THG 
 UNIYGRS1TY Of CALIFORNIA 
 LIBRARY 
 
 C1NGLISH SCM1NAR 
 
 
 5C LIBR1S 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 William Dallam Amies 
 
THE 
 
 MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY 
 

 > j > i j 
 

THE 
 
 MACLISE PORTRAIT GALLERY 
 
 i i 
 
 OF 
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS LITERARY CHARACTERS 
 
 WITH MEMOIRS 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL, CRITICAL, BIBLIOGRAPHICAL, AND ANECDOTAL 
 
 ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE LITERATURE OF THE FORMER 
 
 HALF OF THE PRESENT CENTURY 
 
 i 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM BATES, B.A. 
 
 A NEW EDITION 
 WITH EIGHTY-FIVE PORTRAITS 
 
 * * ' . ' V 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS 
 
 1898 
 
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 *' 
 
 
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 e t ' 
 
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 CTrok 
 Mi 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 This volume consists of a reproduction, on slightly reduced scale, 
 but with no impairment of their effect and truth, of the eighty-one 
 Portraits and Groups originally published in Fraser's Magazine, 
 1830-38, under the title of "A Gallery of Illustrious Literary 
 Characters. " To these, four portraits,* not forming part of the 
 original series, have been added, for the sake of completeness ; and 
 the whole, it is hoped, will be found to derive elucidation and 
 value from the copious illustrative "Memoirs," for which I am 
 responsible. 
 
 It is well to record, in the interests of bibliography, that there has 
 been a previous republication, both in part and in entirety, of this 
 interesting series. So far back as 1833, the portraits of which the 
 " Gallery" then consisted, to the number of thirty-four, were reissued 
 by the proprietors in a handsome quarto volume. A very limited 
 number of the edition was printed at two guineas each, "plain 
 proofs " ; with twenty-four copies on " Indian paper," at three 
 guineas. The publication was announced with the statement that 
 " the Drawings were destroyed immediately after their first appearance, 
 and not one had been suffered to get abroad detached from the 
 Magazine." However this may have been, the collection, good as 
 far as it went, contained little more than a third of the entire series 
 as given in this volume ; it was unaccompanied by explanatory text ; 
 and has become, from its restricted issue, and the destruction of 
 numerous copies by the " Grangerites " of the day, in booksellers' 
 lingo, " difficult of procuration." 
 
 In 1874, the complete "Gallery" was, for the first time, repub- 
 
 * Henry Hallam ; W. M. Thackeray ; Daniel Maclise, R.A. ; and the Rer, 
 Francis Mahony (" Father Prout"). 
 
 ^T'- J ^*JT^.; : 
 
 *5^J 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 lished by Messrs. Chatto and Windus, in a handsome quarto volume, 
 at the price of a guinea and a half. The several portraits were 
 accompanied by the original page of matter by Dr. Maginn, and 
 supplementary " notices " by myself. Three portraits, with memoirs 
 (Hallam, Thackeray, and Maclise), not previously included, were 
 added; and a short memoir, without portrait, of the Rev. Francis 
 Mahony. This costly edition has been long since exhausted ; and 
 copies are already ranked among scarce books. It therefore seemed 
 that the time had come for a reissue ; and this in cheaper form, and 
 with such modifications as experience suggested. The context of 
 Maginn, brilliant as it undoubtedly was, contained much that was 
 hasty, illiberal and purely ephemeral ; and, it was thought, might be 
 omitted, at least in its substantive form, with advantage. All of it 
 that seemed worthy of republication has been incorporated, with due 
 indication or acknowledgment, in my own "notices," or " memoirs " ; 
 and these have been entirely rewritten, and extended to more 
 than four times their original dimensions. Moreover, a portrait of 
 Mahony (" Father Prout ") has now, for the first time, been given. 
 Thus, with these additions and improvements, the assertion seems 
 justified, that the present volume should be regarded as a new book, 
 rather than as a new edition of an already existing one. 
 
 In reviewing their labours in the Magazine, at the conclusion of 
 the first decade of its existence, its conductors, turning from pen to 
 pencil, thus advert to the novel graphic feature of their serial : 
 " We commenced a Gallery of ' Illustrious ' Literary Characters in 
 the month of July, 1830, commenced, we own, in mere jocularity ; 
 and, trusting to his well-known good-nature and long-tried good 
 temper, selected Jerdan as our opening portrait. There was nothing 
 in what we said that could annoy a man for whom we had so sincere 
 a regard ; and we found that the idea pleased. We continued it, 
 therefore, until we published no less than eighty-one." 
 
 Next followed an analytical account of the "Gallery," together 
 with some justification of, or apology for, the choice of subjects, 
 concluding with the remarks : " We closed our series of portraits, 
 principally for lack of sufficiently attractive materials, but are ready to 
 revive them at any time, if we think the public requires us to do so. 
 It will be a valuable present to the future Granger; even as it is, the 
 collection is in no inconsiderable demand for the purpose of illustrating 
 books of contemporary literature, such as the works of Lord Byron, 
 Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, etc. In another generation it 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 will be an object of greater curiosity. Our successors will have no 
 difficulty in procuring set portraits of ' Scott, Rogers, Moore, and all 
 the better brothers,' though even of them it will not be easy to obtain 
 the familiar faces and attitudes as sketched in the Magazine; but 
 where can it be expected that elsewhere will be found any record of 
 the countenances of the illustrious obscure who were scribbling away, 
 with more or less repute, in the reign of William IV. ? " 
 
 There is no doubt that the greater number of these portraits were 
 the production of that distinguished artist, the late Daniel Maclise, 
 R.A. For one or two, the "Gallery" may have been indebted to 
 the well-known " Alfred Crowquill " (the late Alfred Henry For- 
 rester) ; and it is not impossible that Thackeray himself may have 
 lent a helping hand on an emergency. Contenting myself, however, 
 with these general suggestions, I shall make no attempt at further 
 discrimination ; nor refer to the manifestly erroneous judgments of 
 certain self-constituted " experts " who have dogmatized on the 
 subject. 
 
 The Sketches being slight, in many cases tinged by caricature, 
 in nearly all taken surreptitiously or from recollection, and 
 accompanied, moreover, by humorous, satirical or sarcastic com- 
 ments, both artist and author were disposed to obscure their 
 identity with a veil of pseudonymous mystery. The portraits, speak- 
 ing generally, are nevertheless of the highest excellence, and bear 
 the impress of a master hand. Firm and delicate at once in outline, 
 and felicitous in composition, they exhibit a marvellous subtlety in 
 the apprehension and exhibition of intellectual character. Mr. S. C. 
 Hall, a most competent authority, speaks of them as " admirable as 
 likenesses, and capital as specimens of art " ; while Thackeray, in a 
 letter to G. H. Lewes, tells us how greatly Goethe * was interested 
 in those " admirable portraits," though " the ghastly caricature of 
 R(ogers) " made him shut up the book and put it away in anger ; for, 
 as the veteran said with natural horror, "They would make me look 
 like that." f 
 
 * Life of Goethe, by G. H. Lewes, vol. ii. p. 445, ed. 1855. 
 
 f It may be well to mention that a similar series of outline portraits, entitled " Our 
 (Portrait Gallery," inferior in interest and artistic merit, but accompanied by much 
 longer and more serious biographical notices, is to be found in the Dublin University 
 Magazine. This includes seventy-two portraits, and terminates with that of Captain 
 McClure, R.N., in the number for March, 1854, vol. xliii. Those of Moore and J. W. 
 'Croker (vol. xix.), Dr. Maginn (vol. xxiii.), Crofton Croker (vol. xxxiv.), and J. S. 
 Knovvles (vol. xl.), have tl^ir analogues in Fraser's series, with which they may be 
 compared. 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 Of the importance of Portraits generally I have spoken at 
 sufficient length (page 404) ; but those of authors have naturally a 
 special attraction for the lovers of literature. When the gem is so 
 precious, we are apt to believe that the casket must be, in some 
 degree, worthy of it ; and the wish is natural, though in accomplish- 
 ment too often unsatisfactory, to know in the flesh those writers 
 with whose minds we have already become familiar through their 
 books. That there is no faith to be put in faces is an old axiom ; 
 but one against which we instinctively act. We think that there 
 must be a certain correspondence between the man and his book ; 
 and that, from either, we are able to predicate what the other will be. 
 Thus the portraits of the learned may be studied with advantage, not 
 only as matters of art and curiosity, but as enabling us to gain there- 
 from some further apprehension and elucidation of their minds and 
 writings ; " latentem enim ingenii vim" says the learned Bartholinus, 
 "et genium scriJ>torum ex imaginibus et vultu dijudicamus." 
 
 The interest and value of these sketches by Maclise have long 
 been known to artists and literary men. Thus, the separate numbers 
 of the Magazine containing them have been eagerly sought for, and 
 are rarely to be met with now at the book-stalls. Some few ardent 
 collectors have succeeded, with no small expenditure of time, labour 
 and money, in forming complete sets;* while others, of smaller 
 means, or less enthusiastic temper, have been fain to content them- 
 selves with occasional reference, as need suggested, to the eight volumes- 
 of Fraser, in public libraries. From these, however, many of the 
 portraits have been eliminated by unscrupulous " Illustrators ; " and 
 some of the single numbers, from the special interest of certain 
 plates, as, for instance, that containing the " Fraserian " cartoon, 
 which the Graphic stated to be on that account absolutely " priceless/* 
 have become of the utmost rarity. It was thus thought, that the 
 collection and reproduction of the entire series within the compass 
 of a single portable volume, accompanied by such illustration as 
 biographical memoirs, and some few of the more typical and salient 
 pieces of the time might afford, could hardly fail to obtain a wide 
 
 * In one of the catalogues, for 1872, of Mr. F. S. Ellis, the eminent second-hand 
 bookseller of Covent Garden, a very remarkable collected copy of the "Gallery'" 
 occurred for sale. It consisted of eighty-one portraits, many of which were prool 
 impressions, and almost all illustrated by autograph letters of the illustrious originals. 
 The whole was arranged in two volumes, 4to ; bound in ' ' red morocco, super-extra " ; 
 and did not long wait a purchaser, I presume, at the catalogue price of ^63. This 
 worthy successor of Rodd, Thorpe, and Lilly, has since removed to 39, New Bond 
 Strtet, where he flourishes under the firm of "Ellis and White." 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 recognition from general readers, and be regarded by those more 
 specially interested in literary and artistic curiosities, as a KTrj/xa Is de4 
 a "joy for ever." 
 
 Each muster-call on the march of life serves but to remind us 
 sadly of the comrades who have fallen by the way. When two lustres 
 had passed over the " Gallery," its projectors recorded that nearly 
 one-fourth of the members, old and young alike, had sped from 
 "sunshine to the sunless land." This was in 1840; but at the latter 
 standpoint of i860, when Frank Mahony edited Proufs Reliques> 
 for Bohn, the Padre could only remember eight, he unaccountably 
 forgot Jerdan, making a ninth, as surviving, of the twenty-seven 
 " Fraserians " whom Maclise, in the splendid cartoon which forms 
 our frontispiece, has depicted, carousing at the round table in Regent 
 Street. Again, now that at the expiration of a like interval, the 
 present volume goes to press, but a single one of this century of 
 illustrious men remains among us ! 
 
 This gentleman, 
 
 -qui tot per saecula mortem 
 
 Distulit, atque suos jam dextra computat annos," 
 
 strangely overlooked by Mr. Kent, when editing Prout in 1881, 
 as Prout himself had overlooked Jerdan, is the respected rector 
 of Ivy Church, Kent, the Rev. George Robert Gleig, late Chap- 
 lain of Chelsea Hospital, and Chaplain-General to the Forces, 
 When the Abbe* Sieyes was asked what he had done through 
 the French Revolution, he thought it sufficient to reply, -J'ai 
 vecu. Well, Human Life is a "Reign of Terror"; and Time 
 a tyrant more ruthless than Robespierre. To have simply lived 
 through a century " exemplum vita a cornice secundce" is art 
 achievement in itself, and might well justify a " tantum " boast. But 
 the sole survivor at this day, of the twenty-seven hilarious " Knights 
 of the Round Table " nay more, of the eighty-five " Illustrious " 
 of the " Gallery," has done far more than this ; as I have re- 
 corded, I hope with all due respect and amplitude, in the notice 
 devoted to him, at page 267 of this volume. 
 
 In discharge of the functions of "Exhibitor" of the "Gallery," 
 I need say very little as to my own labours ; leaving others to decide 
 how far they add interest and value to the volume. Didactic criticism, 
 and preceptive morality, have been alike foreign to my purpose. I 
 have merely sought, by anecdote, opinion, quotation or fact, just 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 as each may have occurred to me, to illustrate the lives of the men 
 depicted, and reproduce the "form and pressure" of their literary- 
 epoch. I have discoursed about the books, which, happily for the 
 hook-reader, are to be found at every stall ; and I have told of many 
 a one, albo corvo rarior, which the book-collector would "pawn his 
 dukedom" to acquire. After the Newgate Calendar, there are no 
 sadder pages in the history of man than those afforded by the 
 Biographies of authors;* whence the desire and justification to 
 relieve the gloomy records by extrinsic matter of any degree of 
 relevancy to suggest its introduction. Thus I have retold forgotten 
 stories ; refreshed commonplaces ; recorded noteworthy events; revised 
 former judgments ; revived old scandals ; revealed indifferently the 
 friendships and the quarrels, the loves and the hates, the amenities 
 and the acerbities, of a long past day. Desultory, however, as my 
 illustrations are, and of varied character, as the title-page imports, 
 there yet may be something in them to please a diversity of tastes. 
 What is neither new nor attractive to one reader may yet be so to 
 another; and thus, in their very discursiveness, they may prove, it 
 is hoped, an humble illustration of that species of writing, of which 
 the younger Pliny set before us the precept and the example : 
 "Ipsa varietate tentamus ejficere, ut alia aliis, quondam fortasse omnibus 
 placeant" 
 
 That there were Giants in the olden days is the belief of all ; nor 
 is this the mere cry of the laudator temfioris acti. Time would appear 
 to have for the mental eye some of the effects of space for the 
 physical. The objects presented for consideration become undefined 
 and exaggerated in the medium interposed, derive adventitious 
 interest from association, and cease to exhibit those trivial defects 
 which often mar the appreciation of great and enduring qualities. 
 Thus, it is difficult to form an abstract judgment of the great men of 
 the past, and weigh their gifts in an equal scale with those of our 
 more immediate contemporaries. Nevertheless, with this considera- 
 tion before me, I am unable to divest myself of the conviction that 
 the celebrated writers of the former half of the present century awaken 
 a deep and increasing personal curiosity, which can never be claimed 
 for those of the latter by a future race of critics and biographers. 
 
 * " Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, 
 And pause awhile from Letters to be wise : 
 There mark what ills the scholar's life assail. 
 Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol." 
 
 Dr. Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes. 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 Into the cause of this, I do not profess now to enter, and must 
 remain content with the statement of my belief. It is curious, more- 
 over, to remark that a like phenomenon is to be noticed in the 
 literary annals of the other countries of Europe, where, amid, and 
 partly on account of, a general diffusion of intellectual light, the 
 eye is attracted by the radiance of few bright particular stars. 
 " Historians," says S. C. Hall, in the " Postscript " to his charming 
 Book of Memories, " of the later half of the nineteenth century will 
 not have such materials as the first half of it supplied. ' There were 
 giants on earth' when I was young; there are few such to excite 
 wonder, as well as reverence, in the existing age, although, for one 
 who was then an ' author by profession,' there are now a hundred ; 
 while readers have multiplied a thousandfold." It is with this glorious 
 band that the reader is now privileged to consort ; and this, by the 
 phosphoric pencil of Maclise,* and the frequent words of his literary 
 collaborator, not to speak of my own humble labours, in such 
 intimacy, that, though born in a later day, and remote, perchance, 
 from lettered haunts, he may almost lay down the volume with the 
 boast of Horace : 
 
 " quidquid sum ego, quamvis 
 
 Infra Lucill censum ingeniumque ; tamen me 
 Cum magnis vixisse invita fatebitur usque 
 Invidia . . . ." 
 
