of Gaunt, and was the sister of Catharine Lady Swynford, who became the mistress and eventually the wife of the same prince. But all this is now denied, as mere matter of conjecture, and of convenient but unwarranted as- sociation of recorded names : and obviously, if Philippa's maiden no less than married name was Chaucer, it would have to be decisively set aside. * -**► Jl. GEOFFREY CHAUCER, In 1369-70 Chaucer served again in a second invasion of France. Sooniafterwards/1372, he, v visited Italy by commission from the- Icing, with a view,to assigning T some poftHn''Eri"glshd for the use of Genoese merchants. He "stayed at 'Florence and Genoa, and at Padua is supposed to have held personal con- ference with Petrarch. By November 1373 he was back in England. Marks of the royal favour were not wanting to him. On the 23rd of April 1374 a pitcher of wine per day was assigned him, afterwards commuted to a money-payment. This amounted to ^7. 6s. 2j^d. in eight months — then no inconsider- able sum. In the same year he was appointed Controller of the Customs, and Subsidy of Wools, Skins, and Tanned Hides, at the port of London, with a stipulation that the duties of the post should not be discharged by deputy ; and other emolu- ments followed. In 1377 he went to Flanders on a secret mission — the last which he performed for Edward III., who died in June of that year. This, however, was no interruption to Chaucer's official employment. The new boy-king, Richard II., continued his annual twenty marks, along with a like sum in lieu of wine. In January 1378 the poet, together with others, negotiated the king's marriage with Mary of France; and in May he went to Lombardy on an embassy to Bernabb Visconti, Lord of Milan, and the renowned condottiere Sir John Hawkwood, " on certain matters touching Richard's expedition of war." His amicable connexion with his brother-poet, John Gower, to whom he afterwards dedicated his poem of Troilus and Cryseide, becomes apparent on this occasion — Gower being now made one of his representatives, to appear for him if ne- cessary in the English courts of law during his absence abroad. Chaucer returned to England early in 1379. In 1382 he. was made Controller of the Petty Customs in the port of London, in addition to his former office of nearly similar name ; and in February 1385 was released frcm the heavier work of his. appointments, being empowered to nominate a permanent ^ LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. deputy, — although, indeed, the earlier obligation to act person- ally, and not by deputy, may have been more formal than prac- tically operative^ A singular and very obscurely explained incident in the career of Chaucer pertains to the year 1380. On the 1st of May in that year Cecilia Chaumpaigne — a lady of whom we know nothing further distinctly — executed a deed of release (in the Latin language) relieving the poet from any proceedings at law " de raptu meo" — or, as the words would ordinarily be translated, " on account of my ravishing. " Is it then to be understood that Chaucer had really " ravished " the fair Cecilia ? or that he had illegally abducted her, she being a ward or minor ? Neither supposition squares well with the facts. If Chaucer had truly committed the heinous crime above suggested, that would have been a capital felony, and no legal instrument could have been executed having the effect of compromising a felony. If he had abducted a ward or minor, the latter would have been per- sonally disqualified for executing any legal deed whatever. So at least it has hitherto been said ; although we should not over- look the possibility that Chaucer might have abducted Cecilia while a minor, and she, after attaining her majority, might have executed the deed. We must therefore set aside, at any rate, the first of these two interpretations of "de raptu meo" ; heartily glad, for Chaucer's credit, to do this, yet hesitating to reduce his act to what might, under readily conceivable conditions, be a very venial irregularity — the abduction of a minor. What the poet really did remains problematical. It may .perhaps be concluded either that he had carried off an heiress or woman of full age, to marry her to a friend, or else that, too oblivious of his marriage-vow, he had himself formed an illicit connexion with Cecilia under circumstances entitling her to sustain against him some civil action, which, by the document in question, she consented to forego. Returning now to the course of Chaucer's public life, we -•&<& find another conspicuous distinction befalling him in 1386, bul one which soon led to his greatest outward mishaps. He was elected one of the members for Kent in the Parliament which met in October of that year. His political aims and personal interests were bound up with those of the Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt, one of the present king's uncles : but the in- fluence of this prince was now on the wane. He and his party- were adverse to the overgrown temporal power of the Church in this country, and to any encroachments of papal authority : they were on the side of the reformer John Wiclif, or Wiclif was on theirs. As to Chaucer himself, there is nothing to show that he was in any distinct sense a Wiclifite : but his writings supply abundant evidence of his slighting estimate of monks and friars, and of ecclesiastical pretenders and pretensions in general. The Court was hostile to Wiclif, and the influence of the Duke of Gloucester, another of the king's uncles, was rapidly supplanting that of Lancaster : Gloucester succeeded to power in this same autumn. Though the precise details have not come down to us, the result speaks forcibly enough for itself, and persuades us that Chaucer, in his parliamentary and political or party demeanour, must have opposed and offended the Court and the Gloucester faction. In December 1386, only two months after the meeting of Parliament, he was dismissed from his offices in the Customs. His two pensions, however, remained unrevoked, and were still received by himself up to 1388 : then, probably hard-pressed for ready money, he assigned them to one John Scalby, who had most likely paid him their value. Between these two dates, 1386 and 1388, it appears that a calamity of another kind afflicted him : his wife died in 1387- In May 1389 Chaucer got another chance of worldly pro- sperity, but it proved a delusive one. His friends then returned to power, among them the son of the Duke of Lancaster ; and in July the poet was made Clerk of the King's Works, com- T -NH* LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. prising the Tower of London, the Palace : at Westminster, and many other places and manors : his salary was ' two shillings a day, and he was permitted to act by deputy. He had also 'a separate appointment as Clerk of the Works at St. George's Chapel, Windsor. The Chapel was then ruinous, and ready to fall (the now existing Chapel is on a different site); and Chaucer seems to have done nothing for it during two years, beyond buying some stone for repairs, and paying for the unloading of this. Perhaps his remissness caused his discharge from the office — remissness aggravated by his having had the ill-luck, on the 3rd of September 1390, to lose -Q2.0 of the king's money, along with his horse and other belongings, by robberies com- mitted by notorious thieves, partly at a spot designated as " the Foul Oak," near Hatcham in Surrey, and partly at Westminster. At any rate he was ousted from both his architectural employ- ments in 1391, and, although Richard II. relieved him from the debt of £,20, his monetary position relapsed into precari- ousness. He was undoubtedly in straits, and was badgered by law-suits ; but the king, not wholly forgetting the ancient kind- ness with which so illustrious and fascinating a man had been regarded, exempted him from liability to arrest. And in Feb- ruary 1394 his distresses were once more relieved by a royal grant of ^20 per annum for life. To this, in 1398, was added a tun of wine yearly. Generally speaking," it should be under- stood that Chaucer was decidedly a thriving man, according to the standard of those times. To say — as some have done — that his income corresponded to ^1000 per annum is possibly excessive : but for many years his pensions, irrespective of his offices, equalled the then salary of the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, or the Chief Justice of the Court .of Common Pleas. . The reign of Richard II. — weak, shifting, and unsettled barren of foreign glory or of national well-being — was now drawing to a close : Henry of Lancaster, son of the lately 4 deceased Duke, John of Gaunt, returned from, exile, showed a . bold front of remonstrance and resistance, and extinguished the royalty of Richard like the snuff of a candle. Henry had only been four days on the throne whenj on the 3rd of October 1399, he recognized the long-standing, and probably never- tarnished, attachment of Chaucer to his house by adding to the pension of ^20 per annum granted by Richard another of ^26. 13s. 4d. I say " probably never tarnished," because, in some of the older biographies of the poet, a series of supposed facts is set down which, were we compelled to credit it, would materially diminish our respect for his firmness and consistency, and would show that he had little to expect from the justice, whatever he might have received from the pity and indulgence, of the head of his party when seated on his easily won but as yet far from strongly established throne. It has been said that Chaucer, in the most active period of his political life, got im- plicated in the manoeuvres of the Wiclifite Comberton, or John of Northampton, one of the competitors for the Lord-Mayoralty of London ; that he was driven in consequence to take refuge in Hainault, and afterwards in Zealand ; and, on returning to England, was imprisoned in the Tower, whence he obtained his release only by making pusillanimous disclosures, compromis- ing to his confederates. All this used to be doubtful, and may now be safely pronounced a romance void of foundation. •Chaucer, in his advanced age, honourable, honoured, and serene, was destined to enjoy but for a few months the well- earned bounties of his new sovereign. At the close of his life he leased a house in Westminster, standing nearly on the site now occupied by Henry the Seventh's Chapel. Here on the 25th of October 1400 he died — aged, it would seem, hardly sixty, and not (as the older accounts ran) seventy-two. He lies buried in Westminster Abbey, with fame great in his own time, and dwarfing, as the centuries pass, that of almost all other denizens of this gorgeous and venerable house of tombs. <*^ The present monument of grey marble was erected many years after his death, in 1556, by Nicholas Brigham. I have said as yet nothing about Chaucer's poems, but have only given details of the external events of his life, which are nevertheless, in comparison, of very slight importance to any of us at this time of day. The probable sequence of the poems is given thus by Mr. Furnivall, whose authority, founded upon diligent investigations and earnest zeal, may fairly be preferred to that of all previous British enquirers. Following Professor Bernhafd Ten Brink, he divides Chaucer's poetic activity into three periods — 1, preceding his Italian travels commenced in December 1372 ; 2, from his return in November 1373 up to 1384; and 3, his greatest power and ultimate decline. Pre- mising this, and leaving out of count some minor works, we obtain the following results. 1st Period. —The A. B. C, freely translated from Guillaume de Guilleville, being a prayer to the Virgin Mary, arranged in the order of the letters of the alphabet. 1366-68, the Complaint to Pity, which points, in tolerably clear language not lightly to be dismissed as other than substantially true, to an unre- ciprocated love which Chaucer nurtured during eight years for some lady whom it is not given to us to identify. 1369, the Death of Blanche the Duchess, first wife of John of Gaunt (sometimes called The Dream of Chaucer, but not to be con- founded with another poem, Chaucer's Dream, or the Isle of Ladies, now rejected as spurious). 2nd Period. — 1373, the Life of Saint Cecile (or Second Nuns Tale in the Canterbury Tales). 1374 or thereabouts, the Parliament of Fowls ; Complaint of Mars ; Anelida andArcitc; Troilus and Cryseide. 1384, the House of Fame. 3rd Period — The Legend of Good Women; The Canterbury Tales — the central date of which may be towards 1386, while the entire work covers a number of his best years ; Flee fro the Press (commonly termed Good Counsel of Chaucer, to which is ^A GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 13 tagged-on the legend that he wrote the lines on his deathbed). 1392 (from which year his gradual decline may be dated), the Complaint of Venus, founded upon a French poem by Granson. 1399, September, Chaucer's Complaint to his Purse, an appeal to Henry IV. for assistance. In this list it will be observed that several poems ordinarily ascribed to Chaucer do not figure at all. Such are the Testa- ment of Love, the Lamentation of Mary Magdalene, the Assembly of Ladies — all three now definitely rejected; also the Cuckoo and the Nightingale ; the Court of Love ; the Flower and the Leaf; the Romaunt of the Rose, translated and abridged from the famous work of Guillaume de Loris and Jean de Meun, (for, though it is admitted that Chaucer did make some translation of this work, the particular version printed among his poems is, by some critics, regarded as not adequately verified); the Complaint of the Black Knight (or of a Lover's Life). The treatise on the Astrolabe, in prose, is undeniably authentic; and as to the various poems last men- tioned much controversy, based on valid considerations, still prevails. Chaucer presents to us the perfection of the English lan- guage under the transformation which, during the course of three- hundred years, it had undergone from association with the French ; and of English poetry under the long-standing influ- ence of romantic French models, and the now commencing modification of this from Italian ' sources. Rhymed verse, it should be remarked, was already usual in Chaucer's time, although the Piers Ploughman is merely alliterative : he is con- sidered, however, to have been the first who used the heroic metre (the rhymed decasyllabic couplets) in English, a metre previously in use in French and Italian. For absolute origin- ality of invention Chaucer does not stand high ; he continually borrows his subjects and fables, takes the work of other men as his starting-point, and translates or paraphrases ad libitum. Yet ■&'* A ■*■ 14 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. for originality of spirit he rises in the highest degree con- spicuous ; he introduces into poetry — not only English but European poetry — a breadth and variety in the pourtrayal of social life, a play of passion and emotion, a sweetness and rich- ness of colouring, a genuine thorough humanity, which cannot be matched in any preceding author. He draws everything with the touch of a poet and a master, sings his perceptions into shape, and brightens his delineations with kindly and enjoying humour — the humour of a man who knows life in its multiform aspects, from observing it with mingled keenness and sympathy, and mixing in it personally. A charming freshness forms the atmosphere of all his work ; he is perpetually new. The age of chivalry is obsolete, and the tongue with which he has expressed it archaic ; but in his pages it is living and young to us for ever, and will continue to survive in every succeeding age, side by side with the aspects of the passing time, as long as Chaucer's poems themselves live, and of these dateless indeed is the appointed date. Of course by far the greatest of Chaucer's works is the Can- terbury Tales — a wellspring of pathos, pleasantry, and delight, a mine of character and social life. The most adequate because the largest and most inclusive criticism of this incomparable performance — the criticism which most fully expresses the essentials, and pauses least over the surface of it — is that given by another of our exalted poets, William Blake, who has written of it thus : — "The characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations. As one age falls, another rises, different to mortal eyes, but to immortals only the same ; for we see the same characters repeated again and again, in animals, vegetables, minerals, and in men. Nothing new occurs in identical existence : Accident "ever varies, Substance can never suffer change nor decay. Of Chaucer's characters, as described in the Canterbury Tales, some of the names or GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 15 titles are altered by time ; but the characters themselves for ever remain unaltered, and consequently they are the physiog- nomies or lineaments of universal human life, beyond which Nature never steps. Names alter; things never alter. I have known multitudes of those who would have been monks in the age of monkery, who in this deistical age are deists. 1 As Newton numbered the stars, and as Linnaeus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the classes of men. ... It is necessary here to speak of Chaucer's own character, that I may set certain mistaken critics right in their conception of the humour and fun that occur on the journey. Chaucer is himself the great poetical observer of men, who in every age is born to record and eternize its acts. This he does as a master, as a father and superior, who looks down on their little follies, from the emperor to the miller; sometimes with severity, oftener with joke and sport . . . Chaucer's characters live age after age. Every age is a Canterbury Pilgrimage : we all pass on, each sustaining one or other of these characters, nor can a child be born who is not one of these characters of Chaucer. . . . The reader will observe that Chaucer makes every one of his characters perfect in his kind; every one is an antique statue — the image of a class, and not of an imperfect individual." The Canterbury Tales is an uncompleted work ; its scheme would properly include, not only the journey from the Tabard Inn, Southwark, to Canterbury, but also the return-journey, and a second set of tales, told in the latter, should have supple- T Blake's observations correspond with considerable closeness to those ot Dryden ; who, after doing Chaucer the sorry service of turning some of his poems into the English of the time of William the Third, made up for this to a certain extent by his manly and enthusiastic prefatory eulogium. For instance : " We have [in the Canterbury Tales] our forefathers and great grand-dames all before us, as they were in Chaucer's days. Their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by other names than those of monks and friars and canons and lady-abbesses and nuns ', for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of Nature though every- thing is altered." A. 1 6 LIVES OF FAMOUS FOETS. merited those which belong to the former. It has been suggested that the connexion of these several stories by a general framework may have been suggested to Chaucer less by the Decameron of Boccaccio than by the Disciflina Cleri- calis of. Peter Alfonsi, or the Romance of the Seven Sages — both works of popular repute in mediaeval times. Among the other poems of Chaucer — some of them marked by the easy and too monotonous fiction of a dream, indicating a certain sterility of invention as to form, admirable as was his moulding power in narrative and in detail — I may single out one — the Troilus and Cryseide — for a few additional remarks. This poem, lovely in sentiment, and with magical touches of character, is founded upon the Filostrato of Boccaccio, and is in fact, to a great extent, a direct and even a faithful translation of that poem, itself replete with excellence and flowing with facility. The Filostrato is written in the octave stanza, which Boccaccio is believed to have invented, and which afterwards became so famous in Italian literature in the hands of Ariosto and of Tasso (as in ours also in the Don Juan of Byron or the Witch of Atlas of Shelley) : the Troilus and Cryseide is in a singularly beautiful seven-line stanza, known in French poetry before Chaucer's adoption of it. As to the substance of the Filostrato, Chaucer has so far added, curtailed, and modified, that, on a close comparison, we find him to have taken from the Italian less than a third of the total of his own verses. He amplifies and moralizes — or, as one might say without dis- respect, proses — far more than Boccaccio ; and in especial his transmuting hand, and his highly original and acute sense of character, are to be traced in the personage of Pandarus, whom, without departing greatly from his Italian original so far as incident and function are concerned, he essentially recreates. By this process he shifts the story from a quality partly romantic, partly licentious, and partly satirical, as in Boccaccio, to one in which narrative is more nearly allied to drama ; chi- +f». ■4- GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 17 valric lustre, high-flown passion, the many enticements of the. main story, streaked with sharp and living traits of character- painting. And the character-painting of Chaucer is, in its way, though less various and abounding, hardly inferior to that oi Shakespeare. This mode of dealing with the Filostrato of Boccaccio may be taken as indicating generally the relation of Chaucer's poems to those which he worked from and adapted. He used them freely, borrowing, translating, and re- furbishing : under his hand they came out riper with meaning and more intimately human. The poems of Chaucer, as they will always be famous and revered, so were they exceedingly popular in and immediately after his own time : the great number of MSS. attests this, and his renown spread beyond the insular limits of his own land, and on the introduction of printing into England his works were among the first books that appeared in type. What is still more significant of his greatness, he left no poetic successor in England who could so much as tread in his steps, even " non fassibus ceqitis " : the fifteenth and the early sixteenth centuries are almost a blank in English, though partially com- pensated by some leading figures in Scottish, poetry. In his prime of manhood Chaucer is said to have been ot fair and beautiful complexion, of middle height and graceful bearing. His portrait was limned by Occleve from memory, and represents him at an advanced age, with a forked grey beard, in a dark-coloured dress and hood ; a black case, con- taining a knife or writing materials, is in his vest, his right hand extended, and in his left a string of beads. The eyes are well set, the mouth full ; the countenance (supposing the expression to have been fairly well caught in this unpretending but seemly miniature) is at once grave and debonair — the countenance of a man of prolonged experience, thoughtful and lenient, chastened, not hardened, by the furrowing hand of Time. The portly Host in the Canterbury Tales is made to address Chaucer in the following terms, supplying some hints as to his demeanour : — 3 •Hfe- 18 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. " And than at erst he looked upon me, And saide thus : ' What man art thou ? ' quod he. ' Thou lookest as thou wouldest find an hare. For ever upon the ground I see thee stare. Approache near, and looke merrily. He in the waist is shape as well as I : This were a popet in an arm to embrace For any woman small and fair of face ! He seemeth elvish by his countenance, - For unto no wight doth he dalliance.' " The reference here to the poet's abstracted air is confirmed in the House of Fame, where he speaks of himself as sitting at his book till his look becomes dazed. It has been said that the great-grandson of this illustrious poet came near to succeeding to the crown of England. This is made out by representing that his surviving son, Thomas, Speaker of the Commons in 1414, who married the daughter and coheiress of Sir John Burghersh, and became a man of large property, left a daughter, Alice, who married as her second husband the Duke of Suffolk, the same who was attainted and extrajudicially beheaded in 1450. Her eldest son married the Princess Elizabeth, sister of Edward IV. ; and his son, the Earl of Lincoln, nephew of Richard III., was declared by the latter heir apparent to the throne in the event of the death of his own son without issue. This event ensued ; but the Earl of Lincoln was of course set aside by the conquest and accession of Henry VII. But a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. Here the weakest link is the first — the assumption, namely, that Thomas Chaucer was son to the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. No one really knows that he was so, or can prove that he was ; and in default of any such evidence we are bound to dis- miss this diverting figment, and to abide in the conviction that Chaucer was the sovereign of English poesy in his own time and for some two centuries following, and not to be ever wholly dethroned, but was not the great-grandfather of a possible sovereign of the English body-politic. "«£<£•■ W 4" POETS BORN BETWEEN CHAUCER AND SPENSER. John Lydgate from t. 1370 toe. 1450. James I. of Scotland from 1394 to 1437. Thomas Occleve (or Hoccleve) wrote c. 1420. Robert Henryson from 6. 1425 to r. 1500. Henry the Minstrel (Blind) Harry) j wrotef - '47S- William Dunbar from £.146510^.1530. John Skelton from 146910 1529. Gawin Douglas from 1475 to 1521011522. Alexander Barklay died in 1552. Sir David Lindsay from 1490 to c. 1557. John Bale from 1495 to 1563. Sir Thomas Wyatt from 150310 1542. Nicholas Udall wrote c. 1532 to 1564. EarlofSurrey from c. 1517 to 1547. Thomas Sackville Lord } , Buckhurst J fl ' om '• 1530 or IS36 to 1608. Sir Walter Raleigh f rom 155210 1618. George Peele from <,. 1552 to 1598. EDMUND SPENSER. The second of our great English poets, Spenser, is a some- what more obscure figure to us personally than the first of them, Chaucer. Of Chaucer as a man we all entertain a definite, and perhaps nearly the same, conception, founded mainly on the fact that he was the author of the Canterbury Tales; for the writer of that book must infallibly have been gifted with a spirit of observation, of humour, of enjoyment, of sympathy, of pathos, and with a warm-blooded and full-bodied sense of life, and a varied experience of it, which furnish us with a very human, loveable, and individual Chaucer, as the producer of the whole. But Spenser, as the author of the Faery Queen, is by no means equally real to us — he does not become to us equally a man. We find in this, and subordinately in his other works, a mind of uncommon exaltation, with great con- tinuity and self-consistency, and an earnest love of virtue and nobleness, and we surmise a character to correspond — a character indeed more sustained and more untarnished than Chaucer's. But after all we remain in the region of supposi- tions — we do not strongly identify Spenser, though we appre- ciate and honour him. His poems are far less real to us than Chaucer's, and himself less real than his poems. Of the facts of his life, however, we know fully as much as of the elder poet's ; and such facts as have come down to us are mostly of an important kind for the outer record, though not equally so ^ LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. for the inner biography, connecting Spenser as they do with the public events of his time. While we cannot doubt that he was, by nature as well as by position, a man of thought far rather than cf action, we find him nevertheless, during the great majority of his adult career, intermixing capably and vigorously in the nation's work. The earlier period of Edmund Spenser's life is the most uncertain. Hitherto it had not been exactly settled what family he belonged to — perhaps to a Lancashire branch of the ennobled race of Spenser. It seemed a fair presumption that he was connected with Sir John Spenser ; to whose two daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, who married Lord Mounteagle and Lord Hunsdon, he addressed some poems. Now at last it is definitely affirmed 1 that his parents belonged to north-east Lanca- shire, the Pendle Forest district. His father was most probably John Spenser, a member of a solid family of very old standing, who in 1566 was " a free journey-man in the art or mystery of cloth-making," in the service of Nicholas Peele, of London. Edmund was born in London, in East Smithfield near the Tower. Upon his monument in Westminster Abbey the date of birth is given as 15 10 : but this is beyond doubt extravagantly untrue. The ordinarily accepted date, 1553, seems to be right, or only a year or two over-late. He was a " poor scholar " of Merchant Tailors' School, London; thence, on the 20th of May 1569, he entered as a poor scholar or sizar in Pembroke Hall, Cambridge ; taking his degree as B.A. in 1572, and as M.A. in 1576. . He tried for a fellowship, but failed ; and this ill-success, combined with narrow circumstances, is believed to have been his motive for leaving the University. He then re- tired for some while to Lancashire, and lived there with friends without adopting, and it might seem without being minded to adopt, any sort of profession. During this northern sojourn, 1 By the Rev. A. B. Grosart, who in his new edition of Spenser has done a great deal towards clearing up the facts. ***- ♦ ■-&<$" EDMUND SPENSER. 23 pursuant to traditionary guesswork, he fell in love with the lady whom he has celebrated under the name of Rosalind, com- plaining, in the Shepherd 's Calendar, of her cruelty, indifference, and those other vices of maidenly virtue which poets and poet- asters equally spin off into such a superfetation of verse. On this subject we can say nothing precise : there may have been a Rosalind, and she may have been as like the Rosalind of the poems as the undefined nature of that portraiture permits, and Spenser may have been in love with her, or minded to re- present himself as in love ; but, if a negative answer to these surmises would be rash, an affirmative is also insecure. At any rate, with respect to Rosalind, we do not know who she was, nor even whether she was. Another of the personages of the same poem is properly identified — Hobbinol, who stands for the poet's friend Gabriel Harvey. It is probable that Spenser wrote in the north most of the Shepherd's Calendar: he published it in London in 1579. This work, the most an- tiquated in style among all his writings, is much concerned with polemical or party divinity under a pastoral exterior, and has the tone which is known by the term " puritanical " : it obtained a large share of popularity. The Shepherd's Calendar was not, however, the first of Spenser's poems, nor indeed of his publications. The year 1569 is the earliest landmark of his literary career. In that year were included in Vander Noodt's Theatre of Worldlings some sonnets translated from Petrarch, which were after- wards re-issued as the performance of Spenser. In that year also, under the date of 18th October, a payment is re- corded to " Edmund Spenser " who had brought over letters from the English Ambassador in France. This, as we have seen, is the same year when he entered Cambridge University, and when, according to the ordinarily received date of his birth, he was but sixteen years of age ; a period of life more consistent with the dabbling in Petrarch than with the carriage of ambassadorial despatches. We are left to surmise pretty confidently that the Edmund Spenser who then returned from France was not the same person as the Cambridge sizar. Another of his early essays in writing was a series of no less than nine comedies — a highly remarkable enterprise for that epoch of our literature : of these there is no record now remaining. At the beginning of August 1580, on the appointment of Arthur Lord Grey of Wilton as Lord Deputy of Ireland, Spenser accompanied that nobleman thither as his secretary. That he could and did work under him with satisfaction is evident from an interesting passage in his 'View of the State of Ireland, written in the form of dialogue after Lord Grey had been recalled, and had died. Here Irenseus (representing Spenser himself) is made to say : — " In the mean time, all that was formerly done, with long labour and great toil, was, as you say, in a moment undone, and that good lord blotted with the name of a bloody man, whom who that well knew knew to be most gentle, affable, loving, and temperate, but that the neces- sity of that present state of things enforced him to that violence, and almost changed his natural disposition. But otherwise he was so far from delighting in blood that oftentimes he suffered not just vengeance to fall where it was deserved; and even some of them which were afterwards his accusers had tasted too much of his mercy, and were from the gallows brought to be his accusers. But his course indeed was this — that he spared not the heads and principals of any mischievous practices and rebellion, but showed sharp judgment on them, chiefly for ensample sake, that all the meaner sort, which also were generally then infected with that evil, might, by terror thereof, be reclaimed and saved if it were possible." To this and other observations of Irenseus the other speaker Eudoxus replies : " He was always known to be a most just, sincere, godly, and right noble man, far from such sternness, far from such unrighteousness. But, in that # EDMUND SIENSER. 25 sharp execution of the Spaniards at the Fort of Smerwick, I heard it specially noted ; and, if it were true (as some reported), surely it was a great touch to him in honour, — for some say-that he promised them life,— others, at least he did put them in hope thereof." And Irenseus replies, giving us an important glimpse into Spenser's own Irish experiences, which here, and no doubt in many another instance, were far different from the peaceful cabinet-duties which one mostly associates with the - name of secretary : — " Both the one and the other is most untrue ; for this I can assure you, myself being as near them as any, that he was so far either from promising or putting them in hope that first their secretary (called, as I remember, Signor Jeffrey, an Italian), being sent to treat with the Lord Deputy for grace, was flatly refused. And afterwards their colonel, named Don Sebastian, came forth to entreat that they might part with their arms like soldiers, at least with their lives, according to the custom of war and law of nations. It was strongly denied him, and told him by the Lord Deputy himself that they could not justly plead either custom of war or law of nations, for that they were not any lawful enemies ; and, if they ' were, he willed them to show by what commission they came thither into another prince's dominions to war, whether from the Pope, or the King of Spain, or any other. The which when they said they had not, but were only adventurers that came to seek fortune abroad, and to serve in wars amongst the Irish who desired to entertain them, it was then told them ' that the Irish themselves— as the" Earl, and John of Desmond, with the rest — were no lawful enemies, but rebels and traitors, and therefore they that came to succour them no better than rogues and runagates, specially coming with no license nor commission from their own king, so as it should be dishonour- able for him, in the name of the Queen, to condition or make any terms with such rascals ; but left them to their choice to yield and submit themselves or no. Whereupon the said ■A 26 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. colonel did absolutely yield himself and the fort, with all therein, and craved only mercy; which it being not thought good to show them (for danger of them if, being saved, they should afterward join with the Irish — and also for terror to the Irish, who are much emboldened by those foreign succours, and also put in hope of more ere long), there was no way but to make that short end of them as was made. Therefore most untruly and maliciously do these evil tongues backbite and slander the sacred ashes of that most just and honourable per- sonage, whpse least virtue, of many most excellent that abounded in his heroic spirit, they were never able to aspire unto." In March 1581 Spenser received another appointment, that of Clerk in the Irish Court of Chancery. This lasted but a short while : Lord Grey being recalled in 1582, Spenser, to all appearance, returned with him to England, and nothing is known of him for three or four years ensuing. He and his patrons however still kept an eye .on Ireland. On the 27th of July 1586 Spenser obtained from the Crown a grant of about three-thousand acres of forfeited land in that country, a portion of the former domain of the Earl of Desmond, in the county of Cork : perhaps his chief friend Sir Philip Sidney (who died in October of this same year, and who was well seconded by his relative the Earl of Leicester in his zeal for Spenser) may have been foremost in procuring him this advantage. Spenser then went back to Ireland, and lived in the mansion which had been the Earl of Desmond's Castle of Kilcolman, near a lake amid scenery of uncommon beauty; in 1588 he was appointed' Clerk to the Council of Munster. Here he remained till 1589, when he once more came over to England, and published in London the first three books of the Faery Queen, a poem which he had begun towards 1579 — the same date (as we have already seen) as that of the publication of the Shepherd's Calendar. There are two amusing anecdotes of Spenser's literary life, which, though probably apocryphal, may nevertheless find a *■ EDMUND SPENSER. 27 place here, and be read for what they are worth. The first story is that the poet, when he revisited London from the North of England, in 1579, introduced himself to Sidney, pre- senting to him the ninth Canto of the First Book of the Faery Queen, containing the renowned description of the Cave of Despair. Sidney, admiring (as he well might do) the first stanza that he read, ordered Spenser a gratuity of ^50, and, reading another stanza, another .£50. At the third stanza, he raised the total to ^200, and he enjoined his steward to pay the money down at once, lest in the sequel he should be tempted to give away his whole estate. — The second story is that Queen Elizabeth on one occasion, upon receiving some poems from Spenser, ordered him ^100. The minister Lord Burghley exclaimed in dismay, " What ! all this for a song ? " Elizabeth rejoined, "Then give him what is reason." No money however reached the itching palm of Spenser ; who at length adventured to remind his royal mistress of her promised bounty, by addressing to her the following quatrain (quoted in Henslowe's Diary, which is dated 1602) : — " It pleased your Grace upon a time To grant me reason for my rhyme : But from that time until this season I heard of neither rhyme nor reason." This brought the matter to a head : Elizabeth reproved the grudging Burghley, and once more awarded to Spenser the original ;£ioo. Some colour is lent to this latter anecdote by the authenticated fact that Spenser had a great antipathy to Burghley. His poem named Prosopopceia, or Mother Hubbard's Tale, contains many severe causticities directed, according to the general consent of commentators, against that potent minister. This apologue was published with other poems after the appearance of the first part of the Faery Queen, but had, pursuant to his own account, been written " in the raw con- ceit of my youth " — a statement which may possibly have been -«** *&<&- 28 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. merely a device to smooth matters down, although in all likeli- hood the date of the work is really anterior to the grant of land in Ireland. As to Queen Elizabeth, it would not appear that Spenser had any personal acquaintance with his sovereign until he was preparing to publish the Faery Queen: Raleigh, it is said, then introduced him to her, and was urgent for the publication, and Elizabeth accepted the dedication of the poem. In February 1591 she granted Spenser a pension of ^50 per annum, and the title of Poet Laureate. The Faery Queen gave its author a high degree of celebrity. The publisher then collected together the poet's previous com- positions, under the name of Complaints, containing sundry small Poems of the. World's Vanity. This comprises (besides Mother Hubbard's Tale already mentioned) the Ruins of Time, the Tears of the Muses, and other verses, among which are all those that had been previously published — namely, the Shepherd's Calendar, and (it would seem) the poem, of four to five hundred lines, named Muiopotmos, or the Fate of the Butterfly. Many others had been written, but could not be recovered for this publication. Spenser probably remained in England till the beginning of 1592 : he then brought out his elegy entitled Daphnaida, and next returned to Ireland. He probably composed in 1592-93 the eighty-eight sonnets develop- ing his courtship of the lady whom he afterwards married : this fair one was traditionally reputed to have been a peasant- girl, but she is now known to have been a gentle woman, equal in station to Spenser himself, or indeed superior. There is next to no doubt that her name was Elizabeth Boyle, and that she was a kinswoman of Sir Richard Boyle, who became the first Earl of Cork. One of the most splendid of Spenser's composi- tions, the Epithalamium, celebrates his own wedding. In 1595 he published Colin Clout's come home again (the ugly name of Colin Clout, as well as the slightly more genial one of " Young Cuddy," designating himself) ; also Astrophel, an elegy on his * <*» -*!«► EDMUND SPENSER. 29 well-loved and honoured Sir Philip Sidney, and the Mourning Muse of Thesiylis, on the same theme : and ere the year closed he printed likewise his Amoretti — the sonnets and epithalamium just mentioned. In 1596 he came over to England, bringing with him Books IV., V., and VI., of the Faery Queen; these, with a reprint of the three preceding books, were published. This was followed in the same year by a reprint of Daphnaida, along with the Prothalamion, and the four Hymns of Love, Beauty, Heavenly Love, and Heavenly Beauty : the two former Hymns being notified as composed " in the greener time of his youth," and many copies of them " formerly scattered abroad." It is likely that he now wrote, and presented to Queen Elizabeth his important treatise (from which we have already quoted), A View of the State of Ireland ; a work which may still be read with much interest, on historical as well as literary grounds, and which is not unimbued with a solid sense of justice and equitable consideration for the Irish population, although its main thesis is the necessity for quelling, by sovereign anthority and unresting force, all demonstrations of treason, sedition, or disaffection. Spenser shows in this work the temper of a statesmanly official, with breadth of mind for embracing the subject generally, and an active mastery and ready manipulation of ways and means : there is nothing in it of the unpractical dreamer, or the vaguely discursive smatterer. The treatise remained unpublished until 1633. It was probably at an early date in 1597 that Spenser re- turned for the last time to Ireland : in the following year he was recommended by Elizabeth for the office of Sheriff of Cork. Soon after the breaking out of Tyrone's rebellion, in October 1598, his house at Kilcolman was attacked and burned by the rebels. It has always been said that one infant perished in the conflagration : but this story is destitute of both authority and likelihood. Spenser had three sons and a daughter, who all survived : no other infant of his, it may be affirmed, ever existed. A. 30 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. The poet, with his wife and family escaped with difficulty, and arrived in England destitute. Ben Jonson gave the following account of this woeful catastrophe to Drummond of Haw- thornden ; " The Irish having robbed Spenser's goods, and burnt his house and a little child newborn, he and his wife escaped ; and after he died for lack of bread in King Street, and refused twenty pieces sent to him by my Lord of Essex, adding, He was sorry he had no time to spend them." The probability is however that Spenser died, not of actual starva- tion or destitution, but worn out with the hardships and agita- tions of the terrible days he had just passed through. After a certain period of illness, his death took place on the 16th January 1599; it has been said, at a hostelry in King Street, Westminster, but this point is dubious. His own request was that he might be buried in Westminster Abbey, hard by Chau- cer. This was done at the charge of Lord Essex, with a Latin inscription which spoke of him as " Anglicorum foetaricm nostri sceculi facile princeps." Thirty years afterwards the Countess of Dorset erected the existing monument : here the inscription is in English, and follows the original lead in term- ing Spenser " the prince of poets in his time." The author left three sons, Sylvanus, Lawrence, and Peregrine. The son of Sylvanus, named Hugolin, was restored by Charles II. to the Irish estates of his grandfather; but, adhering at a later date to James II., he was outlawed, and the lands reverted to the Crown. They were afterwards conferred upon another scion of the family, named William Spenser. The poet, at his death, left behind him two cantos of an additional book of the Faery Queen, and two stanzas of a third canto. These have been published, and it is doubtful whether much more had ever been written. He is said to have com- posed also a prose treatise named the English Poet, but of this no trace appears. There are two very diverse portraits extant, each of which EDMUND SPENSER. has been said to represent Edmund Spenser. One, which is generally recognised as genuine, shows a long face, with a well- sized straight nose, brown eyes, short curling hair, a full mous- tache, and close-clipped beard ; a thoughtful and rather sad- dened face, corresponding to what we understand his nature to have been — reserved and gentle. The other portrait cannot certainly have been taken from the same original : it is a physiognomy altogether keener — more active, bustling, and mundane. The poet was no doubt not wanting in a certain irritable self-opinion, discernible passim in his writings of the secondary rank ; this was tempered by an earnest sense of gratitude, and by a religious habit of mind which, as was natural for a loyal Englishman of those days, took a strong tinge of anti-Catholicism. He was a man of most extensive knowledge, master of all the learning of his age. Founding his poetical style chiefly on Italian models, he greatly confirmed, if he did not even initiate, the pastoral mode in English verse. He was cunning in metrical refinements, and made the great invention which continues to be named from him the Spenserian stanza — sonorous, majestic, gathering and refluent like the waves of a profound and musical sea. Intentionally archaic in his diction, he heightened the stature of English as a poetic language, and raised it to a pitch of exaltation which had not previously been approached, and has hardly since been rivalled by the few noblest amongst his successors. There are considerable differences of degree in the excellence of Spenser's compositions ; but, broadly speaking, whatever he did has the authentic poetic stamp, and can be read as a choice and finished example of its kind. The Faery Queen, on which alone we need dwell in concluding, is an unmatched and unique work for a quality which might be defined under the name " moral gorgeousness " ; the sphere and substance of the poem being constantly moral, its forms are all imaginative and sump- tuous — an embattled cloudland lit by the most transfiguring (*- — ^ ^ 32 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. tints of the rising and the setting sun. The splendours which enkindle and subserve passion in other writers are marshalled by Spenser into the train of ethics. Hence comes the fascina- tion, and also, it may be allowed, much of the fatiguing effect, of Spenser's gracious and grand creation; we feel that the means are coerced into the service of the end rather than natively germane to that : they are made by the master's hand to grow into it, instead of growing out of it in natural and spontaneous development. They form an alien though magnificent grafting, not a free efflorescence. We need not dwell further on this side of the question. Among very great poems, the Divina Commedia of Dante and the Faery Queen of Spenser stand alone in taking as their direct theme moral or spiritual virtue, to be exhibited, enforced, and illustrated : Dante supplied his own designation as the Poet of Rectitude. The Florentine developed his theme with all resources of trie sublime, the stupendous, the awful, with the mysteries of human loveliness and the pangs of human pathos. The Englishman works out his subject with the allurements of romance; chivalric adventure, beauty, noble and gloomy imagery, are the ministers of his will. As we read, we clearly appreciate his central in- tention, and can estimate his scheme as a formative whole ; but the romance it is that from first to last usurps upon us, and the separate episodes usurp upon the entire romance. Spenser himself, in a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, set forth the purport of the Faery Queen, which is, he tells us, " a con- tinued allegory or dark conceit." He says— (I condense con- siderably)—" The general end of all the book is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline ; which for that I conceived should be most plausible and pleas- ing being coloured with an historical fiction, I chose the history of King Arthur. I labour to pourtraict in Arthur, before he was king, the image of a brave knight perfected in the twelve private moral virtues, as Aristotle hath devised ; the which is ^ — &* EDMUND SPENSER. 33 the purpose of these first twelve Books. Which if I find to be well accepted, I may be perhaps encouraged to frame the other part of politic virtues in his person after that he came to be king. Arthur I conceive to have seen in a dream or vision the Faery Queen ; with whose excellent beauty ravished, he awak- ing resolved to seek her out. In that Faery Queen I mean Glory in my general intention ; but, in my particular, I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our sovereign the Queen, — and her kingdom, in Faery-land. And yet, in some parts else, I do otherwise shadow her ; for, considering she beareth two persons — the one of a most royal queen or empress, the other of a most virtuous lady — this latter part, in some places, I do express in Belphcebe. So, in the person of Prince Arthur, I set forth Magnificence in particular ; which virtue for that (according to Aristotle and the rest) it is the perfection of all the rest, and containeth in it them all, therefore in the whole course I mention the deeds of Arthur appliable to that virtue which I write of in that Book. But of the twelve other virtues I make twelve other knights the patrons, for the more variety of the history ; of which these three Books contain three. The first, of the Knight of the Red Cross, in whom I express Holi- ness ; the second, of Sir Guyon, in whom I set forth Temperance; the third, of Britomartis a lady-knight, in whom I picture Chastity. The method of a poet historical is not such as of an historiographer. The. beginning of my history, if it were to be. told by an historiographer, should be the twelfth Book, which is the last; where I devise that the Faery Queen kept her annual feast twelve days ; upon which twelve several days the occasions of the twelve several adventures happened which, being undertaken by twelve several knights, are in these twelve books severally handled and discoursed." Such, in Spenser's own mind, were the plan and purport of the vast poetical work which remains to all time a model of the loftiness of imaginative and inventive narration, and of the greatness of verse. 4 —^ POETS BORN BETWEEN SPENSER AND SHAKESPEARE. f 1553 or 1554 to early John L.YLY (in the 17th century. Sir Philip Sidney 1554 to 1586. Fulke Greville Lord Brooke.. 1554 to 1628. George Chapman 1557 to 1634. Sir John Harington <■■ 1561 to 1612. Samuel Daniel 1562101619. Joshua Sylvester 1563101618. Michael Drayton 1563 to 1631. Christopher Marlow 6.1565101593. Sir Henry Wotton 1568101639. Edward Fairfax diedr. 1632. f WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. What shall be said about Shakespeare ? What shall not be said ? How could one adequately express the sense of his greatness ? How word anything on this subject which has not been worded, and better worded, before? The mind bows down before this supreme embodiment of human intellect and of the universality of human character, and confesses its incom- petence to estimate him, or to express even such estimate as it can attain to forming. Analysis has long been exhausted, and praise along with that : enthusiasm and reverence remain ; but the terms in which they could be imparted show colourless and dull, sound thin and hollow. I shall attempt little beyond summarizing the known or presumed facts of Shakespeare's life, and then supplying in translation a few of the things which have been greatly said about him — said by the foremost poet of our epoch, Victor Hugo ; whose book on the mightiest of dramatists is little known to English readers, and has somehow been mostly supposed in this country to be worthy rather of raillery than study. William Shakespeare came of a family of decent credit on the paternal side, and on the maternal of some dignity and position. John Shakespeare, his father, was son of a substantial farmer at Snitterfield, a village three or four miles distant from Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire. Mary Arden, the poet's mother, was grand-niece to a gentleman who had been Groom of the Chamber to Henry VII., and who was a brother of Sir ***- 36 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. John Arden : this family was connected with that which pro- duced the Hampden so famous in the time of Charles I. Mary's father was an opulent yeoman at Wilmecote, and she herself heiress to a small farm named Ashbies ; she married John Shakespeare presumably about 1557. The latter, towards 1551, had opened a shop in Henley Street, Stratford, for the sale of gloves, and probably of meat, wool, and barley. He prospered, and bought two small copyhold properties ; became a burgess and an alderman of the town — which may at this time have numbered some twelve-hundred inhabitants — and held other local offices. He was not only an ordinary alderman, but in 1568, four years after the poet's birth, bailiff or chief magistrate of Stratford, and in September 1571 chief alderman : this clearly stamps him as a person of eminent credit in his locality, or, as we should now say, of "the highest respect- ability." A grant of arms was made to him in 1569, and con- firmed in 1599. The instrument of confirmation recites that the great grandfather of John Shakespeare had been rewarded with lands and tenements for services rendered to Henry VII. Thus we see that, both on the father's and on the mother's side, the dramatist had special reasons for bearing the first Tudor sovereign in loyal memory ; and his play of Richard III. indicates that so he did. It is universally, and we may say correctly, assumed that in that world-famous house in Henley Street the poet was born in April 1564. The day of his baptism was the 26th of that month. The exact natal day is fixed at the 23rd, St. George's Day, by the tradition (supposing it to be true) that he died on the very anniversary of his birth. There were seven other children of the marriage, two of them preceding and dying before the birth of William ; four younger ones, three brothers named Gilbert, Richard, and Edmund, and a sister Joan, grew up. Edmund, who died in 1607, became, like Shakespeare himself, an actor in London. Joan married a Mr. Hart j and S^ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 37 to the Hart family the house in Henley Street continued to belong up to 1806., William was probably sent at an early age to the Free School of Stratford : it is to be presumed that he here learned the rudiments of Latin, but not any Greek. He is said to have left school prematurely, owing to the narrowing circumstances of his father; who in 1578 had to mortgage the farm of Ashbies, and can in other respects be traced to have declined. What Shakespeare did upon leaving school is matter of conjecture, or at best of obscure tradition. Aubrey retails a story indicating that he was apprenticed to a butcher, or perhaps served his own father in the butchering branch (if such existed) of the paternal business. " When he killed a calf," says Aubrey, " he would do it in a high style, and make a speech ; " a story which was indeed easy to invent, but which is also not particularly difficult to believe. Another story, also from Aubrey, is that he acted as a country schoolmaster; a third supposition — founded on the intimate acquaintance with legal terms apparent in so many of his writings — that he entered a lawyer's office. In his nineteenth year Shakespeare married ; and the facts suggest that the bride-elect had been liberal of her favours to her boy-wooer in anticipation of the nuptial ceremony. The damsel, about eight years his senior, was Anne, daughter of Richard Hathaway, a well-to-do yeoman at Shottery, a village distant about a mile or so from Stratford. There was only one asking of the banns of marriage, instead of the prescribed and customary three; and, to save the licensing bishop and his officers harmless for such an irregularity and against other contingencies, two friends of the Hathaways, Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, had to enter beforehand into a bond, dated 28 November 1582, taking all the responsibility on themselves. The wedding ensued ; and only about six months thereafter, on the 26th of May 1583, the firstborn child, Susanna, was baptized. It should be understood that Anne A h- 38 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. Hathaway's indiscretion, if any there was, was not a very grave one according to the standard of those times, for betrothal or precontract carried the privileges of marriage; in order to legitimize the offspring, however, actual preceding marriage was requisite. At Charlecote, in the neighbourhood of Stratford, resided a magistrate, Sir Thomas Lucy, who for various reasons was by no means in good odour with the townsmen. There was no park at Charlecote, and therefore many modern scrutinizers of well-worn old stories say there were'nbt any deer ; nevertheless it is possible that there were deer although there was not a park. It is highly conceivable that the ruffling boon-com- panions and mounting young spirits of Stratford thought it a fine sort of thing to harass the public enemy Sir Thomas by any means they could, and among others by appropriating his deer, if any existed — an act which should rather be regarded under the circumstances as retaliatory poaching than as strictly criminal deer-stealing. And it is equally possible that Shakespeare may have borne his part in expeditions of this kind. No proof to any such effect is, or ever has been, adduced ; but an old and constant tradition purports that he stole deer from Sir Thomas Lucy, and was prosecuted for so doing. The tradition does not add that he was convicted, nor, if convicted, what his sentence was — the offence was a trespass, and the maximum punishment, even for deer-stealing in a park, would have been limited to three months' imprison- ment and triple damages. One infers rather that the prosecution lapsed in consequence of his decamping — for that is the most essential part of the whole tale : Shakespeare " made himself scarce," and. came up to London, and many a thing ensued which otherwise might not have ensued. The tale seems credible enough; to be accepted or not "as you like it." Shakespeare is said to have finished-off this adventure by writ- ing, and affixing to the gate of Charlecote, the following abusive stave on Sir Thomas Lucy : — -e$» WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 39 "A parliament-member, a justice of peace, ' At home a poor scarecrow, at London an ass : If ' lousy ' is ' lucy ' (as some volk miscall it), Then Lucy is lousy, whatever befall it. He thinks himself great ; Yet an ass in his state > We allow by his ears but with asses to mate. If ' lucy' is ' lousy ' (as some volk miscall it), Sing lousy Lucy, whatever befall it." * This rhyming peccadillo may or may not be Shakespeare's ; one cannot say for certain. Along with it, as bearing on the main question of the deer-stealing, we have to take count of the first scene in the Merry Wives of Windsor. Here Justice Shallow accuses Falstaff of having " beaten my men, killed my deer, and broken open my lodge '' ; and he and his ancestors are said by his Cousin Slender to have " the dozen white luces in their coat " [coat of arms], and the parson Sir Hugh Evans puns or blunders upon this observation, " The dozen white louses do become an old coat well." The luce (pike-fish or jack) was the crest of the Lucy family. — A different motive suggested for Shakespeare's going to London is the decrease of his father's means, and the necessity for doing what he could for his own growing family: two twins, Hamnet and Judith, had succeeded Susanna, and had been christened in February 1585. These however were in fact the last of his children, to all appearance. How did Shakespeare fare in London ? It is certain that at some time, perhaps in 1586, he became an actor in Lord Strange's (afterwards the Lord Chamberlain's) company at one of the two theatres in Shoreditch ; but whether this was his first employment is questioned. A member of an Inn of Court, writing about 1693, says that Shakespeare was originally received into the playhouse as a " servitor "; and the story runs that he used to hold the horses of the gentlemen who 7 Two other verses of this ballad have been given ; they are probably forgeries by Chetwood. 