LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 Shelf ...S.T.. 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
UNDER THE EVENING LAMP 
 
MR. STODDARD'S POEMS 
 
 POETICAL WRITINGS. With Portrait. 
 8vo, extra gilt, .... $4.00 
 
 THE LION'S CUB, and Other Verse. 
 l6mo, 1 - 2 S 
 
UNDER THE EVENING LAMP 
 
 BY 
 
 V 
 RICHARD HENRY STODDARD 
 
 i 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1892 
 

 Copyright, 1892, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 TROW OIRECTORY 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The papers in this volume were written in 
 pursuance of an idea which was suggested to 
 me some years since as a variation of a kind of 
 writing I was then engaged upon, and which, 
 when they were once begun, gradually shaped 
 itself into a plan, what at first was inclination 
 becoming at last determination. For reasons 
 which do not concern the reader of this page 
 my sympathies were more strongly drawn tow- 
 ard those who had been worsted by misfortune 
 than toward those who, favored by fortune, had 
 marched on gayly and triumphantly. The story 
 of happy lives is soon read. There have been 
 happy lives, even among poets, but they are not 
 many; for it is true of poets above all other 
 men, that many are called, but few are chosen. 
 Why so few are chosen would be worth serious 
 consideration, if the question was not constant- 
 ly answered in the history of the tuneful tribe, 
 
VI PKEFACE 
 
 which teaches us, if it teaches anything, that 
 the majority were not called, or only called by 
 their ambition and their vanity — ambition for 
 which there was no justification, and vanity for 
 which there was no excuse. They deluded them- 
 selves, and paid the penalty of their delusions. 
 There are among these papers studies of some 
 of these unfortunates, and, I dare say, there is a 
 lesson in these studies, though I have not sought 
 to find it. It is enough for me to tell the tale ; 
 others may point the moral. I have been more 
 interested in their lives than in their writings, 
 my object being biographical rather than criti- 
 cal, and if I have succeeded in interesting the 
 reader in these outlines of biography, I have 
 done what I tried to do. He will find some 
 things here, I think, which he will not readily 
 find elsewhere, and others, I hope, which, new or 
 old, will help him to pass a quiet hour under 
 the evening lamp. 
 
 E. H. S. 
 
 The Century, 
 October 29, 1892. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Scotch Contempobabies of Burns, ... 1 
 
 James Hogg (the Ettrick Shepherd), . . 46 
 
 William Motherwell, 77 
 
 The Early Years of Gtffobd, .... 91 
 
 Kobert Bloomfield, 105 
 
 John Clare, . 120 
 
 Ebenezeb Elliott, 135 
 
 David Gbay, . 150 
 
 William Blake, 164 
 
 Habtley Colebidge, ...... 182 
 
 Thomas Loyell Beddoes, 200 
 
 Geobge Dabley, 213 
 
 Thomas Loye Peacock, 225 
 
 Edwabd Fitzgebald, 245 
 
 KlCHABD MONCKTON MlLNES (LOBD HOUGHTON), . 263 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPOEAKIES OP 
 BUKNS 
 
 One hundred and thirty-three years have passed 
 since the birth of Robert Burns, and ninety-six years 
 since his death, and, during all that time, no such 
 poet as he has illuminated the literature of Great 
 Britain. Greater poets have come and gone in By- 
 ron and Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats ; but, with 
 the exception of Byron, no poet who was so surely 
 born and not made, who owed so little to books and 
 so much to himself, and who so absolutely followed 
 the bent of his own genius. There was much in 
 common between Burns and Byron, in spite of the 
 different ranks in which they were born, and the 
 different worlds in which they moved : for each was 
 a man of strong understanding, with strong passions, 
 gifted with humor> wit, sarcasm, which he used and 
 abused ; self-willed and impulsive, wild and way- 
 ward, a fiery spirit, an elemental force, whose com- 
 etary course was splendid but destructive. Both lived 
 
a SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 intensely ; both loved, suffered, and were unhappy, 
 and both died nearly at the same age, Byron at 
 thirty-seven, and Burns at thirty- eight. The fame 
 of both was sudden and has been permanent, and 
 the poetic life of both was confined within twelve 
 years. Other parallels between them might be 
 made ; but as it is not my intention to compare 
 them I shall not make these parallels, my present 
 business lying with Burns and his contemporaries. 
 The early years of Burns are better known to us 
 than those of any other modern poet, and they are 
 worthy of being better known, since they show us 
 as nothing else could the force of the genius w 7 hich 
 could endure their hardships, and free itself from 
 their limitations. Sent to school when a boy, he 
 learned all that his master, Murdoch, could teach 
 him, which at first was to read English tolerably, to 
 write a little, to understand more or less the princi- 
 ples of grammar, and, later, to begin the reading of 
 French. Murdoch loaned him a Life of Hannibal, 
 the village blacksmith loaned him The Life of Sir 
 William Wallace, and from other persons at later 
 periods he obtained the loan of such serious classics 
 as Derham's Physico-Theology, Kay's Wisdom of 
 God in the Works of Creation, Stackhouse's History 
 of the Bible, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original 
 Sin, Hervey's Meditations, and Locke's Essay upon 
 the Human Understanding, and such secular clas- 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 6 
 
 sics as The Spectator, Pope's Homer, The Works of 
 Pope, Richardson's Pamela, Smollett's Ferdinand 
 Count Fathom and Peregrine Pickle, some of the 
 plays of Shakespeare, a collection of songs entitled 
 The Lark, and The Works of Allan Ramsay. It was 
 from these books, to which should be added two or 
 three agricultural works, that "Burns received his 
 early literary education. They were procured only 
 at intervals, and read only when opportunities of- 
 fered, which was at night, when the work of the day 
 was done. For the work of the day had to be done, 
 and the children of the Burns family had to do 
 their share of it. They were poor — how poor, Gil- 
 bert Burns, the brother of Robert, tells us : "We 
 lived very sparingly. For several years butcher's 
 meat was a stranger in the house, while all the 
 members of the family exerted themselves to the ut- 
 most of their strength, and rather beyond it, in the 
 labors of the farm. My brother, at the age of thir- 
 teen, assisted in threshing the crop of corn, for we 
 had no hired servant, male or female. The anguish 
 of mind we felt at our tender years under these 
 straits and difficulties was very great. To think of 
 our father growing old (for he was now above fifty), 
 broken down with the long-continued fatigues of his 
 life, with a wife and five other children, in a declin- 
 ing state of circumstances ; these reflections pro- 
 duced in my brother's mind and mine sensations of 
 
4 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 the deepest distress. I doubt not but the bard labor 
 and sorrow of this period of his life was in a great 
 measure the cause of that depression of spirits with 
 which Robert was so often afflicted through his 
 whole life afterward." 
 
 Burns found what relief he could from the hard- 
 ships of his life in reading ; but he could not have 
 found much in the books of Derham and Bay, or Her- 
 vey and Stackhouse, which were so precious in the 
 eyes of his grave-minded father ; so, when he had 
 gone through them in a perfunctory way, he turned 
 to his song-book and his Ramsay, and read them 
 over and over. They held, though he may not have 
 guessed it at first, the key of his genius, the lock 
 of which he was to discover, as he grew older, in 
 the heart of some bonirie, sweet, sonsie lass. Italian 
 rather than Scotch in temperament, he was a born 
 lover. His first love was a girl a year younger than 
 himself, with whom he was coupled, according to 
 the country custom, as her partner in the labors of 
 the harvest, with whom he used to loiter behind in 
 the evening when returning from their labors, and 
 for whom his heart used to beat so furiously when he 
 looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out 
 the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. This girl, Nelly 
 Kilpatrick, the daughter of the blacksmith who had 
 loaned him The Life of Sir William Wallace, sang 
 sweetly, and among her songs there was one which 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 5 
 
 was said to be composed by the son of a small laird 
 on a maid of his father's, with whom he was in love. 
 The singing of this song, and the love he felt, or 
 supposed he felt, for the singer, was the first known 
 poetic inspiration of Burns, who saw no reason why 
 he might not rhyme as well as the other country 
 lad, for, excepting that he could smear sheep and 
 cut peat, his father living in the moorlands, he bad 
 no more scholar-craft than himself. He proceeded, 
 therefore, to celebrate his Handsome Nell to the 
 tune of her favorite reel, / am a man unmarried, 
 and if his song was superior to that which inspired 
 it the latter must have been poor indeed, for of his 
 seven stanzas all but two lines (which are not re- 
 markable) are utterly commonplace. Here are the 
 two lines : 
 
 And then there's something in her gait 
 Gars ony dress look weel. 
 
 It would not be difficult to trace the lyrical prog- 
 ress of Burns at this period, his memoirs have been 
 written so often, and with such fulness ; but I shall 
 not attempt it, since this progress was by no means 
 a royal one, for what with his Nannies, his Tibbies, 
 his Peggies, his Mysies, his Jennies, the list of his 
 loves is as, long as that in Cowley's famous Chron- 
 icle. It was a more substantial list, however ; for 
 the ladies in Cowley's ballad were shadows, while 
 
6 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 the lassies in his song were solid flesh and blood — 
 the daughters of farmers in the neighborhood, or 
 these not responding to his advances, the female 
 servants of their fathers, the milk-maid, the kitchen- 
 maid, or what not ; for Master Kobert was too ar- 
 dent to be choice in selecting his sweethearts. He 
 was twenty-four or twenty-five before he wrote a 
 love poem which was worthy of his genius. It was 
 his exquisite song to Mary Morrison, which reads as 
 if it came of itself, without premeditation, and with- 
 out labor ; a perfect song of a perfect kind. 
 
 Burns was not precocious, in the sense that Cow- 
 ley and Pope and Chatterton were precocious ; and 
 no poet, however great his gifts, could have been 
 precocious within the limitations that confined his 
 childhood and youth. No man who has not been 
 compelled to earn his bread, not now and then, but 
 day after day, month after month, year after year, 
 can form any, the least, idea of his life, which, in his 
 own powerful words, united the cheerless gloom of 
 a hermit with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave. 
 It weighed heavily upon, though it did not entirely 
 crush, his spirit, which constantly asserted itself in 
 sallies of wild humor and gusts of sharp satire ; but 
 it was fatal while it lasted to the cultivation of his 
 powers, for which, however strenuously he might 
 seek it, he had absolutely no leisure. His lines had 
 fallen in hard places. It was not until the family 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 7 
 
 removed from Mount Oliphant to Lochlea, and he 
 escaped the rigidity of his home life, and mixed in 
 the little world about him, that he began to discover 
 what he was. He caught glimpses of himself in the 
 eyes of women, which revealed his capacity for love ; 
 but a clearer and broader light than they flashed 
 upon him was necessary to reveal his capacity for 
 thought ; women helped him to discover his heart, 
 it remained for man to help him discover his under- 
 standing. 
 
 Toward the end of his twenty-first year Burns 
 was, if not the projector, one of the projectors of the 
 Bachelor's Club at Torbolton. At the first meeting, 
 which was held on the evening of November 11, 
 1780 (Hallowe'en), he was chosen president ; and 
 then the club proceeded to debate a question in 
 which its members were, or might be, interested, and 
 which may be roughly described as a consideration 
 of the qualities which ought to influence a young 
 man in his choice of a wife. We may imagine, if 
 we care to, the arguments in favor of a girl with a 
 large fortune and a girl with no fortune, but they 
 are not set down in the minutes of the club, which 
 simply state that its members found themselves so 
 very happy that they resolved to continue to meet 
 once a month. They elected new members from 
 time to time, and among them at the end of six 
 months was David Sillar, who was the first of his 
 
8 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 poetic contemporaries to enjoy the friendship of 
 Burns. 
 
 The son of Patrick Sillar, the tenant of a farm at 
 Spittleside, about a mile from Torbolton, David was 
 a year younger than Kobert, and like him was a la- 
 borer on his father's farm, and a poet. He sought 
 the acquaintance of Burns, who was becoming known 
 among his neighbors for his social habits, his satir- 
 ical disposition, and the freedom of his opinions, 
 and was introduced to him by his brother Gilbert. 
 There was something striking in his appearance at 
 this time ; he wore the only tied hair in the parish, 
 and at church he wrapped his plaid about his shoul- 
 ders in a particular — which, I suppose, means a 
 picturesque — manner. They were friends at once, 
 and meeting often on Sunday at church, they 
 strolled off between the sermons, not to the inn with 
 their friends and lasses, but across the fields, along 
 the banks of the Ayr, or into the woods of Stair. 
 There was but one drawback to their walks, and that 
 was the womenfolk, meeting with whom turned the 
 current of Burns's mind into new channels, and was 
 a death-blow to their conversation. 
 
 Sillar made the acquaintance of Burns when he 
 needed manly society of a better sort than was open 
 to him at Torbolton. There were men enough there 
 with whom he could crack a merry joke, take a so- 
 cial glass, and be hail-fellow well met ; but until he 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 9 
 
 met Sillar no one who could understand him, and 
 call out what was best in him. There comes a time 
 in the life of every young poet when books can do 
 no more for him ; they have taught him all they had 
 to teach, and whatever else there is for him to learn 
 he must seek elsewhere. Books may inspire, but 
 they cannot mature. The inspiration of Kamsay and 
 Ferguson is evident in the early verse of Burns ; 
 but I see no maturity in anything that he wrote be- 
 fore his Epistle to Davie, which was finished before 
 his twenty-sixth birthday. He had written well 
 before, exceedingly well in Mary Morrison, and 
 The Rigs o' Barley ; but he had given no sign that 
 a new and great poet had come, a poet who could 
 think as well as feel, and who had something to say 
 that was worth the hearing of mankind. Without 
 knowing it, he had obeyed the command of Sidney's 
 Muse, and had looked in his heart and written. 
 
 The personal element in this epistle was manly 
 and sincere, and the philosophical element was clear, 
 strong, and wise. There was a certain sadness in it, 
 as there is apt to be in all personal poetry, but there 
 was no sorrow, and no misanthropy. It reminds 
 one of no Scottish or English poet ; and if it reminds 
 one of any poet, it is of the Latin Horace, whose 
 sagacious worldly spirit seemed to hover at times 
 over his rustic scholar. 
 
 The career of Sillar was a checkered but in the 
 
10 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 main a prosperous one. More averse from manual 
 labor than Burns, he started a small school at Com- 
 raonside, near Torbolton, but finding that venture 
 unprofitable he removed to Irvine, and opened a 
 grocer's shop. He was of a canny turn of mind, 
 and might have done well in trade if he had re- 
 sisted his habit of versifying, a habit which in- 
 creased with him after Burns published his first 
 volume at Kilmarnock. The success of that little 
 book, which was as marked in its way as the 
 success of Childe Harold a quarter of a century 
 later, was the making of Burns, but the marring of 
 several of his countrymen of the same rank in life, 
 and among others of his brother poet, who must 
 needs collect and publish Poems by David Sillar, 
 to which he prefaced an Introduction that began 
 as follows : " Mankind in general, but particularly 
 those who have had the advantage of a liberal edu- 
 cation, may deem it presumption in the author, who 
 has been denied that privilege, to attempt either in- 
 struction or amusement. But however necessary a 
 learned education may be in Divinity, Philosophy, 
 or the Sciences, it is a fact that some of the best 
 Poetical Performances amongst us have been com- 
 posed by illiterate men. Natural genius alone is 
 sufficient to constitute a poet ; for, the imperfections 
 in the works of many poetical writers, which are 
 ascribed to want of education, may, he believes, with 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 11 
 
 more justice, be ascribed to want of genius. He 
 leaves every person to judge of his by his writings." 
 The readers of Sillar, so far as he had any, judged 
 his genius by his writings, and let them alone — a 
 neglect which was a misfortune to him, for what 
 with the expense of getting out his book and his 
 inattention to business he soon became a bankrupt, 
 and was thrown into jail for a debt of five pounds. 
 Released at last — how, it does not appear, but 
 not through assistance from his friends, who refused 
 to help him — he returned to his occupation as a 
 teacher, and opened a school for the instruction of 
 adult sailors in navigation, a branch of education 
 which proved more remunerative than the writing 
 of verse ; for the number of his scholars gradually 
 increased until their tuition yielded him about a 
 hundred pounds a year. By strict economy and 
 minding the main chances he continued to prosper 
 as the years went on. He married twice, his first 
 wife being a widow of Irvine, his second, a maid of 
 Kilmarnock, raised a family of children, and in- 
 herited property from his brothers — by the death of 
 the youngest, William, the farm at Spittleside and a 
 considerable sum of money, and by the death of the 
 two elder ones, Robert and John, what they had 
 amassed as African merchants. No one knew the 
 amount of the fortune he received, for he was close- 
 mouthed, but it was so large that, he concluded to 
 
12 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURKS 
 
 give up his school and live like a gentleman, in a 
 quiet, unostentatious way. He died May 2, 1830, 
 at the age of seventy. Such was David Sillar, the 
 first poetic contemporary of Burns. 
 
 Not long after the death of the head of the family, 
 which occurred on February 13, 1784, the Burns 
 family removed to Mossgiel, two or three miles 
 from Lochlea. They were as poor as ever ; but 
 under their new head, for such Robert, as the eldest 
 son, was, they were not so gloomy as they had been, 
 but, on proper occasions, and within the limits of 
 becoming mirth, were merry. It is well to remem- 
 ber the dead for what they were, but it is also well 
 to remember the living for what they are, and are 
 to be. We owe something to ourselves, and the 
 first, if not the greatest, of our debts is to be cheer- 
 ful, and, so far as we can — happy. The young folk 
 met their kind oftener at Mossgiel than at Loch- 
 lea, and one of their first meetings there was on 
 Fastens e'en (Shrovetide) at a rocking, a festival which 
 derived its name from the rocks, or distaffs, which 
 countrywomen in the olden time used for spinning, 
 and which they used to take with them when they 
 visited their neighbors' houses, as our grandmothers 
 used to take their knitting and sewing. Men and 
 women met together at these rockings in the last 
 century in Scotland, feasted in their frugal fashion, 
 chatted, laughed, and sang songs. At this partic- 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 13 
 
 ular rocking at Mossgiel somebody sang a song 
 which touched the heart of Burns, who inquired the 
 name of its writer, which he was told was JohnLap- 
 raik. With the heartiness which was one of his 
 most charming qualities, and the desire to make a 
 new friend in a brother poet, he wrote a rhymed 
 epistle to Lapraik, modelling his lines after a six-line 
 stanza which was used by Eamsay and Ferguson, 
 and which he had used a few months before in 
 his Epistle to John Rankine, and Death and Dr. 
 Hornbook. It lacked the gravity and the dignity 
 of the fourteen-line stanza which he employed in 
 his Epistle to Davie ; but it was equal to his pur- 
 pose, which was simply to greet Lapraik, and ex- 
 press his personal admiration for his verses. What 
 strikes one in these epistles of Burns is the sim- 
 plicity which led him to undervalue his own gifts 
 and overvalue the slender talents of his friends, for 
 slender, indeed, they were when compared with his 
 brilliant genius. He was as modest as generous. 
 Delighted with his poetic greeting, which was dated 
 April 1, 1785, Lapraik sent an answer by his son, 
 who on arriving at Mossgiel found Burns in a field. 
 " I'm no sure if I ken the han'," he said, as he took 
 the letter. Then he opened it, and seeing whom it 
 was from, he let go the sheet that contained his 
 grain, and did not discover its loss until he finished 
 the letter. At the end of three weeks, he wrote 
 
14 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 Lapraik a second epistle, and on September 13th a 
 third, between which dates the singers met twice, the 
 first time at Mauchline race, or Mossgiel, the last 
 time at Muirsmill, where Burns dined, and spent 
 the night, returning to Mossgiel the next morning. 
 
 Lapraik was thirty-two years the senior of Burns. 
 He inherited what seems to have been a considera- 
 ble property at Dalfram and elsewhere, in the barony 
 of Kylesmuir and sheriffdom of Ayr, and lived com- 
 fortably, marrying two wives and rearing a family of 
 children until his forty-second year, when, in com- 
 mon with others about him, he began to borrow 
 money from the Ayr Bank, a bubble concern, which, 
 starting with a capital of one hundred and fifty 
 thousand pounds, contrived to suspend payment in 
 two years, and in three years to incur debts to nearly 
 seven hundred thousand pounds. It ruined hun- 
 dreds, among them the laird of Dalfram, who, not 
 content with obtaining discounts for himself, guar- 
 anteed others for a large amount. At first he let 
 his lands, then he sold them ; at last, failing to free 
 himself from legal prosecution, he was arrested, and 
 confined in Ayr jail, where he composed the song 
 that Burns admired. He was flattered by the at- 
 tentions that Burns paid him in his epistles, and 
 having, like most poets, small as well as great, a 
 kind of ignorant belief in himself, he resolved to 
 publish his verse as Burns had done. So two years 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPOEAEIES OF BURNS 15 
 
 after the publication of the Kilmarnock edition of 
 Burns there appeared, from the same press, Poems 
 on Several Occasions, by John Lapraik. His last 
 days were passed at Muirkirk, where he kept a 
 small public-house, not far from the church, and 
 where he served at the village post-office. Postman, 
 publican, and poet, he died in May, 1807, at the age 
 of eighty. Such was John Lapraik, the second po- 
 etic contemporary of Burns. 
 
 The volumes of Lapraik and Sillar contain noth- 
 ing that anybody would be likely to read for its own 
 sake ; and if their names have been preserved from 
 oblivion it is because they were fortunate enough to 
 be known by Burns. Lapraik was probably the 
 better poet of the two. He was certainly so in the 
 song which Burns liked, and which I copy below, 
 not as it stands in his book, but as it appeared later 
 in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, where it was 
 retouched and bettered, probably by Burns himself : 
 
 When I Upon Thy Bosom Lean. 
 
 When I upon thy bosom lean, 
 
 And fondly clasp thee, a' my ain, 
 I glory in the sacred ties 
 
 That made us ane wha ance were twain ; 
 A mutual flame inspires us baith, 
 
 The tender look, the melting kiss ; 
 Even years shall ne'er destroy our love 
 
 But only gie us change o' bliss. 
 
16 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 Hae I a wish ? It's a' for thee ; 
 
 I ken thy wish is me to please ; 
 Our moments pass sae smooth away 
 
 That numbers on us look and gaze. 
 Weel pleased they see our happy days, 
 
 Nor envy's sel' finds aught to blame ; 
 And aye when weary cares arise 
 
 Thy bosom still shall be my hame. 
 
 I'll lay me there, and take my rest ; 
 
 And if that aught disturb my dear, 
 I'll bid her laugh her cares away, 
 
 And beg her not to drap a tear. 
 Hae I a joy ? It's a' her ain ; 
 
 United still her heart and mine ; 
 They're like the woodbine round the tree, 
 
 That's twined till death shall them disjoin. 
 
 n. 
 
 No one can read a poet understanding^ without 
 knowing something about bis life, nor estimate tbe 
 value of bis verse without knowing something about 
 the kind of verse which it illustrates. We cannot 
 read Homer by the light of biography, for we know 
 absolutely nothing about him ; but we can read 
 the Iliad and the Odyssey by their own light, and 
 imagine the personality of their unknown creator 
 from the splendor of his creations. The little that 
 has reached us concerning Shakespeare does not 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 17 
 
 help us to comprehend his genius, which cannot be 
 regarded as the natural growth of any of the known 
 facts of his life, nor, on any rational view of heredity, 
 as an intellectual inheritance from any discoverable 
 ancestor. Without ancestors, and without descend- 
 ants, he was, and is, himself alone. We cannot ac- 
 count for him, but we can account for his dramatic 
 work, which was the product of his period. Begun 
 by Marlowe, who was an elemental force in poetry 
 in the age of Elizabeth, as Byron was an elemental 
 force in poetry in the age of the third and fourth 
 Georges, it passed into the mighty hands of Shake- 
 speare when his fiery spirit was let out into eternity 
 before he was thirty, in a tavern brawl by the dagger 
 of Francis Archer, and by him and his fellows, Jon- 
 son, Beaumont, Fletcher, Webster, Ford, and others 
 of that noble line, of whom the last was Shirley, it 
 was carried to a perfection that no later dramatist 
 has ever attained. Ancestry and parentage give us 
 the clue to the character of Byron, which was singu- 
 larly compounded from the stormy and unreason- 
 ing passion of his mother and the calm, calculating 
 profligacy of his father ; but they do not give us 
 the clue to his genius, nor to his poetry, which was 
 modelled after none that was produced before it. 
 He admired, or pretended to admire Pope, and tried 
 in his poetic nonage to follow in his footsteps ; but 
 the more he followed the worse he wrote, and it was 
 
18 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES' OF BURNS 
 
 not until he ceased to write satiric couplets, as in 
 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and Hints 
 from Horace, and began to write in the ottava rima 
 of the Italian poets, as in Beppo, The Vision of 
 Judgment, and Don Juan, that the world saw how 
 genuine and great he was as a satirist. He owed 
 nothing to Pope in these poems, and nothing to any 
 poet in Childe Harold, Manfred, and Cain, which 
 were partly the outgrowth of his melancholy, daring 
 genius, and partly the outgrowth of the unrest of 
 the turbulent time in which he lived, and of which 
 he was the poetic voice. 
 
 No British poet demands for a thorough under- 
 standing of his verse so intimate a knowledge of his 
 life and its environments and the literary influences 
 that made him what he was as Robert Burns. No 
 one before him, and no one after him, can be said 
 to occupy the place that he occupied in the history 
 of Scottish poetry. There was no relationship be- 
 tween him and Barbour, Dunbar, Bishop Douglas, 
 and Sir David Lindsay, or only such shadowy rela- 
 tionship as may be supposed to exist among men of 
 the same race and speech ; he belonged to an ob- 
 scure line, the names of whose founders have per- 
 ished, though their genius has been preserved in 
 the songs they sung. The story of his life is the 
 story of the life of a farmer's son in the last half of 
 the last century in Scotland ; like that of his father 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 19 
 
 before him, and his father before him — it was poor, 
 it was narrow, it was laborious. Father and son — 
 father and sons and daughters — the Burns family 
 earned their daily bread by the daily use of their 
 hands. There was, there could be, no cessation 
 from work until their hands were folded and their 
 eyes closed in the last slumber. The father of Burns 
 was a plain, simple, right-minded man, staid in his 
 temperament and demeanor, deliberate in his way 
 of thinking, and, from his early training, and accord- 
 ing to his lights, devout and religious. They were 
 a serious family, somewhat too serious, it may be, 
 for Burns, when he began to think for himself and 
 go about among the young people at Lochlea and 
 Mossgiel. But however this may have been, and 
 whatever the wisdom or unwisdom of his father's 
 conscientious care of him, his character was moulded 
 in the home circle, which strengthened if it could not 
 broaden it. There was in him the same pattern of 
 manhood as in his father, the same sense of duty, 
 the same sincerity and honesty, and the same self- 
 respect and pride. Burns was happier in his par- 
 entage than Byron, for though a poor unlettered 
 farmer William Burness was what Captain Byron 
 was not — a gentleman. 
 
 The parentage of Burns may, and I think does, 
 explain his personality, but it does not explain his 
 poetry, for, whatever the genius of a writer, his 
 
20 SCOTCH CONTEMPOKAKIES OF BTJKNS 
 
 writing is never wholly shaped by his genius, is sel- 
 dom, indeed, as much shaped by it as by the books 
 he is known to have read while it was undergoing 
 the process of formation and development. We know 
 little or nothing of the quality that we call genius 
 except that it is a mysterious and glorious gift, and 
 that it discovers itself only through sympathy with 
 its kind, love of pictures creating painters, love 
 of music creating musicians, and love of poetry 
 poets. The beginning of art is imitation, and un- 
 less the artist have genius, imitation is its end. 
 Only the great surpass their masters, and become 
 great in turn. We know through his biographers 
 the books which Burns read in his childhood and 
 youth, but not the order in which he read them, for 
 in the list which they furnish us they huddle verse 
 and prose together without regard to chronology. 
 Some of these books appear to have belonged to his 
 father, while others were borrowed from neighbors ; 
 knowing the bent of the paternal mind it is safe to 
 assume that the former were theological ones, and 
 knowing the bent of the filial mind it is equally safe 
 to assume that the latter were poetical ones, fore- 
 most among which were Allan Ramsay and Robert 
 Ferguson. 
 
 Ramsay, who died about a year before Burns was 
 born, was the most famous Scottish poet of the 
 period ; for whatever the native literati thought of 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 21 
 
 him, and for national reasons they probably thought 
 well of him, there can be no doubt that he was 
 greatly admired by the people, among whom The 
 Gentle Shepherd was a classic. Its subject was 
 one which appealed to their sympathies, dealing, as 
 it did, with a condition of rustic life that they were 
 familiar with, and its poetic form was better adapted 
 to their comprehension than any other that could 
 have been given to it. No book-learning was neces- 
 sary for it, as for Shakespeare and Milton, Addison 
 and Pope. It was written in their native speech, 
 their daily dialect, and was understanded by all. 
 Burns must have read The Gentle Shepherd, in 
 his copy of Bamsay, and he doubtless read Kam- 
 say's acknowledged contributions to The Tea-Table 
 Miscellany, a notable anthology, which was as im- 
 portant in the history of Scottish poetry as Percy's 
 Reliques, forty-one years later, in the history of 
 English poetry. Of Ferguson little can be said ex- 
 cept that he made upward of a hundred indifferent 
 poems, some in what he considered the English lan- 
 guage, others in the Scotch tongue ; that he was 
 bibulous and pious ; and that he died in a mad- 
 house when Burns was fifteen. Ferguson and Bam- 
 say were the masters of Burns. Before we can de- 
 termine what they were to him we must look into 
 their writings, and read at least a portion of them. 
 What first strikes us in this readme; is that both 
 
22 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 strove to write English verse, after the received 
 models, Pope, Addison, Prior, and the nambypam- 
 by manufacturers of artificial pastorals in insipid 
 heroics, and strove in vain. They learned nothing 
 from the English poets except to write worse than 
 the worst of them. The next thing that strikes one 
 in this reading is the wonderment that they should 
 have been considered poets when they wrote in the 
 dialect of their own countrymen, which, poetical in 
 a certain sense in their old songs, is prosaic in their 
 inharmonious mouths. We need not be Scotch by 
 birth to know whether Scotch verse is good or bad, 
 for, like all dialect verse, Dorsetshire, Lancashire, 
 Yorkshire, it authenticates itself, if it be poetry. 
 We recognize and value what is said, if anything be 
 said, in proportion to its veracity, without regard to 
 the idiom in which this veracity is expressed. The 
 touch of nature that makes the whole world kin is 
 as sure in dialect as in the literary language. 
 
 Reading the verse of Burns in the order in which 
 it was written, his first source of inspiration appears 
 to have been the collection of songs in two vol- 
 umes, called The Lark, and his second Ramsay and 
 Ferguson, in the first of whom he found the four- 
 teen-line stanza in which he cast his first Epistle 
 to Davie, and the nine-line stanza with a refrain 
 in which he cast his Hallowe'en, and in both of 
 whom he found the six-line stanza in which he cast 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 23 
 
 his Epistles to Eankine, Lapraik, Goudie, Simp- 
 son, Death and Dr. Hornbook, and other poems 
 of the Mossgiel period which will recur to his 
 readers. To these two — the younger a thirsty at- 
 torney's clerk, and the elder a canny wig-maker — he 
 owed these forms of verse, the spirit of which was 
 his own ; how glorious and supremely his own may 
 be seen from a comparison of Ferguson's Hallow- 
 fair and Farmer's Ingle with his Hallowe'en and 
 Cotter's Saturday Night. They revealed him to 
 himself, which was all they could do, or any mas- 
 ter can do to any scholar. He read them wisely 
 for they taught him all they had to teach, more 
 wisely than the English poets and prose writers, 
 who stimulated and baffled his ambition. 
 
 The genius of Burns differed from the genius of 
 any other British poet of equal eminence in that it 
 was incapable of education beyond a certain stage. 
 He read as many books as came in his way in his 
 narrow and laborious life, but except those which 
 ministered to and nurtured his natural gifts he read 
 them in vain. Nothing in any English poet that he 
 is known to have read was instructive or suggestive 
 to him. He mastered no English measure, unless 
 he may be allowed to have mastered the Spenserian 
 in The Cotter's Saturday Night, and whenever he 
 attempted to write in English measures, outside of 
 balladry, his vocabulary was poor and prosaic. His 
 
24 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 English poetry was puerile. His English prose — 
 which consists of the Preface to the Kilmarnock and 
 the Dedication to the Edinburgh editions of his 
 poems, and a great many letters to all sorts of peo- 
 ple — reads as if it cost him a world of pains in the 
 writing. It lacks simplicity and directness, and 
 though often forcible is always ambitious and 
 strained. His letters were probably modelled after 
 a collection of letters by the wits of Queen Anne's 
 time which was known to have been in his posses- 
 sion, and in which Pope must have figured largely, 
 and a worse collection could not possibly have 
 fallen into his hands. That he was dazzled by 
 its spangles of sentiment and captivated by its 
 rhetorical rhodomontade is evident in the epistles 
 that he as Sylvander addressed to Mrs. M'Lehose 
 as Clarinda, and in which he fooled her to the 
 top of her bent. This correspondence was a silly 
 performance, and a cruel one, for the poor woman 
 believed to the day of her death that he really loved 
 her. 
 
 The impression which I have formed of Burns 
 after reading him for years, and comparing him with 
 other poets of earlier and later date, is that no Brit- 
 ish poet ever owed so much to his own genius and 
 so little to the genius or talents of others ; or, to put 
 it differently, so little to books. Tolerably read for 
 a man in his station, he had no conception of litera- 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 25 
 
 ture as literature ; his mind was vigorous, and his 
 gifts were great, but he was not literate. He held 
 his own among the great at Edinburgh — among the 
 literati, the professors, the judges, the lords, and 
 ladies — not by virtue of what he knew, but of what 
 he was. " The attentions he received during his 
 stay in town," said Dugald Stewart to Dr. Currie, 
 "from all ranks and descriptions of persons, was 
 such as would have turned any head but his own. 
 I cannot say that I could perceive any unfavorable ef- 
 fect which they left upon his mind. He retained the 
 same simplicity of manners and appearance which 
 had struck me so forcibly when I first saw him in 
 the country ; nor did he seem to feel any additional 
 self-importance from the number and rank of his 
 new acquaintance." The character of Burns was 
 more thoroughly tested by his environments than 
 that of any poet with whose life I am familiar; 
 for whatever these environments were, and however 
 differently he appeared at different periods, he was 
 always the same simple, manly, independent man — 
 always conscious of his powers, though he never as- 
 serted them offensively, for he was so far from under- 
 standing that he undervalued them in comparison 
 with the powers of others. He underrated himself 
 when he spoke of Eamsay and Ferguson, and when 
 he called Sillar and Lapraik his brother poets. He 
 was generous to his inferiors, more generous than 
 
26 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 he probably would have been if he could have 
 measured them by a literary standard ; and his 
 generosity was hurtful to them, and to the on- 
 coming school of dialect versifiers which they mis- 
 represent, and which should have been killed, not 
 scotched. 
 
 The first poetic recruit that flocked to the stand- 
 ard of Burns after the enlistment of his cronies, 
 Sillar and Lapraik, was William Simpson. The el- 
 dest son of a farmer in Ten-pound Land, near Ochil- 
 tree, Simpson studied for the ministry, but not 
 reaching that sacred destination to which so many 
 ambitious young rustics were rushing pell-mell, he 
 accepted a position as teacher in the parish school, 
 and, before his acquaintance with Burns, was school- 
 master at Ochiltree. The acquaintance itself was 
 made through a copy of Burns's satirical poem, 
 The Twa Herds, which, circulating about the coun- 
 try in manuscript, fell into the hands of Patrick 
 Simpson, by whom it was shown to his brother 
 William, who admired its clever local hits, and tes- 
 tified his admiration in a rhymed letter to its writer, 
 for, like Lapraik and Sillar, Simpson was also a 
 brother poet. Burns acknowledged the compliment 
 in an epistle to Simpson, which was written in the 
 month following his second epistle to Lapraik, 
 which it surpassed in poetic feeling and love of nat- 
 ure. It was in his happiest vein, and it contained 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPOKAKIES OF BUENS 27 
 
 one glorious stanza, which is as true now as it was 
 then : 
 
 The Muse, nae poet ever fand her, 
 Till by himsel he learned 'to wander 
 Adown some trotting burn's meander, 
 
 And no think lang ; 
 O sweet, to stray and pensive ponder 
 
 A heart-felt sang ! 
 
 The bard of Mossgiel and the dominie of Ochil- 
 tree became personal as well as poetical friends, and 
 remained such until 1788, when the latter removed 
 to Cumnock, where, by plying the ferule freely, he 
 taught the young idea how to shoot until well on in 
 the present century. His friendship with Burns 
 reached the ears of one of his acquaintances, who was 
 emulous of enjoying the same honor. His name was 
 Thomas Walker ; he lived at a place called Poole, 
 not far from Ochiltree, and he was a tailor. But he 
 was cut out for better things, in his own opinion, and 
 fitted to wield the quill as well as the shears. He 
 courted the Muse, and sat down one day, like his 
 friend Simpson, or rather rose up, for sitting was 
 his customary position, and composed an epistle to 
 Burns. He despatched it by post to Mossgiel, 
 where it was no doubt received, but its receipt was 
 not acknowledged, either because the receiver was 
 not in the vein to answer it, or was busy with more 
 important work. He waited several weeks, and, 
 
28 SCOTCH CONTEMPOKAEIES OF BUKNS 
 
 not hearing from Burns, went in chagrin to Simp- 
 son, to whom he had read this effusion, and com- 
 plained of his neglect. Simpson sympathized and 
 condoled with him, and, seeing an opportunity for a 
 joke at his expense, wrote a reply himself, and sent 
 it to him with the signature of Burns attached to it. 
 Elated by this fictitious honor, Walker proceeded to 
 Ochiltree and showed it to Simpson, who found it 
 difficult to preserve his gravity. He did so, however, 
 and to the day of his death the credulous tailor was 
 not undeceived. Meeting Burns not long afterward, 
 Simpson informed him of the liberty he had taken 
 with his name. "You did well," he said, with a 
 laugh; "for you thrashed the tailor much better 
 than I could have done." "We have the epistle of 
 Walker, and the reply of Simpson, both of which 
 appeared in some of the early editions of Burns 
 among his genuine productions, and they are not 
 bad of their kind, much better, indeed, than any- 
 thing in the volumes of Sillar and Lapraik. 
 
 The next member of the awkward squad, who 
 formed a sort of poetic body-guard to Burns, was 
 Miss Janet Little, who may be considered its Jille du 
 regiment. The daughter of George Little, of Nether 
 Bogside, near Ecclefechan, in Dumfries - shire, she 
 was born in the same year as Burns, and in so hum- 
 ble a position that when she was old enough she went 
 out to service, first as a nursery-maid in the house 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 29 
 
 of a clergyman named Johnstone, later in the family 
 of Mrs. Dunlop, whose acquaintance was made by 
 Burns on the eve of his departure for Edinburgh, 
 after the success of his Kilmarnock volume, and 
 later still, with Mrs. Hendrie, of the Dunlop ilk, 
 who rented Loudoun Castle, where she took charge 
 of the dairy. While engaged in this useful but 
 menial capacity she penned, in the summer of 1789, 
 a letter to Burns, whose fame as a poet was by this 
 time familiar to most of his countrymen and country- 
 women. Her letter, which has been preserved, was 
 as follows : " Sik : Though I have not the happi- 
 ness of being personally acquainted with you, yet, 
 amongst the number of those who have read and 
 admired your publications, I may be permitted to 
 trouble you with this. You must know, sir, I am 
 somewhat in love with the Muses, though I cannot 
 boast of any favors they have deigned to confer 
 upon me as yet ; my situation in life has been very 
 much against me as to that. I have spent some 
 years in and about Ecclefechan (where my parents 
 reside) in the station of a servant, and am now 
 come to Loudoun House, at present possessed by 
 Mrs. Hendrie ; she is the daughter to Mrs. Dunlop 
 of Dunlop, whom I understand you are particularly 
 acquainted with. As I had the pleasure of perusing 
 your poems, I felt a partiality for the author, which 
 I should not have experienced had you been in a 
 
30 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 more dignified station. I wrote a few verses of ad- 
 dress to you, which I did not think of ever present- 
 ing ; but as fortune seems to have favored me in 
 this, by bringing me into a family by whom you 
 are so well known and so much esteemed, and 
 where, perhaps, I may have an opportunity of see- 
 ing you, I shall, in hopes of your future friendship, 
 take the liberty to transcribe them." 
 
 Miss Little transcribed her verses, which were 
 written in the six-line stanza, common among the 
 Scottish poets in their rhymed epistles, and were 
 womanly and sensible. About two months later 
 Burns acknowledged them in a letter to Mrs. Dun- 
 lop. He had heard of Miss Little and her composi- 
 tions, and, he was happy to add, always to the honor 
 of her character ; but he knew not how to write to 
 her. " I should sit down to a sheet of paper that I 
 knew not how to stain." Whether he ever wrote to 
 her may be doubted. They met, however, about a 
 year and a half afterward, when she made a visit to 
 Dumfries-shire, partly to see her relatives, but more, 
 it would seem, for the purpose of seeing 
 
 The pride o' a' our Scottish plain. 
 
 She called at Ellisland, and found to her regret 
 that he was absent on his Excise duties, though he 
 was soon expected back. While she was waiting 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 31 
 
 his return he was brought home in a disabled state, 
 his horse Pegasus had fallen with him, and broken 
 his right arm. Her poetic pilgrimage and his 
 unfortunate conclusion iD spired a poem in eight 
 stanzas, of which three will probably be sufficient 
 here : 
 
 Hark ! now he comes, a dire alarm 
 
 Re-echoes through his hall ; 
 Pegasus kneeled, his rider's arm 
 
 Was broken by a fall. 
 
 The doleful tidings to my ears 
 
 Were in harsh notes conveyed ; 
 His lovely wife stood drowned in tears, 
 
 While thus I pondering said : 
 
 No cheering draught, with ills unmixed, 
 
 Can mortals taste below ; 
 All human fate by Heaven is fixed, 
 
 Alternate joy and woe. 
 
 The poetess of Loudoun House followed the ex- 
 ample of Sillar and Lapraik, but with more success ; 
 for her subscription list was filled with illustrious 
 names, not merely from the neighborhood, but 
 throughout the country, and in 1792, the year after 
 her visit to Burns, there appeared, from the press of 
 the Wilsons of Ayr, The Poetical Works of Janet 
 Little, the Scottish Milkmaid. After the depart- 
 ure of her mistress from Loudoun House she mar- 
 
32 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 ried John Richmond, an elderly man, who had kmg 
 been employed there as a laborer, to whose chil- 
 dren, for he was a widower, she was a kindly mother. 
 She outlived Burns nearly seventeen years, and, 
 dying in the winter of 1813, was interred in the 
 burying-place of the Loudoun family. Such was 
 Janet Little, the fifth, but not the last, of the poetic 
 contemporaries of Burns. 
 
 m. 
 
 To say that no poet can be thoroughly understood 
 until his life is thoroughly understood is so evident 
 a truism that it should go without saying ; but, un- 
 fortunately, it does not, for out of a thousand read- 
 ers of any poet whose reputation is acknowledged 
 there are not fifty who are acquainted with his per- 
 sonal history, and out of this fifty not five who are 
 capable of determining how far it went to the mak- 
 ing or marring of his character. It is not difficult, 
 or ought not to be difficult in this critical age, for a 
 lover of poetry to tell why he loves it in the abstract, 
 nor why of its concrete forms he loves one form 
 more than another ; why the poetry of Keats, say, is 
 more to him than the poetry of Byron, or why the 
 poetry of Tennyson is more to him than the poetry 
 of Wordsworth. Poetry is not read now as it was 
 in the days of Pope and Dryden, for what it stated 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 33 
 
 in ethics, in politics, and whatever else concerns the 
 material well-being of man, but for what it suggests 
 to his spiritual perception. The eighteenth century 
 did not accept poetry unless it proved something ; 
 the nineteenth century accepts it if it proves itself. 
 Why the verse of some poets, which is good up to a 
 certain point, is not good beyond that point, is a 
 question which most thoughtful readers of their 
 verse often ask themselves, and to which the biogra- 
 phies of these poets afford the only satisfactory 
 answer. They were greatly gifted, but they were 
 not great. Why did not the seeds which were 
 sown so plentifully in their genius ripen and bear 
 an abundant harvest ? 
 
 I have been reading the life of Burns lately more 
 closely than ever before ; and I think I understand 
 as never before some of the causes of the striking- 
 inequality in his verse. I find one in the paucity 
 of his early reading, and in the nature of that read- 
 ing, which, when not theological, was certainly not 
 imaginative, and I find another in the personality 
 of his early friends, which was not of a kind to ele- 
 vate his own. It was his misfortune to know men 
 and women who were inferior to himself, more in- 
 ferior than he divined, for his estimate of himself 
 was a modest one, while his gratitude at being 
 recognized deceived him as to the value of the 
 recognition. Sillar and Lapraik were well enough 
 
34 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 in their way, the one to converse with in his Sunday 
 rambles across the fields at Mossgiel, the other to 
 drink a pint of ale with at Mauchline Fair, or 
 something stronger at his home in Muirsmill, but 
 they were not men from whom he could learn any- 
 thing that he needed to know. What he learned 
 from his Peggy Thomsons and Eliza Begbies he 
 did not need to know, since it was already at the 
 tip of his winning tongue. 
 