 I now bid farewell to the " Gallery " wherein I have lingered so 
 long. As I have slowly paced its "long-drawn aisles," there has 
 been the echo of mighty voices in my ears, and a rustle beneath my 
 feet as of dry and withered leaves in Vall'ombrosa. It is with regret 
 and reluctance that I lay down my pen. I confess my own abiding 
 fondness for the memory of these grand masterful spirits of the 
 former half-century ; nor can I, gazing into the " dark rereward and 
 abysm of time," discern other like period so lavish in the production 
 of men and women of marked and characteristic genius. I love to 
 study their epoch, to ponder over their books, to trace and identify 
 the fugitive piece, to chronicle the obscure fact, and to snatch the 
 " trivial fond record " from the limbo of oblivion. The admiration 
 which they claimed from me in a long past day has not suffered 
 diminution with time; and when I remember their originality of 
 mind, their force of character, their distinction of personality, 
 
 * "Of the luminous effulgence flung round all these matters by that brilliant 
 nlightener (Xaju7ra<3o<or><-), Alfred Croquis, we know not in what style to speak fittingly, 
 -or where to find adequate terms of eulogy." Father Prout's Self-Examination. 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 when I reflect on the varied story of their lives and fortunes, their 
 virtues and even their vices, their fervid loves and their outspoken 
 hates, I am often fain to echo the sentiment of Shenstone : " Oh, 
 quanto minus est cum reliquis versari, quam vestrum meminisse ! " 
 
 Enough by way of introduction to the book, which it is now time, 
 in ancient fashion, to bid " goe forth." With no pretensions to unity 
 of design as a biographical essay, a history of the literary epoch, or 
 a critical analysis of its character and productions, it must be regarded 
 rather as a series of fragmentary episodes than a connected work. 
 The sketches of Maclise were often hasty and furtive ; the illustra- 
 tions of his literary collaborator, Maginn, too frequently redolent of 
 an impure Hippocrene ; and my own " Memoirs," written among the 
 interruptions and distractions of professional life, will sometimes, I 
 fear, show traces of carelessness and crudity, which revision might 
 have allowed me an opportunity of correcting. However, such as 
 it is, I now commit it to the reader, with the humble obsecration 
 of the Latin poet : 
 
 " Da veniam suHtis, et, qui legis ista, memento, 
 Me dare non librum, sed 2x*'a'Ma tibi." 
 
LIST OF PORTRAITS. 
 
 NO. 
 
 The " Fraserians " ... 
 
 I. William Jerdan ... . 
 
 II. Thomas Campbell ... 
 
 III. John Gibson Lockhart ... 
 
 IV. Samuel Rogers 
 
 V. Thomas Moore ... 
 
 VI. Sir Walter Scott ... 
 
 VII. John Galt 
 
 VIII. William Maginn, "the Doctor" , 
 
 IX. Crofton Croker 
 
 X. Mrs. Norton 
 
 XI. John Wilson 
 
 XII. Mary Russell Mitford 
 
 XIII. Don Telesforo de Trueba y Cozio 
 
 XIV. Earl of Munster ... 
 XV. Lord John Russell 
 
 XVI. Right Hon. John Wilson Croker 
 
 XVII. Tydus-Pooh-Pooh 
 
 XVIII. Washington Irving 
 
 XIX. The Lord Brougham and Vaux 
 
 XX. Robert Montgomery 
 
 XXI. James Hogg 
 
 XXII. The Baron von Goethe 
 
 XXIII. Isaac DTsraeli ... 
 
 XXIV. The Antiquaries . * 
 XXV. Louis Eustache Ude ... ... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 4 - 
 7 
 13 
 
 22 
 
 3i 
 
 37 
 40 
 
 49 
 53 
 53 
 63 
 66 
 68 
 69 
 72 
 
 74 
 
 76 
 
 81 
 
 ^7 
 
 9i 
 
 96 
 
 102 
 
 104 
 
 116 
 
XIV 
 
 LIST OF PORTRAITS. 
 
 NO. 
 
 XXVI. Reverend Doctor Lardner 
 
 XXVII. Edward Lytton Bulwer ... 
 
 XXVIII. Allan Cunningham 
 
 "" XXIX. William Wordsworth 
 
 XXX. Sir David Brewster ... 
 
 XXXI. William Roscoe ... 
 
 XXXII. Trince de Talleyrand 
 
 XXXIII. James Morier 
 
 XXXIV. Countess of Blessington 
 
 XXXV. "The Tiger" ... 
 
 XXXVI. Benjamin D'Israeli 
 
 XXXVII. Thomas Carlyle ... 
 
 XXXVIII. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
 
 XXXIX. George Cruikshank 
 
 XL. Dr. Moir 
 
 XLI. Miss Landon 
 
 XLII. Miss Harriet Martineau 
 
 XLIII. Grant Thorburn ... 
 
 XLIV. Captain Ross ... 
 
 XLV. Sir Egerton Brydges 
 
 XLVI. Daniel O'Connell and Richard Lalor Siiiel 
 
 XLVII. Theodore E. Hook 
 
 XLVIII. Charles Molloy Westmacott 
 
 XLIX. Leigh Hunt 
 
 L, William Harrison Ainsworth 
 
 LI. Thomas Hill 
 
 HI. Rev. George Robert Gleig 
 
 LIII. William Godwin ... 
 
 LIV. James Smith ... 
 
 LV. Comte D'Orsay ... 
 
 LVI. Charles Lamb 
 
 LVII. Pierre-Jean de Beranger 
 
 LVIII. Miss Jane Porter 
 
 LIX. Lady Morgan 
 
 LX. Mr. Alaric Attila Watts 
 
 LXI. Lord Francis Egerton 
 
 PAGE 
 122 
 
 125 
 133 
 
 138 
 
 143 
 147 
 154 
 157 
 159 
 163 
 
 164 
 172 
 
 178 
 185 
 
 198 
 199 
 
 205 
 
 212 
 
 215 
 217 
 223 
 231 
 236 
 242 
 256 
 263 
 267 
 270 
 
 277 
 284 
 
 290 
 300 
 309 
 313 
 319 
 323 
 
LIST OF PORTRAITS. 
 
 NO. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 Henry O'Brien 
 
 PAGE 
 . 325 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Michael Thomas Sadler ... 
 
 329- 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 Earl of Mulgrave 
 
 - 33* 
 
 LXV. 
 
 William Cobbett ... 
 
 333 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 Francis Place 
 
 - 344 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 Robert Macnish ... 
 
 35o 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 Regina's Maids of Honour 
 
 354 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 Michael Faraday... 
 
 357 
 
 LXX. 
 
 Rev. William Lisle Bowles ... 
 
 ... 362 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 Mrs. S. C. Hall ... 
 
 366- 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 Sir John C. Hobhouse 
 
 ... 372 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Talfourd ... 
 
 37* 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 Sir John Soane 
 
 = .. 384 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst ... 
 
 39* 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Sheridan Knowles 
 
 .- 39T 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 Edmund Lodge 
 
 402 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 John Baldwin Buckstone 
 
 ... 411 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 Sir William Molesworth 
 
 416 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 Rev. Sydney Smith ... 
 
 ... 419 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 Henry Hallam 
 
 430 
 
 lxxxii. 
 
 William Makepeace Thackeray 
 
 ... 437 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 Daniel Maclise, R.A. 
 
 448 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 Rev. Francis Mahony ("Father Prout") 
 
 .,. 46S 
 
" Tantum In Auctoribus noscendis moment! positum, ut ex illorum ve pietate, 
 el eruditione, vel parta fama, libris increscat autoritas. In illorum porro vitam, 
 aetatem, et Vivendi genus inquirendum, non minori sollicitudine, ut expeditius 
 in legendis eorum laboribus versemur." Th. Bartholinus {JDe Libris Legendis t 
 Hagae Com. 171 1, i2mo, p. 35). 
 
 " In isto vario et diffuso scribendi genere alius alio plura invenire potest, 
 nemo omnia." Justus Lipsius (Allocutio in Not. adlibros "de Cruce"). 
 
 " As the quantity of materials is so great, I shall only premise, that I hope 
 for indulgence, though I do not give the actions in full detail, and with a scru- 
 pulous exactness, but rather in a short summary ; since I am not writing His- 
 tories, but Lives. Nor is it always in the most distinguished achievements that 
 men's virtues or vices may be best discerned ; but very often an action of small 
 note, a short saying, or a jest, shall distinguish a person's real character, more 
 than the greatest sieges, or the most important battles. Therefore, as painters 
 in their portraits labour the likeness in the face, and particularly about the eyes, 
 in which the peculiar turn of mind most appears, and run over the rest with a 
 more careless hand ; so I must be permitted to strike off the features of the 
 soul, in order to give a real likeness of these great men, and leave to others 
 the circumstantial detail of their labours and achievements." Langkorne's 
 Plutarch {Alexander). 
 
 " Be mine to save from what traditions glean, 
 Or age remembers, or ourselves have seen ; 
 The scatter'd relics care can yet'collect, 
 And fix such shadows as these lines reflect : 
 Types of the elements whose glorious strife 
 Form'd this free England, and still guards her life." 
 
 E. L. Bulwer (St. Stephen's). 
 
 u Cum relego, scripsisse pudet ; quia plurima cerno, 
 Me quoque, qui feci, judice, digna lini." 
 
 Ovid (fit Ponto, lib. i. Epist. 5). 
 
THE 
 
 MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY 
 
 L WILLIAM JERDAN. 
 
 The " Gallery" commenced appropriately with the tf8w\ov of William 
 Jerdan, the Nestor, if not the Aristarchus, of journalistic critics. 
 Maginn, in what Charles Lamb would have called a " matter of lie " 
 sort of way, assigns his birth vaguely to "about the year 1730"; but, 
 without venturing to contravene such high authority, I may venture to 
 state that a William Jerdan first saw the light at Kelso, where his father 
 had a small estate, on April 16, 1782. Some seventy years after this 
 event, in August, 185 1, a testimonial was set on foot, "as a public 
 acknowledgment of the literary labours of William Jerdan, animating 
 to many, and instructive to all, since the commencement of the Literary 
 Gazette, in 18 17, to the close of last year, and of the value of his services 
 to Literature, Science and the Fine and Useful Arts." On the Committee 
 for the promotion of this laudable object were men of the highest position 
 in literature,' art and politics, Brougham, Croly, Lockhart, Maclise, 
 Thackeray, Bulwer, Cruikshank, etc. 
 
 The editor of Byron's Don Juan, in his " Preface " to that immortal 
 poem, speaks of " William Jerdan, Esq., of Grove House, Brompton," as 
 " sure of being remembered hereafter for his gallant seizure of Bellingham 
 the assassin of Perceval, in the lobby of the House of Commons, on the 
 nth May, 1812 ; and the establishment of the first Weekly Jourtial of 
 C7'iticism and Belles Lettres in England." It would appear, however, 
 from a statement of the able bibliographer, " Olphar Hamst " (Mr. Ralph 
 Thomas), that Jerdan, so far from being founder of the magazine with 
 which his name is associated, did not assume the editorial conduct of the 
 serial till the twenty-sixth number, his first contribution having appeared 
 in the one previous. Among the other credentials of the critic to be remem- 
 bered by posterity may be mentioned his narrow escape of at least receiv- 
 ing a challenge to fight a duel with the noble author of the poem I have 
 mentioned. It appears that some remarks which he had made on 
 Byron's lines to Mrs. Charlemont 
 
 " Born in a garret, in a kitchen bred," etc., 
 
 having given offence, the irate bard entrusted a cartel of mortal defiance 
 to his friend, the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird, whom, later on, as one " well 
 versed in the duello or monomachie," he commissioned to challenge 
 Southey, who, wisely retaining the document in his possession till he 
 
 B 
 
2 '".I:' ', THE HACLIS E PORTRAIT- GAL iBR Y. 
 
 had, an .opportunity of appealing "from Philip drunk to Philip sober," 
 succeeded in, ciisuading the poet from his angry purpose. 
 
 ""A great cry," says iVIaginn, "was got up a few years ago by some 
 foolish Cockneys, who, having contrived to impose upon Jerdan a sonnet 
 of Shakespeare's as a modern composition continue to ring the changes 
 on this notable blunder ever since, as if there were any man in England 
 on whom the same trick could not have been played with every chance of 
 success. None but a puppy or a pedant will pretend that he knows all 
 Shakespeare's sonnets by heart, if no worse critical lapse than this be 
 committed by Jerdan, he may set his heart at ease, and drink his third 
 bottle in quietness." Of the incident referred to I have no recollection ; 
 but am, too, of opinion that to have been so deceived is no impeachment 
 on Jerdan's critical sagacity, or, indeed, on that of any one else. That 
 man may be safely written down an ass who assumes judicial infallibility 
 in literary or artistic discrimination. The most cautious, learned and 
 experienced judges are liable to error. Authors have forgotten their own 
 writings, and painters failed to recognize the work of their hands. Did 
 not Muretus deceive Scaliger by palming upon him some verses of his own 
 as the work of an ancient? * Did not Peter Burmann express doubts as 
 to the antiquity of Jortin's inscription, and Thomas Warton give it a place 
 in his Delectus ? Was not Sir Walter Scott as open to deception as his 
 own Monkbarns, though no one should have known the ring of a border 
 ballad better than he ? Were no acute critics, like Chalmers and Parr, 
 entrapped by Ireland ; and had not the monk, Rowley, as invented by 
 Chatterton 
 
 " The marvellous boy, that perish'd in his pride " 
 
 his believers by hundreds ? Are the " Letters of Phalaris " authentic ;. and 
 did not Simonides hoodwink the learned Dindorf at Leipzig ? Where is 
 there a more experienced judge of paintings than Dr. Waagen, and did 
 he not laud as most genuine specimens of the old masters, pictures painted 
 for the Earl of Normanton, in our own day, by " Mr. Josh R. Powell, of 
 Brompton " ? Where was the judgment of Sir Thomas Lawrence, when he 
 staked his reputation on the genuineness of the Coreggio " Christ in the 
 Garden," in the National Gallery, which now turns out to be a copy from 
 the original in the collection at Apsley House? Risum teneatis / one 
 might go on for ever with similar questions, out of the hundreds which 
 are suggested in the history of literature and art, and the answers to them 
 should lead to modesty in the assumption of infallible sagacity, and leniency 
 towards others who have fallen into error. 
 
 The spacious house at Brompton in which Jerdan long resided had 
 been built for Sir John Macpherson, the "gentle giant," as he was 
 called, him who succeeded Warren Hastings, and preceded Marquis 
 Cornwallis, as Governor- General of India, and thus figures in history as a 
 bad shilling between two good ones. Jerdan himself was, in figure, a big 
 hulking fellow ; he was hospitable, genial and good-natured ; and always 
 ready to lend a hand to struggling genius. Thus the late Mrs. S. C. Hall, 
 who long was a valued contributor to the Literary Gazette^ in writing to 
 its editor on a Christmas day, concluded her letter by reminding him, 
 
 *The deceived critic revenged himself by the following bitter distich: 
 ' ' Qui rigidse flammas evaserat, ante, Tolosae, 
 Muretus fumos vendidit ille mihi." 
 
WILLIAM JERDAN, 3 
 
 that when looking back upon all that they had lost, he must enjoy " much 
 real happiness from the knowledge that he had always fostered young 
 talent, given circulation to opinions calculated to promote the influences of 
 religion and morality, and never inflicted a careless wound on any living 
 thing."* (Appendix A.) 
 
 In those old days Jerdan was a power in the Republic of Letters. 
 Reputations were thought to depend upon his nod ; he could make, or 
 unmake, the fortune of a book ; and the young argonaut, adventuring forth 
 on the ocean of fame, looked anxiously for " a puff from the river Jordan " 
 (as an old caricature in Figaro had it), to waft his bark into the haven of 
 success. But, if the truth must be told, he held his sceptre with a feeble 
 grasp, and made but a poor use of the power which his position afforded 
 him. Thus he and his magazine, shortly after the appearance of this 
 portrait, went down, after a connection which had endured for thirty-four 
 years, before the higher pretensions of the Athenamm, when it came under 
 the able management of Charles Wentworth Dilke. 
 