4 + 4 40 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. came to see the performances, and that he got noted for .expertness in his humble vocation. Leaving this dubious preliminary, we behold William Shakespeare initiated into his immortality by the fact of his becoming an actor — various companies of players had visited Stratford in his boyhood, and had possibly excited in him some emulous longings and apti- tudes — and by his being thus put in the way, not only of acting, but also of revising and re-adapting plays written by other authors, and hence in the sequel undertaking plays of his own ; how different from all that had preceded, and how supreme over all, even if we look only to his earliest original productions, che world has sufficiently found out — I will divide Shakespeare's London career into three sections, and consider him — 1st, as the Actor; 2nd, as the Author; 3rd, as the Man. 1. Shakespeare the Actor. There is a famous passage (which will be quoted further on) in the work which Robert Greene wrote on his deathbed in 1592, A Groatsworth of Wit, attacking Shakespeare savagely ; this work was edited by Henry Chettle, stationer {i.e. printer or compositor) and playwright, who a few months afterwards apologized for the attack, and averred Shakespeare to be " excellent " in his vocation ; and, though there is nothing to show that he ever made a great sensation as an actor, we may reasonably assume that he was a creditable, and even a distinguished, member of his company. It is said that he played the part of a king in various pieces, and some part or other in Ben Jonson's Sejanus, and (among other characters) the Ghost in Hamlet. Whether he played the part like " an oyster-wife " would be matter of opinion. Thomas Lodge was entitled to his opinion, and he, in his Wit's Misery, dated 1596, has a funny passage applicable to some actor of the Ghost, possibly (though this is the merest conjecture) Shake- speare : " He [the fiend Hate- Virtue] looks as pale as the visard of the Ghost which cried so miserably at the Theatre like an oyster- wife, ' Hamlet, revenge ! ' " The facts of Shakespeare's S*3»- 9 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. ' 41 subsequent connexion with the Blackfriars Theatre, and after- wards with the Globe (or Bankside) Theatre, have been involved in great confusion by definite mis-statements, worse than a free confession of simple uncertainty ; it has been said, for instance, and repeated times out of number, that he was a sharer in the Blackfriars Theatre as early as 1589, and concurred in the building of the Globe. The contrary is apparent from documents recently published, and seemingly unimpugnable.. Richard Burbage (who became the most celebrated actor of the time) and his brother, Cuthbert Burbage, built the Globe Theatre in 1599. They placed Shakespeare in the theatre, and made him and some others partners in the profits of "the House" (so-called) — a term which may at that time have designated the money paid at the doors, and perhaps something more. At a later date — later certainly than May 1603, when James I. came to the throne — the Burbages re-entered upon the Blackfriars Theatre, which had been built by their father years before the Globe ; and here also they placed Shakespeare and other actors. The date when he left the stage is not certainly known : " after 1603 " used to be the date assigned, but it is now clear that his retirement must have been some considerable while after 1603, which, as we have just seen, is the year when he was transferred (or retransferred) to the Blackfriars boards. Mani-' festly he did not wholly like his occupation. He felt that it lowered him in the eyes of others ; perhaps too even in his own, for Shakespeare, it may be abundantly inferred from his writings, always accounted himself a gentleman by birth and breeding, and the associates of his choice were gentlemen. Witness the following passages from his sonnets (no, in) : — " Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view. * * * * Oh for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds. ^r -r >«^ 42 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand ; And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. Pity me then, and wish I were renewed." 2. Shakespeare the Author. If we except the doggrel effusions dubiously ascribed to his youth, before he came to London, — the verses on Sir Thomas Lucy, and a still more juvenile quat- rain ridiculing the neighbouring villages where he had drunk. 1 — we know of nothing written by Shakespeare earlier for certain than 1593 and 1594, at which dates he must have been at least twenty-eight and twenty-nine years of age. In 1593 he pub- lished his poem of Venus and Adonis; which, in the dedication addressed to Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton, he terms "the first heir of my invention'' (some critics suppose it to have been written years before) : and in 1594 the Rape of Lucrece, dedicated to the same nobleman. The latter enter- tained a warm friendship for Shakespeare : one anecdote (which greatly needs verification however) is that the Earl on one occasion gave the actor ;£iooo. Venus and Adonis made an impression, running rapidly through several editions : the seventh (or perhaps sixth) appeared in 1602. The date when the greatest dramatist of the world first wrote a play cannot be fixed; but it must have been not later at any rate than 1597, when the texts of his Richard II, Richard III, and Romeo and Juliet, were published. He himself had nothing apparently to do with the publication in this instance, or in the instance of any other of his plays whatsoever : he wrote for the stage, acted in his own plays, pleased the audience as dramatist and player, distanced all writing competitors in this form of public favour, excited little notice and less enthusiasm among brother ' Here are the verses : — " Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston, Haunted Hillborough, and hungry Grafton, With dodging Exhall, papist Wixford, Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford." authors, knew his own worth, and (seemingly with the most reckless indifference) abandoned his poetic offspring to their fate. Perhaps he had gone to the cuckoo's school for policy, and felt pretty sure that the eggs deposited by the cuckoo in the sparrow's nest would he hatched, if not by itself, by the sparrow. It remains none the less astonishing to all lovers of art that any such artist as Shakespeare should have tolerated the haphazard and harumscarum mode of publication of his dramas which alone he lived to see effected. In 1598 were published Loves Labour's Lost, and Henry IV., Part I. ; in 1600 Midsummer Night's Dream, the Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, Part II., Henry V., Much Ado about Nothing, and (in a second edition) Titus Andronicus ; * in 1602 the Merry Wives of Windsor ; in 1603 Hamlet, an unauthorized edition, followed in 1604 by a more correct one; in 1608 King Lear; in 1609 Troilus and Cressida, and Pericles. Moreover before 1598, the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Won (which is probably identical with All's Well that ends Well), and King J^ohn, had been produced on the stage. The other plays, not distinctly accounted for as to year of writing and first representation, are As You Like It (towards 1600), jfulius Ccesar and Twelfth Night (towards 1602), Measure for Measure and Othello (towards 1604), Macbeth (towards 16 10), Winter's Tale (towards 161 1), the Taming of the Shrew, Henry VI., 2 Antony and Cleopatra, Timon of Athens, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Henry VIII, and The Tempest. The last-named play, or else the Winter's Tale, is generally regarded as the latest of all in date. Then there are the sonnets pub- lished in the Passionate Pilgrim in 1599, and the general body 1 Some play under this title, not then ascribed to Shakespeare, was entered at Stationers' Hall in 1593. 2 Parts II. and III. of Henry VI., in their original form, which was probably not the work of Shakespeare, appeared in 1594 and 1595. Part I. is sus- pected not to be his at all. f «£^_ 44 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. of the sonnets in 1609. These compositions, or some not now definable portion of them, were spoken of as " his sugared sonnets among his private friends " in the Palladis Tamia of Meres, published in 1598, and must therefore be assigned to a date much earlier than 1609. The particular form of the sonnet adopted by Shakespeare had been exemplified by Samuel Daniel in a work issued in 1592, and before him by Lord Surrey and others. When we speak of those greatest dramatic and intellectual master-strokes of the world's literature, we should not forget the material condition, to modern notions ludicrously primitive, of the theatres in which they were presented. That the female characters were all acted b,y boys is not so much to the pur- pose ; though we can hardly doubt that such immaturely juvenile actors were always mediocre actors, and we must think accordingly of the Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra, Rosalind, Juliet, or Desdemona, of those days. A pair of crossed swords, or sometimes two lathes, symbolized a battle ; the shirt worn out- side the dress showed a knight ; the housekeeper's petticoat over a broomstick stood for a caparisoned horse. In 1598 one theatre possessed as its properties the limbs of a Moor, a dragon, a large horse with its legs, a cage, a rock, four heads of Turks and one of Mahound, a wheel, and hell's-mouth. Another owned a sun, a target, the triple plume of the Prince of Wales with motto, six devils, and the pope astride of a mule. Shakespeare's supreme genius, and the hearty public ac- ceptance of his dramas, were not likely to pass unbespattered by envy ; Greene, in his Groatsworth of Wit (already referred to), in enforcing the general text that play-writing had become a work unfit for gentlemen, and that actors were presumptuous and ungrateful, adverted malignantly to "an upstart crow beautified in our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast-out a blank verse as the best of you ; and, being an absolute WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 45 Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shake- scene in a country." This was confuted however by Greene's own editor Chettle, who is the earliest known eulogist of Shakespeare, and who speaks (among other more strictly personal merits) of his " facetious grace in writing." Here "facetious" is probably not to be taken in its modern meaning of "witty" or "humorous," but rather in a more general sense — " ingenious, felicitous " ; nevertheless it might seem that contemporaries were more especially struck, in the earlier work of Shakespeare at any rate, with his brilliancy in wit and re- partee. His plays became the town-talk ; Queen Elizabeth had them represented at court, and, being charmed with the Falstaff of Henry IV., is said to have wished to see the carnal knight on the boards in love — which gave the hint for writing the Merry Wives of Windsor. Her successor was not less discerning, and Shakespeare was the favourite playwright of James I. Ward's Diary (dating from 1648 to 1679) records a report that Shakespeare, living in his later days at Stratford, supplied the stage with two plays every year, and for this received an allowance so large that he spent at the rate of ;£iooo per annum. The diarist was vicar of Stratford, and not unlikely to have some knowledge of his facts ; yet the state- ment can hardly be accepted in detail. The richness of Shakespeare's vocabulary is partly the rich- ness of his mind : it has been computed that he uses about 15,000 words, while even so great a poetic successor as Milton numbers, only about 8000. We find in him the technical phraseology, not alone of law as previously mentioned, but equally of medicine, surgery, chemistry, war, navigation, field- sports, music, necromancy, printing. He seems to have known French and Italian : some of his plays are founded on Italian originals whereof no contemporary translation can be traced. I have said that he knew his own worth ; his conviction that his writings are imperishable — even such minor writings as the -#"<3-- 46 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. sonnets — is amply proveable from passages in the latter. As for instance — ' ' So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see. So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." " Yet do thy worst, old Time ! Despite thy wrong. My love shall in my verse ever live young." " Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme : But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. 'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth : your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till the Judgment that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes." "For such a time do I now fortify Against confounding Age's cruel knife, That he shall never cut from memory My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life., His beauty shall in these black lines be seen ; And they shall live, and he in them still green." " Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read, And tongues to-be your being shall rehearse When all the breathers of this world are dead. You still shall live — such virtue hath my pen — ' Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men." " Make answer, Muse ! Wilt thou not haply say ' Truth needs no colour, with his colour fixed ' ? Excuse not silence so : for 't lies in thee To make him much outlive a gilded tomb, And to be praised of ages yet to be." " Now with the drops of this most balmy time My love looks fresh ; and Death to me subscribes, Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme, While he insults c-'er dull and speechless tribes : And thou in this shalt find thy monument When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent." J*.^ _ «£JU WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 47 The trumpet-tone of all these lines is wondrously inspiriting: they express a perfect and splendid confidence. 1 That Shake- speare, who led an inconspicuous life, and took no heed for the preservation of any of his writings later than the Venus and Adonis and the Lucrece, should yet have known with such entire certainty that they would outlive the perishing body of men and things till the Resurrection of the Dead — this is the most moving fact in his extant history • the one which informs with grandeur of being, and reconciles into a potent unity, the resi- dual elements of his career, sparse and disparate at best, some- times insignificant or incongruous-looking. I will here make only one observation regarding Shake- speare's dramas, and glance at one phase, and only one, of his position in the world of mind. The observation is simply this : That, whatever may be his imperfections (and they are chiefly imperfections deriving from excess of power, and exuberance of resource and performance), there is scarcely a sentence in the dramas which does not challenge admiration on one or other of three grounds — either for depth or fineness of thought or imagery, or for beauty or force of diction, or for true character and dramatic appropriateness. Then, as to Shake- speare's position in the world of mind, it may be said that, though few writers could be named who less belong than he, in a direct sense, to what may be called the Party of Modern Progress, few from whom the watchwords of modern ideas 2 are less expressly audible, few who pertain more dis- tinctly to the aristocratic constitution of society, with a defined order in state and government, monarchical and hieratic, there is nevertheless none to whom, in the long run, the emancipated movement of mind is more deeply indebted. He is, of all 1 It should not be concealed, however, that somewhat similar expressions were used by other sonneteers, and they formed almost a commonplace of sonnet- literature. 2 I mean for instance such watchwords as '.' Liberty, Equality, and Frater- nity," or " Civil and Religious Liberty," or "Am I not a man and a brother?" 48 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. writers, the one who works in the region of man's multiform nature — who fixes our attention upon man as the prime factor in all combinations which we have to contemplate and to deal with. In comparison with the impulses and acts of the human spirit, all else is to him vague, alien, and remote. Religion, supernaturalism, are for Shakespeare potent imaginative means '■ — possibly sincere personal convictions : but they are not his subject-matter, are barely a part of his working apparatus. In the strife of faiths and of sects at the close of the sixteenth century and opening of the seventeenth, his creed is undis- coverable ; catholic or protestant we know not, christian or non-christian we cannot pronounce. He affirms nothing of the origin or destiny of the soul : what he fathoms is its nature, and what he exhibits its phenomena. If we call to memory, along with Shakespeare, the greatest preceding poet of the modern , world, Dante, we shall see the immensity of the contrast ; and this not alone in the choice of subject and mode of develop- ment, but in the very essence of the thing developed, and of the intellectual forces at work upon it : and the same, with differences of degree, may be said of all previous writers * as pitted against Shakespeare. In him only we find this positive starting-point — the mind, spirit, character, passions, faculties, physical personality, of man, without prepossessions or premiss suppositions on the author's part : he is committed to nothing, except to telling us what he discerns and divines, and that with a universality of perception for great and for little, and a radiant splendour of interpretation and presentment, actual and imaginative, to which no parallel exists. He fixes our mind upon realities, not upon suppositions : he shows us that the facts of the world are such and such, not that the reasons for these facts are so and so. He compels us to attend to man and his nature — a microcosm in a macrocosm ; the microcosm ' Chaucer, I think, approaches nearer than any other European writer to Shakespeare, in this respect. ■* WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 49 open to our perception and worthy of our knowledge, the macrocosm not known, and not ascertained to be knowable. A new literature begins with Shakespeare ; begins and in some sense ends with him, for he (it might almost be averred) exhausts its possibilities in suggestion and function, though of course not at all in formative growth and sequence. 3. Shakespeare the Man. Beyond the few matter-of-fact details that we know concerning the dramatist's life after he came to the capital, we must turn to his sonnets for informa- tion. We know, for instance, that he had not been many years in London before he began providing for his ultimate re- settlement in Stratford-on-Avon. Early in 1597 he bought for jQdo (a sum which may be roughly computed as equal to £fiao at the present day) the house named New Place, about the very best in Stratford. In 1602 he bought for ,£320 some arable land, 107 acres, in the parish of Old Stratford ; and in the same year some property in the town. In 1605 ensued his largest purchase — £,AA° f° r tne remainder of a lease, thirty-one years, of the tithes of Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe. In 1604, when he must still have been a London actor, he prosecuted one Rogers, who had bought a quantity of malt from him, and left the debt unpaid; and in 1608 he sued John Addenbrooke for a small debt, and, on Addenbrooke's absconding, proceeded against his security : trivial facts which have been cited, and no doubt truly so as far as they go, as showing that the author of Julius Gzsar and King Lear was a business-man looking sharply, like others, after his own material interests. Some other facts of similar bearing will be mentioned in the sequel. He was in the practice of visiting Stratford re- gularly, perhaps even once every year, during his London career. The exact state of his family relations is open to con- jecture. It is presumed that, on first coming to the capital, he -left his wife and three children in Stratford : they may or may not have rejoined him at a later date. He lived near the Bear 5 ■4* 5<3 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. Garden, Southwark, in 1596 : in 1609 he occupied a good house within the Liberty of the Clink. He frequented the Mermaid Tavern in Cheapside, close to Bread Street, as a member of a club founded by Sir Walter Raleigh : here he waged his famous " wit-combats " with Ben Jonson (ten years his junior), graphically described by Fuller. " Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I beheld like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning ; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, like an English man-of-war, lesser in bulk but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention.'' Jonson himself has left a pleasant record of "gentle Shakespeare," saying : "I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry, as much as any : he was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature.'' This accords with the testimony of Chettle, who (in addition to expressions already quoted) speaks of Shakespeare's " civil demeanour," and his "honesty," by which we should under- stand well-bred straightforwardness, the distinctive mark of a gentleman. And now for the sonnets. This series, numbering 154 items, has, as we all know, been the object of all sorts of disquisitions and commentaries ; some aiming to show that the sonnets con- tribute nothing, or next to nothing, to Shakespeare's biography ; others, that they are written as in the person of a different speaker; others, that their main object is literary satire, a "take-off" of the excesses of amorous sonneteers. Others again, accepting the sonnets as substantially autobiographical, debate to whom they are addressed, whence originating, and why presenting the poet to us in the light in which they do present him ; and one frequent attempt has been to explain away such primd, facie appearances in the sonnets as might induce us to think that Shakespeare was fond to fatuity of a <#" ■*^ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 51 male friend, and illicitly enamoured of a female inveigler. For my part, having given the sonnets the best consideration in my power, I can come to but one conclusion — namely, that these are the very points which must not be explained away ; that the sonnets pourtray to us Shakespeare himself, and such as he really was in sentiment and environment. The sonnets fall into two main divisions. The first and longer division consists of verses addressed to a male friend, expressing a rapturous self-devotion and self-abnegation of amity, and in especial enlarging upon the young mart's per- sonal beauty, and the obligation, incumbent on him from this and other circumstances, to marry, and prolong his race. Another point clearly indicated is the competition of some other writer with Shakespeare for the affection and good offices of his friend : this other writer has with some likelihood been surmised to be Spenser. The attachment expressed by Shake-- speare for his friend, manifestly a person of social rank far supe- rior to his own, is, as I have said, " rapturous," — no fainter word would be adequate : it has even been thought by many to savour so strongly of passionate love as well-nigh to overbalance the evidence, patent though this is on the face of numerous sonnets, that their subject is really a man, and not a woman. On this point I shall only say that the person in question is clearly and certainly a man ; that the feelings expressed are those of friendship, sublimated indeed and unmeasured, yet not transmuted or perverted out of its own nature ; and that what is excessive in these feelings may apparently be ascribed partly to the genuine fervour of the writer's sentiment, and partly to extravagances of diction, such as Shakespeare was assuredly not alone in his time in adopting. Conscious and censurable adulation of a valuable patron may also perhaps be allowed as counting for something ; not, I would with sin- cerity infer, for very much : this also would be only too con- formable to the manners of the age. The second and shorter T Oft 52 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. 4?~ division of the sonnets sets forth (in terms that are quite un- mistakeable to any one who is not prepared to go the extreme length of rejecting the poems altogether in their primary and professed meaning) that the writer was infatuated and enslaved, against his own better knowledge and sense of right, by a dark- complexioned woman, unworthy of the love of a high-souled man; and further that she intrigued, not only with the writer himself in violation of the general canons of social morals, but also with his friend — to all appearance the same friend to whom the other sonnets are addressed — -in violation of the bonds of personal love and honour. I can discover no reason why the sonnets, in this their twofold aspect, should not be a faithful picture of a certain stage in Shakespeare's life ; and I therefore firmly believe that he entertained a long-standing and most ardent attachment for a youth of high rank and eminent en- dowments of person and spirit, and that he got entangled with a paramour of some fascination and no character. Why indeed should we disbelieve either or both of these plainly intimated facts ? The only reason appears to be that we, or some of us, would rather not believe them if we could help. Who the woman may have been is obscure. Sonnet 152 shows her to have been a married woman : and quite recently it has been propounded that she may have been Mrs. Mary Fytton, who (married though she was) ranked among the Queen's maids of honour. The man has been' searched for with diligence, and with some dim semblance of successful result. The sonnets were never published by Shakespeare himself; but in 1609 they were printed and issued by a bookseller, Thomas Thorpe, whose few words of introductory inscription * seem to imply that the male friend to whom most of the poems relate was a certain "Mr. W. H." I say " seem to imply"; for the syntactic construction of the words, no less than the meaning of one 2 The words are as follows (I modernize the spelling) : "To the only be- getter of these ensuing sonnets Mr. W. H. all happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living Poet wisheth The well-wishing adventurer in setting forth ' T. T.*' -*&• WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 53 phrase "only begetter," is undoubtedly ambiguous, and has excited endless discussion. Assuming then that Mr. W. H. is the young man celebrated in the sonnets, we have to enquire who is represented by. these initials. Henry Wriothesly Earl of Southampton, and William Herbert Earl of Pembroke, are the only two probable competitors started by name. Each of these men was in 1609 a peer, and not a " Mr." : but it is allowed on all hands that the application of the term " Mr." to a peer would be an anomaly not unexampled at that period. Both Wriothesly and Herbert were personally well known to Shakespeare : the former, so far as all records go, was certainly the better known of the two, and was, as we have already seen, a specially attached friend of his. The inversion of the initials " W. H." if Wriothesly is meant, whereas there is no in- version if Herbert is meant, counts for a little in favour of Herbert ; not for very much, for the inscription is obviously reticent to some extent, and may have been purposely reticent even to the extent of such an inversion. Wriothesly was bom in 1573, and would at the presumed date of the earliest among the sonnets — say 1597 — have been twenty-four years of age. Herbert, who is known to have been a handsome young man, was born in 1580, and would in 1597 have been but seventeen ; an age which, youthful as it is, need not be deemed absolutely inconsistent with the tone of the sonnets, especially in the mind of Shakespeare who had himself married at eighteen. Besides, if the earliest sonnets may be dated about 1597, many others are of course later than that : one of them seemingly refers to the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, and the accession of James I. — No. 107, beginning " Not mine own fears nor the prophetic soul." Altogether it seems that the claim of Herbert is rather the pre- ferable one of the two. To me, accepting the sonnets as fairly autobiographical, it appears pretty clear that the friend who intrigued with Shakespeare's mistress, and whom I plainly un- «HM- 54 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. derstand to be the same person as the friend mentioned in the earlier sonnets, must have been named William, not Henry ; and, if so, Herbert Earl of Pembroke, not Wriothesly Earl of Southampton. I found this opinion on. the following three sonnets (135, 136, and 143) addressed to the woman. It has been observed time out of mind that these sonnets pun upon the word "will,'' as meaning firstly "will, volition," and secondly "Will, William Shakespeare." I am not the first to point out that a third " Will " — i.e. a second man named William — is ' also in question. To emphasize this interpretation I print the sonnets with a triple typography for the word "will" ; viz. will when volition is meant, Will (italics) when Shakespeare is meant, and Will (capitals) when the interloping friend is meant. " Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will, And Will to boot, and Will in overplus : More than enough am I that vex thee still, To thy sweet will making addition thus. Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious, Not once vouchsafe to hide my Will in thine ? Shall Will in others seem right gracious, And in my Will no fair acceptance shine ? The sea, all water, yet receives rain still. And in abundance addeth to his store : So thou, being rich in will, add to thy will One Will of mine, to make thy large will more. Let no unkind, ' No ' fair beseechers kill : * Think all but one, and me in that one Will. " If thy soul check thee that I come so near, Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy Will, — And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there ; Thus far for love my love-suit, sweet, fulfil. ' Professor Dowden (to whose friendliness and eminent endowments as a Shakespearean scholar I am indebted for some guidance and confirmation in this my trivial essay in the poet's biography) suggested to me this reading of the line. It differs in typography, not in wording, from the ordinary reading, and is, I think, palpably correct. "J" Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love, — Ay, fill it full with wills, and my Will one. In things of great receipt, with ease we prove Among a number one is reckoned none. Then in the number let me pass untold, Though in thy store's account I one must be : For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold That nothing, me, a something sweet to thee. Make but my name thy love, and love that still, And then thou lov'st me, for my name is Will. " Lo ! as a careful housewife runs to catch One of her feathered creatures broke away, Sets down her babe, and makes all swift dispatch In pursuit of the thing she would have stay, — Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, Cries to catch her, whose busy care is bent To follow that which flies before her face, Not prizing her poor infant's discontent : — So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee. Whilst I, thy babe, chase thee afar behind : But, if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me. And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind. So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will, If thou turn back, and my loud crying still." Another point in favour of Pembroke as against Southamp- ton — and this, I fancy, has received little or no attention — arises from a phrase in sonnet 3 — " Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime " — a manifest and admitted assertion that the person addressed bore a strong resemblance to his mother. Now Pembroke really was very like the "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," of Ben Jonson's famous verse; whereas there is not, so. far as I can learn, any evidence to a like effect in the case of South- ampton. 1 It may be said — and to me has been said by two 1 Mr. Scharf, of the National Portrait-Gallery, has kindly given me his valuable aid on this point. He says (July 1876) : " I do not call to mind any representation of the mother of Henry Wriothesly Earl of Southampton, and -HN- -a* 56 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. friends most worthy of hearing— that "thou art thy mother's glass" means practically no more than "thou are thy parenfs glass," the mother being selected for mention merely as the sole surviving parent. This, however, does not convince me ; more especially considering that, as the entire passage in the sonnet is an argument that the young man ought to marry, and become a father, the natural thing to say by way of illustration, if only it could have been said with entire or partial truth, would be " thou art thy father's glass "—and, when the " mother " is substituted, I infer that this is done under the dictation of the actual fact. I must now leave the sonnets, and revert to the general course of Shakespeare's life. — He was probably still resident in London in 1611 : by 161 2 he is known to have been resettled at Stratford, which continued to be his home for the few remaining years of his life. The alderman's truant son re- turned to his native town a man of more worldly consequence, even in the eyes of his solid, humdrum, provincial fellow- citizens, than his father had ever been ; he occupied the best house in Stratford, and was in all likelihood the " greatest man " in that small town, as well as in " the great globe itself." His only son Hamnethad died in iS96,his father in 1601, his mother in 1608. His eldest daughter Susanna had in 1607 married Dr. Hall, a local physician of some eminence, and they already had a daughter, Elizabeth, born in 1608. Shakespeare's wife, and his younger daughter Judith, kept house with him. That he continued attentive to his own' minor interests is shown by his having, in 1612, joined in a petition to the Court of Chancery to compel certain sharers with himself in the farming of the tithes Shakespeare's great friend. But between William Earl of Pembroke, and his mother ' Sidney's sister,' the portraits exhibit a marked resemblance. I think more particularly of the one of Mary Sidney in this gallery, and the many re- petitions of William Herbert by D. Mytens, especially those at Hardwick and Gorhambury. " WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 57 to pay their quota ofa general burden; and by his having resisted, in 1614, a proposed enclosure of some common-lands, detri- mental to his property. In February 16 16 he married his daughter Judith to Mr. Thomas Quiney. It may have been in preparation for this event that on the 25th of January he had drawn-up his will j in that instrument, which was finally executed on the 25th of March, he professes himself to be "in perfect health and memory," so that there is nothing to indicate that he was then sensible of his closely impending death. By the will he left all his lands, tenements, &c, to Susanna ; only ^300 to Judith ; and (by interlineation) his second-best bed with its furniture to his wife ; and some trifling legacies were added. The insignificant bequest to his wife has often been commented upon, as showing that the poet held her in slight regard : to this it is replied that, as almost all his estates were freehold, she was adequately provided for out of these by law, in the form of dower. It would seem that Shakespeare died worth no large sum in actual money ; another inference is that he must, at some time or other, have disposed of his theatrical property, which does not figure at all in his will. In another month Shakespeare was no more ; he died on the 23rd of April 1616. The only record of the cause of death, real or fictitious, is in Ward's Diary : " Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson, had a merry meeting, and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there con- tracted." On the 25th he was buried in the Parish-church of Stratford, with the following epitaph — not, we may reasonably suppose, the composition of such a brain and hand as were -now for ever at rest within his grave : " Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here : Blest be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones." Shakespeare's widow survived him seven years, dying in •*'& 4*- 58 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. August 1623. His daughter Susanna Hall (the inheritor of the bulk of his property, and obviously therefore the person through whom he had hoped to " found a family," if that, as has some- times been supposed, was really an object he had at heart) had but one child, Elizabeth. This lady married Thomas Nash Esquire, and after his death John Barnard Esquire, knighted by Charles II. in 1661; she had no children, and died in 1670. Shakespeare's second daughter, Judith Quiney, had three sofas, who died unmarried. And so, in brief space, the race of William Shakespeare was extinct. ' ' What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster Sink in the ground ? I thought it would have mounted ! " — It may be added that the poet Sir William Davenant, author of Gondibert, was regarded by some contemporaries as an illegitimate son of Shakespeare, and was himself not averse to countenancing this surmise. The principal portraits representing Shakespeare, or supposed to represent him, are the Stratford bust adjacent to his grave, the Droeshout engraving, the Chandos painting, the Jansen painting, and the Felton Head ; also a mask, taken apparently after death, belonging to Herr Becker, and at one time depo- sited with Professor Owen. The first two alone are certainly known to pourtray Shakespeare : they correspond closely enough, while the others deviate considerably in one respect or another. The bust was praised in 1623 as a faithful likeness ; it was executed by Gerard Johnson, a Hollander, after the author's decease ; the authority from which he worked is dubious, but is believed to have been a cast taken after death — not (the internal evidence suggests as much) the one above-mentioned belonging to Herr Becker. This bust was originally (and is now again) coloured, and shows light hazel eyes, and auburn hair and beard. I need not enlarge upon other details in a matter so well' known to all my readers. The Droeshout portrait was also produced in 1623, in the first collected edition <£«» WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 59 of Shakespeare's plays. It was eulogized by Ben Jonson ; and has been accepted as a true likeness by the idealist poet and painter William Blake, who professed to have seen Shakespeare's ghost, and who was at any rate better qualified than ninety-nine persons out of a hundred to infer from a man's spiritual product what his outer semblance might fittingly have been. I conclude, as premised, by translating a few passages from Victor Hugo's book published in 1864, William Shakespeare: passages which I present in a very condensed form, omitting many of the intermediate and connecting details. "What is Shakespeare? One might almost reply, He is the Earth, the Globe. On the Globe is Man : hence the swarming in Shakespeare. Space, " the blue " (as the Germans say), is certainly not wanting in Shakespeare. The earth sees and traverses the heaven : knows this under its twofold aspect, darkness and azure, doubt and hope. Life comes and goes within death. All life is a secret ; a sort of enigmatic paren- thesis between birth and dissolution, between the eye that opens and the eye that closes. Of this secret Shakespeare feels the disquiet. In Shakespeare, the birds sing, the thickets are green, hearts love, souls suffer, the cloud roams, heat and cold succeed, night falls, time passes, the forests and the crowds speak, the vast eternal dream floats on. Sap and blood, all forms of the multiple fact, actions and ideas, man and mankind, livers and life, solitudes, towns, religions, diamonds, pearls, laystalls, charnels, the flux and reflux of being, the step of the comers and goers, — all this is present to Shakespeare and in Shakespeare : and, this genius being the earth, the dead rise therefrom. Certain sinister recesses of Shakespeare are haunted by spectres. Shakespeare gives a glimpse of the twilight horizon of conjecture : the possible, that casement of trance opened on the real. As to the real, Shakespeare brims with it : everywhere live flesh. Shakespeare has emotion, instinct, true ^k" 60 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. tone, right accent, the whole human multitude, with its hum. His poetry is himself, and is, at the same time, you. Shake- speare marks the termination of the middle ages. This closing of the middle ages is wrought by Rabelais and Cervantes as well : but they, being solely banterers, present only a partial aspect : the mind of Shakespeare is a total. " To say ' Poet ' is to say — at the same time and of necessity — ' Historian and Philosopher.' Shakespeare is this threefold man. He is moreover the Painter, and what a painter ! — the colossal painter. Shakespeare has tragedy, comedy, fairy-tale, hymn, farce, the vast divine laughter, terror, and ,horror; and, to say all in one word, drama. He touches the two poles. He belongs to Olympus and to the strolling theatre. No possi- bility eludes him. When he holds you, you are captive ; look for no mercy from him. He has the pathos of cruelty. He shows you a mother — Constance, mother of Arthur ; and, after he has brought you to that point of emotion when you have the same heart as herself, he kills her boy. No respite to the agony. Genius is inexorable; it has its own law, and follows that. The mind also has its inclined planes, and the slope determines its direction. Sheakespeare leans towards the terrible. The poet recognizes no limit save his goal ; he considers only the thought to be worked out. He allows no other sovereignty, no other necessity, than the idea ; for, as art emanates from the absolute, so, in art as in the absolute, the end justifies the means. Art, like the infinite, has a Because superior to every Why. Shakespeare's sovereign horrors reign and dominate. He mingles with them, when he chooses, fascination ; that august fascination of strong natures — as superior to the weakly sweet- ness, the slim attraction, the charm, of Ovid or Tibullus, as the Venus of Melos is to the Venus de' Medici. The things of the unknown, metaphysical problems past fathoming, the enigmas of the soul, and of Nature which is also a soul, the remote intuitions of the eventual included in destiny, the amal- *f*- ±. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 61 gams of thought and of event, can be translated into delicate contours, and can fill poesy with mysterious and exquisite types all the more ravishing for being a little dolorous, half inhering in the invisible, and at the same time most real, preoccupied with the shadow which is behind them, and essaying neverthe- less to affect you with pleasure. The grace of depth exists. Modern geniuses alone have that profundity in a smile which notifies at once an elegance and an abyss. Shakespeare possesses this grace. Hamlet, Doubt, is at the centre of his work; and at the two extremes, Romeo and Othello, the heart in its totality. Shakespeare is above all an. imagination. Imagination is depth. No faculty of mind penetrates and delves more than imagination : it is the supreme diver. Science, arrived at the ultimate gulfs, encounters with it. The Poet philosophizes because he imagines. Hence Shakespeare owns that sovereign manipulation of reality which permits him to have out his whim with her. And this whim is itself .a variety of truth — a variety which claims to be pondered. Whereto shall we compare fate unless to a fantasy ? Nothing more in- coherent in seeming, nothing more loosely linked, nothing more mis-deduced. Why crown that monster John ? why kill that child Arthur? But why Joan of Arc burned? why Monk triumphant? why impunity to Louis Quinze, and punishment to Louis Seize ? Room for the logic of God ! That is the logic wherein the fancy of the poet is nurtured. One of the characteristics of genius is the singular combining of the most far-away faculties. The inner tribunal of man belongs to Shakespeare. This he takes at unaware every moment. He draws from the conscience all the unforeseen that it contains. In this psychical exquisiteness few poet surpass him. Measure- less force, delicious charm, epic ferocity, pity, creative faculty, mirth, that high mirth unintelligible to narrow capacities, sar- casm, the puissant scourge-stroke to the wicked, starry grandeur, miscroscopic tenuity, an unlimited poesy which has a zenith 62 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. and a nadir, the vast whole, the profound detail — nothing is wanting to this mind. In approaching this man's work, one feels the enormous blast which might come from the opening of a world. The irradiation of genius in all directions — that is Shakespeare. " If ever a man has scantly deserved that schoolboy enco- mium " He is well-behaved," certainly it is Shakespeare. Shakespeare is one of the greatest ' ne'er-do-weels ' that right-minded sesthetics have ever had to catechize. Shake- speare is fertility, force, exuberance, the swollen breast, the foaming goblet, the brimming vat, sap in excess, lava in tor- rents, whirling germs, the vast rain of life, all in thousands, all in millions ; no reticence, no binding-in, no parsimony, the insensate and tranquil prodigality of the creator. Will he soon be leaving off? Never. Shakespeare sows dazzlements broad- cast. At each word, an image ; at each word, a contrast ; at each word, day and night. The Poet is Nature. Subtle, minute, delicate, microscopic, like her : immense. Not dis- creet, not reserved, not thrifty. Magnificent -in simplicity. Whatever may be the abundance, whatever may be the en- tanglements — even perplexed, intermixed, and inextricable — all that is true is simple. A root is simple. This simplicity, which is profound, is the only one known to art. Simplicity, being true, is ingenuous. Ingenuousness is the countenance of truth. Shakespeare is simple with the grand simplicity : he is even a simpleton in that. The petty sort he ignores. But likewise this Shakespeare respects nothing, he goes straight ahead, he leaves his followers breathless; he overstrides the convenances, he hustles Aristotle. Shakespeare has no reserve, no retention, no frontier, no hiatus. Deficiency is the thing wherein he is deficient. No savings-bank, no Lent, for him. He overflows, like vegetation, like germination, like light, like flame. Othello, Romeo, Iago, Macbeth, Shylock, Richard the Third, Julius Csesar, Oberon, Puck, Ophelia, . Desdemona, ■«£«$■ WILLIAM SHAKESFEARE. 63 Juliet, Titania ; men, women, witches, fairies, ghosts ; Shake- speare is open-armed — Take, take, take ! More would you have? Here are Ariel, Parolles, Macduff, Prospero, Viola, Miranda, Caliban. More still? Here are Jessica, Cordelia, Cressida, Portia, Brabantio, Polonius, Horatio, Mercutio, Imogen, Pandarus of Troy, Bottom, Theseus. Ecce Deus. It is the Poet : he proffers himself : who will have me ? He gives himself away, he spends himself abroad, he is prodigal of himself : he never empties. Why? He cannot. To him ex- haustion is impossible. He is bottomless : he fills and pours, then recommences : it is the riddled pannier of genius. The drama of Shakespeare marches with a sort of frenzied rhythm ; it is so vast that it totters ; it is dizzy, and makes you dizzy : yet nothing is so solid as this quaking grandeur. Inspiration being a prodigy, a sacred stupor mingles in it. A certain majesty of soul resembles the wilderness, and astonishment is born thereof. Shakespeare, like all great poets and all great things, is steeped in trance. His own vegetation thrills him, his own tempest unnerves him. One would say at some moments that Shakespeare affrights Shakespeare. He feels the horror of his own depth. This is the mark of the supreme in- tellects. It is his own very area which stirs him, and com- municates to him enormous indefinable oscillations. From time to time there comes upon the globe one of these spirits. Their passage renews art, science, philosophy, or society. They fill a century, then disappear. Then it is not a century alone that their light illumes; it is humanity from one end of time to the other : and one discerns that each of these men was the Human Spirit itself contained whole in one brain, and coming, at a given instant, to set on earth its hand and seal to Progression." -*- 3L, *5? 4? POETS BORN BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND MILTON. Sir John Davies 1570 to 1626. „ TT f wrote in the earlier part Thomas Heywood | of the 17th century. John Donne 1573 to 1631. Ben Jonson 1574101637. Bishop Joseph Hall 1574 to 1656. Thomas Dekker wrote c. 1600. John Fletcher 1576 to 1625. John Webster wrote c. 1600— died c. 1650. Phineas Fletcher 1582 to c. 1660. Cyril Tourneur wrote c. 1610. Bishop Richard Corbet 1582 to 1635. Philip Massinger 158410 1640. Giles Fletcher c 1585 to 1623. Sir William Drummond 1585 to 1649. Francis Beaumont 1586 to 1615.' John Ford 1586 to c. 1635. George Wither 1588 to 1667. Thomas Carew c . 1589 to 1639. William Browne 1590 to >$■ 4 -4* 88 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. After his death three small volumes of his so-called Posthumous TVorhweie issued, in 1715 ; these, however, with the exception of two or three short pieces, were fictitious. His genuine Remains came out in 1759, under the editorship of Mr. Robert Thyer ; comprising several amusing and curious pieces, chiefly the Elephant in the Moon (a satire on the Royal Society and its investigations), yet barely, on the whole, sustaining Butler's repute for wit and wisdom. His Commonplace Book was also preserved, and shows the author's remarkable diligence in noting down at first hand all sort of thoughts and observations. One of his writings, mentioned as existing but never published, was a fragment of a tragedy on Nero. But after all Butler, as a poet, is Hudibras, and Hudibras is Butler. This long yet unfinished poem of more than 10,000 verses, is mainly founded, so far as its leading idea is con- cerned, upon Don Quixote, and partly upon the famous Satire M'enippk. Cleveland, and Sir John Mennis (author of the Musarum Delicia), may have given some hint for its mode of versification, which is nevertheless chiefly original. Hudibras himself, as we have seen, travesties Sir Samuel Luke, and through him the Presbyterian religionists and party generally : his squire Ralpho may designate one Robinson, or else Pendle, and through him burlesque the Independents, the sect (as noted in my account of Milton) to which that supreme poet and Oliver Cromwell belonged. Readers of the present day will not at all agree with Pepys in failing to see in Hudibras "where the wit lies"; they, like their predecessors for two centuries, discern an abundance and superabundance of wit, as well as of boisterous animal spirits, and grotesque combi- nations of humour and fancy. But they find the poem laborious and tedious to get through — partly on account of its obsolete and operose detail of general subject-matter, fine points of doctrinal and religious casuistry which have passed far out of modern ken — partly (or indeed chiefly) on account of its •$►■ perpetual tone of mock-heroics, incidents ignoble and tire- some in themselves blown up into big verbal dimensions, like the frog that would have inflated himself into bovine size- partly also (and this is indeed implied in what is premised) by the intrinsic ugliness of the whole thing. Hudibras is an ugly poem ; a poem of surpassing aptness and dexterity, and even pleasantry, of execution; replete with every resource of a richly- furnished mind, and a facile and fantastic humour which knows when to play and when to strike, when to pat its mouse with velvet paws, and when to crunch it with carnivorous incisors ; yet an ugly poem after all. Many readers no doubt feel that the things and the men it satirizes are not wholly deserving of satire — that on the contrary the things and the men it im- plicitly upholds were the more worthy of the taunt, the lash, and the branding-iron. This however is not of so much im- portance: the manner of the satire repels us more than the matter. Butler degrades before he assaults : the objects of his sarcasm are treated like military poltroons, who are first stripped of their uniforms, and then, and not till then, drummed out of the regiment. We cannot accept ugly poems as positively good poems, nor ugly art of whatsoever kind as strictly fine art. Hudibras will always be admired, and will always deserve to be so ; it stands as a difficult and hardly-to- be-rivalled model of a particular kind of intellectual effort and skilled work : it is and will be decreasingly read, and such satisfaction as it yields to the reader will more and more class as literary satisfaction — the gusto of a connoisseur — an acquired taste which would be not very reluctantly relinquished even by the person who experiences and nurses it. Butler must ever retain his own plot of ground on the English Parnassus : it is a plot however which the other denizens regard as rather an excrescence and perceptibly malodorous, and, in their loftier moods, Apollo and the Muses turn a resolutely blind eye to that particular compartment. ■^ * — : . ^ —4 POETS BORN BETWEEN BUTLER AND DRYDEN. John Cleveland 1613 to 1658. Sir John Suckling 1613 to- 1641. Sir John Denham 1615 to 1668. Abraham Cowley 1618 to 1667. Richard Lovelace 1618 to 1658. Andrew Marvell 1621101678. Henry Vaughan 1622 to 1695. ■<$* ■<£«£■ JOHN DRYDEN, With this great protagonist of the poetry of his time, we enter upon what may be regarded as the modern era of our poetic literature. Junior contemporary of Milton and of Butler, Dryden, not only in the quality of his individual genius, but in his whole intellectual atmosphere, seems to be separated from Milton by an indefinite interval of years; and even Butler, for all the free-and-easy unconcern of his verse, and its spirit of grotesque sarcasm, remains so remote from us in the subject- matter of his sectarian hair-splittings, and in the mock-chivalry of his accoutrements, as hardly to fuse into or coalesce with modernism. But in Dryden we fall-in with the man whose profession is literature, who takes up whatever comes to hand suitable for self-exhibition and the occasion of the moment, who writes different sorts of things all with a critical reference — a sense of how he himself ought to do them according to a certain standard, and how others ought to take them ■ the man who dictates in the world of letters, propounds and argues, has partizans and adversaries ; the man who writes miscellaneously for a public of miscellaneous readers. Dryden assumes a position of personal combativeness and general outlook, pur- suing varied lines of attempt rather than evincing a truly versatile impulse of faculty ; we feel in him the stress of modern society, the shiftings of modern thought, the modern spirit of criticism which tries, in the balance of reasoning opinion and the recognized canons of excellence, himself and Jl. 4* -*#* 92 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. his performances in one scale, and all sorts of other writers and their performances in another, not perhaps too equitably, poised. John Dryden, eldest son of Erasmus Driden (thus was the name spelled in his generation) of Tichmarsh, who was third son of Sir Erasmus Driden, of Canons Abbey, created a Baronet in 1619, was born at Aldwinkle All Saints, near Oundle, on the 9th of August 1631, or perhaps 1632, for the point is not exactly settled. All these places are in the county of Northampton, but the family properly belonged to the neighbouring county of Huntingdon. The father was a Justice of the Peace during the interregnum, and may probably have been in religion a Presbyterian. John was sent to Westminster School as a King's Scholar, and studied under the renowned Dr. Busby. In 1650 he was elected to one of the Westminster scholarships at Cambridge, and he entered that University in May of the same year, being a student of Trinity College. That he took his degree as B.A. in 1653 is a wholly ordinary incident; perhaps somewhat less so that in the previous year, 19 July 1652, he had been put out of commons for a fortnight at least, and sentenced to read "a confession of his crime"; what the crime was we know not, but presumably not a very heinous one, seeing the mildness of his punishment. In 1654 his father died, leaving a widow and some younger children ; and John Dryden came into an estate which has been variously estimated at about ^60 and about ^200 per annum. Allowing for the difference in the value of money, the former sum might be regarded as a moderate income to fall back upon, the latter as a fair competence. Nevertheless, and though there is nothing to ' show that he squandered his patrimony, Dryden seems to have been always counted poor by others ; and his poverty was a matter of frequent complaint on his own part. Three years after his father's death he left Cambridge, and was introduced into a subordinate public office by his maternal £►■ •<*- : 4> JOHN DR YDEN. 93 relative Sir Gilbert Pickering, who was a member of Cromwell's Council, and of his House of Lords. Dryden was perhaps his clerk or secretary, and it may be concluded that he adhered at the time to the same political views. The first known verses of Dryden were written in 1649, being Lines on the Death of Lord Hastings, a young nobleman of pro- mise who had died of smallpox on the eve of marriage : here the style is ambitious and extravagant, with many overstrained conceits like a poor imitation of Donne or Cowley. It is not known that he ever again attempted the same style, nor indeed that he resumed writing poetry for the comparatively long term of nine years ; his next verses of any consequence being the Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell, 1658. So great a subject found in Dryden a poet young indeed, and only beginning to wield his powers like a master, yet not unequal to the occasion. The year 1660 came, and with it came Charles II. to deal with the England left him by Cromwell ; to this oc- casion also Dryden was ignobly equal, and produced his Astrcea Redux. Not long afterwards he was enrolled a member of the newly founded Royal Society — probably in virtue of some verses of his on modern philosophy prefixed to Dr. Charleton's Treatise on Stonehenge. We next have to contemplate Dryden in the character of a dramatist ; a character which he sustained for many years, with no little acceptance among his contemporaries, although now, and for a century or more past, his dramas barely survive in the quality of literary curiosities, unread save by the fewest, and regarded as marked examples of inflation and artificial inspira- tion, perversions of a forcible, strenuous, and rich nature. This nature asserts itself notwithstanding, and makes the works the object of active disapproval, rather than negligent unconcern, to those who will still be at the pains to examine them. Energy and capacity abound ; the discipline and beauty of proportion, the authentic accent of truth, are deficient. The first of the $ 94 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. plays, printed some years after stage-performance, and probably written in 1663, was named the Wild Gallant, a comedy: it was unsuccessful on the boards, and was afterwards considerably altered. The other comedies, mostly in prose, were Sir Martin Mar-all, 1668; An Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer, 1671 ; Marriage a la Mode, 1673 ; the Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery, same year, summarily driven off the stage ; Limber- ham, or the Kind 'Keeper, 1680, prohibited after the third night as indecent, and altered in printing ; Amphitryon, after Plautus and Moliere, 1690, a stage-hit. The Royal Ladies, published in 1664, was -a rhymed play. With this we may class the tragicomedies: Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen, 1668; the Tempest, 1670, done in conjunction with Sir William Davenant, and Troilus and Cressida, 1679, both, with pre- sumptuous ruthlessness, altered from Shakespeare ; the Spanish Friar, 1681, a felicitous and very popular composition, which we may reckon as Dryden's masterpiece in comedy, aimed against the Roman Catholics ; Love Triumphant, produced in 1694 without success, and, with one ultimate exception, the last of his dramatic works. Of rhymed tragedies, or (as he was wont to call them) heroic plays, we have the Lndian Queen, written in conjunction with Sir Robert Howard, towards 1665 ; the Lndian Emperor (Montezuma), a sequel to the preceding, 1667, containing afamous description of night; Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr, composed in seven weeks in 1672; Almanzor, or the Conquest of Granada, in two parts, an extra- vagant but fascinating performance, much assailed by the critics of fhe.day, 1672 ; Amboyna, in verse and prose, 1673, written even more rapidly than the Royal Martyr, for the purpose of inflaming the English against the Dutch during the war with that nation ; Aurengzebe, 1675, a drama on a contemporary potentate, about the most elaborate of all Dryden's plays. Some later tragedies are in unrhymed verse : All for Love, or the World well Lost, 1678, the story of Antony and Cleopatra, -«$>«£ JOHN DR YD EN. 99 with his general planning and revision. Shortly before the appearance of Dryden's first part, Lord Shaftesbury had been committed to the Tower; at a later date the grand jury found no true bill against him, and a medal was struck to com- memorate this triumph of the anti-court party ; and Dryden again, in this same year 1681, came out with a satirical poem named The Medal, for which Charles II. presented him with a hundred broad pieces. His next work of importance was the Religio Laid, one of the very few poems which he wrote, apparently, for the mere purpose of self-expression, without ulterior object, or some immediate occasion. He here sets forth the sentiments of a moderate and hardly sectarian christian, with an original and still subsisting bias towards natural religion — one of his main positions being the salvability of virtuous heathens. A certain animus against priestcraft and priests is traceable in many of his writings. Charles II. died in February 1685, and his Roman- Catholic brother James II. ascended the throne : and soon after that event Dryden also announced himself a convert to Catholicism. As was natural and inevitable, a deal of satire and clamour on so opportune a change of faith ensued. At the present day we can only say that the change may have been perfectly genuine, however suspicious; and that at any rate Dryden adhered to it, with every ostensible mark of sincerity, to the close of his life, and long after a reconversion from Catholicism would have been as suitable to his then worldly interests as his original conversion had seemed when it occurred. It is said that as a boy he had been brought up an Anabaptist; which may perhaps be true, but no confirmatory evidence is adduced. It has also been alleged that he thought at one time of taking orders in the English Church — a statement expressly denied by himself in print. His emoluments increased by ^100 a year during the reign of the Catholic sovereign, the appointment of Histo- riographer being added to that of Poet Laureate. -HH* * LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. About this time he translated Maimbourg's History of the League, and his name appears to a translated Life of St. Francis Xavier, also to an answer to Bishop Burnet's Remarks upon Varillas's History of Heresies. He was for several years in such repute that something or other from his pen was regarded as almost necessary to the success of any literary undertaking : in this way he wrote prefatory Lives of Polybius Lucian, and Plutarch, and translated (it has been said in- termediately from the French) the First Book of Tacitus. In 1687 he published the longest of all his poems, The Hind and the Panther; in which the Hind symbolizes the Roman-Catholic Church, and the Panther the Anglican. The consorting and colloquies of these two church-beasts, their theological argu- ments and historical disquisitions, their reserved courtesies and frugal meals, make up the strangest and most incongruous jumble which can well be imagined: the reasonings are in themselves speciously expressed, but void of all cogency to a mind that thinks for itself, and declines to be put-off with assumptions and beggings of the question. It is difficult to conceive how any man with the strong sense and intellectual grasp of Dryden could possibly imagine that the conflicting claims of the two churches might properly be embodied in the persons, or discussed through the gullets, of a Hind and a Panther : to narrate our national history in the form of the adventures of the Lion and the Unicorn were fully as reason- able an attempt. He cannot be acquitted of the solecism on the ground of any dictation from higher quarters, for he himself expressly averred that he wrote voluntarily, and without any pres- sure. The work was composed during the winter of 1686-7, an ^ the beginning of the spring ; and was finished about a fortnight after the king's celebrated Declaration for Liberty of Conscience had been promulgated. The Revolution ensued in 1688 ; James II. vanished from the scene, and William III. was king ; and the Roman-Catholic Jh JOHN DRYDEN. Dryden lost of course his post of Poet Laureate, and had to endure the sight of Shadwell — Og, of all men or reptiles in the world — installed in his place. His gorge rose, and he wrote the satire entitled Mac Flecknoe — Shadwell being here affiliated intellectually upon Flecknoe, another of the bad or indifferent versifiers whom Dryden contemned. Lord Dorset, in his quality of Lord Chamberlain, had to eject Dryden from the Laureateship : he tempered this reverse of fortune by allowing the poet a certain salary at the time, but this hardly abated the sufferer's complaints. In 1693 Dryden brought out a new version of Juvenal and Persius, with a large discourse on satire prefixed ; five of the satires of the former writer, and all those of the latter, being done by Dryden himself : two of his sons, John and Charles, executed one each after Juvenal. Another and more celebrated translation from the Latin soon followed. In 1694 Dryden began his version (termed by Pope "the most noble and spirited translation that I know in any language ") of all the principal works of Vergil — the Pastorals, Georgics, and ALneid: it was published in 1697 — a subscription, then very unusual, being got up for its production. His last volume was the one named Fables, containing (besides some works to which the title rightly applies) modernizations of Chaucer, tales versified from Boccaccio, the second Ode on St. Cecilia's Day {Alexander's Feast), the First Book of the Iliad translated, and the Parting of Hector and Andromache from the same epic. Dryden indeed contemplated translating the whole of the Iliad, and declared his preference for Homer over Vergil : yet perhaps the non-fulfilment of his project is no great loss to poetry. His Homeric specimens seem to me decidedly inferior to Pope's. The 'Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, certainly at the present date the most generally read and admired of all its author's compositions, occupied a fortnight in September 1697 : it was reluctantly undertaken at the urgent request of the Stewards of St. Cecilia's Feast. The earlier "TT $, 4> LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. i Ode on a like occasion — which has not the same dramatic impulse and fire, but can hardly be pronounced inferior to the second on any other ground — had been produced in 1687. This volume of Fables was put together in fulfilment of a contract to deliver 10,000 verses for ^268. 