 We have several descriptions of Burns at different 
 periods, but one above all others which to my mind 
 authenticates itself as a faithful portrait. It is 
 from the pen of an English man of letters, who, 
 writing in many ways all his life, which was a long 
 one, sought at first to distinguish himself as a 
 poet. Of good family and well educated, about 
 three years younger than Burns, Samuel Eger- 
 ton Brydges published his first collection of verse 
 nearly a year and a half before Burns published 
 his Kilmarnock volume. It resembled the average 
 poetry of the period, which had not shaken off the 
 feeble fetters of the followers of Pope, though it 
 was struggling toward the freedom which was soon 
 to be given it by Wordsworth and Coleridge, and 
 of which the most promising sign was its return 
 to the cultivation of sonnetry. Brydges was a bet- 
 ter sonneteer than Charlotte Smith, who appeared 
 a year before him, and William Lisle Bowles, who 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 35 
 
 appeared four years after him, not only because 
 he preserved the legitimate form of the sonnet, 
 which they neglected, but because the spirit of his 
 sonnets was more perfect than the spirit of theirs, 
 each beiDg in itself a harmonious whole, a unit in 
 feeling and expression ; and one of his sonnets, 
 which was contained in his first collection (On 
 Echo and Silence), has outlived all the books that 
 he wrote and edited. He was not a poet, notwith- 
 standing the beauty of this sonnet, but he knew 
 what poetry was ; for besides his scholarship he 
 possessed a sensitive, impressionable temperament, 
 and he greatly admired the poetry of Burns, to 
 whom, while he was living at Ellisland, he bore a 
 letter of introduction, in the autumn of 1790. 
 
 He seems at first to have feared that his visit 
 might be ill received, for he had heard that Burns 
 was a moody person, and difficult to deal with ; but 
 he summoned up courage, and proceeded cau- 
 tiously. But he shall tell his own story: "About 
 a mile from his residence, on a bench under a tree, 
 I passed a figure which, from the engraved por- 
 traits of him, I did not doubt was the poet ; but I 
 did not venture to address him. On arriving at his 
 humble cottage, Mrs. Burns opened the door ; she 
 was the plain sort of humble woman she has been 
 described. She ushered me into a neat apartment, 
 and said that she would send for Burns, who had 
 
36 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 gone for a walk. In about half an hour he came, 
 and my conjecture proved right ; he was the person 
 I had seen on the bench by the roadside. At first 
 I was not entirely pleased with his countenance. I 
 thought it had a sort of capricious jealousy, as if he 
 was half inclined to treat me as an intruder. I re- 
 solved to bear it, and try if I could humor him. I 
 let him choose his turn of conversation, but said a 
 word about the friend whose letter I had brought 
 to him. It was now about four in the afternoon 
 of an autumn day. While we were talking, Mrs. 
 Burns, as if accustomed to entertain visitors in this 
 way, brought in a bottle of Scotch whiskey, and set 
 the table. I accepted this hospitality. I could not 
 help observing the curious glance with which he 
 watched me at the entrance of this sequel of homely 
 entertainment. He was satisfied ; he filled our 
 glasses. ' Here's a health to auld Caledonia ! ' 
 The fire sparkled in his eye, and mine sympatheti- 
 cally met his. He shook my hands, and we were 
 friends at once. Then he drank ' Erin forever ! ' 
 and the tear of delight burst from his eye. The 
 fountain of his mind and his heart opened at once, 
 and flowed with abundant force almost till mid- 
 night. He had amazing acuteness of intellect as 
 well as glow of sentiment ; I do not deny that he 
 said some absurd things, and many coarse ones, 
 and that his knowledge was very irregular, and 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPOKAKIES OP BUENS 37 
 
 sometimes too presumptuous, and that he did not 
 endure contradiction with sufficient patience. His 
 pride, and perhaps his vanity, was even morbid. I 
 carefully avoided topics in which he could not take 
 an active part. Of literary gossip he knew nothing, 
 and, therefore, I kept aloof from it ; in the tech- 
 nical parts of literature, his opinions were crude 
 and unformed ; but whenever he spoke of a great 
 writer whom he had read, his taste was generally 
 sound. To a few minor writers he gave more 
 credit than they deserved. His great beauty was 
 his manly strength, and his energy and elevation of 
 thought and feeling. He had always a full mind, 
 and all flowed from a genuine spring. I never con- 
 versed with a man who appeared to be more warmly 
 impressed with the beauties of Nature ; and visions 
 of female beauty and tenderness seemed to trans- 
 port him. He did not merely appear to be a poet 
 at casual intervals, but at every moment a poetical 
 enthusiasm seemed to beat in his veins ; and he 
 lived all his days the inward if not the outward 
 life of a poet. I thought I perceived in Burns's 
 cheek the symptoms of an energy which had been 
 pushed too far ; and he had this feeling him- 
 self. Every now and then he spoke of the grave 
 so soon about to close over him. His dark eye 
 had at first a character of sternness ; but as he 
 became warmed, though this did not entirely melt 
 
38 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 away, it was mingled with changes of extreme soft- 
 ness." 
 
 This delineation of Burns in his thirty-second 
 year is not only a notable example of intellectual 
 portraiture, but to those who have studied his 
 writings is an acute analysis of his genius, which 
 accomplished what it did through its own intensity 
 and not through the adventitious aid of books. 
 That his knowledge was very irregular, as his visitor 
 could not but feel, was not so surprising as that he 
 succeeded in acquiring any knowledge ; nor was it 
 surprising that his opinions concerning the literary 
 art were crude and. unformed. His familiarity with 
 great writers was not extensive enough to instruct 
 him ; he was misinstructed by minor writers, with 
 whom his acquaintance was sufficiently large. He 
 read without judgment, and admired without taste. 
 This circumstance explains the mediocrity which 
 characterizes all his English writings, and explains 
 at the same time the good-natured favor which he 
 wasted upon indifferent writers, particularly when 
 they happened to be his brother and sister poets ; 
 for the sisterhood of singers was represented by 
 others than the Scottish milkmaid. 
 
 One of these singers was Jeanie Glover, who was 
 born at Kilmarnock about three months before 
 Burns, of what the patronizing biographers of the 
 last century designated poor but honest parents. 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 39 
 
 She was brought up in the principles of rectitude, 
 we are told, and had the advantages of that early 
 education which few Scottish families are without. 
 But unfortunately for those advantages and princi- 
 ples, she was beautiful in face and person, and knew 
 it, and was a fine singer, and knew that also ; so 
 one day, when a company of strolling players came 
 to Kilmarnock, she became stage-struck, and, elop- 
 ing with one of them named Kichard, led a life of 
 ups and downs, playing at fairs, in booths, and the 
 large rooms of public-houses, one of which houses 
 at Muirkirk was appropriately called the Black 
 Bottle. Failing to attain eminence in the legitim- 
 ate drama, Kichard courted public favor as a con- 
 jurer, and, while he exercised his sleight-of-hand 
 tricks, Jeanie, attired in her cheap finery, sang and 
 played the tambourine close by. When Burns 
 knew her her character was not of a kind that ladies 
 covet, and to her other accomplishments she added 
 the reputation of a thief, in which capacity she 
 visited most of the correction-houses in the west of 
 Scotland. But whatever Jeanie may have been, she 
 was a poet, if she composed, as Burns believed she 
 did, a song which he took down from her singing 
 as she was strolling through the country with her 
 sleight-of-hand blackguard, and sent to Johnson's 
 Scots Museum, where, as in most later miscella- 
 nies of the sort, it may be found. It is a pretty 
 
40 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 trifle, fresh in feeling and simple in expression, 
 with a refrain or chorus that sings itself : 
 
 O'er the moor amang the heather, 
 O'er the moor amang the heather, 
 There I met a honnie lassie, 
 Keeping a' her yowes tegether. 
 
 She outlived Burns about five years, dying in the 
 town of Letterkenny, in Ireland, and where a sol- 
 dier, who had heard her sing in Croft Lodge, in 
 Kilmarnock, had the honor of her company over a 
 social glass. Such was Jeanie Glover. 
 
 Another of these singers was Isobel Pagan, who 
 was born a year or two after Burns. She was not a 
 comely person, like Miss Glover, for she squinted 
 with one of her eyes, and was deformed in one foot 
 so as to require crutches in walking. Of her early 
 years nothing is known, except what she has related 
 of herself in one of her poems, and, as it is not par- 
 ticularly to her credit, it may probably be depended 
 upon. It runs as follows : 
 
 I was horn near four miles from Nithhead, 
 
 Where fourteen years I got my oread ; 
 
 My learning it can soon be told, 
 
 Ten weeks, when I was seven years old, 
 
 With a good, old religious wife, 
 
 Who lived a quiet and sober life ; 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPOEAEIES OF BUENS 41 
 
 Indeed, she took of me more pains 
 Than some does now of forty bairns. 
 With my attention and her skill, 
 I read the Bible no that ill ; 
 And when I grew a wee thought mair, 
 I read when I had time to spare ; 
 But a' the whole tract of my time 
 I found myself inclined to rhyme ; 
 When I see merry company, 
 I sing a song with mirth and glee, 
 And sometimes I the whisky pree, 
 But 'deed it's best to let it be. 
 
 But let it be was what Isobel never did for any 
 length of time, for, having wit, high spirits, and an 
 excellent voice, she was noted for her conviviality. 
 She lived for many years in the neighborhood of 
 Muirkirk, at first in a cottage at Muirsmill, and af- 
 terward in another, which was given to her by Ad- 
 miral Keith Stewart. It stood on the banks of the 
 Gapal Water, and was constructed out of a low arch 
 which was originally built for a brick store. Here 
 she lived alone, taking care of herself as well as she 
 could, for, despite her lameness, which prevented 
 her from work, her relations did nothing for her ; 
 but she had, if not friends, certainly companions, 
 who night after night frequented her cottage, and 
 made its vaulted roof ring with their revelry. What 
 these nodes of Isobel's were we may imagine after 
 reading Burns's cantata of The Jolly Beggars, the 
 
42 SCOTCH CONTEMPO BABIES OF BURNS 
 
 scene of which might well have been laid at her 
 cottage, though it was really laid, I believe, at the 
 lodging-house of Poosie Nansie, in Mauchline. Iso- 
 bel was famous throughout the country-side for her 
 singing, her biting sarcasms, and her supply of 
 spirits ; for though she had no license to sell them, 
 she always contrived to find a bottle for her cus- 
 tomers, who were not confined to people of her sort, 
 but embraced in summer what was then called the 
 gentry, who came from all quarters to the moors of 
 Muirkirk for grouse shooting. Sometimes they sent 
 for her, that they might hear her songs and ribald 
 jests, and, after rewarding her with a little money, 
 left her late at night to find her unsteady way home. 
 It was a piece of brutality on their part ; but in cen- 
 suring it, as we must, we should remember that the 
 age in which they were living was a brutal one, 
 when inebriety was the rule and not the exception, 
 and when the commonalty were expected to min- 
 ister to the mirth of the quality. Furthermore, 
 
 Evil is wrought by want of thought, 
 As well as by want of heart. 
 
 But no hand save the one that penned the history of 
 Moll Flanders, could do justice to the career of 
 Isobel Pagan, so I shall not attempt it, for realism, 
 as we understand it now, avoids the description of 
 
SCOTCH COOTEMPORAKIES OF BUENS 43 
 
 frailties like hers. She published her poems about 
 ten years after the death of Burns, and they are not 
 bad of their unlettered kind. They were not written 
 by herself, for, though she could read, she could not 
 write, but were taken down from her recitation by 
 a tailor, whom she pressed into her service, as an 
 amanuensis, and who may have softened some of her 
 coarse touches. The best of them is a rustic love 
 song, in six stanzas, of which the following is the 
 first : 
 
 Ca' the yowes to tlie knowes, 
 Ca' them where the heather grows, 
 Ca' them, where the burnie bows, 
 My bonnie dearie. 
 
 She died in the fall of 1821, in her eightieth year, 
 and was buried in a heavy storm, in the churchyard 
 at Muirkirk, where a stone was erected over her 
 grave. 
 
 Another of these singers was Gavin Turnbull, 
 whose early years were spent in Kilmarnock, where 
 he and his father, whom the townspeople called 
 Tommy Tumble, used to pass their days together 
 in tippling-houses. Poetry and poverty went hand 
 in hand with young Master Gavin, as with good old 
 Thomas Churchyard, for while in Kilmarnock he 
 lived alone in a small garret without any furniture. 
 " The bed on which he lay was entirely composed of 
 
44 SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURNS 
 
 straw, with the exception of an old patched covering 
 which he threw over him during the night. He had 
 no chair to sit upon. A cold stone placed by the 
 fire served him as such ; and the sill of a small win- 
 dow at one end of the room was all he had for a 
 table, from which to take his food, or on which to 
 write his verses. A tin kettle and a spoon were all 
 his cooking utensils ; and, when he prepared a meal 
 for himself, he used the lid of the kettle instead of 
 a bowl." But he did not heed these discomforts, 
 for he was a poet, and so long as he could procure 
 pens, ink, and paper, he was happy. The success 
 of Burns, which turned the heads of so many bard- 
 lings, impelled him to issue his Poetical Essays 
 in the same year that Lapraik issued his Poems on 
 Several Occasions (1788), the pair preceding by a 
 year their brother poet Sillar in his clutch after the 
 laurel. Of the three Turnbull was the best edu- 
 cated, at least in English verse, which he wrote like 
 the celebrated Person of Quality, his model being 
 Thurston, who still held a place among the Eng- 
 lish poets. From Kilmarnock Turnbull removed to 
 Dumfries, where his book was published, where he 
 became a comedian, and where he knew Burns (who, 
 however, may have made his acquaintance before), 
 who, in writing to Mr. George Thomson, of Edin- 
 burgh, in October, 1793, spoke of Turnbull as an 
 old friend and copied in his letter three of Turn- 
 
SCOTCH CONTEMPORARIES OF BURN'S 45 
 
 bull's unpublished poems, in the hope that they 
 might suit his collection of melodies. He liked 
 some of his pieces very much, he said, and one which 
 he liked was this conventional little song : 
 
 The Nightingale. 
 
 Thou sweetest minstrel of the grove y 
 That ever tried the plaintive strain, 
 
 Awake thy tender tale of love, 
 
 And soothe a poor forsaken swain. 
 
 For though the muses deign to aid, 
 And teach him smoothly to complain ; 
 
 Yet Delia, charming, cruel maid, 
 Is deaf to her forsaken swain. 
 
 All day, with fashion's gaudy sons, 
 In sport she wanders o'er the plain ; 
 
 Their tales approves, and still she shuns 
 The notes of her forsaken swain. 
 
 When evening shades obscure the sky, 
 And bring the solemn hours again, 
 
 Begin, sweet bird, thy melody, 
 And soothe a poor forsaken swain. 
 
 Turnbull is supposed to have emigrated to Amer- 
 ica, and to have died here, which is all that is known 
 about him, and much more than would have been 
 known if he had not happened to be a friend of 
 Burns, who, in his case certainly, gave more credit 
 to a minor writer than he deserved. 
 
JAMES HOGG 
 
 (THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD) 
 
 To what extent the verse of certain poets should 
 be regarded as the outgrowth of their personality, 
 and to what extent it should be regarded as the 
 manifestation of their surroundings, is a question 
 which we cannot help asking ourselves, if we are at 
 all given to critical consideration, and one which we 
 find it difficult to answer. There are qualities in 
 the verse of every genuine poet which we feel to be 
 eminently characteristic, individual to, and distinc- 
 tive of, that poet and no other ; and there are other 
 qualities which pertain — if not to his heredity, to 
 his nativity, to the conditions of life in which he 
 belonged, and to his period. Shakespeare could 
 not have been the greatest English dramatic poet if 
 he had not lived in the greatest age of the English 
 drama. That he would have been a great writer in 
 any age cannot be doubted, his literary power was 
 so enormous ; but in an age like this, where the 
 drama is not, and the novel is, he would not have 
 been a dramatist, he would have been a novelist. 
 
JAMES HOGG 47 
 
 If Byron were living now, tie would probably be the 
 poet that he was, his vitality was so intense, and his 
 audacity so daring ; but he would hardly write 
 satires, since no one cares to read them. That 
 Burns would be to-day the poet that he was a hun- 
 dred years ago, I do not believe — not so much be- 
 cause he was the poet of his period, which he cer- 
 tainly was not, in a large sense, as because he was 
 the poet of his day and neighborhood. No such 
 poet as Burns is possible in the last half of the 
 nineteenth century, not even in his stern and rugged 
 land, which happily is not what it once was when 
 he was born. His genius was not imperial, like 
 Shakespeare's, nor patrician, like Byron's, but ple- 
 beian, of the people from whom he sprang, and for 
 the people to whom he sang. He sang because 
 they sang ; no people ever had such songs as theirs; 
 and his songs, for what they are, are what the plays 
 of Shakespeare are. That his countrymen admired 
 him is not to be wondered at, his note is so true 
 and his range is so large, nor that they should have 
 worshipped his memory since his death. What is 
 to be wondered at is the alacrity with which they 
 welcomed his successors, the best of whom was not 
 worthy to undo the latchet of his shoe. He was 
 learned beside them, they were so ignorant, and 
 abstemious when compared with most, they were 
 so bibulous. They were a curious lot ; but one of 
 
48 JAMES HOGG 
 
 the most curious, James Hogg, was not without the 
 rudiments of genius. 
 
 The story of Hogg's life is an instructive and 
 amusing chapter in the curiosities of literature. It 
 is instructive as showing how little circumstances 
 count in the genesis of a poet, and amusing as 
 showing what a poet is in his natural state. It has 
 interested many, but none so much as Hogg him- 
 self. "I like to write about myself," he said ; "in 
 fact there are few things which I like better." He 
 might have said that there was nothing which he 
 liked better ; for he wrote, or re-wrote, four auto- 
 biographies, all of which were entertaining, and none 
 of which was accurate. He began, for example, by 
 misstating the date of bis birth, which was not Jan- 
 uary 25, 1772, but toward the close of 1770, prob- 
 ably in December, on the 9th of which he was bap- 
 tized. He was born at Ettrick, the second of four 
 sons by the same father and mother, Robert Hogg 
 and Margaret Laidlaw. His father was a shep- 
 herd, who, having at his marriage saved what, for a 
 man in his condition, was a considerable sum of 
 money, took a lease of the farms of Ettrick House 
 and Ettrick Hall. He began dealing in sheep, great 
 numbers of which he bought up and drove to Eng- 
 lish and Scottish markets ; but owing to a fall in 
 their price, and the absconding of his principal 
 debtor, he was ruined. He became bankrupt ; 
 
JAMES HOGG 49 
 
 everything that he possessed was sold at auction, 
 and he and his family were turned out of doors 
 without a farthing. This calamity excited the com- 
 passion of a worthy man, a Mr. Brydon, of Crosslee, 
 who took a short lease of the farm of Ettrick House, 
 and placed its former master there as his shepherd, 
 thereby enabling him to support his family for a 
 time. It could not have been for long, however ; 
 for when James was seven years old he was obliged 
 to go out to service, and was hired by a farmer in 
 the neighborhood to herd a few cows. Here the 
 lad stripped off his clothes, and ran races against 
 time, or rather against himself, for he first lost his 
 plaid, then his bonnet, then his coat, and, last of all, 
 his hosen, for shoes as yet he had none. He herded 
 his cows in a naked state for several days, until a 
 shepherd and a maid- servant, who were sent to the 
 hills to look for them, found his clothes, and reha- 
 bilitated him. 
 
 He was taken home during the following winter 
 by his parents, and put to school to a lad who 
 taught the children of a farmer near by, under 
 whom he got into the class that read the Bible. 
 He also practised penmanship, in which he suc- 
 ceeded in a large way, his letters being nearly an 
 inch in length ! When spring came he returned to 
 herding the cows, and in summer was sent to a 
 height called Broadheads, with a rosy-cheeked lass, 
 4 
 
50 JAMES HOGG 
 
 to herd, in addition to his cows, a flock of newly 
 weaned lambs. As the lass had no dog, and he 
 had an excellent one, he was ordered to keep 
 close by her, an order which he willingly obeyed. 
 He herded the lambs and the cows, while she, 
 having nothing to do, sat and sewed. They dined 
 together at a little well, and after dinner he laid 
 his head on her lap, covered her bare feet with 
 his plaid, and pretended to fall sound asleep. 
 One day he heard her say, " Puir laddie, he's juist 
 tired to death." Then he wept until he was afraid 
 she would feel the warm tears trickling on her 
 knee. 
 
 He could not have been a very desirable farmer's 
 boy ; for by the time he was fifteen he had served 
 a dozen masters, from some of whom he received 
 very hard usage, particularly one shepherd, in whose 
 service he was nearly exhausted with hunger and 
 fatigue. Every pittance of the wages he earned he 
 carried to his parents, who supplied him with 
 clothes, his stock of which was so small that he was 
 generally bare of shirts, so bare that time after time 
 he had but two, which grew so bad at last that he 
 ceased wearing them at all. When he was fourteen 
 he saved five shillings out of his wages and bought 
 an old violin, on which, when not too tired, he used 
 to spend an hour or two every night in sawing out 
 old Scotch tunes, which, as his bed was always in 
 
JAMES HOGG 51 
 
 stables or cow-houses, disturbed nobody but himself 
 and his associate quadrupeds. 
 
 At the age of twenty, he hired himself as a shep- 
 herd to a Mr. Laidlaw, at Black House, where his 
 reading may be said to have begun. His first books 
 were The Adventures of Sir William Wallace and 
 The Gentle Shepherd, both of which delighted 
 him, though he could not help regretting that they 
 were not in prose, so that everybody might under- 
 stand them. He made but small progress with 
 them, for, strange to say, he was confounded by the 
 dialect and the metre, so much so by the last that 
 before he got to the end of the second line he gen- 
 erally lost the rhyme of the first ; and when he came 
 to a triplet, a thing of which he had no conception, 
 he read to the foot of the page without perceiving 
 that he had entirely lost the rhyme. But if he was 
 not apt at reading, he was still less apt at writing ; 
 for being obliged about this time to write a letter 
 to his elder brother, he found that he had forgotten 
 how to make certain letters of the alphabet, which 
 he either had to print, or to patch up the words in 
 which they occurred in the best way he could with- 
 out them. In his twenty-sixth year he began to 
 compose songs and ballads ; and a proud man he 
 was when he first heard the lasses sing his uncouth 
 strains, and call him "Jamie the poeter." He had 
 no difficulty in composing them ; but then, the writ- 
 
52 JAMES HOGG 
 
 ing of them — that was a job ! His method of learn- 
 ing to write was to follow the Italian alphabet ; and 
 though he always stripped himself of coat and vest 
 when he began to pen a song, his wrist took a 
 cramp, so that he rarely wrote more than four or 
 six lines at a sitting. Having little spare time from 
 his flock, which was unruly, he folded and stitched 
 a few sheets of paper, which he carried in his pocket. 
 He had no inkhorn ; but in place of one he borrowed 
 a small vial, which he fixed in a hole in the breast 
 of his waistcoat, and having a cork fastened by a 
 piece of twine, it answered his purpose as fully as 
 an inkhorn. Thus equipped, when a leisure mo- 
 ment or two offered, and he had nothing else to do, 
 he wrote out his thoughts as he found them. 
 
 He was in his twenty-seventh year before he ever 
 heard of Burns, and then it was by chance one sum- 
 mer day, when a half-daft man, named John Scott, 
 came to him on the hill where he tended his flock, 
 and repeated Tarn O'Shanter to him, as he tells 
 us in his autobiography : " I was delighted ! I was 
 more than delighted — I was ravished ! I cannot 
 describe my feelings ; but, in short, before Jock 
 Scott left me, I could recite the poem from begin- 
 ning to end ; and it has been my favorite poem ever 
 since. He told me it was made by one Kobert 
 Burns, the sweetest poet that ever was born ; but 
 that he was now dead, and his place would never be 
 
JAMES HOGG 53 
 
 supplied. He told me all about him, how he was 
 born on January 25th, bred a ploughman, how many 
 beautiful songs and poems he had composed, and 
 that he had died last harvest on August 21st. 
 This formed a new epoch in my life. Every day I 
 pondered on the genius and fate of Burns. I wept 
 and always thought with myself, What is to hinder 
 me from succeeding Burns ? I was born on Janu- 
 ary 25th, and I have much more time to read and 
 compose than any ploughman could have, and can 
 sing more old songs than ever ploughman could in 
 the world. But then I wept again because I could 
 not write. However, I resolved to be a poet, and to 
 follow in the steps of Burns." 
 
 The only one of Hogg's early companions who 
 saw any merit in his compositions was William 
 Laidlaw, the son of his master, who, admiring them 
 himself, and showing them to all whom he thought 
 capable of admiring them, tried to persuade him to 
 revise them, but without success ; for he stood by 
 them as they were, though he promised to try 
 and write his next pieces better. Laidlaw was an 
 important factor in the life of Hogg, for it was 
 through his friendship that he was introduced to 
 Scott, to whom he was of assistance in furnish- 
 ing materials for his Minstrelsy of the Scottish 
 Border. But before this introduction took place 
 Hogg had left the service of the elder Laidlaw, 
 
54 JAMES HOGG 
 
 and returned to Ettrick House, which was given up 
 to him by his brother, and had composed a song 
 which became popular. This was a patriotic effu- 
 sion on the threatened invasion of England by Bo- 
 naparte, and it was called Donald McDonald, after 
 its hero, who proclaimed the valor of his race, to 
 the air of Woo'd an' married an' a\ It was first 
 sung (it should be remembered that songs were 
 often sung then before they were printed, some- 
 times before they were written) by Hogg himself to 
 a party of his friends at the Crown tavern, in Edin- 
 burgh, and was so well received that he offered it to 
 one of these friends for a magazine that he edited 
 or published. It was said to be too good for that ; 
 and he was advised to give it to a Mr. Hamilton, 
 who would set it to music and publish it. He fol- 
 lowed the advice and returned to Ettrick, where 
 from day to day he heard of the popularity of his 
 song, though no one knew or cared who wrote it. 
 It was sung at a great masonic meeting in Edin- 
 burgh before the Earl of Moira, who was so much 
 pleased with it that he rose from the chair and des- 
 canted in a speech on the utility of such songs at 
 that time, thanked the singer, and proffered him his 
 whole interest in Scotland. It was also sung at the 
 mess-table of a General McDonald, who was proud 
 of it, and believed to his dying day that it was 
 made upon himself. "Yet neither he nor one of 
 
JAMES HOGG 55 
 
 his officers ever knew or inquired who was the au- 
 thor — so thankless is the poet's trade ! " 
 . The popularity of Donald McDonald confirmed 
 Hogg in his belief that he was a great poet, and 
 projected him into print prematurely. Being now 
 the master of Ettrick House, and consequently a 
 man of affairs, he attended the Edinburgh market 
 one Monday with a number of sheep for sale ; but, 
 not selling all of them, he put what remained in a 
 park until the market on Wednesday, and, not 
 knowing how to pass the time, he resolved to write 
 out some of his poems, and have them printed. To 
 resolve was to do with him, so he sat down and 
 dashed off a lot of his verse (not his best pieces, but 
 those that he remembered best), and placed them 
 in the hands of a printer, to be set up at his ex- 
 pense. This done, he sold the rest of his sheep on 
 Wednesday morning, and went back to Ettrick, 
 whither, before long, he was followed by the print- 
 er's bill, and a thousand copies of his handiwork. 
 He was astonished and disgusted, probably at the 
 cost, certainly at the result ; for when he compared 
 what was in print with what was in his manuscripts, 
 he found many stanzas omitted, others misplaced, 
 and typographical errors abounding on every page. 
 It was a mass of rubbish of which, with all his 
 vanity, he was thoroughly ashamed. 
 
 About a year after this rustic escapade into pub- 
 
56 JAMES HOGG 
 
 licity, when Hogg was at work in the field at Et- 
 trick House, one of his servants came and told him 
 that a couple of strangers wanted to see him at the 
 Ramseycleugh, an inn in the neighborhood, and he 
 started toward home to put on his Sunday clothes ; 
 but before reaching it he met them. They were his 
 friend William Laidlaw and Scott, and they went 
 with him to the cottage, where his mother sang for 
 them the ballad of Old Maitlan', which delighted 
 Scott. Hogg had sent him a copy of it for the 
 Minstrelsy, and he feared lest some dread of his 
 that a part might be forged was the cause of his 
 journey into the wilds of Ettrick ; but he was mis- 
 taken, for if Scott had doubted, he was satisfied as 
 he listened to the old dame's singing. He asked 
 her if she thought the ballad had ever been printed. 
 " Oh, na, na, sir, it was never prentit i' the world, 
 for my brothers an' me learned it frae auld Andrew 
 Moor, an' he learned it, and many mae, frae auld 
 Baby Mettlin, that was housekeeper to the first laird 
 o' Tushilaw." " Then that must be a very old story, 
 indeed, Margaret," said Scott. " Ay, it is that. It 
 is an auld story. But mair nor that, except George 
 Warton and James Steward, there was never ane o' 
 my songs prentit till ye prentit them yoursel', an ye 
 hae spoilt them a'thegither. They war made for 
 singing, an' no for reading ; an' they're nouther 
 right spelled nor right setten down." "Heh-heh- 
 
JAMES HOGG 57 
 
 heh ! Take ye that, Mr. Scott," said Laicllaw. 
 Scott answered by a hearty laugh ; but the old 
 woman gave him a rap on the knee with her open 
 hand, and said : " It's true enough, for a' that." 
 Then the party went to the Kamseycleugh and had 
 a merry dinner. 
 
 The lease of Et trick House expiring in the follow- 
 ing year, Hogg found himself at the age of thirty- 
 three without a home. Scott interested himself in 
 his behalf, and, furnished with strong letters of 
 recommendation from him, he made an excursion 
 into the Highlands in search of employment as an 
 overseer on some great sheep farm ; but he re- 
 turned to Ettrick without success. The next time 
 he went to Edinburgh he waited upon Scott, who 
 invited him to dinner at his home in Castle Street, 
 with his friend Laidlaw and some other admirers of 
 his genius ; and a very queer dinner it must have 
 been. But Lockhart shall describe it for us : 
 "When Hogg entered the drawing-room, Mrs. 
 Scott, being at the time in a delicate state of health, 
 was reclining on the sofa. The Shepherd, after 
 being presented and making his best bow, forth- 
 with took possession of another sofa placed opposite 
 to hers, and stretched himself thereupon at all his 
 length ; for, as he said afterward, ' I thought I 
 could never do wrong to copy the lady of the house.' 
 As his dress at this period was precisely that in 
 
58 JAMES HOGG 
 
 which any ordinary herdsman attends cattle to the 
 market, and as his hands, moreover, bore most 
 legible marks of a recent sheep-shearing, the lady of 
 the house did not observe with perfect equanimity 
 the novel usage to which her chintz was exposed. 
 The Shepherd, however, remarked nothing of all 
 this — dined heartily and drank freely, and, by jest, 
 anecdote, and song, afforded plentiful merriment to 
 the more civilized part of the company. As the liq- 
 uor operated, his familiarity increased and strength- 
 ened ; from ' Mr. Scott ' he advanced to ' Shirra,' 
 and then to ' Scott,' until, at supper, he fairly con- 
 vulsed the whole party by addressing Mrs. Scott as 
 'Charlotte.'" 
 
 A suspicion, if not a recollection, of his behavior 
 on this occasion dawned upon Hogg after he got 
 back to Ettrick, so he penned a letter to Scott — a 
 curious letter, which began with an apology and 
 ended with a solicitation for aid. He had not been 
 satisfied, it seems, with the imitations of old ballads 
 in the Minstrelsy, and had, therefore, written a 
 number of better imitations himself, which he was 
 desirous of having published. Here is his apology : 
 " If I was in the state in which I suspect I was, I 
 must have spoken a very great deal of nonsense, for 
 which I beg ten thousand pardons. I have the con- 
 solation, however, of remembering that Mrs. Scott 
 kept in company all or most of the time, which she 
 
JAMES HOGG 59 
 
 certainly could not have done had I been very rude." 
 And here is his solicitation : "I have as many songs 
 beside me, which are certainly the ivorst of my pro- 
 ductions, as will make about one hundred pages 
 closely printed, and about two hundred printed as 
 the Minstrelsy is. Now, although I will not pro- 
 ceed without your consent and advice, yet I would 
 have you to understand that I expect it, and have 
 the scheme much at heart at present. The first 
 thing that suggested it was their extraordinary re- 
 pute in Ettrick and its neighborhood, and being 
 everlastingly plagued with writing copies, and 
 promising scores which I never meant to perform. 
 As my last pamphlet was never known, save to a 
 few friends, I wish your advice what pieces in it 
 are worth preserving. The Pastoral I am resolved 
 to insert, as I am Sandy Tod. As to my manu- 
 scripts, they are endless ; and as I doubt you will 
 disprove of publishing them wholesale, and letting 
 the good help off the bad, I think you must trust 
 to my discretion in the selection of a few. I wish 
 likewise to know if you think a graven image on the 
 first leaf is any recommendation ; and if we might 
 print the songs with a letter to you, giving an im- 
 partial account of my manner of life and education, 
 and, which if you pleased to transcribe, putting He 
 for I." 
 
 That Hogg should have supposed Scott would be 
 
60 JAMES HOGG 
 
 willing to father his own account of his life shows 
 the high estimate at which he held himself, and the 
 low estimate at which he held Scott, of whose char- 
 acter he could have had no conception. It shows 
 also that his notions of literary honesty were as 
 hazy as his notions of good-breeding, which he vio- 
 lated in this letter, where the " Dear Mr. Scott " of 
 the beginning becomes at the end " Dear Walter." 
 
 It is not easy to trace the life of Hogg during the 
 next five or six years ; for though he was fond of 
 writing about himself, he had not the kind of talent 
 that is requisite for writing a consecutive narrative, 
 nor was the accuracy of his memory to be depended 
 on. There are gaps in his autobiographies which 
 he either could not or would not bridge over, and 
 one of these occurred between his relinquishment 
 of the lease of Ettrick House and his removal to 
 Nithsdale, where he hired himself as a shepherd to 
 a Mr. Harkness, of Mitchel-Slack. One autumn day 
 at Nithsdale, while he was herding the ewes of his 
 master on this great hill of Queensberry, he was ap- 
 proached by two strange men, the elder of whom in- 
 quired if his name was not James Hogg, a query 
 which he answered cautiously, fearing lest he had 
 come after him with an accusation regarding some 
 of the lasses. When he had acknowledged his iden- 
 tity, his questioner grasped his hand, called him 
 " Sir," and said there was not a man in Scotland 
 
JAMES HOGG 61 
 
 whose hand he was prouder to hold. " My name is 
 James Cunningham," he continued, "a name un- 
 known to you, though yours is not entirely so to 
 me ; and this is my younger brother, AllaD, the 
 greatest admirer you have on earth, and himself a 
 young, aspiring poet of some promise. You will be 
 so kind as to excuse this intrusion of ours on your 
 solitude, for, in truth, I could get no peace either 
 night or day with Allan till I consented to come 
 and see you." Hogg grasped the hand of his 
 brother poet, a younger brother by fourteen years, 
 and invited him and his brother into a little bothy 
 on the hill in which he took his breakfast and din- 
 ner on rainy days. It was so small that they had to 
 walk in on all fours, and, when they were in, they 
 could only hold up their heads in a sitting position. 
 They seated themselves on the rushes which served 
 as his bed, and spent the whole afternoon with him, 
 Master Allan repeating his poetry to Hogg, and 
 Hogg, we may be sure, repeating his own poetry in 
 turn, the pair partaking of his scrip and his bottle 
 of milk, and of something stronger which the elder 
 Cunningham had in a bottle, and which, whether it 
 was brandy or rum, helped to keep up their spirits 
 to a late hour. Such was the first meeting of Hogg 
 and Cunningham, who were the best of friends as 
 long as they lived, Cunningham outliving Hogg by 
 some seven years. 
 
62 JAMES HOGG 
 
 Nothing shows the kindness of Scott's heart more 
 than his interest in the poetic fortunes of Hogg, 
 particularly at this time, when his worldly prospects 
 were at their lowest ebb. He was generous enough 
 to find, or fancy he found, merit in the imitations 
 of old ballads which Hogg had written in opposi- 
 tion to those included in the Minstrelsy, and it 
 was through his encouragement that he went again 
 to Edinburgh, where he introduced him to Con- 
 stable, who received him pleasantly, but told him 
 frankly that his poetry would not sell. Hogg said, 
 with equal frankness, that he thought it as good as 
 anybody's he had seen. Constable said that might 
 be ; but that nobody's poetry would sell, for he 
 found it the worst stuff that came to market. How- 
 ever, as he appeared to be a gay, queer chiel, if he 
 would procure him two hundred subscribers, he 
 would publish his book for him, and give him as 
 much as he could for it. Hogg did not much like 
 the subscription condition, but having no alterna- 
 tive he accepted it, and succeeded in getting five 
 hundred subscribers before the book was ready. 
 He had no plans of delivering the copies subscribed 
 for, so he simply sent them to the subscribers ; 
 some of whom paid him double, triple, and ten 
 times their price, while about one-third of the num- 
 ber preferred to take them and pay nothing. Still, 
 the venture was not a losing one, for between what 
 
JAMES HOGG 63 
 
 he obtained on a bill which Constable gave him in 
 addition to his subscribers' copies, and what he paid 
 him during the same year for a work on the diseases 
 of sheep, he realized about three hundred pounds, 
 and was richer than he had ever been before. He 
 was in his thirty- seventh year when he published 
 The Mountain Bard and The Shepherd's Guide. 
 
 The possession of so much money turned the 
 head of Hogg, who, in his own words, " went per- 
 fectly mad." He took a pasture farm in Dumfries- 
 shire, for exactly half more than it was worth, not, 
 as he would have us believe, because he was ignor- 
 ant of its value, but because he was cheated into it 
 by a great rascal who meant to rob him of all he 
 had. And not content with this blunder, he must 
 needs take another extensive farm which involved 
 him still more deeply. "It would have required at 
 least one thousand pounds," he wrote, "for every 
 one hundred that I possessed to have managed all 
 I had taken in hand ; so I got every day out of one 
 strait and confusion into a worse. I blundered and 
 struggled on for three years between those two 
 places, giving up all thoughts of poetry or literature 
 of any kind." Fairly run aground at last, he let his 
 creditors take all he had, and returned to Ettrick 
 Forest, where, he says, he was not only disowned 
 by those whom he loved and trusted most, but told 
 so to his face. " Having appeared as a poet and a 
 
64 JAMES HOGG 
 
 speculative farmer besides, no one would now em- 
 ploy me as a shepherd. I even appealed to some of 
 my old masters, but they refused me, and for a 
 whole winter I found myself without employment 
 and without money in my native country." 
 
 Something must be done ; and since there was 
 nothing for him to do in Ettrick, he wrapped his 
 plaid about his shoulders one winter day at the be- 
 ginning of his fortieth year, and marched away to 
 Edinburgh, determined to push his fortune as a man 
 of letters. If he had not been too ignorant to un- 
 derstand what literature was, and the difficulties 
 that beset all the avenues of approach thereto, he 
 would not have dared to attempt such an enterprise ; 
 but being ignorant, he dared, for he said that he was 
 " in utter desperation." When he got to Edinburgh 
 he found that his poetical talents were rated nearly as 
 low there as his shepherd qualities were in Ettrick, 
 and he sought in vain for employment from the edi- 
 tors of magazines and newspapers. They were will- 
 ing to print his effusions, but not to pay for them ; 
 there was no money going — not a farthing. He ap- 
 plied to Constable to print a volume of songs for 
 him ; and that douce man of business, though 
 averse to the proposition, out of good nature con- 
 sented to publish an edition for him, and give him 
 half the profits. As he never received any profits, 
 however, there probably were none ; for, according 
 
JAMES HOGG 65 
 
 to Hogg's own showing, The Forest Minstrel was 
 a trashy book, only a portion thereof, and that 
 the worst, being his own : for he inserted every 
 ranting rhyme that he had made in his youth to 
 please the circles about the firesides in the country. 
 Hogg would have been starved out of Edinburgh 
 while he was struggling to obtain a literary foothold 
 there, but for the kindness of a Mr. John Grieve, a 
 member of the firm of Grieve & Scott, hatters. He 
 had known the shepherd from his youth, and had a 
 genuine admiration for his poetical gift, an admira- 
 tion which was shared by his partner, who was will- 
 ing to receive him as a guest in their common house- 
 hold. They suffered him to want for nothing, either 
 in money or clothes ; for Mr. Grieve always noticed 
 his wants and supplied them ; nor would they allow 
 him to be obliged to anyone but themselves. Anxi- 
 ous to be doing something for himself, and finding no 
 chance of employment among the booksellers, Hogg 
 cast about for a way of being independent of them, 
 and with the confidence which characterized him at 
 this period hit upon the way which, above all others, 
 promised the least chance of success. This was the 
 establishment of a weekly journal, of which he was 
 to be the editor, and the chief, if not the sole, con- 
 tributor, and which was to instruct the citizens of 
 Edinburgh in literature and criticism, manners and 
 morals, with whatever else was indispensable to their 
 5 
 
66 JAMES HOGG 
 
 culture and his profit. He mentioned the project to 
 several printers, to whom he offered security if they 
 would print it for him ; but they refused, unless he 
 would procure the name of some bookseller as pub- 
 lisher. Then he mentioned it to Constable, who 
 laughed at him, and told him he wished him too 
 well to encourage him in it. At last he found a 
 bookseller, of whom he had never heard, who agreed 
 to his terms, and brought out the first number of 
 this wonderful weekly on September 1, 1810. It 
 was published at four pence, and was called The 
 Spy. When Hogg brought out the first and second 
 numbers, he thought he had subscribers enough 
 to keep the thing going ; but the third or fourth 
 number was so indecorous that no less than seventy- 
 three of his subscribers forsook him. It was a blow 
 to him, but not an instructive one ; for instead of 
 mending his ways, he railed against the fastidious- 
 ness of his readers, and went on as before. He be- 
 gan without literary assistance, and except such as 
 came to him unsought from several of his friends, 
 who quietly contributed a paper now and then, he 
 continued without it for a twelvemonth, when The 
 Spy vanished in the limbo of dead newspapers. 
 
 This absurd venture in journalism, by which Hogg- 
 was a loser rather than a gainer, was not without 
 advantage to him, since it made his name somewhat 
 widely known, and contained better examples of his 
 
JAMES HOGG 67 
 
 poetic gift than any that had yet seen the light. So, 
 at least, thought his good friend Grieve, who, con- 
 stantly regretting his carelessness, would never be- 
 lieve there was any effort in poetry above his reach. 
 He persuaded him to take the field again as a poet, 
 and, nothing loth, since besides these pieces he had 
 some metrical tales by him that he did not wish to 
 lose, he removed to a suburban place called Dean- 
 haughs, where he planned The Queen's Wake, which 
 he wrote in a short time. "It went on of itself," he 
 told Gillies, who says that he always ascribed a 
 separate vitality and volonte to his compositions, 
 so that it was not his business to carry them on ; on 
 the contrary, they carried on their author, and car- 
 ried him away, till at last he wondered even more 
 than others did at his own work ! 
 
 Hogg's new poem, or congeries of poems, finished, 
 he asked Constable to publish it, and Constable nat- 
 urally declined to commit himself until he had seen 
 the manuscript. Hogg demurred to this reasonable 
 condition, and loftily asked him what skill he had 
 respecting the merits of a book ? He admitted that 
 he might have none, but he said he knew how to 
 sell a book as well as any man, which was some con- 
 cern of Hogg's, and knew how to buy a book, also. At 
 last he told Hogg that if he would procure two hun- 
 dred subscribers, to secure him from loss, he would 
 give him one hundred pounds for the right to print 
 
btf JAMES HOGG 
 
 a thousand copies. Hogg put his proposals in the 
 hands of bis friends, who procured for him the re- 
 quisite number of subscribers ; but before they had 
 done so he was approached by a young and obscure 
 bookseller named Goldie, who requested to see the 
 manuscript, and who, after reading it, was anxious 
 to publish it, offering the same terms as Constable, 
 and, over and above these terms, the price of the 
 subscribers' copies to himself. So Constable was 
 thrown over, and Goldie became the publisher 
 of The Queen's Wake. And a very bad one he 
 proved. For though he sold two editions in a 
 short time, he failed before he published a third. 
 Through the aid of Blackwood, who was one of the 
 trustees of his bankrupt estate, Hogg recovered 
 about half of this edition, which was sold on com- 
 mission for him, and ultimately paid him twice 
 as much as he would have received from Goldie. 
 But Blackwood did more than this for him, for, hav- 
 ing lately formed a business connection with Mur- 
 ray, the great London publisher, he handed a por- 
 tion of the edition over to him, and so introduced 
 Hogg to the world of English readers. 
 