 The life of William Jerdan may be said to have been wholly devoted 
 to journalistic literature. He was early on the staff of the Morning Post, 
 the Pilot, the British Press, the Satirist, or Monthly Meteor, the copy- 
 right of which he bought from its former editor and proprietor, George 
 Manners, and which is not to be confounded with the Satirist newspaper 
 of more recent date, and the Sun. He edited the Sheffield Mercury, a 
 Birmingham paper, and other provincial prints. He translated a Voyage 
 to the Isle of Elba from the French of Arsene de Berneaud (1814) ; and he 
 wrote the " Biographical Memoirs "for Fisher's National Portrait Gallery 
 of Illustrious a?id Emi?ient Personages of the Nineteenth Century. In 
 later days he was connected with the Leisure Hour, for which he wrote 
 at intervals during several years an interesting, if somewhat feeble, series 
 of sketches of eminent characters, which he subsequently republished 
 under the title of Men I have Known (London, 1866, 8vo, pp. 490). He 
 has moreover left us his Autobiography, with his Literary, Political, and 
 Social Remi?iiscences and Corresponde?ice (London, 1853, 4 vols. 8vo.), 
 from which may be gathered all those minute details of his social and 
 literary life which were to be expected from the "studium immane 
 loquendi " of protracted age. 
 
 In 1826, Jerdan became a member of the Royal Society of Anti- 
 quaries ; and it should not be forgotten that the Royal Society of Lite- 
 rature, founded in 1821, of which he was one of the earliest members, 
 owes its existence in great measure to his efforts. 
 
 In 1830, he helped to start and edit the Foreign Literary Gazette, 
 which, however, only lived through thirteen numbers. 
 
 Those who wish to learn more of the literary career of William Jerdan 
 must refer to his Men I have Known j his Autobiography j Men of the 
 Time, ed. 1856 ; and the obituary notice in the Gentleman's Magazine, 
 vol. xlvi. N.S., p. 441. 
 
 The little band of literary co-workers who seek or communicate 
 information in the pleasant pages of Notes and Queries may like to be 
 reminded that under the pseudonym of " Bushey Heath " was concealed 
 the familiar name of William Jerdan. 
 
 This veteran critic closed his long and honourable career July, 1869, 
 at the patriarchal age of 88. 
 
 * Autobiography of William Jerdan, vol. iv, chap. 17. 
 
4 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Over his grave, in the churchyard of Bushey, Hertfordshire, a tomb- 
 stone has been erected. Upon one side it bears the following inscription 
 in Roman capitals, "William Jerdan, F.S.A. ; born at Kelso, April 16, 
 1782, died at Bushey, July 17, 1869. Founder of the Literary Gazette, 
 and its Editor for 34 years ; " on the other side, " Erected as a tribute to 
 his memory by his Friends and Associates in the Society of Noviomagus, 
 1874." 
 
 Some twelve months later were borne to their last resting-place, at 
 Willesden, the remains of another editorial critic, whose career had been 
 concurrently prolonged with that of Jerdan. This was the well-known 
 Cyrus Redding, who, born at Penrhyn in 1785, died in June, 1870. He, 
 like Jerdan, had outlived his generation and himself, 
 
 " Oblitusque suorum, obliviscendus et illis " ; 
 
 and only two carriages followed him to the grave ! He used to relate 
 how above one thousand persons followed his father, a popular Non- 
 conformist divine, to the tomb. " There is a line to be drawn," as the 
 Athenaeum remarked, "between fuss and neglect." 
 
 II. THOMAS CAMPBELL. 
 
 " There's Tom Campbell in person, the poet of Hope, 
 Brimful of good liquor, as gay as the pope ; 
 His shirt collar's open, his wig is awry, 
 There's his stock on the ground, there's a cock in his eye. 
 Half gone his last tumbler clean gone his last joke, 
 And his pipe, like his college, is ending in smoke. 
 What he's saying who knows, but perhaps it may be 
 Something tender and soft of a bouncing ladye." 
 
 So for Maginn, who cites these rollicking verses as coming from " a 
 friend." At this point, says he, "the song becomes scurrilous and 
 abusive " ; he suppresses, therefore, " the culpable verses," to my own 
 huge regret, at least, I must confess, and proceeds to the conclusion, 
 " which is panegyrical " : 
 
 " Well, though you are yoked to a dull Magazine, 
 Tom, I cannot forget it, what once you have been ; 
 Though you wrote of Lord Byron an asinine letter ; 
 Though your dinners are bad, and your talk is no better ; 
 Yet the Song of the Baltic Lochiel's proud lay 
 The Seamen of England and Linden's red day 
 Must make up for the nonsense you write and you speak, 
 Did you talk it, and write in seven days in the week ! " 
 
 Our portrait is indeed, as Maginn terms it, " exquisite and taken at 
 the witching hour " ; but gives us the poet other than as Byron described 
 him, "dressed to sprucery, with a blue coat and new wig, and looking as 
 if Apollo had sent him a birthday suit or a wedding-garment." Still, the 
 slight and facile sketch opposite, is happier, in my judgment, than Maclise's 
 finished "three-quarter," where the poet holds his pencil-case like a syringe, 
 or even, I should say, to the fine likeness by Sir Thomas Lawrence 
 (now finally housed in our National Portrait Gallery), if I were not 
 

 THE JSJDJTOH Of TBUE KiEVr MOKTUTXY 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 5 
 
 reminded of John Burnet's charming engraving on small scale, and the 
 larger mezzotint by Cousins. Sir Thomas knew the poet intimately, and 
 drew him over and over again. There is the delicate portrait which he 
 made for the Cadell Gallery, where the engraver has done scant justice 
 to the original ; and there is another, I am reminded, on a smaller scale 
 from which the generous artist had a plate engraved at his own expence, 
 the impressions from which were all signed with his autograph, and sold 
 for the poet's benefit. 
 
 The lines which I have cited seem to leave little in the way of 
 criticism. Still, among the pieces which posterity will not willingly let 
 die, must be included that exquisitely perfect gem, "The Soldier's Dream ; " 
 the fine ode, recited by Mr. Young at the farewell dinner to J. P. Kemble, 
 in 1817 ; * the passionate and plaintive "O'Connor's Child"; the 
 " diamond of his casket of gems," as " Delta " Moir has it ; " Reullura " ; 
 " The Last Man," with its sublime, if faulty, conception (Charles Swain 
 has written a worthy pendant, " The First Man," and we must not forget 
 " The Last Man" of Thomas Hoodf) ; the touching story of " Gertrude," 
 with its Arcadian grace ; the Claude-like exordium of the " Pleasures of 
 Hope," which, with its many fine episodes, will float the poem down the 
 surface of the stream of Time. 
 
 Criticism, the ultimate judgment of the world is conversant with 
 merit in the abstract, and has no consideration for the accidents, thus 
 always injudicious to plead, as self excusatory, of age, sex, or worldly 
 position. But individuals and contemporaries may be permitted to 
 remember that the "Pleasures of Hope" appeared first in 1799, when 
 its author was only twenty-two years of age, and be led to consider it 
 accordingly, what it undoubtedly is, a very remarkable instance, in such 
 a case, of successful mastery over the form and spirit of poetical expression. 
 It is true that marks of juvenility are everywhere apparent ; that the 
 diction is often redundant, and sense not always commensurate with 
 sound. Still, it is a poem of sustained rhythmical march ; of sentiments 
 expressive of every note in the ,'gamut of feeling ; and of episodes, whether 
 from history, fiction or domestic life, full of beauty, force, pathos and 
 natural truth. In the words of Moir, "the heart is lapped in Elysium, 
 the rugged is softened down, and the repulsive hid from view ; Nature is 
 mantled in the enchanting hues of the poet's imagination, and life seems 
 but a tender tale set to music." Perhaps there is no didactic poem in our 
 language so well known and loved as this, if not as a whole, by its com- 
 ponent parts. There is hardly a doubt that it will continue to be so, in 
 spite of new " schools " of poetry, and poetical criticism ; and that it will 
 retain its place, as a classic, in our literature, nobly closing that bright era 
 of which Dryden and Pope heralded the morn, and which closed when 
 
 * This interesting event is commemorated in a volume entitled An Authentic 
 Narrative of Mr. Kemble s Retirement from the Stage, including Farewell Address, 
 Criticism, Poems, etc., with an Account of the Dinner given at the Freemason s Tavern. 
 June 27, 1817, etc. (London, 1817, 8vo.) What a banquet ! Lord Holland occupied 
 the chair, and proposed the health of the actor, who himself returned thanks ; Fawcett 
 replied for the English Performers of Covent Garden, and Talma for the French Stage ; 
 Benjamin West responded for the Royal Academy ; Horace Twiss for Mrs. Siddons ; 
 John Flaxman for himself as the designer of the Vase ; while Matthews and Incledon 
 charmed the guests with their vocal efforts. 
 
 f ' ' The Last Man by Campbell, Hood, and Byron," Blackwood's Magazine, vol. xxi. 
 P. 54- 
 
6 THE MACL1SE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 the star of Wordsworth's genius appeared above the political horizon, to 
 announce a new dayspring of poetry and beauty. 
 
 There is a translation into French by Albert Montemont, Paris, 1824. 
 
 This is not the place for an elaborate criticism of the Spenserian 
 " Gertrude of Wyoming," exquisitely beautiful and pathetic as much of it 
 is ; of " Theodric," which is pure, if wanting in force and spirit ; or of the 
 " Massacre of Glencoe." Neither does the prose of Campbell, most of 
 which was task- work, demand much notice ; as the production of such a 
 poet, it could hardly be otherwise than tasteful and felicitous, though it is 
 too often florid and affected. Little of it is now remembered ; and the 
 greater part, the Life of Mrs. Siddons for instance, which is perfect rubbish, 
 full of errors, and probably the work of some vicarious drudge, is not worth 
 remembrance. Here, however, exception must be made to his brilliant 
 and judicious criticisms on English poetry and poets, for a portable 
 annotated edition of which, without the Specimens, we are indebted to the 
 late and lost Peter Cunningham. 
 
 It is one of the crimes of Horace Walpole that he said, with reference 
 to Chatterton, that " singing birds should not be too well fed." Be this 
 as it may, few poets have been more liberally remunerated than Campbell. 
 From first to last, he appears to have received nearly ^1000 for the 
 * Pleasures of Hope," making about fifteen shillings a line ; than which 
 Byron himself got no more, receiving ^2500 for " Manfred," the " Prisoner 
 of Chillon," and the third canto of" Childe Harold." 
 
 Campbell was slow and fastidious in composition ; we smell the lamp, 
 and hear the limce labor, yet his local colour and incident are often 
 faulty. Thus he places tigers on the banks of Lake Erie, hyaenas in 
 South America, and associates the "village curfew," as it still may be 
 heard at Bodmin and Penrith in our own " land of the grey old past," 
 with the haunts of the red Indian. 
 
 Perhaps he has written nothing truly finer, or more Horatian, than 
 " Hohenlinden," of which Father Prout has left us such a capital version ; 
 yet this exquisite lyric was rejected as a contribution to the Greenock 
 Advertiser, with the intimation that it did not " come up to the editor's 
 standard," and that poetry was evidently not the forte of the contributor ! * 
 We must not, however, forget, as we criticize the critic, that Campbell 
 himself would never admit the merit of the piece. We learn the fact 
 from Cyrus Redding, who edited his poetical works, and who adds, of 
 such little worth is an author's judgment as to the comparative merit 
 of his own productions, that the poet positively forbade the " Dirge of 
 Wallace," one of the finest of his minor pieces, to be included in the 
 collection, (ii. 354.) 
 
 Campbell was a great lover of the " weed," and here we have him 
 enjoying the 
 
 " Innocuos calices et amicam vatibus herbam," 
 as old Raphael Thorius has it, after the editorial worries and labours of 
 the day. Beattie, his biographer, describes his lumbered room, " tobacco 
 pipes mingled with the literary wares," etc. He was, indeed, like Tom 
 Warton and Vinny Bourne, careless in his manners, and unobservant of 
 the superstitions of the table. Lady Morgan relates that when dining 
 with Lord Aberdeen, Manners Sutton, and the Duchess of Gordon, the 
 * Notes and Queries, Dec. 13, 1862, p. 475. 
 
iPt 
 
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. 7 
 
 bard horribile dielu, put his knife in the salt-cellar to help himself to 
 the condiment ! 
 
 Shortly before his death, he read that grand piece, the " Thanatopsis " 
 of Bryant, at the opening of the Exhibition in Suffolk Place, and fairly 
 broke down with emotion when he came to the lines, 
 " So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
 
 The innumerable caravan that moves 
 
 To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take 
 
 His chamber in the silent halls of Death, 
 
 Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night, 
 
 Scourged to his dungeon, etc.," 
 
 saying that " nothing finer had ever been written." He was born July 
 27, 1777, and died at Boulogne, June 15, 1844, aged 67. He lies in West- 
 minster Abbey, next to Southey's monument, where is an admirable 
 statue of the poet by W. Calder Marshall, R.A., of which there is an 
 engraving by W. H. Mote. 
 
 His Life and Letters, by William Beattie, M.D., one of his executors, 
 was published by Moxon, the "poet's publisher," in 3 vols. 8vo, 1849;* 
 there are also the " Memoirs " of the poet by his old friend and literary 
 subordinate in the conduct of the New Monthly Magazine, Cyrus 
 Redding, i860, 2 vols., 8vo. ; and two papers entitled "Mornings with 
 Thomas Campbell," in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, Feb. 8 and 15, 
 
 1845. 
 
 Campbell enjoyed a pension of ^184 per annum, given to him by the 
 Government as far back as 1 806. 
 
 III. JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. 
 
 As we have just had Campbell, the poet, inhaling solace through the 
 somewhat plebeian conduit of a " Broseley," so do we now find Lockhart, 
 the critic, making use of that later and more elegant device by which 
 mediate fumigation is rendered needless, and the convoluted leaf, as 
 Ebenezer Cullchickweed happily has it, is made to serve as its own 
 pipe.f Each plan has its own advantages and its advocates, and is good 
 in its way ; the whole thing is a matter of taste, or pocket, and if Maginn, 
 in his "desultory and autoschediastic, off-hand, and extemporaneous 
 article," declined the controversy for fear of the " acrimony " that might 
 arise, it seems well that a like discretion should be exercised here. 
 
 Lockhart was born in the manse or parsonage house of Cambusnethan, 
 on the 14th of July, 1794. After a preliminary education at the High 
 School, he became, at the age of twelve, a matriculated member of the 
 College and University of Glasgow. Three years later he was entered a 
 commoner at Balliol College, Oxford ; where, going up into the school in 
 the Easter term of 18 13, he came out in the first class in Uteris humanioribus, 
 although " with unparalleled audacity he devoted part of his time to cari- 
 
 * An article on Beattie s Life will be found in the Quarterly Review, vol. lxxxv. 
 pp. 37-4o. 
 
 f Every Night Book ; or, Life after Dark. By the author of The Cigar. London, 
 1827, 8vo, p. 91. 
 
8 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 caturing the examining masters." On this occasion, it is interesting to 
 record, the name which stood next to his own in the alphabetical arrange- 
 ment of the first class, was also destined to become celebrated. This was 
 that of Henry Hart Milman, later on Dean of St. Paul's, the well-known 
 poet and dramatist, and his life-long friend. 
 
 When Lockhart quitted Oxford, fellowships were not then, even in 
 Balliol,open to competition, he turned his attention to the study of Scottish 
 law. But, having long been a proficient in the German language, he was 
 extremely desirous, before taking up his necessary residence in Edinburgh, 
 of visiting Germany, and making the personal acquaintance of Goethe, 
 and others of that band of poets and scholars who, in a single generation, 
 had raised their language from barbarism, and gained for the literature of 
 their country the high rank which it holds among the nations of Europe. 
 The means for accomplishing this object were afforded to the young 
 aspirant by Blackwood. That sagacious publisher, to whom Lockhart's 
 first literary essay if I mistake not, an article on " Heraldry," in the 
 Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, was not unknown, accepted without hesitation 
 a proposal from him to translate into English, the Lectures of Frederick 
 Schlegel on the Study of History, and generously handed to him the 
 price of the copyright before a line was written. The visit to Germany 
 then took place, and Lockhart saw and conversed with Goethe at 
 Weimar. 
 