15s., which sum was to be made up to ^300 as soon as a second impression of the work should be called for. The volume contains about 12,000 verses, and must therefore have both completed and exceeded the contract. Dryden was in fact, in his latest years, dependent on the booksellers. In the preface to this volume he avers that his faculties are as vigorous as ever, — only his memory in some degree impaired, and that not greatly : and assuredly no writer could be named whose powers continued more constantly maturing and mellowing, or whose work in advanced age exhibits more entire freedom from senility, than Dryden. He had now for some while been crippled in his limbs ; and a neglected inflammation in a toe resulted in mortification of the leg, which put a period to the poet's life on the 1st of May 1700. He was then residing in Gerard Street, Soho. On the 13th he was buried in Westminster Abbey, next to Chaucer. There is an odd story of an interference by Lord Jefferies — ostensibly the act of a well-disposed admirer, but really prompted byfoiward and intrusive impertinence — having led to confusion and delay in the funeral : the details however are neither very certain nor remarkably important. Of the facts of Dryden*s private and domestic life not many particulars are known. Towards 1665 he married Lady Elizabeth Howard (who survived him), daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, under circumstances which (according to a satire imputed to Lord Somers) were not very honourable to either party. They had three sons. Charles became Usher of the Palace to Pope Clement XL, and was accidentally drowned in England in 1704. John was author of a comedy named The * »j JOHN DRYDEN. 103 Husband his own Cuckold, to which the father wrote an epilogue containing (among others) the following lines : " Like some raw sophister that mounts the pulpit, So trembles a young poet at a full pit. . . Nor is the puny poet void of care ; For authors, such as our new authors are, Have not much learning nor much wit to spare, And, as for grace, to tell the truth, there's scarce one But has as little as the very parson. . . . The poet has one disadvantage more — That, if his play be dull, he's damned all o'er, Not only a damned blockhead, but damned poor. . . . You cannot from our absent author hope He should equip the stage with such a fop. Fools change in England,- and new fools arise*; For, though the immortal species never dies, Yet every year new maggots make new flies. But, where he lives abroad, he scarce can find One fool, for million that he left behind." Erasmus Henry, the third son, born in 1669, entered a religious order, .inherited the family baronetcy, and died in 17 10. — Dryden affirmed his own constitution to be saturnine, and not sprightly ; he would also appear to have been reserved or even cold in manner, querulous, and somewhat addicted to boasting of his aristocratic friends. One of his enemies says that his conversation was licentious : his writings certainly were so in several instances. This he acknowledged and regretted in the preface to his Fables. " I am sensible," he says, " as I ought to be, of the scandal I have given by my loose writings ; and make what reparation I am able by this public acknowledgment. ... I shall say the less of Mr. Collier because in many things he has taxed me justly ; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine which can be truly argued of ob- scenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph : if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance." Dryden believed in judicial astrology, •4* 104 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. and is credited with having made, according to this system, some prognostications that were wondrously fulfilled : a letter of his, dated in September 1697, shows that he had cast the nativity of his son Charles, and up to that date all had come true. A curt and ill-natured epitaph " intended for his wife " is printed among Dryden's works: it hardly looks worthy of his hand, and was assuredly unworthy of any moderately tender heart. " Here lies my wife. Here let her lie : Now she's at rest, and so am I." On the whole, however, it would appear that Dryden main- tained a fair character for moral propriety and domestic affection. Congreve, who knew him intimately, puts forward the finer side of his nature in the following observations, which are probably not only friendly but substantially fair as well. " He was of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate, ready to forgive injuries, and capable of a sincere reconcili- ation with those who had offended him. His friendship, where he professed it, went beyond his professions. He was of a very easy, of very pleasing access, but somewhat slow, and as as it were diffident, in his advances to others : he had that in his nature which abhorred intrusion into any society whatever. He was therefore less known, and consequently his character became more liable to misapprehensions and misrepresenta- tions : he was very modest, and very easily to be discounte- nanced in his approaches to his equals or superiors. As his reading had been very extensive, so was he very happy in a memory tenacious of everything that he had read. He was not more possessed of knowledge than he was communicative of it : but then his communication was by no means pedantic, or imposed upon the conversation, but just such, and went so far, as, by the natural turn of the conversation in which he was engaged, it was necessarily promoted or required. He was extremely ready and gentle in his correction of the errors of JOHN DR YDEM. 105 any writer who thought fit to consult him, and full as ready and patient to admit the reprehensions of others in respect of his own oversights or mistakes." Certainly "modest" and "diffident" are not exactly the adjectives for those qualities which one discerns as uppermost in the writings, verse and prose, of " glorious John," the master of the " full-resounding line " : on the contrary, there is a great deal of self-assertion, and an oyerbrimming contempt and browbeating of other men, their persons, intellects, perform- ances, and opinions. Still, we can understand that, in a certain sense and with some people, Dryden may have been diffident and modest : that he was other than genial, manly, and attach- ing, we should find it difficult to believe. In his literary character, susceptibility to censure was a marked trait ; but he was neither depressed nor disconcerted under such conditions, but of those who "do well to be angry," and who fly headlong to recrimination and revenge. Our poet used to be bled and purged before writing: and one may readily conjecture that there was sufficient occasion for such treatment, and no exces- sive castigation resultant from it. He dispensed favour to young authors ; frequented Will's Coffeehouse, and was arbiter of any literary dispute there. He must have been on terms of acquaintanceship with Milton, who, as Dryden relates, informed him " that Spenser was his original." He does not appear to have been laborious in his own work, nor very much of a scholar, although his writings display a large range of diversified knowledge appositely used : he was negligent and unequal, and perhaps never, after once publishing a poem, returned to it for revision and improvement. One great project, which Dryden never so much as began carrying out, is indicated in the dedi- cation to his play of Aurengzebe. He intended to write an epic on an English subject, of date neither clpse nor remote. This idea is further developed in the preface to his Juvenal and Persius ; he had designed an epic on King Arthur or the Black ¥ -** io6 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. Prince, and in the supernatural mechanism of the poem (then accepted as a necessity for epical work) would have imagined the Guardian Angels of the several kingdoms — which Dr. Johnson not inaptly terms "the most reasonable scheme of celestial interposition that ever was formed." Dryden charged Blackmore with having stolen his subject from him. The poet's portrait is preserved in the Hall of Trinity Col- lege, Cambridge, and shows a face of so much masculine sanity and gentleness as predisposes us to credit all the good, and dis- regard all the evil, which could be propounded of its original. The features are well-set and comely, and the whole coun- tenance has the breadth of intellectual and personal self- possession — large resources largely and beneficially utilized. Robustness is the great characteristic of Dryden's poetry ; he is often excessive, but it is the excess of faculty, not of endeavour. Whatever he does is done with solidity and superiority: he dominates his subject and his reader, and effects this by the direct unlaboured expression of himself. Animated and resolute conception finds its precise and ample equivalent in nervous diction. The Roman writers nourished his style, which took in his hands such sturdy and full-bodied dimensions as to constitute, though without any extraordinary originality to start with, the nucleus of a new school; the Roman writers far rather than those of the Romance tongues of modern Europe, so prolific in their influence upon preceding British literature.' It was doubtless with surprise no less than zealous delight that in his old age Dryden discovered for him- self the magic of Chaucer, as in his youth the unapproached profusion and profundity of Shakespeare. His greatest power, hardly exercised until he had reached the maturity of his age, was in satire — satire into which be poured the whole energy of his temperament, even more than the brilliancy of his mind, and which represents chiefly vehement invective, as distinct from the sting and scintillation of epigram or lampoon. The -4»« ** JOHN DR YDEA*. 107 abounding sweep and resilient strength of his versification form another of his prime excellences ; and he may almost be said to have remoulded the English heroic measure — puffing it out to excess, it should fairly be admitted, with triple rhymes and rolling Alexandrines. His were essentially a mind and a hand which grasped and used their materials — educing from them the utmost for his own purposes, and leaving them to his successors drained and flaccid for further service. ¥> >-/ A - •+X POETS BORN BETWEEN DRYDEN AND POPE. Katharine Philips c. 1632 to 1664. Thomas Sackville Earl of] .,„„ , r „, Dorset j l6 37 t0 J 7° 6 - Sir Charles Sedley c. 1639 to 1701. Aphra Behn 1644 to 1689. Tohn Wilmot Earl of Roches- 1 , _ . £C ter : \ l6 47 t0 l68 °- Richard Blackmore c. 1650 to 1729. Thomas Otway 1651 to 1685. Nathaniel Lee c. 1655 to c. 1690. John Norris 1657 to 1711. Matthew Prior 1664 to 1721. Sir John Vanbrugh 1666 to 1726. Jonathan Swift 1667 to 1744. William Congreve 1670 to 1729. COLLEY ClBBER 1671 to 1757- Ambrose Philips 1671 to 1749. Joseph Addison 1672 to 1719. Nicholas Ro we 1673 to 1718. Isaac Watts 1674 to 1748. John Philips 1676 to 1708. Thomas Parnell , 1679 to 1717. Edward Young 1684101765. Thomas Tickell 1686 to 1740. Allan Ramsay 1686 to 1758. John-Gay 1688 to 1732. -4 ALEXANDER POPE. A poet of an artificial age, and of artificial life, who is truly a poet, is a possession to be proud of: England can claim in Pope such a poet of her own. The question whether Pope was a poet was already familiar to critical readers in the time of Dr. Johnson, and was re-debated with some acrimony about half a century ago. Some very able and acute writers of that time, such as Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb, fervid with admi- ration for our older authors, and able to appeal to so great an authority as Wordsworth, and to so strong a manifestation as Keats of very different influences in actual poetic production, were then prominent, and not inclined to allow much in favour of such conceptions and methods as Pope had more especially exemplified. The chief champion however of the anti-Pope sect was the Rev. Mr. Bowles, himself an accredited writer of verse. With him Byron did battle : and few things speak more strongly for the intrinsic health and toughness of Byron's judg- ment than the fact that he, a poet whose genius developed in such entirely different forms, stood up vigorously and unyield- ingly for the poetic name and fame of Pope. It may indeed be said that he somewhat overdid the thing, and expressed for "the little Queen Anne's man" an exceptional and enthusiastic homage which might certainly have been tendered with more absolute appropriateness to some other among the great names of England's and the world's literature. But, however this may be, Byron stemmed a flood of semi-sincere and semi-discerning A. ~e»4 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. cavils against the object of his worship, and we should all be grateful to him for having done so, and thus vindicated — across the lapse of a century, and the inevitable changes in direction of thought and models of writing — the essential and indefeas- ible communion of poetic mind. After Byron, no one need be ashamed to confess, in the face of all idealists, subtilizers, adorers of couleur locale or " word-painting," votaries of Nature, medieval romanticists, or classical purists (and among these classes will be found all orders of mind, from the most exalted to mere hocuspocus-mongers), that he regards Pope as a poet, and even a great one. To consider merely antecedent likeli- hood, a strong case might be made out for the probable assump- tion of Pope's being a poet. He was recognized as such by his own generation; and even the most inveterate objectors may be expected to allow that, between the days of Dryden and those of Blake and Burns, there was no one to contest the palm of supremacy with Pope. 1 Now it vs, prima facie by no means likely that, in a period which we all know to have been one of great literary exertion, more than two generations of men should have passed away without producing one veritable poet ; which nevertheless we affirm to have been the case in our country, if we say that Pope beats all his verse-writing com- petitors between Dryden and Blake or Burns, and yet was him- self no poet after all. Perhaps the sum of intellect, and the 1 1 suppose the names that would most nearly be put in competition are those of Allan Ramsay, Thomson, Gray, Collins, Cowper, and Chatterton (dates of birth ranging from 1686 to 1752) : scarcely Young or Goldsmith (1684 to 1731). These names I must leave to the suffrages of their respective zealots, conscious that something might be said in favour of Gray, and cer- tain that something would be said in favour of Cowper, upon whom, as the reviver of ' ' Nature " in poetry, there has been a considerable run for many years past. For my own part, I could not at all allow the claims of Cowper as making head against those of Pope : but it may farther be observed that the period of Cowper's poetic activity began in fact after that of Blake, and only four years before that of Burns, so that he is barely to be reckoned in the comparison, even in point of date. Chatterton was a great and fertile beginning. ALEXANDER fUFE. potentialities of its achievement, are very nearly the same in any one generation as in another ; and, after the literary sense has been thoroughly aroused in a country, and the poetic art shown forth and even consummately realized, it is difficult to suppose that the very best man of his time, practising poetry with all the ardour of a genuine vocation, with a corresponding conviction on his own part, with boundless acceptance from his contemporaries, and with uncontested and utterly incontestable skill and mastery of both the intellectual and technical kinds, should nevertheless have been something other than a poet — devoid of that single faculty, or exquisite and inexpressible integer of faculties, which severs the poet from the many men of letters, and qualifies him to be the singer for his own time, and for long processionary years ensuing. The fact is that, in a very artificial age (and such was the age of Pope), an artificial poet is the highest poet attainable : his very artificiality of matter and style is his authentication as poet. This may sound like a paradox : yet it is hardly more paradoxical than the statement that a gold coin is equally gold whether stamped with the effigy of Alexander the Great or of Louis Quinze, of Cromwell or of Charles the Second, of Napoleon the First or Napoleon the Third. The only condition, then, on which we can have real poets in an artificial age, is that they also should be in a measure artificial : on that condition we can have them, and in Pope England had one truly supereminent. The artifi- ciality of the age he lived in was to him not wholly factitious : it was his atmosphere, and partly his nature. That he should have been as natural as Theocritus, as terrible as ^Eschylus, as austere as Lucretius, as supernal as Dante, as knightly as Chaucer, as noble as Milton, was simply and totally impossible : nay, had it even been possible, such a result would in him have been in some degree spurious, for it could only have en- sued from his prepensely and pertinaciously going out of his age and of himself— and that is not the process which makes a "&*■ LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. poet, or ever did make one. There seems to be something both shortsighted and ungracious in denying the laurel to Pope : shortsighted, for the conditions which affected his poetic posi- tion are intrinsically the same which must operate in any and every highly artificial age, and to reject Pope would go far towards the temerity of banning poetry out of all such recurrent periods ; ungracious, for he gave us the best outcome of the best mind of his time, and in the best of its forms. Let us then (if I may assume to speak for the reader as well as myself) rest contentedly and gratefully in the conviction that Pope was a poet— the only sort of poet that we were likely to get out of the reigns of Anne and George the First ; and moreover, not only the sole sort forthcoming, but an amply good sort for all persons who would enlarge instead of restricting the area of the art, and would fain contemplate the mighty Poetic Spirit work- ing marvellously in all guises and disguises rather than only uttering remote inspirations in some iterated monotone. Alexander Pope was born in Lombard Street, London, on the 21st of May 1688. His father, named also Alexander, was a linen-draper in the Strand, and acquired a handsome compe- tence. It has been said that he belonged to the same family of which the Earl of Downe was the head : the connexion, how- ever, is dubious, and must at any rate have been extremely remote. The mother, Edith Turner, was a daughter of the Lord of the Manor of Towthorpe, Yorkshire : she was one of seventeen children, and survived all the others — as indeed she well might, seeing that she died at the immense age of ninety- three, living no day too long for the tender affection with which her illustrious son cherished and surrounded her. He did not slight her for being " a poor feeble-minded thing," if indeed she was such, nor count her "unworthy any one's care or esteem " : these not very feeling expressions are the description of old venerable Mrs. Pope handed down to us by Mrs. Piozzi. •^ ALEXANDER POPE. 113 Both Pope's parents were Roman-Catholics, the father being a devout religionist ; some have alleged, but no one has furnished proof, that he was a convert to Catholicism. Of the large Turner brood, some had been brought up as Catholics, includ- ing Mrs. Pope, others as Protestants. The family had been strenuous royalists in the time of Charles I. Alexander was an exceedingly delicate boy from his birth, and in childhood noted for gentleness. He was " protuberant behind and before," and remained so stunted in stature that, when grown up, he could not sit at table without a raised seat : he was also very nearsighted. In a word, his outer man was a deplorable sample of Nature's handiwork ; and, if we stop short of calling him dwarfish and deformed, we concede as much to courtesy as to truth. Yet his face in manhood, lit up with very vivid eyes, could not be called displeasing : the atten- uated features were sufficiently harmonious, and in an eminent degree expressive and intellectual. His smile was sweet, but to see him laugh was a rarity indeed. Pope's father retired from trade on his earnings towards the date of the Revolution of 1688, still at a comparatively early age. At first he lived at Kensington, and then moved off to Binfield, in the district of Windsor Forest. His fortune was about ^20,000. As he had conscientious scruples against investing it in Government securities, now that the adversaries of Catholicism were so greatly in the ascendant, he simply kept his money by him in a chest, and used it as occasion arose ; and a great part of it had naturally disappeared at the time of his death. The child showed extraordinary precocity : to which perhaps an aunt of his intended to bear her witness when she made him, at the age of five, the reversionary legatee of all her books, pictures, and medals. By the age of seven or eight, up to which time, it appears, he had not gone to school, he was a great devourer of books. When about eight years old he 9 ±, 114 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. was placed under a priest named Banister, in Hampshire, and began learning Latin and Greek. Thence he went to a school at Twyford, near Winchester ■ and afterwards to another near Hyde Park Corner, having left the Twyford establishment in some disgrace, caused by his writing a versified lampoon upon the master — an incident truly predictive of his after career, if the facts have been stated with unembellished accu- racy. At the London school he made a kind of play out of Ogilby's Homer, eked out with some ■ verses of his own — another omen, as it might seem : this dramatic cento was acted by his schoolfellows. When about fifteen years old, after an interval of a couple of years at home, he returned to London for some further schooling in French and Italian : it is doubtful, however, whether at any date he fully mastered either language, although he could read a French book with ease. Indeed, it should be understood that, apt pupil as he proved under all his masters, Pope, as a grown-up man, was mainly self-educated, and was never to be called a scholar, whether in modern or classical literature, or in any other study. No doubt, the little Roman-Catholic schools to which, under the legal oppressions then in force, he was practically restricted, were far from being of such a grade as to make the utmost of his shining natural abilities. After a few more months in London he returned to his family at Binfield ; and then followed five or six years of close study, mostly of the ancient and English poets. Pope began writing verses so early that he could not after- wards remember how far back the beginning dated. Melody, indeed, seemed inborn in the mis-shapen body, for in boyhood his voice was so sweet as to earn him the appellation of " the Little Nightingale " : in later years, nevertheless, he appeared to be indifferent to music. When he returned home to Binfield from his first London school, aged about twelve, he already aimed to become a poet, making Dryden his chief model f versification : and his father seems never to have thwarted the -<£•« * -*f* ALEXANDER POPE, 115 lad's inclination, whatever direction of literary or other culture it may have pointed in. One of Pope's earliest poems was an epic on Alcander, Prince of Rhodes, begun about his thirteenth year. He wrote some 4000 lines of this ponderous perform- ance ; then dropped it, and finally burned the manuscript. Some of the lines, however, appear, and they were good enoughto appear unaltered, in the Essay on Criticism and the Dunciad. His earliest composition, preserved in a complete form, is apparently the Ode to Solitude, which is hardly distin- guished by any rawness from the mature work of Pope himself, or of poetic writers generally. This preceded rather than succeeded the Alcander. Another juvenile effort was the translation of the First Book of the Thebais of Statius, executed at the age of fourteen : but even this had been forestalled by other renderings from the same poet, beginning as far back, it is stated, as Pope's ninth year ! Other works, the modernizations from Chaucer, a lost comedy and tragedy, might further be cited among the products of his precocity : but to enlarge on this matter were now superfluous. At the age of sixteen or seventeen Pope wrote his Pastorals : these were at once shown about and admired, but their publica- tion only ensued after an interval of five years (1709). Sir William Trumball, of East Hamstead near Binfield, was per- haps the first person to recognize Pope's, great literary promise, in 1705 : he introduced him to the aged dramatist Wycherley, who so far valued and confided in his juvenile friend as to entrust him with the revision of his miscellaneous poems. The task was probably too faithfully executed, and the natural con- sequence followed — ruffled self-esteem and alienation. Besides Trumball, Walsh, the poetical writer and critic, encouraged Pope and his Pastorals ; also Henry Cromwell, an amateur critic and country-gentleman, partly domiciled in London, whose acquaintance Pope made towards 1 708, and with whom he carried on a correspondence which afterwards had an im -i 116 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. portant influence on the current of the poet's celebrity and conduct. It was at the age of seventeen that he preluded his public appearance among literary adventurers by frequenting the noted rendezvous of such personages — Will's Coffeehouse in Russell Street, Covent Garden. The history of Pope's writings is the history of his quarrels. He was far too conspicuously gifted to be an object of indiffer- ence to other men of letters, whether magnates, aspirants, or pretenders : those who looked down upon his person with derision had to look up to his pen with envy or trepidation. And he himself, supremely touchy, splenetic, and dauntless, and endowed with a terrific power of the lash, of which he was naturally as conscious as were all the victims who writhed beneath it, was no sooner touched than he was touched to the quick : on his thin skin a scratch was a scarification, and woe be to the wretch who, in spite, wantonness, or, inadvertence, happened to inflict it. As we have seen already, he could not so much as oblige Wycherley by annotating the margins of his verse without offending him : and his first publication, the Pas- torals, soon generated an amount of bad blood such as seems to have been uniformly and surprisingly absent from the Doric competitions of Corydon and Menalchas. These poems were published in Tonson's Poetical Miscellany, which volume con- tained a few other pieces by Pope, and the Pastorals of 'Ambrose Philips. The last-named performances were reviewed with great applause in the Guardian, a paper with which Philips, as a zealous Whig, stood in high favour. Pope was nettled at this ; and with a delicious ingenuity of malice (which both the moralist and the prudentialist must however note with displeasure, as showing that Pope it was who took the first step, equally superfluous and irretrievable, in that lettered and personal warfare which, passing on from skirmish to skirmish, and from ambush to mel£e, lasted out the remainder of his life) he wrote another review of Philips, contrasting the merits of ■**■■ •4 # ALEXANDER POPE. 117 his Pastorals with those of Pope's own, and professing through- out to give the palm to Philips, although the contrast really presented is manifestly, to a discerning reader, in Pope's favour. The irony was so finely masked that Steele supposed the whole thing to be bona fide, and, receiving the anonymous article, withheld it out of regard to Pope. It was however published in 1 7 13, also in the Guardian: and, its true drift being soon re- cognized, as well as the hand from which it came, the critique so exasperated Philips that, in an ulterior stage of the quarrel, he hung up a rod at Button's Coffeehouse, threatening to punish his detractor with it The latter, we may be sure, was not behindhand in hostilities, and incited his easy-going friend Gay to write his well-known Shepherd's Week in ridicule of his foe. The foremost critic of the day, John Dennis, is said to have regarded Pope's Pastorals slightingly. With him therefore the poet, in his next publication, the Essay on Criticism, tried a fall. This work, written in 1709, was issued in J711, and Dennis naturally retaliated. Next came the ever fresh and fascinating masterpiece, the Rape of the Lock, written in 1711. In its original form, this poem was in only two cantos, which Pope executed in a fortnight : its publication ensued in 17 12. It was at a later date that he conceived and carried out the poetical machinery of the sylphs and gnomes — " airy nothings '' created by a fancy which has almost passed into frivolity, and all the more genuine for that, in their relation to the entire poetical scheme of the work. Addison, now the arch-ruler in the world of letters, more especially in all its Whiggish regions, to whom Pope was introduced in 1 7 1 2, and with whom he was on very friendly terms, advised him against introducing this supernatural by-play ; and (if we regard merely the structural value of the poem, without being biased by the question of its dimensions, and consequent elaboration and importance) I am not certain but that most readers of the present day would --* n8 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. agree with Addison. The author however stood firm, and carried the public with him ; some degree of ruffled amour propre, arising from this incident, may perhaps have conduced to the after-breach of amity'between the two eminent allies. The briefest reference to the facts whereon the poem of the Rape of the Lock was founded must here suffice. The real heroine of the incident, which had recently produced a few wrinkles of excitement on the surface of that shallow pool Fashionable Society, was Miss Arabella Fermor : the author of the " rape " itself was Lord Petre — both belonging to the Catholic aristocracy. Miss Fermor, who shortly afterwards became Mrs. Perkins, was naturally elated by so splendid a celebration of her charms ; elated, and yet it would seem also partly offended that a mere nobody, of a poet should have made so free in print with her adventures. — In 1713 the poem of Windsor Forest, partly written at the age of sixteen, was pub- lished. It was about this time that Pope made some attempts in the art of painting, being inclined to add that accomplish- ment to his more special gift of verse. He studied under the portrait-painter Jervas, and got some of his friends to sit for their likenesses : but he never proceeded far in this occupa- tion, his nearsightedness being a serious obstacle. The great undertaking of Pope in the translation of the Iliad, which led to the most overt acts of his hostility with Addison, was preceded by some other incidents telling in the same direction. In his writing a prologue to Addison's Cato ( 1 7 1 3) there was indeed nothing but friendliness and handsome literary support ; nor yet in his shortly afterwards, when his old enemy Dennis had fallen foul of the pompous tragedy of the Whig dramatist, writing and publishing anonymously the Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris on the Frenzy of John Dennis — Norris being a quack physician of the time, and the idea of the skit boldly borrowed from that of Swift upon the prophet Partridge. But it was not quite pleasant to Pope to find Addison -* -*► ALEXANDER POPE. 119 (who may or may not have known the real authorship of the pamphlet, and who had at any rate a right to dislike an excess ot volunteered zeal which ran over into scurrility) writing to the publisher to express disapprobation of the performance. The publication of the Homeric translation was definitely projected in the same year, 17 13, the work having been commenced in 1712 : the first four Books issued from the press in 1715, and the whole came to a conclusion in 1720. The Rev. William Broome and some others helped Pope in the notes. The poet obtained 575 subscribers for his work, and received from it the large sum of .^5320. 4s. : this relieved him from many difficulties, and was usefully invested in annuities on his life. The year 1715, which witnessed the publication of the first four Books of Pope's version, saw also the appearance of the first Book in a translation executed by Addison's familiar friend and literary protegk Tickell. A far less suspicious coincidence would have sufficed to fire Pope's mind with jealous and angry mis- givings. He attributed the rival publication to Addison's influence, and even to the latter's own pen, sneakingly active under the name of Tickell : and in fact Addison did so far espouse the cause of the less famous bard as to affirm that Tickell's Iliad " had more of Homer." " However, it is not now believed that Addison had any direct concern in Tickell's work. Besides this supposed cause of offence, Pope fancied that Addison had set-on a Mr. Gildon to malign him. Embit- tered by these ideas, he wrote-off the memorable lines on " Atticus " — or rather the first draft of them — now forming a portion of the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, published in 1735 ; and he sent the manuscript to his distrusted friend. Whether 1 No one perhaps knows at the present day — I at any rate do not — whether Addison was right or wrong in this assertion ; for Tickell's translation proved but an abortive embryo which, overpowered by the popularity of Pope's, lived no longer than its first Book. But, as Pope's version has little indeed of Homer, Tickell's might certainly have had more, and yet have been a very poor performance. «Sfr LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. through shame, fear, or let us prefer to believe through his own substantial guiltlessness, " Mr. Addison used me " (so said Pope) " very civilly ever after " ; indeed he wrote in the Free- holder of Pope's Iliad as competing with Dryden's Aineid. The bond of cordiality however was broken, not to be re-knit. Steele endeavoured to effect a reconciliation between the two : but Addison proved to be distant in a personal interview, and Pope was haughty. The translation of the Iliad was enormously admired, and gave its writer such a position in the world of letters as perhaps none of his own original poems, however brilliant and popular, would wholly have availed to procure him. It was followed by the version of the Odyssey, completed in 1725 : the contract for this work was somewhat less advan- tageous than that for the Iliad, nor were Pope's personal labours upon it equally great. Broome and Elijah Fenton, who received between ^700 and j£8oo for their work, while Pope retained about ^3700, were his confederates in the trans- lation, the former writing also the notes : twelve Books alone are the work of Pope. 1 Having achieved this task, he deter- mined to translate no more. Between these two translations he had brought out, in 17 21, his edition of Shakespeare. It was far from being the work of a thorough scholar in the litera- ture of that period, and, as a standard edition, has sunk into deserved disregard : nevertheless it contains many acute re- marks and suggestions, including several conjectural emendations which have been generally adopted. Theobald pointed out the defects of the work : this mortified Pope, and he regretted having ever engaged in so extraneous an undertaking. Neither had Theobald, after a while, much reason to con- gratulate himself upon having intermixed in it. We have reached the year 1725, the thirty-eighth of Pope's life; and will now take a brief glance at his domestic cir- 1 I.e. Books 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 17, 21, 22, 24 : Books *, 6, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 23, are by Broome, and 1, 4, 19, and 20, by Fenton. cumstances. In 17 15 he had persuaded his father to sell the estate at Binfield, and he himself purchased a house at Chiswick, to which he removed with both his parents; and in no great literary personage does deep unaffected filial piety, in the ordinary wear and tear of life, shine brighter and purer than in Pope, the exasperated .satirist, courted associate of geniuses and of princes. The father died in October 17 17. The mother then, in 17 18, removed with the poet to a house in Twickenham of which he bought the lease — being the villa, with its grounds of five acres, which became so famous to contemporaries and to posterity. The grounds received great alterations, and the addition of a " grotto," from Pope's assiduous care ; the house itself under- went but little change. Mrs. Pope, as we have already seen, survived till the age of ninety-three, expiring in 1733, when the life of Pope himself was within eleven years of its term. The other enduring affection of his life (apart from friendships with men of letters or of society, among whom he had several close intimates) was with Miss Martha Blount. His relation to this lady has been matter of much speculation, conjecture, scrutiny, and suspicion. The Blounts were a Roman-Catholic family at Mapledurham in Oxfordshire, with whom Pope had been familiar in early youth, from the year 1707. The head of the family was Mr. Lister Blount : his two daughters, Teresa and Martha, were born respectively in 1688 and 1690, and were therefore of very much the same age as the poet. He, it seems, had at first shown a predilection for the elder and handsomer sister, Teresa, and this continued for some years ; but eventually he taxed her with prudishness, and also with the very opposite misdemeanour of intriguing with a married man, and his strong liking turned into distinct aversion. Martha then ruled supreme ; although indeed at one time, towards 1722-23, Pope appeared to be somewhat enamoured of Miss Judith Cowper, the niece of the Lord Chancellor. 4* T $ LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. She married another person in the latter year. His intimacies with Martha Blount, who in his later years was to be found domiciled in his house from time to time, were a topic of scandal with many, and the opinions even of his more recent biographers have differed as to the facts, or probable facts, of the case. On the whole, the more likely opinion appears to be that the crippled valetudinarian was not in this instance either a. gay Lothario or an amoureux transi : he regarded Martha Blount with a sentiment in which love coloured but did not absorb friendship, and she responded with kindred feelings — not, it may well be believed, strictly untrue or self-interested, although it has been strongly affirmed that towards the close of his life she treated him with careless, and on occasion even with callous, neglect. There seems to be no adequate ground for the story that on his deathbed he offered her marriage. What is certain is that he left her the bulk of his property, " out of sincere regard and long friendship for her," as his will said; and what is reluctantly surmised by those who tender his good name is that on one occasion, wishing to make an investment for Martha's benefit, he descended to accepting a sum of ;£iooo from the Duchess of Marlborough as hush- money to escape the publication of attacks which he had written against the Duke, and probably against the Duchess herself as well. The ineffaceable lines on "Atossa" {Characters of Women) would perhaps have been cheaply bought-off by her Grace at^iooo: they were suppressed during the author's lifetime, but at his death were found to be already in print, in preparation for a new edition. It should be added that diligent modern investigation has shown good ground for be- lieving that Atossa was not intended for the Duchess of Marlborough at all. The complicated affair of Pope's letters next demands our attention : it still remains in some degree mysterious, but un- fortunately the leading facts are now understood only too ■A && ALEXANDER POPE. 123 clearly for the poet's reputation. The less the mystery, the less the respect which can be accorded to him. In 1726 Pope's early letters addressed to Mr. Cromwell were published by one of the notorieties of the day, the piratical bookseller Curll, to whom they had been consigned by Cromwell's mistress. In 1735 the same foul bibliopolical hands ushered into the world a volume of the correspondence that had passed between Pope and various friends. The poet— poor injured undesigning creature — tried the effect of a prosecution of the publisher before the House of Lords for breach of privilege, as letters from some of the Peers were included in the volume : but this effort failed. Then Pope, denouncing the inaccuracy of the surreptitious edition, as well as the wrongful interference with his privacy, professed that the only course open to him for self-vindication was to bring out another authorized and correct edition: and this he accordingly produced in 1737. These letters overflowed with friendship, philanthropy, moral recti- tude, and the finest sentiments in the repertory : they reflected the highest credit upon Pope in the eyes of an admiring and believing public, and subserved his literary fame as well — the publication of any series of letters, and such well-composed letters to boot, being at that time an innovation. But what if it should turn out that the whole affair of the garbled piratical edition was a got-up scheme of Pope's own — a mere device to satisfy his itch for applause, by paving the way to the pro- duction of his own nominally enforced, but in reality forecast and eagerly desired, edition — a plot conceived with as much tortuous disingenuousness as it was based on uneasy vanity, and carried out with effrontery? This, doleful to relate, is what does turn out. Curll, and the respectable bookseller Lintot who was Pope's accustomed publisher, testified that they had received simultaneous clandestine offers of the correspondence, before Curll closed with the proposal, and issued the pirated edition : and a painter named Worsdale -*!^ *y 124 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. professed to have been the messenger who sought out Curll, and this at the instance of Pope himself. When the minutise of the authorized edition are examined, this correspondence proves to be hardly more honourable to the writer than the petty scheming connected with the original issue : both equally evince his readiness to use any small arts which would assist him in posing for effect. For instance, Pope induced one of his friends, a Sussex squire of no particular importance named Caryll, to send back the letters which the poet had addressed to him, on the pretext of the danger of their falling into the hands of Curll or some other such pirate : and these same letters appear in the authorized edition, nominally directed to persons of greater worldly consequence than Caryll. In other letters he not only altered passages, but even changed them into the precise contrary of their original purport. The whole of this affair, in its planning, execution, and details, is alike discreditable to Pope : but, while frankly and emphatically allowing thus much, we should guard against an excess of censure, such as some of the most recent explorers of the facts seem to lapse into. Pope, it is plain, plumed him- self on his letter-writing (which indeed so good a judge as Thackeray has viewed with cordial admiration, though he does not deny its being in some degree artificial) ; he felt inclined to produce it to the world ; and, not finding any obvious straightforward grounds for doing so, he schemed and finessed until the thing was managed, traversing in the process many quaking bogs of equivocation, verbal and acted, and plunging every now and then into a too undeniable quagmire of men- dacity. ' The small and pertinacious trickiness, in its main purpose unharmful enough, deserved punishment, and has amply received it : for this is, of all the transactions of Pope's contentious life, the one which to the present day raises the greatest clamour of disdain and reprobation. Another unpleasant episode is his quarrel with Lady Mary •*■ Wortley Montague. This handsome and brilliant lady made his acquaintance soon after his removal to Chiswick in 1715, at which date she was about twenty-five years of age. For a while they saw one another with mutual delight; and Pope ventured to address her ladyship by letter in a style more befitting a lover than a literary intimate of the infirmest physique. It was probably on account of this very personal insignificance, as well as in unison with the manners of the age, that Lady Mary tolerated such a mode of address, to which she replied with a bantering reciprocity : for at the present day no taint of real' scandal clings round the con- nexion, whatever uncertainties may in earlier times have existed. She returned from abroad to England in 17 18, and the friendship continued. Finally, however, it ceased : whether brought to a sudden close (as some have intimated) by an open and mortifying repulse on some occasion when Pope's expressions of gallantry exceeded a reasonable measure, or gradually worn away by recurring collisions and contra- dictions in the commerce of society. Pope, in ceasing to be a friend, became a spiteful enemy, and no one can count to his praise the verses wherein he insulted " Sappho " (Moral Essays, Epistle 2) : nor was Lady Mary wanting in animus when she retorted. To return to the sequence of Pope's literary labours. In 1 7 27 his prose work The Art of Sinking in Poetry was published in a volume of Miscellanies, wherein Swift also bore a part. A number of authors' names are here given under their initial letters only : those who perceived the cap to fit put it on, and complained of Pope's malicious attack — which he however denied, alleging that the initials meant nobody in particular, and had been inserted at random. It is no marvel that this plea lacked believers. The assailed became in their turn assailants, and numerous diatribes against Pope flowed from the press. The armoury of his satire now furnished forth in # -*• A 126 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. revenge the most terrible of all its weapons, the Dunciad. This splendid chef-d 'osuvre was published in 1728, and in that edition Theobald, who had censured Pope's editorship of Shakespeare, figured as the arch-Dunce: some of the notes were written by Pope's intimate friend, the highly estimable Dr. Arbuthnot. The effect of the satire was gradual, but extremely detrimental to its victims : Thackeray indeed has expressed his opinion that this work, and the others in which Pope and Swift attacked the smaller fry of writers, on whom they fixed the nickname of " Grub Street authors," caused a real direct lowering of the social position of professional literary men, reducing their emoluments, and originating the conception, till then only casual and indeterminate, of the " ragged author." The Dunciad was followed up by a series of further attacks on various persons in the paper entitled the Grub Street Journal Tor 1730 to 1737. In 1742 Pope added to the Dunciad a fourth Book, using certain materials which had long been in his mind, but which he now, owing to asthma and other increasing infirmities, abandoned the project of moulding into an independent poem. His idea had been to write a series of Epistles as a kind of sequel to the Essay on Man, exhibiting the limits of human reason, the different capacities and tendencies of individuals, and other the like subject-matter. This fourth Book of the Dunciad was par- ticularly severe on Colley Cibber the dramatist, now Poet Laureate. Cibber replied in a pamphlet, tracing back Pope's animosity to a somewhat remote date, 17 17, and trivial cir- cumstance. Pope had in that year been concerned in a play named Three Hours after Marriage, which found no favour with the audience, chiefly through the fiasco of an incident of two lovers disguising themselves in a mummy and a crocodile. Cibber, in afterwards acting the character of Bayes in The Rehearsal, made a sufficiently harmless allusion to this topic of the day, by way of " gag," and thereby roused the ire of * : 4 * •J* 4- ALEXANDER POPE. 127 Pope, who had an immediate altercation with him behind the scenes. Cibber's pamphlet now proved a fresh cause of offence ; and Pope, issuing one more edition of the Dunciad, substituted Cibber as its hero for Theobald — not however taking the trouble of re-adapting to the frivolous playwright the accessory details which had been drawn up to suit the ponderous commentator. This was the last literary act of Pope, occurring in 1743, only a year before his death. It remains for us to mention the other works of Pope, inter- mediate between the first and the last editions of the Dunciad. His poem regarding the Use of Riches (Epistle Four of the Moral Essays), published in 1731, was regarded as attacking the Duke of Chandos under the name of Timon. This would have been — or we must probably say was — an ungrateful and wanton act on the poet's part, as the Duke had been at any rate civil and obliging to him, if indeed not munificent, as there is some reason to think : severe reflections were made upon Pope's misdeed, but he denied, without convincing any one, that he had aimed his shaft at Chandos. In 1733, before the appear- ance of the surreptitious edition of his letters, Pope brought out anonymously the first Part of the Essay on Man, a grandiose undertaking which he had been meditating for probably not less than eight years. The real authorship of the poem was not at first divined, many precautions having been taken against iden- tification of it, and consequent hostility : it attained, even in its anonymous stage, a large measure of success. The second and third Epistles of this work followed, the authorship being still unavowed, but now more and more shrewdly suspected : when the fourth came out in 1734, Pope's name appeared on the title-page. Lord Bolingbroke, with whom the poet was now extremely intimate, prompted the general philosophical scheme of the poem : he is said to have laughed at Pope for not perceiving that its positions, if followed out to their logical consequences, were antagonistic to Christian revelation. This -«** 128 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. was discerned by M. Crousaz, a Swiss professor, who wrote a criticism attacking the principles of the Essay on Man as being nothing better than natural religion. The Anglican clergyman Dr. Warburton, afterwards a Bishop, came forward unsolicited to defend Pope in the journal named The Republic of Letters. So opportune a service became the origin of a close intimacy between the two writers : Pope founded Warburton's fortunes, saw in his last years more of him than of any other friend, and left him the copyright of all such published works of his as War- burton had then already annotated, or should thereafter be con- cerned with. In 1733 Pope brought out his second (but now numbered first) Epistle on the Use of Riches, the only writing which hints at his being a Catholic; in 1734, that on the Characters of Men, followed by the singularly powerful and fine one on the Characters of Women. He projected treating in blank verse an epic subject which seems hardly adapted to his genius — the fabulous legend of King Brut of Britain : he also had an idea of composing a History of British Poetry. These .designs were not to be fulfilled. At the time when Pope had first begun publishing, in v 1709, the literary men of the Tory party were in favour : his own early patrons, however, were chiefly Whigs, and the Whig statesman Lord Halifax, subsequently to the fall of the Tories in 1714, offered the poet a pension, which he had sufficient in- dependence of spirit to decline. In the latter portion of his life he was definitely and even closely connected with the Tories, more especially with Bolingbroke after the return of the latter in 1723 from his first exile ; and he had ready access to Frederick Prince of Wales, then the hope of all who craved after a change in the politics of George the Second's reign. It may with truth be said that Pope was more of a Tory in his later years than he had been of a Whig in his youth : but in fact he was from first to last alien from politics, and, if he adopted anything of a party tone, it came from his surroundings POPE S VILLA AT TWICKENHAM. goldsmith's birthplace. ALEXANDER POPE. 129 more than from himself, nor did he at any time commit him- self so far with either faction as to become obnoxious to those of the other with whom he was personally in contact. The year 1723, when Bolingbroke returned from exile, was the same in which Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, was ban- ished as being concerned in a plot favouring the Pretender : on that occasion Pope, who knew him well, appeared in court as a witness in his behalf. As his political opinions, so also Pope's religious views appear to have been somewhat indistinct A strict and unbending Roman-Catholic he assu- redly was not, and certainly at times his attitude of mind regarding the general body of christian dogma was more sceptical than orthodox : to call him a resolute unbeliever would however be going too far, and he may perhaps on the whole be termed a christian conformist, who sincerely respected and accepted " the religious idea," and aquiesced in the form which this has received from Christianity, and, in a minor degree, from the Catholic Church. Atterbury pressed him to relinquish the Catholic for the Anglican form of the faith : but this he refused, being in especial unwilling to pain his mother, then still living. On his deathbed he expressed confidence in a future state : and, being asked whether a Catholic priest should be called in, he promptly assented, though he added that he did not regard such a course as essential. In 1729 he had written to Swift: "I am of the 'religion of Erasmus, a Catholic : so I live, so I shall die ; and hope one day to meet you, Bishop Atterbury, the younger Craggs, Dr. Garth, Dean Berkeley, and Mr. Hutchenson, in heaven." This is a wide extent of comprehension. It is not ecclesiastically orthodox, but neither is it anti-religious, and it is at least charitable. In 1744 the frail unsightly frame which had for fifty-five years been kindled with so bright and mounting a spirit was visibly wearing away. Pope was always so weak that he wore stays (or, as Thackeray expresses it, " was sewed up in a buckram 10 130 , LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. suit every morning") : when in a boat on the river, he sat in a sedan-chair. On one occasion, being overturned into the water as his coach was crossing a bridge, he had had a narrow escape with his life. He compared his own form to a spider's : his loving friend Lord Orrery, going a step further, wrote of him one of the most ill-natured designations on record, " Mens curva in corpore curvo." He used to suffer especially severe headaches, which were somewhat mitigated by inhaling the fumes of coffee. He was extremely sensitive to cold. One of his sides was con- tracted, and he could not dress or get to bed without help. With such a person and constitution, Pope's physical enjoy- ments must necessarily have been few : it seems he took what he could get, and was too indulgent to his appetite, more particularly as regards eating. Some have even said that the immediate cause of his death was a surfeit of potted lampreys, eaten from a silver saucepan which he regarded with predilection. This is more than dubious : but Dr. King at any rate opined that Pope had shortened his days by partaking of high-seasoned dishes and by drinking spirits. In May 1 744 life was flickering down. The poet had attacks of delirium, and was peculiarly distressed by an inability to fix his thoughts. Bolingbroke viewed him with keen commiseration. Spence, the author of the well-known Anecdotes, told this sympathizer that Pope, when still rational, was always saying something kind of his friends : and Bolingbroke replied, " I never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or more general friendship for mankind " — a judgment which should be counted as some considerable testimony to the poet's credit, as the intriguing and battered politician was not exactly the man to be hoodwinked by mere verbal platitudes of philanthropic geniality. Pope received the last sacraments according to the rites of his Church ; he after- wards said, " There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship, and indeed friendship is only a part of virtue." On the evening of the 30th of May 1744 he breathed his last, so -Hte" ■^^ <>«— ALEXANDER POPE. 131 placidly that the precise moment was not observed. He is interred at Twickenham. Pope appointed Lord Bolingbroke and the Earl of Marclr mont his executors, the former being entrusted with his manuscripts and unprinted papers. These were not given to the public ; partly, it appears, because Lord Bolingbroke took great offence at finding that Pope had caused to be printed not only, as authorized, a few copies, but an entire and copious edition, of the pamphlet written by his Lordship named The Patriot King. That Pope exceeded his instructions in the matter, and violated his promise, is undeniable : it is not how- ever apparent that he had any interested or mean, still less any hostile or treacherous, motive in this act, — which may therefore most fairly be ascribed to his secretive and scheming habit of mind, as summed up in the phrase quoted by Dr. Johnson, "He hardly drank tea without a stratagem." On the whole he was a faithful friend, and had some genuine attachments — none more so than in the cases of Gay and Swift : he survived the body of the former, and the mind of the latter. In his own family he was, and deserved to be, greatly beloved. His half-sister Mrs. Rackett spoke up for his courage, saying he knew not what fear was, nor is there anything in his career to belie this domestic attestation. Too capable though he certainly was of shuffling and circumventing to attain any aim in view, he never hung back from attacking when an object for his pugnacity presented itself: like that most gallant of small beasts, the hamster, he took all antagonists as they came — mouse, rabbit, horse, bull, wild-cat, wolf, or bear, all were equally flown at and pinned. Yet he was placable too to a fallen foe. In 1733 poor old John Dennis, with whom he had had many a tooth-and-nail encounter, being blind and in distress, Pope wrote a prologue for his benefit- night ; the reader who refers to it will not, I think, agree with those who consider it sneering and ungenerous. Some banter, ■4* 132 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. no doubt, there is : but this appears to be the kindly banter of one who pities and forgives. Notwithstanding his brilliant powers of wit and of expression, Pope was not distinguished in conversation ; nor had he the taste, so prevalent in his time, for card-playing, and other such social if trivial pastimes. He had a fine memory and great diligence, sparing no pains in the revision and polishing of his compositions. It is said that he never printed anything till some two years from the writing of it had elapsed : and in the interim he would pay heed to the suggestions of friends, as well as to his own second thoughts. He was a great admirer of Dryden, and to some extent took that poet's Mac Flecknoe as the model of his Dunciad. Frugality was one of Pope's characteristics, but certainly not miserliness. He wrote his Iliad, as he went along translating, on the backs of letters addressed to him : and there was some degree of stint in the table he spread before his ordinary guests, although at times he would give a truly handsome dinner, well supported in all respects. His income standing at ^800 a year, he systemati- cally bestowed ^100 in charity. That in his maturer years he lived on terms of great familiarity with many men of high rank and station was no more than the fact It was open 'to all people to say as much, and to himself among others, although he may have proclaimed it with increasing frequency, and self- complacency rather more than needful : but he did, and most truthfully could, add the affirmation that he had purchased and secured these intimacies by no sort of servility. Disregard of his own poetry, and indifference to criticism, are two favourite themes in his letters, one as veracious as the other. Pope may be termed the Poet of the Understanding ; not merely in the limited though strictly true acceptation in which Johnson says that good-sense was the fundamental principle of his intellect, but in something of the same spirit in which A. *- ALEXANDER POPE. 133 Kant (so at least he is generally construed) distinguishes the Understanding, as the faculty for knowledge in man, from the Reason, as the primary or intuitional cognitive power. The range of the author of the Rape of the Lock, the Eloisa to Abelard, the Dunciad, the Essay on Man, and the Homeric translations, was certainly not a narrow one, though it ap- pears to the reader more restricted than it really is, seeing that the writer passed all his subject-matter through a some- what uniform and inexpansive mould of execution : but alike in these several excellent works the Understanding predomi- nates — everything is brought to the test of the judging and comparing mind. We can all say, and say with the utmost truth, that a great creative or em'otional nature has a larger share in what is highest in poesy : the riches and strength of Pope were not in that direction. His it was to discern, to analyse, and to express. This he did with admirable force of mind and of speech, and with amplest possession and skilfullest use of such means of poetry as were more specially germane to his time. He will always occupy a great position — the position of that one among the Understanding Intellects who has most clearly appreciated his own true province in Poetic Art, and has wrung from a reluctant and partly a hostile goddess the largest results, conformable wholly to his own mental nature, and in no disproportionate measure to hers. <►. POETS BORN BETWEEN POPE AND THOMSON. William Somervile 1692 to 1742. Richard Savage 1698 to 1743. Robert Blair 1699 to 1746. John Dyer '. 