 Hogg may be said to have finished his literary 
 apprenticeship with The Queen's Wake, which 
 was published in his forty-third year, and was the 
 prologue to a succession of other books in verse and 
 prose. That one so ignorant as he should have 
 
JAMES HOGG 69 
 
 written it excited the wonder of all who knew him, 
 and gave it a distinction which readers of to-day fail 
 to find in it. It was remarkable as the work of an 
 unlettered man, but not so remarkable, all things 
 coDsiclered, as a work of the period when it appeared. 
 It was an outgrowth o*f the love of old balladry, 
 which Scott awakened and stimulated in his Min- 
 strelsy (1802-3), and a still stronger outgrowth of 
 the element of metrical romance which he turned 
 to such account in The Lay of the Last Minstrel 
 (1805), Marmion (1808), and The Lady of the 
 Lake (1810). Scott was inspired by the chivalrous 
 spirit of the Past, Hogg was inspired by Scott. 
 That the master was the superior to the scholar was 
 a matter of course, not merely because he was a 
 better poet, with a clearer vision and broader sym- 
 pathies, but because he was thoroughly equipped as 
 a man of letters. Both wrote rapidly, for it was a 
 period of voluminous writing that eschewed correc- 
 tion and revision ; but however carelessly Scott may 
 have written, he alwaj's wrote in good taste, which 
 was an unknown quality with Hogg. Still the shep- 
 herd was a poet, and was acknowledged as such by 
 the foremost of his contemporaries — Scott, Byron, 
 Southey, Wordsworth — even when they came to know 
 him personally, and were subjected to his queer 
 ways. Hogg understood the value of his reputa- 
 tion, and was not slow to take advantage of it, for 
 
70 JAMES HOGG 
 
 when his brother poets, as he called them, did not 
 seek his acquaintance, he was not in the least back- 
 ward in seeking theirs. He sought "Wilson, who 
 had lately published The Isle of Palms, which he 
 admired, and iuvited him to dinner at his lodgings 
 in the Gabriel Eoad, and found him a man after his 
 own heart. He was sought by Gillies, whom he also 
 found a man after his own heart, and was very com- 
 municative with him, rattling away about himself 
 and his writings. " But aiblins ye think owre 
 muckle o' the Queen's Wake. It's tolerably gude, 
 I'll no deny that ; but, eh, man, that's naething com- 
 pared wi' what I am able to do ! I hae a grand 
 poyem upon the sclate yenno, that fashes me rather, 
 for it wants to rin on faster than I can copy with 
 the pen. Ye'll think but little of the Queen's 
 Wake when ye come to see that ! " Gillies natur- 
 ally expressed a wish to hear a portion of the grand 
 " poyem upon the sclate ; " but Hogg at once de- 
 murred. "Na, na, fules and bairns should never 
 see work half done." Gillies insisted that Voltaire 
 had his old woman (he meant Moliere), and that 
 Scott was in the habit of consulting with William 
 Erskine and other friends on his poems as they ad- 
 vanced ; but Hogg scouted the idea. " That's vera 
 like a man's that frighted to gang by himsel' and 
 needs somebody to lead him. Eh, man, neither 
 William Erskine, nor any critic beneath the sun, 
 
JAMES HOGG 71 
 
 shall ever lead mei ! If I nae ha sense enouch to 
 mak and mend my ain work, no other hands or 
 heads shall meddle wi' it ; I want na help, thank 
 God, neither from books nor men." 
 
 Wilson invited Hogg to visit him at his house in 
 Cumberland, and nothing loth, for he was fond of 
 new scenes and new faces, he went and spent a 
 month, and they had some curious doings among 
 the gentlemen and poets thereabout. Among the 
 Lake poets whose acquaintance he made was Sou- 
 they, to whom, at Greta Hall, he sent a note one 
 evening, inviting him to come to the Queen's Head 
 and see him. He came, and stayed an hour or two 
 with him, greatly to his grief and disappointment, 
 since he refused to participate in his ram punch ! 
 For a poet to refuse his glass was a phenomenon to 
 the shepherd, who doubted if perfect sobriety and 
 transcendent poetical genius could exist together ; 
 he was sure they could not in Scotland, whatever 
 they might do in England, where there was little 
 that was worth drinking ! He breakfasted with 
 Southey the next morning, and spent that day and 
 the next with him, travelling over the hills and sail- 
 ing on the lake, Southey, who was in high spirits, 
 repeating songs and ballads, and chaffing his neph- 
 ew, young Coleridge, whom he was fond of. 
 
 Hogg made the acquaintance of another Lake 
 poet about this time, meeting him first at a dinner 
 
72 JAMES HOGG 
 
 in Edinburgh, travelling with him and his wife to 
 the scenes of the Yarrow, and rejoining him later at 
 his house in Rydal Mount. There was, there could 
 be, nothing in common between Hogg and "Words- 
 worth, the vanity of both was so dominant, and that 
 there should be a scene between them was on the 
 cards. It occurred at Rydal one night after dinner, 
 at which Wilson, De Quincey, and others were pres- 
 ent, and it was brought about by an aurora, or 
 something of the kind, which threw a great arch 
 across the heavens. They went out to see it, and, 
 arm in arm, by twos and threes, walked up and 
 down and discussed it, the women-folk wondering 
 what it meant, and hoping no harm would come of 
 it. Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy, expressed her 
 fears to Hogg, upon whose arm she was leaning, 
 and he, thinking to say a good thing, blundered 
 out : " Hout, me'm, it's neither mair nor less than 
 joost a treeumphal airch in honor of the meeting of 
 the poets." Whereupon Wordsworth, who had the 
 arm of De Quince}', demanded, "Poets? Poets? 
 What does the fellow*mean? Where are they?" 
 " Who could forgive this ? " asks Hogg, in his auto- 
 biography. And answers : " For my part, I never 
 can, and never will ! " 
 
 Hogg had some relation with another poet of this 
 period, and fortunately perhaps for both, it was 
 epistolatory and not personal. What it was we learn 
 
JAMES HOGG 73 
 
 from a letter written by Byron to bis publisher, under 
 the date of August 4, 1814 : "I have a most amus- 
 ing epistle from the Ettrick bard — Hogg ; in which, 
 speaking of his bookseller whom he denominates the 
 ' shabbiest ' of the trade for not ' lifting his bills,' he 
 adds in so many words, ' curse him and them both.' 
 This is a pretty prelude to asking you to adopt him 
 (the said Hogg) ; but this he wishes ; and if you 
 please, you and I will talk it over. He has a poem 
 ready for the press (and your bills, too, if l liftable '), 
 and bestows some benediction on Mr. Moore for his 
 abduction of Lara from this forthcoming Miscel- 
 lany." 
 
 The Miscellany to which Byron referred, was a 
 scheme of Hogg's for putting money in his pocket, 
 whence, when at intervals it found its way there, 
 it speedily disappeared. One might think the pov- 
 erty of his early years would have made him sav- 
 ing, but it only made him extravagant. His head 
 was turned by the sum that Constable paid him for 
 The Shepherd's Guide and The Mountain Bard, and 
 he straightway squandered it in farming. He re- 
 ceived a present of a hundred guineas from the 
 Countess of Dalkeith, to whom he dedicated The 
 Forest Minstrel, and of course that followed it. 
 Money burned his fingers. Moreover he was fond 
 of company, which was not always of the best ; for 
 though Gillies and Wilson introduced him to good 
 
74 JAMES HOGG 
 
 social circles in town and country, others often in- 
 troduced him into roystering convivial sets where he 
 had no need to learn to drink deep. He was not so 
 much careless in his habits as desultory and fitful, 
 alternating seasons of idleness with tremendous 
 heats of industry. He wrote The Queen's Wake in 
 a few weeks, and dashed off his next two poems, 
 The Pilgrims of the Sun (1815) and Mador of the 
 Moor (1816) at the same break-neck speed. Be- 
 tween these — perhaps before them — he projected a 
 Miscellany, to which his brother poets were to con- 
 tribute, and which he was to publish for his own 
 benefit. But they did not contribute, though he 
 said that Byron and Southey promised to do so. 
 Scott refused to have anything to do with it, and 
 was at once torn out of his good books. How 
 angry and unmannerly he was may be imagined 
 from one of his letters to Scott, in which the mild- 
 est expression was " Believe me, sir, yours with 
 disgust." Not long afterward the petulant poet 
 was taken dangerously ill at his lodgings, and Scott 
 hearing of his illness called on his friend Grieve, 
 and, charging him not to mention the circumstance, 
 offered to take on himself the expenses of the best 
 medical attendance. This fact came to the knowl- 
 edge of Hogg, who proceeded to eat humble pie — 
 not asking Scott for a renewal of their former in- 
 timacy, for haply his family would not suffer it 
 
JAMES HOGG 75 
 
 after what he had written — but that when they met 
 they might shake hands, and speak to one another 
 as old acquaintances. Scott's reply was a short 
 note, in which he told him to think no more of the 
 business, but to come and breakfast with him the 
 next morning. Hogg's Miscellany contributors fail- 
 ing him, he set to work, and in three weeks wrote 
 the Miscellany himself, and, to show what he could 
 do when he had a mind to, he imitated the most 
 notable of the delinquent band, and called the com- 
 posite composition The Poetic Mirror or the Liv- 
 ing Bards of Britain. We have his word for it that 
 it was considered clever, and it may have been ; but 
 it can hardly have been as clever, I should say, for 
 I have not seen it, as the Rejected Addresses, which 
 was published three or four years before, and may 
 have given him the idea. 
 
 What Hogg was up to this time he remained to 
 the end of his days. A man with a poetic gift — one 
 may almost say with a certain literary gift — but with 
 no skill in literature. He was ignorant and confident 
 — ignorant of the world and its ways, and confident 
 of himself and what he could do. If Scott could write 
 metrical romances, he could ; if the author of Wav- 
 erley could write stories, he could ; whatever any- 
 body could do, he could do. He wrote many tales 
 — The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1817), The Three 
 Perils of Man (1821), The Three Perils of Worn- 
 
76 JAMES HOGG 
 
 an (1823), The Confessions of a Fanatic (1824), and 
 others which are forgotten. He edited two vol- 
 umes of Jacobite Songs ; he wrote another met- 
 rical romance, Queen Hynde, and much besides in 
 Blackwood's Magazine and elsewhere. The world 
 was good to him, better than to most poets ; for it 
 made allowance for his untrained temperament, and 
 his unrestrained egotism. Men liked him — Scott, 
 Wilson, Southey — and not least among them the 
 Duke of Buccleuch, who gave him rent free the 
 lease of a farm on Altrive Lake, where he kept open 
 house year in and year out, feasting his flatterers, 
 whom he should have turned out of doors. And 
 women liked him. At least one did, well enough to 
 marry him at the age of fifty. 
 
 Such was James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who 
 died on November 21, 1835, in his sixty-fifth year. 
 
WILLIAM MOTHERWELL 
 
 There are certain books in my small library which 
 are so endeared to me by association that I am apt 
 to overrate their intellectual value, remembering, as 
 I do, the times and places where I read them for the 
 first time, or, going back farther among my scanty 
 pleasures of memory, the hour when I stumbled 
 across them on an old bookstall. I have sometimes 
 thought that I might have been a scholar in some 
 direction, instead of a desultory reader in many di- 
 rections, if the pocket money which was doled out 
 to me in boyhood had enabled me to buy the books 
 I wanted ; but as it came in very small sums, and as 
 infrequently as angel visits, I bought what I could, 
 not what I would — odd volumes of Shakespeare, or 
 such versifiers as Falconer and Beattie, whom I was 
 never young enough to consider poets, though I 
 thought the world did, and read them accordingly. 
 I had from the beginning an instinct in matters po- 
 etical — the instinct which told me that one kind of 
 writing in verse was poetry, while another kind of 
 writing in verse was not poetry ; though precisely 
 
78 WILLIAM MOTHEKWELL 
 
 what poetry was I could not for my life have told. 
 I knew that Burns was a poet, though I was slow in 
 mastering his Doric dialect, that Collins was a poet, 
 and that Falconer and Beattie were not poets. It 
 was my good fortune to begin right. There was, of 
 course, a world of things I had to learn, but I nev- 
 er had to unlearn anything ; for the books which 
 pleased me as a boy have always pleased me as a 
 man, and the books which did not please me as a 
 boy I have never been able to take kindly to. My 
 likes and dislikes were positive, and not the less so 
 because they were occasionally aroused by the same 
 author, who was neither wholly bad nor wholly good. 
 Such a one was William Motherwell, who was well 
 thought of in my younger years ; but who, I fancy, 
 is not much read now. 
 
 The family name of Motherwell was derived from 
 a village of that name in the parish of Dalziel, the 
 county of Lanark, Scotland, which village in turn 
 derived its name from a spring which once existed 
 there (and, for aught I know, may still be existing 
 there), which in the olden time was reported to pos- 
 sess certain medicinal virtues, and called the Well 
 of Our Ladye, in the belief that it was under the 
 protecting care of the Virgin Mother ; whence the 
 name, Motherwell, which, as a surname, has been 
 traced back to the close of the thirteenth century. 
 A slip of the Motherwell tree was transplanted, at 
 
WILLIAM MOTHEKWELL 79 
 
 the beginning of the fifteenth century, into Stirling- 
 shire, where it flourished on the banks of the Car- 
 ron, at a place called Muirmill, from the calling of 
 the proprietors, who, generation after generation, 
 were hereditary millers. But not all of them ; for 
 in the last decade of the eighteenth century a Will- 
 iam Motherwell, of that ilk, settled at Glasgow, 
 where he followed the business of an ironmonger, 
 and where, on October 13, 1797, about fifteen 
 months after the death of Burns, his third son, our 
 William Motherwell, was born. The elder Mother- 
 well was not prosperous at Glasgow ; so early in the 
 present century he removed with his family to Edin- 
 burgh, where, in his eighth year, Master William 
 was placed under the charge of a Mr. William Len- 
 nie, the author of several school-books, who was 
 thought to be an eminent teacher of English. Be- 
 ginning with the alphabet, and passing thence into 
 the earlier branches of boyish education, Mother- 
 well ultimately became the best scholar that Mr. 
 Lennie had, teaching himself in a twelvemonth a 
 small, distinct, and beautiful handwriting, and draw- 
 ing maps so cleverly that they might be mistaken 
 for copper-plate engravings. When William was in 
 the last year of his course, which ended in the fall 
 of 1808, his eleventh year, there was in the Mr. Len- 
 nie's school a girl named Jane Morrison. She was 
 the daughter of a brewer and cornfactor in Alloa, 
 
80 WILLIAM MOTHERWELL 
 
 was about Motherwell's age, and was pretty. But I 
 will let Mr. Lennie describe her : "Her hair was of 
 a lightish brown, approaching to fair : her eyes were 
 dark, and had a sweet and gentle expression ; her 
 temper was mild, and her manners unassuming. 
 Her dress was also neat and tidy. In winter she 
 wore a pale-blue pelisse, then the fashionable color, 
 and a light-colored beaver with a feather." 
 
 Motherwell greatly admired this charming young 
 person in the light-blue pelisse ; but as she is said 
 to have been wholly unconscious of his admiration, 
 he could hardly have known her out of school, and 
 must have been very backward there in showing 
 what he felt. They left school at the same time, 
 and never met again, she returning to her parents at 
 Alloa, and he going to Paisley, where he was con- 
 signed to the care of an uncle, a w r ell-to-do iron- 
 founder, by whom he was sent to the Paisley Gram- 
 mar School, where he remained for three years, and 
 is supposed to have wasted in what are called works 
 of imagination the time that should have been de- 
 voted to school exercises, and to have entertained 
 his school - fellows with stories about castles, and 
 robbers, and strange out of the way adventures, 
 spawned, no doubt, from his recollections of Mrs. 
 Kadcliffe and Monk Lewis. At the age of fifteen he 
 was removed from school by his uncle, and trans- 
 ferred to the office of the Sheriff-Clerk of Paisley, 
 
WILLIAM MOTHEKWELL 81 
 
 which was no more to his taste, I fancy, than a law 
 office was to my taste at his age. But boys were 
 not allowed to choose their employments then, nor 
 in my earlier days, particularly boys whose fathers 
 were unprosperous, or who were fatherless. He 
 turned his talents in penmanship to account in de- 
 ciphering ancient legal documents, and in sketch- 
 ing figures in armor and otherwise. He was given 
 on one occasion an old document to copy, and in- 
 stead of making an ordinary transcript, as he was 
 expected to, he surprised his employer by return- 
 ing a facsimile so perfect, that except for the color 
 and texture of the paper, it would have been difficult 
 to distinguish it from the original manuscript. It 
 was a dangerous accomplishment for a boy ; but 
 Motherwell was neither an Ireland nor a Chatter- 
 ton, so no harm came of it, or only such harm to 
 himself as resulted in later years from his attempts 
 to reproduce the spirit of early English poetry. 
 
 Motherwell performed his clerical duties in the 
 office of the Sheriff-Clerk until he was well on his 
 twenty-fourth year, when he was appointed Sheriff- 
 Clerk Depute of Eenfrewshire, an office which he 
 held until he had completed his thirty-second year. 
 Its emoluments brought him a considerable income, 
 much of which he spent in buying books that hit 
 his taste, accumulating a large library, which was 
 rich in old poetry and historical romance. At what 
 6 
 
82 WILLIAM MOTHEEWELL 
 
 time he first began to write his biographers have 
 not been able to discover, his early manhood was 
 passed in such laborious obscurity. He is said to 
 have written when only fourteen the first draft of 
 the poem in which he celebrated his childish enam- 
 ourment of Miss Morrison ; but it is not very likely. 
 His first book, The Harp of Renfrewshire, which 
 was published anonymously in his twenty - second 
 year, was a collection of selections from the poets of 
 that county, beginning with Sir Hugh Montgome- 
 rie, who died a very old man, nineteen years before 
 the birth of Shakespeare, and ending with Robert 
 Tannahill, who went out of what little mind he had 
 in the spring of 1810, at the age of thirty - five. 
 Motherwell wrote the introductory essay for this 
 collection (which I have never seen) and contributed 
 notes, which are said to be many and valuable. It 
 was the kind of book that might have been expected 
 from a young man with antiquarian tastes, and it 
 indicated the drift of his reading, and the course it 
 would probably take thereafter among the song- 
 writers and balladists of Scotland. It was a favorite 
 field of research among Motherwell's countrymen, 
 for success therein, if it was a guarantee of pecunia- 
 ry gain, was also the certainty of literary reputation. 
 In the spring of 1825 Motherwell sent to Sir 
 Walter Scott a curious old version of the ballad 
 of Gil Morris, upon which Home founded his 
 
WILLIAM MOTHEEWELL 83 
 
 tragedy of Douglas, which some of his admiring 
 countrymen thought superior to anything of Shake- 
 speare's (" Where's your Wully Shakespeare noo ? "), 
 and which interested Motherwell because the ad- 
 venture which it related occurred at Carrondale, 
 the home of his ancestors. The shadow of the 
 calamity that was about to fall upon the great min- 
 strel was lowering darkly before him ; but, true to 
 his love of letters and the impulse of his kind heart, 
 he acknowledged its receipt at once, and, entering 
 into the spirit of Motherwell's pursuit, wrote him a 
 long, scholarly, thoughtful, generous letter of en- 
 couragement and advice, which, like every letter he 
 ever wrote, was an honor to the one who received 
 it as well as to the one who sent it. Minstrelsy, 
 Ancient and Modern, was published at Glasgow in 
 1827, in two volumes, and the reputation of Mother- 
 well as a student and editor of balladry was estab- 
 lished. The year before these volumes were issued 
 there was started at Paisley the Paisley Advertiser, 
 the second editor of which was an Irish gentleman, 
 named William Kennedy, to whom our man of bal- 
 lads was drawn by the ties that sometimes bind lov- 
 ers of letters and artificers of verse ; and they be- 
 came fast friends. Motherwell contributed to, and 
 became a proprietor in, the Advertiser, and on the 
 retirement of Mr. Kennedy, in 1828, succeeded him 
 as its editor. He also began at this time, and 
 
84 WILLIAM MOTHEEWELL 
 
 carried on for a year, the Paisley Magazine, which 
 was considered creditable as a provincial periodical, 
 and which, no doubt, surpassed any metropolitan 
 one in its poetical department, since it contained 
 three notable poems from his pen. He edited the 
 Advertiser for about two years, and it is to be pre- 
 sumed successfully ; for at the end of that time he 
 was invited to become editor of the Glasgow Courier, 
 and he accepted the invitation. He had got on in 
 the world since he made facsimiles of old documents 
 in the office of the Sheriff-Clerk, and, if it had been 
 slowly, it had been surely. He was known as an 
 editor and a journalist, and was beginning to be 
 known as a poet. His friend Kennedy dedicated to 
 him a volume of verse in the year that he removed 
 to Glasgow (The Arrow and the Eose, and Other 
 Poems, 1830), and two years later he returned the 
 compliment by dedicating to Kennedy the first 
 selection of his own verse, Poems, Narrative and 
 Lyrical. 
 
 The career of Motherwell as the editor of the 
 Glasgow Courier was not, I think, one that his 
 friends and admirers would have selected for him, if 
 the choice had depended upon them, nor, I think, 
 one that he would have selected for himself if the 
 choice had depended upon him. But the res angusta 
 domi are imperative and implacable. Speaking for 
 myself, and solely from my own point of view, to be 
 
WILLIAM MOTHEEWELL 85 
 
 the editor of a political paper is to occupy a position 
 which no man of letters, least of all a poet, ought to 
 occupy, since there is never any lack of the kind of 
 men who are fitted to occupy such positions, fitted 
 by the things they call their minds, by their con- 
 fideDce in what they flatter themselves are their 
 opinions, by their adherence to the tenets of the 
 party to which they fancy they belong, and by 
 sundry other qualities which are not becoming in 
 poets, and men of letters, and gentlemen. That the 
 editors of political journals may believe that the 
 rubbish they write is the truth, the whole truth, and 
 nothing but the truth, I will not deny, so various 
 are the vagaries of mankind ; but admitting this be- 
 lief of theirs, I must say that I am sorry for them, 
 and sorry in proportion to their talents. The Glas- 
 gow Courier was a Tory paper, published at a period 
 which was a shock to every fibre in the nature of 
 Motherwell. It was a troublous, a dangerous time 
 in the politics of England, of France, of the world, 
 one may say ; for the old order was going, and the 
 new order was coming. The Eeform Bill, the glo- 
 rious days of July, and all the rest of that turmoil 
 is ancient history, and need not be repeated now. 
 That Motherwell took any, the least, part in it is 
 to be regretted ; for he must have written words 
 which had better not have been written, and inflicted 
 and suffered pangs which might have been spared, 
 
86 WILLIAM MOTHEKWELL 
 
 or might at any rate have been inflicted and suffered 
 by men inferior to him. 
 
 He fell upon evil days and evil tongues when he 
 joined the Orange Society, of which he was made 
 one of the district secretaries for the West of Scot- 
 land — a folly which would seem to show that his 
 brain was disordered, and which led to his being 
 summoned to London, to appear before a Committee 
 of the House of Commons whose business and duty 
 was to inquire into the constitution and practices 
 of the Orange Society. He appeared before this 
 committee, and lost his head — not because he lacked 
 courage to state what he knew, supposing that he 
 really knew anything — but because he was unready 
 in action and speech. " He not only required time 
 to arrange his ideas and to consolidate his thoughts 
 on the most ordinary occasions, but he was habitually 
 slow, and even confused, in the expression of them. 
 No ordeal could, therefore, be more embarrassing to 
 him than a formal examination before a body of 
 sharp-witted men, whose pleasure it not infrequent- 
 ly is to lay snares for an inexperienced witness." 
 Motherwell's biographer tells us that he was haunted 
 by strange fancies while in London ; that the com- 
 mittee perceived that something was wrong with 
 him, and that one of them, a Scottish member, of 
 whom he had often spoken severely in his editorial 
 capacity, treated him with marked attention, and 
 
WILLIAM MOTHERWELL 87 
 
 had him sent safely back to Glasgow, where, it is to 
 be hoped, he softened his editorial severity. But 
 the end was at hand ; for on the last day of October, 
 1835, eighteen days after his thirty-eighth birthday, 
 he dined and spent the evening at the' house of a 
 friend in the suburbs of Glasgow. " There was 
 dancing, and it was observed that he bled freely at 
 the nose, which was attributed to the heated state of 
 the apartments. On going into the open air for a 
 short time, the bleeding stopped, and at half-past ten 
 he left his friend's house in the company of the late 
 Mr. Robert McNish (better known as the Modern 
 Pythagorean) and the late Mr. Philip Ramsay, and 
 from these gentlemen he parted about eleven o'clock. 
 At four o'clock in the morning of the 1st of Novem- 
 ber, he was suddenly struck while in bed with a 
 violent stroke of apoplexy, which almost instantly 
 deprived him of consciousness. He had simply 
 time to exclaim : ' My head ! My head ! ' when he 
 fell back on the pillow, and never spoke more." 
 
 Such was William Motherwell, whose poetry I 
 read over and over in my nonage, in summer when 
 the days were long, and my work ended before the 
 setting of the sun, and under my evening lamp^ 
 when it was too dark and cold to be out-of-doors. 
 It attracted me, and it repelled me. I knew then 
 why it attracted me, and I know now, what I did 
 not then, why it repelled me. It was because a 
 
88 WILLIAM MOTHERWELL 
 
 great deal of it was a forced, not a natural, growth — 
 a simulation of moods and feelings which did not 
 exist in the mind or heart of the poet, a make-believe 
 of love and loss, of sin and sorrow. It was not a 
 creation, but a production, a manufactured melan- 
 choly, an elaborated gloom. It is studiedly morbid 
 and predeterminedly unhealthy, darkened with imag- 
 inary infamy, convulsive with pretended pangs. It 
 was, in short, merely literary verse, and was, there- 
 fore, a sham and a fraud. But this is only one side 
 of it ; for there is another side, and that, within the 
 limitations of Motherwell's genius, is glorious and 
 noble. Many poets have sung of childish love, but 
 none so well as Motherwell in Jeanie Morrison, 
 which is full of feeling and pathetic tenderness. 
 Many poets have sung of betrayed womanliness (for 
 lovely woman will stoop to folly), but none so well 
 as Motherwell in My heid is like to rend, "Willie, 
 the sorrow of which is heartfelt and profound. Very 
 different from these Scotch ballads are the Norse 
 songs, The Battle-flag of Sigurd, The Wooing Song 
 of Jarl Egill Skallagrim, and The Sword Chant of 
 Thorstein Baudi, which are conceived in the spirit 
 of the old skalds, wild and rugged, dark and pas- 
 sionate, threatening like the winds, terrible like 
 the waves, and every way powerful and admirable. 
 There is a dramatic element in these, and in Oug- 
 lou's Onslaught, The Covenanter's Battle Chant, 
 
WILLIAM MOTHERWELL 89 
 
 The Trooper's Ditty, and The Cavalier's Song, 
 which ought to be well known, since they figure 
 in the anthologies. But the anthologies do not al- 
 ways give us a poet's best things ; for here is 
 one of Motherwell's songs which has never to my 
 knowledge appeared in any collection, and which I 
 am sure every lover of good poetry will be glad to 
 have: 
 
 O Wae be to the Orders. 
 
 O, wae be to the orders that marched my luve awa', 
 And wae be to the cruel cause that gars my tears doun fa' ; 
 O, wae be to the bluidy wars in Hie Germanie, 
 For they have ta'en my luve, and left a broken heart 
 to me. 
 
 The drums beat in the mornin', afore the scriech o' day, 
 And the wee, wee fifes piped loud and shrill, while yet 
 
 the morn was gray ; 
 The bonnie flags were a' unfurled, a gallant sight to see, 
 But wae's me for my sodger lad that marched to Germanie. 
 
 O, lang, lang is the travel to the bonnie Pier o' Leith, 
 
 O, dreich it is to gang on foot wi' the snaw-drift in the 
 
 teeth ! 
 And O, the cauld wind froze the tear that gathered in my 
 
 e'e, 
 When I gaed there to see my luve embark for Germanie. 
 
 I looked ower the braid, blue sea, sae lang as could be seen 
 Ae wee bit sail upon the ship that my sodger lad was in ; 
 
90 WILLIAM MOTHEKWELL 
 
 But the wind was blawin' sair and snell, and the ship 
 
 sailed speedilie, 
 And the waves and cruel wars have twinned my winsome 
 
 luve frae me. 
 
 I never think o' dancin', and I downa try to sing, 
 
 But a' the day I speir what news kind neihour bodies 
 
 bring ; 
 I sometimes knit a stockin', if knittin' it may be, 
 Syne for every loop that I cast on, I am sure to let down 
 
 three. 
 
 My father gays I'm in a pet, my mither jeers at me, 
 And bans me for a daudit wean, in dorts for aye to be ; 
 But little weet they o' the cause that drumles sae my e'e, 
 O, they hae nae winsome luve like mine in the wars o 7 
 Germanie ! 
 
THE EARLY YEARS OF GIFFORD 
 
 If there was one critic who more than all other 
 professors of the ungentle craft was detested by the 
 writers of his time, it was William Gifford, and their 
 detestation, while often violent in its expression, 
 was richly deserved. It was not merely because he 
 was a critic that he was hated, but because he was 
 malicious and malignant, and because he did not 
 criticise from a literary, but from a political, point 
 of view. That he was not alone in this last pecu- 
 liarity, this deliberate and obstinate incompetency, 
 as we may say, was admitted by his victims, who, 
 belabored by the bludgeons of Lockhart, Maginn, 
 and Wilson, were able before long to forgive, if they 
 could not quite forget, those jocose blackguards, 
 who could take as well as give hard blows ; but 
 Gifford they never forgave. They despised him for 
 his venal pen, his sycophancy to the great, and for 
 his low origin. That he should have been despised 
 on account of his origin was hard ; for he neither 
 concealed it, as most men would have done, nor 
 boasted of it, as many might have done, but ac- 
 
92 THE EARLY YEARS OF GIFFORD 
 
 knowledged it in the frankest and manliest way. 
 The story of his early years, as related by himself, 
 was a melancholy, a pathetic ODe, and to have lived 
 through them and risen above them, as he did, was 
 to deserve well of the world. 
 
 He tells us, in his autobiography, that he knew 
 little of his family, and of that little not much that 
 was precise. His great-grandfather, the oldest of 
 his ancestors of whom he had heard, possessed con- 
 siderable property near Ashburton, Devonshire. 
 The family to which he belonged was reputed to 
 rank among the most ancient and respectable in 
 that county, and was counted at one time among 
 the wealthiest ; but its prosperity and its dignity 
 were not destined to a long life, their decadence 
 beginning with the son of this gentleman, who was 
 so extravagant and dissipated that a large part of 
 the property was bequeathed from him. The breed 
 of the Giffords was not improved by his son Edward, 
 who ran away from school and shipped on board of 
 a man-of-war, and, on being reclaimed from that ser- 
 vitude and sent to school again, ran away a second 
 time, and wandered about the country with the band 
 of Bamfylde Moor Carew, the king of the gypsies. 
 Cut off by his father, for no elderly prodigal ever 
 believed in the penitence of his descendant, he arti- 
 cled himself to a plumber and glazier, with whom 
 he remained long enough to learn his trade. Left 
 
THE EAELY YEAES OF GIFFOKD 93 
 
 the owner of two small estates by the death of his 
 father, he married Elizabeth Cain, the daughter of 
 a carpenter of Ashburton, and removed to South 
 Molton, where he set up in business for himself. 
 The wild blood in this young man, who could be 
 kept to nothing long, broke out at the end of four 
 or five years, when he made, or joined in, an attempt 
 to create a riot in a Methodist chapel ; to escape 
 prosecution for which act he fled, and shipped on a 
 large armed transport in the service of the Govern- 
 ment, of which, being a good seaman, he rose to be 
 second in command. His wife returned to Ash- 
 burton, where, in April, 1756, William Gifford was 
 born. The business at South Molton could not 
 have been a profitable one, for her only resource 
 on quitting it was the rent of three or four small 
 fields which still remained unsold. With this she 
 did what she could for herself and her child, who, 
 as soon as he was old enough to be trusted out of 
 her sight, was sent to a school-mistress, from whom 
 he learned the rudiments of spelling. His best 
 teacher, however, was his mother, who had stored 
 her mind with the current literature of her class in 
 the middle of the last century, which mostly con- 
 sisted of chap-book lore, and from her he acquired 
 much curious knowledge concerning Catskin, the 
 Golden Bull, the Bloody Gardener, and other famous 
 but forgotten rustic heroes. 
 
94 THE EAELT TEAES OF GIEFOED 
 
 Mariner Gifford returned at the end of eight 
 years to his wife and child. He had had good 
 wages since his departure, and had received more 
 than one hundred pounds for prize-money ; but, 
 sailor-like, he did not fetch much of it home with 
 him. The little property now left was turned into 
 money, and a trifle more was added to it by an 
 agreement to renounce all future pretensions to an 
 estate at Totness, which had been suffered to fall 
 into decay, and of which the rents had been so long 
 unclaimed that they could not be recovered except 
 by an expensive litigation. With this capital in 
 hand Mr. Gilford started in business again, this time 
 as a glazier and house-painter. Master William 
 was put in the free school, where he stayed about 
 three years, and where he learned to read better, 
 and to cipher a little. His home life could not have 
 been a happy one, if he had had wit enough to per- 
 ceive it, for his father, upon whom experience was 
 lost, wasted his time in unprofitable pursuits to the 
 great detriment of his business, and drank deeply, 
 as was the fashion then. He died of a decayed and 
 broken constitution before he was forty. That the 
 boy did not greatly love him was not to be wondered 
 at, since he had not grown up with him, and his 
 little advances to familiarity were repulsed with 
 coldness or anger. He did not long feel his loss, 
 nor was it a subject of much sorrow to him that his 
 
THE EARLY YEARS OF GIFFORD 95 
 
 mother was not able to keep him at school, though 
 he had now acquired a love of reading. She de- 
 termined to continue the business of her dead hus- 
 band, for which determination she had an added 
 reason in the shape of a second boy, and she did so, 
 after engaging a couple of journeymen, who, dis- 
 covering that she was ignorant of the business, 
 squandered her property and embezzled her money. 
 She followed her husband in less than a twelve- 
 month. She had borne his infirmities with patience 
 and good humor ; she loved her children dearly, 
 and died at last, exhausted with anxiety and grief 
 on their account. The poor orphans were left badly 
 off, for the older was not quite thirteen, and the 
 younger was hardly two, and they had not a relative 
 or friend in the world. Everything was seized upon 
 by a person named Carlile, for money advanced to 
 their mother. There was no one to dispute the jus- 
 tice of his claims, and no one to interfere, so he did 
 what he liked, which was to send the younger child 
 to the almshouse, and take to his own house the 
 elder, whose godfather he had been. Kespect for 
 the opinion of the town, which was that he had 
 amply repaid himself by the sale of the widow's 
 effects, induced him to send William to school again, 
 where he was more successful in learning. He was 
 fond of arithmetic, and the master began to distin- 
 guish him, but before three months his golden days 
 
9b THE EAKLY YEAKS OF GIFFOKD 
 
 were over. Carlile sickened at the expense of his 
 schooling, and the town having by this time become 
 indifferent to the boy's fate, he looked around for 
 an opportunity of ridding himself of a useless 
 charge. Before reaching this miserly conclusion 
 he had tried to make him a farmer's boy, but had 
 failed, for after driving the plough one day the lad 
 had refused to do so any longer. During the life- 
 time of his father he had fallen from a table he was 
 attempting to climb, and, drawing it after him, its 
 edge had struck his breast, and injured him so se- 
 verely that he had never recovered his health. See- 
 ing that he would not, and could not, plough, Car- 
 lile made up his mind to send him to Newfoundland 
 to assist in a store, and took him to Dartmouth to 
 a person who was to fit him out. but who, on seeing 
 him declared that he was "too small." The next 
 move of his graceless godfather was to place him on 
 a coaster at Brixham. What use was made of him 
 he does not state, but useful we may be sure he 
 was, for he remained on the coaster for nearly a 
 year, learning nautical terms, and contracting a love 
 for the sea, but reading nothing, for books there 
 were none on the Two Brothers, except the Coasting- 
 Pilot. His master, though ignorant and rough, was 
 not ill-natured ; his mistress, who pitied him for his 
 weakness and tender years, was always kind ; and 
 though he appeared to be overlooked by the sweet 
 
THE EAKLY YEAES OF GIFFOED 97 
 
 little cherub that sits up aloft to keep watch for the 
 soul of poor Jack, he was certainly observed by the 
 good women of Brixham, who, having known his 
 parents, and seeing him running about the beach 
 in a ragged jacket and trousers, reported that fact 
 in Ashburton, whither they went twice a week with 
 fish. The tale they told there revived the memory 
 of the lad among his townspeople, who, in their 
 indignation, made so free with the name of his god- 
 father that he was shamed, or frightened, into send- 
 ing for him. He returned, and was put to school 
 again, and soon at the head of it, qualified to assist 
 the master in case of an emergency. The kindness 
 of the master, who usually gave him a trifle on these 
 occasions, led him to think that if he engaged with 
 him as a regular assistant, and undertook the in- 
 struction of a few evening scholars, he might, with 
 a little additional aid, be enabled to support him- 
 self. He had a further object in view, and that was 
 to succeed his first master, who, grown old and in- 
 firm, was not likely to hold out more than three or 
 four years. It was a pretty educational castle in 
 the air, and it might have been builded in time, but 
 unfortunately he mentioned it to Carlile, who not 
 only treated it with the utmost contempt, but 
 straightway removed him from school, and appren- 
 ticed him to a shoemaker. Sullenly and silently 
 he went to his new master, a noisy, disputatious 
 7 
 
98 THE EAELY YEAES OF GIFEOED 
 
 Presbyterian, who bullied his opponents by the use 
 of synonymes of which they were ignorant. He 
 learned nothing from this Boanerges, and so lit- 
 tle of the trade to which he was bound, and which 
 he hated, that he sank by degrees to the common 
 drudge of the family. He still cherished the hope 
 of succeeding his old master, and secretly pursued 
 his favorite study of arithmetic at every interval of 
 leisure. But these intervals, which were not fre- 
 quent, soon became less so, his master having des- 
 tined his youngest son for the situation to which he 
 aspired. He had but one book — a treatise on Alge- 
 bra, given him by a young woman who had found it 
 in a lodging-house. He considered it a treasure, 
 but it was a treasure locked up, for it supposed the 
 reader to be well acquainted with simple equations, 
 of which he knew nothing. His master's son, how- 
 ever, had purchased Fenning's Introduction, which 
 was precisely what was wanted ; but he had care- 
 fully concealed it, and it was only by chance that 
 our would-be mathematician stumbled upon its hid- 
 ing-place. He sat up the greatest part of several 
 nights successively, and before he was discovered 
 had completely mastered it. He could now enter 
 upon his own Algebra, which carried him pretty far 
 into the science. But a difficulty still remained. 
 He had not a farthing on earth, nor a friend to give 
 him one ; pen, ink, and paper were therefore as 
 
THE EAELY YEAES OF GIFFORD 99 
 
 completely out of his reach as a crown and sceptre. 
 There was one resource, indeed, but the greatest 
 caution was necessary in using it. He beat out 
 pieces of leather as smooth as possible, and wrought 
 his problems upon them with a blunted awl ; for 
 the rest, his memory was tenacious, and he could 
 multiply and divide by it to a great extent. 
 
 His first intellectual effort was in poetry, of which 
 he had not dreamed before, and of which he 
 scarcely knew the name, and it happened in this 
 wise : A person had undertaken to paint a sign for 
 an ale-house in Ashburton, but was so little at home 
 in the animal kingdom that, instead of a lion, he 
 produced a dog ! This awkward affair moved one 
 of the acquaintances of our mathematical shoe- 
 maker to write a set of verses. He liked them, 
 but fancied he could compose something more to 
 the purpose himself. He made the experiment, 
 and was allowed by his shopmates to have suc- 
 ceeded. He thought no more of the matter until 
 another trifling occurrence furnished him with a 
 fresh subject ; so he went on until he had got to- 
 gether about a dozen pieces, which, poor as they 
 were, were talked about in his limited circle, and he 
 was invited to repeat them out of it. His perform- 
 ances were applauded and rewarded, for now and 
 then little collections were made for him, and he 
 received as much as sixpence in an evening. He 
 
100 THE EARLY YEAES OF GIEFORD 
 
 furnished himself by degrees with peri, ink, and 
 paper, and books of Geometry and the higher 
 branches of Algebra, which he cautiously concealed. 
 But the clouds were gathering fast, for his master 
 was roused to a terrific pitch of anger by his indif- 
 ference to his concerns, and the daily reports which 
 were brought to him of his attempts at versification. 
 He was required to give up his papers, and when 
 he refused his garret was searched, and his small 
 hoard of books discovered and confiscated. This 
 was a severe blow, but it was followed by one more 
 severe, which was the death of the old schoolmaster 
 whose succession he had counted upon, and the ap- 
 pointment in his place of a person not much older 
 than himself, and certainly not so well qualified. 
 
 The doggerel of our young shoemaker, which 
 passed from mouth to mouth among people of his 
 own degree, came to the knowledge of Mr. William 
 Cookesley, a surgeon of Ashburton, and gave him 
 curiosity to inquire after the author. He sent for 
 the lad, who told him his little history, and he at 
 once set to work to console and aid him. There 
 were difficulties in the way, however, one being his 
 apprenticeship, which still had eighteen months to 
 run, others being his want of education, the bad- 
 ness of his handwriting, and the incorrectness of 
 his language. But they did not deter this kind- 
 hearted man, who procured some of his poems, dis- 
 
THE EAELY YEAKS OF GIFEOKD 101 
 
 persed them among bis friends and acquaintances, 
 and opened a subscription for his relief. It was 
 headed, " A subscription for purchasing* the re- 
 mainder of the time of William Gifford, and for 
 enabling him to improve himself in writing and 
 English grammar ; " and though few contributed 
 more than five shillings, and none beyond ten and 
 sixpence, enough was raised to free him from his 
 bondage to the awl and last, his master receiving six 
 pounds to cancel his indentures. He was then 
 placed with a friendly clergyman, under whose in- 
 struction he made more progress than his patrons 
 had expected, greatly to the satisfaction of his bene- 
 factor, who had now become his father as well as 
 friend, and who persuaded his other patrons to re- 
 new their subscriptions. At the end of little more 
 than two years after his emancipation he procured 
 the place of Biblical Keader at Exeter College, Ox- 
 ford, where he soon became capable of reading 
 Latin and Greek with facility, and where he turned 
 his attention to a translation of Juvenal, which, as 
 it was not published for more than twenty years, 
 need not detain us now. His next patron (for Mr. 
 Cookesley died in his twenty-fifth year) was Earl 
 Grosvenor, who, receiving a letter which Gifford 
 had written to a friend in his care, but had omitted 
 the direction, supposing it was addressed to him- 
 self, opened it and read it. But Gifford shall tell 
 
102 THE EARLY YEAES OF GIFFOED 
 
 the rest of the story : " There was something in it 
 which attracted his notice, and when he gave it to 
 my friend he had the curiosity to inquire about his 
 correspondent at Oxford ; and, upon the answer he 
 received, the kindness to desire that he might be 
 brought to see him upon his coming to town. To 
 this circumstance, purely accidental on all sides, 
 and to this alone, I owe my introduction to that 
 nobleman. On my first visit he asked me what 
 friends I had, and what were my prospects in life ; 
 and I told him that I had no friends and no pros- 
 pects of any kind. He said no more ; but when I 
 called to take leave, previous to returning to college, 
 I found that this simple exposure of my circum- 
 stances had sunk deep into his mind. At parting, 
 he told me that he charged himself with my present 
 support and future establishment ; and that till 
 this last could be effected to my wish, I should 
 come and reside with him. These were not words, 
 of course ; they were more than fulfilled in every 
 point. I did go and reside with him ; and I ex- 
 perienced a warm and cordial reception, a kind and 
 affectionate esteem that has known neither diminu- 
 tion nor interruption, from that hour to this, a pe- 
 riod of twenty years." 
 
 Such were the early years of William Gifford, as 
 described by himself in the Introduction prefixed to 
 his translation of Juvenal, and that they embittered 
 
THE EAELY YEAES OF GIFFOKD 103 
 
 his character is not to be wondered at, however 
 much it may be regretted. But there was more 
 than one Gifford. There was the crabbed scholar 
 who translated Juvenal ; the contemptuous satirist 
 who broke the poor little butterflies of Delia Crusca 
 on the wheel ; the querulous and quarrelsome edi- 
 tor of Massinger and Ben Jonson ; and, worst of all, 
 the brutal editor of the Quarterly. And there was 
 still another Gifford — the one whom posterity, 
 which has forgiven and forgotten much in him, is 
 willing to think kindly of — Gifford, the poet, who 
 remembered that he was once young in his Notes to 
 his Baviad and Mseviad, and softened their sav- 
 agery with three tender lyrics, the last of which I 
 will quote : 
 
 The Grave of Anna. 
 
 I wish I was where Anna lies, 
 
 For I am sick of lingering here ; 
 And every hour Affection cries 
 
 Go, and partake her humble bier. 
 
 I wish I could ! For when she died 
 
 I lost my all, and life has proved, 
 Since that sad hour, a dreary void, 
 
 A waste unlovely and unloved. 
 
 But who, when I am turned to clay, 
 
 Shall duly to her grave repair, 
 And pluck the ragged moss away, 
 
 And weeds that have no business there ? 
 
104 THE EAELY YEAES OF GIFFORD 
 
 And who, with pious hand, shall bring 
 The flowers she cherished — snowdrops cold, 
 
 And violets that unheeded spring, 
 To scatter o'er her hallowed mould ? 
 
 And who, when memory loves to dwell 
 
 Upon her name forever dear, 
 Shall feel his heart with passion swell, 
 
 And pour the bitter, bitter tear ? 
 
 I did it ; and, would fate allow, 
 
 Should visit still, should still deplore ; 
 
 But health and strength have left me now, 
 And I, alas, can weep no more. 
 
 Take then, sweet maid, this simple strain, 
 
 The last I offer at thy shrine ; 
 Thy grave must then undecked remain, 
 
 And all thy memory fade with mine. 
 
 And can thy soft, persuasive look, 
 Thy voice, that might with music vie, 
 
 Thy air, that every gazer took, 
 Thy matchless eloquence of eye ; 
 
 Thy spirits, frolicsome as good, 
 Thy courage, by no ills dismayed, 
 
 Thy patience, by no wrongs subdued, 
 Thy gay, good-humor— can they fade ? 
 
 Perhaps — but sorrow dims my eye ; 
 
 Cold turf, which I no more must view, 
 Dear name, which I no more must sigh, 
 
 A long, a last, a sad adieu ! 
 