 In 1816, he was called to the Scottish bar, or rather, became an 
 advocate ; but briefs were few and far between. Then came the estab- 
 lishment, in April, 18 17, of Blackwood s Magazine; for which no one, 
 with the exception, perhaps, of Professor Wilson, wrote more frequently, 
 or on a greater variety of subjects. In 181 8, he made the acquaintance 
 of Sir Walter Scott ; visited Abbotsford ; and on April 29, 1820, married 
 the great novelist's eldest daughter, Sophia, more Scotico, in the evening, 
 and in the drawing-room at Abbotsford. 
 
 Besides his contributions to Blackwood, Lockhart at this period got 
 through a large amount of literary work. Scott had declined the respon- 
 sibility of furnishing the historical portion of the Edinburgh Annual 
 Register; and his son-in-law accepted the engagement. Then came 
 Peter's Letters to his Ki?isfolk (1819, 3 vols., 8vo), a satirical work, pos- 
 sibly suggested by the Scotch chapters in the Humphrey Clinker of 
 Smollett, in which, after the fashion of the Citizen of the World of Gold- 
 smith, the Lettres Persanes of Montesquieu, and the more recent 
 Espriellds Letters of Southey, a foreigner is supposed to record the 
 impressions made upon him by what he saw and heard during a brief 
 sojourn in a land which was new to him. The supposed writer was one 
 Dr. Morris, a Welsh physician ; and some folks in these epistles of the 
 imaginary traveller saw nothing but a cento of libels. Lockhart, himself, 
 admits that "nobody but a very young and thoughtless person would 
 have dreamed of putting forth such a book"; but Sir Walter judged 
 more leniently of it, and spoke of the " Doctor's" character for "force of 
 expression, both serious and comic, and acuteness of observation," and 
 regretted that there was not such a book fifty, or even twenty-five years 
 ago. As a record of characters and events the work is indeed highly 
 valuable ; and it is much to be wished that some septuagenarian contem- 
 porary yet surviving would furnish us with an explanation of the personal 
 hints and allusions. Reading the "Letters" after an interval of sixty 
 
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. 9 
 
 years, it is difficult to see why the good people of Edinburgh should have 
 Seen so exasperated by the book and its author ; or why the Whig 
 magnates, Jeffrey at Craigcrook and his legal and literary guests, 
 should have felt so galled by the innocent quizzing of the pseudo-Morris. 
 But so it was ; and Lord Cockburn, himself, some thirty years later, felt 
 it necessary to assure his readers seriously that no such gymnastic 
 exercitations had ever taken place, as the leaping-match in the garden, 
 described and criticized by the Welshman with such awful verisimili- 
 tude ! If the reader has a copy, he will find "second edition" upon the 
 title-page; but it may save inquiry to state that the "first" has no 
 existence but in the suggestion of the author. It may be worth while 
 also to say that the portrait of " Peter Morris, M.D.," prefixed to the first 
 volume, is mentioned by Jackson and Chatto, in their admirable History 
 of Wood Engraving (2nd, and best ed. p. 633), as being one of the 
 earliest published specimens of the invention of Mr. Lizars, of Edinburgh, 
 for " metallic relief engraving." A review of Peter 's Letters will be found 
 in Blackwood s Magazine, vol. iv. pp. 612, 745 ; and vol. vi. p. 288. 
 
 Only a word on his novels, Valerius, a Roman Story, coldly and 
 sternly classical as a romance of Apuleius or Barclay ; Ada?n Blair, with 
 its burning passion and guilt, which startled the kirk like a bombshell ; 
 Reginald Ballon, light, easy and superficial, in which the author sought 
 to depict, with a difference, as " Tom Brown " has done for us in later 
 clays, undergraduate life at Oxford, as it was during the earlier period of 
 his own academical career ; and lastly, not the least remarkable, Matthew 
 Wald, forcibly portraying a character, which, though redeemed by some 
 better impulses, gradually sinks downward, by reason of its innate selfish- 
 ness, to degradation and madness. These stories are, one and all, 
 powerfully written ; they exhibit force of narrative, passages of surpassing 
 beauty and pathos, and elegance of style ; but they have failed to gain 
 for their writer an exalted or permanent place among the great masters 
 of fiction. 
 
 In the literary career of Lockhart, no circumstance is of greater 
 moment than his connection with the Quarterly Review. On the retire- 
 ment of William Gifford in 1826, it was proposed to Lockhart that he 
 should fill the vacant post. He accepted, and at once removed to 
 London. He proved an admirable editor ; maintaining the pleasantest 
 relations between himself and his contributors. As he himself says of 
 Jeffrey,* "he was excellent in beautifying the productions of his 'journey- 
 men ; ' " and as Gifford, his predecessor, had curtailed Southey, so did he 
 feel himself at liberty to permit Croker to interpolate Lord Mahon's 
 article on the French Revolution.! His conduct of the Quarterly 
 extended over the long period of twenty-eight years ; and his conscien- 
 tious and most punctual labours on its behalf necessarily absorbed a 
 large portion of his time and talents. But his seemed to be one of those 
 minds which obtain, or fancy they obtain, their needful relaxation in 
 change of labour ; and he found time for many articles in Blackwood, to 
 assist Wilson. He wrote for Constable's Miscellany, in 1828, the most 
 charming life of Burns which we yet possess ; he assumed the superin- 
 tendence of Murray 1 s Family Library, for which he wrote the opening 
 volume, a Life of Napoleon; and later on, came the Life of Sir Walter 
 Scott, the last and greatest of his separate works, one of the best 
 * Quarterly Review, vol. xci. p. 127. *f* Ibid., vol. cxvi. p. 467. 
 
io THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 biographies in our language, the last volume of which made its appear- 
 ance in 1838. 
 
 The constitution of Lockhart had never been robust, and as early as 
 1850, his health began to break. 
 
 "Over-worked, over-hurried, 
 Over-Croker'd, over-Murray'd," 
 
 as he himself has it,* in the spring of 1853, he felt compelled to resign 
 the management of the Quarterly; and acted on the advice of his friends 
 to try the effect of a winter in Italy. In the summer of the following 
 year he returned ; but he had within the seeds of dissolution. In the 
 succeeding autumn he was seized with paralysis, and died at Abbotsford, 
 in his sixtieth year, in the month of December, 1854, in a small room 
 adjoining that in which Sir Walter himself had breathed his last. He 
 was buried in Dryburgh Abbey, where a monument, erected at the cost 
 of some among the most intimate of his surviving friends, marks his 
 resting-place, at the feet of his illustrious father-in-law. 
 
 An article in the Review which he conducted so long and so well does 
 ample justice alike to his literary abilities and his moral character. In 
 regard to the former, the writer says : " His contributions to this journal 
 were upwards of one hundred in number, and devoted to a great variety 
 of subjects, such as only a versatile and powerful mind could have treated 
 with success. He could write on Greek literature, on the origin of the 
 Latin language on novels on any subject from poetry to dry-rot ; but 
 his biographical articles bear the palm. Many of them contain the 
 liveliest and truest sketches that exist of the characters to which they are 
 devoted," etc. As to the latter, the same hand writes : " We shall not 
 trust ourselves elaborately to paint the moral and intellectual character 
 of one over whom the heart yearns with the deepest and most affectionate 
 regret. The world neither knew Lockhart's real worth, nor appreciated 
 him to the full measure of what it did know. His failings, if so we must 
 call them, lay entirely within view ; his noble and generous qualities were 
 visible only to such as took the trouble to pierce the crust of reserve with 
 which, on common occasions, he was apt to surround himself. There 
 never lived a man more high-minded and truthful ; more willing to 
 make sacrifices for the benefit of others ; more faithful to old ties of 
 friendship and affection ; more ready to help even strangers in their 
 hour of need. Those who knew him best loved him best, a sure proof 
 that he was deserving of their love." f 
 
 Who wrote the admirable article on Lockhart in the Times, subse- 
 quently prefixed to the illustrated edition of the Spanish Ballads, 1856, 
 4to ? It was attributed at the time to his friend, Lord Robertson ; but 
 Sir G. C. Lewis, who, one would think, had good grounds for his state- 
 ment, ascribes it, in a letter to Sir Edmund Head, to Mr. Elwin (the 
 present editor of the Quarterly), Lady Eastlake, and Milman.J In this, 
 which Sir George says was "an e'loge, rather than a biography, or an 
 impartial character," the following passage occurs : 
 
 " It was characteristic of Lockhart's peculiar individuality, that, where- 
 ever he was at all known, whether by man or woman, by poet, man of 
 
 * Poems and Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, 1869, vol. i. p. 215. 
 f Quarterly Review, vol. cxvi. p. 480. 
 
 % Letters of the Right Hon. Sir George Cornewall Lewis , Bart., to various Friends. 
 London, 1870, 8vo, p. 289. 
 
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. n 
 
 business, or man of the world, he touched the hidden chord of romance 
 in all. No man less affected the poetical, the mysterious, or the senti- 
 mental ; no man less affected anything ; yet as he stole stiffly away from 
 the knot, which, if he had not enlivened, he had hushed, there was not 
 one who did not confess that a being had passed before them who had 
 stirred all the pulses of the imagination, and realized what is generally 
 only ideal in the portrait of a man. To this impression there is no doubt 
 that his personal appearance greatly contributed, though too entirely the 
 exponent of his mind to be considered as a separate cause. Endowed 
 with the very highest order of manly beauty, both of feature and expres- 
 sion, he retained the brilliancy of youth, and a stately strength of person, 
 comparatively unimpaired in ripened life ; and then, though sorrow and 
 sickness suddenly brought on a premature old age, which none could 
 witness unmoved, yet the beauty of the head and of the bearing so fai 
 gained in melancholy loftiness of expression what they lost in animation, 
 that the last phase, whether to the eye of painter or of anxious friend, 
 seemed always the finest." 
 
 When dining at Lansdowne House in 1837, Lady Chatterton enjoyed 
 a very pleasant conversation with Fonblanque (editor of the Examiner), 
 and Lockhart. Fonblanque made some cynical remark, and Lady 
 Chatterton notes : 
 
 " At that moment it struck me that he resembled nothing so much as 
 Retsch's engraving of Mephistopheles in Faust. This is never the case 
 with Lockhart, whose splendid dark eyes have always a kindly expres- 
 sion." * 
 
 Maginn, who had every cause to hold him in gratitudeand respect, alludes 
 to his " sempiternal cigar," which seems, indeed, to have been a part of 
 the man. Jamie Hogg gives us a capital picture of him as " a mischievous 
 Oxford puppy, for whom I was terrified ; dancing after the young ladies, 
 and drawing caricatures of every one who came in contact with him." 
 Lockhart, indeed, made capital fun out of the simple Shepherd, whom for 
 years he contrived to keep in a state of perfect mystification as to the 
 authorship of the " tremendous articles " in Blackwood. Says the latter : 
 " Being sure I could draw nothing out of either Wilson or Sym, I always 
 repaired to Lockhart to ask him, awaiting his reply with fixed eyes and a 
 beating heart. Then, with his cigar in his mouth, his one leg flung 
 carelessly over the other, and without the symptom of a smile on his 
 face, or one twinkle of mischief in his dark grey eye, he would father the 
 articles on his brother, Captain Lockhart, or Peter Robertson, or Sheriff 
 Cay, or James Wilson, or that queer, fat body, Dr. Scott ; and sometimes 
 on James, or John Ballantyne, and Sam. Anderson, and poor Baxter. 
 Then away I flew, with the wonderful news to my other associates ; and 
 if any remained incredulous, I swore the facts down through them ; so 
 that before I left Edinburgh, I was accredited the greatest liar in it, 
 except one." 
 
 If the article in the Times, to which I have alluded, be too laudatory, 
 as Sir George C. Lewis thinks, that in the Daily News should be read as 
 a corrective. Possibly, if the two were taken together, like bread and 
 cheese, as Gray tells us he read poetry and prose, a truthful portraiture 
 might be obtained. 
 
 On the whole, the career of Lockhart, though ultimately embittered 
 
 by those calamities which are inseparable from human destiny, was a 
 
 * Memoirs of Georgiana, Lady Chatterton. By Edward H. Dering, 1878, 8vo, p. 44. 
 
12 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 reasonably prosperous and happy one. Possessed of some private 
 means, he had never known the res angusta domi, which is almost 
 proverbially the lot of those, who, as he did, forsake the liberal-handed 
 Themis for that occupation which, as Sir Walter Scott said, might serve 
 as a stick, but should never be relied on as a crutch. Literature was to 
 Lockhart not unremunerative, and his editorship produced him a regular 
 and liberal income. He also, as a reward for his long and efficient co- 
 operation with the Conservative party, in very trying times, enjoyed the 
 office of auditor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the emoluments of which 
 amounted to some ,400 per annum, and to which he had been appointed 
 in 1843 by his personal friend, Lord Granville Somerset, the Chancellor 
 of the Duchy. 
 
 In the interests of bibliography I must note a comparatively unknown 
 and privately printed volume : Ballads : Songs of the Edinburgh Yeo- 
 manry Squadron from 1820 to 1823. Edinburgh, small 8vo, 1825. 
 
 These pieces were written by J. G. Lockhart and P. F. Tytler, as is 
 known to literary amateurs in the northern capital ; but a few copies only 
 being printed for the amusement of private friends, it is not to be 
 wondered at that the slender volume has escaped the biographers of the 
 respective authors. 
 
 Again I read : 
 
 "In the year 1844, Mr. Gibson Lockhart was commanded to write 
 ' An account of the Royal Chapel in the Savoy.' His short pamphlet was 
 printed at the cost of Her most Gracious Majesty the Queen, and was 
 destined only for private circulation." * 
 
 More than a passing word should be said of Lockhart as a poet. His 
 sympathy for the chivalrous character of the Spanish nation, and its 
 patriotic resistance to the encroaching power of the first Napoleon, led 
 him early to the study of its language and literature, of which he never 
 ceased to be a passionate admirer. His spirited translations from the 
 ancient Spanish minstrelsy, preserved in the different Cancioneros and 
 Romanceros of the sixteenth century, were among his earliest contributions 
 to Blackwood. These were first published in substantive form, in 1823, 
 4to ; and have since passed through many editions. Many fine scattered 
 pieces of Lockhart occur to the mind, such as "Captain Paton's Lament," 
 " Napoleon "and others ; and I cannot refrain from citing as a specimen 
 the following exquisitely pathetic fragment, for the publication of which in 
 the Scotsman newspaper (1863), the public is indebted to his old and 
 esteemed friend the Honourable Mrs. Norton : 
 
 "When youthful hope has fled, 
 Of loving take thy leave ; 
 Be constant to the dead 
 The dead cannot deceive. 
 
 " Sweet modest flowers of spring, 
 How fleet your balmy dayi 
 And man's brief year can bring 
 No secondary May 
 
 " No earthly burst again 
 Of gladness out of gloom 
 Fond hope and vision vain, 
 Ungrateful to the tomb. 
 
 * Memorials of the Savoy : the Palace, the Hospital, the Chapel. By the Rev. 
 W. T. Loftie, B.A. ; F.S.A. London, Macmillan, 1878, post 8vo. 
 
v ; ,; >' 
 
 TIHIE AHJTMOE OIF 1TJHL1E ff'JL E A U RE S OF MEMORY 
 
SAMUEL ROGERS. t 3 
 
 " But 'tis an old belief, 
 
 That on some solemn shore, 
 Beyond the sphere of grief, 
 Dear friends shall meet once more 
 
 " Beyond the sphere of time, 
 And sin and fate's control, 
 Serene in endless prime 
 Of body and of soul. 
 
 11 That creed I fain would keep, 
 That hope I'll not forego ; 
 Eternal be the sleep, 
 Unless to waken so." 
 
 The original sketch of the portrait before us, which a writer in the 
 Hour newspaper (Nov. 12, 1873) considers, from personal remembrance, 
 " the very best in the whole series," is in the hands of Mr. John Murray, 
 of Albemarle Street. 
 