1700 to 1758. David Malloch (or Mallet) ... c. 1700 to 1765. ^ ^ «* >. JAMES THOMSON. The Poet of the Seasons deserved to be born, if not in some scene of natural majesty or magnificence, at least in a spot of rural amenity, away from the dense turmoil of great cities. This boon was accorded him ; the place of his birth being Ednam near Kelso, and the date n September 1 1700. His father was the minister of Ednam, a man distinguished for piety. James received his earliest teaching at Jedburgh Grammar-school. Here, and even at a prior date, he at- tracted, by his taste for poetry, the attention of a neighbouring minister, the Rev. Mr. Riccaltoun, who encouraged his boyish attempts. On leaving this school he went to the University of Edinburgh, and in 17 19 became a student of divinity there — not, probably, a particularly diligent student whether in this or in other branches of the scholastic course. His chief care seems still to have been given to the cultivation of his poetical talents. He used (so the story goes) on every New-year's day to burn the verses of the previous twelvemonth, writing at the same time some lines to set forth the reasons — and doubtless of these there was no lack — that warranted the immolation. It was principally by the advice of friends that he had been swayed towards theological studies, with the prospect of afterwards entering the Scottish Church; his father having died in 1720, during the second session of Thomson's University attendance, ' In some accounts I find 7 September ; but it is not correct. *!*- deeply mourned by him, and his mother with her large family — there had been nine children of the union — having in con- sequence removed into Edinburgh. This mother, Beatrix Trotter, is described as a woman of no little elevation of cha- racter and mind. By birth she was allied to the Hume' race, coheiress of a small estate ; an enthusiastic devotee, imagina- tive, and altogether such a person as, according to the fitness of things, might well give birth to a poet. She lived to see her son a man of celebrity. A small but significant incident is said to have determined Thomson to abandon the ministerial career, and to trust to that of a man of letters, more especially in poetry. In his probation for the Scottish Church he was called on by Dr. Hamilton, the Professor of Divinity, to expound a portion of the irgth Psalm relative to the glory of God. This he did with so much richness and loftiness of language as to entail censure no less than praise. The audience were astonished, and Dr. Hamilton complimented his diction ; but reproved it as not being generally intelligible, and so not .befitting one whose office it would be to preach the gospel to the poor, and do practical work in an undistinguished sphere. The youth now paid enhanced attention to poetry, but received from his circle of acquaintance at least as much discouragement as support. One of the persons who showed the most faith in his poetical vocation was Lady Grisel Bailie, who was at this time, 1725, sojourning in London. This fact, combining with general and well-weighed considerations as to the true sphere for a poet, as yet unknown, to come forward in and secure recognition, determined Thomson to leave without further delay the Scottish, and come up to the English, capital ; for not even Scotchmen had, at that early date, discovered Edin- burgh to be " the modern Athens." It does not seem to be quite clear whether Thomson had any definite employment so long as he remained in Scotland : he may perhaps have been -v- JAMES THOMSON. 137 domestic tutor in the family of Lord Binning, and he continued these duties upon his first arrival in London. He travelled by sea; and, on -reaching his goal, looked-up his college-acquaint- ance David Mallet (or more properly Malloch), who was then tutor to the sons of the Duke of Montrose. Lady Grisel, it would appear, did not redeem the more or less definite promises which she had given of promoting the young adven- turer's interests; and letters of introduction to some other influential persons, which he had brought with him from Scot- land, were stolen from him in the street. Mallet, under these untoward circumstances, was the person to whom Thomson chiefly had recourse for friendly offices; and he gave him, on one important practical point, advice which rapidly set the aspirant on the road to fame. Thomson showed Mallet the MS. of the poem which was afterwards developed into the Winter, concluding the Seasons. At present it consisted merely of various detached descriptive pieces : these Mallet advised him to connect into a continuous composition, and so to publish it. This counsel proved emi- nently judicious. The poem was published by a Mr. Millar in 1726, he having bought the MS. from Thomson at a small price : it was dedicated to Sir Spencer Compton. At first it produced little impression ; but two persons of critical repute, Mr. Whateley and Mr. Spence, admired it, and gave it vogue. Still more influential in the same cause -was Aaron Hill the poet, a man of considerable position in the world : the adula- tion with which Thomson requited him, in various letters dated about this time, is beyond all credence and all toleration. At last the hitherto passive dedicatee presented Thomson with a sum of £21, and he obtained introductions to Pope, who conceived a sincere regard for him, and to other magnates of literature and society. Many editions of the Winter succeeded one another. In 1727 the author published also the Summer, and his Britannia, and the poems To the Memory of Newton ***■ 138 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. and On Death. The Britannia identified Thomson with the interests of the opposition : it was aimed against the ministry, on account of their not checking the Spanish aggressions in America. In his encomium of Newton, he obtained some guidance from the scientific knowledge of Mr. John Gray, afterwards Rector of Marischal College, Aberdeen. In 1728 the section of Spring followed ; and the entire poem of the Seasons was completed in 1730 by the addition of the Autumn. Meanwhile, in 1728, the tragedy of Sophonisbahzd been brought out, and played at Drury Lane : Mrs. Oldfield acted the heroine. The drama had excited great expectations, but secured scanty success. We have all read the anecdote of the singularly unfortunate line, "Oh Sophonisba, Sophonisba ! oh !" which (reproducing as it does a cadence in the last act of Othello) was ridiculed by the tempting parody, "Oh Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson ! oh ! " Agamemnon ensued after Sophonisba ; then Edward and Eleo- nora, Tancred and Sigismunda, and finally Coriolanus : Thom- son's works in a dramatic form are completed by the masque of Alfred. Edward and Eleonora was offered for acting, but pro- hibited : the reason being that it contains various allusions appli- cable to the then Prince of Wales, and his attitude as head of the opposition. One of the ministerial writers remarked that, in this play, Thomson " had taken a Liberty which was not agree- able to Britannia in any Season." As to the dramas generally, it may be said that a Quixotically-minded reader who might make the attempt of reading these long-extinct performances would assuredly not find his enterprise in any degree repaid : words of critical comment would therefore be equally wasted. The Agamemnon was produced on the stage in 1738, Quin acting the Grecian king : it is said that Thomson attended on the first night, seated in the upper gallery, and was so in- '► JAMES THOMSON. 139 terested in his own production as unconsciously to follow the actors with audible recitation of the lines, until he was checked by the bystanders. In the masque of Alfred he had the co- operation of Mallet. This composition contains the celebrated lyric of " Rule Britannia," of which it would appear that the authorship should be ascribed to Mallet rather than to Thomson himself. Tancred and Sigismunda (founded on a story in Gil Bias) was the most successful of Thomson's pieces on the stage : Garrick and Mrs. Cibber appeared in it, and it continued as an acting-piece up to 1788, if not later. Coriolanus was not produced during the author's lifetime : shortly after his death it was played for the benefit of his sisters. These brief details concerning the dramatic pieces have diverted us from the consecutive narrative of Thomson's, life — which indeed presents the fewest incidents for record. The only occupation he ever took up, not immediately proper to his own work as a poet, was that, after ceasing to be domestic tutor in Lord Binning's family, he served in the like capacity, to a young gentleman in Little Tower Street : this was relin- quished not later than early in 1727. In 1729 he went abroad as the travelling companion of the Honourable Charles Talbot, eldest son of the Lord Chancellor, and thus visited most of the countries and courts of Europe. On his return, the poem of Liberty formed his chief occupation for two years. Thom- son, whose patriotic feelings were lively, regarded it as his finest work : an opinion in which — as has been the case with more poets than one — -the author differed from the reading public, with whom this performance never became popular. 1 It was issued in separate parts : the Italy, Greece, and Rome, 1 Aaron Hill, however, professed a huge admiration of the poem. He said in a letter to Thomson : " I look upon this mighty work as the last stretched blaze of our expiring genius. It is the dying effort of despairing and indignant virtue, and will stand like one of those immortal pyramids which carry their magnificence through times that wonder to see nothing round them but uncom- fortable desert." 140 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. successively in 1735, and Britain and The Prospect in 1736. Lord Lyttelton undertook the not wholly unbefitting, yet somewhat thankless and unremunerative, task of shortening this poem ; and it has since then been mostly republished in its abridged form. About this time (perhaps in 1734) Thomson received an appointment to an office that was little more than a sinecure, that of Secretary of Briefs. His tenure, however, was of no long continuance. Lord Chancellor Talbot died in 1737, and Hardwicke succeeded him : Thomson — whether through modesty, mere inertness, or whatever other cause — failed to solicit a renewal of the nomination, and thus he lost it. After no very long interval, Frederick Prince of Wales bestowed a pension of ^100 per annum on our author, who had already dedicated to him the poem of Liberty : he had meanwhile been somewhat straitened in means, and found it expedient to intimate to the Prince that his affairs were "in a more poetical posture than formerly." The pension was re- voked towards 1748, in consequence probably of some pique which the Prince felt against Thomson's chief patron, Sir George (afterwards Lord) Lyttelton. Towards 1745 he obtained another post, being appointed by Lyttelton to the office of' Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands : this berth brought him in a clear annual income of ^300, after deducting the pay of his deputy — for it need hardly be said that the Leeward Islands remained to Thomson a terra incognita. There is only one other incident to be named in his career — the publication in 1746 of his Castle of Indolence, after many years' working and polishing — an amount of labour greater than he appears to have bestowed on any other of his poems, which were generally subjected to but little revision. The Castle of Indolence had at first been begun merely as a slight personal raillery upon himself and some of his friends. His death followed not very long afterwards. Returning one even- ing by water from London to his residence in Kew Lane, he •*►■ V JAMES THOMSON. 141 caught cold, which led on to a fever, and he expired on the 27th of August 1748. He lies buried in Richmond Church. A monument was moreover erected to his memory in West- minster Abbey in 1762, out of the profits — which even in his lifetime were not inconsiderable — accruing from his works. Indeed he died in what might be termed a condition of affluence, though not wholly free from debts. Thomson was above the middle size, of a fat and bulky form ; with a face that might almost be called dull, and an uninviting heavy look, although in his early youth he had even been counted handsome, and his eyes were expressive. He was mostly taciturn, save in the company of his familiar friends : with them he was cheerful and pleasant, and he secured their attachment in an eminent degree : the poet Gray held a dis- tinguished place among them, though he was Thomson's junior by sixteen years. In acts of beneficence he was open-handed to the utmost extent of his means : but to intercede with others for any such purpose was a labour insupportable to his retiring sluggish temperament. Unaffected and simple, he was also to some extent self-indulgent ; he liked his ease and his pleasure, and would take of these whatever Fortune was so propitious as to allow him. Richard Savage, who was much in Thomson's company, has mentioned that a lady of his own acquaintance, to whom Thomson was personally unknown, once guessed, from an admiring perusal of his works, that he must be an ardent devoted lover, a great swimmer, and markedly abstinent. Savage, however, had to correct the inferences of enthusiasm, and to inform the fair one that the bard of the Seasons and of Liberty knew no love beyond the universal appetite of sex, had perhaps never been in cold water in his life, and cherished bodily comforts as far as his means permitted. In some other respects the testimony of Savage was wholly in favour of Thomson r he praised his social qualities, and the steadiness of his friendship, especially for old acquaintances whom he had A, -«*- 142 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. outstripped in the career of worldly prosperity. He was be- sides free from all literary jealousy or malignity; and preserved an unruffled temper, unless his indignation were excited by evi- dences of cruelty or hard-heartedness in others. Thomson lived unmarried. At one period of his life, however, towards 1743, he had a great desire to change his single condition, and courted the lady whom he has celebrated as " Amanda." This was Miss Young, daughter of Captain Gilbert Young, of Guly- hill, Dumfries-shire. The poet's pecuniary position was not considered sufficiently firm, and Miss Young married Vice- Admiral John Campbell. It may be added that a letter be- longing to the last year of Thomson's lifetime (4 October 1747) has been preserved, addressed to one of his sisters, in which he says that he had not married in his earlier days on account of uncertainty in his means of subsistence, and thai he now felt himself to be past the matrimonial age, yet might perhaps, at no distant date, seek a wife in his native Scotland. Although the anecdote of the loftiness of his diction in his student-time might have led to a contrary surmise, and his voice was naturally effective, it is said that Thomson was a very slovenly elocutionist when he had to pronounce anything of a dignified kind : he was once perusing some of his lines to Bubb Doddington, who was reputed to excel as a reader, and who was so annoyed at the poet's deficiency as to snatch the MS. from his hands, observing that Thomson did not understand his own verses. He was fond of the fine arts, and especially of music ; and would listen for an hour together to the singing of nightingales. His general mode of living was marked by sim- plicity, not uncombined with elegance. He is reported to have written better in autumn than at other seasons of the year, and at night than in the day. Thomson was not a christian in religious belief: this is plainly shown by a letter which Lord Lyttelton addressed to him in 1747; indeed, his lordship had composed his Observa- JAMES THOMSON. 143 tions on the Conversion and Apostleship of St Paul partly with a view to proselytizing the poet. After the death of the latter, Lyttelton wrote : " Thomson, I hope and believe, died a chris- tian : had he lived longer, I don't doubt but he would have openly professed his faith." The foundation for any such confidence seems to be very scanty. It should be understood nevertheless that Thomson was a firm believer in Providence, and in the immortality of the soul, which he conceived to be destined for progressively augmenting bliss. Lord Lyttelton said of Thomson that he had written { "Not One line which dying he could wish to blot." Johnson — who, speaking of the poet as a contemporary, was more likely to be struck by this point, and to estimate it rightly, than a reader of the present day — considered him very original; original both in the turn of thought, and in the form and execu- tion of his poems. At this date, the time for criticizing Thom- son is long past ; his place is well fixed, and he will retain it for so long as good poetical work of the secondary or tertiary order continues a living thing. Already, indeed, the general mass of his performance is defunct : the Seasons and the Castle of Indolence — certainly not his own favourite composition Liberty — survive with other than a galvanic life. The Castle of Indolence is generally regarded as the more finished and excel- lent production of the two : the Seasons, however, are very greatly more important, and this not only in respect of length. To have selected a subject so vast and universal, and so open to the sympathies and perceptions, and amenable to the per- sonal experience and judgment, of all sorts and conditions of readers in all times, was no small achievement, nor deserving of scantly grateful recognition. It may be even regarded as one of the privileges and distinctions of English poesy that the Poet of the Seasons should have been British in birth and tongue. Such a subject was free of access to every language * i 144 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. under heaven : in any nation a poet might have arisen to mould this theme into song, and give it the hues of his own nationality, but it was in British soil that he did arise. And certainly Thomson is one. of the men to whom has been given that almost impossible prerogative — "To add a sweetness to the violet." For generations past, as the magic of Nature unrolls its annual .recurrences and vicissitudes, some beauty or some majesty has here and there, by this person and by that, been more keenly perceived, more deeply loved, or acknowledged with a more fully realized sense of awe, because of something written by Thomson. He has been one of the concentrators and inten- sifiers — one of the fixing and fashioning spirits — of that characteristically modern passion, the love of scenery. A shabby copy of the Seasons was once observed by some one laid on the window-seat of a country ale-house : " That's true fame," remarked the man. And perhaps a similar incident might even at the present day be likely enough, and bring the same words to one's lips : certainly, within living memory, it would have been altogether likely. Our progenitors, to the fourth and fifth step of ascent from our own time, have delighted in Thomson; and, notwithstanding the shifting of literary models, and of the tenor of public taste, our successors, to as remote or a remoter term, may probably do the same. JH" .fy p POETS BORN BETWEEN THOMSON AND GRAY. Charles Wesley 1708 to 1788. Samuel Johnson 1709 to 1785. William Shenstone 1714 to 1763. 4^ — . & q> THOMAS GRAY. Of all short poems— or indeed of all poems whatsoever — in the English language, which has been, for a century and a quarter past, the one most universally, persistently, and incessantly re- produced and quoted from? I suppose, beyond rivalry and almost beyond comparison, the Elegy in a Country Churchyard of Thomas Gray. Such is the glory which has waited upon scant productiveness and relative mediocrity — though un- doubtedly nobly balanced and admirably grown and finished mediocrity — in the poetic art. The flute has overpowered the organ, the riding -horse has outstripped Pegasus, and the crescent moon has eclipsed the sun. Thomas Gray was born in Comhill, London, on the 26th of December 17 16, the fifth child, and the only one that survived infancy, out of a large family of twelve. His father, Philip Gray, was a citizen and money- scrivener of respectable standing. His mother was sister to a Mr. Antrobus, who was an assistant master at Eton during the period which Thomas passed at that school — for there was he educated (as we all know from his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College), staying until the autumn of 1735, when he proceeded as a pensioner to Peter- house, Cambridge. Both at school and at the university he was supportedseutirely from funds supplied by his mother; for his father, a violent-tempered person of little principle, refused all assistance towards his education — thinking probably that Greek and Latin, culture and intellect, had little to do with ***■ 148 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. those ascending grades in the realization of the human summiim bonitm, the scrivening and the pocketing of money. Gray remained at Cambridge up to September 1738 ; hating mathe- matics, disliking the college discipline, not very diligent as yet in any form of study, but attracted from early youth to poetry, and attending in fair measure to classics and modern languages. Here he executed a few Latin poems and English translations. His earliest verses in his native tongue were about no lines translated from Statius in 1736; and towards the same time he produced some verses on the Marriage of the Prince of Wales, which were considered the best in the academical collection. On leaving Cambridge he came back to London, taking chambers in the Inner Temple, and intending to study law. But this purpose was speedily suspended by an invitation which he received from Horace Walpole, his friend at Eton and at Cambridge, to travel with him on the continent. The tour began in the Spring of 1739, and they journeyed together through France and a part of Italy. At Florence, and on the road thence to Venice, they had some differences, and parted. Walpole was ready enough in after years to take the blame to himself, and he reflected upon his colleague only so far as to say that he was " too serious a companion " — Gray being all for antiquities in the tour, and Walpole for balls and plays : it seems probable however that the too serious com- panion had also been a little inclined to lay down the law with authority, and to exhibit a cultured superciliousness towards any attempts of Walpole to entertain and express an opinion of his own. They had been together at Florence, along with Mr. (afterwards Sir Horace) Mann, the British Envoy; at Rome, Naples, and Herculaneum, discovered but recently ; and again for another eleven months at Florence. After the separation Gray went on to Venice; in September 1741 he returned to England. THOMAS GRAY. 149 He had not been, long back when his father died. The latter had been extravagant, and Gray found that narrow means would hamper him in pursuing the study of the law. He there- fore gave this up entirely, and not perhaps very reluctantly ; returned to Cambridge; and in 1742 took his degree as B.A. in Civil Law. One of his intimates, both at Eton and afterwards, had been Mr. Richard West, son of the Chancellor of Ireland, and author of an Ode to May ; he had dissuaded Gray from completing a projected tragedy on the story of Agrippina. This gentleman died in June 1742, greatly to the sorrow of his friend, who commemorated his loss in an admired sonnet. As it happened, Gray had already inscribed to West his Ode to Spring, before he knew of the young man's death ; and he now began to poetize with some assiduity. His Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, and the Ode to Adversity ,werewrittensoon afterwards ; and about the same time, probably, he commenced the Elegy in a Country Churchyard. He also undertook, but never completed, a Latin poem Dt Principiis Cogitandi: there is reason to infer, indeed, that his early ambition was to excel rather in Latin than in English verse, and he was very copious in his phraseology in the classical tongue. He was passing some weeks at Stoke Pogeis near Windsor, in the secluded dwelling-house of his aunts, at the time when the composition of the Elegy was going on most actively : hence he returned to Cambridge, and continued residing there for the great majority of his remaining years. He was at first settled in Peterhouse; but in 1756, some of his more youthful neighbours having per- sistently annoyed him by clamorous interruptions and indecorous pranks, and no adequate redress being .forthcoming from the college authorities, the poet removed to Pembroke Hall. His first published work — beyond the youthful essay already adverted to — was the Eton ode, which appeared in 1747 : it excited no particular notice. At Cambridge for six years Gray applied himself to the study -s>«^- 150 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. of the best Greek writers. He was displeased at the ignorance and dullness which he found rife in the University ; and he wrote a fragment, intended seemingly as a satirical hymn to Ignorance, beginning, " Hail, horrors, hail, ye ever gloomy bowers." Towards 1744 he seems to have intermitted writing altogether. Walpole, who had ere now become reconciled to Gray, endeavoured to persuade him to publish such poems as he had already produced along with those of their deceased friend West : but this project did not find favour in Gray's eyes. In 1747 he made acquaintance with the Rev. William Mason, then a scholar cf St. John's College, the author of the Monody on the Death of Pope, the English Garden, and many other poems more acceptable to his own generation than to ours. The acquaintance ripened into a lifelong intimacy; and Mason, after his friend's death, superintended the reissue of his poems, and wrote his biography. The publication of the Elegy was at the moment, as it remains to this hour, the most salient event in the life of the studious and unbustling Gray. This poem was completed in 1750. In February 1751 the author was vexed to find that it had been published without his sanction in a serial named The Magazine of Magazines, and was already attracting some attention ; and he asked the bookseller Dodsley to reproduce it in an independent form, and anonymously. He required also that it should appear (but an affectionately admiring posterity has been deaf or callous to his wish in this respect) " without any interval between the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued beyond them." The authorized re- publication ensued accordingly, and the poem became at once immensely popular, raising Gray, from the position of a scholar wholly unknown outside of his own academic circle, into that of a poet second to none of his contemporaries. Eleven editions followed one another in the most rapid succession. •*■ JL THOMAS GRAY. 151 In 1755 Gray finished Ms Ode on the Progress of Poetry, ana about the same time he began The Bard, destined to a cele- brity only inferior to that of the Elegy : these were botli intended to be " vocal to the intelligent alone "—and indeed, when he first published them, which was not done until 1757, it seemed as if they would prove highly unvocal to the unin- telligent, or in other words to ninety-nine readers out of every hundred. But Bishop Warburton and David Garrick praised the poems, and other authoritative voices followed suit from time to time ; till at last that semi-teachable and semi-believing body the general public, indifferently well convinced on the whole, found out that it too was of the same opinion. Meanwhile the gravest of the poet's personal afflictions had befallen him, in the death of his mother, which took place in March 1753 ; a loving son during her lifetime, he cherished her memory with glowing affection. In a letter addressed to the Rev. Mr. Nicholls, dated apparently in 1766, he worded a sentiment which, quoted by Byron, has often passed for Byron's own. " In one's whole life," he says, " one can never have more than a single mother" ; and he adds — " I never disco- vered this (with full evidence and conviction, I mean) till it was too late ; it is thirteen years ago, and seems but as yesterday, and, every day I live, it sinks deeper into my heart." On the death of Colley Cibber in 1757, the Laureateship was offered to Gray by the Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Devon- shire ; but he, opining that the office had derived small lustre from its recent incumbents, thought fit to decline. As we have seen, the only poem of much consequence that he had published before this very year was the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, itself a brief composition of not many stanzas, preceded by the Eton Ode, and followed by two other Odes, as yet in no way popularly accepted. We must therefore allow that, even in the unpoetical central years of the eighteenth century, some of the people in authority were capable of show- ■4* T 152 LIVES OF FAMOUS- POETS. ing no little amount of discernment and of opportune self- reliance, otherwise no such proffer could have been made. The Lord Chamberlain of 1757 knew upon whom to pitch as the permanently famous poet of the time. We shall thus be the less disinclined to forgive the officials if, after making the abortive proposal to such a poet as Gray, they made another and not abortive proposal to such an one as Whitehead, who, being well contented to accept, became the Laureate of our crown and nation, somewhat to the amazement of these latter days. Soon after this, Gray, for about three years, left Cambridge, and lived in London near the British Museum, studying. In 1762 he failed in an application for the Professor- ship of Modern History and Languages at Cambridge : a chair which had been founded, with a stipend of ^400 a year, as far back as 1724, but which had hitherto always remained a per- fect sinecure. His success, however, was only deferred; in 1768 the same professorship was bestowed upon him un- solicited. It is annoying to learn that, as he found the post a sinecure, so he left it : he designed to lecture, but never did so — never indeed went beyond sketching out a plan for his inauguration-speech. This was grievous to Gray himself; he blamed his own inertia, and continued to dally and procrasti- nate, until at last, after three years'_ tenure of the professorship, for him too did the night come when no man could work. Ill- health — he had become subject ever since 1754 to recurring attacks of gout — was no doubt partly the cause and the pallia- tion of his dilatory supineness ; a certain academical scrupulo- sity, and disinclination to set-to with vigour and resolution, also contributed to the same end. This was thoroughly ingrained in Gray's character and habits. Want of learning, insufficient equipment for the onerous undertaking, was certainly not the reason. An admirer, not unqualified to express an opinion, could even go so far as to say that Gray was perhaps the most learned man in Europe. According to the standard of his time, •** = ■ «>$ THOMAS GRAY. 153 he knew profoundly some sciences, such as zoology and botany — history, archaeology, heraldry, metaphysics, politics ; he was versed in moral philosophy and in criticism ; and was a man of recognized taste in the fine arts of architecture, painting, and engraving, and in gardening. His architectural studies had been particularly active towards 1758, and he assisted Bentham in his History of Ely. At one time he thought of publishing an edition of Strabo; and he left for this object many notes and geographical disquisitions, which were afterwards edited by Mathias, along with notes on Plato and Aristophanes. Read- ing — perpetual reading — was in fact his main occupation ; to write was comparatively exceptional. The quiet life of Gray — studious, secluded though not un- social, and uneventful in the strictest sense, for he seems to have been free as well from internal throes as from external ad- venture and agitation — presents little further matter for record. In 1765 he made a tour in Scotland for health's sake, and here he knew Dr. Beattie, the author of the Essay on Truth, and of the poem The Minstrel, both published soon afterwards : Gray wrote an account of this excursion, showing that he had appre- ciated all the sources of interest it presented, in Nature, art, and historic reminiscence. In 1769 he went to Westmoreland and Cumberland, also for health. In 1771, suffering much from violent cough and extreme depression of spirits, as well as from his hereditary gout, he came to London towards the end of May, and stayed at Kensington ; but he was soon back in Cambridge again. Dejection was indeed nothing new to Gray, as we all know as soon as we recollect his line in the Elegy — "And Melancholy marked him for her own." As far back as August 1737 we find him writing to West, with pathetic self-raillery : — " Low spirits are my true and faithful companions. They get up with me, go to bed with me, make journeys and returns as I do ; nay, and pay visits, and will even T v■ 168 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. known among the many famous anecdotes of Goldsmith. He had been placed under arrest by his landlady for rent owing, and sent round to his cordial friend Dr. Johnson (they had now been acquainted for about four years), and, on the arrival of the latter, showed him the MS. of the novel, and asked whether it could not be turned into money : Johnson glanced over and approved it, and, issuing forth, sold it on the spot to Francis Newbery the publisher for an opportune subsidy of ^63. While the Vicar remained as yet unprinted in Newber/s hands, Goldsmith flashed forth upon the town as a poet — The Tra- veller being published on the 19th of December 1764, and being the first production to which the author put his name. He had hitherto done no poetry of any importance : an oratorio of The Captivity (of the Jews in Babylon) is mentioned, but little of it is now traceable. The Traveller was lying by Goldsmith unfinished at the time when Johnson first saw the Vicar of Wakefield : he looked over the poem likewise, formed a high opinion of it, and even set upon it the sign-manual of his approbation by adding nine verses towards the conclusion. The success of the Traveller was signal and instantaneous : several editions appeared within the course of a year, and Gold- smith was pronounced by many— or he divided this distinction with Gray — the first poet of his time. In a pecuniary sense however the venture was of little importance to our author ; for Newbery, out of the large sums which he netted, only handed- over £2 1 to him. The ballad of The Hermit (originally named Edwin and Angelina) followed soon afterwards: and in 1765 were collected from various sources and published the Essays by Mr. Goldsmith, which sold well and were translated into French, the writer's remuneration being again a sum of ^21. The still popular nursery-tale of Goody Two-Shoes appeared in the same year, and is by many ascribed to Goldsmith's hand : it was cer- tainly not such decided hackwork as some that he still continued doing for the booksellers. One of these, Mr. Davies, proposed ^ OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 169 to him to compile, a popular History of Rome : it was published in 1769, and had an extensive sale. For this no less a sum than ,£262. 10s. was paid. Goldsmith remained as ever im- pecunious and harrassed, but he had the spirit to refuse an advantageous offer for writing pamphlets in the interest of the ministry. In the summer of 1768, when his beloved elder brother Henry died in Ireland, a curate and schoolmaster of consistently high aims and principles, to which his narrow fortunes lent a dim but pathetic lustre, Oliver— then staying out of town in Edgeware Road — was writing the Deserted. Village, in which combined reminiscences of his brother and father appear with so much of engaging yet refined and well-weighed simplicity. Auburn, the " village " of the poem, is understood to represent substantially Lissoy : General Napier, the owner of the mansion named Littleton, and of much property in the neighbourhood, had turned all the tenants out of their farms, in order that he might enclose them in his own private demesne. At a more recent date the residence of Captain Hogan, about three miles distant from Ballymahon, and the village adjoining, have been distinguished by the now classical name of Auburn. This celebrated poem was published on the 5th of May 1770, and had an immense sale : by August a fifth edition had already come out. The price offered to Goldsmith was ^105 : he however thought it too much, and — rare instance of practice responsive to theory — he actually returned the money to the publisher, but was soon, through the continued demand for the poem, repaid in full. In 1769 he began the History of Ani- mated Nature, the engagement being for eight volumes at ^105 each; this is chiefly concocted from Buffon, and was published in 1774. A Life of Parnell the Poet, and a Life of Lord Bolingbroke, were produced in 1 770 ; and in the following year the well-known History of England, in four volumes, made up, as the preface acknowledges, mostly from Rapin, Carte, Hume, and Smollett, and of as little serious value, from a strictly historical point of view, as the other performances by our author in the same class of literature. The earlier History of England in Letters was partly laid under contribution likewise. Goldsmith was charged with being unfriendly in this work to liberty and the rights of the .subject : to which censure he did not scruple to reply in a letter, with a candour which is amusing - and may almost deserve to be called admirable, that he " had no thought for or against liberty in his head," but had simply executed a spell of taskwork. The last poem by Goldsmith to which I need refer here is the little snatch of humorous cha- racter-painting named Retaliation, never completed : it was provoked by an epigram of Garrick's upon our author, and Garrick in his turn retorted with another wherein Goldsmith is styled ' ' This scholar, rake, christian, dupe, gamester, and poet. " A project which never came to anything was that of a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, in which Johnson and others were to lend their aid. This was not encouraged by the booksellers ; so Goldsmith thought, but here again without any result, of con- verting the materials he had collected into a Survey of Experi- mental Philosophy. In this slight summary of his numerous and multifarious writings, I have as yet made no mention of the two comedies — the Goodnatured Man, and She Stoops to Conquer. The former was begun in 1766, when Goldsmith was enjoying the full flush of his celebrity from the Traveller, and it was finished early in 1767. It came out in the following year at Covent Garden Theatre, and, though not particularly successful, ran for ten nights, and brought-in to its author about ^400 from the theatre, and ^100 from the publisher as well. She Stoops to Conquer was first performed in May 1773, and was received with the greatest applause — far greater indeed than had at all been looked for. Large profits accrued from it, but to Gold- ■T- OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 171 smith himself comparatively little. An insolent letter published in the London Packet regarding this play led the peppery and irreflective playwright to commit an assault upon Mr. Evans, the publisher of the journal, whose Welsh blood was not much more wont to bear and forbear than the Irish blood of Gold- smith. Both combatants issued mauled from the encounter ; and the aggressor had to patch up a truce by contributing ^50 to the funds of the Welsh Charity. Many and amusing are the anecdotes of Goldsmith — the friend, and not unfrequently the butt, of Hogarth, Johnson, Burke (who had been a fellow-student with him in Dublin University), Boswell, Reynolds, Bishop Percy, Garrick, Richard Nugent Lord Clare, the Horneck family, and so many others with whom to associate was to shine at once with proper and with reflected light — the patron and the prey of all sorts of Irish waifs and strays floating on the surges of London life, hungry and rollicking, embarrassing and importunate • — the boon-companion of queer fellows and company out-at-elbows — the man of tolerant sympathy for all men and all women in need of a helping hand, his purse always, open if frequently empty, his heart ever warm if seldom discreet. But for mere anecdotes I have no adequate space here : and indeed some of my readers may share with myself a certain sense of relief in not going-over once again, and for the five-hundredth time, all the details of how Goldsmith ordered a bloom-coloured coat of his tailor, the long-suffering and partially-paid Filby, and how he treated three damsels to an elegant tea at the White Conduit House, and couldn't discharge the bill. Instead of my spoiling in the retailing anecdotes of this sort which have been well no less than repeatedly told aforetime, it may perhaps be pleasant to the London reader to see a list of the localities in which Goldsmith was housed in the capital. Up to the middle of 1760 he was in Green-Arbour Court; and he removed suc- cessively to -decent apartments in Wine-Office Court, Fleet Street ; to Islington, then a suburban village ; to chambers in the Temple ; and finally to a better set of chambers at No. 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple. The Horneck family, whom I have just been mentioning, were among the most cherished friends of the poet's later years, and probably gave him more liking' for " good society " (in the current meaning of that term) than he was apt to acquire otherwise. The beautiful Miss Mary Horneck, who got the nickname of " the Jessamy Bride," and whose life was prolonged till 1840, was more particularly partial to Goldsmith, and he regarded her with a freshness and warmth of predilection that partook apparently almost of a lover's ardour. He became in 1764 one of the nine original members of the Literary Club, along with Johnson, Reynolds, Burke, Bennet Langton, Topham Beauclerc, Chamier, Hawkins, and Dr. Nugent; and in 1769 was appointed to the honorary post of Professor of Ancient History to the Royal Academy. Five of these eight associates have long ago vanished from the memory of ordinary men, and survive only in the minds of literary enquirers, and haunters of the byeways of society and gossip in those days : it is proportionately amusing to learn that Goldsmith, the author of the Vicar of Wakefield, and " most beloved of English writers," was regarded as hardly fit com- pany for these worthies, the predestined " alms for oblivion." The three who were really fit company for him — Johnson, Reynolds, and Burke — knew better. This leads us to say the few necessary words regarding Goldsmith's person, demeanour, and character. He was thick and short, about 5 feet 5 inches, and, according to Miss Rey- nolds when first she knew him, not unlike a journeyman tailor in externals ; somewhat awkward in refined society ; with a hesitating unattractive manner of speaking, and a loud laugh ; his complexion fair, his hair brown — so far as this was distin- guishable, for he always wore a wig, though Reynolds's famous portrait might suggest the contrary. Garrick, as we have seen, A taxed him with raking and gaming ; and there seems no par- ticular reason for disbelieving this statement and others to the like effect, although some biographers, indulgent to one who was the very soul of indulgence to his fellows, seek to reduce these charges to an insignificant core of fact. That he had a large share of childish vanity is not to be denied — an uneasy itch for putting himself forward, and for affecting a facile ele- gance of dress and address for which he had the slenderest natural qualifications. This was however strictly childish vanity, and remained throughout his life — such are the inconsistencies of human character — combined with essential modesty, sim- plicity, and self-distrust. Poor at first, and afterwards, though his profits were far from trivial, harrassed with debt — a load which seems to have increased upon him more especially from the year 1768, when his first comedy was acted — he owed some ^2000 at his death : Johnson, who yielded to none in the staunchness and heartiness of his affection for Goldsmith, remarked in his sententious way that "he had raised money and squandered it by every artifice of acquisition and folly of expense." His religious views appear to have been indefinite : some writers go so far as to say that he had no particular creed. In the Holy Week of 1773 Boswell took it upon himself to sermonize the poet, and he received for reply : " Sir, as I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my coat from the tailor, so I take my religion from the priest." Johnson's comment, when he heard of this, was — " Sir, Goldsmith knows nothing — he has made up his mind about nothing." And we may be content to think that the lexicographer, himself so zealous a believer, spoke advisedly and on sufficient grounds. In the autumn of 1772 Goldsmith returned from Edge ware to London, with many debts and broken health. Early in March 1774 he went to country-quarters at Hyde, intending to live chiefly out of town henceforward : but this was not to be. He had to come back to his chambers in the Temple, troubled **- ■^N- 174 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. by an access of " a local complaint " (as a biographer terms it) from which he had suffered for some time past. This subsided, but was succeeded by low nervous fever. He took to his bed on the 25 th of March, languished there some days, and, in reply to a question from his physician, said that his mind was ill at ease — the last words which he spoke : convulsions came on, and on the 4th of April, at the comparatively early age of forty-five, he was no more. He doctored himself to some extent, and an overdose of a very powerful medicine is reputed to have had something to do with the fatal termination. On the 9 th he was interred in the burial-ground of the Temple Church. A monument by Nollekens was erected to him in Westminster Abbey, bearing that inscription by Johnson of which the most emphatic phrase remains engraved on the minds of successive generations of his countrymen, no less than on the perishing marble — " Nullum fere scribendi genus uon tetigit, nullum quod tetigit non ornavit. Of all the classes of writing which Goldsmith thus embel- lished, the only one which I need here deal with is the poetic ; and we find amid the small bulk of his poetry that the only two compositions of any considerable importance are The Traveller and The Deserted Village, — most of the residue have a playful turn. Goldsmith is remarkable among our poets for having little which can be expressly fixed upon as poetry — although there is undoubtedly an abundance of felicitous dic- tion, and glowing appositeness of thought. Good feeling, right sense, genuine observation, descriptive and expressive language, flowing, harmonious, and accomplished verse — all these are present, and avail to make the work soundly poetical, if not poetry in its ultimate essence. The genial and tender nature of the man forms the great, the paramount charm of the verse. Goldsmith did not care for elaborate art, or rules of art. In the dedication of The Traveller, addressed to his brother Henry, he says that Poetry suffers ' from the mistaken efforts -■&& of the learned to improve it. What criticisms have we not heard of late in favour of blank verse and Pindaric odes, choruses, anapaests, and iambics, alliterative care and happy negligence ! Every absurdity has now a champion to defend it ; and, as he is generally much in the wrong, so he has always much to say, for Error is ever talkative." Goldsmith's poems are in fact matter fit for either poetry or prose, and manner which would be alrnost as fit for prose as for poetry, were it not for the simple consideration that they are written in excellent verse, with such elevation and refinement of method, and such turns of phrase, as verse naturally and properly entails. •to POETS BORN BETWEEN GOLDSMITH AND.COWPER. Bishop Thomas Percy 1728 to 1811. Charles Churchill 1731 to 1764. Erasmus Darwin 1731 to 1802. William Falconer 1731 to 1769. James Beattie 1735 to 1803. 4- -'■# * WILLIAM COWPER. The family to which the poet Cowper belonged was that which rose to the highest legal eminence in the person of Lord Chan- cellor Cowper. His lordship's nephew, the Rev. John Cowper, D.D., was rector of Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire; at which place William, the future poet, was born on the 26th of November 1731. In 1737 he lost the tender mother (Anne Donne, of Ludham Hall, Norfolk) to whom some of his own tenderest verses are devoted. The boy first went to school at the age of six, and remained there two years : he was made miserable by the cruelties of an elder lad. Hence he was removed to the house of an oculist for another couple of years, as fears were entertained for his sight. At the age of ten he became a pupil in Westminster School, and stayed there till his nineteenth year : he was diligent in his studies, and entered into boyish sports with spirit The career of law having been chosen for him, principally in consideration of the legal patronage which lay in the family, he was articled, on leaving Westminster School, to a solicitor for three years : one of his fellow-cterks in this situation was the youth who rose to be Lord Thurlow. Cowper learned but little law ; removed to chambers in the Middle Temple ; and in 1754 was called to the bar. He fell into an extraordinary state of dejection soon after entering the Temple, having in fact a congenital tendency to insanity. This disorder lasted nearly a year, but received some degree of alleviation from the 1? •*>- 178 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. reading of the religious poems of George Herbert. In 1759 he was appointed a Commissioner of Bankrupts. Still, however, he remained a negligent lawyer, — indifferent, or more than in- different, to his profession. This temper of mind was encouraged by the fact of his having a small patrimony, upon which he partly relied for a subsistence. Cowper continued living in the Temple for eleven years, up to 1763, by which time his private resources were nearly exhausted. According to his own subsequent account, his life in this quarter was an " uninterrupted course of sinful indulg- ence " : it appears that he joined in the ordinary drinking habits of the day, and probably enough in other youthful dissipations, but this latter point is not distinctly set forth. Within this period he courted his cousin Theodora Cowper, sister of Lady Hesketh ; but without any practical result save disappointment to himself, a marriage between the young people being objected to on prudential grounds. He also dallied with literature, con- tributing a few papers to a journal named The Connoisseur. Early in 1763 occurred the event which determined, in a way wholly different from what it appeared to promise, the entire future career of Cowper. The appointment, which he now received from his cousin, to the honourable and lucrative post of First Clerk (or Reading Clerk, and Clerk of the Com- mittees) to the House of Lords, would have seemed to be a possible turning-point in his fortunes, by way of a definite and commodious settlement in life : it proved to be a turning-point of a very different kind — the occasion of madness, religion, poetry, and literary fame. Cowper was a young man of extreme and painful nervousness — nervousness which reached the morbid stage, and was but too capable of passing beyond that into the insane stage. His new duties required him to be often in personal attendance before the House of Lords. Any such sort of publicity was, as he has phrased it, " mortal poison" to himself: hence he voluntarily solicited almost T ."fr. WILLIAM COW PER. 179 immediately, and obtained, a transfer from the First Clerk- ship to a somewhat inferior position, that of Clerk of the Journals, to which the same objection did not apply. But here lay another pitfall for his timorous and wavering steps. The political combinations of the time made it convenient for the Lords to suspect that Cowper's cousin, in appoint- ing him to this lower situation, and transferring the then occupant of it to the higher, must have entered into some cor- rupt bargain. The consequence was that Cowper was sum- moned to submit himself to an examination at the bar of their Lordships' house before commencing his functions, so as to prove his competence. For this purpose he studied the work of the Journals for about half a year, with little success, and less assistance from his destined subordinates. In October 1763 the terrible moment was impending. He could not make up his mind to resign, for that would be construed into a con- fession damaging to his relative's honour : so he would actually have to appear at the bar of the house, be examined, be badgered, probably break down and fail. What refuge but insanity ? Cowper longed for insanity, but it would not come : he at least supposed that it would not and did not come, — but we, judging the facts by the light of after events, and indeed on their own showing, need scarcely "hesitate to say that so monstrous a longing, founded on so trumpery a cause, was itself the longing of a lunatic. Failing insanity, what refuge but suicide? Laudanum first, and next drowning commended themselves to the judicial intellect of the future poet of Stanzas Subjoined to the Bills of Mortality : but even this was denied him — the hand of Providence immediately, and in fact miracu- lously, held him back. A penknife was but a pis alter: that proved equally ineffectual when matched against the present deity. "One way remains," as Shelley has said of a graver theologic complexity. Cowper, who could not succeed in self- poisoning, drowning, or stabbing, did succeed in hanging himself. 180 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. A garter was the sufficient means ; but still the end failed, — he fell down after losing his consciousness. He now informed his kinsman of these attempts, and received the obvious reply that he could not, under the circumstances, take up the appoint- ment which had been conferred upon him. On the very day fixed for his examination — dies ilia — he resigned. The poet (as he has left it on record) did not remember having felt any serious religious impressions earlier than this his thirty-second year — save one or two that proved altogether transitory. His time was now come. He felt a terrible con- viction of sin, and despair of salvation : he thought that he had, long before at Southampton, committed "the unpardon- able sin," by not ascribing to direct divine illumination a very sudden and strong sensation of happiness which he had then experienced. At last, early in December 1763, he became clearly and undeniably mad, immediately after feeling as if a mighty blow had struck his brain ; mad to the eyes of those about him, and mad too to his own after-knowledge. We need not, however, date Cowper's insanity so late as December, nor be very confident that it was over for the time (for it un- doubtedly returned afterwards) by the middle of July 1764, which is the date specified by himself. The man who could make up his mind to drink laudanum out of a basin, solely in order to escape an examination before the House of Lords preliminary to occupying a snug berth, may be pronounced mad at that moment as safely as at the time, shortly ensuing, when he supposed he had committed the unpardonable sin by not assuming himself to be God-inspired when he was happy, or at that other time when he had a sensation of a blow on his brain. And the man who could in after years, and believing himself entirely rational, write of his attempt with the laudanum, " With the most confirmed resolution I reached forth my hand towards the basin,, when the fingers of both hands were so closely contracted as if bound with a cord, and became entirely A T WILLIAM COWPER. 