ROBERT BLOOMFIELD 
 
 There is a charm, a fascination, a spell in the writ- 
 ing of verse that exceeds that which besets all other 
 intellectual exercises, and something very like mad- 
 ness, if it be not madness itself, that creates and 
 supports the determination to persist therein at any 
 and every cost. 
 
 1 ' There is a pleasure in poetic pains 
 Which only poets know." 
 
 They may not be good poets, frequently they are 
 not ; they need not be poets at all ; all that is 
 necessary is that they should be possessed with a 
 desire to rhyme, and convinced of their capacity to 
 do so. That there is a great difference between 
 poetry and prose the most unlettered are ready to 
 admit ; but what constitutes this difference, except 
 that prose may be written anyhow, while poetry 
 must be written in lines which will scan, and which, 
 as a rule, should rhyme with one another, is an arti- 
 cle of belief with the majority of writers and read- 
 ers. That certain moods of mind and trains of 
 
106 EOBERT BLOOMFIELD 
 
 thought, certain emotions and passions, are essen- 
 tially poetic, and that others, which are equally 
 vivid and lucid, equally tender and poignant, are es- 
 sentially prosaic — this, which ought to be the first 
 of lessons, both for rhymesters and poets, is gener- 
 ally the last that is learned by either, so confused 
 and contradictory are the received poetic creeds and 
 the accepted poetic practices. There would be fewer 
 poets than there are if the knowledge that poetry is 
 the profoundest of arts, and not the shallowest of 
 impulses, was as widespread and as potent as it 
 should be ; for it is not to fulness of knowledge but 
 density of ignorance that we must lay the unneces- 
 sary parentage of threshers like Stephen Duck, 
 milk-women like Ann Yearsley, and farmers' boys 
 like Eobert Bloomfield. To consider these writers, 
 and the class of uneducated poets to which they be- 
 long, as of any serious consequence in literature, is 
 to consider them too curiously, since they seldom or 
 never repay the patience and the pains that are ne- 
 cessary to read them ; not to insist upon the loss of 
 time of which we are conscious during the reading. 
 We forget them as poets, but remember them as 
 persons, partly on account of the mental delusions 
 under which they labored, and partly on account of 
 their calamitous lives. They point a moral and 
 adorn a tale as surely as Otway, or Lee, or Chatter- 
 ton, or old Thomas Churchyard, whose epitaph for 
 
EOBEET BLOOMFIELD 107 
 
 himself might well serve for theirs, and be, if any- 
 thing can be, a warning to others : 
 
 " Poetry and poverty this tomb doth enclose ; 
 Wherefore, good neighbors, be merry in prose." 
 
 The career of Eobert Bloomfield was a melan- 
 choly one, of a kind that was not uncommon in the 
 last century among the laboring classes of England, 
 who were born in a poverty which they could no 
 more escape than the beasts of the field the burdens 
 that were laid upon them, and who had nothing to 
 look forward to, when they were broken down with 
 toil, but death, or the parish poorhonse. He was 
 born on December 3, 1766, at Honington, Suffolk, 
 the son of a tailor, who died when he was a year 
 old, leaving a family of six children, and a disconso- 
 late widow, who must needs marry again when Rob- 
 ert was seven, and have another family. She kept 
 the village school, and, while instructing the chil- 
 dren of her neighbors, managed to instruct her own 
 little brood, the youngest of whom learned to read 
 almost as soon as he could speak. Reading was 
 probably all she could teach him, for such knowl- 
 edge of penmanship as he had he picked up from a 
 schoolmaster at Ixworth, under whose tuition he re- 
 mained only two or three months, never going to 
 another master. When he was eleven he was taken 
 by a brother-in-law of his mother, who had a farm 
 
108 ROBEET BLOOMFIELD 
 
 in the adjacent village of Sapiston, who in addition 
 to the sum of one shilling and sixpence a week, 
 which it was customary for farmers to pay such 
 boys, agreed to take him into the house, no doubt 
 on account of the relationship, saving his mother 
 from other expense than that of finding him a few 
 things to wear. He was so small of his age it was 
 thought he would never be able to earn his living 
 by hard labor. So he became that doer of odd 
 chores, that miscellaneous factotum, a farmer's boy. 
 
 Two of the elder Bloomfield boys were working at 
 trades in London, Nathaniel being a tailor like his 
 father before him, and George a shoemaker ; and 
 to them their mother wrote before long respecting 
 their brother Eobert. George promised to take the 
 boy if she would let him have him, and Nathaniel 
 promised to clothe him ; so she took the coach for 
 London with him, determining to place him herself 
 in their hands. George Bloomfield met them at the 
 inn where the coach stopped, and rather a queer 
 pair of rustics that mother of forty-five and that boy 
 of fifteen must have been, particularly the last, who 
 was not bigger than most boys of twelve, and who 
 strutted about dressed just as he was from keeping- 
 sheep and hogs, his shoes filled full of stumps in the 
 heels. He stared about him, boy like, and slipped 
 up, for his nails were not used to a flat pavement. 
 
 Charged to watch over him as he valued a 
 
ROBERT BLOOMFIELD 109 
 
 mother's blessing, to set good examples for him, and 
 to never forget that he had lost his father, George 
 took his brother home with him. He lived in 
 Pitcher's Court, Bell Alley, Coleman Street, in a 
 house of the sort that was then let to poor people 
 in London, with light garrets fit for mechanics to 
 work in, into one of which garrets, where there were 
 five shoemakers at work, and two turn-up beds, lit- 
 tle Eobert was received. They were all single men, 
 lodgers at a shilling a week each ; their beds were 
 coarse, and the garret was far from clean and snug. 
 Eobert was their man to get them what they want- 
 ed to hand. At noon he fetched their dinners from 
 the cook-shop ; if they wanted beer they sent him 
 for it, and then assisted him in his work, teaching 
 him the rudiments of cobbling. When the boy 
 came every day from the public-house to take back 
 the pewter pots, and hear what porter was wanted, 
 he always brought yesterday's newspaper, which 
 they used to read in turns until Eobert was among 
 them, after which he mostly read for them, his time 
 being of the least value. 
 
 He frequently met with words in his reading 
 with which he was unacquainted, and as he worried 
 over them it occurred to his brother to buy for him 
 a small dictionary which he saw on a bookstall, and 
 which must have been badly ill-used since it cost 
 him only fourpence. By the help of this he was 
 
110 EOBEET BLOOMFIELD 
 
 soon able to read and understand the long speeches 
 of Burke, Fox, and other orators of the time. He 
 was also benefited by the preaching or lecturing of 
 a dissenting minister named Fawcet, whose diction 
 was modelled after that of Johnson's Rambler, 
 and from whom he learned to pronounce what he 
 called the hard, meaning no doubt the polysylla- 
 bic, words. Books were scarce in the garret of 
 these shoemakers, mostly consisting of those that 
 came out in sixpenny weekly numbers, such as 
 the History of England, the British Traveller, and 
 a Geography. It was an era of periodicals, whose 
 chief advantage to their readers was their cheap- 
 ness. Among these was one called the London Mag- 
 azine, which George Bloomfield took in, and which 
 contained reviews of new publications. Robert was 
 greatly interested in this department, as well as in 
 the Poet's Corner, to which he became a contribu- 
 tor of smooth verses, about village girls, returning 
 sailors, and other important poetical personages. 
 About this time there came into their garret an- 
 other lodger, who was afflicted with fits, which so 
 distressed Robert that the brothers changed their 
 lodgings to Blue Hart Court, where in their new 
 garret they found a Scotchman, who was a Calvin- 
 ist instead of an epileptic, and who had a number of 
 books, which, not particularly valuing, he lent to 
 Robert, classics like Paradise Lost and The Sea- 
 
EOBERT BLOOMFIELD 111 
 
 sons, and which the lad eagerly devoured, espe- 
 cially the last, which was a revelation to him. 
 
 Not long* after this the journeymen shoemakers of 
 London rose in rebellion against their employers, 
 the point in dispute between them being whether 
 those who had learned the trade without serving 
 an apprenticeship should be allowed to follow it, a 
 question which the employer of George and Robert 
 solved for himself by discharging every man who 
 worked for him that had joined their clubs. Their 
 acting committees got into the shop of this plucky 
 Crispin, and, finding Robert there, threatened to 
 prosecute his master for employing him, and his 
 brother for teaching him. It was a pretty quarrel 
 while it lasted — this case of early boycotting, but it 
 frightened Robert so that he returned to the coun- 
 try, where he was kindly received by his old master. 
 At the end of two or three months he went back to 
 London, where the employer of George undertook 
 to receive him as an apprentice, and, the dispute in 
 the trade being still undecided, to secure him from 
 any consequences of the litigation. 
 
 The brothers remained together until Robert was 
 turned of twenty, when they separated, George 
 going to Bury St. Edmunds, and Robert staying in 
 London. It is not difficult to imagine his life during 
 this period, since it could not have differed much 
 from what it had been, nor during the four or five 
 
112 EOBERT BLOOM FIELD 
 
 years that ensued, when, besides shoemaking, he 
 studied music, and became a player on the violin, 
 and when, following the example of his tailor 
 brother, who had married a Woolwich woman, he 
 married, just after his twenty-fourth year, the comely 
 daughter of a boatbuilcler in the Government yards 
 there. He wrote to his brother George that he had 
 sold his fiddle and got a wife ; but, humanly speak- 
 ing, he had better have kept his fiddle and not got a 
 wife ; for the pair were so wretchedly poor and 
 lived in such squalor that it was several years before 
 they could get out of dirty furnished lodgings, and 
 have a bed of their own. When that good fortune 
 was reached, they lived in a room up one pair of 
 stairs in a house in Bell Alley, where two pairs of 
 stairs higher there was a light garret, where Bloom- 
 field was allowed to sit and work with five or six 
 others, and where he composed The Farmer's 
 Boy. I say composed rather than wrote, for the 
 whole of Winter and the greater part of Autumn 
 was finished before a line of either was written. 
 It was no uncommon thing for Bloomfield to carry 
 hundreds of lines in his head, until he could 
 find, or make, an opportunity to put them on paper. 
 Composed under circumstances like these, The 
 Farmer's Boy was at length completed, and the 
 question arose what to do with it ? For whatever 
 pleasure there may be in stringing rhymes together, 
 
ROBERT BLOOMFIELD 113 
 
 even bad rhymes (and there must be a great deal, 
 or so many men, women, and children would not in- 
 dulge in that pastime), they are never strung to- 
 gether for the writer alone, but are always meant to 
 meet the eye of the public. The manuscript which 
 was offered to several London publishers, who never 
 looked at it, or had it looked at by their readers, 
 but duly returned it when called for by the person 
 who left it at their shops, was finally sent by George 
 Bloomfield to Capel Lofft, to whom he wrote a 
 simple, manly letter about his brother, and whom he 
 asked to read the manuscript, and tell him what he 
 thought of it. I know little about Mr. Lofft, of 
 whom there is not much to know now, except that 
 he was a writer of legal treatises, the editor of two 
 books of Paradise Lost, which he annotated, and 
 the editor and author of a five-volume collection of 
 Sonnets in sundry European languages ; but he 
 must have been a person of some distinction, or the 
 manuscript would not have been sent to him, a 
 gentleman of leisure, or he would not have read it, 
 as well as kindly, considerate, independent, and not 
 averse from forming an opinion of his own respect- 
 ing the work of an uneducated and unknown poet. 
 The Farmer's Boy was in Mr. Lofft's hands for 
 more than a year, but it was in his hands to some 
 purpose, for receiving it in November, 1798, a few 
 days before Bloomfield was thirty-three, he pub- 
 8 
 
114 EOBERT BLOOMFIELD 
 
 lished it in March, 1800, in a superb quarto, with 
 cuts by Bewick, and it was at once successful. 
 Twenty-six thousand copies were sold in less than 
 three years ; it was translated into French and 
 Italian, and a part of Spring was rendered into 
 Latin hexameters. "What the poets of the clay 
 thought of it I have forgotten, if I ever knew, but 
 Lamb, I remember, cared nothing for it : for writ- 
 ing some months after its publication to his friend 
 Manning, who had ashed him about it, he said : 
 " Don't you think the fellow who wrote it (who is a 
 shoemaker) has a poor mind ? Don't you find he is 
 always silly about poor Giles, and those abject kind 
 of phrases which mark a man that looks up to 
 wealth ? What do you think ? None of Burns's 
 poet dignity. I have just opened him, but he makes 
 me sick." It was not in the nature of a man like 
 Lamb to respect a man like Bloomfield. There was 
 nothing in common between them, the one being a 
 scholar and a thinker, the other an unlettered rus- 
 tic, with a knack at versifying. The reputation of 
 •Burns, who died four years before, prepared the 
 way for a self-made rhymester like Bloomfield, 
 whose temporary vogue prepared the way in turn 
 for a little school of self-made rhymesters who sprung 
 up around him. There are tracts of literature 
 wherein, as in old, neglected pastures, mushrooms 
 are sometimes found, and with these mushrooms 
 
ROBERT BLOOMFIELD 115 
 
 hundreds of other fungi which are often mistaken 
 for them by the ignorant and the credulous. 
 
 Byron described Churchill as the comet of a sea- 
 son. If I were to describe Bloomfield, it would be 
 as a glow - worm, whose mild and fitful radiance 
 twinkled awhile, and then went out in the dark- 
 ness. When The Farmer's Boy appeared he was a 
 Ladies' Shoemaker, working for a Mr. Davies, in 
 Lombard Street ; but its success enabled him to re- 
 move to a small house in the City Road. A little 
 later the Duke of Grafton bestowed upon him the 
 post of under-sealer in the Seal Office, concerning 
 which I know no more than Thackeray did of the 
 Pipe Office, when he wrote about Congreve. Its 
 duties were light, but his health was so poor that he 
 was not able to perform them, and soon resigned. 
 His Grace then made him an allowance of a shilling 
 a day, which his successor continued, Bloomfield 
 adding, or trying to add, to that princely income by 
 the manufacture of iEolian harps, and the writing 
 of more verse, three volumes of which were pub- 
 lished in the next four years — Rural Tales in 
 1802, Good Tidings in 1804, and Wild Flowers 
 in 1806. Then, by the advice of some of his 
 friends, he went into the book trade, and soon be- 
 came bankrupt. His health growing worse, his 
 friends took him on a tour in Wales, the poetic 
 fruits of which were given to the world in 1811, in 
 
116 EOBERT BLOOMFIELD 
 
 The Banks of the "Wye. Later he went for a time 
 to Shefford, in Bedfordshire ; and later, after re- 
 turning to London, he went to Canterbury and 
 Dover. Last of all, having become a hypochondriac 
 and half-blind, he went again to Shefford, where, 
 on August 12, 1823, he died in great poverty, 
 leaving a widow and four children. His later 
 writings were a History of Little Davy's New Hat, 
 1817 ; May Day with the Muses, 1822 ; and Hazle- 
 wood Hall, a Village Drama, 1823. Poetry was a 
 fatal dowry in the Bloomfield family ; for, car- 
 ried away by the example of Bobert, Nathaniel and 
 George were both addicted to it, the last dying in 
 wretched squalor about eight years after his famous 
 brother. 
 
 No British poet ever had a harder life than Bob- 
 ert Bloomfield, whose misfortune it was to suffer 
 from poetry and poverty alike. He cannot be said 
 to have been worsened by his gift of verse, such as 
 it was, but he can hardly be said to have been bet- 
 tered by it, since it neither developed his character 
 nor strengthened his mind. But perhaps it did all 
 that could be expected, his mind being, as Lamb 
 observed, a poor one, and his character a weak one. 
 He was the creature of circumstances, crushed by 
 inherited poverty, and cursed with a feeble consti- 
 tution and constant illness. Nature does not make 
 heroes out of sickly shoemakers only five feet four 
 
KOBEBT BLOOMFIELD 117 
 
 inches high, still less great poets. We should re- 
 member this in thinking of Bloomfield, as in read- 
 ing his verse we should remember the period at 
 which it was written. It was as different from our 
 period, which is more poetical, as it was from the 
 Elizabethan period, which was more poetical still. 
 We should remember The Seasons when we read 
 The Farmer's Boy, and thank our stars that the 
 reign of descriptive rural verse is past. The verse 
 of Bloomfield is deficient in poetic qualities, in grace, 
 in tenderness, in imagination ; but it is simple and 
 natural, and not without a certain unliterary charm. 
 A passage from The Soldier Home in his May Day 
 with the Muses, will show the quality of Bloom- 
 field. 
 
 My untried muse shall no high tone assume, 
 Nor strut in arms ; — farewell my cap and plume ; 
 Brief be my verse, a task within my power, 
 I tell my feelings in one happy hour ; 
 But what an hour was that, when from the main 
 I reached this lovely valley once again ! 
 A glorious harvest filled my eager sight, 
 Half shocked, half waving in a flood of light ; 
 On that poor cottage roof where I was born 
 The sun looked down as in life's early morn. 
 I gazed around, but not a soul appeared, 
 I listened on the threshold, nothing heard : 
 I called my father thrice, but no one came ; 
 It was not fear or grief that shook my frame, 
 
118 ROBERT BLOOMFIELD 
 
 But an o'erpowering sense of peace and home, 
 
 Of toils gone by, perhaps of joys to come. 
 
 The door invitingly stood open wide, 
 
 I shook my dust, and set my staff aside. 
 
 How sweet it was to breathe that cooler air, 
 
 And take possession of my father's chair ! 
 
 Beneath my elbow, on the solid frame, 
 
 Appeared the rough initials of my name, 
 
 Cut forty years before ! — The same old clock 
 
 Struck the same bell, and gave my heart a shock 
 
 I never can forget. A short breeze sprung, 
 
 And while a sigh was trembling on my tongue, 
 
 Caught the old dangling almanacks behind, 
 
 And up they flew like banners in the wind ; 
 
 Then gently, singly, down, down, down they went, 
 
 And told of twenty years that I had spent 
 
 Far from my native land. That instant came 
 
 A robin on the threshold ; though so tame, 
 
 At first he looked distrustful, almost shy, 
 
 And cast on me his coal-black, steadfast eye, 
 
 And seemed to say (past friendship to renew), 
 
 " Ah ha ! old worn-out soldier, is it you ? " 
 
 Through the room ranged the imprisoned humble bee, 
 
 And boomed, and bounced, and struggled to be free, 
 
 Dashing against the panes with sullen roar, 
 
 That thrust their diamond sunlight on the floor ; 
 
 That floor, clean sanded, where my fancy strayed 
 
 O'er undulating waves the broom had made, 
 
 Reminding me of those of hideous forms 
 
 That met us as we passed the Cape of Storms, 
 
 Where high and loud they break, and peace comes never : 
 
 They roll and foam, and roll and foam forever. 
 
ROBERT BLOOMFIELD 119 
 
 But Jiere was peace, that peace which home can yield ; 
 The grasshopper, the partridge in the field, 
 And ticking clock, were all at once become 
 The substitutes for clarion, fife, and drum. 
 
 There are touches in this which recall Goldsmith 
 at his best, as in The Deserted Village. 
 
JOHN CLARE 
 
 Of great poets since the race, emerging from 
 savagery, discovered the worth of spiritual emo- 
 tion and the charm of melodious words, there have 
 been but few ; but of poets there have been many. 
 There are poets, and poets. Precisely what poetry 
 is no one has yet been able to define, it is mani- 
 fested in so many ways, each being a mask behind 
 which lurks the personality of the poet, now con- 
 cealing and now revealing itself. Epical in Homer 
 and Milton, dramatic in Shakespeare, theological in 
 Dante, philosophical in Goethe, and misanthropical 
 in Byron, it is a Proteus, which, absent nowhere, is 
 nowhere present, " one and indivisible." With poets 
 like these it is more than a royal inheritance, an in- 
 exhaustible treasury of whatever was greatest and 
 best in their hearts and souls ; with others it is 
 merely a gift from Nature, who is bounteous now, 
 and now niggardly. Every great poet is a great in- 
 tellect ; for the mass of poets, who are divided into 
 less, lesser, and least, intellect is not so much 
 needed as impulse and inclination, aptitude and 
 
JOHN CLAEE 121 
 
 persistence, and that strange confidence which is 
 begotten of ignorance, and which the ignorant are 
 prone to mistake for genius. Poetry was not a 
 mental acquisition and development with Bloom- 
 field and Clare ; it was an alms which Nature be- 
 stowed upon them in a generous mood, to lighten 
 the dark road they were to travel, and to console 
 them in their misfortunes and sufferings. 
 
 John Clare, the son of Parker and Ann Clare, was 
 born at Helpstone, on July 13, 1793. The elder of 
 twins, and so small when an infant that his mother 
 said he might have been put in a pint-pot, his par- 
 ents were the poorest of English poor, his father 
 being a day laborer who, broken down with hard 
 work and privation, became a pauper at an early 
 age, and received an allowance of five shillings a 
 week from the parish, while his mother, who was of 
 a feeble constitution, was afflicted with dropsy. At 
 the age of seven he was set to watch sheep and 
 geese on the village heath, where he made the 
 acquaintance of an old woman called Granny Bains, 
 who had committed to memory a great number 
 of old songs, which she used to sing to the little 
 fellow, who kept repeating them to himself all day, 
 and in whose dreams they hummed all night. Be- 
 fore long he was promoted from watching sheep 
 and geese to the rank of team leader, and to help- 
 ing his father in the threshing barn. Exposure in 
 
122 *" JOHN CLAEE 
 
 the ill-drained fields brought on an attack of ague, 
 rallying from which he was sent into the fields 
 again. Kecovering his health, he sometimes made 
 by overwork a few pennies, which he hoarded for 
 schooling, and which enabled him to attend an 
 evening school in the winter. A favorite with the 
 master, he was allowed the run of his small library, 
 his reading ranging from Bonnycastle's Arithmetic 
 and Ward's Algebra to Kobinson Crusoe. By the 
 time he was fourteen or fifteen he had begun to 
 write verse, which he showed to his mother, telling 
 her that it was worth silver and gold. " Ay, boy, it 
 looks as if it were," she said, though she thought 
 he was wasting his time. He deposited his scrib- 
 blings in a chink in the cottage wall, whence they 
 were duly subtracted by his mother to boil the 
 morning kettle. 
 
 Clare's earliest known literary inspiration ante- 
 dated these scribblings by a year or two. It came 
 in the shape of Thomson's Seasons, which was 
 shown to him by a companion, and of which he was 
 eager to possess a copy. Learning that one might 
 be bought at Stamford for eighteenpence, he 
 begged his father to give him that sum ; but the 
 poor man was not able to do so. By strenuous 
 exertions his mother managed to raise sevenpence, 
 and by loans from friends in the village he made up 
 the deficiency. He rose before dawn the next Sun- 
 
JOHltf CLAEE 123 
 
 day, and walked to Stamford, seven miles away, to 
 buy the precious book, forgetting, or not knowing, 
 that business could not be transacted there on that 
 day. After he had waited three or four hours be- 
 fore the book-shop, a passer-by informed him of that 
 fact, and that the shop would not be opened until 
 the next morning. He returned to Helpstone with 
 a heavy heart, and next morning retraced his steps, 
 and secured the book, which he tried to read on the 
 way home, but met with so many interruptions that 
 he clambered over the wall of Burghley Park, and, 
 throwing himself on the grass, read it twice through 
 before rising. Not long after this his father applied 
 to the head-gardener of Burghley Park to employ 
 John, and he was engaged for a three years' appren- 
 ticeship, at the rate of eight shillings a week for the 
 first year, and an advance of one shilling a week for 
 each succeeding year. Parker Clare considered 
 this a fortunate beginning for his son, but it was 
 really a yery unfortunate one ; for it threw him into 
 the society of a set of roystering rustics, who com- 
 pelled him to go with them on their nightly visits 
 to public-houses in the neighborhood, where he 
 drank so much more than was good for him that he 
 was overcome by it, and slept out in the open air 
 on several occasions. Besides this addiction to bib- 
 ulosity, of which he set the example, the head-gar- 
 dener was of a brutal disposition, which circum- 
 
124 JOHN CLAEE 
 
 stance probably accounts for Clare's running away 
 from Burghley Park before he had been there a 
 year, and walking, with a fellow-apprentice, twenty 
 or thirty miles, until they found a nurseryman who 
 gave them something to do. 
 
 Homesick and destitute, the runaway apprentice 
 returned to Helpstone, where be became a farm 
 laborer, and where he won the ill-will of his neigh- 
 bors, who did not approve of his shifty ways, and 
 his habit of talking to himself as he walked. At 
 twenty-four he was working in a limekiln for ten 
 shillings a week, and in love with the daughter of a 
 cottage farmer. But he was more desperately in 
 love with the Muse, whom he had wooed much 
 longer ; and in order to prove this love he resolved 
 to publish a volume of his poems. So he saved up 
 a sovereign, and issued a prospectus, in which he 
 informed the public that the trifles which he wished 
 to bring out could lay no claim to eloquence of com- 
 position, most of them being juvenile productions, 
 while those of later date were merely the offsprings 
 of the leisure intervals which the short remittance 
 from hard and manual labor afforded, and which he 
 hoped would be some excuse in their favor. And 
 so on, and so on. His artless and honest address 
 was answered by subscribers for exactly seven 
 copies ! They were not generous, those canny folk 
 of the Fen country. A copy of this prospectus 
 
JOHN CLARE 125 
 
 came into the hands of Mr. Edward Drury, a book- 
 seller at Stamford, who called upon Clare at his 
 home, and persuaded him to show him a few of his 
 manuscript poems, with which he was so much 
 pleased that he offered to publish a volume of them 
 at his own expense, and give him the profits after 
 the expense was deducted. 
 
 Mi\ Drury sent some of Clare's verse to his 
 friend, Mr. Taylor, a bookseller of London, of the 
 firm of Taylor & Hessey, the publishers of Keats, 
 and Mr. Taylor coming to Stamford in the autumn 
 of 1819, met Clare, probably through the good of- 
 fices of Mr. Drury, and invited him to meet him at 
 dinner that day at the house of Mr. Octavius Gil- 
 christ, a kind-hearted, hospitable grocer. Clare 
 made his appearance at the dinner, clad in his lab- 
 orer's clothes, and dropped into a chair, all meek- 
 ness and simplicity. Gilchrist questioned him 
 about his life and habits, offered him wine, which 
 assuredly he had never tasted before (credulous 
 Octavius !), and, when one of the party sang Auld 
 Eobin Gray, noticed the tears stealing silently 
 down his cheeks. Apart from the patronage of Gil- 
 christ, it was a pleasant evening for Clare, and with 
 it a fortunate one, for on the strength of it he was 
 introduced to the world in the first number of the 
 London Magazine, in January, 1820, where the fussy 
 Gilchrist condescended to praise his rustic Muse. 
 
126 JOHN CLAEE 
 
 Gilchrist's exploitation of Clare served as a pro- 
 logue to bis book, which, under tbe title of Poems 
 Descriptive of Kural Life and Scenery, was at once 
 published by Taylor & Hessey, and was a success, 
 both from a monetary and literary point of view. 
 The first edition was exhausted in a few days ; a sec- 
 ond speedily followed, and it passed through a third 
 before the close of the year. It was praised in the 
 Gentleman's Magazine, the New Monthly Magazine, 
 the Eclectic Keview, even in the Quarterly, " so sav- 
 age and tartarly." Complimentary letters flowed in 
 upon Clare, books were sent to him, and his influen- 
 tial friends set about devising some means to bet- 
 ter his conditioD. He was invited to Milton Park, 
 where — after he had dined with the servants — he 
 was received by Lord and Lady Milton, and Earl 
 Fitzwilliams, who made him a handsome present. 
 He was also invited to Burghley Park, where — after 
 he had dined with the servants — he was received by 
 the Marquis of Exeter, who promised to allow him 
 an annuity of fifteen pounds for life. Pounds and 
 patronage from the nobility and gentry opened the 
 eyes of the cottage farmer to the merits of his would- 
 be son-in-law, who was at once permitted to marry 
 his daughter Martha. A subscription was started 
 for the benefit of Clare by Admiral Lord Eadstock, 
 who had met him at a dinner given to him in London 
 by Mr. Taylor, and was liberally patronized, Taylor 
 
JOHN CLARE 127 
 
 & Hessey heading it with a donation of one hundred 
 pounds, Earl Fitz williams, the Dukes of Bedford and 
 Devonshire putting down their names for twenty 
 pounds each, and Prince Leopold, the Duke of 
 Northumberland, the Earl of Cardigan, Lords John 
 Eussell and Kenyon, Sir Thomas Baring, and others 
 theirs for ten pounds, the whole list, with other les- 
 ser subscriptions, making the sum of four hundred 
 and twenty pounds. With an investment like this a 
 peasant like Clare was tolerably well provided for. 
 
 The success of Clare's first collection of verse led 
 to the publication of a second, which was issued in 
 the following year (1821), under the title of The 
 Village Minstrel and Other Poems. It was in two 
 volumes, and was embellished with his portrait, 
 after a painting by Hilton, who seems to have 
 caught his best expression, which was at once inter- 
 esting and refined. In the spring of the next year 
 he paid a second visit to London, where he was en- 
 tertained by his publishers, who had become the 
 proprietors of the London Magazine. There he made 
 the acquaintance of some of its best contributors, 
 men like Charles Lamb, Allan Cunningham, Thomas 
 Hood, George Darley, and H. F. Cary, the transla- 
 tor of Dante. The literary guild took to him as they 
 seem never to have taken to Bloomfield, and dined 
 him, wined him, exchanged books with him, and 
 wrote him the kindest letters ; particularly Lamb, 
 
128 JOHN CLARE 
 
 who, in an epistle penned at the India House, praised 
 his second venture, telling him what pieces therein 
 he liked, and warning him against a too great use of 
 provincial phrases. The conclusion of this epistle 
 is in Lamb's best vein: "Since I saw you I have been 
 in France and have eaten frogs. The nicest little 
 rabbity things you ever tasted. Do look about for 
 them. Make Mrs. Clare pick off the hind quarters ; 
 boil them plain with parsley and butter. The fore- 
 quarters are not so good. She may let them hop 
 off by themselves." If Clare's cronies did not teach 
 him, they at least helped him, to drink deep ere he 
 departed from London. He remained several weeks 
 and then returned to Helpstone, where he found 
 his wife dangerously ill, and where before long he 
 was very ill himself, weakened by an insufficiency of 
 food, and harassed by more than a sufficiency of 
 creditors. 
 
 In the spring of 1824 he paid a third visit to Lon- 
 don, where to his list of old friendships he added 
 De Quincey, Hazlitt, and Coleridge, and where he 
 put his frail, suffering body in the hands of a kindly 
 physician, who helped him to overcome his habitual 
 and inordinate thirst. His third book, The Shep- 
 herd's Calendar (1827), was a failure, partly, it may 
 be, because it was brought out in a bad season, but 
 more, it is to be feared, because the gloss of novelty 
 was worn off his name and his verse. He was in 
 
JOHN CLAEE 129 
 
 request, however, with the editors of Annuals, which 
 had just begun their short-lived reign, and from 
 which a few guineas were now and then doled out 
 to him. 
 
 The fortunes of Clare did not increase in the same 
 ratio as his family, which, by the time he was thirty- 
 eight, consisted of ten persons who were depend- 
 ent upon him, six of whom were children. He tried 
 once or twice to obtain a portion of the money which 
 had been invested for his benefit years before, but 
 without success ; for in cases of this kind the trus- 
 tees in whose hands such moneys are lodged are al- 
 ways sure that they are the best judges of the uses 
 to which they should be applied — at any rate, much 
 better judges than the poor devils for whom these 
 moneys were originally raised. Clare might have the 
 interest, but he should not touch the principal. 
 Moved at last by the desperation of the poor poet, 
 Lord Milton set apart for him a cottage at North- 
 borough, a village three miles from Helpstone ; but 
 when the day arrived that he should enter into pos- 
 session of it, Clare was very reluctant to quit his 
 old home. Not so his wife, concerning whom one of 
 his biographers writes : " Patty, radiant with joy 
 to get away from the miserable little hut into a 
 beautiful roomy cottage, a palace in comparison 
 with the old dwelling, had all things ready for 
 moving at the beginning of June, yet could not per- 
 
130 JOHN CLARE 
 
 suade her husband to give his consent to the final 
 start. Day after day he postponed it, offering no ex- 
 cuse save that he could not bear to part from his 
 old home. Day after day he kept walking through 
 fields and woods among his old haunts, with wild, 
 haggard look, muttering incohereDt language. The 
 people of the village began to whisper that he was 
 going mad. At Milton Park they heard of it, and 
 Artis and Henderson hurried to Helpstone to look 
 after their friend. They found him sitting on a 
 moss-grown stone at the end of the village nearest 
 the heath. Gently they took him by the hand, and, 
 leading him back to the hut, told Mrs. Clare that it 
 would be best to start at once to Northborough, the 
 Earl being dissatisfied that the removal had not 
 taken place. Patty's little caravan was soon ready, 
 and the poet, guided by his friends, followed in the 
 rear, walking mechanically, with eyes half shut, 
 walking as in a dream. His look brightened for a 
 moment when entering his new dwelling-place — a 
 truly beautiful cottage, with thatched roof, case- 
 mated windows, with roses over the porch, and 
 flowery hedges all round. Yet before many hours 
 were over he fell back into deep melancholy, from 
 which he was relieved only by a new burst of song." 
 The poetical career of Clare was practically ended : 
 for though he published another volume, The Rural 
 Muse (1835), and gained a little money and praise 
 
JOHN CLARE 131 
 
 by it, melancholy had now marked him for her own. 
 His language grew wild and incoherent, and his 
 memory failed so that he no longer recognized his 
 wife and children. In his rational intervals he 
 worked in his garden, or read and wrote in his little 
 study ; but these intervals became fewer and fewer, 
 until at last they ceased altogether. At length he 
 was placed in a private asylum at High Beach, in 
 Epping Forest, where, constantly employed in the 
 garden, he grew stout and robust, and was allowed 
 to stroll beyond the grounds of the asylum, and to 
 ramble in the forest. At times he would converse in 
 a sensible manner, but in the end he always lost 
 himself in utter nonsense. He was possessed with 
 the hallucination that he had two wives. The first, a 
 young woman named Mary Joyce, with whom he had 
 fancied he was in love before he met his Patty, the 
 second being Patty, through whom he sent his love 
 to the dear boy who had written to him, and to her 
 who was not forgotten, and who had been dead for 
 years. Once he made his escape from the asylum, 
 and after wandering about the country for four days 
 and three nights was so near starvation that he had 
 devoured the grass in the fields. Finally he reached 
 his home at Northborough, whence he was sent to the 
 County Lunatic Asylum at Northampton, where he 
 was supported by the generosity of the Fitzwilliams 
 family, and treated as a " gentleman patient." Books 
 
132 JOHN CLARE 
 
 and writing materials were furnished him ; he was 
 considerately addressed as "Mr. Clare," and was 
 permitted to walk in the fields, and go into the 
 town whenever he wished. He had a favorite win- 
 dow in the asylum commanding a view of the valley 
 of the Nen, and a favorite seat in a niche under the 
 roof of the portico of All Saints Church, where he 
 sat for hours watching the children at play, and jot- 
 ting down his fancies in a pocket note-book. At 
 last he was so feeble that he was wheeled around 
 the asylum grounds in a Bath-chair, and was heard 
 muttering to himself, " I have lived too long," or 
 " I want to go home." Just before the close of his 
 seventy-first year, on May 20, 1864, his perturbed 
 spirit entered into rest. 
 
 The poetry of Clare is what might have been ex- 
 pected from his long familiarity with rural scenery, 
 and his intimate knowledge of country life. Simple 
 as the song of a bird, it is best described by Milton's 
 phrase, " native wood-notes wild," for art it has none, 
 and only such music as lingered in the memory of 
 Clare from the few poets that he had read. It 
 abounds with picturesque details, which declare the 
 naturalist as well as the poet ; it sparkles with happy 
 epithets, and to those who delight in Nature for its 
 own sake, and not for the human quality which the 
 present race of poets are striving to infuse into it, it 
 is winsome and charming. It is not the kind of 
 
JOHN CLAEE 133 
 
 poetry to criticise, for it is full of faults, but to read 
 generously and tenderly, remembering the lowly life 
 of Clare, his want of education, his temptations, his 
 struggles, his sorrow and suffering, and his melan- 
 choly end. 
 
 Here is something which he intended to be a son- 
 net, and which is from his first volume : 
 
 The Primrose. 
 
 Welcome, pale Primrose ! starting up between 
 Dead matted leaves of asli and oak, that strew 
 The every lawn, the wood, and spinney through, 
 'Mid creeping moss and ivy's darker green ; 
 How much thy presence beautifies the ground ; 
 How sweet thy modest, unaffected pride 
 Glows on the sunny bank, and wood's warm side. 
 And where thy fairy flowers in groups are found 
 The school-boy roams enchantedly along, 
 Plucking the fairest with a rude delight ; 
 While the meek shepherd stops his simple song 
 To gaze a moment on the pleasing sight ; 
 O'erjoyed to see the flowers that truly bring 
 The welcome news of sweet returning Spring. 
 
 Here is something different, which is from the same 
 volume, and is better known : 
 
 To the Glow-worm. 
 
 Tasteful Illumination of the night, 
 Bright-scattered, twinkling star of spangled earth ! 
 
I 
 
 134 JOHN CLAEE 
 
 Hail to the nameless colored dark-and-light, 
 
 The witching nurse of thy illumined birth. 
 
 In thy still hour how dearly I delight 
 
 To rest my weary bones from labor free ; 
 
 In lone spots, out of hearing, out of sight, 
 
 To sigh day's smothered pains ; and pause on thee, 
 
 Bedecking, dangling briar and ivied tree, 
 
 Or diamonds tipping on the grassy spear ; 
 
 Thy pale-faced glimmering light I love to see ; 
 
 Gilding and glistering in the dewdrop near ; 
 
 O, still-hour's mate ! my easing heart sobs free, 
 
 While tiny bents low bend with many an added tear. 
 
EBENEZER ELLIOTT 
 
 If there be one intellectual quality which more 
 than another should be regarded as Nature's best 
 and greatest gift to man, it is that strange and 
 beautiful thing which we call Poetry. Given to 
 many in measures which correspond with their ca- 
 pacity to receive it, and their power to exercise it, it 
 is bestowed in its fulness only upon a few, who, 
 without it greater than their contemporaries, with 
 it are the greatest of the race. There have been 
 great captains — Alexander, Csesar, Napoleon ; there 
 have been great sculptors — Phidias, Michael An- 
 gelo ; great painters — Raphael, Titian, Velasquez ; 
 but only one great, only one world-poet — Shakes- 
 peare. Why others who went before him, and 
 others who came after him, are dwarfs in comparison 
 is a question that we cannot answer, consider it as 
 curiously as we may. Wherein they fell short of 
 him we can discover, if we set about it wisely, and 
 why they fell short is not far to seek, if we are fa- 
 miliar with their lives as well as their works, with 
 their personality as well as their poetry. Some 
 
136 EBENEZER ELLIOTT 
 
 failed through not knowing what poetry is, some 
 through not knowing their own powers, and some 
 through their temperaments, which may have been 
 too inert, or too active, too indolent, or too hasty. 
 Many poets fail because they mistake impulses for 
 inspirations, more because they do not value their art 
 highly enough. If Byron had understood himself 
 he would not have tried to write tragedies, nor do 
 I think that Lord Tennyson would have done so 
 either, if in his age he had not lost the clear sagacity 
 of his young manhood. The fault of Shelley's po- 
 etry, as I understand it, is a want of human interest ; 
 and the fault of Browning's poetry, as I understand 
 it, is a want of intelligibility. Both were overpow- 
 ered by their individuality ; as, in a more common 
 way, was Ebenezer Elliott, who ought to have been, 
 but was not, the successor of Burns. 
 
 The pedigree of Ebenezer Elliott was a stalwart 
 if not a gentle one ; for, if the account of his grand- 
 father may be trusted, his paternal ancestors were 
 border thieves who lived on the cattle they stole from 
 the English and Scotch, and prospered in the plenty 
 that cost them nothing but courage. They ceased 
 to levy their toll of beeves by, if not before, the 
 middle of the last century, for toward its close one 
 of their number, an Ebenezer Elliott, who had mar- 
 ried the daughter of a rich farmer near Hudders- 
 field, was in business as an iron-founder at Masbor- 
 
EBENEZEK ELLIOTT 137 
 
 ough, in the parish of Rotherham, Yorkshire, where 
 our Ebenezer, who was one of a family of eleven, 
 was born. Ushered into this breathing world on 
 March 17, 1781, he came very near being ushered 
 out of it again, for in the confusion attending his 
 birth he was placed in an open drawer, which was 
 closed by someone who did not notice its occu- 
 pant, for whom, when it was discovered that he was 
 missing, there was an outcry, which caused the per- 
 son who had last handled him to remember his 
 place of deposit, and restore him to his many- 
 childed mother. That the poet's father was not a 
 dull, commonplace creature, may be inferred from 
 the nickname by which he was widely known, 
 " Devil Elliott," from his faith, which was red-hot 
 Calvinism, and from his politics, which were, or were 
 believed to be, of a Jacobin character. One of the 
 poet's contemporaries, who was well acquainted with 
 his father, relates an anecdote of this Jacobinical 
 Calvinist, which was characteristic of the man as 
 well as of the time in which he lived : " The Roth- 
 erham troop of Yeomanry had a field day. It was 
 getting toward evening ; and previous to the dis- 
 missal of the men, they were drawn up in a line in 
 High Street, with their faces to the Crown Inn, 
 while some one was addressing a loyal speech to 
 them from one of the windows. Mr. Elliott's shop 
 being in the narrowest part of the street, and, from 
 
138 EBENEZER ELLIOTT 
 
 some cause or other, one or more of the military 
 steeds, which stood with their hinder parts toward 
 his door and windows beginning to prance, they 
 were not long before their tails and haunches came 
 through the glass. The old man immediately con- 
 ceived the idea that this was done on purpose, and 
 because he was a Jacobin. Under this impression 
 he flew into a terrible rage, seized, I believe, some 
 offensive weapon which the stock in his own shop 
 supplied, and rushed to the assault. A disturbance 
 ensued but, no blood was shed ; and thus the affair 
 did not end as seriously as it might have done, con- 
 sidering what it was to quarrel with the authorities 
 in those days. Probably Mr. Elliott's real respecta- 
 bility in the eyes of his neighbors, together with his 
 commercial influence in the town, protected him 
 from similar consequences to those which befell the 
 more unfortunate James Montgomery, at a little 
 earlier date, in Sheffield." 
 
 The elder Ebenezer is said to have possessed lit- 
 erary talent, which manifested itself in a rhymed 
 paraphrase of Job, and oratorical talents, which 
 united and expended their powers along the lines 
 of theology and politics. Under the room in which 
 the poet was born there was a little parlor like the 
 cabin of a ship, which was yearly painted green, and 
 the walls of which were embellished with pictures, 
 and there every fourth Sunday the doughty iron- 
 
EBENEZER ELLIOTT 139 
 
 monger used to hold forth like another Boanerges 
 to a select congregation, which came from a distance 
 of twelve or fourteen miles to hear his tremendous 
 doctrines of ultra Calvinism. On other days he 
 would point to the portraits on the walls, and de- 
 claim on the virtues of Cromwell and Washington, 
 laughing heartily, and dilating on the splendors of 
 the glorious victory of his Majesty's forces over the 
 rebels at Bunker Hill. 
 
 The childhood of young Ebenezer differed but lit- 
 tle from the childhood of the ordinary English lad 
 at the end of the last century. He went to a dame's 
 school, where he was taught to read and write indif- 
 ferently, and he had the small-pox, which was so 
 virulent as to leave him blind for a time. At the age 
 of nine or ten he was sent to a school in Sheffield, 
 where he was so backward that his sums were done 
 for him by the other boys. At last his father took him 
 from this school, and placed him in another about two 
 miles from Masborough, where he might have him 
 more under his own eyes, and where he did no bet- 
 ter, but rather worse, for during the summer months 
 he was almost always playing truant in the woods 
 thereabout, gathering wild flowers, robbing birds' 
 nests, and rioting in other forbidden pleasures. 
 Discovering this last delinquency, beside which his 
 duncery was nothing, his irate parent concluded to 
 make him an ironmonger, like himself ; so he placed 
 
140 EBENEZER ELLIOTT 
 
 him in his shop, or foundry, or whatever it was, 
 where he proved himself as clever as other begin- 
 ners of his age, sixteen, and where he remained for 
 seven years, receiving no wages, and hut little 
 pocket money ; for if the elder Elliott was irate, he 
 was also thrifty. 
 
 Up to this time he had shown no inclination to- 
 ward education, and no intellectual aptitude of any 
 kind ; but one Sunday, when he happened to call on 
 a widowed aunt — who must have been a remarkable 
 woman, since she is said to have supported herself 
 and three children on thirty pounds a year, and to 
 have given two of them, who were boys, an educa- 
 tion which made them gentlemen — calling upon 
 this gentlewoman on that momentous Sabbath, he 
 saw among her books a copy of Sowerby's English 
 Botany, with which he was enraptured. " Never 
 shall I forget," he wrote long afterward, " the im- 
 pression made upon me by the beautiful plates. I 
 actually touched the figure of the primrose, half 
 convinced that the mealiness on the leaves was real." 
 Sharing the pleasure which she had been the means 
 of conferring upon him, his good aunt showed him 
 how to reproduce the flowers by holding them up to 
 the light, and copying them on thin paper. From 
 Sowerby, who gave him a taste for botany, to 
 Thomson, who gave him a taste for poetry, was but 
 a step, and he took it after hearing his favorite 
 
EBENEZER ELLIOTT 141 
 
 brother Giles read the first book of The Seasons. 
 What arrested his attention in this reading was the 
 description of the polyanthus and the auricula, with 
 which he was so much struck that he seized the 
 book, when Giles laid it down, and rushed into the 
 garden, where he compared the verbal description 
 with the actual flower. Before this he had never 
 read poetry, which always gave him headache ; but 
 now he began to read it, and write it, one of his 
 best feats in rhyming being an imitation in heroic 
 couplets of one of Thomson's descriptions of a thun- 
 der-storm. He now began to read such books as he 
 could procure, and as some of them, among others 
 Ray's Wisdom of God, Derham's Physico-Theology, 
 Young's Night Thoughts, and Barrow's Sermons, 
 were of the old-fashioned, solid kind, he was in- 
 structed if not entertained. "I never could read a 
 foolish book through," he said afterward, " and it 
 follows that I read masterpieces only." He was also 
 and always an indefatigable reader of newspapers. 
 