 IV. SAMUEL ROGERS. 
 
 "De mortuis nil nisi bonum ! " ejaculates Fraser. " There is Sam Rogers, 
 a mortal likeness painted to the very death ! " 
 
 Yes, here we have the " Bard of Memory," lean as if he had been fed 
 on bank-notes, and drunk ink : sallow as if he had breathed no air that 
 was not imbued with the taint of gold, a caput mortuum; yet another 
 quarter of a century was even yet to pass away before 
 
 " The weary wheels of life at length stood still : " 
 and Samuel Rogers, so long a symbol of death in life, exchanged, we 
 would trust, for life in death, his fabled wealth, and his Tusculum of St. 
 James's Place, with its pictures, its busts, its gems, its coins, and its books. 
 
 Innumerable were the jokes on, the tele morteoi Rogers. Ward, after- 
 wards Lord Dudley, asked him how it was, since he was so well off, he 
 did not set up his hearse ; Mackintosh wondered why, when at an election 
 time he could not find accommodation at any hotel in a country town, he 
 did not seek a snug lie down in the churchyard ; a French valet, mistaking 
 him for Tom Moore, threw the company into consternation by announcing 
 him as " M. Le Mort" ; Scott advised him to try his fortune in medicine 
 in which he would be sure to succeed, if there was any truth in 
 physiognomy, on the strength of his having a perpetual/^zVi- Hiftpocratica ; 
 Hook, meeting him at Lord Byron's funeral, gave him the friendly caution 
 to keep out of the sight of the undertaker lest that functionary should 
 claim him as one of his old customers ; but the story which caps all is 
 that in the John Bull, to the effect that when Rogers one night hailed a 
 coach in St. Paul's churchyard, the jarvey cried " Ho, ho, my man ; I'm 
 not going to be had in that way : go back to your grave ! " * 
 
 * This is not a bad story certainly, of the ben trovato order, of course ; but it is 
 hardly a new one. Not improbably the versatile Theodore had been dipping into the 
 new edition of The Lives of the Norths by the Hon. Roger North (Lond. 1826, 8vo, 
 3 vols.), where he would have read : 
 
 1 ' The Turks have an opinion that men that are buried have a sort of life in their 
 graves. If any man makes affidavit before a judge that he heard a noise in a man's 
 
i 4 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Like one of olden times : 
 
 " Longa Tithonum minuit senectus" * 
 
 the longer he lived the more attenuated he became ; the Voltaire of 
 England, resembling in excessive leanness, cadaveric livor, retention of 
 faculties in extreme senility, and imputed malignity of wit, that great 
 writer, to whose strictures upon Milton's personifications, Young replied 
 by the well-known distich : 
 
 " Thou art so witty, profligate and thin, 
 At once we see the Devil, Death and Sin," 
 
 which reminds me somehow of the bitter couplet attributed to Tom 
 Moore : 
 
 "With equal good nature, good grace, and good looks, 
 As the Devil gave apples, Sam Rogers gives books ; " 
 
 and whose " portrait," as drawn by a contemporary hand, might serve 
 indifferently for either poet : 
 
 " Spectre vivant, squelette decharne', 
 Qui n'a rien vu que ta seule figure, 
 Croirait d'abord avoir vu d'un damne* 
 L'^pouvantable et hideuse peinture " 
 
 A strangely favoured lot was that of Samuel Rogers. Born at Stoke 
 Newington, July 30, 1763, of opulent parents, he enjoyed for nearly a 
 century, ample leisure and means to indulge his favourite tastes and pur- 
 suits. He was the connecting link between the age of Johnson, Goldsmith, 
 Reynolds, and our own. He was eating his eighth birthday pudding 
 on the day- that Gray, the poet, died. In the same year that the Ayrshire 
 ploughman canvassed the weavers of Kilmarnock for subscriptions to that 
 volume of Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect^ which will only perish 
 with the language in which they are written, the London banker took his 
 first verses to Cadell, with a cheque to pay the probable expenses. He 
 had seen, as he related to Mitford, John Wesley lying in state, after death, 
 March 2, 1791, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. He had agitated the 
 " tintinnabulary appendage" at the door of Samuel Johnson, and been 
 blackballed at his club, though proposed by Fox and seconded by Wind- 
 ham ; wandered over St. Anne's Hill with Fox and Grattan ; dined with 
 Condorcet at Lafayette's in 1789 ; listened to the trial of Home Tooke ; 
 breakfasted with Robertson, heard Blair preach, taken coffee with the 
 Piozzis, and supped with Adam Smith, all in one day of that same eventful 
 year ; met Byron in Italy ; and had enjoyed the intimacy of a host of 
 celebrities, whose lives were but ephemeral episodes in his own. The 
 Nestor, rather, perhaps, the Tithonus, of our poets, his pleasurable 
 existence was prolonged to his ninety-fourth year, a length of career only 
 approached, so far as memory serves me, by the poet, Waller, who, coming 
 into existence only two years after the death of Queen Elizabeth, missed 
 but by a few months witnessing the accession of William and Mary. He 
 retained his faculties nearly to the last, thus forming a striking exception 
 
 grave, he is, by order, dug up, and chopped all to pieces. Two merchants once, airing 
 on horseback, had (as usual for protection) a janizary with them. Passing by the 
 burying-place of the Jews, it happened that an old Jew sat by a sepulchre. The 
 janizary rode up to him, and rated him for stinking the world a second time, and com- 
 manded him to get into his grave again." 
 * Horat. Od. ii. 16, vol. iii. p. 57. 
 
SAMUEL ROGERS. 15 
 
 to the dictum of Swift, who demurred to the title of " a fine old man," 
 saying, " there is no such thing ; if his head and his heart had been good 
 for anything, they would have worn him out long ago." 
 
 As Rogers enjoyed the most refined society of his long day that of 
 the frequenters of his ever memorable breakfasts, so did he live surrounded 
 with the choicest memorials of past and present literature and art. His 
 walls were hung with rare specimens of the older masters, and the brighter 
 aquarelles of Turner and Stothard. The mantel-piece in his drawing-room 
 was designed by Flaxman ; in his library were stored the MSS. of Gray, in 
 their exquisite caligraphy, and the celebrated agreement between Milton 
 and Samuel Simmons, the publisher (April 27, 1667), for the copyright of 
 Paradise Lost; there was Roubiliac's clay model for a bust of Pope, by 
 whose side his father had stood when the artist was modelling the drapery ; 
 there was a sketch by Raphael for which the Marquis of Westminster had 
 offered him enough land to build a villa on ; and there was a piece of 
 amber enclosing a fly, which as Sydney Smith hinted, might have buzzed 
 in the ear of Adam. As Byron wrote in his diary ; " if you enter his 
 house his drawing-room his library you, of yourself, say this is not 
 the dwelling of a common mind. There is not a gem, a coin, a book 
 thrown aside on his chimney-piece, his sofa, his table, that does not bespeak 
 an almost fastidious elegance in the possessor." 
 
 Rogers made a good use of his wealth, which has, however, been over- 
 stated. It probably was never much above ^5000 a year, of which he 
 spent a fourth part in charity. It was to him that Sheridan addressed the 
 last letter he ever wrote, begging for assistance, to prevent the very bed 
 on which he was dying from being torn from under him by the bailiffs ; 
 and the answer was a cheque for ^150, not the first, by the way, in the 
 same direction. It was he who helped Moore in his Bermudan difficulties ; 
 and lent Campbell 500 to enable him to purchase a share in the Metropo- 
 litan; and it was under his patronage that Moxon commenced business 
 as a publisher, as, under the auspices of Pope, Dodsley had started in 
 business-life a century before. 
 
 As a proser, take the word in any sense, Rogers commenced his 
 literary career, as Dr. Johnson had done before him, when he was still in 
 his teens (1781), by contributing a series of essays, eight in number, 
 entitled the " Scribbler," to the Gentlemarts Magazine. He was not, how- 
 ever, an admirer or imitator of the lexicographer's " turgid style " ; and 
 his prose notes, or episodical and illustrative narratives appended to 
 Italy and Poems, which he continued to polish and augment as long 
 as his faculties lasted, have been said on high authority to constitute the 
 choicest collection of anecdotes and quotations, and some of the most 
 exquisite pieces of prose compositions in the language. Of these, indeed, 
 Mackintosh used to cite the short essay on " National Prejudices" in Italy 
 as absolutely perfect, both in thought and style. 
 
 The epoch of his advent as a poet was favourable to his fame ; a small 
 taper is conspicuous in a dark room. Gray, Goldsmith, Akenside and 
 Churchill were dead. Burns had not appeared ; Cowper and Crabbe 
 were but yet little known ; the audience of Darwin was fit but few ; 
 Dr. Walcott ("Peter Pindar") held the day with his coarse and vigorous 
 satires ; and Hayley was lord of the ascendant in his vapid and polished 
 mediocrity. The rest of the field was occupied by poets of the softer sex, 
 Hannah More, Anna Seward, Lucy Aikin, and Helen Maria Williams. 
 
16 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 The "Ode to Superstition " appeared in 1786; then the "Pleasures of 
 Memory," * its every line redolent of Goldsmith in structure and 
 diction, tender, classical and refined, it is true, but with little of the 
 divine afflatus of original genius, inferior in power to the " Pleasures of 
 the Imagination" of Akenside, which preceded it, and in episodic beauty 
 to the "Pleasures of Hope" of Campbell, which it suggested. The 
 Italy, ascribed to Southey on its first anonymous appearance, 
 gemmed with charming descriptions of Ausonian life and scenery, and 
 exquisite graces of style and language ; " Human Life," warm in colour, 
 deep in feeling, tender in conception ; and " Columbus," a fragmentary 
 epic, which obscure, inelegant in machinery, wanting in ease and spon- 
 taneity, and harsh in transition, hardly perhaps merited the severe 
 castigation which it received in the Quarterly Review at the hands of 
 Lord Dudley, the corrosive sublimate of whose bitter article the retaliative 
 poet sought to neutralize by an epigram, which in its manifestation of the 
 true Greek talent of expressing by implication what it wishes to convey, 
 may be pronounced one of the best in the English language : 
 
 " Ward has no heart, they say ; but I deny it, 
 He has a heart, he gets his speeches by it ! " 
 
 When the estro of composition was over, the muse of Rogers was 
 hard-bound, gave birth but seldom, and was long in travail the poet sat 
 down to perfect the material form of his darling offspring. Stothard, 
 with his tender and graceful pencil, our English Raphael, and Turner, 
 the northern Claude, with his rainbow-tinted palette, were summoned to 
 collaborate. The production of the two volumes, Poems, and Italy, 
 published by Moxon, 1830-4, is said to have cost their author between 
 ^10,000 and ,12,000; and as they have never been excelled in beauty 
 and taste by any books anywhere or any when, and as, moreover, the 
 art of the painter and the poet is so happily married as to be indivisible, 
 it is possible that there may be some applicability in the wicked parody 
 of Pope's distich : 
 
 " See where the pictures for the page atone, 
 And Sam is saved by beauties not his own," 
 
 or the wickeder couplet : 
 
 " Of Rogers's Italy Luttrell relates 
 That 'twould have been dished, were it not for the plates !" 
 
 However this may be, there is little doubt that the marvellous 
 engravings from Turner's exquisite drawings, and Stothard's pure and 
 graceful designs have done much to perpetuate the poems which they 
 so happily illustrate. The successive issues are numerous between 1830 
 and 1859 > but it is of course the early copies of the first edition, identi- 
 fied by the head and tail-pieces to the Poem on a Tomb being worked 
 off in wrong positions, which are most highly prized by the cog7iosce?iti. 
 Any, however, are better than none ; Ruskin enjoins the student of draw- 
 ing to " possess himself first of the illustrated edition." f 
 
 For the drawings, Turner was to have received ^50 apiece ; but as it 
 
 * Translated into German by A. G. Braschius (Leipsic, 1836, 8vo.) ; and into 
 French by Albert Montemont (Paris, 1825, 8vo). There is also, as a literary offspring, 
 The Pains of Memory, a Poem, in Two Books. By Peregrine Bingham (London, 181 1, 
 i2mo), of which there is a second edition with vignettes. 
 
 f Elements of Drawing, by John Ruskin, page 91. 
 
SAMUEL ROGERS. 
 
 17 
 
 was represented to him that the poet had miscalculated the probable 
 returns, he consented, it is said, to take them back, and charge $ each 
 for their use.* They are now, with the exception of the second vignette 
 the " Hospice of St. Bernard," in the National Gallery. The engravers 
 received sixty guineas a plate. 
 
 One of the most interesting episodes in the life of Rogers was his 
 intimacy with Byron. This took place, through the introduction of 
 Moore, in Nov. 181 1. Byron in his satire of 1809 had called the poet 
 " melodious Rogers," and classed the " Pleasures of Memory " with the 
 " Essay on Man," and the " Pleasures of Hope,'' as the most beautiful 
 didactic poems in the language. In 18 13, Byron dedicated to him his 
 poem, " The Giaour," " as a slight but most sincere token of admiration 
 for his genius, respect for his character, and gratitude for his friendship ; " 
 and wrote on a blank leaf of the " Pleasures of Memory," the charming 
 lines : 
 
 " Absent or present, still to thee, 
 
 My friend, what magic spells belong I 
 As all can tell, who share like me, 
 In turn thy converse or thy song. 
 
 " But when the dreaded hour shall come, 
 By friendship ever deem'd too nigh, 
 And ' Memory ' o'er her Druid's tomb 
 Shall weep that aught of thee can die ; 
 
 '* How fondly will she then repay 
 Thy homage offered at her shrine, 
 And blend, while ages roll away, 
 Her name immortally with thine." 
 
 After this, the poets met by appointment at Bologna, in the autumn of 
 1821 ; visited the Florence Gallery together ; and parted, never to meet 
 again in this world. Rogers had found Byron had grown grey-headed in 
 the five years that had passed since they had met before, though only in 
 his thirty-third year ; and saw little to 
 
 -recall the youth that swam 
 
 From Sestos to Abydos. 
 
 The poets sat " far, far into the night conversing ; " and the elder bard 
 has left a charming account of the interview, as one of the episodes in his 
 Italy (p. 97). 
 
 It is sad to know that such a friendship, so begun, and between two 
 such men, should be marred in its remembrance. How it came about 
 is not known. Whether Byron, as has been said, had received annoyance 
 by the minute and fastidious dilletanteism of Rogers, and his unseason- 
 able visits when in Italy ; or whether, as seems more probable, some one 
 of those sarcastic and personal remarks in which the latter was wont to 
 indulge at the expense of his most intimate associates had been conveyed 
 to the poetic pilgrim at Ravenna by one of the good-natured friends 
 who are ever ready to charge themselves with such missions, it appears 
 that he (Byron) revenged himself by the composition of a satire, which 
 has been said to be " the greatest of modern satirical portraits in verse/' 
 and " not surpassed for cool malignity and happy imagery in the whole 
 
 * Edinburgh Review, No. ccxi. p. 99. It is elsewhere stated that Turner's remu- 
 neration for the drawings was from fifteen to twenty guineas apiece. 
 
 C 
 
18 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 compass of the English language." It was composed, it would appear, 
 at Venice before the final meeting of the poets at Bologna, but was never 
 published by its author. Its appearance was posthumous ; and as it 
 is not included in the " Poetical Works," and is but little known, it must 
 find a place here : 
 
 "QUESTION. 
 
 ' ' Nose and chin would shame a knocker, 
 Wrinkles that would puzzle Cocker ; 
 Mouth which marks the envious scorner, 
 With a scorpion in each corner, 
 Turning its quick tail to sting you' 
 In the place that most may wring you ; 
 Eyes of lead-like hue and gummy, 
 Carcass pick'd out from some mummy ; 
 Bowels (but they were forgotten 
 Save the liver, and that's rotten). 
 Skin all sallow, flesh all sodden, 
 Form the Devil would fright God in. 
 Is't a corpse stuck up for show, 
 Galvanized at times to go ? 
 With the Scripture in connexion, 
 New proof of the resurrection, 
 Vampire, ghost, or ghoul, what is it? 
 I would walk ten miles to miss it. 
 
 "ANSWER. 
 