181 useless, — it had the air of a divine interposition " — was still in a state of mind that one would hardly call sane. In fact, it appears to me more than questionable whether Cowper was strictly sound-minded in any stage of his exceptional religious experiences. If he was insane when he believed himself to be secure of damnation, intermediately between the attempted suicide and the acknowledged raving madness, I do not see why we should suppose that he was perfectly sane when the religious exaltation took another turn, and he regarded himself as converted, and a monument of the invisible miracle of grace. In his autobiographical narrative he treats himself as sane at all these dates, although insane for some months betwixt his first conviction of damnation and his conviction of salvation ; and in the same narrative he relates, as real facts of divine interposition against his suicidal attempts, various details which were seemingly no more than his own hallucinations of the time, or deranged reminiscences in after years. There are clearly the strongest grounds, from the evidence of dates and otherwise, for saying that the conviction of damnation was a form of religious mania ; and I know of no very good reason why the conviction of salvation should have been an inspira- tion of unclouded intellect. The most clearly perceptible difference between the two cases is that the conviction of damnation naturally made Cowper extremely unhappy, and cul- minated in ravings ; while the conviction of salvation made him happy, and culminated in placidity and in hymn-writing. Whether the latter conviction was any more rational than the former is quite a separate question. At the present moment we have to deal with Cowper con- fessedly and violently mad. He was placed under the care of Dr. Cotton at St. Alban's ; and remained there under careful tending many months, constantly oppressed at first with the sense of everlasting reprobation. One dayin July i764heopened a Bible at the third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans — — &<& 182 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus : whom God hath set forth to be a pro- pitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteous- ness for the remission of sins that are past." Cowper read the words, was relieved from his load of anguish, and was from that day a converted man. Still, it was not considered expedient to discharge him as yet from the asylum — and this fact again is a weighty suggestion that his religious felicity was as much a form of mania as his religious despair : he remained under Dr. Cotton's superintendence for nearly a year ensuing. In June 1765 he did at last quit the asylum. He resigned, chiefly in order to avoid resuming a London life, his position as Com- missioner of Bankrupts, which brought him only the small income of about ^60 per annum : his means thus became extremely straitened. He took up his residence at Hunt- ingdon, with a view to being near a younger brother, then at Cambridge. At Huntingdon he formed the friendship which constituted the tranquil happiness of the great majority of his remaining life : he became acquainted with the Rev. Mr. Unwin and his family. These kindly and sympathizing neighbours, observing his depressed spirits and scanty means, readily sanctioned an arrangement whereby Cowper became a boarder and inmate in their house : he entered the hospitable doors on the nth of November 1765, and seldom had any other home thenceforward than with the Unwin family. Mr. Unwin himself was soon lost from the circle, dying in 1767. Cowper and Mrs. Unwin — the " Mary" of his poems — then removed to Olney in Buckingham- shire, being attracted thither by their special esteem for the curate, Mr. Newton, the well-known evangelical clergyman. Here Cowper zealously identified himself with the religious interests of the society around him ; his charities of mind and heart expanded; and he became, as far as the interruptions of his constitutional malady allowed, a happy man. Mr. Newton -«* "- .-$*$• WILLIAM COWPER 183 obtained his cooperation on the volume of Hymns he was then preparing, so well-known as the Olney Hymns, published in 1776. A fair proportion of the whole number are by Cowper, who thus, at the more than mature age of forty-four or forty-five, ' first took an appreciable position in the field of literature and of poetry. This daylight of his manhood was not without' its clouds. Attacks of mania recurred between 1773 and 1776, consequent partly upon, the death of his brother; and they put a stop to the writing of his hymns before he had gone to any great length with the work. At another time he connected himself with the fantastic religionist Teedon ; a vagary in which again the taint of insanity is to be surmised. In this same year, 1776, and after Cowper's recovery, Mr. Newton quitted Olney : one of the mainstays of the poet's activity and cheerfulness was thus removed. At Mrs. Unwin's solicitation he now began his poem on The Progress of Error; followed by three others — Truth, Table-talk, and Expostulation. These, along with Hope, Charity, Conversation, Retirement, and some short pieces, were published in one volume in 1782, without exciting particular notice. Though no longer a young man, he entered with youthful ardour and impulse on the poetic career ; for it is said that the contents of this volume, about 6000 lines of verse, were the production of a quarter of a year. It was followed in 1 785 by The Task and Tirocinium ; and now at last, at the age of fifty-three, Cowper became a man of renown. The book was greatly admired, and raised him, in public estimation, to a level with any contemporary writer of poetry. The lady who (as intimated at the opening of The Task) pressed Cowper to undertake the writing of that work, was Lady Austen, a clever and lively widow whose society at this period possessed great attractions for him : gradually, how- ever, her hold upon him weakened — whether through a change in his own feelings, or, as has sometimes been said, through the influence of Mrs. Unwin, who apprehended that this rival $■ 4 lp' T WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 215 at once less agitated and more spacious and aboriginal. It cannot rightly be said that he ever gave up or shirked his interest in humble life as such, or the broad humanity of his ' feelings and conceptions. Had he been pointed out by Nature for a politician, indeed, it must have been averred that he turned tail, and patched up a suspicious truce, if not a positive alliance, with the enemy : but he was not so pointed out, and therefore candour calls upon us to test his conduct by a different standard. For his contemporaries, such as Shelley, this may have been next to impossible : for us now it is both possible and obligatory. But the fact certainly lessens our warmth of liking for Wordsworth. It is also, I think, true that a certain crust of " Respect- ability," perceptible even in the youthful Wordsworth, continued to increase upon him unpleasantly, and to clog and warp the clear and pure contours of his mind. He was certainly, and in a high sense, the poet of Men in Humble Life : but Respect- ability intervened, and obstructed his becoming either the poet of Man in his fullest dimensions, natural in mode of life, unso- phisticated by circumstances, uncramped by scruples— or else, like Burns, the genuine outspoken voice of the peasant, with the peasant's full heart, liberal nature, free tongue, and patent faults. Wordsworth as a poet is in a certain sense easy, but in a deeper sense difficult, to appraise : the very ease of criticizing him constitutes part of the difficulty. Some points to be stated regarding him are so plain, and moreover so damaging, that one feels embarrassed in fitting them in to the general framework, and explaining in scanty space how lofty, as a whole, is the honour to be accorded to the poet. The best preparation for reading his works is his own preface to the Lyrical Ballads, with the other prose matter annexed to it ; the best criticism whereby to revise one's impressions derived immediately from perusal of the poems is that given by Coleridge in his Biograp/iia ■&<&- 216 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. Literaria. From the former of these two sources of information, the reader will note that Wordsworth regards all good poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings''; insists much on pleasure as a necessary element of all poetry, and even of all knowledge of whatsoever kind ; and opines that, in works of imagination or sentiment, both in prose and in verse, the language assimilates in proportion to the intrinsic value of the feelings and ideas embodied. In Coleridge's criticism it is propounded that the power of giving a novel enforcement and significance to old truths is Wordsworth's predominant characteristic. Without following further in detail the observations, para- mount as they are in value for our purpose, of Wordsworth himself and of his illustrious friend Coleridge, I shall here submit the few points which occur to myself as apposite in closing these remarks. The essence of Wordsworth's mind in poetry is contemplative imagination ; imagination direct, ex- tensive, and sympathetic, but so far contemplative as to interfere very gravely with its working impressiveness. 1 The Americans have a habit of saying that So-and-so is or is not a "magnetic" man : they have often, for instance, said this latter of General Grant. Whether based or not on true notions in physiology, this is a very available laconism, and may serve us here : Words- worth was not a magnetic man, and is consequently not a mag- netic poet. Not that he is incapable of magnetism : he is at times wonderfully charged with it, and produces an impression as sudden, as acute, and as profound as almost any poet that could 1 Shelley, writing of himself to Godwin (December 1817), said: "In this have I long believed that my power consists : in sympathy, and that part of the imagination which relates to sentiment and contemplation. " It is remarkable that nearly the same thing can truthfully — more truthfully perhaps — be said of Wordsworth, a poet so exceedingly different from Shelley in general tone. The greatest divergence is in that quality of "sympathy." Shelley felt and excited sympathy. Wordsworth felt it ; but he often (as our text indicates) both felt and expressed it without exciting it from the majority of his readers, and some readers there are from whom he can scarcely ever excite it. -M 4+ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 217 be named. Further than this, there are some natures, pecu- liarly analogous to his own, which find him very frequently or even generally magnetic : and any readers who value and enter into poetry are likely to think Wordsworth, on prolonged and repeated reading, far more magnetic than they had at first sup- posed. Still the fact remains that, with all his imagination, all his intimate knowledge of Nature, all his deep and pure feeling, all his command of poetic resource, he is not, in the large sense, a fascinating or attractive writer. His contemplative- ness, combined with what was called above his "respectability," is mainly in fault. He has himself pondered too much what he wants to say, what he means to say, why he wants and means it, whether it is right to want and mean it, and how to say it. In fact, he is too conscientious and too little instinctive for a poet. Simple he often is, even to baldness — the extreme of this is one of his leading defects; sympathetic he most assuredly is in passages or entire compositions continually recurring througliT out his volumes ; spontaneous he both seems and is very often, according to his own standard of spontaneity. But even sim- plicity, and the sympathetic and spontaneous qualities, do not quite suffice for his purpose with the reader : there is too much background for them (if one may use the phrase) — they come out of a nature at once too passively receptive, and too self- conscious of the process of reception and of after reproduction. He is a meditative and intensive poet — as such admirable, per- haps unequalled ; but, if people will not accept that in full of all poetic demands, there is nothing to compel them to do so, and Wordsworth has no more to give them. I shall not dwell here on some express blemishes which are nevertheless very truly stated and very banefully operative — such as occasional triviality, more frequent bathos, and prosing lengthiness more frequent still. The upshot of these objec- tions is that Wordsworth has bad defects, which are specially annoying inasmuch as they are specially anti-poetic. After all T 218 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. this has been allowed for and acknowledged, and after we have even excluded altogether in our minds the poems or passages open to such a censure, the residue remains, and constitutes Wordsworth a most true poet — indeed, a very exalted and a great one ; with emotion to move us, purity and simplicity to charm, imagination to upraise, and beauties of art to delight ; but wanting certain dramatic and impulsive qualities, without which the relation between a poet and his reader remains, how- ever genuine, a not quite final and complete relation. The Prodigal Son said to his Father, " Make me as one of thy hired servants." If we transfer this conception from the region of morals or religion to that of poetry, and imagine the poetic son of Father Apollo, overwhelmed with the privileges and heights of sonship, petitioning his parent to be " as one of his hired servants," and taken at his word, we have a tolerable image of Wordsworth. He is a son of Apollo ; he works with exquisite humility, and at the same time with a lofty filial feel- ing, and a self-respect all the more vital through its outward abnegation : yet the work which he produces is not absolutely son's work, but partly servant's work, and would look wholly so at times, but that other portions of it keep us better informed. 'T •£-#< WALTER SCOTT. Walter Scott is, pari passu with Lord Byron (and still more signally in the popular sense), the British-born author of by far the greatest world-wide fame among all who have flourished within a century past. Dickens might almost be added to their company so far as prose-writing is concerned : the double tiara of prose and of poetry belongs to Scott alone among the three. He was born in Edinburgh, on the 15th of August 1771 (the same day of the month as the great Napoleon, but two years later on), and died at Abbotsford, the creation of his own genius and enthusiasm, on the 21st of September 1832. This space of but sixty-one years must always seem short to his admirers for the multifarious product and activity of his life — a life in which literary exertion, though the predominant, was by no means the sole thing open to the notice of his contemporaries. Born with a naturally strong constitution, Walter Scott suffered nevertheless much early illness. He had attained the twenty-second month of his infancy, when one morning his right leg was found to be powerless and perfectly cold : hence ensued a lameness which proved unsusceptible of cure, and which remained with him all his life. In his fifth year, a lonely, contemplative boy, he went to reside with his grandfather at Sandy Knowe, on the Tweed, near Kelso ; and afterwards to the house of a maiden aunt, who took him off to Bath. This lady had an immense store of tales and legends : she was abundantly ready at imparting them to her nephew, and he was -*#* <**+ LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. still more eager as a listener than she as a narrator. In his eighth year he was removed from a private academy to the High School of Edinburgh ; his vigorous, courageous, enjoying character asserted itself, and, spite of his lameness, he joined in most of the active sports of the schoolboys. In other matters his proficiency was nothing noticeable. In October 1783 he was transferred to Edinburgh University. Another casualty befell him about the end of the year 1784. He broke a blood-vessel, and remained confined to his bed for several weeks. In this second period of enforced inactivity, the habit of omnivorous reading — especially of anything having a roman- tic or traditional character — became powerfully confirmed. Scott read almost all the romances, old plays, and epics, pertaining to a circulating library which formed his solace ; tales of chivalry, Cyrus and Cassandra, the novels of modern days — all furnished alike his pabulum ; his strong sympathetic nature, quick fancy, and enormously retentive memory as-i similated and digested them all : (it is said that he was able to repeat the whole of Campbell's Pleasures of Hope after a couple of readings). He thus attained an early command of language; and a habit of inventing stories for the diversion of his college chums preluded the work of the future novelist. The chief enjoyment of Scott's holidays was to go out with a friend who had the like taste for tales, and the lads would then recite their wild inventions alternately : Arthur's Seat was a favourite spot for these performances, which were kept secret from the profane. The same tale, of knight-errantry or what not, would be continued from day to day. Nor had his early domestica- tion with his grandfather failed to furnish its quota towards the same general direction of taste and faculty. The old gentleman was a farmer, who lived in habits of semi-patriarchal familiarity with his domestics ; and many traits of unadulterated Scotch character were here seen by young Walter — and, if seen, assuredly noted. ■«H«^ # WALTER SCOTT. In May 1786, relinquishing his wish for a military life, to which his lameness was a serious obstacle, he began an ap- prenticeship to his father, whose avocation was that of a Writer to the Signet, corresponding pretty nearly to an English attorney : this was the ordinary induction to the career of a Scottish Advocate, or barrister, for which Walter had already made some preliminary studies under Professor Dick. Hence- forward his health took a new and stronger turn, and (as a rule) he suffered little from any illness. The father was a strict disciplinarian, and a man of spirit and principle — in religion a Presbyterian precisian, and in law a formalist : the household was regulated on a like pattern. The mother, Anne Rutherford, was daughter of a physician in extensive practice, Professor of Medicine in Edinburgh University ; on the side of both parents, Walter was remotely connected with some ancient Scotch families. Neither of the parents, it may be remarked, had any poetical tendency, nor any noticeable gift of memory, in which their son was so potent. As Scott advanced in years, he began — perhaps primarily with a view to health — to take long rambles, on foot or on horseback, through the Border and Highland counties where his father had relations or clients. He found many an out-of- the-way character, interesting to the feelings or the imagination, remaining from the political troubles of 1745 and the succeed- ing years — more especially interesting to Walter Scott, who himself came of a Jacobite stock : he saw much also of the lower ranks of society in the agricultural districts. On a visit to a paternal aunt and uncle near Kelso, he first, at the age of thirteen, became acquainted with a book destined to lead to much in his own future career — the Percy Ballads. Fascinated with these, he next read the similar collection by Evans, and that of Scottish Ballads by Herd. In his schooling, though neither brilliant nor diligent, he had made some progress in Latin, moral philosophy, ethics, and history ; and he acquired Jt "^ * ■*** T.TVES OF FAMOUS POETS. sooner or later an available acquaintance with the German, French, Italian, and Spanish languages. He was no adept in Greek, and in later life had forgotten even its alphabet. The same visit to the neighbourhood of Kelso had a powerful share in awakening the interest, so conspicuous in all his writings, for the beauties and influences of natural scenery. An enquirer into the early traces of Scott's writing faculty may note some class-exercises which he composed under Dugald Stewart in 1790, and three essays which he read in the Edinburgh Speculative Society in 1792-93. His subjects were, the Manners and Customs of the Northern Nations of Europe ; the Origin of the Feudal System; the Origin of the Scandinavian Mythology ; and the Authenticity of Ossian's Poems — all of them themes entirely germane to the future bent of his genius. At an earlier date he had written an essay maintaining Ariosto to be a better poet than Homer : hence Dr. Dalziel had pronounced the rather precarious prophecy that " dunce he was, and dunce he would remain." This was a period of much intellectual activity in Edinburgh : the men who afterwards founded the Edinburgh Review were contemporaries of Scott. The latter had made some attempts in verse even before reading Percy's Reliques. Some lines on the Setting Sun are dated in July 1783 ; some on Mount ^Etna still earlier, 1782; and, towards the completion of his fifteenth year, he is said to have executed a poem in four books on the Conquest of Granada, which, however, he burned almost immediately. At the house of Professor Ferguson, about 1786, he had seen Burns ; and had been impressed, as was befitting, by the view of the great poet of Scottish life, of whose successor? he was destined to be the chief. For a period of about ten years, however, his rhyming propensities remained in abeyance : they were at length re-awakened by reading the ballads of Matthew Gregory Lewis, to whose Tales of Wonder he afterwards con- tributed. Towards the same time, in 1788, a lecture delivered V WALTER SCOTT. 223 by Henry Mackenzie turned his attention to the German language. This he studied, but only in a desultory way, up to 1793 or 1794; when Miss Aiken (afterwards Mrs. Barbauld) brought to his notice some of the poems of Burger. Hence resulted his earliest published poem — the Helen and William — paraphrased from that author's Lenore, and issued in 1796, along with the Wild Huntsman, also from Burger. Scott had never acted with any regularity as clerk in his father's legal business ; he was constantly absent on the jaunts in which he so greatly delighted, and, when in the office, chess- playing divided his attention with law. In 1791 he finally resolved to adopt the profession of an Advocate : and recom- menced his attendance at the College classes, but with some interruption from illness. In the same year he was admitted by the Faculty of Advocates to his first trials; in July 1792 he passed the residue, and was called to the bar, where he practised for a few years only. He showed himself active in. the private business of the Faculty, and in the work of the Speculative Society. In the Civil Court he made only one professional appearance ; but several in the Court of Justiciary, for which he was diligent in preparation ; nor was there any lack of energy or of pushing talent in his general, business habits. In several prosecutions for riot he appeared as counsel for the defendants. He also came forward prominently in organizing, more especially in the character of Quarter-master, a volunteer corps of horse, the Royal Edinburgh Light Dragoons, to act in case of French invasion or other sudden demand. In December 1799 he obtained, through the interest of the Melville and Buccleuch families, the appointment of Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire, which brought him in ^300 per annum ; in t8o6, the more lucrative post of one of the Principal Clerks of the Court of Session, an office which still left him a good deal of leisure, and from which he did not retire till almost the close of his life, November 1S30. The T- ^. 224 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. full emoluments of this Clerkship (about ^1300 per annum) did not accrue to him until the year 181 2. He had already, since 1797, been in possession of a small landed property, to which he succeeded on the death of an uncle. At the end of the same year, 24th December, and soon after a disappointment in love with a Perthshire lady, he had married Miss Charlotte Margaret Carpenter, a lady of French birth and connexions, and with a moderate fortune,, whom he met at the Cumbrian watering-place of Gilsland. Scott was thus a man more than tolerably prosperous in worldly circumstances, even apart from the large gains which his writings soon began to produce : about the date of publication of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1805, he had a clear income of at least ^1000 a year. Neither money nor position was to him an object of indifference : he had a strong and growing ambition for aristocratic society — with which, indeed (as already observed), he was partly con- nected by birth. The young couple lived at first, on the happiest terms, in a cottage at Lasswade. Afterwards they dwelt at Ashestiel, a beautiful spot on the Tweed, as the Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire was bound to reside in that county during some part of the year. From an early stage of his career of authorship — a career pre-eminently successful and famous from first to last — Scott resolved, with the prudence of a clear-sighted professional man, and of a man of the world to whom writing was only one outlet or expression of a wide and generous interest in life, that he would use literature "as a staff, not as a crutch." In 1799 he published his translations of Gothe's Gb'tz von Berlichingen, and circulated privately his ballads of Glenfinlas and the Eve of St. yohn. The translation of Gb'tz brought him in the moderate profit of ^25. $s. : the critics received it well, but the public remained chilly. His recognized and substantial position as an author can scarcely be said to have begun until he published, in 1802, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, ^ including some of his own imitations of the old ballad-poetry, along with forty traditional pieces never before published, and much prose illustration. A third volume of the work came out in 1803. He had paid, towards the beginning of the century, several visits to Liddisdale, and to Teviotdale, a locality then little known : here he collected many traditionary songs, and amassed besides a stock of observations afterwards utilized in the novel of Guy Mannering : indeed he had been a collector of ballads, in one way or another, from very early youth. With the Border Minstrelsy commenced also his connexion with commercial speculation in literature ; a connexion which told for much in his shining prosperity of after years, but which at last proved the wreck of all his fortunes. Mr. James Ballantyne, then editor of a Kelso newspaper, received from his old schoolfellow Scott, and accepted, the offer to print the Border Minstrelsy : he procured for the purpose a new and fine fount of types, and the handsome appearance of the volumes es- tablished the reputation of the so-called " Border Press." Mr. Ballantyne shortly removed to Edinburgh, and set up business as printer on a large scale, in secret partnership with Scott, whose share in the business was one-third. The latter visited London in 1803, and managed to be on good terms with political opponents as well as sympathizers. He was again in London, and also in Paris, in 1826. With the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Walter Scott be- came a distinguished man : it was the best possible preparation for his fame as a poet in his own right, and on an extensive scale. It was first succeeded by an edition of Sir Trisirem, a poem written about a.d. 1280, and ascribed to Thomas the Rhymer (of Ercildoune) : Scott added to the composition some completing lines of his own. In January,- 1805 he published the Lay of the Last Minstrel, the first draught of which, in its present shape, had been written in the autumn of 1802 : it was received with a tumult of applause, easily accounted for, not 16 .^ s 226 LIVES 0/« FAMOUS POETS. only by its very considerable excellences of poetic work, but especially by the novelty of its scene and treatment, and its romantic attraction. Scott was, indeed, the first man of that epoch to make poetry the rage. Altogether, nearly 44,000 copies of the Lay had sold before the issue of the anno- tated edition of 1830. Readers were delighted to find some new source of interest opened up to them in poetry ; jaded with the old subjects and the old methods — with whatsoever was recognized and right, respectable and conventional, the old clothes now threadbare, and the old viands now destructive of appetite — they got at last something fresh, full of stimulation in itself, and in the evidence which it everywhere presented of a lively, hearty, buoyant, and rejoicing nature, open to all im- pressions of the strength and sentiment of the past, and repro- ducing them in forms eminently quick-blooded. Marmion, issued in 1808, confirmed Scott's renown as a poet, and deserved to do so ; at portions of it Scott, though mostly not a careful writer, worked with earnest application. He received ^1000 for the poem from its publishers. His fame rose still higher, and attained its culmination with the publication, in May 181 o, of the Lady of the Lake — which readers of the present day will be apt, however, to pronounce the least valuable work of the three. Twenty-thousand copies sold in a few months. Its pictures of Highland scenery, valour, and manners, naturally made it immensely attractive at the time, and produced a huge effect in popularizing the Highlands among tourists of an ad- venturous or sentimental turn. The Vision of Don Roderick followe'd in 1811. It was obviously little adapted to enhance the purely poetic reputation of its author ; but the public cir- cumstances of the time favoured its success. Rokeby, written in three months and a half at the close of 181 2, and published in 18 13, was again received with great applause; yet so far sobered down as to show that the furor for Scott was now already on the wane— not to speak of its own general tameness WALTER SCOTT. 227 and marked inferiority. The Lord of the Isles was written in 18 14: it was better than Rokeby, but its reception again told the same tale of receding popularity, although a sale of fifteen- thousand copies could not at the lowest be called less than very tolerable. His two other leading poems were published anony- mously, with a view to testing the genuine state of public feeling ; the Bridal of Triermain in the same year that the Lord of the Isles was composed, 18 14, and Harold the Dauntless in 1817. There was moreover the Field of Waterloo, 1815, the authorship of which was avowed. As to the Bridal of Trier- main, a rather peculiar arrangement was adopted. The subject had been suggested to Scott by William Erskine, Lord Kin- nedder ; and an agreement was made with this legal dignitary that the poem, on appearing in print, should not be disowned by him. Two large editions sold off, and a third was called for : both parties to the quasi-deception then thought it had lasted long enough, and Scott proclaimed himself the author. A more potent despot was now ruling the world of poetry :. Byron had finally eclipsed Scott by the publication of Childe Harold in 1812; and Scott's own numerous imitators had cheapened his wares, and made them almost as commonplace as they had a few years before been new in style. About this period he composed also some dramatic pieces, without either achieving or deserving success. They were published in 1822 and 1830. Retreating from the poetic domain, he was already a ruler— and a still more powerful ruler — in another. His novel of Waverley appeared anonymously in July 1814. Some consi- derable while before this, the reading of Miss Edgeworth's Pictures of Irish Life had incited him to try whether he could accomplish something of the same kind for Scotland. He began writing his romance in 1805, and had produced some seven chapters or so; but an unfavourable judgment by a friend led him to set it aside. When ultimately it appeared, it made ■Mfr J3L* 228 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. rapid progress to fame ; and, as we all know, this novel and its successors {Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, Old Mortality, Rob Roy, The Heart, of Midlothian, and others of later date) soon achieved an unbounded popularity. At the very first, Scott was not suspected to be the author ; but surmise soon began to cling to his person, and strengthened as years elapsed, and, long before the actual avowal, he was thoroughly recog- nized as one with the " Great Unknown." This avowal was made in 1827, at the annual dinner of the Edinburgh Thea- trical Fund Association : policy, not unmingled with caprice, had sealed his lips till then. The novels, of which it is not my function to offer here any account or any estimate, continued with little intermission to pour forth from the press from 1814 to 1826, and again from 1828 onwards. 1 Besides poetry and romance, Scott was sufficiently active in other walks of literature. He contributed to the Edinburgh Review at its commencement, but quitted it in consequence of divergences of political opinion, and took a warm interest in the establishment of the Quarterly. His trade connexion with the Ballantynes, and through them with Constable and other publishers, led him to project many publications, in which he bore his part as editor or contributor. His Life of Dry den was published in 1808, that of Swift in 1814; both of them accompanying editions of the author's works. Besides these, he produced the biographical and critical preface to the Ballantyne Collection of English Novelists, and annotations to Sadleir's Correspondence, and other such books ; Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk; the articles on Chivalry, Romance, and the Drama, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica; some papers of Tory politics in a weekly journal named The Beacon ; an Account of the Re- galia of Scotland ; and several letters, sighed "Malachi Mala- growther," opposing the equalization of the Scottish and English 1 Scott, it may be noted, regarded Rebecca, thejewish heroine of his Ivanhoe, as the finest of all his female characters. , , & •M f T WALTER SCOTT. 229 monetary systems. As in whatever he did, there is, in produc- tions of the critical class by Scott, a manly, straightforward character, more conspicuous than any quality of subtlety or original insight. Famous, fully occupied, happy in domestic life, surrounded by numerous friends and acquaintances, wealthy, and loving society, Scott seemed one of the most fortunate of men. He had a rather weak-minded ambition — that of living like a feudal lord ; and for a while he realized it with considerable klat. In 181 1 he bought a hundred acres of moorland on the Tweed, near Melrose — moorland bleak and bare — for which he gave ^4000. " Cartley Hole'' did not sound so well as "Abbots- ford " : he called it by the latter name, and about 1814 left his residence at Ashestiel for the house of Abbotsford, which he rebuilt. He filled it with costly and curious odds and ends of all sorts; exercised a large hospitality; and endeavoured to revive the aspect of the olden times. Many other purchases of land followed, at heavy prices: fully ^20,000 were spent on the mansion and garden. Scott's baronetcy was conferred in 1820. A triumph which culminates in a reception of George the Fourth cannot be a triumph of a highly exalted kind : such was the case with Walter Scott, who took a prominent part in the festivities of the King's visit to Edinburgh in August 1822. But the term of all these brilliancies was at hand. The publishers with whom Scott was so closely connected, Constable and the Ballantynes, were men of talent, but unduly enterprizing : from the first, their undertakings went beyond their capital, and their speculations increased with their perils. Scott was not only a partner with the printer James Ballantyne to the extent of one- third, but also to the same extent with a younger brother, the publisher John Ballantyne : the latter partnership dated from 1808, the former from 1805. The commercial crisis of 1825-6 precipitated, but did not in fact cause, the collapse of these firms : all of them became bankrupt in January of the latter -*r ■^^ 230 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. year. It turned out that Scott was indebted to Constable's creditors, as a partner in the firm of Ballantyne & Co., to the extent of nearly ,£72,000, about half ot which sum was in- cluded in the debts of the firm itself. Besides this, there were other liabilities of the partnership, amounting to about £110,000; so that Scott's personal debt reached a total of something like £147,000. That he had been rash is admitted on all hands. He undertook work on a loose and precarious system ; having, from or even before the year 1823, contracted to produce novels, and taken payment for them in bills, now become valueless, before so much as fixing on their subject- matter. He showed a bold front to adversity : "Time and I against any two," said he to his creditors. He expressed his confident hope of paying all ; surrendered the whole of his property ; and executed a trust-deed in favour of certain gentlemen who were to receive the proceeds of his future labours, and to pay-off his debts by instalments with interest. He sold his splendid house and furniture, took lodgings, and turned-to once more and doggedly at writing. He expressed to a friend his sense of how hard it was to lose everything, and be poor at last, but said that he hoped yet to retrieve all within a few years. The works that Scott wrote subsequently to this great reverse, which overtook him at about fifty-five years of age, naturally want buoyancy. They include the History of Napoleon, 1827, which had been begun before the wreck of his fortunes ; the Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft ; the Tales of a Grand- father (episodes of Scottish History), 1827-28; the Scottish History in Lardner's Cycloptzdia ; the notes to his collected works in 1829. His health did not long endure the strain : in February 1830 symptoms of paralysis supervened. A severer stroke of the same malady came in April 1831 : still he con- tinued writing many hours a day. His strenuous exertions had practically achieved their purpose : the debts were much HHH *£&- WALTER SCOTT. 231 diminished even before the close of his life (he paid six shillings in the pound the year after publishing the Life of Napoleon, and had in four years paid .£70,000); and the aftersale of his collected works finally wiped them out. The troubles which beset himself personally were aggravated by the aspect of public affairs, then gloomy and ominous enough to so staunch a tory as Scott : yet he was partially cheered by the consciousness of the great progress he was making towards clearing-off his debts, and by the tender affection of his children. In the hope of im- proving his health, he went abroad, sailing from Portsmouth on the 27th of October 1831. He landed in Naples on the 17th of December, remained there till the 16th of April, and then went on to Rome and other places. Finding his strength de- crease, he made haste homewards, starting on the nth of May. All this while he had continued writing the latest of his long list of romances. Reaching London on the 13th of June, Sir Walter was struck down by a combination of paralysis and apoplexy. The end was visibly approaching. Finally he visited his friend Mr. Laidlaw, the then owner of the house which had witnessed his own signal but unenduring prosperity ; he said, " now he knew he was at Abbotsford." He had arrived there on the nth of July 1832 ; but he arrived only to die. For fourteen days (after an attack of delirium, in which it was remarked that his mind in its wanderings never strayed to his literary works) he remained in an insensible condition, which closed in death on the 21st of September 1832, about half-past one p.m. The day was warm and beautiful, and all his children were present. On the 26th his remains were buried in the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey. Scott was the fourth in a family of ten children ; of these the only one to leave any descendants was his younger brother Thomas. H is own children were his successor in the baronetcy, Sir Walter, Charles, Mrs. Lockhart, and Miss Anne Scott ; the two ladies did not survive their father many years. Lady Scott -4 V 232 LIVES OF FAMOUS fUFTS. had died in the thick of her husband's troubles, 15th of May 1827. The private character of Scott was worthy of all respect ; and especially so in his uncommon freedom from literary vanity, his total and resolute avoidance of literary quarrels, and his readiness to encourage and assist deserving or unfriended aspirants. At all periods of his life, his manners were easy and agreeable — the natural result of strong character and sense, and a willingness to enjoy life in its various aspects as he found it, with his great innate insight and genius to fall back upon when- ever these were in demand. In youth he was not frivolous or dissipated, nor in manhood and more advanced age indifferent to any healthy, hearty, or manly pleasure of the moment. He often walked some thirty miles in a day, and rode more than a hundred without resting. In all his earlier years he was greatly addicted to field-sports : towards 181 2 this taste began to diminish, and he paid some attention to farming, but never took any steady interest in it. He was an early riser, was wont to do his writing-work in the morning, and would then spend the rest of the day with his guests, or otherwise killing time, showing little or nothing of the professional author. His celerity in composition is attested, among innumerable other instances, by his having written the second and third volumes of Waverley in the afternoons of three summer weeks of 18 14. He finished the Lay of the Last Minstrel at the rate of about a canto per week. The Lord of the Lsles was to a great extent written while the poet was in company : neither conversation nor music caused him any serious disturbance. As in charactei and habits of life, so ,in person, Scott was by no means ex clusively or predominantly to be identified as a literary man. His face is too well known to demand or bear description : the long, upright forehead, the straitened length of head, the deep- grey eyes. The general aspect is perhaps that of a shrewd farmer, or country-gentleman of moderate estate, rather thai ■$»<#■ MfffiliH SCOTl'S STUDY AT ABBOTSFOED. =T WALTER SCOTT. 233 anything else ; sagacity, penetration, humour, usage of the world, power and habit of concentrated reflection, are all markedly discernible : but the poet and romancist who flooded all Europe with his vivid and moving conceptions is hardly the personage that one would be prepared to meet in such a countenance. As regards the merits of Walter Scott as a poet, it is difficult for some critics to be sufficiently affluent of praise, and for others to be sufficiently chary. When one has said that he is exceedingly spirited, one has expressed the most salient and the finest of his excellences ; only we must remember that a narrative and romantic poet cannot be. thus spirited without having other admirable gifts whence the spirit ensues, and whereby it is sustained — virility, knowledge of life, character, and circumstance, quick sympathy with man and nature, flow of invention, variety of presentment, a heart that vibrates to the noble and the right — much picturesqueness, some beauty. On the other hand, it is not untrue to say that Scott, though con- tinually spirited, is also very frequently tame — and not free from tameness even in his distinctively spirited passages. His phrases, when you pause upon them, are full of commonplace. The reason of this is that Scott was very little of a literary-poetic artist: greatness of expression — the heights and depths of language and of sound — were not much in his way. He respected his subject much more than he respected his art: after consulting and satisfying his own taste and that of his public, the thing had to do well enough. Scott has always been the poet of youthful and high-hearted readers : there seems to be no reason why he should not continue indefinitely to meet their requirements, and certainly they will be con- siderable losers if ever, in the lapse of time and shifting of poetic models, his compositions should pass out of ready cur- rency. He is not, and never can be, the poet of literary readers : the student and the artist remember him as a cherished T *£"$- 234 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. enchantment of their youth, and do not recur to him. Neither the inner recesses of thought nor the high places of art thrill to his appeal. But it is highly possible for the critical tendency and estimate to be too exclusively literary ; the poetry of Scott is mainly amenable to a different sort of test, and to that it responds not only adequately but triumphantly. T 11/ " POETS BORN BETWEEN SCOTT AND COLERIDGE. James Montgomery 1771 to 1854. James Hogg 1772 to 1835. <*£• ■ ■ — - — — - — — -S^ ~«^> SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. .The youngest of a very numerous family, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on the 21st of October 1772, at Qttery St. Mary, in Devonshire. His father became the vicar of this small place, having been Head Master in the King's School ; a devout and learned and eminently simple-hearted man, whose extreme absence of mind brought him at times into positions in which a less genuine person would' have been ridiculous. His illustrious son was wont in after years to compare him to Parson Adams. By his first wife the Vicar had three daughters, and ten children by his second. Anne Bowdon, the mother of the future poet, was an uneducated but sensible and domestic woman, of a practical turn of mind. It would seem that Samuel inherited much more from his father than from his mother. The Reverend John Coleridge died before his youngest son was seven years of age ; in about two years, the mother followed him to the tomb, and the family was left in straitened circum- stances. Samuel was sent to Christ Hospital, London, in 1782: one of his schoolfellows there was Charles Lamb. Mr. Bowyer — a learned and capable flagellant who, instead of enduring a rapid recurrence of committals to the treadmill for brutalities perpetrated upon unhappy boys, was remembered by Coleridge long afterwards with respect tempering the hauntings of fear — was the preceptor in chief. Friendless in London, ill fed, and harshly used, poor little Coleridge could scarcely help being a r w ■*fa 238 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. melancholy lad, though not wanting in a certain buoyancy of spirits : he joined in no sports, but revelled in books. There are few more curious anecdotes than that which tells us that the forlorn Bluecoat Boy, strolling one day through a crowded London thoroughfare, was thrusting out his arms and hands in an abstracted mood, when his fingers touched a gentleman's waistcoat. Accused on the instant of pocket-picking intentions, he explained that he had been fancying himself Leander in the act of swimming across the Hellespont. Such a response was well calculated to take his questioner aback; the result was that the latter goodnaturedly paid for Coleridge as subscriber to a circulating library, whence the youth drank many a deep draught of bookish delight. Meanwhile he was making very great classical progress : before his fifteenth year he had trans- lated the hymns of Synesius into English anacreontics. He was moreover already deep in metaphysical and theologic controversy. History did not interest him at all, nor even poetry and romance much. He rose to be Deputy Grecian at Christ Hospital, and was selected by the bloodthirsty but discerning Bowyer for a scholarship in Cambridge University. The book which decisively roused Coleridge's feeling for poetry was one whose title will surprise readers of the present day — the sonnets of the Rev. Mr. Bowles. He had indeed shown a certain versifying tendency before — having written at the early age of eight some lines still preserved for the lettered enquirer. Among his poems of good literary calibre, several also belong to a very youthful period ; Real and Imaginary Time, for instance, was composed in his sixteenth year. About this latter age he fell in love with the sister of a schoolfellow. It was in boyhood also that he laid the seeds of much future suffering. Imprudent exposure, in swimming and otherwise, brought on a good deal of illness at the age of seventeen to eighteen,and left him a prey to rheumatism ever after. In February 1791 Coleridge was entered at Jesus College, SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 239 Cambridge. He paid no attention to mathematics ; nor, even in classics, did he distinguish himself to the extent that might have been anticipated. He obtained a prize for a Greek ode, but did not, after all, take a degree. A debt which he had in- curred for college-furniture caused him a deal of trouble : to this, and to his comparative failure as a student, and possibly (as some writers have said) to a disappointment in love, may be attributed the strange impulse on which he acted, in the second year of his university career, in suddenly leaving Cambridge. He came up to London, and wandered desolately about the streets, and next, without more ado, enlisted in the Fifteenth Light Dragoons under the assumed name of Comberback. This occurred on the 3rd of December 1 793. Private Comber- back was treated with kindness in the troop, but showed (as one might well have guessed) no military aptitude, never getting out of the awkward squad. One day a Cambridge man recog- nized him in the streets of Reading, where he was quartered. Soon also one of the officers noticed his classical knowledge, elicited his story, and communicated with his friends, who made no delay in procuring his discharge on the 10th of April 1794. Coleridge returned to Jesus College, but not for long. He has left it on record that his course of life while at the University was nearly correct in a moral point of view, although it was his weakness to affect to be more lax than he really was. Coleridge had now become acquainted with Robert Southey, and was bent upon joining him in a literary course of life. He went off to Bristol, where his friend lived : both of them gave some public lectures on politics. Everybody has heard tell of the project which the two young men schemed out for themselves of what they termed a pantisocracy, or community where all the members should be absolutely equal : it was to be set up at Susquehannah, in America — a place which they pitched upon because its sounding name hit their fancy. But neither Cole- ridge nor Southey was destined to be a resident at Susque- .fc. 240 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. hannah, nor yet a pantisocrat — though, after all the many cachinnations with which their not highly practical scheme has been greeted, it may fairly be said that this was not the lowest ideal in which both or either of them indulged. The coup de grace to this speculation came when, in the autumn of 1795, Coleridge married Miss Sarah Fricker, of Bristol; Southey immediately afterwards espoused one of her sisters, and Mr. Lovel, a Utopian versifier of their acquaintance, wedded another. With these interests and responsibilities, pantisocracy dissolved its dream-woven fabric, aud became a thing to smile and wonder over. Coleridge remained as yet an ardent lover of liberty, and in many respects a devoteeof the principles contended for in the French Revolution — that epoch of glorious hopes, and of great achievements too, which the progress of material well-being and of unheroic common-sense has been making somewhat too dim to us of the waning nineteenth century. The earliest published poem by Coleridge was the drama named The Fall of Robespierre — a statesman who was a mere political "bogy" in those days, and one whom an English reader of the newspapers could hardly help supposing much inferior to the patriotic but de- clamatory, band of Girondins whom he had overthrown. Jubi- lation over the downfall of the "sanguinary monster" was natural to a Coleridge, as well as to a Barras or a Coburg : less natural and less appropriate to the Muse of History after the lapse of more than three quarters of a century. The drama was published with the name of Coleridge alone as author, in the same year as the event, 1794 : it appears, however, that the second and' third acts are in fact the production of Southey. In the following year this first poetical was succeeded by its author's first prose" work, Condones ad Populum, in which also Southey had a hand. Coleridge was now living at Clevedon near Bristol, and soon afterwards he took a cottage at Nether Stowey, at the foot of the Quantock Hills. Here he was close SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 241 to a friend, Mr. Poole, who gave him substantial proofs of his kind feeling, and was also near Allfoxden, the residence of Wordsworth, with whom he had about this time become ac- quainted. The two exalted poets recognized each other's gifts and loftiness of mind, and have left emphatic testimony of the fact; although the cordial friendliness of Coleridge towards Wordsworth was not without some interruption in later years. In February 1796 the former started a paper of liberal views named the Watchman, and made a tour through the northern manufacturing towns, to beat up subscribers. The Watchman had to discontinue, at the ninth serial appearance, his vigilance over the public weal. His recurrences were made with a lack of punctuality deplorable in so alert an official, and the opinions which he emitted were not exactly what his few and rapidly fewer subscribers had been expecting. The editor's attitude of mind towards public questions was shifting fast : and what began with a change of circumstance ended in a settled divergency — a change of opinion, and even of sentiment. Coleridge was still indeed anti-ministerial in British politics ; but, after the French invasion of Switzerland, he became bitterly anti-Gallican and anti- Jacobin. Practically, with what- ever qualifications and saving-clauses of intellectual continuity, the pantisocrat developed into a tory. As in the case of Wordsworth, it would be equally needless and unfair, at this distance of time, to denounce Coleridge as a. turncoat, or ascribe his altered tone of mind to any moral obliquity ; he never made toryism pay to any extent worth mentioning, as did Southey, his associate in zenith and nadir of opinion : nor did he, like that distinguished panegyrist of Wat Tyler and of George the Third, exhibit the personal spites of a rancorous renegade. This change of political opinion in Coleridge was gradually, though more slowly, accompanied by a similar change of religious opinion. In his schoolboy days he had dallied with scepticism, which the bully Bowyer chastised with the 17 "44 242 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. only available weapon in his armoury, the rod. He grew up, however, a sincere adherent to biblical faith, but a unitarian — or (as he himself says) a " psilanthropist," or believer in the merely natural manhood of Jesus. While living at Stowey he frequently preached in the unitarian chapel in the neigh- bouring town of Taunton, and attracted large congregations by his gifts of surpassing oratory and ever-welling fluency — gifts by which we must always remember that he was distinguished among his contemporaries in a most peculiar degree, and fully as much as by the thought or beauty of his published writings, whether in poetry or in prose. But unitarianism was not to remain his spiritual tabernacle to the end. Towards the close of 1796 he engaged deeply and seriously in religious specula- tions ; and, as time wore on, unitarianism became more and more barren and repulsive to him, and one final flash of convic- tion turned him into a trinitarian, not only sincere but impas- sioned in the faith. Thenceforth, without setting himself to speak in an uncharitable spirit of his opponents, Coleridge ceased to regard as any genuine Christianity at all that form of Christianity which is without belief in Christ as God. It is not altogether easy — not at any rate for those who approach the subject without holding the touchstone of the like form of faith — to enter into the workings of Coleridge's mind on this sub- ject ; to understand what it was that convinced him, or what was in fact the persuasion into which he was convinced, taken in its esoteric as well as its exoteric relations — for unquestion- ably the esoteric counted for a good deal. A memorandum written in February 1805 shows that he had been emerging from unitarianism seven or eight years earlier, and that the doctrine of the Trinity had now at last " burst upon him at once as an awful truth : — No Christ, no God." He adds : " Oh that this conviction may work upon me and in me, and that my mind may be made up, as to the character of Jesus and of historical Christianity, as clearly as it is of the Logos, and intel- * ^ T ~ ' ^p SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 243 lectual or spiritual Christianity — that I may be made to know either their special and peculiar union, or their absolute dis- union in any peculiar sense ! " The most obvious result of Coleridge's trinitarian conversion is a flood of eloquence and verbiage about "the Logos " ; and perhaps its most persistently operative effect upon the unillumined reader is to make him glance rapidly over the page of prose to see whether that word appears upon it, and to turn the leaf decisively when he per- ceives that it does — which it does very often. But I have been anticipating somewhat, and must revert to Coleridge's literary doings at Nether Stowey. He used for a while, with a view to eking out a subsistence, to write verses for money in a London journal; and in 1796 he published a volume, consisting mostly of his earlier poems, intermixed with others composed by Lamb. Of this volume a second edition appeared in 1797, with some added verses by Mr. Charles Lloyd, the translator of Alfieri. This year, 1797, was the great epoch of Coleridge's poetic fertility : the works by which he will be longest and always remembered were the production of a young man of twenty-five, a little less or a little more — a point which readers are apt to forget, and to re-learn with surprise. Indeed, during the three years of his sojourn at Nether Stowey he composed most of his leading poems, though published at a later date. The Ancient Mariner was the work of 1797 ; also the first part of Christabel (the second part belongs to 1800), and the drama of Remorse, termed in the first instance Osorio. Zapolya was a much later dramatic work, written between 18 14 and 1816, and published in 181 7 : a hasty performance which received a fair share of popularity. The plan of the volume named Lyrical Ballads, so famous in the critical contests of that time, was now formed in consequence of conversations between Coleridge and Wordsworth; the Ancient Mariner appeared in this volume, published in 1798. In the memoir of Wordsworth I have already given the impprtant remarks made ¥* 244 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. | . j by Coleridge regarding the Lyrical Ballads, and his own share \ in them : a good deal more, bearing on the same matter, will be found in the preface written by Wordsworth to the volume ; we have also seen that the name of " Lake Poets " was applied to the two authors of this book, soon after its appearance, and also to Southey. In 1 798, the year of the publication of this celebrated joint volume, Coleridge, through the liberality of the distinguished china-manufacturers Josiah and Thomas Wedgewood, was enabled to visit Germany, with a view to deeper and completer educational studies. He sailed on the 16th of September, in company with Wordsworth, and the sister of that poet ; and he remained abroad for rather more than a year, returning to London at the end of November 1799. At Gottingen he attended Blumenbach's lectures on physics and natural history, and studied, through the medium of notes made by a young German, Eichhorn's lectures on the New Testament. He also took lessons from Professor Tychsen in the Gothic of Ulphilas, and went through a complete course of German literature. With the later German metaphysics he did not form an acquaintance until some years afterwards. On first coming back to England, he stayed in London (Buckingham Street, Strand), and devoted himself to the trans- lating of Schiller's drama of Wallenstein — an arrangement having been made for publishing the English version at the same date with the German original. He completed his work in the very moderate space of six weeks, and issued it from the press in 1800 : it had scarcely any sale. He next undertook the literary and political departments of the Morning Post, stipu- lating that he should be at liberty to perform his work without favour, and without deviation from a definite line of principle. Afterwards, from about 1803, he began writing in the Courier, and this employment continued till 18 T4. In 180 1 he had settled at Keswick in Cumberland : Southey was already a -*¥* SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 245 resident there, and Wordsworth was not far off, at Grasmere. But the damp climate did not suit Coleridge's health, and in 1804 he availed himself of an opportunity of going to Malta, on a visit to his friend Dr. Stoddart. Almost immediately on his arrival in the island, an oppression of breathing came on, and continued to affect his health for the residue of his life. From May 1804 till the summer of 1805 he acted as Secretary ad interim to the Governor of Malta, Sir Alexander Ball — a dis- tinguished naval officer, of whose character Coleridge has left in the pages of The Friend a very high eulogium. His salary as Secretary was no doubt the highest rate of remuneration he ever received in his life for any kind of service to the world, ;£8oo per annum. Neither the Ancient Mariner nor the " Logos " counted for nearly so much to Coleridge. On the arrival of the new Secretary, the poet quitted Malta on the 2 7th of September 1805, and went to Syracuse; next through Naples to Rome, where he remained for some months. Here he met Washington Alston, the American painter, whom he valued, and who painted a likeness of the poet. Coleridge at last had to leave Rome hurriedly, having received a hint that Napoleon then the Briareus of the entire continent, meant to arrest him : the "Corsican ogre," we are told, attributed to the author's articles in the Morning Post the feelings of jealousy and indignation which had caused the rupture of the peace of Amiens. The story has rather an apocryphal air; but it is narrated in good faith, and to disbelieve would not be to dis- prove it. Coleridge returned to England from Leghorn in an American ship in 1806. A French vessel gave chase ; and the American captain compelled him to throw overboard all his papers — a serious loss to himself and to readers, as among these papers were many notes upon the antiquities and other matters of interest in Rome. Keswick was now once more the home of Coleridge, though he was oftener staying with Wordsworth at Grasmere. Here ■&, 246 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. he planned The Friend — a periodical publication, the 1st Number of which appeared on the 8th of June 1809, and the 27th and last on the 15th of March 1810. He was his own publisher, and naturally lost money, being as far as possible from an adept in matters of business. Wordsworth gave some cooperation in the writing of The Friend, which, in its re-edited form issued in 181 8, was so considerably altered as almost to constitute a new work. In 1810 Coleridge left the Lake district, and did not again return to live there; his wife and family