 The life of Elliott, though it extended nearly to 
 the allotted age of man (he died in his sixty-ninth 
 year), was not of a kind that can be enlarged into a 
 complete biography, certainly not without much and 
 ingenious padding ; so I will attempt none. Suffice 
 it to say, then, that he married at Rotherham, and 
 received a fortune with his wife, and that he in- 
 vested this fortune, whatever its amount, in business 
 
142 EBENEZEK ELLIOTT 
 
 — a business in which there were many partners, of 
 whom his father was one, and which was already 
 bankrupt beyond redemption. Here he passed sev- 
 eral years in hopeless efforts, in hopeless hopes and 
 yearnings, and here he lost his last penny, and be- 
 came for a time a pensioner on the bounty of his 
 wife's maiden sisters. Honest as well as proud, 
 he was wretched ; but not being weak as well as 
 wretched, he employed himself in writing poems, 
 and in painting landscape views of the neigh- 
 borhood. At length, by the generosity of his wife's 
 sisters, he started in business once more, with a 
 capital of one hundred and fifty pounds, and hav- 
 ing no partner this time, for his father had died, he 
 was successful. 
 
 He removed to Sheffield, where, at the age of 
 forty, he began life anew, began it seriously as a 
 poet, and more seriously as a manufacturer of and 
 dealer in iron and steel. His warehouse was a 
 dingy little place, surrounded with bars of iron, 
 with a bust of Shakespeare in the centre, and in the 
 counting-room casts of Ajax, Achilles, and Napoleon. 
 It was not a showy place, but it was so prosperous 
 while Elliott occupied it, that he sometimes made as 
 much as twenty pounds a day without stirring from 
 his chair, or seeing the merchandise that he sold. 
 There have been poets who would not have devoted 
 themselves to business as willingly and strenuously 
 
EBENEZER ELLIOTT 143 
 
 as Elliott did, and they are greatly to be pitied for 
 their lack of sense. Burns was not one of those 
 witless weaklings, for given the chance at money- 
 making that Elliott had, he would have embraced it 
 as Elliott did, and left the hostages that he had 
 given to fortune in comfortable circumstances. He 
 set a high value on his poetry, but a higher value on 
 his manhood ; for singing for himself at first, he 
 sang at last for the whole poetic race : 
 
 " To make a happy fireside clime 
 To weans and wife, — 
 That's the true pathos and sublime 
 Of human life." 
 
 The recognition of this great duty led young Master 
 Shakespeare up to London, and kept elderly Mr. 
 Elliott in Sheffield. 
 
 Elliott's prosperity continued as the years went on, 
 and as his sons grew up he took them into partner- 
 ship with him, and busied himself, like the good cit- 
 izen he was, with whatever was calculated to advance 
 the interests and welfare of his fellow-townsmen, 
 becoming an active member of their Mechanics' In- 
 stitute, before which he delivered a course of lectures 
 on Poets and Poetry, and a fervid speaker on the 
 political topics of the time, chief est among which 
 was the Corn Laws, which to him, and those of his 
 way of thinking, were the sum and substance of all 
 
144 EBENEZER ELLIOTT 
 
 iniquity. As the issues which were involved in the 
 Corn Laws were settled more than half a century 
 ago, I shall not try to make their dead bones live ; 
 for of all the things that once set men by the ears 
 the deadest of all are dead politics. 
 
 The time came when Elliott could afford a coun- 
 try house ; so he took a handsome villa in the sub- 
 urbs of Sheffield. Before him here was the prose 
 of his life in the smoke of chimneys in the near dis- 
 tance, and muffled noises that were wafted to him 
 from bustling streets ; behind him was its poetry, 
 for a path ran from the back of his house to a range 
 of wooded hills and the verdant valley of the Rivelin. 
 Labor and leisure and troops of friends — we may 
 be sure that Elliott enjoyed himself at this time. 
 But it was not to last long — the prosperity of 
 poets never does last long ; so one day the pros- 
 perity of Elliott forsook him, and calamity overtook 
 him, in the shape of the great financial panic of 
 1837, concerning which he wrote at a later day : " I 
 lost fully one-third of my savings, and after ena- 
 bling my six boys to quit the nest, got out of the 
 fracas with about £6,000, which I will try to keep." 
 To keep this remnant of his fortune Elliott left Shef- 
 field and went to Hargate Hill, near Great Hampton, 
 where, on land that he had purchased some time 
 before, he built himself a substantial house. Here, 
 as at Sheffield, he was visited by all sorts of people, 
 
EBENEZER ELLIOTT 145 
 
 chiefly of the Corn Law and Chartist persuasion, to 
 whom he was a celebrity. It is not given to many 
 poets to be celebrities in their old age, and that it is 
 not given to them is a circumstance not much to be 
 regretted, whatever young poets may think, so heavy 
 are the penalties which it entails upon them, and 
 which are wrung from them by worshippers who 
 force themselves upon them, many with impertinent 
 questions, and nauseate them with senseless admira- 
 tion and idolatry. During the last years of Elliott's 
 life Hargate Hill was a Mecca to which swarmed 
 hosts of pilgrims, and among them a Mr. George S. 
 Phillips, who was an author in the sense that he 
 wrote several books, one being a Memoir of Eben- 
 ezer Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer. I have looked 
 over this memoir at intervals, with every wish to 
 find something therein that would put me en rap- 
 port with Elliott, and I have found nothing that has 
 done so. I knew this Mr. Phillips about twenty 
 years ago, and the more I knew of him the more 
 I wondered how Elliott could tolerate him, and the 
 less I thought of Elliott. 
 
 Having no confidence in the reminiscences of this 
 slovenly and shabby Boswell, whose inaccuracy was 
 surpassed only by his imagination, I will close this 
 imperfect sketch of Elliott's life with a brief extract 
 from a letter from his son Francis, written short- 
 ly after his death, which occurred on December 1, 
 10 
 
146 EBENEZER ELLIOTT 
 
 1849, his sixty-ninth year : " The last month of his 
 life was one of great torture and equal fortitude ; 
 and he died in the presence of his family early on 
 the morning of the first of December, and was 
 buried in great privacy, as he wished to be, in the 
 churchyard of the beautiful little village of Darfield. 
 The tower of the church can be seen from the 
 windows of his house, and forms a distinguishing- 
 feature in a landscape that was dear to his eyes." 
 
 It is difficult to fix the poetic place of Elliott, for 
 the reason that there is no known definition of poe- 
 try which does not suggest and require additions 
 and deductions, and the further reason that he is so 
 different at different times that one cannot but hes- 
 itate in the attempt to determine his actual form 
 and pressure. To say that he has written badly is 
 only to say what has been said over and over again 
 of Burns and Byron. But neither Burns nor Byron 
 ever wrote so badly as he, nor with such persist- 
 ence. Unlike their bad writing, which was acciden- 
 tal, his bad writing seems to have resulted from the 
 system that he pursued, partly, no doubt, through 
 ignorance, but more through obstinacy — the obsti- 
 nacy which mistakes itself for originality. He was 
 not so much an uneducated poet as a mis -edu- 
 cated poet. He may have read only masterpieces, 
 as he claimed, but if so he read them amiss, since 
 he learned nothing from them. His admiration of 
 
EBENEZER ELLIOTT 147 
 
 Byron, which was life-long, was of Byron at his 
 worst, for Byron taught him to rail and curse, not 
 to reflect and meditate. He was fain to tell stories 
 in verse, and his stories, in the hands of Byron, if 
 Byron could have forgotten to be romantic, or the 
 hands of Crabbe, who could not be romantic, might 
 have been interesting. But in his hands they were 
 not interesting, and if one reads his Splendid Vil- 
 lage now, or his Village Patriarch, it can only be 
 by an effort which soon becomes wearisome, and at 
 last intolerable. He has no narrative talent. The 
 movement of his verse, which was uncertain, was 
 perpetually wasting itself in needless digressions — 
 noisy with exclamations, and turbid with the sedi- 
 ments of passion. He was interested in humanity, 
 as all poets are, but not so much in its still, sad 
 music as in the crash of its thunder and the long, 
 tumultuous roll of its billows. He could not love 
 the poor without hating the rich, not knowing, or 
 caring to know, that the rich should no more be 
 hated as a class for being rich, than the poor should 
 be pitied as a class for being poor. But he was no 
 philosopher, for he felt more than he thought, and 
 felt so vehemently that he was often unreasonable 
 and unjust. It is not too much to say that he was 
 generally in a rage when he wrote, and that his 
 Muse was a common scold. This is what some of 
 his contemporaries said of him, and it was true in a 
 
148 EBENEZER ELLIOTT 
 
 measure. But it was not the entire truth, nor the 
 truth generously stated, as it is by Professor Down- 
 den in Ward's English Poets, to which the reader of 
 this chat may turn at his leisure. 
 
 Like most poets, Elliott is at his best when he is 
 least ambitious. Not in such an epiclet as The 
 Splendid Village, which one can read, though not so 
 easily as The Deserted Village, nor in his Corn Law 
 Rhymes, which also one can read, though not so 
 easily as some of his lyrics and domestic pieces, say 
 The Dying Boy and the Sloe Blossom, The Wonders 
 of the Lane, or A Shadow. His fame, such as it is, 
 rests mainly on the Corn Law Rhymes, of which this 
 is, perhaps, as good a specimen as can be given. It 
 purports to be a Song, that should be sung, if one 
 cares to sing it, to the tune of Robin Adair : 
 
 Child, is thy father dead ? 
 
 Father is gone ! 
 Why did they tax his "bread ? 
 
 God's will be done ! 
 Mother has sold her bed : 
 Better to die than wed ! 
 Where shall she lay her head ? 
 
 Home we have none ! 
 
 Father clammed thrice a week. 
 
 God's will be done ! 
 Long for work did he seek, 
 
 Work he found none. 
 
EBENEZEK ELLIOTT 149 
 
 Tears on his hollow cheek 
 Told what no tongue could speak. 
 Why did his master break ? 
 God's will be done ! 
 
 Doctor said air was best, 
 
 Food we had none ; 
 Father with panting breast 
 
 Groaned to be gone. 
 Now he is with the blest, 
 Mother says death is best ; 
 We have no place of rest — 
 
 Yes, we have one ! 
 
 The noblest piece of writing that Elliott has in- 
 spired was written when the news of his death 
 reached the shores of the New World. It was by a 
 poet of the same order as he, but a much greater 
 poet — John Greenleaf Whittier — and is a magnifi- 
 cent eulogy of Elliott. 
 
DAVID GRAY 
 
 If poetry be, as poets are fond of believing, the 
 highest achievement of which man is capable, the 
 bright, consummate flower of what is best and 
 noblest in his nature, it is a flower which comes to 
 perfection only in great minds. There is a class of 
 minor minds which are fertile enough in producing 
 growths which at first sight may appear to be poetic 
 ones, but they are not from celestial seed, and how- 
 ever they may flaunt in their bloom their vitality is 
 brief. There is another class of minds which are 
 equally fertile, and of which the growths seem more 
 promising, but they are short-lived ; for if the seed 
 from which they sprung was genuine, the soil in 
 which it was sown was not vigorous enough to bring 
 the seed to maturity. The fulness of health in 
 strong minds, the disease of weak minds is poetry. 
 There have been many weaklings in the history of 
 letters, but they are not so frequent as they were, 
 partly because a knack of turning rhymes is less 
 esteemed than it was, and partly because the world 
 has steeled itself against its Michael Bruces, Eobert 
 
DAVID GEAY 151 
 
 Fergusons, Henry Kirke Whites, and David Grays. 
 It may, in its sentimental moods, pity them as per- 
 sons ; but it has ceased to think of them as poets. 
 They mistook their desire for power — the desire to 
 be poets, for the power which goes to the making of 
 poets, and the mistake was never corrected. They 
 might possibly have overcome their ignorance if 
 they could have been made conscious of it ; but by 
 no possibility would they have overcome their vanity, 
 of which nothing would have made them conscious. 
 The infirmity of the guild into which they forced 
 themselves, vanity, was their disease — the incurable, 
 mortal disease of which they perished. 
 
 The life of David Gray has been related in a 
 sketchy way by two Scotchmen, who were more or 
 less acquainted with him, and who write of him 
 with more enthusiasm than discretion. The sub- 
 stance of what they tell us is as follows : He was 
 born on January 29, 1838, at Duntiblae, a little row 
 of houses on the south bank of the Luggie, about 
 eight miles from Glasgow ; but was removed with 
 his parents when a mere child to Merkland, on the 
 north bank of this streamlet, about a mile from Kirk- 
 intilloch. Merkland, like Duntiblae, was simply a 
 group of humble wayside cottages, which were occu- 
 pied by hand-loom weavers. In one of these cottages, 
 which was one story high, with a slated roof, and a 
 little kitchen garden in the front and rear, lived 
 
152 DAVID GRAY 
 
 David Gray, the father of our David, who was the 
 eldest of eight children, who may well be supposed to 
 have crowded the cottage, when they were all gath- 
 ered therein, for, divided by a lobby, or hallway that 
 ran from the front to the back door, it consisted of 
 but two apartments, the one to the right hand being 
 fitted as a weaver's workshop, the other to the left 
 being a stone-paved kitchen, out of which opened a 
 tiny bedroom. 
 
 Like many another poor Scotchman before him, 
 and not a few, no doubt, since, the father of David 
 Gray determined that his eldest son should become 
 a scholar. Precisely what quality in learning, as 
 they conceive of learning, leads such men to fancy it 
 the best heritage they can bestow upon their chil- 
 dren, passes ordinary comprehension. It is a delusion 
 which costs them dearly, and costs their children 
 more dearly still before they have done with it, as it 
 did David Gray, who might have made a good hand- 
 loom weaver instead of an indifferent poet. But it 
 was not to be. So he was sent to the parish school 
 at Kirkintilloch, where he learned to read, write, and 
 cipher, which were useful accomplishments, and 
 went later to the Glasgow University, where he 
 pursued his studies, which, of course, had begun 
 with Latin, living upon what he had saved out of the 
 pittances he had received as a pupil - teacher and 
 private tutor, and upon what his hard-working par- 
 
DAVID GKAY 153 
 
 ents could forward to him from home in the shape 
 of butter and oatmeal. 
 
 The motive which actuated David Gray in the Uni- 
 versity was not the motive which actuated his par- 
 ents while he was there ; for they expected him to 
 become a minister, while he expected to become a 
 poet. A reader of verse from childhood, he soon 
 betook himself to the writing of verse — a pursuit in 
 which he was encouraged by the editor of the Glas- 
 gow Citizen, who printed his poetic firstlings, as he 
 had printed those of Alexander Smith some years 
 before. His poetizing was not kindly received at 
 home, whither he went every Saturday night in or- 
 der to spend the Sabbath with the old people, his fa- 
 the affecting an indifference toward it which he is 
 thought not to have felt, while his mother bewailed 
 and lamented it, her cry being : " The kirk, the free 
 kirk, and nothing but the kirk." 
 
 His Sabbaths at Merkland could not have been as 
 pleasant to David Gray as his week-days in Glasgow, 
 where he had several literary acquaintances, among 
 whom was Mr. Eobert Buchanan, who was three 
 years his junior, and who, like himself, was deter- 
 mined to be a poet. They read together, planned 
 great works, and wrote gushing letters to famous 
 people. His twenty-second birthday found him out 
 of employment, his term of service in the Free 
 Church Normal Seminary, of which he was a Queen's 
 
154 DAVID GRAY 
 
 scholar, having expired ; and it was necessary that 
 he should obtain other employment— a circumstance 
 of which he was promptly reminded by his parents. 
 Yes, he must do something, and at once ; but what ? 
 He had completed a longish poem about the Luggie, 
 and the question was, how to get it published. He 
 wrote to one of his friends : "I sent it to G-. H. 
 Lewes, to Professor Masson, to Professor Aytoun, to 
 Disraeli ; but no one will read it. They swear they 
 have no time. For my part, I think the poem will 
 live ; and so I care not whether I were drowned to- 
 morrow." He wrote further: "I spoke to you of 
 the refusals which had been unfairly given my poem. 
 Better to have a poem refused than a poem unwrit- 
 ten." 
 
 That the men to whom he sent his poem really 
 had not time to read it, should not have surprised 
 him ; for if he had known the world a little better he 
 would have known that their own affairs were natu- 
 rally of more importance to them than the ungra- 
 cious labor of reading manuscript from an unknown 
 pen. The general tenor of what he wrote to them 
 may be inferred from what he wrote about this time, 
 or possibly a little earlier, to Mr. Sydney Dobell, 
 who some nine years before had published a drama 
 entitled The Eoman (1850), four years later a poem 
 entitled Balder (1854), and a year later, during a 
 residence in Edinburgh, a volume of Sonnets on the 
 
DAYID GRAY 155 
 
 War. The world is not reading Mr. Sydney Dobell 
 now, but thirty-two years ago he was a well known 
 poet. The son of a prosperous wine merchant, 
 whose business he followed, he resided at the Cleeve 
 Tower, Cheltenham, to which place David Gray des- 
 patched an epistle, which ranks among the curios- 
 ities of literature. Here is an extract from it : 
 
 " First : Cleeve Tower I take to be a pleasant 
 place, clothed with ivy, and shaded by ancestral 
 beeches ; at all events it is mighty different from 
 my mother's home. Let this be understood dis- 
 tinctly. 
 
 " Second : I am a poet. Let that also be under- 
 stood distinctly. 
 
 " Third : Having at the present time only 8s. a 
 week, I wish to improve my position, for the sake of 
 gratifying and assisting a mother whom I love be- 
 yond the conception of the vulgar. 
 
 " These, then, are my premises, and the inference 
 takes the form of this request. Will you — a poet 
 — as far as you can, assist another, a younger poet (of 
 twenty), in a way not to wound his feelings, or hurt 
 his independency of spirit ? " 
 
 That Dobell was not so profoundly impressed by 
 this boyish braggadocio as Gray hoped he might be, 
 but on the contrary so disgusted by it that he re- 
 buked him sharply, is evident from a later letter, 
 in which Gray endeavored to defend himself from 
 
156 DAVID GKAT 
 
 the charges which his correspondent had brought 
 against him, and of which the heaviest was probably 
 his amazing self-confidence : " When my biography 
 falls to be written," he said, "will not this same 
 ' self-confidence ' be one of the most striking feat- 
 ures of my intellectual development? Might not a 
 'poet of twenty * feel great things ? In all the stories 
 of mental warfare that I have ever read, that mind 
 which became of celestial clearness and godlike 
 power, did nothing at twenty but feel. And I am 
 so accustomed to compare my own mental progress 
 with such men as Shakespeare, Goethe, and Words- 
 worth (examples of this last proposition), that the 
 dream of my youth shall not be fulfilled, if my fame 
 equal not at least the latter of these three." 
 
 Before long he changed his tune : " I am 
 ashamed of what I wrote to you before," he said. 
 " I was an actor then, not myself ; for, being bare 
 of all recommendations, I lied with my own con- 
 science, deeming that if I called myself a great man 
 you were bound to believe me." 
 
 If Gray had been a little older and a little wiser 
 he would not have written such ridiculous letters, 
 or writing them in his perpetual vacillations from 
 vanity to modesty, he would have kept them until 
 his sober senses returned to him, and then have 
 thrown them in the fire. To be a foolish poet is 
 not a crime ; but to be known as a foolish poet is a 
 
DAVID GRAY 157 
 
 misfortune. It stood in the way of Gray at this 
 time with Dobell, and it stood more, much more, in 
 his way with others at a later day. Meanwhile, what 
 was he to do ? He thought of starting a school with 
 one of his friends, but as the project went against the 
 grain it was abandoned. His friends in Glasgow 
 advised him to connect himself with the press in that 
 city, but no such connection could be made. Still, 
 something must be done. What should it be ? He 
 talked the matter over with his young friend Bu- 
 chanan, and they resolved to go to London, where 
 such geniuses as they were sure to be received 
 with open arms. About three months after he had 
 completed his twenty-second birthday (May 3, 
 1860), Gray presented himself before Buchanan 
 with his lips firmly compressed and his eyes full of 
 fire, and exclaimed, "Bob, I'm off to London! " 
 
 " Have you funds ? " demanded the practical Rob- 
 ert. 
 
 " Enough for one, not enough for two," was the 
 canny reply. " If you can get the money, anyhow, 
 we'll go together." 
 
 Two days later Gray wrote to his parents: "I 
 start off to-night, at five o'clock, by the Edinburgh 
 and Glasgow Railway, right on to London, in good 
 health and spirits." 
 
 Gray and Buchanan agreed to go to London to- 
 gether, but in making this agreement they forgot to 
 
158 DAVID GEAY 
 
 state at which of the Glasgow stations they were 
 to meet ; so, when the hour came, Gray left from 
 one station and Buchanan from another. Precisely 
 what befell Gray when he reached London is not 
 known. He could hardly have been fool enough to 
 spend his first night there in walking up and down 
 Hyde Park, carpet-bag in hand, in the rain ; so we 
 may conclude that he found a cheap lodging some- 
 where, and, after a frugal supper, went to bed, 
 whence he rose early next morning, and started on 
 his quest among authors and publishers. He com- 
 municated with Dobell, to whom he wrote a few 
 days after his arrival : "I am in London and dare 
 not look into the middle of next week. What 
 brought me here? God knows, for I don't. 
 Alone in such a place is a horrible thing. I have 
 seen Dr. Mackay, but it's all up. People don't seem 
 to understand me. . . . Westminster Abbey! 
 I was there all day yesterday. If I live I shall be 
 buried there — so help me God ! A completely de- 
 fined consciousness of great poetical genius is my 
 only antidote against utter despair and despicable 
 failure." 
 
 Gray and Buchanan met a week or so after their 
 arrival in London, and Gray being dissatisfied with 
 his lodging, which he declared was a cold, cheerless 
 place, where he had only a blanket to cover him, was 
 persuaded by Buchanan to share his room, which 
 
DAVID GRAY 159 
 
 was the better of the two, though there were 
 draughts everywhere in it — through the chinks of 
 the door, through the windows, and up through the 
 floor. Before quitting Glasgow Gray had written to 
 Mr. Richard Monckton Milnes, the poet, and now he 
 wrote to him again, reminding him that he had 
 promised to read his poem ; telling him that he had 
 travelled to London to give it to him, and to push 
 his fortunes, and adding that he saw starvation be- 
 fore him within two days. Should he send the 
 poem, or bring it ? He asked, because he knew he 
 did not want to be troubled with people of his sort 
 coming about him. "Whatever you do, do it 
 quickly, in God's name." The answer to this note 
 was more gracious than it deserved, though just 
 what might have been expected from so kind a man 
 as Lord Houghton, concerning whom, at this junct- 
 ure in the life of Gray, his accomplished biographer, 
 Mr. T. Wemyss Reid (who first printed Gray's 
 note), quietly says : "He did not write inviting him 
 to send his manuscript to him — he did not even ask 
 him to come to his house as a guest ; but within a 
 couple of hours from the delivery of the touching 
 note I have just printed, Milnes himself entered the 
 humble lodging-house in the Borough, bearing with 
 him a load of delicacies such as he believed the 
 writer of such a letter must absolutely need. Hav- 
 ing made some provision for Gray's subsistence 
 
160 DAVID GKAY 
 
 while he remained in London, he took back to his 
 own home the manuscript of the beautiful poem of 
 The Luggie, which Gray had written, and upon 
 which he was so anxious to have the opinion of his 
 fellow-poet. A few days afterward, while he was sit- 
 ting at breakfast in Brook Street, Gray was shown 
 into his room. Milnes saw in a moment that some- 
 thing was wrong, and by and by he extracted from 
 him the fact that he had spent the previous night 
 in the park. There had been no actual necessity 
 to do so — there could have been none with Milnes 
 in London — and the young man was in a state of 
 hysterical excitement, and to indulge some morbid 
 fancy of his own, had condemned himself to this 
 terrible punishment — a punishment which laid the 
 seeds of the fatal disease that carried him off a little 
 more than eighteen months later." 
 
 Mr. Eeid also mentions that before Gray was al- 
 lowed to leave the house of Lord Houghton he was 
 warmed and fed and clothed ; and he might have 
 added that his fatherly helper made something for 
 him to do by giving him manuscript to copy at the 
 rate of a pound a week, and that he warmly recom- 
 mended The Luggie to Thackeray for insertion in 
 the Cornhill Magazine, wherein it would have been 
 singularly inappropriate, as he could not but have 
 known. 
 
 The exposure to which Gray had so wantonly sub- 
 
DAVID GEAT 161 
 
 jected himself during his mad night's outing in the 
 park, brought on so severe an illness that he was at 
 last willing to return home, as Lord Houghton had 
 advised him to do from the beginning. He went 
 back to Merkland, where he was sorrowfully re- 
 ceived by his loving parents, and where, as the days 
 went on he was visited by an eminent physician 
 from Glasgow, a friend of his friend Dobell, who de- 
 cided, after examining him, that with a continued 
 residence there he had but little chance of his life, 
 though his case he thought was far from hopeless, 
 provided he could at once be removed to a warmer 
 climate. He started a subscription for the purpose 
 of sending the patient to South Africa, a benevolent 
 act in which Lord Houghton promised to assist ; 
 with the suggestion, however, that pending his re- 
 moval to such a distance Gray should come to Tor- 
 quay, where he himself would be able to look after 
 his comfort. Gray accordingly went to Torquay, 
 but he was so terrified by the sight of the consump- 
 tive patients in the hospital that he fled from the 
 place, and obtaining money from the house physi- 
 cians, to whom he had been introduced, returned to 
 Merkland. 
 
 Days passed, weeks passed, months passed, and he 
 
 knew that he could not live. He was ready to die, 
 
 his life had been such a failure ; but he was not 
 
 willing to die until he was sure his poems would bo 
 
 11 
 
162 DAVID GRAY 
 
 published. He worked over them, he copied them, 
 he wrote to his friends about them — wrote so earn- 
 estly, so yearningly, so sadly, that they raised 
 money enough to publish them, Lord Houghton 
 subscribing five pounds, and Mr. Dobell and other 
 friends other sums. So they were placed in the 
 hands of the printer, and a specimen page that be- 
 gan " How beautiful ! " was sent to him. It reached 
 him on December 2, 1861. When he saw it, his 
 face lighted up, and the fame for which he had 
 struggled was won. "It is good news," he said. 
 The next day he died, his last words being, " God 
 has love, and I have faith ! " His death was an- 
 nounced to Lord Houghton by his father in the fol- 
 lowing words : " Dear Sir : My son David died on 
 Tuesday, December 3d, at two o'clock, afternoon. 
 Born 20th January, 1838. Your obedient servant, 
 David Gray." 
 
 If there be a moral in the life of David Gray, 
 I am not moralist enough to point it out. My 
 business has been to tell the story of his life as 
 simply as I could, extenuating nothing, and setting- 
 nothing down in malice. I have known so many 
 poets, old and young, that I have come to believe 
 that I understand them as well as most men who 
 write about them — much better, I think, than those 
 who praise them too loudly, or dispraise them too 
 feebly. I accept them for what they are, not for 
 
DAVID GRAY 163 
 
 what I might wish them to be ; for whether we 
 know it or not, they are a law unto themselves, 
 and are their own excuse for being. The quality of 
 David Gray's verse may be inferred from this un- 
 studied sonnet : 
 
 Now, while the long- delaying ash assumes 
 
 The delicate April green, and, loud and clear 
 Through the cool, yellow, mellow twilight glooms, 
 
 The thrush's song enchants the captive ear ; 
 Now, while a shower is pleasant in the falling, 
 
 Stirring the still perfume that wakes around; 
 Now, that doves mourn, and from the distance calling, 
 
 The cuckoo answers with a sovereign sound, 
 Come, with thy native heart, true and tried ! 
 
 But leave all books ; for what with converse high, 
 Flavored with Attic wit, the time shall glide 
 
 On smoothly, as a river floweth by, 
 Or as on stately pinions through the gray 
 Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way. 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 Among the things which may be considered works 
 of art, using the phrase in a sense that is wide 
 enough to embrace engravings on steel and wood, 
 casts in plaster as well as paintings in oil and water- 
 colors, with whatever else of cunning workmanship 
 comes under the head of bric-a-brac — among these 
 things, I say, there is one which has been in my 
 possession for more than a quarter of a century, 
 and upon which I set a high value, because it was 
 the gift of a friend of my early days, whose dust is 
 now mouldering in the City of Flowers, and because 
 it is a pictorial interpretation of the personages of 
 a great poet, an old English poet, whom all his suc- 
 cessors have delighted to honor — Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 This treasure, for such it is to me, is a copy of 
 Blake's Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims. It is an 
 engraving, whether on steel or copper I am not 
 learned enough in engravings to state, about forty 
 inches in length and ten inches in width, and it 
 represents the Canterbury pilgrims as they started 
 from the door of the Tabard Inn — a company of 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 165 
 
 old-time Englishmen, headed by the Knight, the 
 Squire, the Yeoman, the Priest, the Nun, and the 
 Abbess, who are followed by the Monks, the Par- 
 doner, the Host, the Shipman, the Frankelin, the 
 Man of Law, the Wife of Bath, the Miller, and the 
 Clerk of Oxenford, the procession ending at the 
 door of the inn with the Eeeve and Chaucer, all 
 mounted, and all proceeding to the shrine of St. 
 Thomas. All these figures are worthy of careful 
 study, for the sake of Chaucer, of whose dramatic 
 quality they are a curious revelation, and for the 
 sake of Blake, of whose unique genius they are a 
 strange manifestation. There is something in this 
 engraving that arrests the attention at once, that 
 holds it whether it will or no, and that refuses to 
 be forgotten. It is not beautiful, though there are 
 lovely and gracious things in it. It is homely and 
 rude in many ways ; but rude or homely, lovely or 
 gracious, it is characterized by a feeling that is 
 inexplicable, a power which cannot be analyzed, 
 and an imagination from which there is no escape. 
 We seem, while we look at it, to be in another 
 world than this workaday world of ours — an earlier 
 world where men and women are more natural than 
 they are here, where the hills and vales are more 
 primitive, the clouds more fantastic, and the light 
 in the morning sky more uncertain and visionary. 
 Wherever I have lived since this picture has be- 
 
166 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 longed to me, it has been with me, in the room in 
 which I write, over the mantel, with books . to the 
 right of it, books to the left of it, and books in 
 front of it — poets and essayists, story-tellers and 
 historians, and others in the heavy and light brigade 
 of letters. I have looked at it until I know it by 
 heart, and I never look at it without finding some- 
 thing new in it, and thinking of Blake, whom I 
 know better than I did when I first made his ac- 
 quaintance through this strange work of his, and 
 who, poet and painter, stands apart, alone and un- 
 accompanied in the world of English art and song. 
 Let me chat about him a little here. 
 
 William Blake was born in London, in Broad 
 Street, Carnaby Market, near Golden Square, on 
 November 28, 1757. The second of a family of five 
 children, he was the son of James and Catharine 
 Blake, whose daily bread was obtained from the 
 sale of hosiery. Nothing is known of his child- 
 hood, except that his education was confined to 
 reading and writing, and that he was fond of coun- 
 try rambles. He took to drawing when he was ten 
 years old, and to poetry when he was twelve, which 
 was at too early an age for his lines in either direc- 
 tion to fall in many pleasant places. His first essays 
 in art consisted in copying prints, and his first 
 knowledge of art in what he saw on the walls of 
 salesrooms, which he haunted, and where he bought 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 167 
 
 engravings at low prices — not those which were 
 then in vogue, for he cared nothing for those, but 
 Eaphael, Michael Angelo, and other old masters, 
 whose vogue in England was still to come. His 
 artistic insight was in advance of his age, and far 
 in advance of the age in which he lived. "lam 
 happy," he wrote long afterward; "I cannot say 
 that Eaphael ever was from my earliest childhood 
 hidden from me. I saw and I knew immediately 
 the difference between Raphael and Rubens." 
 When he was fourteen he was apprenticed to James 
 Basire, a well-known engraver, who was employed 
 by the Antiquarian and Royal Societies, and by 
 whom, when he was fairly instructed in his craft, 
 he was sent to make drawings in Westminster 
 Abbey. He sketched the tombs there, engraved a 
 selection from his studies thereof, and made draw- 
 ings from history and fancy. His chief pleasure 
 during his apprenticeship was in making drawings 
 and verses to be hung up in his mother's room. 
 When his term had expired he studied in the An- 
 tique School in the Royal Academy, where he ven- 
 tured to differ from the keeper of the library, who 
 did not share his enthusiasm for Raphael and 
 Michael Angelo, whose work he considered inferior 
 to that of Rubens and Lebrun. "Those etchings 
 you call finished" Blake said to the librarian, " are 
 not even begun ; how, then, can they be finished ? " 
 
168 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 There is a story that Blake at this time, or per- 
 haps a little later, waited upon Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds, to show him some of his designs, and that 
 Sir Joshua, repelled by their extravagance, advised 
 him to cultivate simplicity — a criticism which Blake 
 never forgave. His apprenticeship over, he sought 
 and obtained employment as an engraver for the 
 Ladies' Magazine, and another publication entitled 
 the Novelists' Magazine, in both of which he trans- 
 lated into black and white the works of other artists, 
 working at the same time for himself as his ambi- 
 tion prompted him, in water- colors. The first artist 
 of note whose acquaintance he made was Thomas 
 Stothard, whose drawings were in demand among 
 publishers for their loveliness and grace ; the second 
 was John Flaxman, the sculptor, who was employed 
 by the Wedgewoods, whose pottery work, enriched 
 by his classic groups, was famous the world over ; 
 the third was Henry Fuseli, a Swiss painter, who 
 carried his admiration of Michael Angelo to an ex- 
 travagance that was laughable when it was not re- 
 pulsive. It is not well to look closely into the 
 friendship of painters or poets, for with every desire 
 on the part of both to fulfil their obligations to the 
 letter as well as in spirit, they are so conscious of 
 themselves that they cannot be thoroughly conscious 
 of others, and so avid of appreciation that they de- 
 mand more than they are willing to bestow. Blake 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 169 
 
 thought too highly of himself to think very highly of 
 either Flaxman or Stothard, whom, in his moments of 
 irritation, he accused of borrowing from him— justly 
 or unjustly, we have no means of deciding. Fuseli 
 admitted that he was good to steal from, which was a 
 great deal from so opinionated a creature as Fuseli. 
 In his twenty-third or twenty-fourth year Blake 
 kept company with a young person named Clara 
 Woods, whom he had not art enough to make love 
 him, though she had art enough to make him jeal- 
 ous. He complained of her treatment of him to his 
 friends and acquaintances, and among others to a 
 Miss Catharine Sophia Boucher, the daughter of a 
 market gardener at Battersea, who told him that 
 she pitied him from the bottom of her heart. " Do 
 you pity me ? " he asked. " Yes, I do, most sin- 
 cerely." "Then I love you for that," he answered. 
 " And I," she declared, " love you." Miss Boucher, 
 who was one of a family of five, was a slim and 
 graceful brunette, with a pretty, expressive face and 
 shapely white hands, such as artists like to draw or 
 paint. Womanly in her ways, and with a certain 
 rustic charm, she was uneducated, so much so that 
 when, in her twenty -first year, she became the wife 
 of Blake, she could only make her mark in the parish 
 register. The marriage was distasteful to the father 
 of Blake, so the young man left the paternal home in 
 Broad Street, where he had resided up to that time, 
 
170 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 and set up a house for himself and his wife in Green 
 Street, Leicester Fields, where he went on with his 
 engraving and painting in water- colors, and with a 
 labor of love, which he at once undertook, and which 
 consisted in teaching his wife to read and write. 
 
 Not long after his marriage Blake was introduced 
 by Flaxman to a Mrs. Mathew, the wife of a clergy- 
 man, at whose house, in Rathbone Place, her friends 
 and adherents used to gather at stated seasons, 
 which were doubtless in the evening, and hold what 
 were called conversazioni, which may be roughly 
 Englished as social talks, the participants in which 
 met to natter one another, and show themselves off, 
 and exploit the fad of the hour, from Shakespeare to 
 the musical glasses. Thither Blake went, leaving 
 his wife at home, we suppose, for we are not told 
 that she accompanied him ; and there he read his 
 verses, and sang them ; for though he knew nothing 
 of music as a science, he had set some of his verses 
 to airs of his own composing, which were said to be 
 singularly beautiful. His acquaintance with this lady 
 was of service to him as a poet ; for it resulted in the 
 publication of his first volume, the expense of which 
 appears to have been borne by Flaxman and Mr. 
 Mathew, the latter of whom wrote the preface to it. 
 
 Blake's Poetical Sketches, which was published in 
 1783, was not a book to attract attention, stealing 
 into the world, as it did, amid a host of similar ven- 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 171 
 
 tures which no one pretended to read, not even the 
 hacks whose business it was to report the poetry of 
 the day in the magazines, and violating, as it did, 
 all the received standards of poetical taste. It ap- 
 peared in one of those intervals which occur in all 
 literatures — one of those interregnums between 
 dynasties whose power has departed and dynasties 
 whose power is approaching, between the line of 
 prosaic poets of whom Dryden and Pope were the 
 chiefs, and the line of poetic poets, which, begin- 
 ning with Wordsworth and Coleridge, still occu- 
 pies the throne of English song. Blake antedated 
 Cowper, the Cowper of The Task, by two years, and 
 the Burns of The Cotter's Saturday Night, and The 
 Twa Dogs, by four years. He was not a poet in 
 the sense that the Bard of Olney and the Ayrshire 
 Plowman were poets ; but there are lyrics in his 
 Poetical Sketches, which were written between his 
 twelfth and twentieth years (1769-1777), which sur- 
 pass anything of the kind since the reigns of Eliza- 
 beth and James. Here is one which has the flavor 
 of the old dramatists, the greatest of whom might 
 have been proud to own it : 
 
 Song. 
 
 My silks and fine array, 
 
 My smiles and languished air, 
 
 By love are driven away ; 
 And mournful lean Despair 
 
172 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 Brings me yew to deck my grave; 
 Such, end true lovers have. 
 
 His face is fair as Heaven 
 
 When springing buds unfold ; 
 Oh, why to him was't given, 
 
 Whose heart is wintry cold ? 
 His breast is love's all-worshipped tomb, 
 Where all love's pilgrims come. 
 
 Bring me an ax and spade, 
 
 Bring me a winding-sheet ; 
 When I my grave have made, 
 
 Let winds and tempests beat : 
 Then down I'll lie, as cold as clay, 
 True love doth pass away! 
 
 The year after the publication of the Poetical 
 Sketches Blake changed his abode from Green 
 Street, and, entering into partnership with a man 
 named Parker, opened a shop as an engraver and 
 print seller in Broad Street, next door to his brother 
 James, who, on the death of their father, had suc- 
 ceeded to his hosiery business. With William went 
 his younger brother, Kobert, whom he had taken as 
 a pupil, and who began to make original designs, as 
 did also his wife, to whom he succeeded in impart- 
 ing an art education that was serviceable to both. 
 At the end of two or three years Kobert died, and 
 very happily, as it would seem, since William saw 
 his soul ascend through the ceiling, clapping its 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 173 
 
 hands for joy. Parted from William in the flesh, 
 Robert remained near him in spirit, ministering to 
 him and teaching him in visions of the night how to 
 bring out his poems, which he was too poor to pub- 
 lish at his own expense, and with them the designs 
 which they had suggested, and which could not be 
 said to elucidate their meaning. The method em- 
 ployed, which was simple enough when once revealed, 
 or invented, consisted of a kind of engraving in re- 
 lief of the words and the pictures. This process, as 
 described by Gilchrist, in his Life of Blake, was as 
 follows : " The verse was written, and the designs 
 and marginal embellishments outlined on the cop- 
 per with an impervious liquid — probably the ordi- 
 nary stopping-out varnish of engravers. Then all the 
 white parts or lights (the remainder of the plate, that 
 is), were eaten away with aqua fortis or other acid, so 
 that the outline of letter and design was left promi- 
 nent, as in stereotype. From these plates he printed 
 off in any tint — yellow, brown, blue — required to be 
 the prevailing (or ground) color in his fac-similes ; 
 red he used for the letter press. The page was then 
 colored up by hand in imitation of the original draw- 
 ing, with more or less variety of detail in the local 
 hues." 
 
 By this process Blake produced his books, begin- 
 ning with Songs of Innocence, in 1789, and ending 
 with Milton, in 1804. They numbered fifteen, only 
 
174 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 two of which can be said to possess any poetical 
 merit, the remainder either soaring above or sinking 
 below the comprehension of ordinary readers of po- 
 etry. They defy classification and evade analysis, 
 satisfying no intelligent comprehension in the read- 
 ing, and affording no clue to their immediate or ulti- 
 mate object. Some purport to be prophetic, but of 
 what we have to conjecture ; others, like The Book of 
 Thel and Tiriel, purport to be narratives or histories 
 of mysterious persons in unknown places, " out of 
 space, out of time." If they remind us of anything in 
 English letters, it is of Ossian, whose shadows exer- 
 cised a curious fascination over uncritical minds, 
 which mistook vagueness for sublimity, and turgid 
 modern prose for an ancient poetical form. That 
 Blake should have been captivated by the Ossian fad 
 is not to be wondered at when we remember that 
 it captivated Coleridge and Byron in their younger 
 days, and a greater than both in a more stirring field 
 than that of song — Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 
 If we wish to understand Blake as a poet, we must 
 discard his Ossianic and prophetic aberrations, and 
 read him as we would any other poet, not when he 
 is at his worst, but when he is at his best, in his 
 Songs of Innocence, and Songs of Experience, which 
 was published five years later. Here we find a poet 
 who differed from all his contemporaries, who had 
 no predecessor, and has had no successor, but who 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 175 
 
 was altogether unique, original and individual, primi- 
 tive and elemental. The qualities which distinguish 
 his verse at this time were simplicity and sincerity, 
 sweetness and grace, an untutored, natural note 
 which reminds one of the singing of a child who 
 croons to himself in his happy moments, not know- 
 ing how happy he is, wise beyond his years, superior 
 to time or fate. They seem never to have been writ- 
 ten, but to have written themselves, they are so 
 frank and joyous, so inevitable and final. The spell 
 begins with the artless Introduction to the Songs 
 of Innocence (Piping Down the Valleys Wild), The 
 Lamb, Holy Thursday, and On Another's Sorrow, 
 and continues in the Songs of Experience, with the 
 Introduction, and Earth's Answer, The Fly, and that 
 tremendous lyric, The Tiger, which to read once is 
 to remember forever. We are grateful to brother 
 Robert, who taught Blake the method by which 
 the poems could be translated from manuscript to 
 print ; to St. Joseph, who revealed to Blake the pro- 
 cess by which he mixed his colors ; and to helpful 
 Mrs. Blake, who, under her husband's direction, col- 
 ored the designs and bound the books in boards. 
 
 The life of Blake, which has been related in two 
 volumes by the late Mr. Alexander Gilchrist (1863), 
 and by Mr. William Michael Rossetti, in a brief me- 
 moir contributed by him to the Aldine Edition of 
 Blake's Poetical Works, was devoid of incidents 
 
176 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 that attract biographers, in that they are not strik- 
 ing, however characteristic they may be of his per- 
 sonality, and however much they may direct or de- 
 fend the current of his days. He was one of those 
 men who live for themselves more than their art, 
 one of those strange men with whom art is so much 
 a part of themselves that they never heed where 
 either begins or ends — an egotist, an enthusiast, a 
 visionary. He was the kind of man that his fellows 
 never quite understand ; it may be because they 
 assume that they are superior to him in worldly 
 knowledge, which most of them are without doubt, 
 or because he irritates and angers them with his 
 self-sufficiency and arrogance. To differ from the 
 majority of mankind is to challenge their good sense, 
 delay their appreciation, and destroy their sympa- 
 thy. Opinionated and determined, Blake would 
 not be helped except in his own way, nor could he 
 be helped long in that way, he was so impulsive and 
 impolitic, so fractious and unreasonable. He was 
 poor all his life, in spite of the diligence with which 
 he plied his craft, and there were times when his 
 scanty subsistence depended on the bounty of his 
 friendly patrons, one of whom filled his house with 
 his water-colors. 
 