 ' Many passengers arrest one, 
 To demand the same free question. 
 Shorter's my reply and franker 
 That's the Bard, the Beau, the Banker. 
 Yet if you could bring about, 
 Just to turn him inside out, 
 Satan's self would seem less sooty, 
 And his present aspect Beauty. 
 Mark that (as he masks the bilious 
 Air, so softly supercilious) 
 Chasten'd bow, and mock humility, 
 Almost sicken'd to servility ; 
 Hear his tone (which is to talking 
 That which creeping is to walking ; 
 Now on all-fours, now on tip-toe) ; 
 Plear the tales he lends his lip to : 
 Little hints of heavy scandals ; 
 Every friend in turn he handles ; 
 All which women, or which men do 
 Glides forth in an innuendo, 
 Clothed in odds and ends of humour 
 Herald of each paltry rumour, 
 From divorces down to dresses, 
 Women's frailty, men's excesses, 
 All which life presents of evil 
 Make for him a constant revel. 
 You're his foe, for that he fears you, 
 And in absence blasts and sears you. 
 You're his friend, for that he hates you ; 
 First caresses, and then baits you : 
 Darting on the opportunity 
 When to do it with impunity. 
 You are neither, then he'll flatter . 
 
SAMUEL ROGERS. V) 
 
 Till he finds some trait for satire ; 
 Hunts your weak point out, then shows it 
 When it injures to disclose it, 
 In the mode that's most invidious, 
 Adding every trait that's hideous, 
 From the bile, whose blackening river 
 Rushes through his Stygian liver. 
 Then he thinks himself a lover : 
 ' Why I really can't discover 
 In his mind, age, face, or figure : 
 Viper-broth might give him vigour : 
 Let him keep the cauldron steady, 
 He the venom has already. 
 For his faults, he has but one 
 'Tis but envy when all's done. 
 He but pays the pain he suffers, 
 Clipping, like a pair of snuffers, 
 Lights which ought to burn the brighter 
 For this temporary blighter. 
 He's the cancer of his species, 
 And will eat himself to pieces : 
 Plague personified and famine ; 
 Devil, whose sole delight is damning ! 
 
 " For his merits, would you know 'em ? 
 Once he wrote a pretty poem ! " 
 
 These bitter lines were written in 1818. They are said to have been 
 in Moore's hands ; but he suppressed them, probably because their 
 publication would have excluded him from Rogers's breakfasts ; and 
 they first appeared, with annotations/ "supplied by the great literary 
 characters who annotate the new edition of Lord Byron," in Eraser's 
 Magazine, No. xxxvii. p. 81. It is of these that Maginn elsewhere {Dub. 
 Univ. Mag., Jan., 1844, p. 86) says that they "are well worth five dozen 
 ' Parasinas ' and ' Prisoners of Chillon.' " The satire is indeed a literary 
 curiosity of the highest interest, exceeding in cool and concentrated 
 venom everything that has appeared since the days of Swift, except 
 perhaps Gifford's truculent Epistle to Peter Pindar. " I would give 
 a trifle," in no creditable spirit said Maginn, " to have seen Sam's face 
 the morning that satire was published." The victim, we are told, thought 
 of buying up all the copies of the magazine, but he was dissuaded by 
 a cooler friend, who convinced him of the futility of such a step. Crabb 
 Robinson called it in his "Diary," a vile lampoon, and tells on the 
 authority of W. S. Landor and Lady Blessington, of the heartless glee 
 with which Byron boasted that he made Rogers sit down on the very 
 cushion beneath which the doggrel catilinary was written, "never," said 
 he to Lady Blessington, " in the whole course of my existence did I feel 
 more exquisite satisfaction than when I saw the ugly creature sitting 
 upon my satire." * 
 
 Rogers took no ostensible revenge ; but we can fancy that a sad 
 feeling of desecrated friendship was in his heart when he penned in a 
 copy of " Byron " the following lines, which saw the light for the first 
 time in the Dublin University Magazine, for May, 1857 : 
 
 * MS. letter from Rev. Alexander Dyce to Sir Egerton Erydges ; the writer 
 gives the anecdote on the authority of the poet, Campbell, who had it from Lady 
 Blessington. 
 
2 o THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 " When I beheld thee, light and gay, 
 The idol of the passing day ; 
 The god of fools who never knew 
 The worth of him they cringed to ; 
 When I beheld thee, proud and young, 
 Despise the tribute due thy song ; 
 While thy high spirit kept away 
 Sages from converse, souls astray : 
 When nature show'd the bitter mind 
 Fraught with ill-will to all mankind ; 
 I wept that genius had been given 
 To one who thus could lead so far from heaven." 
 
 Maginn brings the easy accusation of " petty larceny " against the 
 poet. This charge is probably, in part at least, based upon the assertion 
 of Coleridge, in his first volume of verse, that Rogers stole the tale of 
 " Florio " from the Lochleven of Michael Bruce. Lamb wrote to 
 Coleridge, denouncing the charge as utterly unfounded ; and Coleridge, 
 in the second edition of his volume, took occasion to " expiate a sentence 
 of unfounded detraction by an unsolicited and self-originating apology." 
 Rogers was satisfied, and thus the matter ended. 
 
 The face of Rogers is said to have been pleasing, and even handsome, 
 in youth. The painting by Hoppner {cetat. 46), and the drawing by Sir 
 Thomas Lawrence, alike lend credence to the belief. Then there is the 
 oil-painting by the latter, " in middle life," of which a wood-cut is given 
 in the Illustrated London News, Dec. 20, 1855, side by side with one 
 from a photograph by Paine, representing the banker-poet at the age of 
 ninety-two. But the fact is there is no good likeness of him, for the 
 simple reason that he would not allow one to be taken. There is one 
 drawn on stone in 1838, by Mrs. Geale, a niece of Lady Morgan, which 
 would have been excellent if the artist had ventured to give her subject 
 his actual age. The portrait by Meyer, from a sketch by Baron Denon, 
 is not satisfactory. Dantan's bust is hardly a caricature, and for that 
 reason was held by Rogers in especial horror. The sketch of Maclise 
 before us is, perhaps, the best, and most faithful of all, though we can 
 understand how Goethe, in distant Weimar, as Thackeray wrote to 
 G. H. Lewes, looked upon it with a natural horror, as "a ghastly 
 caricature," exclaiming, as he shut up the book and put it away in anger : 
 " They would make me look like that ! " 
 
 If Rogers has not come down to us as a modern Joe Miller, it is not 
 the fault of Dr. Maginn and Theodore Hook. He had a knack of uttering 
 pointed epigrammatic sayings and smart repartees ; but, as the case of 
 Selwyn, Luttrell, Sheridan, Walpole, Jekyll, Rose and others not to 
 mention honest "Joe" himself, hundreds of jokes have been fathered 
 upon him, of whose paternity he was guiltless. In the early days of the 
 John Bull it was the fashion to lay every foundling witticism at the door 
 of Sam Rogers ; and thus the refined poet and man of letters became 
 known as a sorry jester, just as Virgil was held to have been a great 
 magician, in the dark ages ; the grave philologist Meursius is chiefly 
 known to the present generation as the author of one of the most obscene 
 books ever written, of which he is altogether innocent ; * Aristotle himself 
 enjoys, in the bucolic mind, at least, the reputation of a circumforaneous 
 quack ; and the learned George Buchanan, lumen Scotice, who whipped 
 * Joannis Meursii, Elegantice Latini Sermonis, i2mo (circa. 1750). 
 
SAMUEL ROGERS. 21 
 
 "Latin fundamentally into James. I., is only known to chap-book students 
 as " the King's Fool " ! Maginn gives a happy, if outrageously extrava- 
 gant, illustration of our poet's alleged reputation for humour, when he 
 says : " Joe Miller vails his bonnet to Sam Rogers ; in all the news- 
 papers, not only of the kingdom but its dependencies, Hindostan, 
 Canada, the West Indies, the Cape, from the tropics, nay, from the 
 Antipodes to the Orkneys, Sam is godfather-general to all the bad jokes 
 in existence. The Yankees have caught the fancy, and from New 
 Orleans to New York it is the same, Rogers is synonymous with a pun. 
 All British-born or descended people, yea the very negro and the 
 Hindoo father their calembourgs on Rogers. Quashee, or Ramee- 
 Samee, who knows nothing of Sir Isaac Newton, John Milton, or 
 Fraser's Magazine, grins from ear to ear at the name of the illustrious 
 banker, and with gratified voice exclaims, ' Him dam funny, dat Sam ! ' " 
 
 It was to Rogers that Moore dedicated his Lalla Rookh; Byron 
 inscribed his name at the summit of a literary pyramid of contemporary 
 poets, while he put Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey nearly at the 
 base. Leigh Hunt, on the other hand with better judgment, in his clever 
 Feast of the Poets, admits four only to dine with Apollo, Scott, Southey, 
 Campbell and Moore ; while Rogers is merely asked to tea. " You might 
 have given him supper," wrote Byron to Hunt, " if only a sandwich ; " 
 and Moore pointed out what he thought an injustice. 
 
 Dr. Beattie, his medical attendant, who was with him when he died, 
 wrote : " a more tranquil and placid transition I never beheld." Memory 
 had long deserted her chosen bard, and he fell into that state which 
 Juvenal depicts as sadder than all the other infirmities of age : 
 
 Membrorum damno major dementia, qua? nee 
 Nomina servorum, nee vultum agnoscit amici 
 Cum quo praeterita caenavit nocte, nee illos 
 Quos genuit.quos eduxit." 
 
 Still, almost to the very last, he remembered and would fondly repeat 
 some beautiful lines by Charles Mackay, worth, he was wont to say, all 
 the fine writing the world ever produced, and which, published in a 
 juvenile volume of poems, and presented to Rogers, had gained for their 
 writer his acquaintance and friendship : 
 
 " When my soul flies to the first great Giver, 
 Friends of the Bard, let my dwelling be, 
 By the green bank of that rippling river, 
 Under the shade of that tall beech tree 
 Bury me there, ye lovers of song, 
 When the prayers for the dead are spoken, 
 With my hands on my breast, 
 Like a child at rest, 
 And my lyre in the grave unbroken." 
 
 Among the most constant guests at the memorable breakfasts of 
 Rogers was the Rev. Alexander Dyce. This gentleman who himself 
 died May, 1869, had been in the habit, from his first introduction tothe 
 poet, and with his knowledge and sanction, of recording the various 
 sayings and anecdotes with which the conversation of his host abounded. 
 These, or rather a selection from them, he subsequently published under 
 the title of Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers (Moxon, 
 1856, 8vo), a volume which received an unfavourable notice in the 
 
22 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Edinburgh Review ', No. ccxi., p. 73. Another little volume, with a 
 biographical preface, is entitled Recollections of Sa?nuel Rogers (Long- 
 mans, 1859, small 8vo). The editor'of this was William Sharp, a nephew 
 of the poet, one of whose brothers, Samuel Sharp, is author of a privately 
 printed memoir, Some Particulars of the Life of Samuel Rogers (1859, 8vo, 
 pp. lxiv. 
 
 V. THOMAS MOORE. 
 
 As we look upon the figure opposite, in a bower of vines and roses, and 
 with the head of Anacreon above his own as if to remind us that he is 
 below the bard of Teos, we need to be reminded, as Maginn hints, that in 
 " that little wizened, cunning, crabbed countenance, which is not much 
 better than a caricature of a John-apple of ancient date," we are 
 looking upon "the Epicurean in person the Thomas Little, the 'kissing 
 and kissed ' of Rosa the mail-coach companion of ' Fanny of Timmol/ 
 the poet of all the loves, and all the grapes " ! 
 
 " What a lucky fellow you are," said Rogers to Moore ; " surely you 
 must have been born with a rose on your lips, and a nightingale singing 
 on the top of your bed ! " And yet the "Bard of the Butterflies " certainly 
 does not look happy in his Anacreontic retreat ; perhaps he is brooding 
 over the Regent's threat to " put him into a wine-cooler ; " or haply has 
 Maclise thought appropriate that " expression of hostility to the Church 
 establishment," which Sydney Smith once advised a sculptor to throw 
 into the poet's countenance. 
 
 But to descend to facts. Thomas Moore was born May 28, 1779, in 
 Dublin, where his father was a tradesman, respectable, but of the humbler 
 sort. " Tommy dearly loves a Lord," was Byron's memorable saying of 
 his little friend ; and remembering this amiable weakness, one cannot but 
 think with amusement of the painful distress of the poet, when, on his 
 introduction in long after-life to Jamie Hogg, in a brilliant assemblage of 
 wit and fashion, the simple Shepherd made crude allusion to his lowly 
 origin, in the words, " You and me maun be freends, Maister Moore, for 
 we're baith leerie pauets, and baith sprung frae the dregs of the people ! " 
 He received his earlier education under the care of the well-known 
 Samuel Whyte, of Grafton Street, who will be remembered alike by his own 
 literary productions, and as the early tutor of Sheridan. At the age of 
 fourteen, he became a student of Trinity College, Dublin, when, inter alia, 
 he gained the medal of the Historical Society for a poetical extravaganza 
 entitled "An Ode upon Nothing, with Notes by Trismagistus Rusti- 
 fustius " ; and in 1799, choosing the law as a profession, he proceeded to 
 London to enter at the Middle Temple, with a " little packet of guineas," 
 as a viaticum, and a scapular blessed by the priest as a charm against 
 evil, sewed up by his careful mother in the waistband of his pantaloons. 
 As the classical studies of Lockhart produced that direction of thought to 
 which we owe Valerius, so it is to the college life of Moore that we are 
 indebted for the first fruits of his genius, the translation of Anacreon. 
 This had a considerable success. So long as youth, and beauty, and 
 
TJIE AUTHdMR <0>F "JLAJIJL.A ffiOOIl" 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 23 
 
 love, and mirth, exert their soft influence to gladden the life of man, even 
 so long will the Teian bard, who was even then an ancient when Horace 
 wrote 
 
 " Nee si quid olim lusit Anacreon 
 Delevit aetas " 
 
 be immortal on the earth ; and thus the version of Moore, which though 
 possibly deficient in scholarship, was yet found sufficiently symphonious 
 with the old Greek spirit of the original to be pretty generally read and 
 admired.* His patron, Lord Moira, had made him known to the Prince 
 Regent, and induced that much-maligned man to subscribe to the book, 
 and accept the dedication. By the joint influence of the two, under 
 Addington's administration in 1803, Moore obtained the appointment to a 
 snug sinecure, or the next thing to it, of some ^400 a year nett, as Regis- 
 trar to the Admiralty Court of Bermuda. He enjoyed this office for fifteen 
 years, a deputy doing what real work it involved. At the close of this 
 period Moore, who seemed to have forgotten alike the deputy and the 
 office, was disagreeably reminded of his responsibilities by an application 
 for the reimbursement of the proceeds of certain sales, say some ^2000, 
 which had been embezzled by his subordinate. Moore might easily 
 have paid the money, or the smaller amount to which it was commuted 
 as he was in the receipt of large sums from his publishers, who, indeed, 
 offered to advance the whole amount ; but he preferred to take sanctuary 
 at Holyrood House to escape from immediate arrest, and next proceeded 
 to Paris, where, in happy oblivion of his liabilities, he lived for a time a 
 Capuan life of gaiety and enjoyment. 
 
 In 1806 had been published his Odes and Epistles, in which he 
 recorded his observations on American society and manners, made on a 
 hasty visit to the United States in 1804, on the occasion of his voyage to 
 Bermuda to assume his appointment. These lyrics, the prose preface 
 to which is admirably written, are sparkling with that witty and graceful 
 ease which the poet made his own, but are deservedly branded by Jeffrey 
 for that frequent indecency, which, conspicuous in the " Tales " of Prior, 
 between whom and Moore so many points of poetical resemblance 
 may be traced, has escaped the reprehension of so stern a moralist as 
 Dr. Johnson, and not prevented laudatory mention of that poet on his 
 monument in Westminster Abbey. Possibly the evil is exaggerated ; any 
 way it seems inherent in this manner of verse. There is an old alliance 
 between the daughters of Mnemosyne and the winged son of Cytherasa. 
 It was the boast of Horace that he sang 
 
 " Liberurn, et Musas, Veneremque et illi 
 Semper hasrentem puerum " 
 
 and the licentiousness of thought and expression that here and there 
 mars the exquisite polish of his " Odes," may be traced through the 
 "Juvenilia" of Beza, the "Basia" of Secundus, the "Pancharis" of 
 Bonnefonius, the " Chansons " of BeVanger, and the " Songs " of Burns, 
 down to the amatory effusions of " Thomas Little," some of which, as 
 the offspring of 
 
 * A lovely edition of Moore's version was published by the late John Camden 
 Hotten, in 1869, "with fifty-four illustrative designs by Girodet de Roussy." These 
 exquisite drawings [originally accompanied a French translation of the odes of 
 Anacreon, made by the artist himself, and published in France shortly after his death. 
 