remained behind. The poet may possibly have seen them at some subsequent date, but was never more domesticated with them. This has of course been charged against him as a grave misdoing; he was still a youngish man, thirty-eight years of age, but I do not find it recorded that, beyond the act of ceasing to cohabit with his wife, he gave any cause of scandal. The vessels of wrath which were afterwards, under somewhat similar circumstances, poured forth upon the atheist Shelley and the sceptic Byron, might therefore, with some show of fairness, be considerably diluted for the grizzling head of the christian and orthodox Coleridge. Still it was a transgression requiring explanation, if not expiation. Apologists have pleaded that the poet did not, in any complete sense of the term, " desert " his wife, but gave her all his little income, and lived on the meagre profits of his pen. He had also had the providence to insure his life in the year 1803. He came to London, where he had already, in 1808, delivered a course of lectures, on poetry and the fine arts, at the Royal Institution. At first he lived with his friend, the barrister Basil Montagu ; afterwards at Hammersmith with another acquaint- ance, Mr. Morgan. He now delivered, at the London Philoso- phical Society, another course of lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, beginning in November 181 1, followed by a further course at the Royal Institution. His great reputation as a critic of aesthetics and poetry is to a large extent founded upon these Jl- f -*■ SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 247 several sets of lectures, and upon his written recastings of their purport. He spoke from notes, but frequently, and at con- siderable length, launched out into extempore discourse. His action, even when he declaimed energetically, was subdued. Now also, 1813, after a long interval of years, the drama of Remorse, written as far back as 1797, obtained, through the good offices of Lord Byron, a hearing on the boards of Drury Lane, and met with a fairly encouraging amount of public acceptance. Soon after this event Coleridge lived for a while at Calne, in Somersetshire. Here he collected the volume of poems entitled Sibylline Leaves, wrote most of his Biographia Literaria, and dictated Zapolya : this drama also was offered to Drury Lane, but declined. We now come to the last migration of Coleridge's somewhat nomadic though not eventful life. For years he had been addicted to dosing himself with opium and laudanum. He began the insidious practice, it seems, in consequence of seeing a medical notification of the curative effects of Kendal's Black Drop in a case of rheumatism and palpitation of the heart, both of which diseases afflicted himself. He procured the drug, and its medicinal virtue appeared at first almost magical. Another statement, not perhaps entirely baseless, and given as on his own authority, is that he took opium " to deaden the sharpness of his cogitations " : there seems to be no good ground for ' charging him with having used it for the mere gratification of a morbid appetite. Anyhow he was now a helpless and a restive slave to the habit : this had grown upon him, he had struggled with it, had succumbed, and could 'not, with all his feeble and half-hearted efforts, throw it off. In consequence of this state of things, Dr. Joseph Adams, on the poet's behalf, asked Mr. Gillman, a surgeon residing at Highgate, in April 1816, whether he could make it convenient to receive Coleridge as an inmate of his house, with a view to breaking him of the destructive and now abhorred practice. Mr. Gillman consented. Coleridge, 248 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. whom he had never seen before, arrived on the 12th at the pleasant and hospitable house in Highgate : he settled down there, and left it no more till death. His stipulation was that he should pay his own expenses. He said that he had never, since he began taking laudanum, gone for sixty con- secutive hours without it. But. severe precautions on Mr. Gillman's part, aided by self-command as strenuous as the poet was capable of, succeeded : Coleridge ceased to be an opium- eater. At Highgate he cultivated his flowers, and had a set of birds as pensioners. He was not apparently sad, though there are ample evidences in his writings of deep-seated dissatisfaction with himself, and with the comparatively slight life-long results of his spacious, splendid, and various intellect. Not indeed that the bulk of his published writings is, properly speaking, insignificant, nor their fabric flimsy : but he was mournfully con- scious of projects lapsed, energies waning, and opportunities lost, never to recur. His extraordinary powers of conversation, or rather monologue or holding-forth, now found ample exer- cise : there were many, and some half- worshiping, listeners to the oracular and superabundant utterances, which flowed on for hours. " The moaning sing-song of that theosophico- metaphysical monotony left on you, at last, a very dreary feeling," says Carlyle, who has given (in his Life of Sterling) an incomparable record of these outpourings. There are other records much more admiring, and some perhaps not less true in the main ; but they run no chance of surviving in the popu- lar memory against Carlyle's. The two volumes which have been published of Coleridge's Table-talk are said to give but a very insufficient idea of the reality. The period of Coleridge's chief studies in German meta physics began about the time of his settling in London : in his earlier life he had been a disciple of Hartley's theories, and named his eldest son after that writer. An expert has pro- nounced that he adopted the method and terminology of the #" 4 -eH!» SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 249 Teutonic philosophers, rather than developed any system. His avowed ambition was to overthrow the ascendency of Locke and Paley ; but it cannot be said that he in any way achieved this. In psychology he adhered to Schelling's hypothesis of The Absolute : he advocated without much advancing it. The twelfth chapter of his Biographia Literaria, which comes nearer than any other of his writings to being a full statement of his views, is indeed little more than a translation from Schelling. He sturdily opposed the Utilitarians, then rising into promi- nence, and was an upholder of the doctrine of a moral sense. Not only in matters of speculation, but in poetry as well, Cole- ridge has been assailed as an unmeasured and disingenuous borrower. That there is some truth in these charges has been determined upon evidence too clear for refutation : but one is not bound to adopt or to urge them with any animus. Cole- ridge was a man of very wide reading and susceptible intellect : opinions or conceptions with which he found himself in sympathy rapidly took possession of and pervaded his mind, and he reproduced them, coloured more or less by his own genius, without its being permitted to us to call that genius in question, even if its receptivity was excessive. Some suspicion of plagiarism might again be founded upon passages in Cole- ridge's Lectures on Shakespeare resembling observations made by Schlegel : it appears, however, that in fact the English lecturer had preceded the German by about two years. The First and Second Parts of Christabel were now for the first time printed. Mr. Gillman has left us an account of the course which the story, as narrated by Coleridge to his friends, was intended to take. Geraldine was conceived as a creature "not of this world," and veritably of " hideous form." After a while, she was to transmute herself into the aspect of Christabel' s absent lover, and was to resume the courtship of that noble young damsel ; and Christabel, though haunted by some uneasy forebodings, was to be on the point of marrying the seeming ^ * ■* 250 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. warrior, when the real original lover was to make his re- appearance, to the discomfiture and evanishing of the fiendish Geraldine. This does not look like a very effective conclusion to a tale so potent over the imagination, in its inception, as Christabel. Perhaps Mr. Gillman, whose reference to the matter is not distinguished by much delicacy of artistic insight, has given but a blurred version of Coleridge's conception ; or possibly Coleridge himself, more than sufficiently plagued by people who wanted to know how Christabel " was to end," put them off with a slovenly account of the scheme. Other works of the author's later years were the Two Lay Sermons, written in 1816; the Aids to Reflection, 1825; the essay On the Con- stitution of Church and State, according to the Idea of each, 1830. The Theory of Life was a posthumous publication, not issued till 1849. He contemplated writing, as the crowning work of his literary life, a book on Christianity as the sole revelation of permanent and universal validity ; and had planned, ever since the age of twenty-five, an epic on the Destruction of Jerusalem, which he considered the only thoroughly epic subject as yet unappropriated : it need hardly be said, however, that neither of these formidable projects ever took actual shape. The year 18 19 was unfortunate to Coleridge : his publisher became bankrupt, and the poet's pecuniary position, always lax and uncertain, now sank into a dependence which weighed much on his spirits. He thought of becoming a systematic contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, being acquainted with the conductors of that rather venomous organ of toryism ; and he did publish there No. 1 of a Selection front Mr. Coleridge's Literary Cor- respondence (October 182 1) : but No. 2 or any farther successor of No. 1 never appeared. In 1825 the Royal Society of Literature, recently incorporated by George the Fourth, was dignified by numbering Coleridge as one of its ten "Royal Associates," and he thus became the recipient of an annual ^105 from the king's private purse : one of the not too numerous SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 251 good deeds which one is glad to remember to the credit of " the First Gentleman in Europe." At the accession of " the sailor king," William the Fourth, this meagre but welcome dole, well earned and no doubt gratefully received, came to an end. Thus glided away the lengthening, lingering twilight of Coleridge's days ; glided calmly, and somewhat lethargically, yet not without active intellectual life at the centre. Many physical sufferings heralded the close ; caused eventually by an organic change slowly taking place in the structure of the heart. Nightmare also often troubled him, along with other ailments which had beset him from his early youth and manhood. Four years of confinement to a sick-room came to an end on the 25 th of July 1834. The poet's remains lie in the churchyard of < Highgate. Perhaps the thing that strikes one most in Coleridge's idiosyncrasy and career is what would be called " want of cha- racter." It looks as if he had not been born with any very decided bent towards any development other than intellectual ; and, even in the intellectual region, he works with small force of personality. As to the ordinary aims or interests of life, he cared little to attain, and less to strive. In a certain sense he was slothful and imprudent : not, however, that he was at any time properly an idle man, nor long unoccupied, — he even had strong and continuous powers of application. But he had not the habit of business-like working, on a systematic plan and for objects which other people concurred with himself in regarding as practical. His desire of truth was earnest, and at first asso- ciated with tolerance towards opponents. In his later years, however, he was somewhat harsh in his judgments, and querulous on his own account, which may to a considerable extent be attributed to ill health. His opinions, not over-stable in themselves, were always preached with emphasis. Though one hardly forms such a conception of him, it is attested that he had ample gifts of wit, and even of humour, and was a -HH> distinguished punster. He possessed in an eminent degree the power of attaching friends ; along with personal humility, gentleness, and courtesy, a strong sense of gratitude, and marked candour in the confession of his shortcomings. All the social affections were known to him, abnormal though his conduct was in living apart from his family throughout the latter half of his manhood. In person one is compelled to say that few illustrious men look less interesting than Coleridge in the ordinary portraits (except the sketch by Maclise) : there is no resistance in his face — nothing which tells out as a rallying-point of character in himself, or for our encouragement. He was himself fully alive to this. A letter of his dated 6th August 1814 (I am not aware that it has ever been published) says, with regard to the portrait painted by Alston, " I am not mortified, though I own I should like it better to be otherwise, that my face is not a manly or representable face. Whatever is impressive is part fugitive,' part existent only in the imaginations of persons impressed strongly by my conversation. The face itself is a feeble, un- manly face. The exceeding weakness, strengthlessness, in my face, was even painful to me.'' We are fain to recede from the portraits, and take refuge in the fearfully hackneyed quotation from Wordsworth, — " A noticeable man with large grey eyes." Coleridge was about 5 feet ■ POET BORN BETWEEN BYRON AND SHELLEY. Bryan Waller Procter 1789 to 1874. A. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley — these are, I believe, the four sublimest sons of song that England has to boast of among the mighty dead — say rather among the undying, the never-to-die. Let us remember also two exceptional phenomena, an " inspired ploughman," Burns, and an unparallelled poetess, Mrs. Browning, and be thankful for such a national destiny. There are plenty of others : but those four are, if I mistake not, the four. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on the 4th of August 1792 at Field Place, Sussex, the seat of his father, Mr. Timothy Shelley. The family is of high antiquity and distinction, and is at the present day represented by a peer (Lord de L'Isle and Dudley) and two Baronets. Mr. Timothy Shelley was the son of Mr. (afterwards Sir) Bysshe Shelley, a man of talent, hand- some presence, varied experiences, and eccentric habits : in the latter years of his life he lived in great seclusion at Horsham. He had married two heiresses, and had families by both. The former line was represented by Mr. Timothy Shelley, of whom Percy was the eldest child and heir; the later line was represented by Sir John Shelley-Sidney, of Penshurst. Mr. Timothy Shelley married Elizabeth, the beautiful daughter of a gentleman settled at Effingham, Surrey, Mr. Charles Pilfold. Four daughters and a son, in addition to Percy, grew up : two of the daughters are still alive. Mr. Timothy Shelley (who succeeded to the baronetcy, and died, long after his illustrious son, in 1844) was M.P. for Shoreham; a commonplace sort of *T 3io LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. country-gentleman, kindly enough but somewhat mulish and violent-tempered — in politics, an adherent of the Whig party, and especially of the local magnates, the ducal family of Norfolk. The mother was a woman of good abilities, but not with any literary turn. Shelley grew out of infancy at home, receiving a little schooling at the neighbouring village- of Warnham, and afterwards at Sion House School, Brentford. The master here was a hard Scotchman, and the pupils formed an unrefined and ungentle team. Shelley, shrinkingly sensitive and open to all delicate impressions, endured much misery at their hand's, and soon found out that the world into which he was born was not exactly his sort of world. We learn from the Dedication to the Revolt of Islam how acutely he felt his isolation and dis- tresses, and how early he resolved to be " wise, and just, and free, and mild." Hence, in his twelfth year, he passed to Eton, where things went on much the same. Shelley refused with scorn and exasperation to submit to the fagging system : his spirit was not to be bent or broken, and he had his way. A tutor of the school, Dr. James Lind, was his early friend, and the trainer of his mind towards many high achievements. In especial he inspired the youth with a vivid though transitory love for chem- ical experiment, and with enlarged ideas of toleration and free enquiry in matters of religion. The anecdote of Shelley's setting fire to a tree on the common, by gunpowder which he lit with a burning - glass, is one of the best-known in his biography. At one time, being attacked by a fever which affected the brain, he was (or supposed himself to be) in. some danger of being sent by his father to a private madhouse : Dr. Lind hurried to Field Place, cured him, and averted the peril. Shelley's career at Eton under Dr. Keate, and amid school- fellows whom he was perpetually resisting, was a stormy one : at last, about 1809 (it has been said, but with uncertain authenticity) 4 ±. PERCY B YSSHE SHELLE Y. 311 he struck a penknife through the hand of one of his young persecutors. He had been, not a diligent scholar, but in some respects a zealous one ; translating, for instance, half of Pliny's Natural History, and very ready, though far from scrupulously correct, at Latin verses. He had always a splendid memory and an insatiate love of reading. Shelley was already an author, and now figures as a lover as well. He wrote a number of wild romances in his boyhood, of which one, Zastrozzi, was published in 1810, and another, St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian, at the end of the same year. The merciful hand of Time has suppressed the others, and left only these two outpourings to excite alternate hilarity at their ab- surdities, and astonishment at the condition of mind which could induce a publisher to accept — much more to invest in — either of them. Zastrozzi was actually purchased for some ^40, and obtained a certain degree of success ; St. Irvyne did not go down the public throat so easily. In 1810 Shelley had also made a first appearance in print as a poet. His volume was entitled Original Poetry by Victor and'Cazire, and his sister Elizabeth had really a hand in it. Somehow — but nobody now knows with whom the true responsibility rested — some com- positions by M. G. Lewis had been pirated into this volume, and it was immediately suppressed, and remains extinct. 1 Before 1 1. Kirby (27 Bloomsbury Street) unearthed in 1875, and kindly com- municated to me, a contemporary criticism on Victor and Cazire, which it appears was "small 8vo, pp. 64." The review is in The Poetical Register, and Repository of Fugitive Poetry, for 1810-n. As a literary curiosity, I subjoin it here. — "There is no Original Poetry in this volume : there is nothing in it but downright scribble. It is really annoying to see the waste of paper which is made by such persons as the putters-together of these 64 pages. There is, however, one consolation for the critics who are obliged to read all this sort of trash. It is that the crime of publishing is generally followed by condign punishment in the shape of bills from the stationer and printer, and in the chilling tones of the bookseller, when, to the questions of the anxious rhymer how the book sells, he answers that not more than half-a-dozen copies have been sold." •<£>■$• 3'2 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. the time when he left Eton, Shelley fell in love with his beautiful young cousin Harriet Grove, the daughter of a clergyman in Wiltshire. She received his homage graciously, and the two families were ready to look upon the affair as a match. Soon, however, the sceptical tone of Shelley's mind and correspondence excited alarm in Miss Grove's parents, and in her own tepid bosom as well ; and, after the catastrophe which befell Percy at Oxford in the Spring of 1811, the court- ship was broken off, and Harriet soon married another suitor — leaving her cousin to ponder suicide, to denounce bigotry, and gradually to cicatrize his wounded affections. In the autumn of 1 810 he went to University College, Oxford, and at once struck up an extreme intimacy with a fellow-student, Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg. The bond between them was a common love of intellectual enquiry and of literature. Probably also Mr. Hogg, like Shelley, had a scep- tical turn in religious matters ; but the enthusiastic and revolutionary elements of the poet's mind found no counterpart in his friend's, whose writings on the contrary exhibit him to us in the quality of a high Tory, an easy man of the world, and one habituated to regard all things from a caustic, and even a somewhat cynical, point of view. With vigorous and little supervised study, an intimate friendship, active habits, the simplest tastes, and (according to the best testimony) the purest habits in morals, Shelley greatly enjoyed the period of his Oxford studentship ■. but it was not to last long. Soon after his arrival at the University he showed Hogg some poems he was proposing to publish. Hogg saw that they were poor stuff, and told him as much ; and eventually he and Shelley set to work at converting their juvenilities into intentional and caricatured extravagances. In this altered form the book was published as Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, edited by ffihn Fitzvictor ; the suppositi- tious authoress- being a crazy washerwoman who had attempted 4*- -4* PERCY BYSSHE SffELLE Y. 313 the life of George the Third, and who was now not in reality dead, but vegetating in a madhouse. This farrago of bur- lesqued revolutionary commonplaces was accepted in good- faith, and even admired, by university men. Shelley also published, there is strong reason for believing, A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things j but not a single copy of it is forthcoming. He had contracted at Eton, under the influence of Dr. Lind, a habit of writing pseudonymously to various literary personages on speculative and other subjects. At Oxford he continued this practice, and drew up and advertised a little syllabus which he termed The Necessity of Atheism, and which he circulated, enclosed in letters (of course not avowing his real name) wherein he professed to have come across the pam- phlet, and to be unable to refute its arguments. It is, I think, futile to deny that the author of The Necessity of Atheism was himself, when he wrote it, an atheist: he had indeed been named " Shelley the Atheist " at Eton, though some contro- versy as to the true origin of that term has arisen. A break- down was likely to ensue, and did ensue. Shelley was de- nounced to the authorities of his College as the probable author of the atheistic pamphlet ; was summoned to admit or deny the charge ; and, on refusing to do either, was expelled. Hogg, who had been his confidant and abettor, shared the same fate. Shelley and Hogg left Oxford for London on the 26th of March 181 1, and soon separated, as the latter had to go to York to study conveyancing. Shelley was in the first instance excluded from the paternal home, and lived mainly on the pocket-money which his sisters goodnaturedly hoarded, and sent round to him by a schoolfellow, Harriet Westbrook. After a short while, however, his father relented, and allowed the delinquent £,2.00 per annum. It must be added that Percy was the reverse of a dutiful son. Difference of ideas and of character, and the frequent conflicts of circumstance, in- "*t^ 314 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. spired him with a strong antipathy to his father, transcending to all appearance the bounds of reason, and certainly those of filial respect and obligation. Harriet Westbrook now becomes the most important figure in Shelley's singular ' and chequered career. She was a very charming blonde, aged sixteen, the daughter of a retired hotel-keeper in easy circumstances. Shelley visited at her father's house, and soon talked Harriet out of the ordinary routine of religious and moral assumptions. Afterwards, while he was on a visit to a cousin in Wales, Harriet corresponded with him, alleging many horrors of petty persecution on her father's part, and she volunteered to " throw herself on his protection." Shelley returned to London ; found pretty Har- riet in a pining condition, and in all the languor of " senti- ment" for himself ; and, about the end of August i8ir, eloped with her to Edinburgh. Here he forthwith married her (28th August), which was in every respect an honourable act of youthful unworldliness, and all the more so in that his own pet theories were directly adverse to the formal institution of mar- riage. No evidence is forthcoming to show that the poet was ever strictly in love with Harriet ; while on the other hand a very strong presumption arises that she, more especially guided by her elder sister Eliza and the family generally, had " set her cap '' at so highly eligible a parti as the grandson and eventual heir of the extremely wealthy Sir Bysshe Shelley, of Castle Goring. No doubt too Shelley's own genius, delicate beauty of aspect, and never-failing personal fascination, were highly impressive to the girlish Harriet ; and her many graces of face, figure, and manner, not indifferent to him. Harriet was by no means uneducated, nor wanting in those superficial likings for literature which go with education. She was a frank, kind, nice girl, and in all ways worthy of any ordinary man's love. Unfortunately, to so exceptional a man as Shelley, her attrac- tions were not made for a permanency : the heart of a poet is PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 315 " deep calling to deep" and, if it turns out that there is only shallow to respond, the result is too well assured — ''No song, but sad dirges, Like the wind in a ruined cell." As Mrs. Siddons said in a tragedy voice to the haberdasher's assistant, "But will it wash?" Charming Harriet's conjugal gifts of mind and character did not " wash." The income of Shelley during his married life with Harriet averaged something like ^400 a year — not too certain perhaps in its inflowing, and continually forestalled by some act of lavish generosity for public or private objects. To have rejected (as he did) ^2000 a year, tendered on the sole condition of his entailing the patrimonial estate on his eldest son, or in default on his younger brother, was, under the circumstances, a noble adhesion to principle — for Shelley abhorred the system of primogeniture. He was very migratory in his movements ; and much and increasingly oppressed by the presence of Miss Westbrook in his house, wherein, almost immediately after his marriage, she established herself as general dictatress and woman of business. From Edinburgh he went to York, staying with Hogg ; to Keswick in Cumberland, where he made the acquaint- ance of Southey; to Dublin, where he agitated for Catholic emancipation and repeal of the union ; to Nantgwillt in Rad- norshire ; Lynmouth in Devonshire ; Tanyrallt in Carnarvon- shire. Lynmouth he quitted in August 181 2, because his servant had been sentenced to six months' imprisonment for distributing and posting-up a political Declaration of Rights drawn out by Shelley, and this and other circumstances made him an object of suspicion to the oppressive and timorous Tory government of the day ; and Tanyrallt he abandoned in March 1813, alleging that a twice-repeated nocturnal attempt at assassination had been made upon him. This is only one out of many wondrous stories told by Shelley as pertaining to various stages of his career. Some of them are proved untruths $ 4 3l6 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. others more than questionable ; others again may be believed without gross credulity. This tale of the assassination is of the more than questionable class : nobody could trace the assassin, or guess why assassination should have been attempted at all. Yet there are some considerations which save the allega- tion from absolute, unhesitating rejection. Why Shelley told' these portentous stories is a strange problem. He had a great respect for truth, and endured much tribulation in the cause of speculative verity, as estimated by- himself. In default of a better reason, one is fain to say that he had a most excitable imagination, fancied many things, and attitudinized or exag- gerated in others ; a habit which was greatly fostered by his practice (which began late in 1811) of taking laudanum, often in large doses, to mitigate the pangs of a spasmodic disease which afflicted him from an early age, and on to the conclusion of his noble and too brief life. Snapped out of Carnarvonshire by the pistol of a probably non-existent bravo, Shelley, with Harriet and Eliza, returned to Dublin, visited Killamey, and next settled awhile in London, still shifting frequently from house to house. His first child, Ianthe Eliza, was born in London in 1813. About the same time he printed his earliest considerable poem, Queen Mab. He did not publish it : but that function was performed for him by a pirating bookseller, in 1821. Queen Mab is a work of some poetic suggestiveness, much youthfulness, and great audacity of opinion and expression : it produced a certain sensation, chiefly by dint of the last-named characteristic. Shelley was preemi- nently an enthusiast, and even (so far as a perfectly tolerant man can be one) a fanatic : he actually fancied that a performance like Queen Mab was capable of producing a change in the opinions and practices of society. Such an overweening notion may be pardoned to a youth of twenty-one ; a few years later he perceived the world of life and of custom to be made of rather tougher material. His next residence was at Bracknell «*" A PER CY B YSSffE SHELLE Y. 3*7 in Berkshire ; then for a short while in Edinburgh ; and back to London, broken by visits to Bracknell. We have now reached the end of r8i3, and approach the finale of Shelley's married life with Harriet. She did not respond to his demands on heart and head ; teased him some- times to act in modes inconsistent with his ideas ; and con- tinued, by active or passive concurrence, to fasten on him " the daughter of the horseleech," Eliza Westbrook. Things were in a critical state by the close of 1813, yet still so far remediable as that Shelley remarried Harriet in London on the 24th of March i8r4, in order to remove any conceivable uncertainties attaching to the Scotch marriage. The presumable early advent of a son and heir was no doubt a cogent motive. By May 1814 things passed from the critical to the catastrophic stage. Shelley now became acquainted with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, then sixteen years of age, the daughter of the celebrated author of Political Justice, Caleb Williams, and other works for which the young poet and speculator entertained a huge admiration. If a reunion of heart with Harriet was possible before, it now became impossible. Shelley fell helplessly in love with Mary ; quitted Harriet ; offered his heart-homage to Mary, either soon before or soon after the separation, and received an immediate and cordial response; made such arrangements for the well-being of Harriet as his circumstances allowed ; and started for a continental trip, with Mary and Miss Clairmont (a daughter of the second Mrs. Godwin by her previous marriage) on the 28th of July. Poor Harriet, who had behaved well to Shelley according to her lights and oppor- tunities, was much to be pitied, and as yet, so far as any pub- lished facts attest, in no way pointedly to be blamed. She returned to her father, now at Bath, and soon gave birth to a son, Charles Bysshe, who died in 1826. Not to revert to a sorrow- ful subject, I will here at once add the little that remains to be said concerning Harriet, which is indeed both scanty and not very «*- 318 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. distinctly defined. Not long after parting from Shelley she found some other protector or protectors : and, in consequence of some untoward events arising from a connexion of this sort, she drowned herself in the Serpentine on the i oth of November 1 8 1 6. Returning from Switzerland in September 1814, Shelley and Mary found themselves isolated and poor. In this latter respect, the death of Sir Bysshe on the 6th of January 181 5 brought present and substantial relief : an arrangement being made with Sir Timothy whereby Percy came into immediate possession of an allowance of _^iooo a year, which, subject to an annual deduction of £,200 or less consequent upon the Chancery pro- ceedings soon to be mentioned, continued to be his income for the residue of his life. He now settled at Bishopgate near Windsor Forest, and wrote his first decidedly fine poem, Alastor. In January 1816 Mary bore him a son, his favourite William, who died in Rome in June 181 9. A second child, Clara, died in Venice in 181 8; the last, born in Florence in November 18 19, is the present Baronet, Sir Percy Florence Shelley. In May 18 16 Shelley, with Mary and Miss Clairmont, again went abroad for a somewhat longer excursion, and stayed at or near Se'cheron on the Lake of Geneva, where they made acquaintance with Byron. He and Shelley prized each other's poetic genius, and Byron had besides a deep personal regard for Shelley, whom he appreciated as the most high-minded, disinterested, and consistent man within his Cognizance. Shelley did not, and could not, say anything so heartily laudatory of Byron ; but he could sympathize with him in several things, admire him deeply and self-obliviously in more, and serve him with true friendliness under all conditions. In Switzerland Mrs. Shelley began her renowned novel Frankenstein. It was during this tour that Shelley, in a not over-wise spirit of defiance, signed his name in the Album for visitors at the Chartreuse of Montanvert, with the tag Mfli tyCKavQfoynoz Sti/wicpaTiKog t u.0to£ 7£. -■$>» ■w PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 319 Shelley and Mary were back in England by September 1816, and had hardly fixed upon a residence at Great Marlow in Buckinghamshire when the news of Harriet's suicide startled them. The poet felt the shock deeply : it continued to intensify for a while, and up to the close of his life its impression remained potent As already intimated, this mournful termination to Harriet's career was in no wise directly attributable to Shelley or his proceedings : it is moreover to some extent explicable, without supposing that the calamities of Harriet were really of a very overwhelming character, by the fact that, from early girlhood and on through the most prosperous days of her married life, she had had an avowed proclivity to suicide. The death of Harriet was soon followed by another blow to Shelley, perhaps still more keenly felt. Mr. Westbrook refused to deliver up to him the children, Ianthe and Charles, and filed a bill in Chancery to justify his resistance. He alleged that Shelley had deserted his wife, was an atheist, and intended to bring up the children in his own religious and social hetero- doxies. In August 1817 Lord Chancellor Eldon delivered judgment, assigning to Mr. Westbrook the custody of the children, and their education to an army-doctor of orthodox principles, with an allowance to be paid by their father. The grounds on which his judgment proceeded were not strictly those of speculative opinion alleged against Shelley, but of actual conduct, in the affair of Harriet and Mary, consequent upon and conformable to opinion. Shelley had meanwhile, in December 18 16, married Mary Godwin, and had taken up his residence at Marlow. Here he lived on a scale of considerable comfort, combined with pro- fuse liberality to others. At the beginning of 1815 he had walked a London hospital, chiefly with a view of ministering to the poor on occasion: at Marlow he exerted himself incessantly in alleviating the distress, whether bodily or pecuniary, of the impoverished lacemakers and other sufferers in his vicinity. ■««*■ 4*- LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. His own health was precarious, and most alarming symptoms of consumption appeared more than once in these years, but finally ceased in 1818. His spasmodic and other ailments remained, and were torture enough. An attack of ophthalmia, which recurred at a later date, was also caught in 181 7 in at- tending some of the poor. In this year Shelley saw a great deal of Leigh Hunt, and a very affectionate friendship reigned between them. At Hunt's house in Hampstead, the author of Alastor met Horatio Smith and Keats, and took more kindly to the latter than he found reciprocated. The Revolt of Islam, at first named Laon and Cythna, was published in 18 18, and confirmed beyond cavil, to discerning eyes, the lofty promise of Alastor. It had been preceded by a pamphlet, bearing the name of " The Hermit of Marlow *' as author, on the subject of parliamentary reform. Laon and Cythna was a dainty dish to set before the British public; for the two lovers who give the name to the poem were, in that first form of it, not lovers only but brother and sister as well. The publisher, Mr. Oilier, protested, and withheld the book after a very few copies had been issued : Shelley stuck to his text for a while : at last, outwearied or convinced, he gave in, and introduced into the poem the few changes which have brought it to its present wholesomer complexion. Considerations of health, and perhaps of money, now made Shelley turn longing eyes towards the Continent, especially towards Italy. On the nth of March 1818 he left England, with his wife and two children and Miss Clairmont; went straight to Milan; and was fated never to revisit his native country, nor even to quit Italian soil again. It cannot exactly be said that Shelley had a rooted intention of never returning to England — in some respects, indeed, he had a predilection for living there : but the probability is that, had his life been prolonged for several years, he might still have been mostly a foreign resident. The main lines of his Italian flittings are as «*>- JL. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. , 321 follows : 1818, Milan, Leghorn, the Bagni di Lucca, Venice and its neighbourhood, Rome, Naples; 1819, Rome again, the neighbourhood of Leghorn, Florence; 1820, Pisa, the Bagni di Pisa (or di San Giuliano), Leghorn; 18 21, Pisa, and a visit to Byron at Ravenna; 1822, Pisa and Lerici. The perturbed section of Shelley's life — a life marked by more than common peculiarity of adventure for a modern poet, and for one whose experiences were crowded into so few years — has now closed : the period of his great poetic productiveness which had already commenced, continued increasingly. In 1818 he finished Rosalind and Helen, a poem begun in England ; in many respects graceful and moving, but on the whole the least substantial of his mature compositions. The same year pro- duced Julian and Maddalo ; an admirable masterpiece, and the first longish work (if with some reluctance we exclude Alastor from such a category) in which we perceive Shelley to be a richly endowed artist, not only capable of consummate performance, but actually performing consummately through- out. This splendid poem was sent to London for publication, but never appeared until after the author's death ; a fate which it shared with Peter Bell the Third and The Witch of Atlas, not to speak of numerous briefer writings. Prometheus Unbound, the greatest of all his works to my thinking, followed close upon Julian and Maddalo ; being begun about September 18 1 8, and finished in December 181 9. -To have written Pro- metheus Unbound is to be one of the world's immortals; to have written The Cenci is to rank among the Englishmen least distant from Shakespeare. This was the product of the summer months of 18 19. Shelley undertook the work under a strong impulsion, yet without any confidence or experience of his capacity as a dramatist. Having completed it, he was much bent on procuring its representation on the stage; and he offered the tragedy, through his friend Thomas Love Peacock, to the management of Covent Garden, hoping more especially 4* — : 4* A- 322 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. to secure Miss O'Neill for the heroine, — but the unnatural horror of the subject precluded even the suggestion of the part to that distinguished actress, and the whole project fell through. Peter Bell the Third belongs to the autumn of the same prolific year, 18 19; a piece of supernal grotesque far too little re- marked by ordinary Shelleyan readers — as airy, ringing, and catching as if we heard Momus laughing behind the low horizon- clouds. The Witch of Atlas, unsurpassed even by Shelley himself as a. piece of imaginative fancy and of execution, was the work of three days of August 1820, succeeding an ascent of Monte San Pellegrino near the Bagni di Pisa. In the same month he began Swellfoot the Tyrant, moved thereto by the grunting of pigs at a fair which accompanied in unelucidative chorus the reading aloud of one of his loftiest poems. It was published in due course, but forthwith extinguished by a threat from the Society for the Suppression of Vice. The remaining three works, Epipsychidion, Adonais, and Hellas, bring us into closer contact with the incidents or associations of Shelley's own life. Epi- psychidion (of which a small edition was published, and also, for some reason or other, afterwards withdrawn) is the result of the poet's introduction to the Contessina Emilia Viviani, a beauti- ful and impassioned young lady who had been shut up for some years in the Convent of St. Anne in Pisa, pending her father's selection of an appropriate husband for her. Shelley sympathized with and indeed loved her intensely, though not in such a sense as to cause or justify any scandal. At last this beautiful young creature was married to an elderly man, whom, after a few years, she left with the approbation of her father ; some while after Shelley's death, she died of a consump- tive malady. Adonais is the record of the generous admira- tion of Shelley for his illustrious brother-poet Keats, who had expired in Rome on the 23rd of February 182 1; the record also, it must be said, of a baseless supposition, on the part of Shelley himself and of others at the time — that the author of *►■ PERCY B YSSHE SHELLS Y. 323 Endymion had been brought to his grave by a severe criticism of that poem published in the Quarterly Review. Hellas, written in the autumn of 182 1, shows the enthusiasm with which the poet watched the progress of the revolution then raging with various successes in Greece. Prince Alexander Mavro- cordato, to whom the drama is dedicated, was one of his intimates in Pisa. In this city the Shelleys (Miss Clairmont remained behind in Florence) saw, for the first time in Italy, a good deal of society. Byron settled in Pisa at the close of 182 1, being now domesticated with the Countess Guiccioli, and thus bringing Shelley into the circle of her relatives the Counts Gamba ; his second cousin and eventual biographer Medwin was there from time to time, and introduced him to Lieutenant and Mrs. Williams, a young couple from India, whom Shelley, grew extremely fond of — saying indeed that Jane (Mrs. Williams) was the realization of his idea of the Lady in the Sensitive Plant. At the very beginning of 1 82 2 the Williamses brought Shelley ac- quainted with Captain Trelawny, the hero of a most adventurous sea-life already, and of remarkable experiences afterwards. Lord Byron, whom Shelley had visited at Ravenna in the summer of 1821, proposed (as we have already seen in the memoir of his lordship) that a quarterly magazine should be started in which himself, Shelley, and Leigh Hunt, should publish all their ensuing original works, and share the profits. Shelley, who more especially championed the interests of Hunt in this matter, was resolved to have as little as possible to do with the project individually, not wishing either to compromise others or to hamper himself Hunt eventually acceded to the scheme, and, after many delays, was on his way to Italy. On the 26th of April 1822 the Shelleys and Williamses left Pisa to spend the summer on the Genoese coast, between the villages of Lerici and San Terenzo : they had taken a house close to the seashore, named the Casa Magni, and lived there *■ «£ -* 324 Z/KSS 0.F FAMOUS POETS. together. It was a singularly sultry summer, and a very wild secluded neighbourhood. Shelley, always passionately fond of boating, and Williams, who shared the same taste, had agreed to be joint owners of a small schooner for which Williams sup- plied a somewhat hazardous model : she was built at Genoa, and named the Don yuan, and reached the Casa Magni on the 1 2th of May. Shelley was now engaged in composing his Triumph of Life — too soon to be triumphed over by death — which he had taken up after hammering away for a while upon the drama of Charles the First. Leigh Hunt reached Genoa in June, and went on to Leghorn. Shelley and Williams followed him thither in the Don yuan, and saw him housed in Pisa. Circumstances were now urging Byron to quit this part of Italy, and Shelley found much cause for anxiety in the uncertain prospects thus threatened to Hunt Further dejected by a desponding letter which he received from his wife, now in a delicate state of health, he set sail on the after- noon of the 8th of July, to return from Leghorn to Lerici. It was a day of dull and menacing heat About half-past six a squall burst, and the Don yuan sank in from ten to fifteen fathom water. Shelley could never be taught to swim : he thrust aside into his breast-pocket the last volume of Keats which he was reading, and went down. Williams made an attempt to swim : but he also, along with the only other soul on board, a sailor- boy named Charles Vivian, perished. After days of harrowing suspense the corpses were all traced out by Trelawny, and those of Williams and Shelley were burned on the seashore after the ancient fashion, on the 15 th and 16th of August. The ashes of the glorious poet were afterwards deposited in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. . It is still a question whether Shelley died by the storm, or by being run down by a felucca, one of the Italian fishing -barques; and, if the latter, whether the running-down was an accident or a crime. The chief Doints of evidence deserving of atten- i' *r PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 325 tion are the following. On the gth of July, the day after his death, an English-made oar, believed to have come out of his schooner, was noticed in one of the Italian boats at Leghorn. The body of Williams, with its scanty residue of clothing, was found in such a condition as to impress Trelawny with the idea that it " might have been plundered " — after being cast ashore, or, as we might equally conjecture, before that event. In Sep- tember the schooner was dragged for and recovered. Captain Roberts, the naval officer who had seen to her being built, now examined her carefully, and came to the conclusion,' at first that she had been swamped in a heavy sea, but afterwards that she had been run down by a felucca. Some suspicion of foul play arose at once : it was surmised (as recorded by Leigh Hunt, and, at a later date, by his son who was also on the spot 1 ) that a native boat had attempted to board her piratically, tempted by a sum of money in dollars that she carried. Any suspicion of this kind, however, remaining unconfirmed, died out : only lately, in November 1875, was it revived by a letter addressed from Rome by Miss Trelawny to her father, stating that a sailor had (as reported) recently died at Leghorn, and had confessed on his deathbed * that he had been one of the 1 Mr. Thornton Hunt, who (in a note to his father's Autobiography) writes as follows: — "A story was current in Leghorn which conjecturally helped to explain the shipwreck of Shelley's boat. It went out to sea in rough weather, and yet was followed by a native boat. When Shelley's yacht was raised, a large hole was found stove in the stern. Shelley had on board a sum of money in dollars ; and the supposition is that the men in the other boat had tried to board Shelley's piratically, but had desisted because the collision caused the English boat to sink ; and they abandoned it because the men saved would have become their accusers. The only facts in support of this conjectural story are the alleged following of the native boat, and the damage to the stern of Shelley's boat, otherwise not very accountable." 2 The story comes to us from (1) Miss Trelawny, who had it from (2) her friends "the K — s," who had it from (3) an intimate of theirs at Spezia, who is understood to know and to have received it from (4) the priest who confessed (5) the dying malefactor, and was asked by him to make the confession public. ***■ 326 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. crew that ran down the boat containing Shelley and Williams. This crime had been perpetrated under the impression that Byron was on board with a large amount of money. " They did not intend " (these are Miss Trelawny's words) " to sink the boat, but to board her and murder Byron. She sank, he said, as soon as she was struck." -Trelawny — and this is per- haps the most important point of all, considering how highly capable he was of estimating the facts and the probabilities of the case — believed the rumoured confession of the sailor to be probably true. " This account," he wrote to me, " so exactly corresponds with the event that I think it solves that which for half a century has been a mystery to me and others." Not- withstanding all this, we are as yet — in the absence of further corroboration of the report — permitted to believe that Shelley may have died by the blind decree and all-compensating equity of Nature — cruel, awful, arbitrary, unfathomed, unappealable — rather than by the ignoble and unfraternal hand of man — he the brother of all mankind. Shelley was nearly 5 feet n in height, strong, slim, with something of a stoop. His hair was abundant and wavy, dark- brown which began early to grizzle ; his eyes deep-blue ; his countenance uncommonly juvenile, — full of spirituality, and of the beauty which goes along with that, though he was not of the type of a regularly " handsome man." He was generosity, unworldliness, and disinterestedness, personified; of the most sensitive emotions and affections ; and inspired by a boundless philanthropy. Physical and moral courage were equally his, along with an innate impulse to resist all dictatorial authority in social, political, and more especially speculative matters. No man was more singleminded, none a more ardent lover of abstract truth and ideal virtue. His career corresponded with great exactitude to his principles ; and, though there are some passages in it to be deplored even from his own point of view, and to be condemned from others, few men could challenge a * JL PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 327 clearer verdict for an exalted, pure; and transcendent nature. A great deal has been said about Shelley's atheism and materialism by people who had neither his power or elevation of mind for approaching these abstruse subjects, nor his spirit of ardent investigation for exploring them, nor his courage and openness for declaring the results, as he apprehended them, of the exploration. Far be it from me to truckle to any clamour on such a theme, or to intrude any irrelevances of opinion, my own or others': the only opinion here to be ascertained, be it right or wrong, is Shelley's. The fact, then, seems to be that, in his early youth, he was a sceptic on all sorts of religious subjects ; next, a materialist and atheist, in the mode of French philosophy ; afterwards, in his maturer years, or from about 1815-16, mainly a Berkeleyan or Immaterialist, and, along with this, something of a pantheist rather than atheist. But he did not affect certainty where he found mystery ; and to the end of his life it would seemingly have been difficult to him to define what precise sort of pantheism or theism he contem- plated as consistent with the facts of Nature — or what degree of hold over his belief the ordinary or the more esoteric doctrines of the immortality of the soul had acquired. In politics he was genuinely a republican ; but not a courtier of the mob, nor at all disposed to ignore the practical difficulties which would beset a transfer of power from the few to the many, prior to full preparation of the many to use it with justice and understanding. The poetry of Shelley is in domain supreme, and in beauty supreme. Its paramount quality is the ideal : through the husks of all things he penetrated into their soul, and saw this soul in the garb of beauty. It might have been said of Shelley as of his own skylark, " And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest." The poetic ecstacy took him constantly upwards; and, the higher he got, the more thoroughly did his thoughts and words ***■ J. 328 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. become one exquisite and intense unit. With elevation of meaning, and splendour and beauty of perception, he com- bined the most searching, the most inimitable loveliness of verse-music; and he stands at this day, and perhaps will always remain, the poet who, by instinct of verbal selection and charm of sound, comes nearest to expressing the half-inexpressible — the secret things of beauty, the intolerable light of the arcane. Besides this unparagoned merit, Shelley is admirably great in the poetic-familiar, as in Julian and Maddalo; the tragic, as in The Cenci ; the fantastic-grotesque, as in Peter Bell the Third; and in poetic translation generally. He is therefore very far indeed from being (as the popular notion tends too much to supposing) a mere vague idealist who is pretty nearly at the end of his tether when he has no metaphysical abstractions to talk about, ,no anti-actual impersonations to pre- sent, and no indeterminate magnitudes of the natural world to spatiate in. Not the less true is it that Shelley is often too shadowy in thought and phrase, and hence indifferently quali- fied for narrative work, and too ready to lose himself in the fascinations rather than to follow out the structural contours of his subjects. He is also, from first to last, a somewhat loose and haphazard writer, considered strictly as such, apart from the impulses of poetic genius. He comes right continually through instinct and power : if he does not thus come right, neither does he keep himself right through heedfulness, or the resolute will for artistic perfection. And yet he is among the most perfect, the most unspeakable, of artists. To sum up, there is no poet — and no man either — in whose behalf it is more befitting for all natures, and for some natures more inevitable, to feel the privileges and the delights of enthu- siasm. The very soul rushes out towards Shelley as an un- approached poet, and embraces him as a dearest friend. *$L^r- xy POET BORN BETWEEN SHELLEY AND MRS. HEMANS. John Clare 1793 to 1864. •+■$■ 332 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. Austrian and Tuscan Governments. The surname Wagner was in reality a corruption from the illustrious Venetian name Venier, borne by three Doges, and by the commander of the fleet of the Republic at the great battle of Lepanto. Felicia was the fifth child in a family of seven, of whom one died in infancy; she was distinguished, almost from her cradle, by extreme beauty and precocious talents. " The full glow of that radiant beauty which was destined to fade so early " is one of the expressions used by the poetess's sister in describing the former at the age of fifteen. This reference to " early fading " appears to be intended to apply rather to the death of Mrs. Hemans when only in her forty-second year, and to the ravages of disease in the few years preceding, than to any loss of comeli- ness in mature womanhood. An engraved portrait of her by the American artist William E. West, one of three which he painted in 1827, shows us that Mrs. Hemans, at the age of thirty-four, was eminently pleasing and good-looking, with an air of amiability and sprightly gentleness, and of confiding candour which, while none the less perfectly womanly, might almost be termed childlike in its limpid depth. The features are correct and harmonious ; the eyes full ; the contour amply and elegantly rounded. In height she was neither tall nor short. A sufficient wealth of naturally clustering hair, golden in early youth, but by this time of a rich auburn, shades the capacious but not over-developed forehead, and the lightly pencilled eyebrows. The bust and form have the fullness of a mature period of life ; and it would appear that Mrs. Hemans' was somewhat short-necked and high-shouldered, partly de- tracting from delicacy of proportion, and of general aspect or impression on the eye. We would rather judge of her by this portrait (which her sister pronounces a good likeness) than by another engraved in Mr. Chorley's Memorials. This latter was executed in Dublin in 1831 by a young artist named Edward Robinson. It makes Mrs. Hemans look younger than in the ■3- -*> FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS. 333 earlier portrait by West, and may on that ground alone be surmised unfaithful ; and, though younger, it also makes her heavier and less refined. The childhood of Felicia Browne was probably rendered all the happier by a commercial reverse which befell her father be- fore she was seven years of age. The family hereupon removed to Wales, and for nine years they lived at Gwrych T near Aber- gele in Denbighshire, close to the sea and amid mountains. This was the very scene for the poetically-minded child to enjoy, and to have her powers nurtured by : a great love of Nature, and in particular an affectionate delight in Wales, its people and associations, constantly traceable in her writings, followed as an almost necessary consequence. Her mother, an amiable and excellent woman, fully qualified to carry on her daughter's education, devoted the most careful attention to this object, and was repaid by an unswerving depth and con- stancy of love. A large library was kept in the house, and Felicia drew heavily upon its stores : a pretty picture is pre- sented to the mind's eye, and would be not unworthy of realization by art, in the anecdote that it was her habit, at the age of six, to read Shakespeare while seated in the branches of an apple-tree. Along with great rapidity of comprehension, she had a memory of surprising retentiveness, and would repeat whole pages of poetry after a single reading. At the age of about eleven she passed a winter in London, and was there ' again in the following year — never afterwards, In 1808 — age fourteen — Felicia first appears as an authoress. She published a volume of poems which got abused in some review : this was the only time that really harsh criticism befell her. The mishap so far affected the impressionable damsel as to keep her in bed some days : but she surmounted it pretty soon, and resumed writing. In the same year she wrote a poem named England and Spain; being then under the in- 1 So spelled by Mrs. Hughes : " Grwych " by Mr. Chorley. ■4& 334 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. fluence of military enthusiasm arising from the events of the Peninsular War, in which one of her brothers was serving : another of them was also in the army, and in the same regiment, the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers. The next year was a momentous one in the life of Felicia Browne. She met Captain Hemans, of the 4th (or King's Own) Regiment, an officer not rich in purse, but having advantages, as we are informed, both of person and education : he professed admiration of the be- witching girl, and she gave him her love. He shortly had to return to Spain ; and nearly three years elapsed before they again met. Meanwhile, in 1809, the Browne family removed to Bronwylfa, near St. Asaph in Flintshire; and in 181 2, for the second and last time, appeared a volume of poetry bearing the name of Felicia Dorothea Browne, The Domestic Affections, and Other Poems. In the summer of 18 12 she married 'the man of her choice. Biographers have not permitted us to know distinctly whether or not the conjugal life of Mrs. Hemans was happy, or what Captain Hemans might possibly have found to say on the sub- ject : at any rate, it was a short one, practically speaking. The wedded couple resided at first at Daventry in Northamptonshire, where the Captain was Adjutant to the County Militia : here they remained about a year, and here was born their son Arthur, the first of a family of five, all of whom were boys. They then went to live with Mrs. Hemans's own family at Bronwylfa ; her mother was now at the head of the house, as her father, having resumed the mercantile career, had gone out to Quebec, where finally he died. In 1818 Captain Hemans resolved to go to the south of Europe "for the sake of his health " — a very in- convenient motive, or a highly convenient one, according to circumstances : he had suffered much from the vicissitudes of a military life, especially during the retreat to Corunna, and afterwards through fever caught in the Walcheren expedition. He departed just before the birth of his fifth son : went to T ■*#*■ FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS. 335 Rome ; and there settled down. The parting proved to be a final one. It might have been fancied that even the shattered frame of a young officer who had survived Corunna and Wal- cheren would suffice for the effort of coming to Wales, England, or Ireland, at some time between 1818 and 1835, so as to rebehold a wife whom he had left in the bloom of youth and loveliness, and whose literary fame, for many years succeeding his departure, lent an ever-brightening lustre to the name of Hemans, and so as to get a glimpse of his promising boys. But this was not to be : for some reason or other, not defined to us, even the charms of Bronwylfa, with a wife, five sons, and a resident mother-in-law, did not relax the tenacious grasp which Italy and Rome obtained on Captain Hemans. Or again it might have seemed conceivable that not only Captain Hemans but also his wife, the author of Lays of Many Lands, sensitive to the historic and romantic associations of such a country as Italy, would find it compatible with liking as well as duty to pay a visit to Rome, or possibly to make it a per- manent dwelling-place. As to this, it may perhaps be inferred, in a general way, that the family affections of daughter and mother were more dominant and vivid in Mrs. Hemans than conjugal love : her intense feeling of the sacredness of home, which it would be both idle and perverse to contest, may have set before her, as more binding and imperative, the duties of service to her own mother, and of guidance to her own children, than the more equal, passionate, and in some sense self- indulgent relation between wife and husband. However, abandoning conjecture, it may be best here to transcribe the reticent hints on the subject which are given by the poetess's sister Mrs. Hughes, in her Memoir, and which show that the de facto separation between Captain and Mrs. Hemans depended partly upon considerations of family obligation, and partly upon special circumstances not clearly indicated, but apparently re- flecting more or less on the marital deportment of the Captain. fr e# 336 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. " It has been alleged, and with perfect truth, that the literary pursuits of Mrs* Hemans, and the education of her children, made it more eligible for her to remain under the maternal roof than to accompany her husband to Italy. It is however un- fortunately but too well known that such were not the only reasons which led to this divided course. To dwell on this subject would be unnecessarily painful ; yet it must be stated that nothing like a permanent separation was contemplated at the time, nor did it ever amount to more than a tacit con- ventional arrangement which offered no obstacle to the frequent interchange of correspondence, nor to a constant reference to their father in all things relating to the disposal of her boys. But years rolled on — seventeen years of absence, and conse- quently alienation : and, from this time to the hour of her •death, Mrs. Hemans and her husband never met again." With this incident of the life-long separation between her husband and herself, anything of a romantic character in the occurrences of Mrs. Hemans's career terminates ; although the colouring of high-toned romance in her mind and writings never died out, but to the last continued to permeate, enliven, and beautify, that other element and staple of her life, its sweet and earnest domesticity. Now we have only to contemplate the loving daughter, glad, as long as fate permitted, to escape being the head of the household, although invested with the matronly dignity proper to the motherhood of five boys. We see in her the not less deeply affectionate, tender, and vigilant mother ; the admired and popular poetess, distinguished and soon burdened by applause; shortly afterwards the cureless invalid, marked out for an early death, towards which she pro- gresses with a lingering but undeviating rapidity — calm in conscience, bright and cheerful in mind, full of faith and hope for eternity, and of the gentlest charities of life for her brief residue of time. In 18 1 8, before the departure of her husband, Mrs. Hemans JL ± HN>- FELICIA DOROTHEA HE MANS. 337 had published a volume of poetical Translations ; and about the same time she wrote The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy, and Modern Greece, and other poems which were after- wards included in the series named Tales and Historic Scenes. In 1820 she brought out The Sceptic: a mild performance which some still milder-minded disbeliever found of convincing efficacy, assuring Mrs. Hemans, in a personal interview not long before her death, that it had wrought his conversion to the christian religion. In the same year she made the acquaintance of the Rev. Reginald (afterwards Bishop) Heber, then rector of Hodnet — the first eminent literary personage whom she knew well. He encouraged her in the composition of another poem destined to extirpate religious error, entitled Superstition and Revelation : it had been begun some while before this, and was never distinctly abandoned, but remained uncompleted. To- wards this time also Mrs. Hemans wrote a set of papers in the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine on Foreign Literature ; almost the only prose that she ever published, and serving chiefly as a. vehicle for poetic translations. She obtained two literary prizes for poems, and her ambition was equal to the composition of a five-act tragedy intended for stage representation — The Vespers of Palermo. This was a work that occupied some time. At last, after she had received ^210 for the copyright of the tragedy, it was produced at Covent Garden Theatre on the 12th of December 1823. No doubt the authoress's own hopes were not altogether low as to the success of the piece, and her friends were in high expectancy. Young and Charles Kemble took the principal male characters : Miss Kelly appeared as Constance. The acting of this lady is said, fairly or unfairly, to have been disastrous to the piece : it proved "all but a failure," and was withdrawn after the opening night, and never reproduced in London. Not long afterwards, however, the tragedy was acted in Edinburgh, and with a considerable measure of success. A dispassionate reader of the present day— if indeed there exists 23 M&- 338 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. a reader of The Vespers of Palermo — will probably opine that the London audience showed at least as much discrimination (apart from any question as to demerit in Miss Kelly) as that in Edinburgh. Mrs. Hemans's talent was not of the dramatic kind. Perhaps there never yet was a good five-act stage-tragedy written by a woman ; and certainly the peculiar tone and tint of Mrs. Hemans's . faculty were not such as to supply the defi- ciency which she, merely as a woman, was almost certain to evince. Even as a narrative poet, not to speak of the drama, she shows to no sort of advantage : her personages not having anything of a full-bodied character, but wavering between the romantically criminal and the longwindedly virtuous — poor supposititious creatures, inflated and diluted. Something better may nevertheless be said for the second of her tragedies, The Siege of Valencia, published in 1823 along with Belshazzar's Feast and some other poems. This play appears to have been written without any view to the stage : a condition of writing which acts detrimentally upon a drama composed by a born dramatist, but which may rather have the opposite effect upon one coming from a different sort of author. In The Siege of Valencia the situation is in a high degree tragical — even terrible or harrowing : and there is this advantage — no small one in the case of a writer such as Mrs. Hemans — that, while the framework is historical, and the crisis and passions of a genuinely heroic type, the immediate interest is personal or domestic. Mrs. Hemans may be credited with a good and unhacknied choice of subject in this drama, and with a well- concerted adaptation of it to her own more special powers : the writing is fairly sustained throughout, and there are-passages both vigorous and moving. As the reader approaches the d'enouement, and finds the authoress dealing death with an unsparing hand to the heroically patriotic Gonzalez and all his offspring, he may perhaps at first feel a little ruffled at noting that the only member of the family who has been found wanting Jl. 4* _JL FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMAJVS. 