 The death of the poet Cowper in the spring of 
 1800, was the indirect cause of Blake's quitting the 
 chartered banks of the Thames, and spending three 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 177 
 
 or four years in the country. This rural residence 
 resulted from his introduction by Flaxman to Mr. 
 William Hayley, a gentleman of fortune who ranked 
 among the poets of the day through an elegant but 
 feeble poem, entitled The Triumphs of Temper, and 
 who undertook to write a Life of Cowper, with 
 whom he had been acquainted. He styled himself 
 " The Hermit of Eartham," from a seat which he 
 had at Eartham, in Sussex, to which he invited 
 Blake, to make illustrations for the Life of Cow- 
 per. Adjacent to Eartham was a little seaside vil- 
 lage called Felpham, where he had a turreted ma- 
 rine cottage, near which was a smaller cottage 
 which he rented to Blake for twenty pounds a year, 
 and into which Blake moved with his wife and sis- 
 ter, despatching thence an epistle to his friend 
 Flaxman, whom he addressed as his " Dear Sculp- 
 tor of Eternity." As the spirit of this letter is 
 significant of the mental condition of the writer, a 
 passage from it may not be amiss here : " And now 
 begins a new life, because another covering of earth 
 is shaken off. I am more famed in Heaven for my 
 works than I could well conceive. In my brain are 
 studies and chambers filled with books and pictures 
 of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eter- 
 nity before my mortal life ; and these works are 
 the delight and study of archangels. Why, then, 
 should I be anxious about the riches or fame of 
 13 ... 
 
178 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 mortality ? The Lord our Father will do for us and 
 with us according to his divine will, for our good. 
 You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel, my 
 friend and companion from eternity. In the divine 
 bosom is our dwelling-place. I look back into the 
 regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient 
 doings before this earth appeared in its vegetated 
 mortality to my mortal vegetated eyes. I can see 
 our houses of eternity, which can never be sepa- 
 rated, though our mortal vehicles should stand at the 
 remotest corners of Heaven from each other." 
 
 That Blake and Hayley could not get on together, 
 however they may have sought to do so, and how- 
 ever great the allowance that each made for the 
 other, was inevitable ; for gentle and generous as 
 Hayley was, the vagaries of Blake could not fail to 
 triumph over his temper. They parted at last, and 
 Blake returned to London in the spring of 1808 
 (the visions being angry with him at Felpham), and, 
 taking a lodging in South Molton Street, soon pro- 
 duced three extraordinary works, at least one of 
 which, he said, had been dictated to him. He 
 called it Jerusalem, and declared it was the grandest 
 poem that this world contains. "I may praise it," 
 he added, " since I dare not pretend to be any other 
 than the secretary — the authors are in eternity." 
 Within the next year or two he made a series of 
 designs, in water-colors, for Blair's Grave, a gloomy 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 179 
 
 poem which still enjoyed some reputation. He 
 intended to engrave and publish them, and would 
 have done so if he had not fallen into the clutches 
 of a Yorkshireman named Cromek, who had aban- 
 doned engraving, and become a dealer in prints. 
 This fellow, who was a scamp, met Blake when he 
 and his wife were living on half a guinea a week, 
 saw these designs in his room, and purchased the 
 series of twelve for twenty-one pounds. It was 
 understood — at any rate Blake understood — that he 
 was to engrave the designs ; and he was proceed- 
 ing to do so when Master Cromek engaged another 
 engraver, thereby depriving Blake of any further 
 gain from his work, which was published in 1808 
 and was very profitable. Nor was this the end of 
 Cromek ; for he had the impudence to call after- 
 ward on Blake, who had made a drawing of Chau- 
 cer's Canterbury Pilgrims, for which he gave him a 
 commission ; but, true to his knavish instincts, he 
 threw him over, and engaged Stothard to make an 
 oil picture on the same subject. When Blake dis- 
 covered this fact it created a difficulty between him- 
 self and Stothard, which was never healed. 
 
 A prospectus at the end of Blair's Grave of Stot- 
 hard's print, determined Blake to complete his own 
 Canterbury Pilgrims in what he called " fresco," 
 and to exhibit it with other of his pictures and 
 water-colors in the house in which he was born, and 
 
180 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 which was still occupied by his brother the hosier. 
 He drew up a Descriptive Catalogue of his works, 
 which is said to be an excellent example of his 
 prose. The price of admission to this exhibition 
 was half a crown, which included the Catalogue ; 
 but not many half-crowns were taken in, for Blake's 
 art did not hit the popular taste. Nor did the print 
 of the Canterbury Pilgrims which was published in 
 the autumn of 1810, at the cost of four guineas 
 to subscribers, who were few indeed. Lamb was 
 greatly struck by this print, which he declared was 
 the best criticism he had ever seen of Chaucer's 
 poem. 
 
 Given the singular temperament of Blake, his ec- 
 centric habit of thought, and his wayward line of 
 conduct, it required no great sagacity to divine from 
 the beginning the end of his career, which could by 
 no possibility be a prosperous one. Unsuccessful 
 with the public, who knew little and cared less for 
 his art, and unsuccessful with publishers, who pre- 
 ferred the work of more popular engravers than he, 
 he lived by two or three patrons, who greatly ad- 
 mired him, one being Mr. John Linn ell, a landscape 
 painter, another, Mr. John Varley, a painter in 
 water-colors. It was for Varley that he drew his 
 views of Visionary Heads, The Man who Built the 
 Pyramids, Edward the Third, and The Ghost of a 
 Flea ; and it was Linnell who purchased for a good 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 181 
 
 sum his water-color drawings for the Book of Job, 
 which were published in 1826, and were the finest 
 of all modern contributions to ancient Scriptural 
 art, simple in conception, severe in execution, noble 
 and dignified, majestic and magnificent. A perfect 
 set of these wonderful designs is a priceless posses- 
 sion. 
 
 The end came to Blake on August 12, 1827. He 
 composed and uttered Songs to his Maker, and 
 they were so sweet in the ear of his wife, who stood 
 by to hear them, that he said to her with a loving 
 smile : " No, beloved, they are not mine ! no, they 
 are not mine ! " He assured her that they would not 
 be parted, and that he should always be about her 
 to take care of her. He was going to that country 
 he had all his life wished to see. " Just before he 
 died, his countenance became fair, his eyes bright- 
 ened, and he burst out into singing of the things he 
 saw in Heaven." His breath began to fail, and to- 
 ward six in the evening he passed away, so calmly 
 and silently that the moment of his departure was 
 not known. So lived, and so, in his seventieth year, 
 died William Blake, of whom I will only say, in the 
 words of Crabbe Kobinson, " Shall I call Blake 
 artist, genius, mystic, or madman ? Probably he is 
 all." 
 
HARTLEY COLERIDGE 
 
 Whether the virtues and vices of men are the 
 growth of their own personality, or whether they 
 are inherited from their parentage, is a question 
 which may well make the student of character pause 
 before he attempts to decide it. To consider hered- 
 ity is not to consider too curiously as regards the 
 poetic character, which, strong in great poets like 
 Shakespeare and Milton, is weak in singers like 
 Edgar Allan Poe and Hartley Coleridge. Familiar 
 from childhood with the verse and the life of the 
 elder Coleridge, I have just been reading the life 
 and the verse of his son, with whom great gifts were 
 uselessly lodged, and who, beyond the son of any 
 English poet that I recall, was the inheritor of un- 
 fulfilled renown. 
 
 The son of a country clergyman, vicar, and head 
 master of a Free Grammar School at Ottery St. 
 Mary, his father, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, left an 
 orphan at the age of nine, received before he was 
 ten a presentation to Christ's Hospital, where he 
 proceeded to bewilder himself in metaphysics and 
 
HARTLEY COLERIDGE 183 
 
 controversial theology, occasionally dropping into 
 poetry, which was savagely criticised by his master. 
 At nineteen he went to Jesus College, Cambridge, 
 where he soon won the Browne Gold Medal for a 
 Greek ode on the Slave Trade, where he read Burke 
 and studied the politics of the period, and whence, 
 at twenty-one, either because he was in love or in 
 debt (perhaps in both), he decamped, and went up 
 to London, where, after a few days, he enlisted in 
 the Fifteenth Light Dragoons as Silas Titus Comber- 
 back — a freak which was imitated about thirty years 
 later by Poe, who, in like manner, remembered to 
 preserve the initials of his own name in the name 
 under which he enlisted. An execrable rider and a 
 negligent groom of his horse, Samuel Taylor re- 
 mained in the awkward squad until he chanced to 
 attract the attention of his captain by a quotation 
 from Boethius, which he had scrawled on the wall of 
 his stable at Beading, and which led to his discharge 
 and return to Cambridge. A few months after this 
 we find him at Bristol, in the society of two poets of 
 about his own age — Robert Lovell, and Robert 
 Southey — and three young damsels named Fricker, 
 one of whom, Mary, either was, or was about to be, 
 married to Lovell, another, Edith, being engaged 
 to Southey, the third, Sarah, remaining in maiden 
 meditation fancy free. Before long the fancy of 
 this young man, which turned to so many things, 
 
184 A HARTLEY COLERIDGE 
 
 turned to thoughts of love, and he became engaged 
 to the fair Sarah. He said at a later period that 
 the engagement was not his own deliberate act, but 
 that it was in a manner forced upon him by the 
 scrupulous Southey, who insisted that he had gone 
 too far in his attentions for airy honorable retreat ; 
 others who saw him at the time declared that if 
 there ever was a man in love, he was that man. 
 But however this may have been, he was engaged, 
 and returned to college, where he was in disfavor 
 with the authorities on account of the visionary 
 nature of his ideas, and soon left it for the second 
 time, devoting his days to poetry, in conjunction 
 with Southey, and his nights to smoking, in con- 
 junction with Lamb, at the "Cat and Salutation." 
 From London back to Bristol, where, with the help 
 of Southey, he projected the notion of founding a 
 Pantisocracy on the banks of the Susquehanna, 
 and where he lectured on History, Keligion, and the 
 Hair Tax Powder. He lived from hand to mouth, 
 the hand that supplied the mouth being for the 
 most part that of Southey. 
 
 Seventeen days before completing his twenty- 
 third year, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, logician, meta- 
 physician, bard, was married at St. Mary Bedcliffe 
 church, Bristol, to Sarah Fricker. The happy pair 
 began their honeymoon at Clevedon, on the banks 
 of the Severn, where a cottage was hired, the rent 
 
HAETLEY COLEKIDGE 185 
 
 of which was five pounds a year — a small, low, one- 
 story building. It was, of course, unfurnished ; so 
 two days after his marriage Coleridge wrote to 
 Joseph Cottle, and asked him to send him at once 
 such housekeeping necessaries as a riddle slice, a 
 candle box, a tin dustpan and tin teakettle, a pair 
 of candlesticks, a carpet brush, a pair of slippers, a 
 cheese-toaster, a keg of porter, coffee, raisins, cur- 
 rants, catsup, nutmegs, allspice, cinnamon, rice, 
 ginger, mace, and — a Bible ! They were despatched 
 thither, and were followed by Cottle, who, on his 
 return to town, sent an upholsterer to paper the 
 parlor, the walls whereof were merely whitewashed, 
 A poet himself, and a publisher in a small way, 
 Cottle had offered our bard thirty guineas for a 
 volume of verse, which was then in the press ; and 
 that finished, a guinea and a half for every hundred 
 lines that he might produce. 
 
 Upon this problematic provision, and with a child- 
 like trust in Providence, the Coleridges began their 
 wedded life. It was a happy one, if we may trust a 
 poem on the music of an iEolian Harp which it in- 
 spired. Bat, unhappily for poets, there comes a 
 time in their lives when something besides the 
 music of iEolian harps is necessary to keep the wolf 
 from their cottage doors. So Coleridge projected a 
 periodical, The Watchman, and set out on a tour to 
 Sheffield, Birmingham, Manchester, Derby, and Not- 
 
186 HAETLEY COLERIDGE 
 
 tingliam to procure subscribers for it, preaching 
 Unitarian sermons by the way in a blue coat and 
 white waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of 
 Babylon might be seen upon him. Like Panti- 
 socracy, The Watchman was intended to propagate 
 whatever was calculated to improve the mental and 
 moral condition of mankind, including, of course, 
 the material condition of the editor. It was to con- 
 sist of thirty-two pages, and to be published every 
 eighth day, for fourpence — a sum which then and 
 there, as was remarked by a Calvinistic tallow- 
 chandler who was solicited to subscribe, meant " a 
 deal of money at the end of the year." This search 
 for subscriptions was no more remunerative than 
 Micawber's coals, but all the same The Watchman 
 appeared. Precisely what duty this guardian of the 
 night was supposed to perform, no one could quite 
 make out ; but whatever it was, it was resented 
 from the start, for the second number, which con- 
 tained an essay against fast-days, cost the editor 
 nearly five hundred subscribers at one blow. That 
 he was devoid of humor was apparent from the Bib- 
 lical motto to this essay : " Wherefore my bowels 
 shall sound like an harp." He wandered up and 
 down, making enemies every time he sprang his 
 rattle, until he reached the tenth number, when he 
 concluded to discharge himself and retire to his box, 
 where, about four months later, there was another 
 
HAETLEY COLEEIDGE 187 
 
 mouth to feed. It was the mouth of little Hart- 
 ley, who was born on September 19, 1796. His 
 father was at Birmingham at the time ; but when 
 the news reached him he started at once for Cleve- 
 don, composing on the way a sonnet, in which he 
 tried to imagine what he would feel if some one 
 should meet him at his door, and tell him the child 
 was dead. His foreboding was not realized, how- 
 ever ; so he wrote another sonnet, in which he told 
 the person to whom it was addressed— and who is 
 supposed to have been Lamb — what he really felt 
 when the nurse first presented the infant to him. 
 
 Spells of genius were woven around the infancy 
 and childhood of Hartley Coleridge. An eight 
 months' child, and diminutive in stature, he was 
 idolized by his father and his father's friends, who 
 were captivated by his strange loveliness and his 
 singular habits of introspection. That he was a re- 
 markable child, and would have been so considered 
 even if he had not been a poet's son, is evident from 
 all that has been written about him, as well as the 
 portrait which Wilkie painted at the age of ten, and 
 which is as simply and sweetly human as the head 
 of an ideal boy. We have a picturesque glimpse of 
 him in the The Nightingale, a charming idyl, which 
 was written at Nether Stowey, in the spring of 
 1798, and have also another in Frost at Midnight, 
 which was written some two months earlier, and con- 
 
188 HAKTLEY COLEKIDGE 
 
 tains a paternal prophecy concerning his future life. 
 The poet depicts himself as sitting in his cottage, with 
 the babe sleeping in the cradle beside him, and as 
 musing over his school-days, which were not happy. 
 
 My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart 
 
 With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, 
 
 And think that thou shall learn far other lore, 
 
 And in far other scenes ! For I was reared 
 
 In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, 
 
 And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars. 
 
 But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a breeze 
 
 By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags 
 
 Of ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds, 
 
 Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores 
 
 And mountain crags ; so shalt thou see and hear 
 
 The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible 
 
 Of that eternal language, which thy God 
 
 Utters, who from eternity doth teach 
 
 Himself in all, and all things in Himself, 
 
 Great universal Teacher ! He shall mould 
 
 Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. 
 
 Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, 
 
 Whether the summer clothe the general earth 
 
 With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing 
 
 Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch 
 
 Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch 
 
 Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eve -drops fall, 
 
 Heard only in the trances of the blast, 
 
 Or in the secret ministry of frost 
 
 Shall hang them up in quiet icicles, 
 
 Quietly smiling to the quiet moon. 
 
HARTLEY COLERIDGE 189 
 
 To what extent Coleridge's interest in his son was 
 a poetic one, and to what extent a paternal one, we 
 have to conjecture from what is related respecting 
 his contradictions of character and his eccentricities 
 of conduct. He seems to have had no recognition 
 of duty as it is understood by the majority of man- 
 kind, or to have been incapable of performing it the 
 moment he recognized it as duty. Unfitted for do- 
 mestic ties, he was seldom at home when he could 
 be anywhere else, and when at home he was not 
 above being supported by others. The story of his 
 life is the story of his changes of residence — from 
 town to town, from England to Germany, from Lon- 
 don to Keswick, thence to Malta and back to Lon- 
 don, where, with visits to Keswick and Grasmere, 
 he took up his final abode with the Gillmans, dying 
 at Highgate in his sixty-second year. It is, further- 
 more, the story of his many employments — in jour- 
 nalism, in lecturing, in planning books that were 
 never written, in endless talk, and in the constant 
 consumption of opium. 
 
 When Hartley was about four years old he was 
 taken by his father and mother to Keswick, where 
 a house was then being built by a Mr. Jackson on 
 the bank of the Greta, into which house, when 
 completed, or rather into half of it, moved the 
 three Coleridges, who were soon joined by a 
 fourth, Derwent, who grew up to be the play- 
 
190 HAETLEY COLERIDGE 
 
 mate of Hartley, the story of whose life he lived 
 to write. 
 
 The strange impression which Hartley made upon 
 the friends of his father, and the apprehensions to 
 which that impression gave rise, were embodied by 
 one of these friends in a copy of verses (To H. C, 
 Six Years Old), to which the only worthy compan- 
 ion piece that I can recall is Emerson's Threnody. 
 A great poet, Wordsworth, for once was a prophet : 
 
 blessed Vision ! happy Child ! 
 Thou art so exquisitely wild, 
 
 1 think of thee with many fears 
 
 For what may be thy lot in future years. 
 
 I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, 
 
 Lord of thy house and hospitality ; 
 
 And Grief, uneasy lover ! never rest 
 
 But when she sat within the touch of thee. 
 
 O too industrious folly, 
 
 O vain and causeless melancholy, 
 
 Nature will either end thee quite, 
 
 Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, 
 
 Preserve for thee, by individual right, 
 
 A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. 
 
 The childhood of Hartley Coleridge was not 
 marked by the love of reading which has character- 
 ized so many clever children, but by a curious 
 introversion of mind, and a strange inability to 
 distinguish between fact and fiction. Involved in 
 
HARTLEY COLERIDGE 191 
 
 himself and compact of imaginations, he lived in a 
 dream. What some of his young dreams were we 
 gather from Crabbe Kobinson, who, describing in 
 his Diary a visit made by him to Lamb, in the sum- 
 mer of 1811 (Hartley's fifteenth year), mentions that 
 Coleridge was present, and that there was a short 
 but interesting conversation on German metaphys- 
 ics : " C. related some curious anecdotes of his son 
 Hartley, whom he represented to be a most remark- 
 able child, a deep thinker in his infancy. He tor- 
 mented himself in his attempts to solve the prob- 
 lems that would equally torment the full-grown 
 man, if the world and its cares and pleasures did 
 not distract his attention. Hartley, when about five 
 years old, was asked a question about himself being- 
 called Hartley. ' Which Hartley ? ' asked the boy. 
 ' Why ! is there more than one Hartley ? ' ' Yes,' 
 he replied, ' there's a deal of Hartleys.' ' How so ? ' 
 1 There's Picture Hartley (Hazlitt had painted a 
 portrait of him), and Shadow Hartley, and there's 
 Echo Hartley, and there's Catch-me-fast Hartley ; ' 
 at the same time seizing his own arm with the other 
 hand very eagerly — an action which shows that his 
 mind must have been drawn to reflect on what 
 Kant calls the great and inexplicable mystery, viz., 
 that man should be both his own subject and ob- 
 ject, and that these two should be one." 
 
 If Coleridge had thought less of the subjective 
 
192 HAETLEY COLEKIDGE 
 
 and the objective about which he was prosing all 
 his life, and more of his wife and children, the 
 eldest of these children might, perhaps, have been 
 preserved from the weakness which wrecked his 
 life. His father may have been as proud of him as 
 he professed to be, but the pride which not only 
 permitted him to neglect the lad while his character 
 was in the process of formation, but left his physi- 
 cal maintenance, as well as that of his mother and 
 his brother and sister, to others, chiefly to Southey, 
 is so closely allied to degradation that I for one can 
 neither condone it, nor understand it. 
 
 Practically a pensioner on the bounty of his re- 
 lations, and the generosity of his father's admirers, 
 Hartley Coleridge was sent to Oxford in his eigh- 
 teenth or nineteenth year, as a scholar of Merton 
 College. The charm which he had exercised in 
 boyhood over all with whom he came in contact was 
 felt and acknowledged here, and by no one more 
 than his fellow- student Alexander Dyce, who was 
 one day to take rank among the best of Shake- 
 speare's scholars. Here is what Dyce wrote to his 
 brother Derwent after his death: "His extraordi- 
 nary powers as a converser (or rather a declaimer) 
 procured for him numerous invitations to what are 
 called at Oxford ' wine parties.' He knew that he 
 was expected to talk, and talking was his delight. 
 Leaning his head on one shoulder, turning up his 
 
HAETLEY COLEKIDGE 193 
 
 dark, bright eyes, and swinging backward and for- 
 ward in his chair, he would hold forth by the hour 
 (for no one wished to interrupt him) on whatever 
 subject might have been started — either of litera- 
 ture, politics, or religion — with an originality of 
 thought, a force of illustration, and a facility and 
 beauty of expression, which I question if any man 
 then living, except his father, could have surpassed." 
 
 Hartley spent his long vacations at Greta Hall, 
 Keswick, the home of his uncle, Southey, where, in 
 the summer of 1810, he made the acquaintance of 
 Chauncey Hare Townsend, who thus described his 
 personal appearance : 
 
 "It was the custom of Hartley at that time to 
 study the whole clay, and only toward the dusk 
 of the evening to come forth for needful exercise 
 and recreation. My attention was at first aroused 
 by seeing from my window a figure flitting about 
 amongst the trees and shrubs of the garden with 
 quick and agitated motion. This was Hartley, who, 
 in the ardor of preparing for his college examina- 
 tions, did not even take his meals with the family, 
 but snatched a hasty morsel in his own apartment, 
 and only, as I have said, sought the free air when 
 the fading* daylight no longer permitted him to see 
 his books. Having found out who he was that so 
 mysteriously flitted about the garden, I was deter- 
 mined to lose no time in making his acquaint- 
 13 
 
194 HAETLEY COLERIDGE 
 
 ance, and through the instrumentality of Mrs. Cole- 
 ridge, I paid Hartley a visit to what he called his 
 den. This was a room afterwards converted by 
 Mr. Southey into a supplementary library, but then 
 appropriated as a study to Hartley, and presenting 
 a most picturesque and student - like disorder of 
 scattered pamphlets and open folios. Here I was 
 received by Hartley with much urbanity and friend- 
 liness, and from that time we were a good deal to- 
 gether." Mr. Townsend was impressed by the elo- 
 quence of Hartley's talk, which skimmed over the 
 fields of literature, explored the region of metaphys- 
 ics, and frequently embraced religion, of which the 
 young collegian appeared to have a profound knowl- 
 edge. He was of an absent turn of mind — a Co- 
 leridgian peculiarity of which Mr. Townsend re- 
 membered a curious instance. " Hartley generally 
 joined the family at tea, which was served in Mr. 
 Southey's study, or library, a large room whose walls 
 were books, whose ornaments were works of art 
 and objects of science — an apartment in which all 
 requisites for bodily and mental comfort were more 
 united than in any apartment I ever saw. As it 
 was known that Hartley at that period was wholly 
 occupied with his studies, and that these were pur- 
 sued up to the last available moment of the day, he 
 was by common consent absolved from what Gait 
 would have called the prejudices of the toilet, and 
 
HAETLEY COLERIDGE 195 
 
 so it was his wont to stray into the room where 
 the family were assembled, attired in his reading- 
 costume, namely, a sort of loose toga, between a 
 coat and a dressing-gown, and his feet in slippers. 
 Sometimes he did not appear in the library at all ; 
 but with that perfect liberty which made happy the 
 inmates of Mr. Southey's house, he would stay away, 
 or come, just as it suited his fancy or his studies. 
 On one occasion it so happened that, after a day or 
 two's seclusion, Hartley came into the library in the 
 very identical reading costume I have described, on 
 an evening when, added to the usual frequenters 
 of our tea-table, were a party of strangers (a cir- 
 cumstance of which Hartley was wholly unaware), 
 some of them ladies from the South, such as were 
 wont occasionally, during the summer, to seek Mr. 
 Southey's residence with any pretext or introduc- 
 tion which might further their desire to see the 
 great poet, and partake his known hospitality. 
 When I saw Hartley open the door, and walk in 
 with his usual abstracted look, I felt awkward for 
 him, but I might have spared myself that feeling ; 
 Hartley did not seem to think that the addition to 
 our party was a legitimate cause of embarrassment, 
 or rather, he did not, I believe, employ any thought 
 on the subject at all. For exactly as if not a single 
 person had been present besides those whom he 
 was accustomed to behold, he quietly walked up to 
 
196 HAETLEY COLERIDGE 
 
 the first seat that presented itself, which happened 
 to be an ottoman, where one or two ladies sat, and 
 placed himself by their side with a preparatory bow, 
 as if he was doing (which in fact he was) a perfectly 
 natural thing. Whatever the ladies might at first 
 have thought of this rather unusual apparition, I 
 am quite sure that, in a very few minutes, every 
 other feeling of theirs was completely merged in 
 unfeigned delight at the conversation into which 
 Hartley entered with them, with an easy good breed- 
 ing which he possessed in a remarkable degree, and 
 which, united as it was with uncommon power of 
 mind, his fair auditors might perhaps have looked 
 for in vain from one who had approached them 
 dressed point device, and encased in the whole 
 buckram of ceremony." 
 
 Hartley returned to Oxford, passed his examina- 
 tion successfully, and stood for a fellowship at Oriel. 
 He obtained the fellowship with high distinction, 
 but did not hold it long, for at the close of his pro- 
 bationary year he was judged to have forfeited it, on 
 the ground mainly of intemperance. 
 
 The blow was a terrible one to Coleridge, not so 
 much on account of its material consequences, as on 
 account of the moral offence it involved. So, at 
 least, he declared to his son Derwent, who probably 
 accepted the justice of his father's verdict, which 
 came with a very bad grace (I cannot help thinking) 
 
HAETLEY COLERIDGE 197 
 
 from one who had long been in the habit of taking 
 from two quarts of laudanum a week to a pint a day, 
 and who had been known to take a whole quart in 
 the twenty-four hours. But if Coleridge was not 
 moral, he was nothing. Waiving, however, the 
 moral offense, which was speedily punished, the 
 material consequences were deplorable, in that poor 
 Hartley was never able to overcome them. He went 
 to London, where he remained about two years, and 
 where, of course, he failed to live by his pen, as 
 many literary adventurers had done before him, 
 and many have done since. "The cause of his fail- 
 ure lay in himself," his brother assures us, " not in 
 any want of literary power, of which he had always 
 a ready command, and which he could have made 
 to assume the most popular forms, but he had lost 
 the power of will. His steadiness of purpose was 
 gone, and the motives which he had for exertion, 
 imperative as they appeared, were without force. 
 Necessity acted upon him with the touch of a tor- 
 pedo. He needed a more genial stimulus. Dreamy 
 as he had always been, he had not hitherto neglect- 
 ed the call of duty. He had shown no want of en- 
 ergy or perseverance either at school or college. 
 Now he gave way to a habit of procrastination, from 
 which, except for short intervals and under favor- 
 able circumstances, he did not recover until it was 
 too late. Thus leaving undone what he wished, and 
 
198 HAETLEY COLERIDGE 
 
 continually intended to do, he shrank from the bit- 
 terness of his reflections, which, notwithstanding, 
 continually returned upon him and took the place of 
 action ; and though he never deliberately sought re- 
 lief in wine, yet he was a welcome guest in all socie- 
 ties, and when surprised by consequences against 
 which he was not sufficiently on his guard, he shrank 
 from the reproaches, and yet more from the uncom- 
 plaining forgiveness of his friends. This led to a 
 habit of wandering and concealment, which returned 
 upon him at uncertain intervals during the middle 
 portion of his life, exposing him to many hardships, 
 if not dangers, and his friends to sore anxiety." 
 
 Quitting London at last, Hartley returned to Am- 
 bleside, where he received pupils, for which he was 
 not fitted, since he could not maintain the neces- 
 sary discipline ; thence he removed to Grasmere, 
 where he lodged at a little rustic inn, and, later, at 
 Nab Cottage, on the banks of the Rydal, where, 
 known throughout the country for his gentle ways, 
 and loved by all, particularly children, he wan- 
 dered from year to year down his darkened vale of 
 life, until January 6, 1849, when his perturbed 
 spirit found rest. "Let him lie by us," said Words- 
 worth, "he would have wished it." It was done; 
 and to-day, in the little graveyard at Grasmere, 
 among the dust of the Wordsworths, one sees the 
 name of Hartley Coleridge. 
 
HAETLEY COLEEIDGE 199 
 
 The son of a poet, and the son, by adoption, of 
 two other poets, Hartley Coleridge might have 
 proved his relationship to the Triumvirate of the 
 Lakes more surely than he did if his career had not 
 prematurely been blasted. His verse is not much 
 read now, I fancy, but it ought to be, for it is better 
 than the strong lines which are the fashion in this 
 critical age. I think so, at any rate, and I hope the 
 reader of this sonnet of his will agree with me : 
 
 Long time a child, and still a child, when years 
 
 Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I — 
 
 For yet I lived like one not born to die ; 
 
 A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears, 
 
 No hope I needed, and I knew no fears, 
 
 But sleep, though sweet ! is only sleep, and waking, 
 
 I waked to sleep no more, at once o'ertaking 
 
 The vanguard of my age, with all arrears 
 
 Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man, 
 
 Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is gray, 
 
 For I have lost the race I never ran ; 
 
 A rathe December blights my lagging May ; 
 
 And still I am a child, though I be old, 
 
 Time is my debtor for my years untold. 
 
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 
 
 No nineteenth century English poet with whom I 
 am acquainted, ever promised more and performed 
 less than Thomas Lovell Beddoes, whose verse, like 
 his life, was a wayward fragment. He enjoyed the 
 honor of a remarkable, and, in a certain sense, dis- 
 tinguished, parentage, his mother being a younger 
 sister of Maria Edgeworth, and his father, Thomas 
 Beddoes, what would now be called a scientist, 
 since to knowledge in medicine, which was his pro- 
 fession, he added knowledge in chemistry, and was 
 the projector and founder of a Pneumatic Institu- 
 tion for the treatment of disease by inhalation, for 
 which Watt constructed an apparatus, and where- 
 in a young man named Davy, who was afterward 
 knighted, was his assistant. Dr. Beddoes wrote a 
 treatise on the calculus, a number of political pam- 
 phlets in which he violently assailed Pitt, several 
 medical works, and was the author of a poem on 
 the conquests of Alexander, one object of which was 
 to denounce the aggrandizements of his country- 
 men in India, another to show the possibility of 
 
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 201 
 
 imitating, if not excelling, that preposterous piece 
 of glittering fustian — Darwin's Botanic Garden. 
 Like many thoughtful men in the last decade of 
 the last century, he sympathized warmly with the 
 French Ke volution, and, like all philosophic enthu- 
 siasts, he hated every form of oppression. Inquisi- 
 tive and energetic, original and independent, a seek- 
 er after, and a worshipper of, truth, he died in his 
 forty-ninth year, and was mourned by Southey, who 
 wrote, on hearing of his death : " From Beddoes 
 I hoped for more good to the human race than 
 any other individual ; " and, also, by Coleridge, who 
 wrote on the same occasion : " I felt that more had 
 been taken out of my life by this than by any 
 former event." 
 
 Born in Kodney Place, in the summer of 1803, 
 and left an orphan in his sixth year, young Bed- 
 does was placed under the guardianship of Mr. 
 Davies Giddy, an old college friend of his father, 
 by whom he was sent to the Bath Grammar School, 
 and removed thence, in his fourteenth year, to the 
 Charterhouse school, where he was considered a 
 very clever boy, though not fond of society and the 
 usual games of schoolboys. One of his achieve- 
 ments while at the Charterhouse was the taking of 
 a prize for a Latin theme, another was the volumi- 
 nous study of the old dramatists, an uncommon 
 course of reading for a lad in the period of Scott 
 
202 THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 
 
 and Byron, and one which betrayed an independ- 
 ence if not a singularity of taste. It developed, if 
 it did not create, his determination to be a poet, 
 which was formed at an early day, his first compo- 
 sition dating in his fifteenth year. He saw himself 
 in print in the Morning Post in the following year, 
 and by the time he was eighteen he had written 
 verse enough to fill a volume, which he called The 
 Improvisatore, and of which he was afterward so 
 ashamed that he destroyed every copy upon which 
 he could lay hands. Like all first volumes of verse, 
 it reflected the manner of the poets whom he 
 sought to emulate, who were not the Elizabethan 
 dramatists, as one might suppose from his reading, 
 but the sentimental imitators of Scott and Byron — 
 feeble specimens of metrical romances, of which 
 there were three in his little book, such constituting 
 a "fytte," and each having an " induction." I have 
 never mustered up courage enough to read The Im- 
 provisatore, but I have read enough of it to see that 
 it is written in pure and beautiful English — a liter- 
 ary quality by which the earliest writing of Beddoes 
 was distinguished as surely as the earliest writing 
 of Keats. 
 
 About a year before the publication of this volume 
 Beddoes was entered a commoner at Pembroke Col- 
 lege, Oxford, in which his father and his guardian 
 had been educated, and which, from the number of 
 
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 203 
 
 poets whom it had sheltered, Dr. Johnson described 
 as a nest of singing birds. It was while residing 
 here, where he made no effort to distinguish him- 
 self, that Beddoes turned his studies of the old 
 dramatists to account in The Bride's Tragedy, the 
 leading idea of which was based upon an event that 
 had occurred at Oxford. The reign of the poetic 
 drama was more bustling at the time than it has 
 been since, and among all those who sought to illus- 
 trate it successfully — Byron, Coleridge, Croly, Mil- 
 man, Procter — there was no one in whom the dra- 
 matic instinct was so strong as this young com- 
 moner of Pembroke. The Bride's Tragedy, which 
 appeared in his nineteenth year, was welcomed by 
 the best critics, two of whom, both poets, praised it 
 heartily — Barry Cornwall in the Edinburgh Review 
 and George Darley in the London Magazine. Darley 
 wrote, over the pen-name of John Lacy, a series of 
 Letters to the Dramatists of the Day, in one of 
 which he expressed his admiration of this perform- 
 ance of Beddoes, whom he complimented at the ex- 
 pense of his elders— notably Byron and Barry Corn- 
 wall, to whom he was teaching their once poetical 
 mother tongue, the very elements of their native 
 poetical dialect, which they had either forgotten, or 
 corrupted with a base intermixture of foreign prin- 
 ciples. He wrote : " However, here is Minor Bed- 
 does, born in the very zenith of this mock sun of 
 
204 THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 
 
 poetiw, while it is culminating in the mid-heaven of 
 our literary hemisphere, shining in watery splendor, 
 the gaze and gape of our foolish-faced, fat-headed 
 nation ; here is Minor Beddoes, I say, born amid 
 the very rage and triumph of the Byronian heresy — 
 nay, in a preface more remarkable for good nature 
 than good sense, eulogizing some of the prose-poets 
 — yet what does Minor Beddoes ? Why, writing a 
 tragedy himself, with a judgment far different from 
 that exhibited in his own panegyrical preface, he 
 totally rejects, and therewith tacitly condemns and 
 abjures, the use of prose-poetry. But it was not the 
 boy's judgment that led him to this ; it was his un- 
 depraved ear, and his native energy of mind, teach- 
 ing him to respite this effeminate style of versifica- 
 tion. The Bride's Tragedy transcends, in the 
 quality of its rhythm and metrical harmony, The 
 Doge of Venice, and Mirandola, just as much as it 
 does Fazio, and the other dramas which conform 
 to the rules of genuine English heroic verse in the 
 energy of its language, the power of its sentiments, 
 and the boldness of its imagery — that is incalcu- 
 lably." 
 
 The first literary friend that Beddoes seems to 
 have made was Procter, who introduced him to 
 Thomas Forbes Kelsall, whose name, unknown as it 
 is, I bracket here with Procter's, for the reason that 
 the pair stood in closer personal relations with him 
 
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 205 
 
 than any of his acquaintances, and corresponded with 
 him for years. The interest which attaches to him 
 at this period is not derived from his life, which was 
 rather an aimless one, but from his sallies into the 
 paths of criticism, and his excursions into the fields 
 of song. There is a life, a spirit, an originality in 
 his letters which is not a common inheritance 
 among the guild of poets, charming as are the letters 
 of Gray and Cowper, and enjoyable as are the riot- 
 ous letters of Byron. They are as surely the let- 
 ters of a man of genius as those of Lamb, or Keats, 
 or Edward Fitzgerald, and should be read with the 
 largest indulgence for their aggressive individuality 
 and indomitable independence. They show the ac- 
 tivity of his mind, which was ripening fast, and its 
 abundant fertility, for they refer to poetic works up- 
 on which he was engaged, Love's Arrow Poisoned, 
 The Last Man, Torrismoncl, The Second Brother — 
 hasty dramatic studies which, promising to be 
 powerful tragedies, were abandoned almost as soon 
 as begun, and never completed. " His poetic com- 
 position was then exceedingly facile," we are told 
 by his friend Kelsall ; "more than once or twice he 
 has taken home with him at night some unfinished 
 act of a drama, in which the editor had found much 
 to admire, and at the next meeting has produced a 
 new one, similar in design, but filled with other 
 thoughts and fancies, which his teeming imagination 
 
206 THOMAS LOYELL BEDDOES 
 
 had projected, in its sheer abundance, and not from 
 any feeling, right or fastidious, of unworthiness in 
 its predecessor." 
 
 One needs to be a profound student of the motives 
 which actuate men like Beddoes before he can begin 
 to understand their impulses and eccentricities. A 
 law unto themselves, they are a puzzle to their fel- 
 lows. There mingled in Beddoes strains of the Irish 
 blood of his mother and the Welsh blood of his 
 father, and it may have been the predominance of 
 the last which impelled him to abandon literature 
 and study medicine. What might have been a whim 
 at first was soon a determination, for rushing off to 
 Germany at twenty-two he practically expatriated 
 himself during the rest of his life, studying at Got- 
 tingen under Professor Blumenbach, who said he 
 was the best scholar he ever had. If he had been 
 content to devote his days to medicine one might 
 feel, perhaps, that it was from a passion for the 
 scientific advancement of the healing art, or from a 
 sense of duty toward the sick and suffering, and con- 
 done the way of life that robbed the world of a great 
 poet ; but when to the study of medicine, which he 
 can hardly be said to have practised, he added an 
 active and dangerous participation in Continental 
 politics, one cannot but conclude that he was either 
 a. madman, or a fool. He seems to have inherited 
 politics from his father as well as physic. At last he 
 
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 207 
 
 was obliged to fly from Bavaria and take refuge in 
 Switzerland, where he rowed along the lakes, and 
 walked over the Alps, writing a little English and a 
 great deal of German. He made several flying visits 
 to England, on the last of which he intended to re- 
 main only six weeks, but remained ten months, six 
 of which he spent in a bedroom, reading and smok- 
 ing, and seeing no one. He had changed so greatly 
 in his personal appearance as to be scarcely recog- 
 nizable by the friends of his youth, was misanthropic 
 and cynical, rough in his speech, and eccentric in 
 his manners, or want of manners. He visited his 
 friend Kelsall, and the Procters, who found him, as 
 Mrs. Procter afterward confessed to Mr. Edmund 
 Gosse, a rather uncomfortable companion. "She 
 told me that his eccentricities were so marked that 
 they almost gave the impression of insanity, but that 
 close observation showed them to be merely the re- 
 sult of a peculiar fancy, entirely unaccustomed to 
 restraint, and the occasional rebound of spirits after 
 a period of depression. The Procters found Bed- 
 does a most illusive companion. He would come to 
 them uninvited, but never if he had been asked, or 
 if he feared to meet a stranger. On one occasion, 
 Mrs. Procter told me, they had asked Beddoes to 
 dine with them, and proceed afterward to Drury 
 Lane Theatre. He did not come, and they dined 
 alone. On approaching the theatre they saw Bed- 
 
208 THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 
 
 does in charge of the police, and on inquiry found 
 that he had just been arrested for trying to put 
 Drury Lane on fire. The incendiary, however, had 
 used no more dangerous torch than a five-pound 
 note, and Mr. Procter had little difficulty in persuad- 
 ing the police that this was much more likely to 
 hurt the pocket of Mr. Beddoes than the rafters of 
 the theatre." 
 
 From this visit Beddoes returned to Frankfort, 
 where he lodged with a young baker, and where his 
 blood was poisoned from the virus of a dead body 
 that he was dissecting. For six months he remained 
 with his baker, whom he taught to speak English, 
 and whom he persuaded to accompany him on a 
 journey through Germany and Switzerland. At 
 Zurich he hired a theatre for one night, that the 
 man of bread might enact the part of Hotspur. 
 When they separated at Basel, Beddoes took a room 
 at a hotel, where, on the next morning after his ar- 
 rival, he inflicted a wound on his right leg with a 
 razor. Kemoved to the Town Hospital, he was 
 waited upon by two of his medical friends, under 
 whose care he might have recovered if he had not 
 stealthily torn off the bandages of his wound. Gan- 
 grene set in, and the leg was amputated below 
 the knee-joint. As he improved in health he began 
 to read the books which covered his bed, to write, 
 nnd talk of literature. Before long he was able to 
 
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 209 
 
 walk out of his room, and the first time he went 
 into the town he procured, on his own author- 
 ity as a medical man, the deadly poison known 
 as curare. In the evening one of his physicians 
 was summoned to his bedside. He was lying on 
 his back insensible, with a note in pencil pinned 
 on his bosom. It was addressed to one of the 
 oldest of his English friends, and began, curtly : "I 
 am food for what I am good for — worms." He 
 died that night, and was buried under a cypress 
 in the hospital cemetery. Such was the life, and 
 such the death, in his forty-sixth year, of Thomas 
 Lovell Beddoes. 
 
 Just before the completion of his twenty-second 
 year, and on the eve of his departure for Germany, 
 Beddoes wrote to his friend Kelsall, that he was 
 thinking of a very Gothic tragedy, for which he had 
 a jewel of a name — Death's Jestbook — and which, 
 of course, no one would ever read. Precisely when 
 he began it does not appear ; but less than six 
 months after this he informed the same friend that 
 it was going on like a tortoise — slow and sure ; that 
 he thought it would be very entertaining, but very 
 unamiable, and very unpopular ; and that it might 
 be finished by the following spring or autumn. By 
 the time spring came he had written the first four 
 acts and half of the fifth, and by autumn it was 
 done and done for, its limbs being as scattered and 
 14 
 
210 THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 
 
 unconnected as those of the old gentleman whom 
 Medea minced and boiled young. Two years later 
 he visited England for a few days and brought 
 the manuscript ; but Kelsall and Procter were 
 averse from its publication until he should revise 
 and correct it. Year after year passed, and it 
 was revised and corrected, but not to his satis- 
 faction ; for he left no less than three different 
 texts. These he bequeathed with the rest of his 
 manuscripts to Kelsall, who, not long after his 
 death, published Death's Jestbook, and reprinted 
 it two years later with The Bride's Tragedy, and 
 his miscellaneous verse. The collection made two 
 charming volumes, of the kind to which Picker- 
 ing had accustomed the amateurs of printing, by 
 whom they were seized upon and placed among 
 their treasures. 
 
 There were the makings of a greater poet in Bed- 
 does than he ever became, except at intervals, and 
 in his most inspired moments ; and the poet that 
 he might have been, if fully developed, is of a kind 
 that English poetry has long since outgrown. He 
 belonged to the same guild of dramatists as Mar- 
 lowe, Tourneur, and Webster, but where they were 
 masters, he was an apprentice. There were the 
 same dark elements in his genius as in theirs, but 
 they were more confused and tumultuous, more cha- 
 otic than creative, and more horrible than terrible. 
 
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 211 
 
 Death's Jestbook is a nightmare rather than a 
 drama, and should be judged, if one must judge it, 
 for what it is, not for what it might be, or should 
 be. A law unto himself, Bedcloes is the most law- 
 less of poets. The scenes of his tragedies are laid 
 in the land of Nowhere, and the actors therein, 
 if not wholly mad, are certainly not sane. They 
 live, move, and have their being in a borderland be- 
 tween the worlds of life and death. The prey of 
 spasmodic emotion and unnatural passion, there is 
 no telling what they will say or do in their fits 
 of delirium, which are as unaccountable as vio- 
 lent. The specialty of the elder Beddoes was the 
 analysis of disease ; the specialty of his son was the 
 exhibition of disease in the actors of his gloomy 
 masquerades. They are as unsubstantial as the 
 Chorus in Lord Brook's tragedy of Alaham, which 
 was the Ghost of one of the old kings of Ormuz. 
 A reader of Beddoes for years, I have never till 
 now attempted to define his qualities, and now 
 that I have attempted it, I am sorry that I have 
 done so ; for when a poet with his genius ap- 
 pears, which is not often in a century, I am con- 
 tent to let him be a chartered libertine, if he must. 
 He had great, almost the greatest of gifts — an ac- 
 tive and daring imagination, a profusion of imag- 
 ery, and a vocabulary of singular purity, richness, 
 and power. I copy one of his lyrics, which has 
 
212 THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 
 
 the flavor, though not the melody, of the best of 
 Shelley's. 
 
 A Dirge. 
 
 (Written for a Drama.) 
 
 To-day is a thought, a fear is to-morrow, 
 Arid yesterday is our sin and our sorrow; 
 
 And life is a death, 
 
 Where the hody's the tomb, 
 
 And the pale, sweet breath 
 
 Is buried alive in its hideous gloom. 
 
 Then waste no tear, 
 
 For we are the dead ; the living are here, 
 
 In the stealing earth, and the heavy bier. 
 Death lives but an instant, and is but a sigh, 
 And his son is unnamed immortality, 
 Whose being is thine. Dear Ghost, so to die 
 Is to live — and life is a worthless lie — 
 Then we weep for ourselves, and wish thee good-by. 
 
 Was Beddoes mad ? Judging by his eccentric life, 
 and the sickly cast of thought by which his verse 
 was distinguished, I fear so. 
 