24 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 -Talents made 
 
 Haply for pure and high designs, 
 But oft like Israel's incense, laid 
 Upon unholy, earthly, shrines " 
 
 though powerless enough for real harm, his friend Atkinson, to whom 
 the poems were addressed, speaks of the poet as a " child playing on the 
 bosom of Venus " had possibly been better unwritten. 
 
 Besides this, the tone of his remarks on the great and often misjudged 
 country which he had so cursorily visited gave considerable offence to 
 those who had given him a frank and hospitable reception. Washington 
 Irving, long before he visited England and made Moore's personal 
 acquaintance, wrote in his earliest production : 
 
 " While in the parlour I delayed, 
 Till they their persons had array'd, 
 A dapper volume caught my eye, 
 That on the window chanc'd to lie ; 
 A book's a friend I always choose 
 To turn its pages and peruse : 
 It prov'd those poems known to fame 
 For praising every cyprian dame ; 
 The bantlings of a dapper youth, 
 Renown'd for gratitude and truth ; 
 A little pest, hight Tommy Moore, 
 Who hopp'd and skipp'd our country o er ; 
 Who sipp'd our tea and lived on sops, 
 Revell'd on syllabubs and slops, 
 And when his brain, of cobweb fine, 
 Was fuddled with five drops of wine, 
 Would all his puny loves rehearse, 
 And many a maid debauch in verse." * 
 
 I am afraid that gratitude was not one of the virtues of Tommy 
 Moore. He never forgave Lord Moira and the Prince Regent for their 
 early friendship and patronage. Like the daughter of the horse-leech he 
 cried for " more " ; and when the former, with " All the Talents," came 
 into office in 1806, he verily thought that his fortune was made. His 
 noble patron did what he could, but it was not much. Fox had promised 
 concurrence, but died. Lord Moira's influence vanished ; and the dis- 
 appointed patriot felt free, as he says with exultation, " to call a rascal a 
 rascal wherever I meet him ; and never," adds he, " was I better dis- 
 posed to make use of my privilege." All this means that Moore then 
 felt at liberty to libel those whose benefits had not kept pace with his 
 demands, and from whom he had nothing more to expect. Then came, 
 as a natural sequence, that series of scurrilous and personal attacks upon 
 the Prince, inspired by an odiiwi in longum jacens, which the poet, thus 
 abandoning the lyre of Catullus for the mace of Juvenal, collected in 
 1813, in the little volume entitled The Twopenny Post Bag. These 
 satiric verses, which had been produced under the immediate influence 
 of Holland House, are at once easy, polished and witty. But they are 
 flippant and malignant ; and reflect deep discredit on their author, as 
 directed against one whose notice he had once been proud to obtain, who 
 had certainly conferred some favours upon him,- and whose station, as 
 
 * Salmagundi; or the Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launceloi Langstaff, Esq,, 
 and Others. London, 1824, 8vo, p. 8a. 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 25 
 
 depriving him of the power of retaliation, should have been his protection 
 from similar insults. 
 
 In Satire, it must be admitted that Moore is entitled to a distinguished 
 place. Not, indeed, that he wielded the massive and ruthless weapon of 
 the great Roman, the cutting lash of Ariosto and Dryden, the delicate 
 scalpel of Boileau and Pope, or the poisoned dagger of Junius. The 
 edge of his sarcasm seems turned by its wit, and the smile of the archer 
 to blunt his arrow's point. Yet the blade of Moore is sharply incisive, 
 illustrating in the effect of its practised stroke, the axiom of Lady Mary 
 Wortley Montague, 
 
 "Satire should, like a polish'd razor keen, 
 Wound with a touch that's hardly felt or seen." 
 
 The Prose of Moore has the same faults as his poetry, too much 
 glitter and ornament, too little simplicity and repose, 
 
 " Syllabub syllables sweetly strung, 
 Seeming so sillily smooth to be sung, 
 Sicken some singular sinners they say, 
 Scorning soft sentiment's silvery sway " 
 
 the pendulum of taste has now swung to the opposite extremity of 
 the arc ! 
 
 In 1825, appeared his Life of Sheridan, which, with all the sparkle 
 and brilliancy of its diction, proved a disappointment to the reading 
 public, in whom expectation had probably been too highly raised. Fair 
 justice is done to the talents and moral character of the orator ; but it 
 must be admitted that our estimation of him as a wit suffers no little 
 from what we learn as to the preparation of his impromptus. Dr. Parr, 
 the great scholar, not the renowned "old Parr," it is necessary to 
 explain, but Parr of Hatton, whom Moore had often consulted when 
 writing this biography, and after whom his eldest son was named, by 
 his last will and testament (1825) gave and bequeathed "a Ring tc 
 Thomas Moore, of Sloperton, Wilts, who stands high in my estimation, 
 for original genius, for his exquisite sensibility, for his independent spirit, 
 and incorruptible integrity." 
 
 Moore may even be mentioned in the character of a Theologian, for 
 he wrote a book of some learning in defence of the chief articles of the 
 Roman Church, though he had his children baptized in the Anglican 
 communion. This is not the place to speak at length of his Life oj 
 Byron, for which he bled Murray to the tune of nearly ^5000. It is 
 known that the materials were first confided to Maginn, not an over 
 squeamish man certainly, who shrank aghast from the hideous apoca- 
 lypse. Moore was applied to, and the result is that portraiture of the 
 poet-lord, which, if but an idealized representation, does not at least 
 require to be veiled like his own " Prophet of Khorassan." The problem 
 of Byron's life yet waits an CEdipus for its solution. 
 
 In 1817, appeared Lalla Rookh. This is a poem of splendid diction 
 and gorgeous imagery ; too rich in ornament, too dazzling in uncontrasted 
 light. The author, who was to receive ,3000 for his task, had prepared 
 himself by an immense amount of preliminary reading, and it is no small 
 proof of his genius that, of ponderous and intractable materials, he has 
 constructed so rich and graceful an edifice. We may presume, too, that 
 the poem is characterized by some truth of local colour, as it has been 
 
26 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 translated into Persian, and is a favourite with the Orientals themselves. 
 Luttrell has a quatrain : 
 
 " I'm told, dear Moore, your lays are sung 
 Can it be true, you lucky man? 
 By moonlight, in the Persian tongue, 
 Along the streets of Ispahan." 
 
 The poem had struck a new key. Eastern scholars could hardly under- 
 stand how it could have been written by one who had never inhaled the 
 spices of Araby or reclined beneath a palm-tree ; while its gorgeous 
 imagery, its brilliant pageantry and its luscious rhythm took the British 
 public fairly by storm. 
 
 Then came the Loves of the Angels, which, with much that is 
 beautiful, was felt to be inferior ; and which had, moreover, the misfortune 
 to appear in the same year with the fine Heaven and Earth of Byron. 
 Alciphronj or rather, the Epicurean, "a pretty Epicurean," says 
 Maginn, "who never kisses a girl, or empties a bottle, throughout the 
 whole book ! " is a prose poem, worthy of a place by the side of Vathek 
 and Rasselas, but reminding one too much of the Vie de Sdthos. The 
 same remark applies to all these longer-winged flights of the muse of 
 Moore. They all smell too much of the lamp, they are deficient in 
 inventive genius, are inspired by books rather than instinct, and are 
 overlaid, materiam superat opus, both text and notes, with pedantic 
 learning. It has been said that there are more Greek quotations in the 
 works of Moore, than in the entire cycle of English poetry, from Chaucer 
 to Byron. Yet all the time, strange to say, this learned Theban exhibits 
 in his Diary the crassest ignorance of current facts in general literature, 
 mistaking, for instance, Malesherbes, the minister of Louis XVI., for 
 Malherbe, a poet of the time of Henry IV. ; speaking of Swift and 
 Bickerstaff as if they were not one and the same person ; apparently 
 thinking that Florus is a Latin poet ; getting into a shocking muddle 
 about the origin of Deane Swift's Christian name ; ridiculing Paley for 
 shortening the penultimate of profugttsj and thinking that the university 
 phrase, " longs and shorts," refers to syllables instead of lines ! with 
 many another blunder as gross as that which he himself relates in his 
 capital story of the Frenchman, who, when Lord Moira pointed out to 
 him the castle of Macbeth in Scotland, complacently corrected his noble 
 cicerone : " Maccabe'e, Milord : nous le prononcons Maccabee sur le 
 Continent Judas Maccabeus, Empereur Romain ! " 
 
 But these remarks do not apply to Moore's earlier and lyrical 
 pieces ; it is as a song-writer that he will live. His genius was essentially 
 lyrical, and his minor pieces are the very diamond-dust of poetry. Here 
 he is the legitimate successor of Carew, Herrick, Surrey, Lovelace, 
 Suckling and Waller ; he is what Tasso is to the Venetians, Bdranger 
 to the French, and Burns to the Scotch. " To me," says Byron, " some 
 of Moore's last Erin sparks, 'As a beam o'er the face of the waters,' 
 1 When he who adores thee,' ' Oh, blame not the bard,' ' Oh, breathe not 
 his name,' are worth all the epics that ever were composed." In these 
 exquisite compositions breathes the very soul of sweetness, elegance 
 and pathos ; wit the most brilliant, harmony the most perfect, imagery 
 the most felicitous, all shaping into verbal form, as if with the silent 
 music of crystallization. And if in these, Moore is not always perfect ; 
 if we miss earnestness of purpose, simplicity, natural impuke and 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 2) 
 
 spontaneity of utterance ; if there is sometimes too much elaboration 
 of wit and stimulation of fancy, let it be remembered that no art is 
 more difficult than that of writing a good song, and that compositions 
 worthy of the name, the coinage of the heart rather than of the brain, 
 and inspired by true feeling as distinguished from imitative and febrile 
 sentiment, are much rarer, in this or any other language, than is generally 
 suspected. 
 
 I have associated the name of Moore with that of Burns ; the com- 
 parison, indeed, forces itself upon the mind, and, whether right or not, 
 these two poets must stand forth as the lyrical genii of their respective 
 countries. Each has his merits. We know the profound passion and 
 simple pathos of the Scottish peasant, and regarding Moore as a national 
 poet, cannot but see some truth in the saying of Hazlitt, that he " changed 
 the wild harp of Erin into a musical snuff-box." Yet Moore has special 
 merits of his own, as is pointed out by an elegant and liberal critic : " If 
 Moore had been born and bred a peasant as Burns was, or if Ireland had 
 been such a land of knowledge, and virtue, and religion, as Scotland, 
 and, surely, without offence, we may -say that it never was, and never will 
 be, though we love the green island well, who can doubt that with his 
 fine fancy, warm heart, and exquisite sensibilities, he might have been 
 as natural a lyrist as Burns ; while, take him as he is, who can deny 
 that in richness and variety, in grace, and in the power of wit, he is 
 superior to the ploughman ? " * 
 
 Jeffrey draws a fine comparison between the poetry of Moore and 
 that of Byron : " Mr. Moore's poetry is the thornless rose, its touch 
 is velvet, its hue vermilion, and its graceful form is cast in beauty's 
 mould. Lord Byron's, on the contrary, is a prickly bramble, or some- 
 times a deadly upas, of form uncouth and uninviting, that has its root 
 in the clefts of the rock, and its head mocking the sides, that wars with 
 the thunder-cloud, and the tempest, and round which the cataracts 
 roar." f 
 
 But Jeffrey had not been always thus laudatory : Byron asks : 
 
 " Can none remember that eventful day, 
 That ever glorious, almost fatal fray, 
 When Little's leadless pistol met his eye 
 And Bow Street myrmidons stood laughing by ? " J 
 
 in allusion to the ridiculous duel, when, on the challenge of Moore, the 
 poet and the critic met at Chalk Farm, in 1806, to settle their literary 
 differences. The proceedings were stopped by the interference of the 
 constabulary, when it was found on examination of the weapons that one, 
 if not both, of the pistols was innocent of ball ! Moore was always 
 extremely sore on the subject, and wrote a letter to the Morning 
 Chronicle vindicating his conduct, and asserting that his pistol, at least, 
 was regularly loaded. However this may be, that of his antagonist was 
 certainly found to contain nothing but a paper pellet. Moore was so 
 incensed by Byron's jocular allusion to the harmless affray, that he 
 
 * Recreations of Christopher North, i. 272. f Edinburgh Revieiu, No. Ixxv. 
 
 % English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 1 vol. ed. of Byron's Poems, p. 428. 
 
 The article which provoked the duel will be found in No. xvi. of the Edinburgh 
 Review, July, 1806, where the poet is denounced as " the most licentious of modern 
 versifiers, and the most poetical of the propagators of impiety" ; and an additional 
 sting added to the charge by the insinuation of mere mercenary motives. 
 
28 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 addressed a challenge to him, in turn ; this was confided to his friend 
 Hanson, and somehow never reached its destination. 
 
 There is another allusion to this ridiculous affair in a forgotten 
 volume, which is worthy of record as the first novel of Theodore Hook. 
 This is entitled the Man of Sorrow, and it purports to be written by 
 " Alfred Allendale." One of the portraits sketched in these volumes, 
 which, by the way, have been republished since the author's death, 
 is that of our poet, under the name of " Mr. Minus." Here occurs 
 the following epigram, which may be thought the worthier of preserva- 
 tion here, as it has been attributed to one of the authors of Rejected 
 Addresses: 
 
 " When Anacreon would fight, as the poets have said, 
 A reverse he display'd in his vapour, 
 For while all his poems were loaded with lead, 
 His pistols were loaded mth paper/ 
 
 "For excuses, Anacreon old custom may thank, 
 Such a salvo he would not abuse, 
 For the cartridge, by rule, is always made blank 
 Which is fired away at Reviews." * 
 
 There is a necessary correspondence between the mechanical handi- 
 work of man and the instruments by which it is produced. So also with 
 the creations of the mind. Rousseau, we are told, was wont to write the 
 amatory billets between Julie and Saint-Preux, in what Burke terms his 
 " famous work of philosophic gallantry," La Nouvelle Heloise, on scented 
 note paper, with the finest of crow quills ; and, with like fitness of means, 
 Moore, we are told by his countryman, Mr. Percy Boyd, always wore 
 a pair of kid gloves when he was writing, the ends of which he was wont 
 to nibble in the throes of composition, till the tip of each finger was 
 quite bitten through. These memorials were carefully preserved by his 
 sister Ellen ; and their possession was competed for with avidity by his 
 lady friends. 
 
 It was at Mayfield Cottage, near Ashbourne, on the Staffordshire side 
 of the river Dove, that Moore wrote Lalla Rookh, and spent some of the 
 happiest years of his life. The whole neighbourhood, though not often 
 alluded to in literature, is haunted land to the literary pilgrim. Within 
 a mile or two is Wootton Hall, where Rousseau lived and botanized for 
 years, and where he wrote his Confessions j a mile away, on the other 
 side of the Dove, dwelt Michael Thomas Sadler ; at Oakover, within 
 a short walk, was the home of Ward, the author of Tremainej two miles 
 further up the river, a grotto is preserved in which Congreve wrote his 
 first drama ; hard by is the grand entrance to Dovedale, immortalized 
 by old Isaak Walton ; at Chatsworth, almost within sight, Hobbes, the 
 philosopher of Malmesbury, smoked and thought ; at Lissington lived 
 Richard Graves, the author of the Spiritual Quixote, of whose fine head 
 a pencil sketch by Wilkie is before me as I write ; Mayfield Cottage has 
 since been the residence of Alfred Butler, the novelist ; t and lastly. Dr. 
 Taylor, one of Dr. Johnson's most esteemed friends, was an inhabitant 
 of Ashbourne, and there were recorded by Boswell some of the lexico- 
 grapher's most amusing conversation and peculiarities. 
 