339 in the fiery trial — wanting through an excess of maternal love — is also the only one saved alive : but in this too the authoress may be pronounced in the right. Reunion with her beloved ones in death would in fact have been mercy to Elmina, and would have left her undistinguished from the others, and untouched by any retribution : survival, mourning, and self- discipline, are the only chastisement in which a poetic justice, in its higher conception, could be expressed.— Besides the two dramas of The Vespers of Palermo and The Siege of Valencia, Mrs. Hemans began likewise two others — De Chatillon, or the Crusaders, and Sebastian of Portugal : neither of these was finished. Soon before the production of The Vespers of Palermo on the stage, she had taken up with great zest the study of the German language; and her Lays of Many Lands, published in 1826, were to a considerable extent suggested by Herder's work, Stimmen der Volker in Lieder. The same volume contained her poem of The Forest Sanctuary, which had occupied her in the latter part of 1824 and commencement of 1825 : this she was disposed to regard as her finest work. It is the most im- portant of her narrative or semi-narrative poems, and, as compared with the others of that class, may reasonably claim a preference, without our committing ourselves to any very high eulogium upon it The Records of Woman followed in 1828, being the first of the authoress's works that Messrs. Blackwood published : into this series she put more of her personal feeling than into any of the others. In the summer of 1830 appeared the Songs of the Affections, being the last of her publications prior to her departure for Ireland. Meanwhile the course of her private life had been marked only by such variations as removal of residence, and by one deep and irreparable affliction in the death of her beloved mother on the nth of January 1827, followed soon afterwards by the failure of her own health. The first removal, in the *•■ ^^ — — <|$. 340 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. Spring of 1825, had been from Bronwylfa to Rhyllon, a house distant from the former only about a quarter of a mile : here she settled along with her mother, sister, and four boys — the eldest son being then at a school at Bangor. For a time also her second brother, Major Browne, afterwards Commissioner of Police in Dublin, and his wife, resided in the same house, on their return from Canada. Rhyllon, though with attractive surroundings, was a much less picturesque house than Bronwylfa; but this brief period of Mrs. Hemans's life proved to be probably the happiest that she had passed since childhood. Besides many sources of tranquil domestic satisfaction, and for a while a somewhat firmer condition of her own health, she was in the enjoyment of a considerable reputation not now confined to her native country, for the fame of her poems had spread to America, and flourished there with extraordinary vigour. She was at one time invited to emigrate to Boston, and there conduct a periodical under an arrangement which would have secured her an income. Her literary correspondence became very large ; and gradually the urgencies of editors of annuals, owners of albums, and other such predaceous assailants of leisure and patience, besieged and waylaid her to a burdensome and harrassing extent. In the summer of 1828 she paid a visit to some friends at Wavertree Lodge, near Liverpool. Her health was now exceedingly frail, with palpitation of the heart, . and inflammatory and other distressing symptoms, frequently aggravated by her exceeding carelessness in all matters affecting herself. Her friends induced her to take medical advice, and she was directed to assume a reclining posture as often as practicable. Another consequence of this visit was her resolu- tion to move to the village of Wavertree, chiefly with a view to the better education of her three younger boys : the two others, at the same time that their mother quitted Wales in the autumn, went away to Rome, to the care of their father. Mrs. Hemans's sister had married, her brother was appointed to a post in ***- Ireland, and the cherished Welsh home was thus irremediably broken up. The residence at Wavertree, however, turned out unsatisfactory : Mrs. Hemans did not find it healthy for herself, nor its educational advantages equal to her expectation. She had some friends in Liverpool whom she liked, more especially the Chorley family, but for the most part was oppressed by the importunities of undiscerning and uncongenial neighbours, upon whom moreover she often failed even to produce a favourable impression. She was regarded as odd—" wore a veil on her head, like no one else " (as is shown indeed in Mr. West's portrait of her) : and she, for her part, could hardly be induced to go into any general society, and would fain have got a friend " to procure her a dragon to be kept in her court- yard," as a protection against intruders. Her house was itself very small, and on her arrival comfortless : but she managed to make it comparatively elegant. She now conceived a great passion for music, and, in the winter of 1830 and ensuing Spring, applied herself to the study of the art under Zeugheer Herrmann, receiving also some assistance from a well-known amateur, Mr. Lodge. She so far cultivated her faculty in music as to be able to invent airs for some of her own lyrics. Playing on the harp and the pianoforte had been among her earlier accomplishments : and her voice was naturally good, but failed in youth, owing to the weakness of her chest. , The residence at Wavertree was varied by excursions to Scotland and to the Lake country. In July 1829 she paid a visit to Mr. Hamilton, the author of Cyril Thornton, at Chiefs- wood, near Abbotsford, and saw a great deal of Sir Walter Scott. Two of his kindly compliments to Mrs. Hemans have been preserved in her sister's record. " I should say you had too many gifts, Mrs. Hemans, were they not all made to give pleasure to those around you " : and afterwards at leave-taking, " There are some whom we meet, and should like ever after to claim as kith and kin ; and you are one of those." The Scotch NM~ 342 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. trip included visits to Yarrow, Abbotsford, and Edinburgh, and sitting for a bust to Mr. Angus Fletcher. The excursion to the Lakes of Westmoreland took place in the following year, 1830 : the poetess went to Wordsworth's house, Rydal Mount, with her son Charles ; * and, on afterwards moving to a neigh- bouring cottage named Dove's Nest, overlooking Winander- mere, was joined by her two other boys from Wavertree. Mrs. Hemans's letters show how much she liked Wordsworth, both poetically and personally : she found him more impulsive than she had expected, and greatly enjoyed his fine reading, and the frequent touches of poetry in his talk. Nor was her admiration unresponded to, as proved by the lines which Wordsworth devoted to her memory but a few years after- wards — " Mourn rather for that holy spirit Sweet as the Spring, as ocean deep ; For her who, ere her summer faded, Has sunk into a breathless sleep." She left Dove's Nest towards the middle of August, and revisited Scotland, and then re-entered Wales by way of Dublin and Holyhead. As the experiment of Wavertree had proved disappointing, and as her brother Major Browne was now settled in Ireland, Mrs. Hemans determined to take up her residence in Dublin from the following Spring. In the late autumn of 1830 there- fore she saw her last of Bronwylfa, and towards the close of April 1 83 1 she quitted Wavertree and England, never (as it was fated) to return. She passed a few weeks in Dublin ; then stayed at her brother's house, the Hermitage, near Kilkenny ; and in the early autumn was finally domiciled in the Irish capital. At first she dwelt in Upper Pembroke -Street ; after- wards at No. 36 Stephen's Green; and thirdly at a house which proved more comfortable, and in which her life came to 1 Charles Hemans settled eventually in Italy, became in a high degree dis- tinguished as an archaeological writer, and died in October 1876. *- ±. FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS. 343 a close, 20 Dawson Street. In Dublin, as before at Wavertree, Mrs. Hemans lived retired from society, but in familiar inter- course with a few sterling friends, among whom were Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Archbishop and Mrs. Whately, and the Rev. Blanco White. Her health was in a very shattered state, the palpitation of the heart continuing, and being attended by frequent fainting-fits. Every now and then, how- ever, she rallied, and it was still possible for her friends to flatter their hearts with hope ; and the gentle sweetness and even playfulness of her temper, mingled with tender sentiment and ever-deepening religious impressions, never failed her. She had now to pass a great part of her time lying on a sofa. After her settlement in Ireland Mrs. Hemans published the following volumes of poetry — her prevailing tendency being at this period towards themes of a religious character. Early in 1834, the Hymns for Childhood were first issued from the Home Press, in Dublin, — having previously, however, as far back as 1824, appeared in an American edition. The National Lyrics were collected, and produced by the same Dublin pub- lishers, almost simultaneously with the Hymns for Childhood ; and were succeeded, at no long interval, by the Scenes and Hymns of Life, which volume obtained much applause. This was the last publication during her lifetime. She afterwards wrote Despondency and Aspiration, and dictated the series of sonnets named Thoughts during Sickness : the last composition of all was the Sabbath Sonnet, produced on the 26th of April, only twenty days prior to her death. The other events of the last two years of Mrs. Hemans's life may be very briefly summarized : fatal illness, and the attentions of relatives and friends, are nearly all that the record includes. Not only her brother and his wife, but also her sister Mrs. Hughes, with the husband of the latter, were with her with more or less continuity. In May 1833 her son -I 344 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. Claude went to America, to engage in commercial life ; another son, Willoughby, was employed on the Ordnance Survey in the north of Ireland : Charles, and during his holidays Henry, tended her affectionately. The latter, shortly before his mother's death, was unexpectedly appointed to a clerkship in the Admiralty by Sir Robert Peel, who added " a most munifi- cent donation." In July 3834 Mrs. Hemans caught a fever : she went to the county of Wicklow for the sake of her health, but here another illness, scarlet fever, assailed her. Returning to Dublin, and being ordered tc pass as much time as pos- sible in the open air, she caught a cold, through having sat out too long reading in the gardens of the Dublin Society, where an autumnal fog overtook her : the cold was followed by ague, and this, with a hectic fever which supervened, may be regarded as the final stage in her disease, now mainly of a dropsical character. At the beginning of March 1835, after spending some while at Redesdale, the seat of her attached friends the Whatelys, she returned to Dublin, having almost lost the use of her limbs; and on the 16th of May, without a sigh or movement, she ceased to live. She lies buried in St Anne's Church, Dublin. Mrs. Hemans, while sprightly, versatile, and conversible, was not the less of a very retiring disposition, shrinking from self-display, and the commonplaces of a public reputation. Her character was extremely guileless. Notwithstanding her exceeding sensitiveness — which extended not only to the af- fections and interests of life, but to such outer matters as the sound of the wind at night, the melancholy of the sea- shore, and in especial (though there was no reason for this in any personal occurrences) to the sadness of burials at sea — she was yet very free from mere ordinary nervous alarms. "My spirits," she once wrote, "are as variable as the lights and shadows now flitting with the wind over the high grass, and sometimes the tears gush into my eyes when I can scarcely ^ FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS. 345 define the cause. I put myself in mind of an Irish melody sometimes, with its quick and wild .transitions from sadness to gaiety." Her conversation was various and brilliant, with a total freedom from literary pretence. She had a strong percep- tion of the ludicrous, but abstained from sarcasm or ill-nature, more especially as weapons against any who had injured or neglected her ; and personal or invidious literary gossip was her aversion. She would not permit herself to be vexed at small things, but was wont to quote the saying of Madame L'Espinasse (applying it no doubt chiefly to the severance of her matrimonial ties), " Un grand chagrin tue tout le rested She had a keen dislike to any sort of coarseness in conversation or in books, and would often tear out peccant pages from volumes in her possession. Her accomplishments were con- siderable, and not merely superficial. She knew French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and in mature life German, and was not unacquainted with Latin. She had some taste and facility not only in music (as already referred to) but likewise in drawing ; and some of her sketches of localities have served for vignettes in the copyright edition of her complete works. Wordsworth has amusingly (but it is said not accurately) written that " she was totally ignorant of housewifery, and could as easily have managed the spear of Minerva as her needle." Her poetry was often written with a readiness approaching improvisation : this she felt as in some degree a blemish, and towards the close of her life she regretted having often had to write in a haphazard way, so as to supply means for the education of her sons. Byron, Shelley, and Madame de Stael, were among the writers she was in the habit of quoting. Jealousy of contemporary female writers, prominent in the public eye, was unknown to her gentle and true-hearted nature: Miss Jewsbury (afterwards Mrs. Fletcher) was among her intimates, and she indulged herself in friendly correspondence with Miss Baillie, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Howitt, and others. The first-named of these ladies, 4*- ^ •^ ^ 346 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. Mrs. Fletcher (whose death preceded that of her friend by about a year), has, in her book named The Three Histories, described Mrs. Hemans under the name of Egeria ; and, as the faithfulness of the portrait, allowing for some degree of idealiza- tion, is attested by Mrs. Hughes, I am induced to repeat it here : — " Egeria was totally different from any other woman I had ever seen, either in Italy or England. She did not dazzle, she subdued me. Other women might be more commanding, more versatile, more acute : but I never saw one so exqui- sitely feminine. Her birth, her education, but above all the genius with which she was gifted, combined to inspire a passion for the etherial, the tender, the imaginative, the heroic — in one word, the beautiful. It was in her a faculty divine, and yet of daily life ; it touched all things, but, like a sunbeam, touched them with a ' golden finger.' Anything abstract or scientific was unintelligible and distasteful to her. Her knowledge was extensive and various ; but true to the first principle of her nature, it was poetry that she sought in history, scenery, cha- racter, and religious belief — poetry that guided all her studies, governed all her thoughts, coloured all her conversation. Her nature was at once simple and profound : there was no room in her mind for philosophy, nor in her heart for ambition ; the one was filled by imagination, the other engrossed by tenderness. She had a passive temper, but decided tastes ; any one might influence, but very few impressed her. Her strength and her weakness alike lay in her affections. These would sometimes make her weep at a word, — at others, imbue her with courage ; so that she was alternately a ' falcon-hearted dove,' and ' a reed shaken with the wind.' Her voice was a sad sweet melody, and her spirits reminded me of an old poet's description of the orange-tree, with its ' Golden lamps hid in a night of green,' or of those Spanish gardens where the pomegranate grows beside the cypress. Her gladness was like a burst of sunlight ; ■*«1 FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS. 347 and, if in her depression she resembled night, it was night bear- ing her stars. I might describe and describe for ever, but I should never succeed in portraying Egeria. She was a Muse, a Grace, a variable child, a dependent woman, the Italy of human beings." In Mrs. Hemans's poetry there is (as already observed) a large measure of beauty, and, along with this, very considerable skill. Aptitude and delicacy in versification, and a harmonious balance in the treatment of the subject, are very generally apparent : if we accept the key-note as right, we may with little misgiving acquiesce in what follows on to the close. Her skill, however, hardly rises into the loftier region of art : there is a gift, and culture added to the gift, but not a great native faculty working in splendid independence, or yet more splendid self-discipline. Her sources of inspiration being genuine, and the tone of her mind feminine in an intense degree, the product has no lack of sincerity : and yet it leaves a certain artificial impression, rather perhaps through a cloying flow of "right-minded" perceptions of moral and material beauty than through any other defect. " Balmy " it may be, but the atmosphere of her verse is by no means bracing. One might sum up the weak points in Mrs. Hemans's poetry by saying that it is not only " feminine " poetry (which under the circum- stances can be no imputation, rather an encomium) but also " female" poetry : besides exhibiting the fineness and charm of womanhood, it has the monotone of mere sex. Mrs. Hemans has that love of good and that horror of evil which characterize a scrupulous female mind, and which we may most rightly praise without concluding that they favour poetical robustness, or even perfection in literary form. She is a leader in that very modern phalanx of poets who persistently coordinate the impulse of sentiment with the guiding power of morals or religion. Everything must convey its "lesson," and is indeed set forth for the sake of its lesson, but must at the same time if" 348 , LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. have the emotional gush of a spontaneous sentiment. The poet must not write because he has something of his own to say, but because he has something right to feel and say. Lamartine was a prophet in this line. After allowing all proper deductions, however, it may be gratefully acknowledged that Mrs. Hemans takes a very honourable rank among poetesses; and that there is in her writings much which both appeals, and' deserves to appeal, to many gentle, sweet, pious, and refined souls, in virtue of its thorough possession of the same excellent gifts. According to the spiritual or emotional condition of those who peruse, it would be found that a poem by this authoress which to one reader would be graceful and tender would to another be touching, and to a third poignantly pathe- tic. The first we can suppose to be a man, and the third a woman; or the first a critic, the second a "poetical reader," and the third a sensitive nature attuned to sympathy by suffering. ■* afterwards Mrs. Lindon — who was shortly the devouring passion of his heart. She was the daughter of a gentleman of independent means, who had died during her childhood. Hitherto Keats had been very shy of women ; having worshipped them with all a boy's dreamy devotion while at school, but afterwards, on a nearer view, having experienced some loss of a dear ideal illusion mixed with vexations and perturbations which had rather kept him out of theway of the sex. Now he loved with passion, almostwith fury; and, although his affection was returned, and his suit favoured, "*♦■ 356 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS, •«H i the fervency of his love was fated to pass soon into gloom and soon afterwards into desperation. His want of means was a bar to marriage : he had neither money, nor the expectation of making money, nor a professional position of any kind. In" a nation of shopkeepers and of insular politicians his sole known function was to write splendid but partially juvenile poetry, and his prospects were naturally considered not altogether " eligible." This made him unhappy enough : increasing ill-health darkened around him ; and with rage eating at his heart the unhappy poet divined that he should be dead ere health and fortune would combine to fix the golden moment, and to yield his mistress to his arms. The fatal crisis and the visibly fatal symptoms delayed ; but, years before the end, Coleridge, shaking hands with Keats, had whispered to Leigh Hunt, " There is death in that hand." Death was to be about Keats's path before it visited himself. In the autumn of 1818, his youngest and dearly loved brother Tom expired : the poet tended him affectionately, and weakened his own constitution in consequence. There was another brother George who about the same time emigrated to America ; and a sister who eventually married a gentleman of some literary merit, Senhor Llanos. This lady is still living in Spain, and has a son known as a painter. Keats had written his Isabella before the Scottish trip with Mr. Armitage Brown in 1818 ; the Eve of St. Agnes was the composition of the winter of the same year ; Lamia, of the earlier part of 1 8 1 9. Hyperion, which had been carried up to its present uncompleted condition by about the time when the hos- tile reviews of Endymion appeared, did not content its author — he considered it to be deformed by Miltonic inversions ; and partly in this feeling, partly from other motives, the poem was set aside. According to the original design, it would have reached about the same length as Endymion. In conjunction with Mr. Brown, Keats also undertook the writing of the drama of Otho the Great. Brown supplied the subject, and J* - ±. JOHN KEATS. 357 the general conduct of the story ; Keats put all into form and verse. The two friends worked on their joint plan, sitting vis-a-vis : finally Keats grew dissatisfied with its outcome, and executed the fifth act unassisted. Elliston, the theatrical man- ager, accepted the drama for representation, and Kean was expected to undertake the principal character: but all this project came to nothing. In these months Keats also took up the study of the Italian poets. He had now been ailing for some while, but as yet no positively alarming symptoms had appeared. One night he travelled to Hampstead outside a stage-coach, and was con- scious of having caught a chill. He went to bed, vomited something, lit a candle, and looked : he had learned enough in surgery to affirm that it was arterial blood. " That drop," he said, " is my death-warrant : I must die." He was calm at the time. Some few weeks passed, and he was apparently recovered. In the autumn of 1 819 he took a lodging in West- minster, intending to write regularly for periodicals : but he soon found that he could not bear even this small degree of separation from his beloved, and he returned to his old neigh- bourhood, and was for a while almost domesticated with her family. The necessity of some definite employment became more and more evident and urgent, the reluctance to take the decisive step greater and greater : he debated between emi- grating to South America, and closing with an appointment as surgeon to an East Indiaman. In wearing conflicts of feeling and of resolve, but not without hope as to his prospects of health, Keats was endeavouring to reconcile himself to his lot when a serious attack of blood-spitting came on. He saw that the only chance of saving his life lay in departure to a milder climate. Meantime the last of his contributions to the poetry of England and of the world — the small volume entitled Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems — had been published. Its prefatory note is dated in June 1820, and is J' V 358 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. to the effect that the fragment of Hyperion is included in the volume at the publisher's request, and contrary to the inclina- tion of the author, who had left it unfinished in consequence of the unfavourable reception of Endymion. It is fortunate that the publishers prevailed in this debate ; for Hyperion is par excellence the poem by Keats which both Byron and Shelley warmly admired, and perhaps, had there been no Hyperion published during the author's lifetime, there would have been no Adonais written, to proclaim his immortality as soon as the mortal part was consigned to the grave. This Lamia volume was received in a fairly respectful tone ; and a notice by Jeffrey shortly appeared in the Edinburgh Review, calculated to redress the stolid injustice previously done by the Quarterly and by Blackwood. Another poetic project formed by Keats was the poem named The Cap and Bells, somewhat in Ariosto's vein, with which he made a beginning. Nothing further remains to be told of his career, beyond the miseries of disease and death ; disease rapid, terrible, relent- less, and overwhelming at times to the mind as well as the body of the sufferer — death foreseen and inevitable, and at last welcomed with open arms. Towards the middle of Sep- tember 1820 Keats embarked, accompanied by his old ac- quaintance Mr. Severn, who had just won the gold medal of the Royal Academy for historical painting : they went by sea to Naples. Sharp indeed were the pangs of blighted and never-to-be-appeased love with which the poet took leave of his mistress. From Naples (in which city he received from Shelley an invitation, which he did not act upon, to join him and be nursed at Pisa) the two friends proceeded to Rome, where the dying man was attended by Dr. (afterwards Sir James) Clark : he soon took to his bed here, and was not destined to rise from it again. The last letter which he wrote was dated on the 30th of November. Still he lingered awhile; lingered, suffered, raved, and at last became resigned. At one time he said, " I feel the daisies T growing over me " ; his last ' So in Leigh Hunt's narrative ; Lord Houghton says " the flowers." •*** JOHN KEATS. 359 words were, " Thank God it has come.'' It did come — the pitiless and merciful Death which comes to all came quietly to Keats — on the 23rd of February 1821. Shortly before this he had received a letter from the lady of his heart, which he had not courage to read. He directed that it should be buried with him, along with a purse and letter from his sister ; and that the inscription over his bones should be, " Here lies one whose name was writ in water." That is an age-long and shoreless water, which will continue flowing while generation after generation of men, his brothers and lovers, come to contemplate the sacred tomb in Rome, dominated by the pyramid of Caius Cestius. They have but to move some paces aside, and stand by a still more sacred tomb which opened in the ensuing year, 1822 — that of the world-loving, world-hated Shelley, divinest of the demigods. Keats had an unusually small head, covered with copious auburn-brown ringlets, which he wore parted down the middle : his lower limbs also were small beyond the due proportion foi his broad-shouldered and generally alert and vigorous-looking, though by no means tall, frame. His eyes were large, blue, and sensitive : his mouth likewise was singularly sensitive, combined with a certain pugnacious look of the full under-lip, meeting a rather overhanging upper lip. The general bright- ness and even beauty of his face were most observable, marked by an " expression as if he had been looking on some glorious sight." Wide at the forehead, and comparatively small at the chin, the visage was partly feminine in contour, and with less than masculine squareness, yet eminently virile and gallant But in fact he was never strong constitutionally : his tendency to consumption was congenital, and so great were the ravages of the disease before its final triumph that his lungs were found, after death, to be almost obliterated. As to his character, no one who is even cursorily acquainted with his poems can doubt that an intense capacity for enjoyment, and a great *■ -T- 4* 360 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. readiness to yield himself up to impulses of this kind, were preeminent in his nature. These qualities were united with kindliness, love of right, and a quick sense of honour. Courage was also conspicuous. Habitually gentle, Keats was indignant at any calumny or baseness : about the time when he was composing Endymion, he thrashed a butcher who was beating a little boy in the street, and his vigorous comment upon hearing of certain shabbinesses of conduct has been recorded, " Is there no human dust-hole into which we can sweep such fellows?" With such a tendency of feeling, it is not perhaps surprising that he was personally a little thinskinned, and that his relations with friendly people of a social origin superior to his own had a tinge of antagonism — as for instance even with Shelley. In society he combined earnestness and pleasantry. His intensest delight in life, he once told Severn, had been the watching of the growth of flowers ; in poetry, after a while, his great standard of style, and continual companion, was the Sonnets of Shakespeare. He said in one instance that " the polar-star of poetry," in his view, was Invention : and, among the many striking observations which he has left upon the art of which he was so great though so youthful a master, none is more rememberable than this, "The Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream ; he awoke, and found it truth." As of Keats's character, so of his poetry, enjoyment is the primary element, the perpetual undertone : his very melancholy is the luxury of sadness, his despair the drained and reversed cup of ecstasy. Enjoyment as the soul of the work, profusion as its body ; consummate niceties of art as its adornment. The spirit of art was always vividly near and precious to Keats. He fashioned it exuberantly into a thousand shapes, now of gem-like exquisiteness, now mere sightly or showy trinkets; and of these the scrupulous taste will even pronounce the cheapest, and rightly pronounce them, to be trumpery. Still, there is the feel- ing of art, however provoking its masquerade; recognizable here as clearly as it is in the formative fine art, wrought by a cunning «*HN- JOHN KEATS. 361 hand, in a period of great and overblown development and impending decadence— such as the late cinquecento or the earlier French jococo. Not indeed that, in Keats's case, there is any taint of decadence — but on the contrary the wanton and tangled wilfulnesses of a beautiful precocity, and a beautiful immaturity. Clearer and clearer did the true and high prompt- ings of art become to him as he advanced, and more immediate and certain his response to them. He might have said at the last with Nero " Qualis art if ex pereo /" The reader of Keats is conscious mainly of two critical impressions — the unsatisfied perception of what the glorious aspirant could and would have done with a longer span of life, and astonishment that so much was actually accomplished by one so young. If he is a reader qualified to peruse Keats, these two impressions will -leave scanty room for another, which is nevertheless perfectly correct — the sense of the extreme and even exasperating faultiness of much of that which the delightful poet has left us — a positive, not a negative faultiness — no falling- short, but a distinct misdoing. Nor will such a reader much repine over the reflection that Keats, had he lived longer, would have written more, and still better to boot. Keats, youthful and prodigal, the magician of unnumbered beauties which neither author nor reader can think of counting or assessing, is the Keats of our affections. Mature him, and he would be a more perfect planner and executant, and promoted to yet loftier office among the immortals ; but he could not win upon us more, — could not leave us a more lovely memory, nor so priceless a treasure of regret. ^ __ _ : *f» J, POET BORN BETWEEN KEATS AND HOOD. William Motherwell 1797 to 1835. 4- T ■ Ms p +p> THOMAS HOOD. There were scarcely any events in the life of Thomas Hood. One condition there was of too potent determining importance — life-long ill health ; and one circumstance of moment — a commercial failure, and consequent expatriation. Beyond this, little presents itself for record in the outward facts of this up- right and beneficial career, bright with genius and coruscating with wit, dark with the lengthening and deepening shadow of death. The father of Thomas Hood was engaged in business as a publisher and bookseller in the Poultry, in the city of London, — a member of the firm of Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe. He was a Scotchman, and had come up to the capital early in life, to make his way. His interest in books was not solely confined to their saleable quality. He reprinted various old works with success ; published Bloomfield's poems, and dealt handsomely with him ; and was himself the author of two novels, which are stated to have had some success in their day. For the sake of the son rather than the father, one would like to see some ac- count, with adequate specimens, of these long-forgotten tales ; for the queries' which Thomas Hood asks concerning the piteous woman of his Bridge of Sighs interest us all concerning a man of genius, and interest us moreover with regard to the question of intellectual as well as natural affinity : — " Who was his father, Who was his mother ? Had he a sister, Had he a brother?" Another line of work in which the elder Hood is recorded to have been active was the opening of the English book-trade with America. He married a sister of the engraver Mr. Sands, and had by her a large family : two sons and four daughters survived the period of childhood. The elder brother, James, who died early of consumption, drew well, as did also one or two of the sisters. It would seem therefore, when we recall Thomas Hood's aptitudes and frequent miscellaneous practice in the same line, that a certain tendency towards fine art, as well as towards literature, ran in the family. The consumption which killed James appears to have been inherited from his mother : she, and two of her daughters, died of the same disease ; and a pulmonary affection of a somewhat different kind became, as we shall see, one of the poet's most inveterate persecutors. The death of the father, which was sudden and unexpected, preceded that of the mother, but not of James, and left the survivors in rather straitened circumstances. Thomas, the second of the two sons, was born in the Poultry, on or about the 23rd of May 1799. He is stated to have been a retired child, with much quiet humour : chuckling, we may guess, over his own quaint imaginings, which must have come in crowds, and of all conceivable or inconceivable sorts, to judge from the product of his after years; keeping most of these fancies and surprises to himself, but every now and then letting some of them out, and giving homely or stolid bystanders an inkling of insight into the many-peopled crannies of his boyish brain. He received his education at Dr. Wanostrocht's school at Clapham. It is not very clear how far this education ex- tended : J I should infer that it was just about enough, and not '-The authority— I might almost say, the one authority — for the life of Hood, is the Memorials published by his son and daughter. Any point which is not clearly brought out in that affectionate and interesting record will naturally be equally or more indefinite in my brief summary, founded as it is on the Memo- rials. **4- THOMAS HOOD. 365 more than enough, to enable Hood to shift for himself in the career of authorship, without serious disadvantage from inade- quate early training, and also without much aid thence derived — without, at any rate, any such rousing and refining of the literary sense as would warrant us in attributing to educational influences either the inclination to become an author, or the manipulative power over language and style which Hood displayed in his serious poems, not to speak of those of a lighter kind. We seem to see him sliding, as it were, into the profession of letters, simply through capacity and liking, and the course of events — not because he had resolutely made up his mind to be an author, nor because his natural faculty had been steadily or studiously cultivated. As to details, it may be remarked that his schooling included some amount — perhaps a fair average amount — of Latin. We find it stated that he had a Latin prize at school, but was not apt at the language in later years. He had however one kind of aptitude at it — being addicted to the use of familiar Latin quotations or phrases, cited with humorous verbal perversions. In all the relations of family life, and the forms of family affection, Hood was simply exemplary. The deaths of his elder brother and of his father left him the principal reliance of his mother, herself destined soon to follow them to the tomb : he was an excellent and devoted son. His affection for one of his sisters, Anne, who also died shortly afterwards, is attested in the beautiful lines named The Deathbed, — " We watched her breathing through the night." At a later date, the loves of a husband and a father seem to have absorbed by far the greater part of his nature and his thoughts : his letters to friends are steeped and drenched in "Jane," "Fanny," and "Tom junior." These letters are •mostly divided between perpetual family details and perennial jocularity : a succession of witticisms, or at lowest of puns and whimsicalities, mounts up like so many squibs and crackers, „■* £■" ^ 366 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. fizzing through, sparkling amid, or ultimately extinguished by, the inevitable shower — the steady gush and downpour — of the home-affections. It may easily be inferred from this account that there are letters which one is inclined to read more thoroughly, and in greater number consecutively, than Hood's. The vocation first selected for Hood, towards the age of fifteen, was one which he did not follow up for long — that of . an engraver. He was apprenticed to his uncle Mr. Sands, and afterwards to one of the Le Keux family. The occupation was ill-suited to his constantly ailing health, and this eventually conduced to his abandoning it He then went to Scotland to recruit, remaining there among his relatives about five years. I According to a statement made by himself, he was in a mer- chant's office within this interval; it is uncertain, however, whether this assertion is to be accepted as genuine, or as made for some purpose of fun. His first published writing appeared in the Dundee Advertiser in 18 14 — his age being then, at the utmost, fifteen and a half; this was succeeded by some con- tribution to a local magazine. But as yet he had no idea of authorship as a profession. 1 "Two years," according to the Memorials ; but the dates for this portion of Hood's life are not accurately given in that work. Hood completed the fif- teenth year of his age in May 1814. It is certain, from the dates of his letters, that his sojourn in Scotland began not later than September 1815 ; and the writer of the Memorials himself affirms that Hood "returned to London about 1820," in or before July. If so, he was in Scotland abouifive years ; and, from the fact that he had written in a Dundee newspaper in 1814, one might even surmise that the term of six years was nearer the mark. At any rate, as he had reached Scotland by September 1815, he was there soon after completing his sixteenth year : yet Mr. Hessey (Memorials, p. 23) says that he was articled to the engraving business " at the age of fifteen or sixteen," and his apprentice- ship, according to Mr.. Hood junior, lasted "some years" even before his transfer from Mr. Sands to Mr. Le Keux. The apprenticeship did not begin until after the father's death ; but the year of that death is left unspecified, though the day and month are given. These dates, as the reader will readily perceive, are sometimes vague, and sometimes contradictory. In the text of my notice, I have endeavoured to pick my way through their discrepancies. A -*$*- THOMAS HOOD. 367 Towards the middle of the year 1820, Hood was re-settled in London, improved in health, and just come of age. At first he continued practising as an engraver; but in 182 1 he began to act as a sort of sub-editor for the London Magazine, after the death of the editor, Mr. Scott, in a duel. He concocted ficti- tious and humorous answers to correspondents — a humble yet appropriate introduction to the insatiable habit and faculty for out-of-the-way verbal jocosity which marked-off his after career from that of all other excellent poets. His first regular contri- bution to the magazine, in July 1821, was a little poem To Hope: even before this, as early at any rate as 1815, he was in the frequent practice of writing correctly and at some length in verse, as witnessed by selections, now in print, from what he had composed for the amusement of his relatives. Soon afterwards, a private literary society was the recipient of other verses of the same order. The lines To Hope were followed, in the London Magazine, by the Ode to Dr. Kitchener and some further poems, including the important work, Lycus the Centaur — after the publication of which, there could not be much doubt of the genuine and uncommon powers of the new writer. The last contribution of Hood to this magazine was the Lines to a Cold Beauty. Another early work of his, and one which, like the verses To the Moon, affords marked evidence of the impression which he had received from Keats's poetry, is the unfinished drama (or, as he termed it, " romance ") of Lamia : I do not find its precise date recorded. Its verse is lax, and its tone somewhat immature; yet it shows a great deal of sparkling and diversified talent. Hood certainly takes a rather more rational view than Keats did of his subject as a moral invention, or a myth having some sort of meaning at its root. A serpent transformed into a woman, who beguiles a youth of the highest hopes into amorous languid self-abandon- ment, is clearly not, in morals, the sort of person that ought to be left uncontrolled to her own devices. Keats ostentatiously & ^N- 368 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. resents the action of the unimpassioned philosopher Apollonius in revealing the true nature of the woman-serpent, and dissolv- ing her spell. An elderly pedant to interfere with the pretty- whims of a viper when she wears the outer semblance of a fine woman ! Intolerable ! — Such is the sentiment of Keats ; but such plainly is not altogether the conviction of Hood, although his story remains but partially developed. By this time it may have become pretty clear to himself and others that his proper vocation and destined profession was literature. Through the London Magazine, he got to know John Hamilton Reynolds (author of the Garden of Florence and other poems, and a contributor to this serial under the pseudonym of Edward Herbert), Charles Lamb, Allan Cunningham, De Quincey, and other writers of reputation. To Hood the most directly important of all these acquaintances was Mr. Reynolds ; this gentleman having a sister, Jane, to whom Hood was intro- duced. An attachment ensued, and shortly terminated in marriage, the wedding taking place on the 5th of May 1824. The father of Miss Reynolds was the head writing-master at Christ Hospital. She is stated to have had good manners, a cultivated mind, and literary tastes, though a high educational standard is not always traceable in her letters. At any rate the marriage was a happy one; Mrs. Hood being a tender and attentive wife, unwearied in the cares which her husband's pre- carious health demanded, and he being (as I have said) a mirror of marital constancy and devotion, distinguishable from a lover rather by his intense delight in all domestic relations and details than by any cooling-down in his fondness. It would appear that, in the later years of Hood's life, he was not on entirely good terms with some members of his wife's family, in- cluding his old friend John Hamilton Reynolds. What may have caused this I do not find specified : all that we know of the character of Hood justifies us in thinking that he was little or not at all to blame, for he appears throughout a man of just, ± *$" "4* THOMAS HOOD. 369 honourable, and loving nature, and free besides from that sort of self-assertion which invites a collision. Every one, however, has his blemishes; and we may perhaps discern in' Hdod a certain over-readiness to think himself imposed upon, and the fellow-creatures with whom he had immediately to do a genera- tion of vipers — a state of feeling not characteristic of a mind exalted and magnanimous by habit, or " gentle " in the older and more significant meaning of the term. The time was now come for Hood to venture a volume upon the world. Conjointly with Reynolds, he wrote, and published in 1825, his Odes and Addresses to Great People. The title- page bore no author's name ; but the extraordinary talent and point of the work could hardly fail to be noticed, even apart from its appeal to immediate popularity, dealing as it did so continually with the uppermost topics of the day. It had what it deserved, a great success. This volume was followed, in 1826, by the first series of Whims and Oddities, which also met with a good sale; the second series appeared in 1827. Next came two volumes of National Tales, somewhat after the manner of Boccaccio (but how far different from his spirit may easily be surmised), which are now little known. The volume containing the Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, Hero and Leander, and some other of Hood's most finished and noticeable poems, came out in 1827. The Midsummer Fairies itself was one of the author's own favourite works, and certainly deserved to be so, as far as dainty elegance of motive and of execution is concerned : but the conception was a little too ingeniously remote for the public to ratify the author's predilection. I The Hero and Leander will be at once recognized as modelled f on the style of Elizabethan narrative poems : indeed, Marlow treated the very same subject, and his poem, left uncompleted, was finished by Chapman. Hood's is a most astonishing ex- ample of revivalist poetry : it is reproductive and spontaneous at the same time. It resembles its models closely, not servilely * : ; — 4* -HN- 370 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. —significantly, not mechanically ; and has the great merit ot resembling them with comparative moderation. Elizabethan here both in spirit and in letter, Hood is nevertheless a little less extreme than his prototypes. Where they loaded, he does not find it needful to overload, which is the ready and almost the inevitable resource of revivalists, all but the fewest : on the contrary, he alleviates a little, — but only a little. In 1829 appeared the most famous of all his poems of a narrative character — The Dream of Eugene Aram; it was pub- lished in the Gem, an annual which the poet was then editing. Besides this amount of literary activity, Hood continued writing in periodicals, sometimes under the signature of " Theodore M." His excessive and immeasurable addiction to rollicking fun, to the perpetual " cracking of jokes " (for. it amounts to that more definitely than to anything else in the domain of the Comic Muse), is a somewhat curious problem, taken in connexion with his remarkable genius and accomplishment as a poet, and his personal character as a solid housekeeping citizen, bent chiefly . upon rearing his family in respectability, and paying his way, or, as the Church Catechism has neatly and unimprovably expressed it, upon " doing his duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him." His almost constant ill-health, and, in a minor degree, the troubles which beset him in money-matters, make the problem all the more noticeable. The influence of Charles Lamb may have had something to do with it, — probably not very much. Perhaps there was something in the literary atmosphere or the national tone of the time which gave comicality a turn of predominance after the subsiding of the great poetic wave which filled the last years of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth century in our country, in Blake, Burns, Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, Landor, Byron, Keats, and, supreme among all, Shelley. Something of the same transition may be noticed in the art of design ; the multi- T ~~ t THOMAS HOOD. 371 farious illustrator in the prior generation is Stothard, — in the later, Cruikshank. At any rate, in literature, Lamb, Hood, and then Dickens in his earliest works, the Sketches by Boz and Pickwick, are uncommonly characteristic and leading minds, and bent, with singular inveteracy, upon being "funny," — though not funny and nothing else at all. But we should not force this consideration too far : Hood is a central figure in the group and the period, and the tendency of the time may be almost as much due to him as he to the tendency. Mainly, we have to ' fall back upon his own idiosyncrasy : he was born with a boundlessly whimsical perception, which he trained into an inimitable sleight-of-hand in the twisting of notions and of words; circumstances favoured his writing for fugitive publi- cations and skimming readers, rather than under conditions of greater permanency ; and the result is as we find it in his works. His son expresses the opinion that part of Hood's success in comic writing arose from his early reading of Humphrey Clinker, Tristram Shandy, Tom Jones, and other works of that period, and imbuing himself with their style : a remark, however, which applies to his prose rather than his poetical works. Certain it is that the appetite for all kinds of fun, verbal and other, was a part of Hood's nature. We see it in the practical jokes he was continually playing on his good-humoured wife — such as altering into grotesque absurdity many of the words contained in her letters to friends : we see it — the mere animal love of jocu- larity, as it might be termed — in such a small point as his frequently addressing his friend Philip de Franck, in letters, by the words, " Tim, says he," instead of any human appellative. z 1 This " Tim, says he, " is a perfect gag in many of Hood's letters. It is curious to learn what was the kind of joke which could assume so powerful an ascendant over the mind and associations of this great humourist. Here it is, as given in the Hood Memorials from Sir Jonah Barrington's Memoirs : — " 'Tim,' says he. — 'Sir,' says he.