GEORGE DARLEY 
 
 Old magazines, to which famous writers were con- 
 tributors in their literary nonage, generally afford 
 me a pleasure which I am not certain to derive from 
 their biographies, in that reading them in the order 
 in which they were published I see these writers 
 through the eyes of their contemporaries, note the 
 growth of their minds, and detect the laws which de- 
 termine the extent of their powers. Every time I 
 come upon the name of a writer whom I am tracing 
 he is a different man to me ; last month he was 
 merry, this month he is melancholy, and next month 
 — but who can tell me what he will be then ? I follow 
 my Proteus with surprise, possibly with disappoint- 
 ment, but always with the satisfaction we feel in dis- 
 covering things for ourselves. He is not necessarily 
 a celebrity (about such, if they have been well edited, 
 there is not much to be learned) ; and if he be not, 
 so much the better, for the less there is known the 
 more there is to be known. 
 
 No old magazine with which I am acquainted 
 ever started under better auspices than the London- 
 
214 GEOEGE DAELEY 
 
 Magazine, or ever had, at least in its earlier volumes, 
 a better corps of contributors. Foremost among 
 them was Charles Lamb, who enriched its pages 
 month after month with the immortal Essays of 
 Elia ; Thomas de Quincey, who startled its readers 
 with his experiences and fantasies as an Opium 
 Eater ; Allan Cunningham, who had no end of ro- 
 mantic Scotch legends to tell ; Thomas Hood, who 
 was its sweetest, and loveliest, and most poetical 
 poet ; John Clare, the Northamptonshire peasant, 
 and other good men and true, who, if not wholly 
 forgotten, have missed renown. The first editor of 
 the London Magazine was John Scott, an able, inde- 
 pendent man, who thought well of Hunt and Keats, 
 and very ill of Wilson, Lockhart, and the rest of 
 Blackwood's blackguards, and whose fearless pug- 
 nacity cost him his life (the duello was fashionable 
 then) ; and his assistant, or "sub," was Hood, whose 
 cunning hand inserted answers to rejected contribu- 
 tors in the Lion's Mouth. 
 
 It is instructive, in looking over these old maga- 
 zines, to read what the gentlemen who were em- 
 ployed upon them in a critical capacity had to say 
 respecting the publications of the period. The first 
 volume of the London Magazine contains reviews 
 of the Endymion of Keats, The Cenci of Shelley, 
 and Milman's Fall of Jerusalem ; the second volume 
 reviews of Hunt's Hero and Leander, Barry Corn- 
 
GEORGE DAELEY 215 
 
 wall's Marcian Colonna, and The Abbot of Scott ; 
 and the third reviews of Kenilworth and Marino 
 Faliero. Seventy years ago the reputations of 
 Hunt, Keats, and Shelley were still to make, while 
 the reputations of Scott and Byron, though as- 
 suredly great, were not so certainly fame as now. 
 But others besides authors were held up at the bar 
 of criticism in the London Magazine, and among 
 them were the prominent actors of the day — Elliston 
 and Liston, Young and Macready, and Edmund 
 Kean, who was then at the height of his popularity, 
 and was, in the opinion of his doughty censor (who 
 could not have been Hazlitt, for he was a Keanite), 
 a very faulty, and, at times, a very bad actor. I 
 have spent many pleasant hours over the London 
 Magazine, in the society of Lamb and Hazlitt and 
 De Quincey — glorious spirits, who were then in 
 their prime — and many melancholy hours also ; for 
 in letters, as in other earthly pursuits, many are 
 called, but few are chosen. We cannot all be great, 
 nor remembered, for whatever our aspirations and 
 ambitions and talents, most of us poor penmen are 
 speedily, and some of us deservedly, forgotten. Who 
 reads Allan Cunningham to-day, or John Clare, or 
 Bernard Barton, or dear George Darley ? 
 
 A good many years ago, when I used to haunt old 
 bookstores, where rarities were more plentiful than 
 they are now, and might sometimes be purchased 
 
216 GEOEGE DAELEY 
 
 cheaply, I came across a little book, in a marbled 
 paper binding, with a back of black leather, where- 
 on was stamped in tarnished gold letters, " G. Dar- 
 ley," and under it the word " Sylvia." Opening it 
 out of curiosity, I read the title-page : Silvia ; or 
 The May Queen. A Lyrical Drama. By George 
 Darley ; and, casting my eye at the foot of the 
 page, I discovered that it bore the imprint of the 
 publishers of Keats, John Taylor and J. A. Hessey, 
 and that it was published in 1827. Turning the 
 leaves, I saw that it was a book in verse, inter- 
 spersed with prose, and so far it hit my taste ; but 
 who was George Darley ? I had never heard of him. 
 I bought the book, however, and read it with a 
 delight that I do not now find in much modern 
 verse. A year or two later I bought another book, 
 at the same old store, from which I learned some- 
 thing about George Darley. It was Recollections 
 of a Literary Life, by Mary Russell Mitford. 
 
 The plan which this estimable gentlewoman pur- 
 sued while writing this agreeable volume was not 
 one which demanded any research on her part, her 
 object being simply to chat about some of her fa- 
 vorite authors, to indicate the qualities in their 
 writings which appealed most strongly to her taste, 
 and to illustrate these qualities by a few choice ex- 
 tracts. She knew Darley only through his corre- 
 spondence, never having met him, and consequently 
 
GEOEGE DAELEY 217 
 
 had but little to tell her readers about his personality 
 and life, except that he was the son of an Irish al- 
 derman, and that he stammered so as to render con- 
 versation painful and difficult to himself, and dis- 
 tressing to his companions. Sir Egerton Brydges, 
 who wrote a series of Imaginary Biographies, could 
 not have made much out of these shadowy outlines, 
 to which I can add but little, though I have supple- 
 mented them when I could. The son of Arthur 
 Darley, George Darley, was born at Dublin, in 
 1795 ; entered Trinity College in 1815, and took 
 the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1820. What ca- 
 reer Alderman Darley expected his stammering son 
 to follow when he sent him to college we have to 
 conjecture, but certainly it was not the one which 
 he determined to follow, which was that of author- 
 ship ; so he became estranged from his family, and, 
 quitting Dublin, went to London, whither many a 
 young Irishman had gone before him, and many 
 more have gone after him. There, in 1822, he pub- 
 lished his first book, The Errors of Ecstacie, which 
 is described as a dialogue in melodious blank verse 
 between a Mystic and the Moon, and a curious dia- 
 logue it was, no doubt. How he continued to live 
 in London, whether on an allowance from his prosaic 
 parent, or by his pen, we have to conjecture, but 
 most likely by the latter. 
 
 He wrote largely in the London Magazine, to 
 
218 GEOKGE DAKLEY 
 
 which, in March, 1823, he contributed Olympian 
 Revels, a Dramatica, a medley in prose and verse, 
 the intention of which was not so apparent as that 
 of The Revelle, which appeared a month earlier, or 
 that of The Chase, which appeared four months 
 later, both of which I assume to be his. These fan- 
 tastic trifles, which fairly indicated his intellectual 
 quality, served as a prologue to a series of papers, 
 which began in the latter month (July), with A Let- 
 ter to the Dramatists of the Day, and was contin- 
 ued month after month in five similar letters, over 
 the signature of John Lacy, the series concluding 
 with a double epilogue in the shape of a postscript, 
 from an alleged dramatist, who defended himself 
 and his fellows behind the shield of Terentius Se- 
 cundius, and a Eeply to the same from the aggres- 
 sive Mr. Lacy. If these letters were not eagerly 
 read (though I believe they were), they should have 
 been, firstly, because they were critical ; secondly, 
 because they were scholarly ; and thirdly, because 
 they were independent. That this writer had stud- 
 ied the early masters of English dramatic literat- 
 ure was as certain as that he had studied its latest 
 pupils, to whose poverty of action and affluence of 
 fiction he was keenly sensitive. But he wrote other 
 things than those dramatic diatribes in the London 
 Magazine ; for I find in the number for July, 1824, 
 a story of his called Lilian of the Vale, a sort of 
 
GEOEGE DARLEY 219 
 
 imaginative pastoral of the Florian order, which 
 contained a little song, I've been Koaming, that soon 
 attained a wide popularity. He tried his " 'prentice 
 han' " at other stories, seven of which he collected 
 into a volume, The Labours of Idleness, which was 
 published in 1826, and was followed (as I have al- 
 ready said), in. 1827, by Sylvia, which was founded 
 on Lilian of the Vale. 
 
 But other intellectual activities than are implied 
 in the writing of stories, and poems, and criticisms, 
 were dominant with Darley at this period ; for 
 between 1826 and 1828 he wrote three scientific 
 treatises, one on Geometry, another on Algebra, and 
 a third on Trigonometry. "Whether these works, 
 which were designed for popular use, proved profit- 
 able to him, or whether his family assisted him, I 
 know not ; but his fortunes seem to have prospered 
 within the next four or five years, enough at any 
 rate to enable him to travel on the Continent. 
 When Chorley became one of the staff of The Athe- 
 naeum, in the autumn of 1833, he was wandering in 
 Italy, but sending contributions to that journal — let- 
 ters on Art which Chorley says were written in a 
 forced and affected style, but which were pregnant 
 with research, unborrowed speculations, excellent 
 touches, by which the nature of a work and its 
 maker are characterized. " The taste in composi- 
 tion, the general severity of the judgments pro- 
 
220 GEOEGE DAELEY 
 
 nounced might be questioned, but no one could 
 read them without being spurred to compare and 
 think. In particular, he laid stress on the elder 
 painters, whose day had not come for England — on 
 Giotto, Francesco Francia, and Leonardo da Vinci." 
 Never having seen those letters, I can neither con- 
 firm nor contradict Chorley's opinion of them ; but, 
 judging from Darley's Letters to the Dramatists, I 
 should say that they were not so much forced and 
 affected as original and individual. There were, no 
 doubt, mannerisms in his way of writing, but no af- 
 fectations, I think ; certainly no such mannerisms as 
 in Carlyle or Sterne. 
 
 When Darley returned to England he, like Chor- 
 ley, became one of the staff of The Athenaeum, filling 
 the chair of Dramatic Criticism, whence he delivered 
 his judgments without fear or favor, and where he 
 did poor Chorley an ill turn by the severity with 
 which he noticed Talfourd's Ion, which enjoyed a 
 singular but not long-lived popularity. Chorley's 
 recollection of the circumstance is a specimen of 
 melancholy humor. "I was only known to Mr. 
 Talfourd," he says, " as one who wrote in The Athe- 
 naeum, and having in person expressed to him what 
 I thought and felt in regard to the play, it was 
 necessary for me at once, with the utmost earnest- 
 ness, to write to him on the appearance of the criti- 
 cism, against which I had privately protested, but in 
 
GEORGE DARLEY 221 
 
 vain, with the strongest possible disclaimer of its 
 unjust and uncouth severity, and an equally strong- 
 assertion of my own utter powerlessness to interfere 
 in suppression or mitigation. My letter, I fear, 
 was not believed to be sincere. It was said that, 
 had I been in earnest, I could easily have at- 
 tested my sincerity by entire withdrawal from a 
 publication so wicked and malignant — a stringent 
 suggestion, truly ! " Stringent, but just like Tal- 
 fourd, who used to travel all over England to see 
 Ion played. 
 
 Miss Mitford places Darley among Unrecognized 
 Poets, and there, I fear, he will ever remain. I 
 never met with anyone who had read his Sylvia, or 
 his two tragedies, Thomas a Becket, (1840), and 
 Athelstan, (1841), or his Nepenthe, a poem in two 
 cantos, which was privately printed but never pub- 
 lished. He is known, so far as he is known, by his 
 edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, (1840), which we 
 must have on our shelves, whether we read it or 
 not. That his life was a lonely and unhappy one, 
 may be imagined from the impediment in his 
 speech, which he called " his mask," and from his 
 failure to win the reputation that he coveted. The 
 love of fame may or not be the infirmity of noble 
 minds that the young Milton supposed, but its loss 
 is certainly a trial. "It is impossible not to sympa- 
 thize with such trial," Miss Mitford says, "not to 
 
222 GEORGE DAELEY 
 
 feel how severe must be the sufferings of a man, 
 conscious of no common power, who sees, day by 
 day, the popularity for which he yearns won by far 
 inferior spirits, and works which he despises passing 
 through edition after edition, while his own writings 
 are gathering dust upon the publisher's shelves, or 
 sold as waste paper to the pastry-cook or chandler. 
 What wonder that the disenchanted poet should be 
 transmuted into a cold and caustic critic, or that the 
 disappointed man should -withdraw into the nar- 
 rowest limits of a friendly society, a hermit in the 
 centre of London ! " But if Darley's life was an un- 
 happy one, it was not spun out beyond the allotted 
 years of man ; for it terminated in 1846. When the 
 danger of his last illness was imminent some of his 
 London friends wrote to a brother of his in Dublin ; 
 but no answer was returned. They w 7 rote again 
 still more urgently ; and then after his death and 
 burial it was discovered that his brother was dead 
 also. 
 
 When I began this chat about George Darley I 
 meant to say something about his Letters to the 
 Dramatists, which are admirable criticisms on the 
 later Poetic Drama of England, and about his 
 Sylvia, which is conceived in the spirit of the 
 masques of the Jacobean and Carolian poets, and 
 of which the noblest example is Comus. But on 
 second thoughts I forbear, believing that the prose 
 
GEORGE DARLEY 223 
 
 and verse of Darley are better than anything I can 
 say about them. Here is one of his lyrics from the 
 fourth act of Sylvia, wherein it is sung at daybreak 
 by the hero, Romanzo : 
 
 Awake thee, my Lady-love ! 
 
 Wake tliee, and rise ! 
 The sun through the bower peeps 
 
 Into thine eyes ! 
 
 Behold how the early lark 
 
 Springs from the corn ! 
 Hark, hark how the flower-bird 
 
 Winds her wee horn ! 
 
 The swallow's glad shriek is heard 
 
 All through the air ! 
 The stock-dove is murmuring 
 
 Loud as she dare ! 
 
 Apollo's winged bugleman 
 
 Cannot contain, 
 But peals his loud trumpet call 
 
 Once and again ! 
 
 Then wake thee, my Lady-love ! 
 
 Bird of my bower ! 
 The sweetest and sleepiest 
 
 Bird at this hour ! 
 
224 GEORGE DARLEY 
 
 Here is something more exquisite still, a perfect 
 lyric, which any poet, the greatest, might be proud 
 to have written : 
 
 Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers, 
 Lulled by the faint breezes sighing through her hair ; 
 
 Sleeps she, and hears not the melancholy numbers 
 Breathed to my sad lute amid the lonely air ! 
 
 Down from the high cliff the rivulet is teeming, 
 
 To wind round the willow banks that lure him from 
 above : 
 
 O that, in tears from my rocky prison streaming, 
 I, too, could glide to the bower of my love ! 
 
 Ah, where the woodbines with sleepy arms have wound her, 
 Opes she her eyelids at the dream of my lay ; 
 
 Listening, like the dove, while the fountains echo round 
 her, 
 To her lost mate's call in the forests far away ! 
 
 Come, then, my bird, for the peace thou ever bearest, 
 Still Heaven's messenger of comfort to me ; 
 
 Come ! this fond bosom, my faithfulest, my fairest, 
 Bleeds with its death-wound — but deeper yet for thee ! 
 
 I know — alas ! no, I knew — one poet, who was 
 never tired of that divine song — my dead friend, 
 Bayard Taylor. 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 
 
 The beginnings of literature, so far as we can re- 
 cover them from history or tradition, or detect 
 them from critical analysis, were in individual 
 minds, of whose activity they were an exhibition and 
 a record. They arrested the attention, if they did 
 not challenge the admiration, of the early races of 
 men through their personality, whose assertion was 
 its authentication, and whose manifestation was its 
 might. The literary fathers of the world spoke for 
 themselves and out of themselves, and were domin- 
 ant as long as the world believed in them. But it 
 was not for long ; for often before they died their 
 children abandoned the primitive speech for the 
 languages that prevailed around them. Originality, 
 then conventionality, inspiration, then imitation, ge- 
 nius, then talent. This, in little, is the history of 
 literature as it is the history of man, which is one 
 of races, not one of persons. The sovereigns of lit- 
 erature have never been numerous enough to gov- 
 ern the world continuously, either alone or in lineal 
 succession ; for however potent the great may have 
 15 
 
226 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 
 
 been, their comings and goings were not solar or 
 stellar, but cometary or meteoric — "few and far be- 
 tween." The greater, the fewer, and the more 
 apart. There has been but one Homer, one Horace, 
 one Dante, one Calderon, one Shakespeare. The 
 law-givers have gone, and gone forever ; for though 
 their laws remain on the statute books there is none 
 to interpret them intelligently, or administer them 
 justly. 
 
 There was a freshness and a force in all early 
 literatures ; but they grew less and less the more 
 these literatures were cultivated, shrinking and 
 shrinking until the spontaneous utterance of natural 
 feeling dwindled into the studied expression of 
 measured emotion — until things became words. The 
 strength of a literature diminishes as it becomes 
 literary, and it must be literary before it is na- 
 tional ; for however ready men may have been in 
 the beginning to believe in leaders, they have come 
 to believe in themselves, and to follow no leaders 
 except those that they select and direct. To be 
 popular now is to cater for and submit to the popu- 
 lace. But there are — as there always have been 
 and will be — men who cannot and will not do this, 
 and to neglect them is not to silence them, nor to 
 ignore their work to suppress it. They may miss 
 popularity, but they achieve distinction, for, un- 
 known to many, they are known to the few for all 
 
THOMAS LOYE PEACOCK 227 
 
 time. So known are Walter Savage Landor, Ed- 
 ward Fitzgerald, and Thomas Love Peacock, who 
 have all written unforgetable books, the most enter- 
 taining, if not the most notable, of which are Pea- 
 cock's. 
 
 They are of the kind which one reads every word 
 deliberately and admiringly, noting the order in 
 which the words follow each other, file after file, to 
 a music of their own, and noting at the same time 
 the thoughts and feelings which accompany them, 
 charmed by their sweetness and grace, and capti- 
 vated by the intelligence whose ministers and ser- 
 vitors they are. We read most books for what they 
 are, with no thought of their authors ; but we read 
 these books for the sake of their authors, who are 
 present on every page, and vital in every line. 
 
 The life of Peacock, though a long and busy one, 
 was not one that a biographer would be likely to 
 seize upon as affording him an opportunity to in- 
 dulge in narrations of adventure, or speculations of 
 a spiritual nature. It was devoid of incident and 
 averse from publicity, other than is implied in au- 
 thorship ; but it suited the temperament it nurtured, 
 and the mind in which it awakened observation, and 
 to which it supplied experience. Fortunate in his 
 birth, whereby he was spared the penury which is 
 so often the inheritance of genius, the only child of 
 Samuel Peacock, a prosperous London merchant, 
 
228 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 
 
 the head of the firm of Peacock & Pallat, and of 
 Sarah Love, the eldest daughter of Thomas Love, 
 who was connected with the British Navy, Thomas 
 Love Peacock was born on October 18, 1785, at Wey- 
 mouth, where he lived until the death of his father, 
 three years later, when he was taken b}' his widowed 
 mother to Chertsey, where his boyhood was passed. 
 He was a favorite with his grandfather, who was 
 never tired of describing to him the battles in which 
 he had fought (he had lost one of his legs in an ac- 
 tion in the West Indies, where Lord Rodney had 
 defeated the French under Admiral de Grasse), and 
 he was highly thought of by the pedagogue under 
 whom he was instructed at Englefield Green, who 
 prophesied that he would prove one of the most re- 
 markable men of the day. Admired by his master, 
 and beloved by his grandfather, he was so beautiful 
 as a child that he attracted the attention of Queen 
 Caroline, who once stopped her carriage to kiss him 
 and smooth his flaxen curls, which hung in profu- 
 sion below his waist. He remained at school until 
 he was thirteen, and greatly, it would seem, to his 
 advantage ; for though his master was not much of 
 a scholar, he had good assistants in French and the 
 classics, and had besides an apt pupil in Thomas, 
 who was early impressed with the doctrine of Har- 
 ris, the author of Hermes, that it was as easy to 
 become a scholar as a gambler. Thus encouraged, 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 229 
 
 Master Peacock took to reading the best books, il- 
 lustrated by the best critics, and was so far ad- 
 vanced in learning when he left school that it was 
 not thought necessary to send him to college. 
 
 When he was about sixteen he was taken from 
 Chertsey to London, where he began a course of 
 study in the British Museum, devoting his days to 
 the literature of Greece and Rome, and the history 
 of art, architecture, and other branches of ancient 
 learning. He was of the stuff of which great schol- 
 ars are made, readily mastering whatever he under- 
 took, and retaining what he acquired to the last 
 day of his life. His earliest intellectual efforts were 
 in the direction of verse, in the cultivation of which 
 his success was not equal to his ambition. His first 
 volume, Palmyra and Other Poems, which was pub- 
 lished in his twenty-first year, attracted no atten- 
 tion, and deserved to attract none ; for, except in its 
 notes, which were derived from Wood, Voltaire, Gib- 
 bon, Ossian, and the Bible, it was dreary reading. 
 
 At the age of twenty-three he accepted an appoint- 
 ment as under-secretary to Sir Home Popham, Com- 
 mander of the Venerable, a post which was not to 
 his liking, since it interfered with his poetical pur- 
 suits, which were only exercised now, when they 
 were exercised at all, in the writing of Prologues 
 and Addresses in the patriotic manner of Dibdin, 
 the Tyrtasus of the British tar, whom his dauntless 
 
230 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 
 
 numbers fired to the extermination of Johnny Cra- 
 paud. After a year of this servitude he went back 
 to civil life and the pacific service of the Muse, who, 
 withholding her smiles from him in Tadmor's mar- 
 ble waste, might, perhaps, be propitious to him at 
 home. He had projected a year before a poem on 
 the Thames, and to the poem thus projected he now 
 returned, putting himself in training for it in a 
 series of pedestrian tours, through which he pur- 
 posed to trace the progress of the river from its 
 source to its outlet. The notion of preparing for a 
 poem by such means, arid of composing a poem on 
 such a theme, would not occur to any poet or poet- 
 aster now ; for whatever poetry may be now, it is 
 not topographical. But it was otherwise when the 
 century was new, and verse of all kinds was in de- 
 mand ; so Peacock walked his hundreds of miles, 
 and wrote his hundreds of lines, and, finishing both, 
 published The Genius of the Thames (1810), which 
 must have met with some favor, since it passed into 
 a second edition. 
 
 Peacock did not discover the genius of poetry 
 which he sought so assiduously in his pilgrimage 
 along the Thames ; but he encountered another 
 genius which consoled him in his disappointment— 
 the genius of pedestrianism. He was led by the 
 spirit in his feet into North Wales, a sequestered 
 region, abounding in mountain scenery, the gloom 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 231 
 
 of savage woods, the noise of splashing waterfalls, 
 and the long inherited silence of mysterious vales. 
 His first lodge in the wilderness was Maentwrog, of 
 which he speedily became enamoured, exploring it in 
 all directions, climbing the rocks, tracking the rivers, 
 and wandering along the sea, carrying in his mind 
 the law in triad, that the poet should have an eye 
 that can see Nature, a heart that can feel Nature, 
 and a resolution that dares follow Nature. Here, 
 soon after his arrival, in the winter of 1810, he 
 made the acquaintance of a clergyman, Dr. Griffidh, 
 whose daughter Jane was famous for her beauty, 
 and whose scholarship was sufficient to enable her 
 to talk with Peacock about Scipio, Hannibal, and 
 the Emperor Otho. 
 
 Peacock seems to have had no acquaintance with 
 literary folk until his twenty-seventh year, when he 
 met Shelley, who not long before had succeeded in 
 having himself expelled from Oxford, and in eloping 
 with the daughter of a well-to-do publican, whom 
 he had married at Edinburgh. They met at Nant 
 Gwilt, near Rhayader, where the young couple were 
 staying in one of their financial crises, and the ac- 
 quaintance soon ripened into friendship. 
 
 If Shelley could have known Peacock at an earlier 
 period, the difference in their ages (Peacock being 
 seven years the senior) and their intellectual aims 
 and habits, might have guided his wandering steps 
 
232 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 
 
 into easier ways than the thorny paths through 
 which he was stumbling. No influence with which 
 he had yet come in contact was so healthful, and 
 none at any time so sane and unselfish. It was his 
 misfortune to be misunderstood, his biographers 
 tell us, and in a certain sense they are right ; but 
 his greatest misfortune was in misunderstanding 
 himself, and the people who professed to be his 
 friends. They were a bad lot, forerunners of a 
 sect who are still among us, and who are always 
 more noisy than numerous — egotists who mistake 
 their individual ignorance for universal knowledge, 
 and their vagaries of conduct for philosophical life ; 
 reformers who, mad in reforming others, never re- 
 form themselves, superior to morality, which they 
 deride, gluttonous in sensual enjoyments, profuse 
 at the expense of others, revolutionary in politics, 
 and agnostics in religion. He could not have fall- 
 en into worse hands. 
 
 It was not long before the Shelleys changed their 
 residence, removals with or without cause being one 
 of their habits, and when Peacock met them again 
 they were living at Bracknell, with an addition of 
 two to their household, one being Mrs. Shelley's sis- 
 ter, Eliza Westbrook, the other her newly born 
 daughter, Ianthe. It was not a happy household, 
 partly because Shelley disliked his sister-in-law, 
 whose assumption of superiority was irritating, and 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 233 
 
 partly because Harriet did not nurse her child, as he 
 thought she ought to do. He was fond of the child, 
 with whom he used to walk up and down a room for 
 a long time, holding it in his arms, and singing to 
 it a monotonous melody of his own, which ran on 
 the repetition of the word " Yahmani ! Yahmani ! " 
 which grated on the ears of Peacock ; for Shelley's 
 voice was harsh and high, though it soothed the 
 child when it was fretful. They were surrounded 
 by their queer set of friends, at whom the satirical 
 Peacock must needs laugh, an irreverent proceeding 
 in which he was joined by Mrs. Shelley, and which 
 disgraced the pair in the eyes of the elect. Their 
 follies infected the sensitive mind of Shelley, who 
 imagined on one occasion that an unknown ruffian 
 had attempted to assassinate him, and that he had 
 preserved his life only after a valorous struggle in 
 which he had discharged his pistols, and on another 
 occasion that a fat old woman who sat opposite to 
 him in a coach was afflicted with elephantiasis, and 
 that he had caught it from her. " He was contin- 
 ually on the watch for its symptoms ; his legs were 
 to swell to the size of an elephant's, and his skin was 
 to be crumpled over like goose-skin. He would 
 draw the skin of his own hands, arms, and neck very 
 tight, and if he discovered any deviation from 
 smoothness, he would seize the person next to him, 
 and endeavor by a corresponding process to see if 
 
234 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 
 
 any corresponding deviation existed. He often 
 startled young ladies in an evening party by this 
 singular process, which was as instantaneous as a 
 flash of lightning.'' Peacock quoted Lucretius to 
 him, and he was comforted. 
 
 Peacock seems to have known more of the relation 
 between Shelley and his wife than any of their com- 
 mon friends, and as far as he allowed himself to sit 
 in judgment upon them, his judgment was in her 
 favor. He certainly sympathized with her, and he 
 defended her memory long after her death. He was 
 not the man, however, to take sides with either ; 
 for, knowing both as he did, he probably thought 
 they were both to blame. Shelley met Mary God- 
 win, and not remembering to be off with the old 
 love before he was on with the new, he abandoned 
 his Harriet, and ran away with his Mary. The 
 Shelley-Godwin pair returned to England after a 
 short sojourn on the Continent, and went into lodg- 
 ings in London, where they received but few vis- 
 itors ; for, as might be expected, many of their 
 friends fell off from them. Peacock was not of the 
 number, for he often used to pass his evenings with 
 them. Shelley's chief employment at this time was 
 the raising of money on his expectations from the 
 race which Byron denominated " Jews and their fel- 
 low-Christians ; " and his chief pastime the sailing of 
 paper boats on the Surrey Canal and the Serpentine. 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 235 
 
 These boats, particularly those that he launched on 
 the Serpentine, he freighted with halfpence, in the 
 presence of boys who, watching their course, ran 
 round to the side at which they were likely to land, 
 and scrambled for their contents. They shouted 
 when they captured those little argosies, and Shelley, 
 who was still a boy at heart, as loudly as the rest. 
 
 Peacock and his mother spent the summer of 1815 
 at Great Marlow, where he used to walk to Bishops- 
 gate, the eastern entrance of Windsor Park, where 
 Shelley had taken a furnished house, and spend a 
 few days with him. They made an excursion to- 
 gether in a shell, on the Thames, going wherever 
 they would if the water was high enough to float 
 them. Shelley was in poor condition when they 
 started, owing to his diet of bread, butter, and tea ; 
 but when he consented to follow Peacock's pre- 
 scription of well-peppered mutton chops, he braced 
 up at once, and, what with the fine weather and his 
 vigorous rowing, enjoyed himself hugely. 
 
 Before Peacock knew Shelley his authorship was 
 amateurish and tentative, displaying more confidence 
 than capacity, and betraying ignorance in all its as- 
 sumptions of knowledge ; but when he began to 
 know Shelley he began to know himself and his 
 shortcomings. His first discovery was that he was 
 not a poet ; for, whatever he may have thought of 
 his Genius of the Thames, he could no longer believe 
 
236 THOMAS LOYE PEACOCK 
 
 that after reading Alastor. His next discovery was 
 that he was a prose writer, and that his walk in 
 prose was that of satire. His writing hitherto had 
 been imitative, henceforth it should be original ; it 
 had reflected books, it should now reflect men. He 
 proceeded, therefore, to make studies, not from a 
 dramatic, but from a philosophic, point of view, not 
 of passions, but fashions. He was not a student of 
 character, like Shakespeare, but a student of hu- 
 mors, like Ben Jonson. 
 
 Cogitation like this must have passed through the 
 mind of Peacock in the society of Shelley and his 
 friends, who were an education to him, and through 
 whom, consciously or unconsciously, he completed 
 his apprenticeship in, and became a master of, the 
 literary art. His first work after his emancipation 
 was Headlong Hall, which was written about the 
 time when Shelley wrote Alastor, and was published 
 in the same year. It was followed within the next 
 two years by Melincourt, Nightmare Abbey, and 
 Khododaphne. Why, after having scored a brilliant 
 success in prose, as he certainly did in his novels, he 
 should have gone back to verse in Rhododaphne is 
 one of those puzzles with which the lives of men of 
 genius abound, and which weaken, if they do not 
 destroy, our belief in their self-knowledge. Rhodo- 
 daphne was a delusion, and an aberration on the 
 part of Peacock, in whom, at the age of thirty-three, 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 237 
 
 it was inexcusable. It possesses no interest in itself, 
 and is only interesting in the history of modern 
 English poetry when compared with the Endymion 
 of Keats, which was written at the same time. There 
 was no comparison between the two men ; for Pea- 
 cock was a Grecian, and Keats was not. But he was 
 better than a Grecian — he was a Greek, as Landor 
 said, and, better still he was a great poet. 
 
 Peacock was one of the few English authors of our 
 time whose reputation was beneficial and not preju- 
 dicial to his worldly interests. It came to be known 
 to the directors of the East India Company, who, un- 
 like such bodies generally (at least as they exist here), 
 were not averse from clever men, outside their own 
 relatives and dependents, and they offered him a 
 clerkship in their Examiner's office, and allowed him 
 six weeks to prepare for his examination. He passed 
 triumphantly, his papers being returned with the 
 indorsement, "Nothing superfluous, and nothing 
 wanting." So, in 1819, a year after the publication 
 of Nightmare Abbey, he entered the service of the 
 India Company, and the next year married the 
 daughter of his Welsh friend, Dr. Gryffdh, whom he 
 had not seen for eight years. 
 
 The biographical interest that attached to Peacock 
 during his six years' acquaintance with, and friend- 
 ship for, Shelley and his wives, did not follow him 
 into the India House, where he took his place among 
 
238 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 
 
 a score of other clerks, and performed the duties 
 that were assigned to him. There are minds to 
 which official duties are so distasteful that they 
 shuffle through them negligently, some with a silly 
 sense of humiliation which they resent, others with 
 a careless condescension which they cultivate. There 
 are other, and wiser, minds which accept these du- 
 ties willingly and cheerfully, and find a pleasure 
 in performing them faithfully. Such a mind was 
 Peacock's, which may have been sarcastic, but was 
 singularly sane, and such a mind was Lamb's, which 
 kept its whimsicality for home consumption, though 
 it was occasionally dilatory in the morning. 
 
 One would like to know that Peacock was ac- 
 quainted with Lamb, who was also a clerk in the 
 India House, and he may have been, though I do not 
 recall any tradition to that effect. They were not 
 authors but clerks in the India House, where their 
 penmanship was expended in day-books and ledgers, 
 not in novels and essays. They moved in different 
 circles, and led different lives : Lamb in dingy lodg- 
 ings with his old books, his crazy sister, and the 
 queer cronies who washed down his cold mutton 
 with mugs of porter ; Peacock in a cosey house in 
 Stamford Street, Blackfriars, with his beloved clas- 
 sics, his beautiful Welsh wife, and his rosy chil- 
 dren. The world went well with Peacock, but not 
 so well with Lamb, for what with his frequency of 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 239 
 
 gin and water, and his weeping pilgrimages to the 
 madhouse with his poor sister, a shadow was on his 
 life. 
 
 Peacock's services in the India House were appre- 
 ciated and rewarded, for before his third year there 
 was ended he was promoted to the staff of the Cor- 
 respondence Department. Fourteen years later he 
 rose to the chief post as Examiner, succeeding James 
 Stuart Mill, the author of the History of British In- 
 dia, and being succeeded, in 1856, by his more famous 
 son, John Stuart Mill. He was thereupon retired, 
 after thirty-seven years active and honorable service, 
 with an annual pension of £1,333, 6s. Sd. During 
 his clerkly life he wrote three novels — Maid Marian, 
 in 1822 ; The Misfortunes of Elphin, in 1829 ; and 
 Crotchet Castle, in 1831. The first two of them 
 more nearly fulfilled the conditions that custom has 
 imposed upon the novel, pure and simple, than the 
 two which preceded them and the two which came 
 after them, the last of which, Gryll Grange, was 
 published in 1860. The freshness, the frankness, 
 the jovial, romantic spirit, and hearty love of out- 
 door life, which animated every page of Maid Ma- 
 rian, insured its immediate success. Dramatized by 
 Planche as an opera, for which Bishop composed 
 the music, it was produced at Covent Garden, 
 where Charles Kemble made a hit in one of its 
 songs, which is said to have been the only song 
 
240 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 
 
 that he ever learned to sing in his whole career. It 
 was also translated into German. 
 
 The last ten years of Peacock's life were passed at 
 Halliford, where, surrounded by his books, his chil- 
 dren and grandchildren, his friends, and his dogs, 
 he led the life of a prosperous country gentleman 
 — scholarly in his habits, courtly in his manners, 
 humorous and witty in his conversation, a gracious 
 host, and a kindly master. He enjoyed the repose 
 he had earned, and clung to the customs of his 
 youth, always keeping May Day in the good old 
 English fashion, inviting all the village children to 
 his grounds, where they were rewarded according 
 to the beauty of their garlands with new pennies or 
 silver threepences, the largess being bestowed upon 
 them by the Queen of the May, who was one of his 
 grand-daughters, and sat beside him in a white 
 dress, with a wreath of flowers on her head, and a 
 sceptre of flowers in her hand. He delighted in his 
 garden, where he fed his birds, which were never 
 startled by the noise of guns, for no guns were al- 
 lowed to be fired on his place ; but his happiest 
 hours were spent in his library, which, like Pros- 
 pero's, was dukedom enough, and which, when a fire 
 broke out in the roof of his bedroom, he refused to 
 leave, asseverating with energy; "By the immortal 
 gods, I will not move ! " He died on January 23, 
 1866, his eighty-first year, and was buried at Shep- 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 241 
 
 perton, close to his third daughter, Bosa, his grave 
 being marked by a stone, with only his name and 
 the date of his birth and death inscribed thereon. 
 
 The stories of Peacock must be read for what 
 they are, and nothing else, or not read at all. To 
 read them as we do novels is to read them to no 
 purpose. They are not novels, and were not meant 
 to be novels. Their plots, if the incidents of which 
 they are composed can be called plots, are of the 
 slightest, and not of a kind that creates interest and 
 awakens sympathy, either through the action they 
 involve, or the characters they present. They are a 
 succession of scenes and a procession of persons — a 
 succession of scenes in English country houses, such 
 as are described in Headlong Hall and Nightmare 
 Abbey, a procession of persons such as we may 
 suppose to inhabit them, and visit them, and enjoy 
 their hospitality. United by the ties of good breed- 
 ing and good fellowship, they have enough in com- 
 mon to like each other heartily, and enough indi- 
 viduality to differ from each other widely. Some of 
 them have very decided views, the discussion of 
 which forms the staple of their conversation. The 
 master of the house in which these discussions are 
 held is usually a doctrinaire, who has no sympathy 
 with other doctrinaires, and who, like Iago, is noth- 
 ing if not critical. 
 
 Peacock's prose is what Matthew Arnold main- 
 16 
 
242 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 
 
 tained poetry should be — a criticism of life, not life 
 in the abstract, but life in the concrete — the social, 
 political, national life of his own people and period. 
 He was thoroughly English in his conservatism ; 
 certain of present, but doubtful of future, good. 
 One of his pet aversions was political economy, 
 another was phrenology, a third was animal mag- 
 netism, which was odious because it originated in 
 the United States. Americans were repugnant to 
 him, and Scotchmen, even Scott, whose books were 
 written in all the worst dialects of the English lan- 
 guage. Like "Wordsworth, he was inimical to rail- 
 roads, that hurry about people who have nothing to 
 do, and telegraphs, that convey the words of people 
 who have nothing to say. He was prone to preju- 
 dice and paradox, or pretended to be in order to 
 show his wit. When we read him we should re- 
 member that he was a humorist and a satirist, and 
 that he wrote dramatically, assuming for the mo- 
 ment the personality of his characters, for whose 
 opinions and utterances he was not responsible. He 
 was satirical, but not cynical — a sharp-witted, but 
 good-natured censor. He handled his victims as 
 Izaak Walton handled his worms — as if he loved 
 them, and if they did not condone their impale- 
 ment, they ought to have done so. Shelley did, 
 for he not only forgave but admired Peacock's carica- 
 ture as Scythrop in Nightmare Abbey. 
 
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 243 
 
 Peacock was not a poet in the sense that his 
 friend Shelley was, but he possessed rare poetical 
 gifts. He was essentially a lyrist, and one of the 
 best these later days have seen, his touch being as 
 sure as it was light. Here is one of his lyrics, which 
 I am afraid to praise lest I praise it too much : 
 
 The War Song of Dinas Vawr. 
 
 The mountain sheep are sweeter, 
 But the valley sheep are fatter ; 
 We therefore deemed it meeter 
 To carry off the latter. 
 We made an expedition ; 
 We met an host and quelled it : 
 We forced a strong position, 
 And killed the men who held it. 
 
 On Dyfed's richest valley, 
 
 Where heads of kine were browsing, 
 
 We made a mighty sally, 
 
 To furnish our carousing. 
 
 Fierce warriors rushed to meet us ; 
 
 We met them, and o'erthrew them ; 
 
 They struggled hard to beat us ; 
 
 But we conquered them, and slew them. 
 
 As we drove our prize at leisure, 
 The king marched forth to catch us ; 
 His rage surpassed all measure, 
 But his people could not match us. 
 
244 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK 
 
 He fled to the hall-pillars ; 
 And, ere our force we led off, 
 Some sacked his house and cellars, 
 And others cut his head off. 
 
 We there, in strife bewildering, 
 Spilt blood enough to swim in : 
 We orphaned many children, 
 And widowed many women. 
 The eagles and the ravens 
 We glutted with our foemen : 
 The heroes and the craven, 
 The spearmen and the bowmen. 
 
 We brought away from battle, 
 
 And much their land bemoaned them, 
 
 Two thousand head of cattle, 
 
 And the head of him who owned them ! 
 
 Endyfed, King of Dyfed, 
 
 His head was borne before us ; 
 
 His wine and beasts supplied our feasts, 
 
 And his overthrow our chorus. 
 
 
EDWARD FITZGERALD 
 
 There are, and always have been, in the literatures 
 of all peoples who have attained to literature, a body 
 of authors, generally a small body, whose presence 
 in authorship was more due to circumstances by 
 which they were drifted thitherward than to any 
 predisposition and predetermination on their part, 
 and whose achievements therein were as unexpected 
 by themselves as by their readers. Literature has 
 never ranked among the professions which men 
 have recognized as indispensable to their well-being 
 — the professions which they oblige themselves to 
 study, and to which when they have learned them 
 they devote their lives ; learned professions, like 
 law and medicine, theology and philosophy ; es- 
 thetic professions, like painting, statuary, and 
 music ; the civil professions involved in engineer- 
 ing and mechanics, and the military professions in- 
 volved in national defence and offence, soldiering 
 and sailoring, with all their instruments of human 
 destruction. Men have always been ready to be 
 admirals and generals, builders of bridges and rail- 
 
246 EDWAED FITZGEEALD 
 
 roads, composers and sculptors, doctors and judges 
 and bishops ; but they have not been so ready to be 
 poets and dramatists, novelists and essayists, or 
 members of the craft less definable than those of 
 whose nature they are partakers whom we call men 
 of letters. " There be none so singular as authors," 
 was the observation of a quaint old writer who hov- 
 ered around, but was not admitted, within the guild 
 of which he was the satirist and the eulogist ; "nas- 
 citur nonfit, they understand their hornbooks before 
 they see them, and skip in a twinkle from Priscian 
 to Tullie. They learn without teaching, each being 
 his own master and scholar. The knowledge that is 
 cudgelled into others runs in their veins like ichor, 
 and wherein their fellows are sterile they are more 
 fruitful than Hesperian gardens. Life is their Uni- 
 versity, and experience conferreth their degree of 
 Magister Artem." 
 
 The determination to literature is an instinct 
 which escapes detection until it discovers itself, and 
 which, when discovered, defies analysis. There 
 seems to have been a time when it existed in the 
 race rather than in the individual — in the mem or 
 classes of men, to whom its beginnings are attrib- 
 uted by tradition ; the minds which recorded the 
 religious beliefs and observances of their peoples in 
 the Hindu and Hebrew Scriptures, with whatever in 
 the shape of history or legend struggled through 
 
EDWARD FITZGEEALD 247 
 
 the rhythmical recollections of balladry into epic 
 verse. To what extent great writers were the prod- 
 uct of the ages in which they flourished, whether 
 wholly, in some instances, or partly, in others, and 
 to what extent the ages in which they flourished 
 were moulded by them into the form and pressure 
 they wore, is matter for speculation which would be 
 worthy of all the study which could be bestowed 
 upon it, if by any possibility a decisive conclusion 
 could be reached. But no such conclusion can be 
 reached ; for if history teaches anything, it teaches 
 the impossibility of distinguishing between man and 
 Nature, and of separating ages from their writers, 
 and writers from their ages. Dante and his period 
 are one and indivisible in the literary history of 
 Italy, as Shakespeare and his period, and Pope and 
 his period, are one and indivisible in the literary 
 history of England. It has always been the distinc- 
 tion of great writers that their writing authenticates 
 itself. Not that they have always been themselves, 
 for if the spirit was willing the flesh was weak, and 
 to be long at their best has not been given to many ; 
 but that there has always been something in their 
 writing which was not in the writing of others — an 
 individuality which was not to be mistaken, a per- 
 sonality which was not to be imitated. But there 
 are writers and writers — the greater, who, like 
 sovereigns, govern the intellectual world by the 
 
248 EDWAED FITZGEEALD 
 
 divine right of their own power, the lesser, who, 
 like princes, rule over kingdoms by virtue of powers 
 which are conferred upon them. Nor are these all, 
 for there are others to whom provinces are subject 
 whenever they make incursions therein. They come 
 and go as they choose, reigning to-day and abdicating 
 to-morrow, caring more for what they are, which may 
 be little, than for what they might be, which would 
 be much. Some are too modest to estimate their 
 gifts at their true value, and some are too indolent, 
 or too indifferent, to exercise their gifts. They are 
 sufficient for themselves, and whatever they may be 
 the love of fame is not among their infirmities. 
 
 One of these unambitious men of letters was Ed- 
 ward Fitzgerald, whose name, now that it is known 
 to the readers of English verse in connection with 
 the name of Omar Khayyam, will long be remem- 
 bered. It will also be remembered among the 
 names of those who have grappled with the task of 
 translating Calderon, and it might be remembered 
 in many ways if he could only have persuaded him- 
 self to walk in those ways, either in his singing 
 robes, or in the plain garments of prose. He was 
 of a good family, his mother a Fitzgerald, and his 
 father, who was her cousin, a Purcell, who on the 
 death of her father assumed the name of Fitzgerald. 
 Born on the last day of March, 1809, at Bredfield 
 House, an old Jacobean mansion in Suffolk, Edward 
 
EDWARD FITZGERALD 249 
 
 Fitzgerald was nurtured in English air until his 
 seventh year, when the family was transplanted to 
 France, in the first place at St. Germain, the for- 
 est of which was enlivened with royal hunting par- 
 ties, which the boy never forgot, and later at Paris, 
 where they occupied a house in which Robespierre 
 had lived. Returning to England, he was sent, in 
 his twelfth year, to King Edward the Sixth's school 
 at Bury St. Edmunds, where two of his elder broth- 
 ers were, and where he had for school-fellows James 
 Spedding, whose life-work was to be the editorship 
 of Bacon, J. M. Kemble, who was to become an 
 authority in Anglo-Saxon, and others not so well 
 known, from whom the world was to hear in coming 
 days. Five years later he was entered at Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, where his contemporaries were 
 Spedding, the Tennysons — Frederick, Charles, and 
 Alfred — and William Makepeace Thackeray. He 
 was not emulous of university distinctions, nor was 
 he what is called a reading man, entertaining him- 
 self with music, drawing, and poetry. Taking his 
 degree in his twenty-first year, he stopped for a 
 time with a brother-in-law, and then ran over to 
 Paris, where an aunt was living, and where he was 
 joined by Thackeray. 
 