— ' Fetch me my hat,' says he ; W 372 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. Hood reminds us very much of one of Shakespeare's Fools (to use the word in no invidious sense) transported into the nine- teenth century, — the Fool in King Lear, or Touchstone. For the occasional sallies of coarseness or ribaldry, the spirit of the time has substituted a bourgeois good-humour which respects the family circle, and haunts the kitchen-stairs ; for the biting jeer, intended to. make some victim uncomfortable, it gives the sarcastic or sprightly banter, not unconscious of an effort at moral amelioration ; for the sententious sagacity, and humorous enjoyment of the nature of man, it gives bright thoughts and a humanitarian sympathy. But, on the whole, the intellectual personality js nearly the same : seeking by natural affinity, and enjoying to the uttermost, whatever tends to lightness of heart and to ridicule — thus dwelling indeed in the region of the com- monplace and the gross, but constantly informing it with some suggestion of poetry, some wise side-meaning, or some form of sweetness and grace. These observations relate of course to Hood's humorous poems : into his grave and pathetic poems he can import qualities still loftier than these — though even here it is not often that he utterly forswears quaintness and oddity. The risible, the fantastic, was his beacon-light ; some- times as delicate as a dell of glow-worms ; sometimes as up- roarious as a bonfire ; sometimes, it must be said (for he had to be perpetually writing whether the inspiration came or not, or his inspiration was too liable to come from the very plati- tudes and pettinesses of everyday life), not much more brilliant ' That I may go,' says he, ' To Timahoe,' says he, 'And go the fair,' says he, 'And see all that's there,' says he. — ' First pay what you owe," says he ; 'And then you may go,' says he, ' To Timahoe, ' says he, 'And go to the fair,' says he, 'And see all that's there,' says he. — ' Now by this and by that, ' says he, ' Tim, hang up my hat,' says he." THOMAS HOOD. 373 than a rushlight, and hardly more aromatic than the snuff of a tallow candle. We must now glance again at Hood's domestic affairs. His first child had no mundane existence worth calling such ; but has nevertheless lived longer than most human beings in the lines which Lamb wrote for the occasion, On an Infant dying as soon as born. A daughter followed, and in 1830 was born his son, the Tom Hood who became editor of the comic journal Fun, and died in 1874. At the time of his birth, the family was living at Winchmore Hill ; thence they removed, about 1832, to the Lake House, Wanstead, a highly picturesque dwelling, but scanty in domestic comforts. The first of the Comic Annual series was brought out at Christmas 1830. In the following couple of years, Hood did some theatrical work ; writing the libretto for an English opera which (it is believed) was performed at the Surrey Theatre. Its name is now unknown, but it had a good run in its day : a similar fate has befallen an entertainment which he wrote for Mathews. He also composed a pantomime for the Adelphi ; and, along with Reynolds, dramatized Gil Bias. This play is understood to have been acted at Drury Lane. The novel of Tylney Hall, and the poem of the Epping Hunt, were written at Wanstead. Born in comfortable mediocrity, and early inured to narrow fortunes, Hood had no doubt entered upon the literary calling without expecting or caring to become rich. Hitherto, how- ever, he seems to have prospered progressively, and to have had no reason to regret, even in a worldly sense, his choice of a profession. But towards the end of 1834 a disaster overtook him ; and thenceforth, to the end of his days, he had nothing but tedious struggling and uphill work. To a man of his buoy- ant temperament, and happy in his home, this might have been of no extreme consequence, if onlysound health had blessed him: unfortunately, the very reverse was the case. Sickly hitherto, he was soon to become miserably and hopelessly diseased : he 374 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. worked on through everything bravely and uncomplainingly, but no doubt with keen throbs of discomfort, and not without detriment at times to the quality of his writings. The disaster adverted to was the failure of a firm with which Hood was connected, entailing severe loss upon him. With his accus- tomed probity, he refused to avail himself of any legal immu- nities, and resolved to meet his engagements in full eventually ; but it became requisite that he should withdraw from England. He proposed to settle down in some one of the towns on the Rhine, and circumstances fixed his choice on Coblentz. A great storm which overtook him during the passage to Rotterdam told damagingly on his already feeble health. Coblentz, which he reached in March 1835, pleased him at first ; though it was not long before he found himself a good deal of an Englishman, and his surroundings vexatiously German. After a while he came to consider a German Jew and a Jew German nearly convertible . terms ; and indulged at times in considerable acrimony of com- ment, such as a reader of cosmopolitan temper is not inclined to approve. He had, however, at least one very agreeable acquaintance at Coblentz — Lieutenant Philip de Franck, an officer in the Prussian service, of partly English parentage : the good-fellowship which he kept up with this amiable gentleman, both in personal intercourse and by letter, was (as we have seen) even boyishly vivacious and exuberant In the first instance Hood lived at No. 372 Castor Hof, where his family joined him in the Spring of 1835 : about a year later, they removed to No. 752 Alten Graben. Spasms in the chest now began to be a trying and alarming symptom of his ill health, which, towards the end of 1836, took a turn for the worse; he never afterwards rallied very effectually, though the fluctuations were numerous — (in November 1838, for instance, he fancied that a radical improvement had suddenly taken place) — and at times the danger was imminent The unfavourable change in question was nearly simultaneous with a visit which he made to W- 4*- £* THOMAS HOOD. 375 Berlin, accompanying Lieutenant de Franck and his regiment, on their transfer to Bromberg : the rate of travelling was from fifteen to twenty English miles per diem, for three days con- secutively, and then one day of rest. Hood liked the simple unextortionate Saxon folk whom he encountered on the route and contrasted them with the Coblentzers, much to the dis- advantage of the latter. By the beginning of December he was back in his Rhineland home ; but finally quitted it towards May 1837. Several attacks of blood-spitting occurred in the interval ; at one time Hood proposed for himself the deadly- lively epitaph, " Here lies one who spat more blood and made more puns than any other man." About this time he was engaged in writing Up the Rhine ; performing, as was his wont, the greater part of the work during the night-hours. The sojourn at Coblentz was succeeded by a sojourn at Ostend ; in which city — besides the sea, which Hood always supremely delighted in — he found at first more comfort in the ordinary mode of living, including the general readiness at speaking or understanding English. Gradually, however, the climate, extremely damp and often cold, proved highly unsuit- able to him ; and, when he quitted Ostend in the Spring of 1840, at the close of nearly three years' residence there, it was apparent that his stay had already lasted too long. Within this period the publication of Hood's Own had occurred, and put to a severe trial even his unrivalled fertility in jest : one of his letters speaks of the difficulty of being perfectly original in the jocose vein, more especially with reference to the concur- rent demands of Hood's Own, and of the Comic Annual of the year. At the beginning of 1839 he paid a visit of about three weeks to his often-regretted England, staying with one of his oldest and most intimate friends, Mr. Dilke, then editor of the Athenmum. Another of his best friends— one indeed who continued to the end most unwearied and affectionate in his professional and other attentions, Dr. Elliot— now made a T 5»^ 376 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. medical examination of Hood's condition. He pronounced the lungs to be organically sound ; the chief seat of disease being the liver, and the heart, which was placed lower down than usual. At a later stage of the disease, enlargement of the heart is mentioned, along with haemorrhage from the lungs consequent on that malady, and recurring with terrible fre- quency : to these dropsy, arising from extreme weakness, was eventually superadded. Indeed, the catalogue of the illnesses of the unconquerably hilarious Hood, and the details of his sufferings, are painful to read. They have at least the merit of giving a touch of adventitious but intimate pathos even to some of his wildest extravagances of verbal fence, — and of enhancing our sympathy and admiration for the force and beauty of his personal character, which could produce work such as this out of a torture of body and spirit such as that. During this visit to London, Hood scrutinized his publishing and other accounts, and found them sufficiently encouraging. The first edition of Up the Rhine, consisting of 1500 copies, sold off in a fortnight. Soon, however, some vexations with publishers ensued : Hood felt it requisite to take legal proceedings, and the action lingered on throughout and beyond the brief remainder of his life. Thus his prospects were again blighted, and his means crippled when most they needed to be unembarrassed. The poet, was back in England from Ostend in April 1840 ; and, under medical advice, he determined to prolong his visit into a permanent re-settlement in his native London. Here therefore he remained, and returned no more to the Continent He took a house, with his family, in Camberwell, not far from the Green ; removing afterwards to St. John's Wood, and finally to another house in the same district, Devonshire Lodge, Finchley Road. He wrote in the New Monthly Magazine, then edited by Theodore Hook : his Rhymes for the Times, the celebrated Miss Kilmansegg, and other compositions, first ap- peared here. Hook dying in August 1841, Hood was invited 4" THOMAS HOOD. 377 to succeed him as editor, arid-closed with the offer : this gave him an annual salary of ^300, besides the separate payments for any articles that he wrote. The Song of the Shirt, which it would be futile to praise or even to characterize, came out, anonymously of course, in the Christmas number of Punch for 1843 : it ran like wildfire, and rang like a tocsin, through the land. Immediately afterwards, in January 1844, Hood's connexion with the New Monthly closed, and he started a publication of his own, Hood's Magazine, which was a consi- derable success : more than half the first number was the actual handiwork of the editor. Many troubles and cross- purposes, however, beset the new periodical ; difficulties with which Hood was ill fitted, by his now rapidly and fatally wor- sening health, to cope. They pestered him when he was most in need of rest ; and he was in need of rest when most he was wanted to control the enterprise. The Haunted House, and various other excellent poems by Hood, were pub- lished in this magazine. His last days and final agonies were a little cheered by the granting of a Government pension of ^100, dating from June 1844, which, with kindly but ominous foresight, was conferred upon Mrs. Hood, as likely to prove the survivor. This was during the ministry of Sir Robert Peel, whose courteous com- munications to the poet, and expressions of direct personal interest in his writings, made the boon all the more acceptable. Hood, indeed, had not been directly concerned in soliciting it. At a somewhat earlier date, January 1841, the Literary So- ciety had, similarly unasked, voted him a sum of ^50 ; but this he returned, although his circumstances were such as might have made it by no means unwelcome. From Christ- mas 1844 he was compelled to take to his bed, and was fated never to leave his room again. The ensuing Spring, through- out which the poet lay seemingly almost at the last gasp day by day, was a lovely one. At times he was delirious ; but mostly ^_— _— ^ 4r *>^- 378 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. quite clear in mind, and full of gentleness and resignation. " Dying, dying," were his last words ; and shortly before, " Lord, say 'Arise, take up thy cross, and follow me.'" On the 3rd of May 1845 he lay dead. Hood's funeral took place in Kensal Green Cemetery : it was a quiet one, but many friends attended. His faithful and loving wife would not be long divided from him. Eighteen months later she was laid beside him, dying of an illness first contracted from her constant tendance on his sick-bed. In the closing period of his life, Hood could hardly bear her being out of his sight, or even write when she was away. Some years afterwards, a public subscription was got up, and a monument erected to mark the grave of the godd man and true poet who " sang the Song of the Shirt." The face of Hood is best known by two busts and an oil- portrait which have both been engraved from. It is a sort of face to which apparently a bust does more than justice, yet less than right. The features, being mostly by no means bad ones, look better, when thus reduced to the mere simple and abstract contour, than they probably showed in reality, for no one sup- posed Hood to be a fine-looking man ; on the other hand, the value of the face must have been in its shifting expression — keen, playful, or subtle — and this can be but barely suggested ty the sculptor. The poet's visage was pallid, his figure slight, his voice feeble ; he always dressed in black, and is spoken of as presenting a generally clerical aspect. He was rpmarkably deficient in ear for music — not certainly for the true chime and varied resources of verse. His aptitude for the art of design was probably greater than might be inferred from the many comic woodcut-drawings which he has left. These are irresistibly ludicrous — (who would not laugh over " The Spoiled Child " — "What next? as the Frog said when his tail fell off" — and a host of others ?) — and all the more ludicrous and effective for being drawn more childishly and less artistically than was -«*- jr. €>#-- ^ THOMAS HOOD. 379 within Hood's compass. One may occasionally see some water-colour landscape-bit or the like from his hands pleasantly done j and during his final residence in England he acted upon an idea he had long entertained, and produced some little in the way of oil-painting. He was also ingenious in any sort of light fancy-work — such, for instance, as carving the scenery for a child's theatre which formed the delight of , his little son and daughter. His religious faith was, according to the writers of the Memorials, deep and sincere,' though his opposition to sectarian narrowness and spite of all sorts was vigorous, and caused him sometimes to be regarded as anti- religious. A letter of his to a tract-giving and piously cen- sorious lady who had troubled him (published in the same book) is absolutely fierce, and indeed hardly to be reconciled with the courtesy due to a woman, as a mere question of sex. It would be convenient, I may observe, to know more plainly what the biographers mean by such expressions as " religious faith," " christian gentleman," and the like. They are not ex- plained, for instance, by adding that Hood honoured the Bible too much to make it a task-book for his children. " Religious faith" covers many very serious differences of sentiment and conviction, between natural theology and historical Christi- anity; and, on hearing that a man possessed religious faith, one would like to learn which of the two extremes this faith was more nearly conversant with. In respect of political or social opinion, Hood appears to have been rather humane and philanthropic than democratic, or "liberal" in the distinct tech- nical sense. His favourite theory of government, as he said in a letter to Peel, was " an angel from heaven, and a des- potism." He loved neither whigs nor tories, but was on the side of a national policy : war was his abhorrence, and so were the wicked corn-laws— an oligarchical device which survived him, but not for long. His private generosity, not the less true or hearty for the limits which a precarious and very mode- «**> 380 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. rate income necessarily imposed on it, was in accordance with the general sentiments of kindness which he was wont to ex- press both in public and private : if he preached, he did not forget to practise. ■It has been well said x that " the predominant characteristics of his genius are humorous fancies grafted upon melancholy impressions." Yet the term "grafted" seems hardly strong enough. Hood appears, by natural bent and permanent habit of mind, to have seen and sought for ludicrousness under all conditions — it was the first thing that struck him as a matter of intellectual perception or choice. On the other hand, his nature being poetic, his sympathies acute, and the condition of his life morbid, he very frequently wrote in a tone of deep and indeed melancholy feeling, and was a master both of his own art and of the reader's emotion ; but, even in work of this sort, the intellectual exercitation, when it takes precedence of the general feeling, is continually fantastic, grotesque, or positively mirthful. And so again with those of his works — including rude designs along with finished or off-hand writing — which are professedly comical : the funny twist of thought is the essential thing, and the most gloomy or horrible subject-matter is often selected as the occasion for the horse-laugh. In some of his works indeed (we might cite the poems named The Dead Rob- bery, The Forge, and The Supper Superstition) the horse-laugh almost passes into a nightmare laugh. A ghoul might seem to have set it going, and laughing hyasnas to be chorusing it. A ' man of such a faculty and such a habit of work could scarcely, in all instances, keep himself within the bounds of good taste — a term which people are far too ready to introduce into serious discussions, for the purpose of casting disparagement upon some work which transcends the ordinary standards of appreciation, but a term nevertheless which has its important meaning and its 1 Home's New Spirit of the Age. c. in 1858 ; the Tales of a Wayside Inn (first series) in 1863; the translation of Dante's Commedia in 1867 j the New England Tragedies in 1868; the Divine Tragedy and Three Books of Song in 1872 ; Aftermath in 1873 (the last- named two volumes are mainly continuations of the Wayside Inn) ; The Hanging of the Crane, the Masque of Pandora, and other Poems, in 1875; Keramos in 1878; Ultima Thule in 1880. A sonnet on the death of President Garfield, and Hermes Trismegislus, were among the author's very last poems. The volume named In the Harbour appeared posthumously. The three works, The Divine Tragedy, The Golden Legend, and the New England Tragedies, were in 1873 re-issued under the joint designation of Christus, a Mystery. Longfellow's translation from Dante is in blank verse, and of very uncommon merit in point of faithfulness, admitting few departures from direct word-for-word rendering. The illustra- tive matter appended to it comes from a wide area of selec- tion, and is both valuable and attractive. The New England Tragedies have not been received with such an amount of favour as to suggest that they will eventually rank among the author's most popular works. By his own avowal he wrote these dramas "for the moral that they teach "j a very im- prudent enterprise for a veteran writer, who might have laid to lb HENR Y WAD,S WOR TH L ONGFELL OW. 387 heart the truth that morals do not make tragedies, and that good intentions serve as pavement to some other place than the Palace of Art. The Hanging of the Crane is a poem of very moderate length, in seven parts, relating to the joys and chastenings of a happy married life, from wedlock up to the Golden Wedding ; in general conception it bears a certain resemblance to Schiller's Song of theBell. The Divine Tragedy is a presentation, in dramatic form, of the main incidents of the mission of Jesus, divided into " Three Passovers." It is a daring attempt to combine the phrases of gospel-discourse with connecting or amplifying matter from the author's own repertory : how far successful, our reader may test to some extent by the following short extract. — *' Christus. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and we hear The sound thereof ; but know not whence it cometh Nor whither it goeth. So is every one Born of the spirit. Nicodemus [aside). How can these things be ? He seems to speak of some vague realm of shadows, Some unsubstantial kingdom of the air ! It is noj this the Jews are waiting for, Nor can this be the Christ the Son of David Who shall deliver us. Christus. Art thou a master Of Israel, and knowest not these things? " There are some things that masters in the literary Israel like- wise are asked to know,' or in default to take the consequences. In addition to his own very numerous original or trans- lated works, Longfellow engaged in some undertakings of editorship or compilation. Thus, in company with Mr C. C. Felton, he produced, in 1845, The Poets and Poetry of Europe, with Introductions and Biographical Notices ; in 1846, a collection of poems from various sources, named The Waif; and in 184,7, another, The Estray. Hiawatha, besides any number of translations into modern languages, has been turned into Latin by Professor F. W. Newman (published in H~ 38S Z/FE.? OF FAMOUS POETS. 1862) ; it was also made the subject of musical treatment at Covent Garden in 1861. Could contemporary popularity pledge posterity for fame, Longfellow would be secure. He must have been, among English-speaking people, the most widely read poet, by far, living within the last third of a century. Indeed, save Tenny- son, he can have had no even distant rival ; and no doubt the number of Longfellow's readers, in America, England, and the English colonies, must have greatly exceeded Tennyson's, and his proportional superiority, in point of translations and of the foreign readers thereby accruing, will have been even larger. But all this counts for little in the reckoning with posterity ; for that purpose, what we have to look to is the actual quality of the work, and the grounds upon which this vast immediate popularity has rested. Perhaps the main constituent of Longfellow as a poetical writer is intelligence. I mean "intelligence" in the current semi-technical sense wherein that word is used — as we speak of the "intelligence'' of the age, or of "the intelligent classes," or "intelligent working-man." Intelligence in. this sense is not to be confounded with " intellect " in a more abstract or exalted application of the term : the most " intelligent " man is not necessarily the most "intellectual" — still less, the greatest for the higher purposes of the poetic or other noble art. This intelligence is a certain openness to information of all sorts, and a readiness at turning it to practical account ; a workmanlike knowledge and mastery of all kinds of mental tools ; in especial, a great susceptibility to " the spirit of the age." It presupposes considerable culture co-related to its own direct objects ; in the case of Longfellow, this culture is both solid and spacious. He was in a high sense a literary man ; and next, a literary artist ; and thirdly, a literary artist in the domain of poetry. It would not be true to say that his art is of the intensest kind or most magical potency ; but it is 1 4*- HENR Y WADS WOR TH L OMGFELL W. 389 art, and imbues whatever he performs. In so far as a literary artist in poetry is a poet, Longfellow is a poet, and should (to the silencing of all debates and demurs) be freely confessed and handsomely installed as such. How far he is a poet in a further sense than this remains to be determined. Having thus summarily considered "the actual quality of the work " as derived from the endowments of the worker, I next proceed to " the grounds upon which the vast popularity of the poems has rested" One main and in itself all-sufficient ground has just been stated : that the sort of intelligence of which Longfellowwas sbconspicuous an example includes preeminently "a great susceptibility to the spirit of the age." The man who meets the spirit of the age halfway will be met halfway by that ; will be adopted as a favourite child, and warmly re- posited in the heart. Such has been the case with Longfellow. In sentiment, in perception, in culture, in selection, in utter- ance, he represents, with adequate and even influential but not overwhelming force, the tendencies and adaptabilities of the time ; he is a good type of the " bettermost," not the excep- tionally very best, minds of the central or later-central period of the nineteenth century ; and, having the gift of persuasive speech and accomplished art, he can enlist the sympathies of readers who approach his own level of intelligence, and can dominate a numberless multitude of those who belong to lower . planes,, but who share none the less his own general concep- tions and aspirations. He is like a wide-spreading tree on the top of a gentle acclivity, to which the lines of all trees lower down point and converge, and of which the shadow rests upon them with kindly proximity and protection. This is popularity. The question whether the popularity will be prolonged into enduring fame is much the same as the question in what degree the spirit of our own age will be operative in time to come. As long as it is operative, the same relation between Long- fellow and the public of poetic readers will subsist : when it £»>$- T 4*- 390 LIVES OF FAMOUS POETS. declines, his influence will also wane, unless some other and supereminent qualities are his, appealing to that which is permanent in man, and not transitional as one generation yields its place to another. The poetic performances of Longfellow may perhaps be distinguished into three categories. In the first of these there is a certain pretence — an inflation of mind, and over-strained ad captandum use of temporary catch-words or figure-heads of thought and sentiment, an audible and visible appeal to " the finest feelings of our nature " — an essentially false note, predestined to be found out in the long run. The finest feelings of our nature are indeed the things most des'erving to be appealed to : but there is a way of appealing to them which smacks not less of the assertion, " I am myself the man who knows these feelings and can rouse them in you," than of any more modest frame of mind, or simpler phase of natural emotion ; and this may strike some people as too often the way in which Longfellow apostrophizes them. Excelsior appears to me to be prominently one of these compositions. They will not only not be enduringly admired, but will be rejected with some degree of angry irritation. The second class includes the great bulk of his writing. It is good enough for its time and its public, and is even within limits good intrinsically ; but has not any such powerful vital stamina as to survive chance and change, the perpetual flux of things : it is not of the stuff to remain a fixed quantity when so much else, in mind and matter, shall have altered. The third class includes some small composi- tions here and there, and in especial the two long poems, Evangeline and Hiawatha, published respectively in 1847 and 1855. These, if I am not mistaken, are works made for posterity and for permanence. Evangeline, whatever may be its short- comings and blemishes, takes so powerful a hold of the feelings that the fate which would at last merge it in oblivion could only be a very hard and even a perverse one. Who that has read 4* — ■ ^ -i- HENR Y WADS WOK TH L ONGFELL OW. 391 it has ever forgotten it ? or in whose memory does it rest as other than a long-drawn sweetness and sadness that has become a portion, and a purifying portion, of the experiences of the heart ? Hiawatha has a different claim. It is a work sui generis, and alone; moreover, manly, interesting, and a choice and dif- ficult piece of execution, without strain or parade. The native American legends and aboriginal tone of thought have to be preserved in some form or other, as a matter of natural and national necessity: they are here compactly preserved in a good poem, the work of a skilled artist. Were there a better poem than Hiawatha forthcoming for the particular purpose, the fate of this work would be remitted to casualty. But it is the first, may be the last, of any distinguished value, and is amply fine enough to endure. I can hardly imagine it super- seded, nor, until superseded, overlooked. This leads us to consider for a moment whether Longfellow impressed himself upon the time, or qualified for posterity, as the American poe't par excellence. I do not think he did. Hiawatha will live as the poem of the American native tribes, not as the poem of America; Evangeline will live as an idyll of the heart associated with American scenery in close-linked intercommunion, but also not as an absolutely national and typical work : and the other compositions of Longfellow having claims of the same order appear to be in full measure subject to the chances and mischances of " natural selection in the struggle for life." The real American poet is Walt Whitman — a man enormously greater than Longfellow or any other of his poetic compatriots. •if—— — *r ■M*- -n -^ ¥ *r- -HG- INDEX. . A. A. B. C. (Chaucer's), 12. Absalom (Duke of Mon- mouth), 98. Absalom and Achitophel, 98. Abydos, The Bride of, 296. Academical Exercises, by Milton, 75. Achitophel (Shaftesbury), 98. Adams, Dr. Joseph, 247. Adams, J. Quincy, 383. Addenbrooke, John, 49. Addis, 274. Addison, 108, 117 to 120, 266. Adonais, 322, 358. Adversity, Ode to, by Gray, 149. ^Eschylus, in. Aftermath, by Longfellow, 386. Agamemnon, by Thomson, 138. Age of Bronze, The, 304. Agnes, The Eve of St., 356, 358. Agrippina. Tragedy by Gray, 149. Aids to Reflection, by Cole- ridge, 250. Ailesbury, Lady, 155. Akenside, viii, 160. Alastor, 318, 320, 321. Albinus, 164. Albion and Albanius, 95. Alcander.Prince of Rhodes, "5- Alden, John, 384. Alfonsi, Peter, 16. Alfred, King, 2. Alfred, by Thomson, 138, *39- Ali Pacha, 294. All for Love, 94. All's Well that Ends Well, 43. Allegra (Byron), 300, 304. Allegro, L', 66, 67. Almanzor, 94. Alps, Scenery of the, by Wordsworth, 2t3. Alston, Washington, 245, 252, 383. Amanda, 142. Amboyna, 94. American [North) Review, 384. 385- Amoretti (Spenser's), 29. Amphitryon, byDryden,94. Anacreon, translated by Moore, 274, 278. Ancient Mariner, The, 208, 243, 254. Anelida and Arcite, 12. Annus Mirabilis, 98. Anthologia Hibernica, 274. Anti-Thelyphthora, 184. Antiquary, The, by Scott, 228. Antony and Cleopatra, 43. Antrobus, 147. Aram, The Dream of Eu- gene, 370. Arbuthnot, Dr., 126. ,, Pope's Epistle to, 119. Arden, Sir John, 36. Areopagitica, 70. Ariosto, 16, 358. Aristophanes, Gray's Notes • on, 153. Aristophanes, The Clouds, translated by Campbell, 258. Art of Sinking in Poetry, The, 125. Arthur, King, 32, 75, 105. Arthur, King, byDryden, 95- As you Like it, 43. Assembly of Ladies, The, 13- Assignation, The, 94. Asir INDEX. 395 Campbell's (Thomas) Lec- tures, 263.. Campbell, Vice - Admiral, 142. Canova, 281. Canterbury Tales, 12, 14 to 17, 21. Cap and Bells, The, 358. Captivity, The, Oratorio by Goldsmith, 168. Carbery, Earl of, 84. Carbonari, 302. Carew, Thomas, 64. Carlisle, Earl of, 288, 290, =93- Carlyle, 248, 300. Carmarthen, Lady, 287. Caryll, 124. Castle of Indolence, The, 140, 143. Cato, by Addison, 118. Cecile, Life of St., 12. Cecilia's (St.) Day, Dry- den's Odes on, 101, 102. Cenci, The, 321, 328. Cervantes, 60. Chamier, 172. Chandos, Duke of, 127. Chantrey, Sir Francis, 281. Chapman, George, 34, 369. Characters of Men, by Pope, 128. Characters of Women, by Pope, 122, 128. Charles. I., 71, 287. Charles I, by Shelley, 324. Charles II., 30, 73, 84, 86, 98, 99. Charleton's (Dr.) Treatise on Stonekenge, 93. Charlotte, Princess, 296. Chdlillon, De, 339. Chatterton, no, 188. Chaucer, Agnes, 4. Alice, 18. Chaucer, Geoffrey, viii, 3 to 18, 21, 30, 48, 102, in, 115, 309. Dreamy The) of, or Death of Blanche, 12. Good Counsel of, 12. „ Modernization, by Dryden, 15, 101. Chaucer, John, 4. Chaucer, Philippa, 3, 6, 9. , , Robert le, 4. ,, Thomas, 18. Chaucer s Complaint to his Purse, 13. ,, Chaucer s Dream, or Isle of Ladies, 12. Chaumpaigne, Cecilia, 8. Chaworth, Mary, 290, 304. Mr., 288. Chettle, Henry, 40, 45, 5°- Chetwood, 39. Chillon, The Prisoner of, 300. Chinese Letters, by Gold- smith, 167. Chorley, 340. Charleys Memorials of Mrs. Hemans, 332. Christaiel, 208, 243, 249, 250, 254. Christus, by Longfellow, 386. Churchill, 176, 187. Cibber, Colley, 108, 126, 127, 151. Cibber, Mrs., 139. Cintra, The Convention of, by Wordsworth, 209. Citizen (The) of the World, 167. Clairmont, Miss, 300, 317, 318, 3 2 °. 3 2 3- Clare, J ohn, 330. ,, Lord, 291. ,, (Richard Nugent), 171. Clarinda, 194. Clark, Sir James, 359. Clarke, 350. ,, Charles Cowden, 350, 351. Clement XI., Pope, 102. Cleomenes, 95. Cleveland, 87, 88, 90. Cockney School of Poetry, 211. Cold Beauty, Lines to a, by Hood, 367. Coleman, Junior, 202. Coleridge, Anne, 237. ,, Hartley, 248. Rev. John, 237, Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 206, 207, 210, 211, 215, 216, 237 to 235, 268, 269, 356, 370. Coleridge, Sarah, 240, 246. Coleridge's Biographia Li- teraria, 213, 247, 249. ,, Lectures, 246, 247, 249. ,, Table-talk, 248. Colin Clouts Come Home Again, 28. Collier, 103. Collins, no, 160, Comberback (Coleridge), 239- Comberton (John of North- hampton), 11. Comedy of Errors, The, 43. Comic Annual, The, 373, 375- ; Complaint of the Black Knight (The), or of a Lover's Life, 13- to Pity, The, 6, 12. Complaints (by Spenser), 28. Compton, Sir Spencer, 137. Comus, 66, 67. Condones ad Populum,2dfl, Congreve, 104, 108, 154. Connoisseur, The, 178. Constable, 229, 230. Constance (in King John, 60. Constitution 0/ Church and State, by Coleridge, 250. Contarine, Rev. Thomas, / 163, 164, 166. Cooper, Samuel, 82. Copton, Hamo de, 4. Corbet, Bishop, 64. Corinth, The Siege of, 300 Coriolanus, by Shake ■ speare, 43, [138, 139. Coriolanus, by Thomson, Cork, Richard Boyle, Earl of, 28. Corruption, by Moore, 279. Corsair, The, 269. [7%!;, 193 Cottar's Saturday Hight, Cotton, Dr., 181, 182. Courier,'The, 244. Court of Love, T/ie, 13. Cowley, 90. (*»<=?■- -4 T 396 INDEX. Cowper, Anne, 177. Rev. John, 177. ,, Judith, 121. ,, Lord, 178, 180. ,, Theodora, 178. Cowper, William, iio, 177 to 187. Crabbe, George, 188. Craggs, 129. Crashaw, Richard, 64. Cromwell, Henry, 115, 123. Oliver, 71, 75, 82. „ , , Dryden's Stanzas on the Death of, 93. ,, Richard, 71. Grousaz, 128. Cruikshank, 371. Cuckoo ( The) andtheNight- ingale, 13. Cuddy, Young (Spenser), 28. Cunningham, Allan, 286, 368. Cunningham, Peter, 263. Curll, 123, 124. Currie, Dr., 198. Cymbeline, 43. Cynthia, by Ralph, 383. Cyrus and Cassandra, 220. D. Dallas, 294, 295. Dalziel, Dr., 222. Dana, Richard Henry, 383. Daniel, Samuel, 34, 44. Dante, 48, in, 264. Dante, The Prophecy of, 302. Daphnaida, 28, 29. Dark Ladie, The, 208. Darwin, Erasmus, 176. Davenaat, Sir William, 58, 64. 73. 87, 94. 97. 9 8 - David (Charles II.), 98. Davies, Miss, 69. Davies, Sir John, 64. DeDoctrina Christian.^, by Milton, 75. De Principiis Cogitandi, by Gray, 149. Dead Robbery, The, by Hood, 380. Death of a Fair Infant, Milton's Lines on, 66. Death, Thomson's Poem on, 138. Deathbed, The, by Hood, 365- Decameron, The, 16. Declaration of Rights, by Shelley, 315. Defensio pro PopuloAngli- cano, 71, 73. „ Secunda, 72, 73' Defensio Regia, 71. Deformed Transformed, The, 304. Dekker, Thomas, 64. Demonology and Witch- craft, by Scott, 230. Denham, Sir John, 90. Dennis, John, 117, 118, 131. Deserted Village, The, 169, 174. Despondency and Aspira- tion, 343. Devonshire, Duke of, 151. Dialogue on Dramatic Poe- try, by Dryden, 95, 96. Dibditi, Charles, 188. Dick, Professor, 221. Dickens, 219, 371. Dilke, 351, 375. Disciplina Clericalis, 16. Divina Commedia, 32, 79. „ t Translated by Longfellow, 386. Divine Tragedy, The, by Longfellow, 386, 387. Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, The, 69. Doddington, Bubb, 142. Dodsley, 150. Doeg (Settle), 98. Domestic Affections, The, by Mrs. Hemans, 334. Donegal, Lady, 274. Donne, John, 64. Dorset, Countess of, 30. ,, Earl of, 84, 85, 101, 108. Douglas, Gawin, 20. Dowden, Professor, 54. Doyle, Colonel, 280. Drayton, 34, 57. Droeshout, 58. Drummond,SirWilliam,64. Dryden, Charles, 101, 102, 104, Dryden, Lady Elizabeth, 102, 104. Dryden, Erasmus, 92. ,, Erasmus Henry, 103. DRYDEN, JOHN, viii, iS^S.g 1 ^ 10 ?. 1 ^. J 3 2 - ,, Epilogue quoted, 103. Dryden, John (Junior), ioi, 102. [228. Dryden, Scott's Life of, Duddon, River, Words- worth's Sonnets on, 213. Duff, Mary, 209. Dunbar, William, 20. Dunciad, The, 115, 126, 127, 132, 383. Dundee Advertiser, The, 366. Duval, Ode to, by Butler, 87. Dyer, John, 134. Eastlake, Sir C. L., 281. Ecclesiastical Sonnets, by Wordsworth, 213. Edgeworth, Miss, Pictures of Irish Life, 227. Edinburgh Encyclopedia, The, 263. Edinburgh Monthly Ma- gazine, The, 337. Edinburgh Review, The, 228, 277, 292, 358. Edward III., 5, 7. Edward and Eleonora, 138. Egeria (Mrs. Hemans), 346, 347- Eichhom, 244. Eikonoclastes, 71, 73. Eldon, Lord, 319. Elegy in a Country Church- yard, 147, 149, 150, 156. Elephant in the Moon, ■ The],88. Elizabeth, Princess (Sister of Edward IV.), 18. ,, Queen, 27, 28, „ 2 9. 4S. S3- Elliot, Dr., 375. Elliott, Ebenezer, 286. Elliston, 357. Elmina, 339. Elphin, Bishop of, 164. % &• -$r& INDEX. 397 Elwood, Michael, 74. Emerson, R. W., 384. Emmet, Robert, 274. Encyclopedia Britannica, Scott's articles in, 228. Endymion, by Keats, 323, 35==. 3S3. 356. 357. 358. England, History of, by Goldsmith, 167, 169. England, History of, by Milton, 75. England, The Lakes of, by Wordsworth, 213. England and Spain, by Mrs. Hemans, 333. English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 277, 293, 295. English Poet The, (by Spenser), 30. Enquiry into State of Po- lite Learning, by Gold' smith, 167. Epicurean, The, 281. Epipsychidion, 322. Epithalamium{Spenser's), 28. Epping Hunt, The, 373. Ercildoune, Thomas of, 2. Erin, The Exile of, 261. Espinasse (L'), Madame, 345- Essay on Crttictsm, by Pope, 11S, "7- Essay on Man, 126, 127, 128. ,, Satire, by Duke of Buckingham- shire, 97. „ Truth.by Beattie, 153. !S6. Essex, Earl of, 30. Estray, The, 387. Eton College, Ode on a Distant Prospect of, nj, 149. Eudoxus, 24. Europe, The Poets of, by Longfellow, 387. Evangeline, 385, 386, 390, 39i- , Evans, Mr., 171. „ Sir Hugh, 39. Evans's Collection of Bal- lads, 221. Evening Walk, &c, by Wordsworth, 205. Evening's Love, An, 94. Examiner, The, 303, 351 . Excelsior, 390. Excursion, The,by Words- worth, 209, 210. Expostulation, by Cow- per, 183. F. Falles, by Dryden, 101, 102, 103. Fables for the Holy Alli- ance, 281. [33. Faery Queen, The, 21, 26 to Fairfax, Edward, 34. Falconer, William, 176. FareThee Well, by Byron, 300. Faust (Gothe's), 79. Favourite Cat, Lines on the Death of by Gray, IS7. Felton, C. C, 387. Fenton, Elijah, 120. Ferguson, Professor, 222. Fergusson, Robert, 188, 193- Fermor, Arabella, 118. Filostrato, 16. Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, Moore's Life of, 282. Fitzvictor, John (Shelley), 312. Flecknoe, 101. Flee fro the Press, 12. Fletcher, Angus, 342. ,, Giles, 64. ,, John, 64. „ Mrs., 34s, 346. „ Phineas, 64. Flinn, Mr., 164. Florence, The Garden of, 212, 368. Flower ( The) and tlie Leaf, 13. Ford, John, 64. Forest Sanctuary, The, 339. Forge, The, by Hood, 380. Foscari, The Two, 302. Franck, Philip de, 371, 374. 37S-. Frankenstein, 318. Franklin, Benjamin, 383. Frederick the Great, Life, by Campbell, 265. Freeholder, The, 120. Frere, J. Hookham, 202. Friend, The, by Coleridge, 245, 246. Fudge Family {The) in Paris, 280. Fugitive Pieces, by Byron, 292. Fuller, 50. Fun, 370. Furnivall, F. J., 12. Fytton, Mary, 52. G. Galileo, 67. [303, 323. Gamba, Count, 301, 302, „ ' „ Pietro, 301, 302, 3°3. 3°S- Garfield, President, 386. Garrick, 139, 151,-170, 172. Garth, Dr., 129. Gaubius, 164. Gaunt, John of, 5, 6, 9. Gay, 108, 117, 131. Gem, The, 370. George III., 313. George IV., 229, 250, 274, 278, 282. Gertrude of Wyoming&te. Giaour, The, 296. Gifford, 293, 353, 354. Gil Bias, Drama from, by Hood, 373. Gildon, 119. Gill, Dr., 66. Gillman, 247 to 250. Gilpin, John, 184. Glencoe, The Pilgrim of, 264. Glenfinlas, by Scott, 224. Glennie, Dr., 290. Gloucester, Duke of, 9. Godfrey, Thomas, 383. Godwin, Mrs., 317. „ William, 317, 351. Gothe's Goetz von Berlich- ingen, Scott's Transla- tion, 224. Golden Legend, The, by Longfellow, 386. Goldsmith, Rev. Charles, 162, 163, 164. ,, Dean, 164. ,, Henry, 162, 164, 169, 174. „ John, 163. „ Lieutenant, 162. ■*fr 398 INDEX. Goldsmith, Oliver, viii, no, 161 to 175, 270. ,, £ssaysby,i68. Gonzalez, 338. Good-natured Man, The, by Goldsmith, 170. Goody Two-Shoes, 168. Gower, John, 2, 7. Graham of Fintray, 195. Grahame, James, 259. Granada Conquest of, by Scott, 222. Granson, 13. Gray, John, 138. Mrs.,, 147, 151,154. ,, Philip, 147, 149. Gray, Thomas, viii, no, 141, 147 to 158, 168. „ Letters, 153, 155. 158. . Great Britain, Annals of, by Campbell, 263. Greece, Modern, by Mrs. Hemans, 337. Greene's (Robert), Groats- worth of Wit, 40, 44. Grey of Wilton, Arthur Lord, 24, 26. Griffin, Rev., 163. Griffiths, 166. Grosart, Rev. A. B., 22. Grosvenor, Sir Robert, 4. Grotius, 67. Grove, Miss Harriet, 312. Grub Street Journal, The, 126. Guardian, The, 116, 117. Guiecioli, Count, 301, 302. ,, Countess, 291, 301, 304, 305, 323. Guilleville, Guillaume de, 12. Guise, The Duke of, by Dryden, 95. Guy Mannering, 225, 228. Guyon, Sir, 33. H. Habington, William, 64. Halifax, Lord, 128. Hall, Bishop, 64. „ Dr., 56. ,, Susanna, 37, 56, 57, 58. Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 384. Hallowe'en, by Burns, 193. Hamilton (Author of Cyril Thornton), 341. Hamilton, Dr., 136. ,, Gavin, 193. „ Sir William Ro- wan, 343,. Hamlet, 40, 43. Hampden, John, 36. Hanging (The) of the Crane, 386. Harold, Childe, 227, 294, 295' 3°°. 3°i. 3°4- Harold the Dauntless, 227. Harrington, Sir John, 34. Hart, Joan, 36. ,, Mr., 36. Hartley, 248. Harvey, Gabriel (Hobbi- nol), 23. Hastings, Lord, Dryden's Lines on the Death of, 93- Hathaway, Richard, 37. Haunted House, The, 377. Hawkins, 172. Hawkwood, Sir John, 7. Haydon, B. R., 351, 354. Hazlitt, 263, 351. Heaven and Earth, 302, 3°4- Heber, Bishop, 337. Hebrew Melddies, 300. [323 Hellas, by Shelley, 322, Hemans, Arthur, 334. „ Captain, 334,335. „ Charles, 342, 344, „ Claude, 344. Hemans, Felicia Doro- thea, 331 to 348. Hemans, Henry, 344. „ Willoughby, 344. Henry IV., 9, 10, 11, 13. Henry IV., by Shakespeare. 43, 45. ,. v. » 43. ,. VI. „ 43. Henry VII., 18, 36. Henry VIII., by Shakes- peare, 43. Henry the Minstrel (Blind Harry), 20. Henryson, Robert, 20. Henslowes Diary, Quota- tion from, 27. Herbert, Edward (Rey- nolds), 368. Herbert, George, 64, 178. Herd's Collection of Scot- tish Ballads, 221. Herder's Stimmen der Vblker in Lieder, 339. Hermes Trismegistus, by Longfellow, 386. Hermit, The, by Gold- smith, 168. Hero and Leander, by Hood, 369. Hero and Leander, by Marlow and Chapman, 369- Herrick, .64. Herrman, Zeugheer, 341. Hesiod, 68. Hesketh, Lady, 178, 184, 185. Hessey, 366. Heyne, Professor, 258. Heywood, Thomas, 64. Hiawatha, 384, 386, 387, 39o. 39i- Highland Mary, 192. Hill, Aaron, 137, 139. Hind (The) and the Pan- ther, 100. History of Animated Fea- ture, by Goldsmith, 169. Hobbes, 87. Hogan, Captain, 169. Hogarth, 171. Hogg, James, 236. ,, Thomas Jefferson, 3i"2, 313, 3T5. Hohenlinden, The Battle of, 261. Hood, Anne, 365. Fanny, 365, 373. ,, James, 364. „ Jane, 365, 368, 377, 378- H00D,TH0MAS,363t038i. ,, ,, Memorials of , 366, 379. ,, Thomas, Junior, 365. 37L 373- Hood s Magazine, 377. Hood's Own, 375. Hook, Theodore, 376. Hope, cW.,byCowper,i83. Hope, To, by Hood, 367. Horace, 264. Horace, Hints from, by Byron, 294. t INDEX. 399 Home's New Spirit of the Age, 380. Horneok, Mary, 172. Horton, Sir Wilmot, 280. Houghton (Lord), Z.y£ of Keats, by, 349, 354, 358- Hours of Idleness, by Byron, 292, 293. Hotise of Fame, The, 12, 18. , Howard, Sir Robert, 94, 96, 97- Howitt, Mrs., 345. Hudibras, 81 to 8s, 88, 89. Hughes, Mrs., 335, 343. 346. Hugo, Victor, 35, 96. ,, Essay on Shakespeare, translated quotation, 59 to 63. Hume, David, 156, 167, 169. Humphrey Clinker, 371. , Hunsdon, Elizabeth, Lady, 22. Hunt, Leigh, 109, 211, 286, 303, 304, 320, 323, 324, 325, 351, 352, 354, 356, 358. ,, Thornton, 323. Husband (The) his own Cuckold, 103. Hutchenson, 129. Hymn to Ignorance, by Gray, 150. Hymns for Childhood, by Mrs. Hemans, 343. Hymns of Love, &c, by Spenser, 29. [358. Hyperion, by Keats, 356, „ by Longfellow, 384, 386. Idad, The, 79. ,, Chapman's Trans- lation, 350. ,, Cowper's Transla- tion, 184. ,, Dryden's Transla. tions, 101. „ Pope's Translation, 118, 119, 120, 132. Tickell's Transla- tion, 119. In the Harbour, by Long- fellow, 386. Indian Emperor, The, 94, 95- Indian Queen, The, 94. Infant, Lines on an, by Lamb, 373. Intolerance, by Moore, 279. Ireland, Moore s History of, 282. Ireland, View of the State of, 24, 29. Irenaeus, 24. Irish Melodies, 278, 283. Irishman in search of a Religion, 282. [358. Isabella, by Keats, 356, Islam, The Revolt of 310, 320, 352. Island, The, by Byron, 304. Isle of Ladies, The, 12. Italy, The Restoration of the Works of Art to, 337 ■. Ivanhoe, 228. J- Jackson, 281. James I. (of England), 41, 45, 53. James I. (of Scotland), 20. James II., 95, 98, 99, 100. Jansen, 58. Jefferies, Lord, 102. ,, Thomas, 81. Jefferson, 276. Jeffrey, Lord, 259, 277. Jeffrey, Signor, 25. Jennings, 349. Jervas, 118. John, King, 43. John, The Eve of St., by Scott, 224. Johnson, Dr., 106, 132, 143, 146, 154, 157, 168, 170, 172, 173, 174. , , Lives of the Poets, viii. „ Gerard, 58. ,, Rev. John, 185. Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, 196. Jones, Rev. R., 204. Jonson, Ben, 29, 50, 55, 57, 59, 64. Juan, Don, by Byron, 16, 301, 302, 307. J „ (Shelley's boat), 324, 325, 326. Julian and Maddalo, 321, 328. Julius Ccesar, 43. Juvenal, 186. ,, Translation by Dryden, 101, 105. K. Kant, 133. Kavanagh, 386. Keate, Dr., 310. Keats, George, 356. Keats, John, 109, 211, 268, 320, 322, 324, 349 to 361, 367; 368, 370, Keats, Mrs., 356. ,, Thomas, 356. Kelly, Miss, 337, 338. Kemble, Charles, 337. Kent, Countess of, 82. Keramos, 38b. Keux, Le, 366. Kilmansegg, Miss, 376. King, Dr., 130. Kinnedder, Lord, 227. Kirkby, 311. Kitchener, Ode to Dr. , 367. Knowles, J. Sheridan, 286. Kubla Khan, 254. L. Lady (The) of the Lake, . 226. Laidlaw, 231. Lake Poets, 2ro, 211. Lalla Rookh, 279, 283. Lamartine, 348. Lamb, Charles, ' ro9, 237, 243. 2 S 6 . 3°8. 37°. 37L 373. Lamia, by Hood, 367. „ by Keats, 356 ,358. Lancaster, Catharine, Duchess of, 6. Lancaster, Constance, Duchess of, 6. Landon, Letitia E, 382. Landor, 256, 370. Langland, William or Robert, 2, 3. Langton, Bennet, 172. Lansdowne, Marquis ' of, 281, 282. Loon and Cythna, 320. Lara, 296. Lardner's Cyclopaedia, 230, 282. ■«p 400 INDEX. Latin Epistles, by Milton, 7S- ,, Grammar ,, ,, 75. Lavender, 290. Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 281. ,, Life, by Camp- bell, 265. Lay {The) of the Last Minstrel, 224, 225, 232. Lay Sermons by Coleridge, 250. Layamon, 2. Lays of Many Lands, by Mrs. Hemans, 335, 339. Lear, King, 43, 372. Lee, Nathaniel, 95, 108. Legend of Good Women, The, 12. Leicester, Earl of, 26. Leigh, Colonel, 297. „ Elizabeth Medora, 297. ,, Hon. Mrs., 280, 287, 297, 298, 306. Letters from the South, by Campbell, 265. Lewis, Matthew G., 222, 256, 311. Liberal, The, 303, 304. Liberty, by Thomson, 139, 140. Limberham, 94. Lincoln, Earl of, 18. Lind, Dr. James, 31D, 313. ^„,tot, 123. L'Isle (De) and Dudley Lord, 309. Literary Society, The, 250, 377- Little, Thomas (Moore), Poems by, 276. Llanos, Mrs., 356. Lloyd, Charles, 243. LochieVs Warning, 261. Locke, 248. Lockhart, Mrs., 231. Lodge, Mr., 341. , , Thomas, 40. Logan, John, 188. London Magazine, The, 367, 368. London Packet, The, 171. Long Story, A , by Grey, 157 Longfellow,Francis £.,385. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 383 to 391- Longfellow, Mrs., 385. ,, Stephen, 384. Longman, 279, 280. Longueville, William, 86. ,, Junior, 87. Lonsdale, Lord, 203, 210. Lord of the Isles, The, 227, 232. Loris, Guillaume de, 13. Love, by Coleridge, 254. Love and Madness, 258. Love Triumphant, 94. Lovel, 240. Lovelace, Countess of, 298. ,, Richard, 90. Love's Labour's Lost, 43. ,, ,, Won, 43. Loves ( The) of the Angels, 281, 283. Lucian, Dryden's Life of, 100. Lucrece, The Rape of, 42. Lucretius, 68. Lucy, Sir Thomas, 38, 39, 212. Ludlow, Earl of, 67. Luke, Sir Samuel, 82, 83. Lushington, 299. Luttrell, 280. Lycidas, 66, 6y. Lycus the Centaur, 367. Lydgate, John, 20. Lyly, John, 34. Lyndsay, Sir David, 20. Lyrical Ballads, by Wordsworth and Cole- ridge, 206, 207, 208, 215, 243, 244. Lytlelton, Lord, 140, 142. Lytton, Lord (E. B.), 382. M. M. P., or the Blue-Stock- ing, 279. Mab, Queen, 316. Macaulay, Lord, 382. Macbeth, 43. Mac Flecknoe, ior, 132. Mackay, Charles, Medora Leigh, by, 297. Mackenzie, Henry, 223. McLehose, Mrs.,' 194. Maclise, 252. Macpherson, James, 188. Magazine ( The) of Maga- zines, 150. Maimbourg's History of the League, 100. Malagrowther, Malachi (Scott), 228. Mallet (or Malloch), David, 134, 137, 139. Manfred, 295, 300. Mann, Sir Horace, 148. Manriques Coplas, trans- lated by Longfellow, 385. Mar-all, Sir Martin^ 94. Marchmont, Earl of, 131. Mardyn, Mrs., 299. Marino Faliero, 302. Marlborough, Duchess of, 122. Marlow, Christopher, 34, 3°9- Marlow, The Hermit of (Shelley), Pamphlet by, 320. Marmion, 226. Marriage a la Mode, by Dryden, 94. Marriage of Miles Stan- dish, The, Sfc, 386. Mars, Complaint of , 12. Marvell, Andrew, 71, 90. Mary Magdalene, The Lamentation of, 13. Mary, Queen of Richard II., 7- Mason, Rev. William, 150, r6o. Massinger, 64. Mathews, 373. Mathias, 153. Matthews, Charles Skin- ner, 291. Maturin, Rev. C. R., 286. Mavrocordato, Prince Alexander,. 323. May, Ode to, by West, 149. Mazeppa, 301. Meadows, Philip, 7T. Measure for Measure, 43. Medal, The, 99. Medwin, 323. Melbourne, Lord, 277. Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, by Words- worth, 213. 4*- -* INDEX. 401 Mennis, Sir John, 88. Metropolitan Magazine, The, 264, 265. Meun, Jean de, 13. Midlothian, The Heart of, 228. Midsummer Night's Dream, The, 43. Milbanke, Sir Ralph, 296. Millar, 137. Milner, Dr., 166. Milton, Anne, 70, 72, 73,74. „ Deborah, 72. ,, Elizabeth, 72, 73. Milton, John, viii, 45, 65 to 79, 105, in, 185, 3°9- Milton, John (Father and Grandfather of the Poet), 65, 66, 70. Milton, Katharine, 72. ,, Mary (Mother), 69, 72. „ Mary (Daughter), 7°. 7 2 . 73. 74- ,, Sarah, 65, 67. Minerva, The Curse of, 294. Mitford, Miss, 345, 355. Moira, Lord, 274, 276, 277. Monmouth, Duke of, 98. Montagu, Basil, 246, 351. Montague, ' Lady Mary Wortley, 125. ■ Montgomery, James, 236. Monthly Review, The, 166. Moon, To the, by Hood, Moore, Bessy, 278. Moore, Thomas, 273 to 284, 291, 29S, 299. 3° 6 - Moral Essays, by Pope, 125. Moreau, 261. Morgan, 246. Morning Post, The, 244, 245- Morocco, The Empress of, 96. Motherwell, William, 362. Moulin, Pierre du, 72. Mounteagle, Anne Lady, 22. Moxon's Popular Pofts.yn. Much Ado atout Nothing, 43- Muiopotmos, 28. Mulgrave, Lord, 97. Murray, John, 280, 295, 306. Musters, 290. Mytens, D., 56. N. 281, to by Nairne, Lady, 202. Napier, General, 169. Napoleon I. , 219, 245. ,, Ode, by Byron, 296. , , Scott's History of, 230, 231. Nash, Thomas, 58. National Airs, by Moore, 279. National Lyrics, by Mrs. Hemans, 343. National Tales, by Hood, 3 6 9- Necessity of Atheism, The, 3!3- New England Tragedies, 386. New England's Crisis, 383. New Monthly Magazine, The, 263, 264, 376, 377. Newbery, Francis, 168. Newman, Professor, 387. Newton, Rev. John, 160, 182, 183. Newton, To the Memory of, by Thomson, 137,138. Nicholls, Rev., 151. Nicholson, Margaret (Shel- ley), Posthumous Frag- ments of, 312. Night, by Ralph, 383. Noel, Lady, 298. Nollekens, 174. Norfolk, Duke of, 310. Norris, John, 108. Norris on Frenzy of Den- nis, by Pope, 118. Nugent, Dr., 172. O'Connor, 274. O'Connor's Child, 262. O'Neill, Miss, 322. Occleve (or Hoccleve), 17, 20. Ode on Nothing, 274. 27 Odes and Addresses Great People, 369. Odes and Epistles, Moore, 276. Odyssey, Cowper's Trans- lation of the, 184. Odyssey, Pope's Transla- tion of the, 120. CEdipus, by Dryden, 95. Og (Shadwell), 98. Ogilby's Homer, 114. Old Mortality, 228. Oldfield, Mrs., 138. Oilier, 320. Olney Hymns, The, 183. Orm (or Ormin), 2. Orrery, Lord, 95, 130. Ossian, 222. 1 Othello, 43. Otho the Great, 357. I Otway, Thomas, 108. Outremer, 384, 386. Ovid, 60. Owen, Professor, 58. Packe, 86, 87. Paget, Dr., 72. Palermo, The Vespers of, 337. 33 8 . 339- Paley, 248. Palladis Tamia, by Meres, 44. Pandarus, 16. Paradise Lost, 74, 78, 79- 74- Parisina, 300. Parker, Margaret, 290, 292. Parliament of Fowls, The, 12. Parnell, Thomas,. 108. ,, Life of, by Gold- smith, 169. Passionate Pilgrim, The, 43- Pastorals, by A. Philips, 116, 117. „ by Pope, 115, 136, 117. Patriot King, The, 131. Paul, St., Epistle to the Romans, 181. Paul, St., Lyttelton on Conversion of, 143. * -s>$ 402 Paul's Letters to his Kins- folk, 228. Peacock, Thomas Love, 286, 321. Peel, Sir Robert, 344, 377, Peele, George, 20. [379. Peele, Nicholas, 22. Pembroke, Countess > of, 55, 56. Earl of, S3 to 56- Pendle, 88. Penseroso, II. , 66, 6j. Pepys, Samuel, 85. [222. Percy Ballads, The, 221, Percy, Bishop, 171, 176. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 43- Persius, Translation by Dryden, 101. Peter Bell, 212. „ the Third, 212, 213, 321, 322, 328. Petrarch, 7. [265. ,, Life, by Campbell, Petre, Lord, 118. Philhellenes, Committee of, 304. Philips, Ambrose, 108, 116, 117. ,, John, 108. ,, Katharine, 108. „ Mrs., 68. Pickering, Sir Gilbert, 93. Pickwick Papers, The, 37*- Pierpont, John, 383. Piers Ploughman, The Vision of, 3, 13. Pilfold, Charles, 309. Piozzi, Mrs., 112. Plato, Gray's Notes on, 153. Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, The, 369. Pleasures of Hope, The, 220, 259 to 262, 264, 268. Pleasures of Memory, 239. Pliny's Natural History, 310. Plutarch, Dryden's Life of, 100. Poetical Register, The, 3". , Polidori, Dr., 300. INDEX. Political Essay (A) on the Existing State of Things, 313. Political Justice, 317. Polybius, Dryden's Life of, 100. Poole, 241. Pope, Alexander, viii, 101, 109 to 133, 137, 184, 186, 190. Pope, Alexander, Senior, 112, 113, 114, 121. Pope, Byron's Letters on, 109, 302. ,, Edith, 112, 121. Pope's Letters, 122, 123, 124. Portsmouth, Duchess of, 97- Powell, Richard, 69, 70. Power, 278. Prelude, The, by Words- worth, 206, 209. Press, The (Irish News- paper), 274. Prince of Parthia, The, 3 8 3- Prince of Wales, Gray's Lines on the Marriage of, 148. Prior, Matthew, 108. Procter, B. W., 308. [183. Progress of Error, The, Progress of Poetry, Ode on, by Gray, 151, 157. L3 2 *- Prometheus Unbound, 79, Prosopopceia, or Mother Hubbard's Tale, 27. Prothalamion, 29. Prynne, 87. Psalms Translated by Mil- ton, 66. Public Ledger, The, 167. Punch, 377. Purcell, 95. Quarles, 64. Quarterly Review, The, 228, 323, 353, 358. Quin, 138. Quincey, De, 214, 368. Quiney, Judith, 39, 56, 57, 58. ,, Thomas, 57. Quixote, Don, 88. Quotations : From Sir Jonah Bar- rington's Memoirs, 37*- From Blake on Chaucer, 14, 15. [83. FromButler'sHudibras, From Chaucer's Canter- bury, Tales, 18. From Coleridge's Bio- graphia Literaria, 207. From Congreve on Dry- den, 104. From Dryden's Epilogue on Play by his Son, 103. From Mrs. Fletcher's Three Histories, 346. Gray on Himself 154. From Gray's Letters, 153- *55- From Henslowe s Diary, 27. From Victor Hugo's William Shakespeare, 59 to 63. From Longfellow's Di- vine Tragedy, 387. From Shakespeare's Son- nets, 41, 42, 46, 54, 55. From Spenser's Preface to Faery Queen, 32, 33 From Spenser's View of the State of Ireland, 24, 25, 26. From Swinburne on Coleridge, 252. Rabelais, 60. Racine, 96. Rackett, Mrs., 131. Raleigh, Sir Walter, 20, z8 , 32. S°- Ralph, James, 383. Ramsay, Allan, 108, no, 190, 193, 199. Ramus, Logic after Me- thod of, by Milton, 75. Rape of the Lock, The, 117, 118. Ready(A) Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, by Milton, 73. Real and Imaginary Time, by Coleridge, 238. 4r ■4* INDEX. 4°3 Reason of Church Govern- ment, by Milton, 68. Records of Woman, 339. Red Cross Knight, The, 33. Redding, Cyrus, 263. Reformation in England, Milton's Treatise on, 68. Rehearsal, The, 97, 126. Religio Laid, 99. Remorse, by Coleridge, 243, 247. Repository, The, 184. Republic of Letters, The, 128. Retaliation, by Goldsmith, 170. Reynolds, J . Hamilton, 212, 351, 368, 369, 373. Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 171, 172. Reynolds, Miss, 172. Rhine, Up the, by Hood, 375. 376. Rhymes for theTtmes, 376. Rhymes on the Road, 281. Riccaltoun, Rev., 135. Richard II., 7, 10. Richard II., by Shake- speare, 42. Richard III., 18. Richard III., by Shake- speare, 36, 42. Richardson, John, 37. „ Samuel, 166. Rob Roy, by Scott, 228. Robert of Gloucester, 2. Roberts, Captain, 325. Robespierre, 205. The Fall of, by Coleridge, 240. Robinson (Squire Ralpho), 88. Robinson, Edward, 332. Rochester, Earl of (Hyde), 07. Rochester, „ (Wilmot), 97, 108. Rock, Captain of, 282. Roderick, The Vision of Don, 226. Roet, Sir Payne, 6. Rorers (of Stratford), 49. Samuel, 202, 259, 280. Rolls, Colonel, 83. Romance of the Seven Sages, The, 16. Romaunt of the Rose, The, *3- Rome, History of, by Gold- smith, 169. Romeo and Juliet, 42. Rosalind (Spenser's), 23. Rosalind and Helen, 321. Rosewell, Sir Henry,. 83. Rowe, Nicholas, 108. Royal Ladies, The, 94. Ruins of Time, The, 28. Rule Britannia, 139. Ruskin, 213. Russel, Sir William, 81. Russell, Earl, 280, 281. Rustifucius (Moore), Ode t on Nothing, by, 274. KLutherford, Dr., 221. Rylstone, The White Doe of, 212. Memoirs Rokeby, 226. S. Sabbath Sonnet, by Mrs. Hemans, 343. Sacred Songs, &c, by Moore, 279. Sadleir's Correspondence, 228. St. Irvyne, 3TI. Samson Agonistes, 74. Sandells, Fulk, 37. Sands, 364, 366. Sardanapalus, 302. Satanic School, 211. Satire, Discourse on, by Dryden, 101. Satire Minippie, Le, 88. Saumaise, De, 71. Savage, Richard, 134, 141. Scalby, John, 9. Scenes and Hymns of Life, 343' Sceptic, The, by Mrs. Hemans, 337. Sceptic, The, by Moore, 279. Scharf, George, 55. Schelling, 249. Schiller's Song of the Bell, 387- , Schlegel, 249. 1 Scotland, The Regalia of, \ by Scott, 228. Scott, Miss Anne, 231. ,, Mrs. Anne, 221. ,, Charles, 231. ,, John, 367. ,, Lady, 224, 231. ,, Thomas, 231. Scott, Sir Walter, 219 to 234, 265, 268, 341, 37°- Scott, Sir Walter, Dramas by, 227. ,, Early Es- says by, 222. Scott, Sir Walter, Junior, 231. Scottish Ballads, 199, 221. Border, The Mins- trelsy of the, 224, 225. Scottish History, by Scott, 230. Scrope, Lord, 4. Seaside and Fireside, 386. Seasons, The, by Thom- son, 137, 138, 143, 144. Sebastian, Don, 25. Sebastian, Don, by Dry- den, 95. Sebastian of Portugal, by Mrs. Hemans, 339. Second Nun's Tale, 12. Secret Love, 94. Sedley, Sir Charles, 108. Sejanus, 40. Selden, John, 82. Sensitive Plant, The, 323. Settle, Elkanah, 96, 98. Severn, Joseph, 35T, 358. Seward, Anna, 188. Shadwell, 98, 101. Shaftesbury, Lord, 98, 99. Shakespeare, Anne, 37, 38, 49. 56, 57- J c ,, Edmund, 36. Gilbert, 36. ,, Hamnet, 39, 5<5- John, 35, 36, 37, $6. Mary, 35, 36, 56- ,, Richard, 36. Shakespeare.William, viii, 17, 35 to 63, 96, 212. Pope's Edi- tion of, 120. A, ^ ■&&, 404 INDEX. Shakespeare's Sonnets, 44, Solitude, Ode to, by Pope, Superstition and Revela~ 50 to 54, 360. "S- Hon, by Mrs. Hemans, Shallow, Justice, 39, 212. Somers, Lord, 102. 337- She Stoops to Conquer, 170. Somervile, William, 134. Supper Superstition, The, Shelley, Sir Bysshe, 309, Song of the Spirit, The, by Hood, 380. 314, 318. 377- Surrey, Lord, 20, 44. ,, Charles Bysshe, Songs of the Affections, 339. Swellfoot the Tyrant, 322. 3 J 7. 3 IQ - Sophocles, 258. Swift, 108, 118, 125, 129, ,, Clara, 318. Sophonista, by Thomson, I S t - ,, Elizabeth, 311. 138. ,, Scott's Life of, 228. ,, Harriet, 313 to Southampton, Earl of, 42, Swinburne on Coleridge, 3*9- „ S3. 55- quotation, 252. ,, Ianthe Eliza, 316, Southey, 210,211, 213, 239, Swynford, Lady, 6. T 3i9- 240, 241, 244, 256, 315. Sylvester, Joshua, 34. ,, Lady, 309, 310. Spanish Friar, The, 94. Synesius, 238. ,, Mary W., 300, Spanish Poetry, Longfel- T. 317 to 323. low's Essay on, 385. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, Spanish Student (The) Table-talk,by Cowper, 183. 16, an, 212, 268, 284, and Poems on Slavery, Tacitus, Dryden's transla- 289, 291, 292, 300, 302, 386. tion from, 100. 303. 3°S. 3°9 to 328, 345, Spectator, The, 190. Talbot, Charles, 139. 352. 3S4. 3S8, 359, 360, Spence, 130, 136. , , Lord Chancellor, 370- Spenser, Edmund, viii., 140. Shelley, Sir Percy Florence, 21 to 33, 75, 105, 350. Tales and Historic Scenes, 318. Spenser, Elizabeth, 28. by Mrs. Hemans, 337. „ Sir Timothy, 309, „ . Hugolin, 30. Tales of a Grandfather, 3!0, 318. ,, Imitations of, by 230. ,, William, 318. Keats, 350. Tales of a Wayside Inn, Shelley-Sidney, Sir John, ,, John, 22. 386. 309- ,, Sir John, 22. Tales of Wonder, 222. Shelvocke, 254. ,, Lawrence, 30. Tarn O'Shanter, 200. Shenstone, 146. ,, Peregrine, 30. Taming (The) of the Shepherd, Fleetwood, 85. „ Sylvanus, 30. Shrew, 43. Shepherd's Calendar, The, ,, -William, 36. Tancred and Sigismunda, 23, 26, 28. Spring, Ode to, by Gray, 138. 139- Week, The, 149. Task, The, by Cowper, 183. 117. Stael, Madame de, 345. Tasso, 16. Sheridan, Richard B., 188, State (The) of Innocence Tasso, The Lament of, 295, 273. 2 93- and Fall of Man, 95. 301. ,, Moore's Life of. Statius, Gray's transla- Tate, 98. 282. tion from, 148. Tears of the Muses, The, 28. Shirley, James, 64. Steele, 117, 120. Teedon, 183. Sibylline Leaves, by Cole- Sterling, Carlyle's Life of, Tempest, The, by Shake- ridge, 247. 248. speare, 43. Siddons, Mrs., Life, by Stevenson, Sir J., 278, 280. Tempest, The, recast by Campbell, 265. [34. Stewart, Dugald 194, 222, Dryden, 94. Sidney, Sir Philip, 26, 27, 259- Ten Brink, Professor B., Simmons, 74. Stoddart, Dr., 245. 12. Skelton, John, 20. Stothard, 371. Tennyson, 213, 266, 381, Slender, 39. Stowe, Mrs. Beecher, 297, 388. Smart, Christopher, 160. 298. Tenure of Kings and Ma- Smectymnuus, Apology for, Strabo, 153. gistrates, by Milton, 71. 68. Strange, Lord, 39. Testament of Love, The,!^. Smith, Horace, 272, 320. Suckling, Sir John, 90. Tetrachordon, 69. ,, James, 256. Suffolk, Alice Duchess of,i8. Thackeray, 124, 126, 129, Soldier s\Dreapt, The, 267, „ Duke of, 18. 161. J h ^ V INDEX. 4°5 Tkcbais, 115, Theobald, 120, 126, 127. Theocritus, in. Theodore M. (Hood), 370. Theodric, 264. Theory, of Life, by Cole- ridge, 250. Thestylis, The Mourning Muse of, 28. Thirza, 290, 291. Thomas the Rhymer, 2. Thomson, Beatrix, 136. ,, Benjamin, 383. ,, George, 197. Thomson, James, viii,i 10, 135 to 144. Thomson's (George) Col- lection of Scottish Airs, 197- Thorpe, Thomas, 52. Thoughts during Sickness, by Mrs. Hemans, 343. Three Books of Song, by Longfellow, 386. Three Graves, The, by Coleridge, 255. Three Histories, The, by Mrs. Fletcher, quotation from, 346. Three Hours after Mar- riage, 126. Throgmortons, 184. Thurlow, Lord, 177. Thyer, Robert, 88. Tibullus, 60. Tickell, 108, 119. Ticknor, Professor, 385. Timon of Athens, 43. Tirocinium, 183. Titus Andronicus, 43. Tom Jones, 371. Tonson's Poetical Miscel- lany, 116. Tourneur, Cyril, 64. Townshend, Charles, 154. Traveller, The, by Gold- smith, 163, 168, 174. Treatise of True Religion, A, by Milton, 75. Trelawny, Edward John, 212, 35>S> 3 2 3. 3 2 4- „ Miss, 325, 326: Trelawny' s Recollections of Shelley and Byron, 212. Trevanion, Mr. and Mrs., =97- Tricrmain, The Bridal of, 227. Tristram Shandy, 371. Tristrem, Sir, Scott's Edi- tion of, 225. Triumph of Life, The, 324. Troilus and Cressida, by Shakespeare, 43. ,, recast by Dryden, 94. Troilus and Cryseide, 7, 12, 16, 17. Trumball, Sir William, 115. Truth, Cowper's Poem on, 183. Turner, J. M. W., 281. Turner (of Towthorpe), 112. Twelfth Night, 43. Tychsen, Professor, 244. Tylney Hall, 373. \ Tyrannic Love, 94. Tyrtaeus, 258. U. Udall, Nicholas, 20. Ullin's (Lord) Daughter, Ulphilas, 244. [262. Ulster, Countess of, 5. „ Lionel, Earl, of, 5 Ultima Thule, 386. United States Literary Gazette, The, 384. Unwin, Mrs. , 182 to 185. Rev., 182. Use of Riches, Epistle by Pope, 127, 128. Valencia, The Siege of, 338, 339. Van der Noodt's Theatre of Worldlings, 23. Vanbrugh, Sir John, 108. Vaudracour and Julia, 213. Vaughan, Henry, 90. Venice, The Merchant of, 43- Venier, 332. Venus and Adonis, 42. Venus, The Complaint of, 13. Vergil, translated by Dry- den, 101. 28 Vernor, Hood, andSharpe, 363. Verona, The Two Gentle- ■ men of, 43. Victor and Cazire (Shel- ley), Original Poetry \>y , Villa, Manso, Marquis of, 67. Villamil, 281. Visconti, Bernab6, 7. Vision of Judgment, The, 302, 304, 307. Vivian, Charles, 324. Viviani.Contessina Emilia, 322. Voices of the Night, 384. Voltaire, 164. ,, Life of, by Gold- smith, 167. W. W. H., 52, 53. Waggoner, The, by Words- worth, 212. Wagner, 331. Waif, Tlie, 387. Wakefield, The Vicar of, 162, r67, 168. Wales, Frederick Prince of, 128, 138, 140, 148. Wallenstein, Coleridge's Translation from Schil- ler, 244. Waller, Edmund, viii, 64. ,, Sir William, 70. Walpole, Horace, 148,150, iSS. IS7- Walsh, 115. Waltz, The, by Byron, 295. Wanostrocht, Dr., 364. Warburton, Bishop, 128, 151. Ward s Diary, 45, 57. Watchman, The, 241. Waterloo, The Field of, by Scott, 227. Watts, Isaac, 108. Waverley, 227, 232. „ Novels, The, 228. Webster, John, 64. Wedgewood, J. and T., 244. Wentworth, Lord, 296,298. Werner, 304. 4*- -NN> 406 Wesley, Charles, 146. West, Richard, 149, 150, 153- ,, Gray's Sonnet on, 149. ,, William E., 332, 333. Westbrook, Eliza, 314 to 3i7- John, 319. Wharton, 156. Whateley, 137. Whately, Archbishop, 343, 344- Whims and Oddities, 369. White, Rev. Blanco, 343. Whitehead, 152. Whitman, Walt, 391. Whyte, Samuel, 273. Wiclif, 9. Wild Gallant, The, 94. Wilder, Rev.Theaker,i63. Will's Coffee-house, 105, 116. William III., 100. „ IV., 251. INDEX. Williams, Lieutenant, 323, 324, 325. Mrs., 323, 324. Windsor Forest, by Pope, 118. „ TheMerry Wives , »/. 39. 43. 45- Winters Tale, A., 43. Wither, George, 64. Wit's Misery, quotation from, 40. Wolcot, John, 188. Wordsworth, Anne, 203. , , Christopher, 203. ,, Mary, 208. ,, Miss, 206, 244. Wordsworth, William, 109, 203 to 218, 241, 243 to 246, 252, 254, 268,269, 342, 345, 370. Worsdale, 123. Wotton, Sir Henry, 34. Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 20. - Wycherley, 115. X. Xavier, St. Francis, Life of, translated by Dry- den, 100. Y. Ye Gentlemen of England, 267, 268. Ye Mariners of England, by Campbell, 261, 267, 268. Young (the Actor), 337. Young, Edward, 108, no. ,, Miss, 14. ,, Professor, 258. ,, Thomas, 66. Youth and Age, by Cole- ridge, 253. Zafolya, 243, 247. Zastrozzi, 311. Zimri (Duke of Bucking- ham), 98. Cornell University Library PR 502.R82 Lives of famous poets.A companion volume 3 1924 013 263 938