 In the spring of the following year, when he was 
 residing at Naseby, where his father had a consider- 
 able estate, Fitzgerald wrote his first poem, or the 
 
250 EDWARD FITZGERALD 
 
 first which has been preserved, for his college verse, 
 unlike that of Tennyson and Hallam and others 
 who, at Cambridge, contended for the prize that was 
 offered for Timbuctoo, has perished, and a remark- 
 able poem it is. It was printed in Hone's Year 
 Book for April 30, 1831, and copied into the Athe- 
 naeum, where it was seen by Lamb, who, in writing 
 to Moxon, said he envied the writer of it, because 
 he felt he could have done something like it him- 
 self. He might have done so, no doubt, when he 
 wrote his Old Familiar Faces, but not much later, 
 and certainly not then, when he was scarcely equal 
 to the writing of his platitudinous Album Verses. 
 There is a quality in this poem, which was entitled 
 The Meadows in Spring, that smacks of a primitive 
 time, when feelings were fresh and joyous, and 
 words alive — a childly simplicity and a manly direct- 
 ness, a frankness and sincerity — the charm and grace 
 of truth. This quality may be inferred from the 
 first four stanzas (there are thirteen in all), which 
 must, I feel sure, have been in the mind of Long- 
 fellow when he wrote A Midnight Mass for the Dy- 
 ing Year. Here they are : 
 
 'Tis a dull sight 
 
 To see the year dying, 
 When winter winds 
 
 Set the yellow wood sighing ; 
 Sighing, oh ! sighing. 
 
EDWARD FITZGERALD 251 
 
 When such a time cometh, 
 
 I do retire 
 Into an old room 
 
 Beside a bright fire — 
 O pile a bright fire ! 
 
 And there I sit 
 
 Reading old things, 
 Of knights and lorn damsels, 
 
 While the wind sings — 
 O, drearily sings ! 
 
 I never look out 
 
 Nor attend to the blast ; 
 For all to be seen 
 
 Is the leaves falling fast ; 
 Falling, falling. 
 
 The life of Fitzgerald was so apart from the things 
 which go to the making of what most biographers 
 consider Lives, that if he had been asked to tell its 
 story, he would probably have shaken his head with 
 a grave smile, and quoted the words of the Needy 
 Knife-grinder, " Story, God bless you ! I have none 
 to tell, sir." It was an easy life, in that it demanded 
 no exertion from Fitzgerald, who, from the allowance 
 which he received from his father, was in comfortable 
 circumstances, and, consequently, master of himself 
 and his time ; it was an intellectual life, in that it 
 was devoted to reading and thinking, and it was a 
 friendly life, in that it enriched, and was enriched 
 
252 EDWARD FITZGERALD 
 
 by, the lives of his friends, between whom and him- 
 self there was a constant stream of correspondence. 
 He lived in his books, his thoughts, and his letters. 
 What his letters were we know, thanks to the loving 
 care of his executor, Mr. William Aldis Wright, by 
 whom they were diligently collected and published 
 in the first of the three volumes that constitute his 
 Literary Remains. They cover a period of more 
 than fifty years, the earliest that has been recovered 
 dating in the spring of 1830, the latest in the summer 
 of 1883, and are of great value, since they enable 
 us to enter and understand the unique personality 
 of which they are at once a record and revelation ; 
 of greater value in some ways, I think, than the 
 books which he wrote for publication, in which, as 
 in all books that are worthy of publication, the lit- 
 erary element predominates. 
 
 He put himself in his letters, as Cowper did, as 
 Byron did, as Keats did ; and if they can be said to 
 resemble the letters of either, they resemble those 
 of Keats, in their naturalness, their sincerity, their 
 frank communicativeness, their hearty kindness, and 
 their unstudied humor. They are interesting in a 
 literary sense as showing the course of his studies, 
 which is traceable in the books that he read from 
 time to time, and the fruition of those studies in his 
 opinion of these books. They tell us, for example, 
 that in the year after he left college he was reading 
 
EDWARD FITZGERALD 253 
 
 Bacon's Essays, Evelyn's Sylva, Browne's Religio 
 Medici, and that he admired the eloquence of the 
 last, and the beauty of its notions, more than he had 
 done before. He thought Hazlitt's Poets the best 
 selection he had ever seen, and he had read some 
 Chaucer, too, which he liked. Six days later (No- 
 vember 27, 1832), he had something to say about 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets, of which he thought as high- 
 ly as Keats. "I have been reading Shakespeare's 
 Sonnets ; and I believe I am unprejudiced when 
 I say, I had not an idea of him, demigod as he 
 seemed before, till I had read them carefully. How 
 could Hazlitt call Warton's the finest sonnets? There 
 is the air of pedantry and labor in his, but Shakes- 
 peare's are perfectly simple, and have the very es- 
 sence of tenderness that is only to be found in the 
 best parts of his Borneo and Juliet besides." 
 
 Further on in the same letter he refers to The 
 Happy Life of Sir Henry Wotton, which he calls 
 very beautiful, and quotes a lyric from Lyly (whom 
 he calls Lily), copying his verse as prose, and speaks 
 of Back and Syde (meaning the merry old song with 
 that refrain) as breathing both content and virtue, 
 "with a little good drink over." But his reading 
 was not confined to the older English poets, for 
 about six months before this he mentioned a younger 
 one, who had yet to discover wherein his strength 
 lay, and to win through neglect and ridicule the 
 
254 EDWARD FITZGERALD 
 
 great fame which is now his. " I have bought Ten- 
 nyson's poems. How good Mariana is ! " And 
 about a year later, after a night ride on the coach to 
 London : "I forgot to tell you that when I came up 
 in the mail, and fell a-dozing in the morning, the 
 sights of the pages in crimson and the funerals 
 which the Lady of Shalott saw and wove, floated 
 before me ; really the poem has taken lodging in my 
 poor head." Fitzgerald was greatly interested in 
 the poetic growth of Tennyson, to whom he con- 
 stantly referred in his letters. " Tennyson has been 
 in town for some time," he wrote to one of his 
 friends from London, in the autumn of 1833. " He 
 has been making fresh poems, which are finer, they 
 say, than any he has done. But I believe he is chiefly 
 meditating on the purging and subliming of what 
 he has already done, and repents that he has pub- 
 lished at all yet. It is fine to see how in each suc- 
 ceeding poem the smaller ornaments and fancies 
 drop away, and leave the grand ideas single." 
 
 A year and a half later he wrote to another friend 
 from Manchester, and informed him that Tennyson 
 had lately stayed with him at Ambleside. "I will 
 say no more of Tennyson than that the more I have 
 seen of him, the more cause I have to think him 
 great. His little humors and grumpinesses were so 
 droll that I was always laughing; and was often 
 put in mind (strange to say) of my little unknown 
 
EDWARD FITZGERALD 255 
 
 friend, Undine. I must, however, say, further, that 
 I felt what Charles Lamb describes, a sense of de- 
 pression at times from the overshadowing of a so 
 much more lofty intellect than my own ; this (though 
 it may seem vanity to say so), I never experienced 
 before, though I have often been with much greater 
 intellects ; but I could not be mistaken in this uni- 
 versality of his mind, and perhaps I have received 
 some benefit in the now more distinct conscious- 
 ness of my dwarfishness." 
 
 About five years later he wrote to another friend 
 from London : " We have had Alfred Tennyson on 
 here ; very droll and very wayward ; and much sit- 
 ting up of nights till two and three in the morn- 
 ing with pipes in our mouths, at which good hour 
 we would get Alfred to give us some of his magic 
 music, which he does between growling and smok- 
 ing, and so to bed." 
 
 Fitzgerald's admiration of Tennyson was hearty, 
 but not indiscriminate, for when he did not like his 
 work he said so frankly. He was always outspoken, 
 sometimes rather more outspoken than wise, as in a 
 letter that he wrote to Frederick Tennyson, in May, 
 1848 : " I had a note from Alfred three months ago, 
 he was then in London, but is now in Ireland, I 
 think, adding to his new poem, The Princess. Have 
 you seen it ? I am considered a great heretic for 
 abusing it ; it seems to me a wretched waste of 
 
256 EDWARD FITZGERALD 
 
 power at a time of life when a man ought to be do- 
 ing his best ; and I almost feel hopeless about Alfred 
 now. I mean about his doing what he was born to 
 do." Finishing this sentence, Fitzgerald proceeded 
 at once to express his opinion of another writer, a 
 common friend of Tennyson and himself : " On the 
 other hand, Thackeray is progressing greatly in his 
 line ; he publishes a novel in numbers, Vanity Fair, 
 which began dull, I thought, but gets better every 
 number, and has some very fine things indeed in it. 
 He is become a great man, I am told ; goes to Hol- 
 land House and Devonshire House, and for some rea- 
 son or other will not write a word to me. But I am 
 sure it is not because he is asked to Holland House." 
 
 We gather fewer particulars than we could wish 
 respecting Thackeray, whom Fitzgerald was con- 
 stantly in the habit of meeting, but enough to see 
 that he esteemed him highly ; and we see from a 
 letter of Thackeray the esteem in which he held 
 Fitzgerald. It was written in the autumn of 1852, 
 on the eve of his departure for America : 
 
 " My dearest old Feiend : I mustn't go away with- 
 out shaking your hand, and saying farewell and God 
 bless you. If anything happens to me, you by these 
 presents must get ready the Book of Ballads which 
 you like, and which I have not time to prepare be- 
 fore embarking on this voyage. And I should like 
 my daughters to know that you are the best and 
 
EDWARD FITZGERALD 257 
 
 oldest friend their father ever had, and that you 
 would act as such ; as my literary executor and so 
 forth. My books would yield a something as copy- 
 rights ; and, should anything occur, I have commis- 
 sioned friends in good place to get a pension for my 
 poor little wife. Does not this sound gloomily ? 
 Well ; who knows what fate is in store ; and I feel 
 not at all downcast, but very grave and solemn just 
 at the brink of a great voyage. I shall send you a 
 copy of Esmond to-morrow or so, which you shall 
 yawn over when you are inclined. But the great 
 comfort I have in thinking about my dear old boy is 
 that recollection of our youth, when we loved each 
 other as I do now while I write farewell." 
 
 Carlyle, with whom Fitzgerald corresponded at 
 considerable length about the battle-field at Naseby, 
 which joined a portion of his father's estate, and who 
 was about the most cantankerous Scotchman that 
 ever maltreated the English tongue, smoothed his 
 rugged front at the sight of Fitzgerald's handwrit- 
 ing. " Thanks for your friendly human letter," he 
 wrote in reply to one of his missives, " which gave 
 us so much entertainment in the reading (at break- 
 fast time the other day), and is still pleasant to think 
 of. One gets so many mhuman letters, ovine, bo- 
 vine, porcine, etc., etc. I wish you would write a 
 little oftener ; when the beneficent Daimon suggests 
 fail not to lend ear to him." 
 17 
 
258 EDWAED FITZGEEALD 
 
 Not long before his death Thackeray was asked by- 
 one of his daughters which of his old friends he 
 loved most, and he answered, " Why, dear old Fitz, 
 to be sure, and Brookfield." And the Laureate, on 
 hearing of Fitzgerald's death, wrote to a common 
 friend : "I had no truer friend ; he was one of the 
 kindliest of men, and I have never known one of 
 so fine and delicate a wit. I had written a poem 
 to him the last week, a dedication, which he will 
 never see." 
 
 The life of Fitzgerald flowed on like a quiet 
 stream, the main body of which loitered about 
 Boulge, Woodbridge, where he had a cottage. 
 Here he lived year after year, reading his books, 
 thinking his thoughts, and writing his letters. He 
 was not a recluse, in spite of his lonely life, for 
 whenever the whim took him he was up and off else- 
 where, in town or country, to attend to some errand 
 he had created, to see some sight he had neglected, 
 or to stay with some old friend. He made frequent 
 visits to London, drawn thither by his love of 
 music, which was constant, his love of the drama, 
 which was fluctuant, or his love of art, which at one 
 time was a passion with him. He haunted the gal- 
 leries and exhibitions, and prowled round the shops 
 of old dealers, where he picked up (as he believed) 
 rare bargains for a song. He criticised like a virtu- 
 oso, and purchased like a novice, generally for him- 
 
EDWAKD FITZGEEALD 259 
 
 self, occasionally for some friend who trusted in Ms 
 judgment. One of these confiding amateurs was 
 Bernard Barton, a Quaker poet, who had a minor 
 vogue then, but is only known now because Lamb 
 wrote him some pleasant letters, and who is men- 
 tioned here only because Fitzgerald married his 
 daughter, who, it is to be hoped, made him a rea- 
 sonably good wife. 
 
 Of Fitzgerald at or about this period we have a 
 lively description from the pen of a clever observer 
 — the Rev. George Crabbe, Rector of Merton, a 
 grandson of the poet Crabbe, of whose homely verse 
 Fitzgerald was to the last a hearty lover. "Fitz- 
 gerald was living at Boulge Cottage w T hen I first 
 knew him ; a thatched cottage of one story just out- 
 side his father's park. No one was, I think, resi- 
 dent at the hall. His mother would sometimes be 
 there a short time, and would drive about in a 
 coach and four black horses. This would be in 
 1844, when he was thirty-six. He used to walk by 
 himself, slowly, with a Skye terrier. I was rather 
 afraid of him. He seemed a proud and very punc- 
 tilious man. I think he was at this time often 
 going of an evening to Bernard Barton's. He did 
 not come to us, except occasionally, till 1846. He 
 seemed to me when I first saw him much as he 
 was when he died, only not stooping ; always like a 
 grave, middle-aged man ; never seemed very happy 
 
260 EDWARD FITZGERALD 
 
 or very light-hearted, though his conversation was 
 most amusing sometimes." 
 
 Fitzgerald was very fond of Mr. Crabbe's father, 
 though they had several coolnesses, which, Mr. 
 Crabbe thought was the fault of his father, who 
 was rather notional. Fitzgerald had in his cottage 
 an old woman to wait upon him, but he was care- 
 ful not to make her do anything. " Sometimes he 
 would give a little dinner — my father, Brooke, B. 
 Barton, Churchyard — everything most hospitable, 
 but not comfortable. In 1846 and 1847 he does 
 not seem to have come much to Bredfield. Perhaps 
 he was away a good deal. He was often away visit- 
 ing his mother, or W. Browne, or in London, or at 
 the Kerriches'. In 1848, 1849, and 1850, he was a 
 good deal at Bredfield, generally dropping in about 
 seven o'clock, singing glees with us, and then join- 
 ing my father over his cigar, and staying late and 
 often sleeping. He very often arranged concerted 
 pieces for us to sing, in four parts, he being tenor. 
 He sang very accurately, but had not a good voice. 
 When E. F. G. was at Boulge, he always got up early, 
 eat his small breakfast, stood at his desk reading or 
 writing all the morning, eat his dinner of vegetables 
 and pudding, walked with his Skye terrier, and then 
 finished the day by spending the evening with us 
 at the Bartons. He did not visit with the neighbor- 
 ing gentlefolks, as he hated a set dinner-party." 
 
EDWARD FITZGERALD 261 
 
 Outlines like these, the number of which might 
 be increased, though the lines of themselves could 
 not be strengthened without borrowing from fancy, 
 constitute the chief facts of the life of Fitzgerald, 
 which came to a sudden close on June 14, 1883, 
 at the rectory of his friend Crabbe, who, on the fol- 
 lowing day, announced the intelligence to his exec- 
 utor : " He came last evening to pay his annual 
 visit with my sisters, but did not seem in his usual 
 spirits, and did not eat anything. At ten he said 
 he would go to bed. I went up with him. At a 
 quarter to eight I tapped at his door to ask how he 
 was, and getting no answer went in and found him 
 as if sleeping peacefully, but quite dead. A noble 
 character has passed away." 
 
 What Fitzgerald might have done with his gifts 
 and his opportunities, his talents, his scholarship, 
 and his competence, if he had devoted his days to 
 literature, we may conjecture, but we cannot know. 
 But he did not devote his day to literature, wherein 
 he had no ambition to excel. He read and read, he 
 thought and thought ; but he was averse from writ- 
 ing books, and of the three which he published he 
 prefixed his name to but one. This was his second 
 book, Six Dramas from Calderon (1853) ; his first 
 one, Euphranor (1851), stealing into the world 
 anonymously, and dying silently — a fate which 
 nearly overtook his last one, the Rubiyat of Omar 
 
262 EDWARD FITZGERALD 
 
 Khayyam (1861), which, also published anony- 
 mously, and at his expense, was luckily preserved 
 by one of those miracles which sometimes illumi- 
 nate the history of literature. Fitzgerald kept a 
 few copies for himself, and gave the rest of the edi- 
 tion to the publisher, who derived no profit from it, 
 since it would not sell, and could scarcely be given 
 away. Still there was something in it that made its 
 way, a force that would be recognized, an imperish- 
 able vitality, the vitality of the master, Omar Khay- 
 yam, and the scholar, Edward Fitzgerald. 
 
 t 
 
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES 
 
 (LOED HOUGHTON) 
 
 No nineteenth century poet was ever more hap- 
 pily situated than Lord Houghton, who was blessed 
 with whatever he most desired and enjoyed, and no 
 poet of any century was ever fitted to perform so 
 many and such different parts as he. Fortunate in 
 his birth, his father, Robert Pemberton Milnes, be- 
 ing a wealthy gentleman of good family in the West 
 Riding of Yorkshire, his mother, the daughter of a 
 viscount, there was nothing that a gentleman ought 
 to have from youth to age that was not within his 
 reach. He had only to wish to have. Carefully 
 educated in childhood, shortly after completing his 
 eighteenth year he was entered by his father at Trin- 
 ity College, Cambridge, where he found himself 
 in a remarkable circle. Dr. Wordsworth, a brother 
 of the poet, was the master ; Whewell, whose forte 
 was science and whose foible was omniscience, 
 was the senior tutor ; and his fellow- students were 
 such young men of genius and talents as John 
 Stirling, Richard Chenevix Trench, Julius Hare, 
 
264 KICHARD MONCKTON MILNES 
 
 William Makepeace Thackeray, Arthur Henry Hal- 
 lam, and the three Tennysons, Frederick, Charles, 
 and Alfred. Alfred the Great, as he was called by 
 his friends before many years were over, was at- 
 tracted by the personal appearance of young Kich- 
 ard on the day that he himself entered college. 
 " There is a man I should like to know," he said to 
 himself ; " he looks the best-tempered fellow I ever 
 saw." They spoke to each other, and were friends 
 ever after. Milnes soon began to distinguish him- 
 self by his ability as a debater, a circumstance which 
 must have gratified his father, who had not only 
 been the first man of his time at Trinity, but was 
 famous for a speech which he had made in the 
 House of Commons, where he represented the bor- 
 ough of Pontefract — a speech which was so highly 
 thought of that he was offered a seat in the Cabinet, 
 either as Chancellor of the Exchequer, or Secretary 
 of War, both of which positions he at once declined, 
 declaring that with his temperament he would not 
 live a year. They were great orators, those young 
 Trinitarians of two generations ago, and foremost 
 among them was Milnes, who on one occasion freed 
 his mind respecting the character of Voltaire : 
 " During the stormy period of the French Eevolu- 
 tion, and during the greater peril of the Empire un- 
 der Napoleon, a lamp was kept perpetually burning 
 on the tomb of Voltaire. France is greater now 
 
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES 265 
 
 than she was then ; France is wiser now than she 
 was then ; but that lamp does not burn upon the 
 tomb of Voltaire." 
 
 On another occasion they debated whether The 
 Ancient Mariner of Coleridge, or the acts of a Mr. 
 Martin would be most effectual in preventing cru- 
 elty to animals, and Coleridge seems to have carried 
 the day. 
 
 About this time — his twentieth year — Milnes be- 
 gan his literary career by contributing short re- 
 views and bits of verse to the Athenaeum, and by 
 competing with other singing birds of Trinity for 
 the prize poem, the subject of which was Tim- 
 buctoo. Here he crossed swords with Arthur Hal- 
 lam and Alfred Tennyson, both of whom were his 
 juniors, the former by about two years, the latter by 
 about two months, and was worsted by both. Hal- 
 lam was rash enough to choose the terza rima, a 
 measure which never has been and never can be 
 naturalized in English verse ; but Tennyson, wiser, 
 was content with blank verse, of which he was soon 
 to be a master. He had published two years be- 
 fore a volume of verse in connection with his elder 
 brother Charles, and it is the fashion now to say 
 that he made a clever beginning therein — a verdict 
 that was not reached by the contemporary critics of 
 that collection. There was no promise in Poems by 
 Two Brothers, but there was more than promise — 
 
266 EICHAKD MONCKTON MILNES 
 
 there was performance — in Timbuctoo, which took, 
 and deserved to take, the prize, surpassing as it 
 did the best prize poems of the period. 
 
 It was a period of transition in the poetic history 
 of England, which within the eight years preceding- 
 had been darkened by the taking off of three great 
 poets— Keats, in 1821, Shelley, in 1822, and By- 
 ron, in 1824. There was that in the genius of 
 Byron which had for years dazzled the multitude of 
 his countrymen with its fire and force, its fecundity 
 and versatility, and obscured the saner and wiser 
 gifts of his contemporaries, by one of whom his su- 
 premacy was denied. Whether any of the Lake 
 poets were just to Byron, may be doubted ; that 
 none of them was generous and hearty in their re- 
 cognition is certain. His audacities shocked the 
 moral nature of Southey and Wordsworth, particu- 
 larly Wordsworth, who, worshipping himself, ac- 
 knowledged no excellence save his own. The dis- 
 ciples of Wordsworth, whose numbers had never 
 corresponded with their clamor, took heart after 
 the death of Byron, and, assisted by the scantier 
 disciples of Keats and Shelley, set about his intel- 
 lectual dethronement. The revolt broke out at 
 Cambridge, where, in the autumn of 1829, the 
 young gentlemen of Trinity held a debate on 
 Wordsworth and Byron, and a little later in the 
 same year, when a deputation of them proceeded to 
 
EICHAED MONCKTOE" MILNES 267 
 
 Oxford, where they maintained the superiority of 
 Shelley to Byron, two of the three Shelleyites being 
 Hallam and Milnes. 
 
 The life of Milnes, for five or six years after leav- 
 ing college, was passed in Germany, and Italy, and 
 Greece. Lacking in incidents that call for enumer- 
 ation and description, it was enjoyable in that it 
 gratified his temperament, and important in that it 
 assisted in the formation of his character. He had 
 a nature that required change, a mind that was avid 
 for knowledge, and the gift of making himself at 
 home wherever he was. He agreed with the little 
 Queen Anne's man in thinking that the proper study 
 of mankind was man, and entering the world as his 
 university -after leaving England, he studied the 
 peoples among whom he sojourned. English to the 
 core, he was more than English in his sympathy 
 with other nationalities, and in his adaptability to 
 their habits and modes of thought. 
 
 Ripened by foreign travel, which was a liberal 
 education to him, Milnes returned to England at 
 the age of twenty-seven, and, residing with his 
 parents, who had taken a house in London, he be- 
 gan his social career. No young Englishman of his 
 position and talents could begin life to-day with 
 such advantages as he enjoyed ; for the England of 
 the nineties is less literary, less artistic, than the 
 England of the thirties. Fashionable people did 
 
268 EICHAED MONCKTON MILNES 
 
 not live so much for fashion then as now, or the 
 fashion for which they lived was of a more intellect- 
 ual kind. They thought more of the personalities 
 than the purses of the guests whom they invited to 
 dinner, and when they gave evening parties it was 
 rather to enjoy good talk than costly music. They 
 cultivated the art of conversation. He had two am- 
 bitions — one to make a name in letters, the other to 
 shine in society, and he pursued them with such 
 ardor that it was difficult to say for a time which 
 was the stronger. The first task to which he de- 
 voted himself was the procuring of poetical contri- 
 butions for a volume which Lord Northampton had 
 undertaken to edit for the benefit of the Eev. 
 Edward Smedley, an unfortunate man of letters 
 who had lost his hearing, was losing his sight, and 
 whose family was totally unprovided for. Milnes 
 entered into the project warmly, and sought to en- 
 list his literary friends, writing to Alford, Spedding, 
 Hare, De Vere, and others, who responded heartily, 
 and to Alfred Tennyson, who at first declined to 
 help him, having taken an oath never to have any- 
 thing to do with such vapid books. Milnes lost his 
 temper, and answered in heat, but was soothed by a 
 temperate reply, and the promise of a poem, which 
 was duly received. The Tribute appeared in the 
 summer of 1837, and as it was published by sub- 
 scription, at a guinea a copy, it probably realized 
 
RICHAKD MONCKTOJS" MILNES 269 
 
 something for the family of Smedley, who had died 
 while it was in hand. It was better than most books 
 published under similar conditions ; for though it 
 was not enriched by much good poetry, it contained 
 contributions from several good poets which had 
 been procured by Milnes — among them Wordsworth, 
 Southey, Moore, Landor, Milman, Montgomery, 
 Joanna Bailie, Henry Taylor, Horace Smith, Bernard 
 Barton, George Darley, Aubrey De Vere, Trench, 
 Alford, and R M. Milnes and Alfred Tennyson, 
 Esquires. Like other publications of the period, 
 not in themselves remarkable, The Tribute has be- 
 come rare, having been sought after of late years by 
 students of Tennyson bibliography, on account of 
 the Laureate's contribution therein, which is, no 
 doubt, the first rough draft of what is now the 
 twenty-fourth section of Maud, which was not pub- 
 lished as a whole until eighteen years later. 
 
 The social position of the Milnes family was an 
 open sesame to the best life in London, and Milnes 
 availed himself of the privileges that it conferred 
 with an ardor which was inseparable from his tem- 
 perament. He was young, he was pleasure-loving, 
 he was clever, and he was ambitious. He was not 
 content to be thought a poet, but was fain to distin- 
 guish himself as a man of the world, an acknowl- 
 edged wit, a brilliant talker, an ornament to society. 
 If it was a weakness, it was one which he shared 
 
270 EICHAED MONCKTON MILNES 
 
 with most writers of his day, who were eager for 
 personal triumphs, whether they were won in the 
 soirees over which Lady Morgan, the Misses Berry, 
 and Lydia White presided, or in the more brilliant 
 circles that assembled at Lansdowne House, Hol- 
 land House, and Gore House. 
 
 The society with which he mingled in those hos- 
 pitable mansions was the best of the time, represent- 
 ing, as it did, whoever was most eminent in the in- 
 tellectual walks of English life — statesmen and 
 politicians, poets and philosophers, lords and ladies, 
 professional wits and talkers, and now and then the 
 lion of the season. At Lansdowne House he met 
 the celebrities of the Whig Party, who figure in the 
 Diary of Moore, who was a constant visitor ; at Hol- 
 land House he met Sydney Smith, and a more liter- 
 ary set ; and, at Gore House, Count d'Orsay, Ben- 
 jamin Disraeli, Prince Louis Napoleon, and Lady 
 Blessington, the hostess, who was not in the good 
 books of her censorious sex. Wherever he went 
 Milnes was at home, too much at home, some 
 thought, for what with his high spirits and cool and 
 easy demeanor, he differed from the majority of his 
 countrymen. His manners resembled those of the 
 people among whom he had lived in France, in 
 Italy, in Greece more than the staid and measured 
 proprieties of English life. Frank and natural, in- 
 dividual and original, he was aggressive and auda- 
 
EICHAED MONCKTOIST MILLIES 271 
 
 cious, and whatever his convictions, or fancied con- 
 victions, he had the courage of them ; he offended 
 prejudices with his paradoxes, and offended still 
 more by defending them cavalierly. His cleverness 
 made him enemies, and they told stories about him, 
 and when there were no stories to tell they invented 
 them, and so made him more enemies. He was 
 much talked about, and much lied about. He was 
 not ignorant of the estimation in which he was held, 
 but his nature was so buoyant that he never lost his 
 temper, or never but once, when he wrote to Sydney 
 Smith, upon whom most of the sharp sayings about 
 him were popularly fathered, who replied as follows : 
 " Deae Milnes^ : — Never lose your temper, which 
 is one of your best qualities, and which has carried 
 you hitherto safely through your startling eccen- 
 tricities. If you turn cross and touchy, you are a 
 lost man. No man can combine the defects of oppo- 
 site qualities. The names of Cool of the Evening, 
 London Assurance, and Inigo Jones are, I give 
 you my word, not mine. They are of no sort of im- 
 portance ; they are safety-valves, and if you could 
 by paying sixpence get rid of them you had bet- 
 ter keep your money. You do me but justice in 
 acknowledging that I have spoken much good of 
 you. I have laughed at you for those follies which 
 I have told you of to your face ; but nobody has 
 more readily and more earnestly asserted that you 
 
272 EICHAED MONCKTON MILNES 
 
 are a very agreeable, clever man, with a very good 
 heart, unimpeachable in all the relations of life, and 
 that you amply deserve to be retained in the place 
 to which you had too hastily elevated yourself by 
 manners unknown to our cold and phlegmatic 
 people. I thank you for what you say of my good 
 humor. Lord Dudley, when I took leave of him, 
 said to me : ' You have been laughing at me for the 
 last seven years, and you never said anything which 
 I wished unsaid.' This pleased me." 
 
 Milnes thought so much of this letter that he in- 
 serted it in Lady Holland's Life of Sydney Smith, 
 and reading it in the last years of his life in his 
 library at Fryston to his biographer, Mr. Wemyss 
 Reicl, he said : " Don't you think that that was an 
 admirable letter for an old man to write to a young 
 one who had just played the fool ? " 
 
 The death of William IV. in the summer of 1837, 
 caused the dissolution of Parliament, and the elec- 
 tion of new members, among whom was Milnes, 
 who was chosen to represent the borough of Ponte- 
 fract. He took his seat in the autumn alongside of 
 Disraeli, and was more successful with his oratory 
 than that fantastic young politician, whose maiden 
 speech was laughed down. He was complimented 
 by Stanley, who spoke of the powerful and feeling- 
 language of the member for Pomfret, and by Peel, 
 who said his speech was just the right thing. Hav- 
 
EICHAKD MONCKTON MILNES 273 
 
 ing now begun life on his own account, and being 
 in a sense a public character, he took rooms in Pall 
 Mall. The setting up of this bachelor establishment 
 of his was an important event, in that it introduced 
 him to the great world of London in the character 
 of a generous host, who exercised his hospitality in 
 breakfasts. He followed in this mode of entertain- 
 ment the national habit of his countrymen, con- 
 cerning whom one of their satirists has said that if 
 London were to be destroyed by an earthquake the 
 survivors would meet among the ruins and celebrate 
 the catastrophe ; and he followed, besides, the ex- 
 ample of Rogers, whose breakfasts were preferred 
 to his poetry. He had given them for years in his 
 luxurious home in St. James's Place, and they were 
 famous ; but they were not what they had been, for 
 most of his early guests were dead or estranged, his 
 wit had become malevolent, and his stories, like 
 himself, had grown old. 
 
 The breakfasts of Milnes were much talked about, 
 so indiscriminate were his invitations thereto, and 
 so unconventional some of his guests. Everybody 
 who was anybody was to be found at them, and 
 scores of nobodies in whom he was interested for 
 the moment. Curious respecting all ranks and con- 
 ditions of men, he was a student of character in his 
 light way, and was tolerant of whatever was amus- 
 ing. Statesmen and philosophers, mountebanks 
 18 
 
274 EICHARD MONCKTON MILNES 
 
 and quacks, all were fish that came to his net. To 
 have done something, no matter what, or to be 
 thought capable of doing something, no matter 
 what, was a passport to his favor. The universality 
 of his invitations, which were always accepted, was 
 ridiculed, and many stories were current about them. 
 One of these stories (which was not true) turned on 
 a noted murderer, concerning whom some one at 
 his table inquired if he had been hanged that morn- 
 ing, and his sister replied : "I hope so, or Kichard 
 will have him at his breakfast-party next Thursday." 
 Caiiyle said that if Christ were on earth again 
 Mimes would ask him to breakfast, and the clubs 
 would all be, talking of the good things that Christ 
 had said. And years afterward, when he and Carlyle 
 were talking of the administration which Peel had 
 just formed, and in which he was not included, as 
 he had hoped to be, Carlyle remarked : " Peel knows 
 what he is about ; there is only one post fit for you, 
 and that is the office of perpetual president of the 
 Heaven and Hell Amalgamation Society." 
 
 What with his enjoyments and employments, 
 Mimes was a busy man ; but busy as he was he 
 found time to mediate the Muse, who, in his case, 
 was not thankless, and to publish two volumes of 
 verse, Memorials of a Residence on the Conti- 
 nent, and Poems of Many Years. The excellence 
 of these volumes, which was of a quiet, unobtrusive 
 
EICHAED MONCKTON MILNES 275 
 
 kind, was at once recognized by the critics and his 
 fellow-poets, one of the oldest of whom, Landor, 
 declaring that he was the greatest poet then living 
 in England. Landor was mistaken, however, as he 
 often was in his estimate of his friends (particularly 
 his friend Southey), for greatness was alien to the 
 genius of Milnes, which, active for a few years in 
 poetry, finally abandoned it for other and more 
 worldly pleasures and pursuits. "What he might 
 have been as a poet we know not ; what he chose 
 to be was a member of Parliament, a giver of break- 
 fasts, a man of society and the world. 
 
 But he was more than this : he was warm-hearted 
 and high-minded ; he loved and lived for his friends, 
 and was never weary in doing good. To need his 
 help was to have it, whether it was deserved or not. 
 His life was a round of generous acts, performed in 
 secret and out of pure kindness. He was not a man 
 of letters in the ordinary acceptation of the phrase ; 
 but no man of letters ever honored the profession 
 more highly than he, or ever encouraged and as- 
 sisted its struggling members with more sympathy 
 and heartiness. He understood the poetic temper- 
 ament, its weakness, its pride, its lack of worldly 
 wisdom, and was always ready to alleviate the ill- 
 fortune which often attaches to it. Others in his 
 place would have been content with relieving dis- 
 tressed authors with money — anyone with a good 
 
276 EICHAED MONCKTON MILNES 
 
 bank account could do that ; but lie did more, for, 
 giving* money freely, he gave with it his time and 
 tact, his maturest consideration, and his most deli- 
 cate feeling. When Hood, who was always poor, 
 and often ill, was in his last illness, he busied him- 
 self in procuring gratuitous contributions for his 
 magazine, and when the sufferings of that beautiful 
 spirit were ended, he started a subscription in be- 
 half of his family, and raised a sum which placed his 
 widow in comfort for the remainder of her days. 
 To have helped and comforted Hood was a privilege 
 and a distinction of which any man might have been 
 proud. It was otherwise with David Gray, who was 
 one of those poor creatures that, mistaking aspira- 
 tions for achievement, delude themselves into the be- 
 lief that they are poets, and whom we pity, in spite 
 of their foolishness, but whom it is impossible to 
 like or respect, their exactions are so unreasonable, 
 and their vanity so enormous. 
 
 But there are poets and poets, and there were 
 pleasanter episodes in the life of Mimes than the 
 one which has linked his name with that of Gray, 
 and of these the most pleasant one in which his in- 
 fluence was of essential and lasting service to his 
 friend Tennyson. What led to it — its prologue, as 
 one may say — is thus described by the biographer 
 of Lord Houghton. " Eichard Mimes/' said Carlyle 
 one day, withdrawing his pipe from his mouth, as 
 
EICHAED MONCKTON MILNES 277 
 
 they were seated together in the little house in 
 Cheyne Row, " when are you going to get that pen- 
 sion for Alfred Tennyson ? " " My clear Carlyle," 
 responded Milnes, " the thing is not so easy as you 
 suppose. What will my constituents say if I do get 
 the pension for Tennyson? They know nothing 
 about him or his poetry, and they will probably 
 think he is some poor relation of my own, and that 
 the whole affair is a job." Solemn and emphatic 
 was Carlyle's response. "Bichard Milnes, on the 
 Day of Judgment, when the Lord asks you why you 
 didn't get that pension for Alfred Tennyson, it will 
 not do to lay the blame on your constituents ; it is 
 you that will be damned." Milnes went to Peel, 
 who sometimes consulted others in regard to the 
 Civil List, and found that he had never heard of 
 Tennyson. He sent him Locksley Hall and Ulysses, 
 and the poet forthwith received a pension of two 
 hundred pounds per annum. 
 
 What was most interesting in Milnes was not his 
 career, but his character ; not the outward events of 
 his life, which in the main was not unlike that of 
 other English gentlemen of good family, who mingle 
 in the social and political movements of their day, 
 marry the women of their choice, to whom they are 
 good husbands, and beget children, to whom they 
 are good fathers ; but the intellectual individuality 
 that impelled him to travel, to write, to give break- 
 
278 EICHAED MONCKTON MIL1STES 
 
 fasts, to be cheery and kindly, the best of compan- 
 ions, and the warmest of friends — in other words, 
 the unique personality that made him the man he 
 was. To understand this it is not necessary that 
 we should pursue his biography further than we 
 have done. Suffice it to say, then, that at the age 
 of forty-two he married the Honorable Annabel 
 Crewe, the younger daughter of the second Lord 
 Crewe ; that at the age of fifty-four he was raised 
 to the peerage as Baron Houghton of Great Hough- 
 ton; and that he died at Vichy in his seventy- 
 seventh year, and was buried in the little church- 
 yard at Fryston. 
 
 A change came over the hospitality of Milnes, 
 which, chiefly exercised during his bachelor days at 
 his chambers on Pall Mall, was transferred, after his 
 marriage, to his Yorkshire home at Fryston. A sub- 
 stantial country home, situated on the banks of the 
 Clive, in a centre of gardens and shrubberies, with 
 prairies of park and miles of larch and beechen 
 woods, Fryston was just such a home as a scholarly 
 author would desire, for besides the family portraits 
 which covered its walls, masterpieces by Reynolds, 
 Gainsborough, Romney, and Lawrence, it was filled 
 with books. They were found not merely in the 
 library proper, but in every room, in corridors, in 
 odd nooks and corners, and on the staircase, the 
 hall itself being converted into a library. And not 
 
EICHAED MONCKTON MILNES 279 
 
 the least among the treasures there were the books 
 which their authors had presented to Milnes. " Of 
 presentation copies there is literally no end at Fry- 
 ston ; indeed, pages could be filled with a simple 
 list of the books of various kinds which have been 
 dedicated to him by their writers. It was his habit 
 to insert in all these presentation volumes the let- 
 ters which accompanied the gifts, so that a rambling 
 survey of this portion of the book-shelves at Fry- 
 ston is attended by many a delightful discovery, 
 many an unexpected peep into the secret mind of 
 the author who has brought his little tribute of 
 friendship or admiration to the poet-peer." 
 
 The friends of Milnes were as free of Fryston be- 
 fore he became its master as of his chambers in 
 London, and a story is told of Thackeray's first visit 
 there and of his introduction to the elder Milnes, 
 who, on learning that he smoked, said to him : 
 " Pray, consider yourself at liberty, Mr. Thackeray, 
 to smoke in any room in the house except my son's. 
 I am sorry to say that he does not allow it." " Rich- 
 ard, my boy," said Thackeray, slapping his friend 
 on the back, "what a splendid father has been 
 thrown away upon you ! " On another occasion he 
 informed him that Fryston combined the graces of 
 the chateau and the tavern. Carlyle, who seldom 
 liked anything or anybody, enjoyed his visits to Fry- 
 ston, and was so friendly to Milnes that he never 
 

 280 BICHAED MONCKTON MIL1STES 
 
 abused him in his correspondence. The hospitality 
 of Milnes made Fryston a charming place to visit, 
 and drew thither, year after year, the most distin- 
 guished men of the time. He was the literary host 
 of England, and whether his guests were famous or 
 obscure, whether they belonged to the great world 
 or had merely for the moment emerged from the 
 masses, they could not be long in his company with- 
 out feeling the charm of his manner, and being 
 warmed and attracted by the tenderness of his heart. 
 His fame as a talker was world-wide, and there is 
 no need to say that the dinner-table at Fryston was 
 the scene of a hundred happy encounters of wit, in- 
 telligence, and knowledge. The character of Milnes 
 was tersely summed up one evening, years ago, 
 at the Cosmopolitan Club, by Mr. W. E. Foster, 
 who, on his leaving earlier than usual, said to a 
 friend beside him : "I have many friends who 
 would be kind to me in distress, but only one who 
 would be equally kind to me in disgrace, and he 
 has just left the room." 
 
 Lord Houghton was a poet, but rather of the kind 
 that is made than of the kind that is born. He was 
 drawn to poetry by his culture, which preferred the 
 elegancies to the solidities of scholarship, and by his 
 early friendships and associations. When he began 
 to write the reputation of Wordsworth was higher 
 than it had ever been before, or has ever been since, 
 
EICHAED MONCKTON MILNES 281 
 
 and he was enough influenced by it to be willing to 
 shine in its reflected light. He was not sufficiently 
 individual to be original, so he attached himself to 
 the school of Wordsworth, success in which de- 
 manded no mental endowments that were beyond 
 his natural powers, and he ranked for a time among 
 the most promising of his pupils. When the readers 
 of these worthy gentlemen grew tired of them, as 
 they did when they became interested in the richer 
 and stronger verse of Tennyson and Browning, they 
 were kindly relegated to the obscurity of unread 
 libraries, and he among them. He was the best of 
 the band. There are fine qualities in his verse, ten- 
 derness and refinement of feeling, veins of pensive 
 meditation, graces and felicities of expression, and 
 at times imagination. His little love-songs are ex- 
 quisite. There is a story attached to one of his 
 poems which is worth telling, as an instance of the 
 worthlessness of the criticism to which poets are 
 sometimes subjected by their personal friends ; and 
 as this poem happened to be a good one, I will 
 give the story here, in the words of his biographer, 
 Mr. Wemyss Eeid, to whom it was related by Lord 
 Houghton himself. The incident upon which it 
 was founded occurred in his twenty-seventh year, 
 during a visit to Ireland. "He was driving, he 
 said, to the house of his friends the O'Briens, in one 
 of the national cars, and as the horse's feet beat 
 
282 RICHAKD MONCKTON MILNES 
 
 upon the road, they seemed to hammer out in his 
 own head certain rhythmical ideas, which quickly 
 formed themselves into rhymes. By the time he had 
 reached Trathol the little poem was complete, and 
 immediately on entering his own room he sat down 
 and committed it to paper. It was the well-known 
 song beginning, 'I wandered by the brook-side,' 
 and having the refrain 
 
 ' But the beating of my own heart 
 Was all the sound I heard.' 
 
 " When he came down to dinner he brought the 
 verses with him, and showed them to his friends. 
 They were unanimous in declaring them to be wholly 
 unworthy of his powers and the reputation which 
 he already enjoyed, and they urged upon him the 
 virtue of committing them at once to the flames. 
 As it happened, the little verses which thus met with 
 so cold a reception when they were first launched 
 upon the world, were destined to attain perhaps a 
 wider fame and popularity than anything else which 
 fell from his pen. From the first moment of their 
 publication they caught the ear of the public ; they 
 were set to music almost directly they had been 
 printed, rival composers competing for the privilege 
 of associating their names with them ; and little 
 more than twelve months after that lonely ride on 
 the Irish highway, when the first idea of the poem 
 
EICHAED MONCKTON MILNES 283 
 
 came into Milnes's mind, a friend of his who was sail- 
 ing down a river in the Southern States of North 
 America, heard the slaves as they hoed in the planta- 
 tions keeping time by singing a parody of the lines 
 now universally familiar." Mr. Eeid adds to this 
 pleasant story a little note concerning the personal- 
 ity of Lord Houghton, and an incident which oc- 
 curred in his later years, as he was walking one day 
 in London with a friend. " Passing the end of a 
 street he paused, listened eagerly to a wandering 
 singer whose voice had reached him, and then dart- 
 ing off in pursuit of the man, reappeared quickly, 
 with a glow of delight on his face. ( I knew it was 
 my song ! ' he exclaimed, showing a roughly printed 
 broadside bearing the words of his famous song." 
 Here, without further comment, is the song. 
 
 I wandered by the brook-side, 
 
 I wandered by the mill, 
 I could not bear tbe brook flow, 
 
 Tbe noisy wbeel was still ; 
 There was no burr of grasshopper, 
 
 No chirp of any bird, 
 But the beating of my own heart 
 
 Was all the sound I heard. 
 
 I sat beneath the elm-tree, 
 
 I watched the long, long shade, 
 
 And as it grew still longer 
 I did not feel afraid : 
 
284 KICHARD MONCKTON MILNES 
 
 For I listened for a footfall, 
 
 I listened for a word ; 
 But the beating of my own heart 
 
 Was all the sound I heard. 
 
 He came not, no, he came not, 
 
 The night came on alone, 
 The little stars sat one by one 
 
 Each on his golden throne ; 
 The evening air passed by my cheek, 
 
 The leaves above were stirred, 
 But the beating of my own heart 
 
 Was all the sound I heard. 
 
 Fast silent tears were flowing 
 
 When something stood behind, 
 A hand was on my shoulder, 
 
 I knew its touch was kind ; 
 It drew me nearer, nearer, 
 
 We did not speak one word, 
 For the beating of our own hearts 
 
 Was all the sound we heard. 
 
 THE END 
 
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