 After the splendid success of Lalla Rookh, Moore paid two visits to 
 
 * Life of Theodore Hook. f Author of Elphirislone, The Herberts, etc. 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 29 
 
 the Continent, one in company with the poet Rogers, and a second with 
 his friend, Lord John Russell. After a stay in Paris, where about 1822, 
 he wrote the Loves of the Angels, and Fables of the Holy Alliance, he 
 finally returned to England. Shortly after this, he took up his abode at 
 that charming cottage for all time indissolubly associated with his name, 
 to the quiet and happiness of which as he so tenderly apostrophizes it, 
 
 " That dear home, that saving ark, 
 
 Where love's true light at last I've found 
 Cheering within, when all grows dark, 
 And comfortless and stormy round " 
 
 he could ever return with joy, after his occasional visits to London, the 
 tumult and strife of the outward world, and the intoxicating adulation of 
 society. This was Sloperton, in the immediate neighbourhood of the 
 lovely demesne of Bowood, the seat of his friend, the Marquis of Lans- 
 downe: Here, the charm and delight of society, he passed the latter 
 part of his life. Bowood, with its fine library, its lovely scenery and its 
 refined hospitality, was ever open to the poet, and thus, as they sail 
 down the stream of time, the name of Lansdowne will be for ever 
 associated with that of Moore, as Mecsenas is with Horace, Southampton 
 with Shakespeare, Glencairn with Burns, and Lucien Buonaparte with 
 Beranger. 
 
 On the thirty-seventh anniversary of the " Literary Fund," a speech 
 was delivered by Moore, a passage in which has a deep and interesting 
 significance, when we think of the calamity with which he was subse- 
 quently visited. " Men of genius," he says, " like the precious perfumes 
 of the East, are exceedingly liable to exhaustion ; and the period often 
 comes when nothing of it remains but its sensibility, and the life which 
 long gave light to the world terminates by becoming a burden to itself, 
 . . . and the person who now addresses you speaks the more feelingly, 
 because he cannot be sure that the fate he has been depicting may not 
 one day be his own." 
 
 These boding words were, unhappily, prophetical of his own fate. As 
 in the case of another great genius of his country, Swift the light of 
 reason was extinguished, and darkness enshrouded the intellect that had 
 so long and brightly shone with the fires of wit and imagination. Thence- 
 forth his existence was purely physical, and after a few years of decrepi- 
 tude, he sank into the grave on Feb. 25, 1852, in the seventy-third year of 
 his age. His wife survived him, but all his four children had died before 
 their father. He was buried in the graveyard attached to Bromham 
 Church, Wiltshire, where, twenty-five years later, a memorial window in 
 his honour was unveiled by the late Mrs. S. C. Hall. 
 
 One word as to his domestic relations. He married in 181 1, and has 
 been absurdly charged by the moralists with selfish neglect of his amiable 
 wife. This allegation, supported by extracts from his own Diary, may be 
 best refuted by the statement of one who was surely well able to speak : 
 " This excellent and beautiful person received from him the homage of a 
 lover, enhanced by all the gratitude, all the confidence, which the daily 
 and hourly happiness he enjoyed were sure to inspire ; thus, whatever 
 amusement he might find in society, whatever sights he might behold, 
 whatever literary resources he might seek elsewhere, he always returned 
 to his home with a fresh feeling of delight. The time he had been absent 
 
jo THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 had always been a time of exertion and exile ; his return restored him to 
 tranquillity and peace." * 
 
 In the year after his death (1853) appeared his Memoirs, Journal, and 
 Correspondence (8 vols. 8vo), by the Right Hon. Lord John Russell, his 
 life-long friend, to whom the task had been confided by will. We have 
 also : Thomas Moore : His Life, Writings and Contemporaries. By H. 
 R. Montgomery, London, i860, 8vo, pp. 208 ; and a later gathering : The 
 Hitherto Uncollected Writings of Thomas Moore, Prose and Verse, 
 Humorous, Satirical and Sentimental^ chiefly from the Author's MSS., 
 and all hitherto Inedited and Uncollected, edited by Richard Home 
 Shepherd, 1877, 8vo. 
 
 There are portraits of the poet by Sir M. A. Shee ; Maclise ; Jackson ; 
 Richmond ; F. Sieurac (engraved in Galignani's excellent edition of the 
 Poetical Works j and Sir Thomas Lawrence, the last work of the artist, 
 if I mistake not who has perhaps best succeeded in conferring upon his 
 subject the aristocratic and dignified air which nature had denied him. 
 He was, indeed, but a little fellow at the best ; " What a pity we cannot 
 make him bigger ! " ejaculated Lady Holland. The poet Campbell termed 
 him " a fire-fly from heaven " ; and N. P. Willis, in the glare and glitter 
 of one of Lady Blessington's soire'es, was struck by the appearance of Moore 
 " with a blaze of light on his Bacchus head." By the way, there is also a 
 scarce caricature etching of the poet, as a winged Grecian youth, by his 
 countryman, Thomas Croften Croker. 
 
 The classical reader may care to be reminded that the Irish Melodies 
 which brought him in 500 a year from James Power, the music- 
 publisher, and of which his own exquisite vocalization was a thing unique 
 in its way have been admirably translated into Latin verse under the 
 title of Cantus Hibemici Latine redditi, quibus accedunt Poemata qucedam 
 Anglicorum auctorum item Latine reddita. Editore Nicolas Lee Torre, 
 Coll. Nov. apud Oxon. olim Socio. Leamington, 1856-8-9. 3 vols. 8vo. 
 Mr. Torre was assisted in his task by some of the most elegant scholars 
 of the day, among whom may be mentioned the unfortunate J. Selby 
 Watson, M.A. 
 
 I do not think that, after all, it can be said that this gifted man, " the 
 poet of all circles and the idol of his own," as Byron termed him, 
 the pet alike of peers, peeresses, publishers and public, 
 
 " who, in all names could tickle the town, 
 
 Anacreon, Tom Little, Tom Moore, or Tom Browne," f 
 
 was illiberally treated by the British Government. As early as 1835 
 or 1836, the head-clerkship of the State Paper Office, with a salary of 
 ^300 a year, was placed at his disposal by Lord John Russell. This 
 was, very properly, declined by the poet, who felt that the honour was 
 nil, the emolument small, and that time, which he could more profitably 
 and agreeably employ, would be consumed in dull and tedious routine. 
 Very shortly after, a letter from Lord Lansdowne announced that a 
 pension, involving no duties, had been actually conferred upon him, of 
 like amount. 
 
 The library of Thomas Moore was, in 1855, presented by his widow 
 to the Royal Irish Academy, " as a memorial of her husband's taste and 
 erudition." 
 
 * Memoirs, Pref. xi. f Byron, "To Thomas Moore.' 
 
e e t l e " 
 
 < *?*> 
 
 w \ , /'A l > 
 
 ,^v 1 ^ "/ 3\ to .' 7 
 
 g^ WV ffl ! Ki N '> 
 
 V ' m /'HA rd aw 
 
 
 ^JCTSt^Afe^r 
 
 **~<*sfa^7 
 
 * "'" F 
 
 IT HE IE A HI IT ffll Jffi <U> 
 
 ^ IE K. iL JE IT. 
 
SIX WALTER SCOTT, 
 
 VI. SIR WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 "There he is," says Maginn, "sauntering about his grounds, with his 
 Lowland bonnet in his hand, dressed in his old green shooting-jacket, 
 telling stories of every stone and bush, and tree and stream, in sight 
 tales of battles and raids or ghosts and fairies, as the case may be, 
 of the days of yore, 
 
 * ere Scotland's griefs began, 
 
 When every man you met had killed his man ! ' " 
 
 As to the portrait, whatever may be its inferiority, as an artistic work, 
 we have the further testimony of the " Doctor" to the effect that "every- 
 thing is correct in the picture, from the peak of his head down to his 
 very cudgel"; while Mr. D. G. Rossetti does not doubt that "in its 
 unflinching enjoyment of peculiarities, it gives a more exact impression 
 of the man, as equipped for his daily life, than any likeness that could be 
 met with." * It has been asserted too positively that Maginn never saw 
 Scott on his native heather ; but this he certainly may have done when 
 visiting Blackwood at Edinburgh in 1820. Other opportunities may have 
 occurred subsequently ; but anyway, from his intimacy with Lockhart and 
 other friends of the " Ariosto of the North," he might readily have acquired 
 a knowledge of his peculiarities even down to the Shandean flourish of his 
 bamboo-cane, " in the manner of Corporal Trim," adds Maginn, " as 
 follows ; " 
 
 The desire of becoming acquainted in the body with those from whose 
 minds we have long received delight, is natural enough ; as is also the 
 expectation to find in the one the "outward and visible sign" of the 
 " inward and spiritual grace" we have known in the other. But this is a 
 desire, often if not always, productive of disappointment, and could never, 
 hardly, one would imagine, be more so than in the present instance. 
 What becomes of the doctrine of " correspondence " if we have a faithful 
 representation of the "Wizard of the North" in the coarse ungainly figure 
 before us, a bundle of amorphous garments, surmounted by a conical, 
 shock-headed protuberance, unkempt and slovenly, as was Mephibosheth, 
 when he came down to meet his royal patron, though the son of 
 Jonathan was lame in both his feet, instead of one only, a fact of which our 
 artist has cleverly reminded us. 
 
 * The Academy, April 15, 1871. 
 
32 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Pascal, the Provincial epistolographer, excused himself for writing at 
 length, on the ground he had not time to be brief. In a similar spirit 
 of paradox, I might well apologize for writing so little about Scott because 
 there is so much to say. 
 
 " Scott, the Magician ! " as Parr ejaculated : 
 
 "Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet 
 Ut magus, et modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis." 
 
 This great writer was born in the year 1771. For the details of his 
 childish history, and the events of his after-life, reference must alike be 
 made to his own charming autobiography, and the illustrations of Lockhart, 
 whose life of his great father-in-law may be said to exhibit, with the 
 single exception of Boswell's Life ofJoh?iso?i, the most lucid, candid and 
 complete account which has ever been given of one man by another. His 
 first attempts in verse appeared in the very year of the death of Burns. 
 It is a little singular that the earliest inspiration of his muse was not the 
 indigenous traditional minstrelsy of his own land of historic flood and fell, 
 but that German ballad poetry, which, tinged by a mystic and gloomy super- 
 naturalism, enjoyed a brief popularity during the early part of the present 
 century. It was the Lenore of Burger which Scott chose to translate ; and 
 it must be admitted that his version has all the vividness and freedom of an 
 original poem. But the influence which produced it was accidental and 
 evanescent, and his genius reverted to that direction for which early associ- 
 ation had prepared it. His childhood had been passed at the farm of Sandy- 
 Knowe where every field had its battle, and every brook its legend ; the 
 Rebellion of '45 still dwelt in the memory of the simple Borderers, and the 
 atrocities of the * Butcher Cumberland " were not forgotten. The taste for 
 ballad-literature had been awakened in the public mind by the collections of 
 Percy, Ritson, Evans and Pinkerton ; and hence, the Border Mi?istrelsy of 
 Scott, which appeared in 1802 at once achieved a remarkable success. It 
 contained, as a critic of the day prophetically remarked, " the elements of 
 a hundred romances " ; and did much, with the labours of the other editors 
 I have mentioned, to break up the old classic style, and influence the com- 
 positions of Southey, Coleridge and Wordsworth. For the small original 
 edition, Scott had received ^100 ; and he was finally enabled to sell the 
 copyright for ^500 to Longman's, who had previously, however, decided 
 that the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge were not worth 
 anything at all. Next came the Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, and 
 the Lady of the Lake j and by the year 18 10, fame and fortune were his 
 own. Scott was even then, before, be it marked, he had written a line 
 of prose, the " Great Magician " ; and, with the irresistible influence ol 
 his own Lochinvar, led the whole world captive. The Delia Cruscans 
 died away ; and the minor stars of Whitehead, Hoole, Pye, Darwin, 
 Seward and Hayley paled their ineffectual fires before the new and effulgent 
 luminary. Still, it must not be forgotten that the voice of praise was not 
 altogether unanimous, and that, among others, Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt 
 were disposed to underestimate the poetry of Scott, as Waller had 
 depreciated Milton ; Madame de Stael, Corneille ; and Voltaire, Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 On the other hand, Moir, a judicious critic, not less than an elegant 
 poet, wrote of his immortal countryman : 
 
SIX WALTER SCOTT. 33 
 
 ' Brother of Homer, and of him 
 On Avon's banks, by twilight dim, 
 Who dreamt immortal dreams, and took 
 From Nature's hand her storied book ; 
 Earth hath not seen, Time may not see, 
 Till ends his march, such other three," 
 
 and with, all due allowance for national predilection, it may be said that 
 in simplicity and majesty of conception, picturesqueness of description, 
 ardour of narration, rapid recurrence of striking incident, and manly 
 avoidance of false sentiment and affectation, the Scottish poet has only 
 been surpassed by the Bards of Chios and Avon. But these are not 
 qualities in request in these days of spasmodic utterance, rugged diction, 
 affected profundity and false sentiment. "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, 
 speaking of some such atrocities of his own day, " a man might write 
 such stuff for ever, if he could but abandon his mind to it"; and yet 
 some modern critic, his name is not of much matter, has positively 
 characterized these "poets "in "schools," and "groups," Romantic, Idyllic 
 and so forth, God save the mark ! One's consolation is, that, after drink- 
 ing awhile at these turbid puddles, one must revert to the pure fount at 
 last, and that Scott, with the older masters, will some day cease to be 
 underrated, merely because they can be understood. 
 
 But these metrical poems are but the introduction to the greater 
 achievement of his life, in which Scott may be truly said to have 
 conquered himself, and eclipsed his own glory, his prose poems, for 
 such in very truth are his Novels, Tales, and Romances. These may 
 be said to have now passed out of the region of criticism ; and need 
 not detailed notice here or elsewhere. Scott created the modern novel. 
 We had Richardson, it is true, and the earlier lucubrations of the Minerva 
 press ; but that peculiar form of prose poetry, which in our own day 
 seems an indispensable need, and brings to thousands solace and dis- 
 traction amid the spircunenta of professional and commercial life, was 
 then unborn. It is Scott, once more, to whom we owe it ; with the 
 assistance, be it remembered, of those charming writers of the softer sex, 
 Edgeworth, Austen and Ferrier, who accompanied the greater light, like 
 moons about a planet. Scott, in this immortal series, has opened to our 
 gaze a new and enchanted world ; and the creations of his teeming fancy, 
 like those of Shakespeare, people our waking remembrance with all the 
 vividness of material entities. Moreover, with that perfervid love for his 
 native country which is only comparable with the Florentine nationalism 
 of Dante, he may lay claim to have discovered to the world his own 
 beloved land of mist and mountain, whose past history he has illuminated, 
 whose lonely glens he has peopled, and which he has invested with a 
 perennial charm for all the nations of the earth. 
 
 It is a curious story ; how, desirous of trying his hand at a prose 
 romance, he had written the earlier chapters of Waverley j and how, 
 discouraged by his friends, he consigned the sheets to a slumber in his 
 desk of almost Horatian length ; * how he finished the book at a heat, 
 and determined on its publication, notwithstanding the adverse opinion 
 of James Ballantyne, who found it dull and vulgar ! We all know, some 
 of us may remember how the modest story took the world by storm, 
 with what electrical enthusiasm it was received as the first fruits of a new 
 
 * ' Nonum prematur in annum." Horat., De Arte Poet, 388. 
 
34 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 and delightful harvest of literature. "My opinion of it," said Lord 
 Holland, when some one asked him what he thought of the new novel, 
 " none of us went to bed all night, and nothing slept but my gout." Once 
 more Scott had taken by assault the world of letters. One solitary 
 individual, avid of notoriety, and seeking, like Herostratus of old, to 
 gain it quoamque modo, is said to have made himself remarkable as " the 
 man who had never read the Waverley novels." To such a one, if he 
 has a follower in these latter days, criticism would be useless ; while to 
 the rest of the world, who read and love them, it would be alike 
 supererogatory. 
 
 The peculiarity in the conformation of Scott's head is noteworthy ; 
 but the apex of the cone is more sharply fastigated here than in a cast 
 after death on a bracket before me. This is said to be due to an enlarge- 
 ment of the organ of " veneration," and phrenologists strive to render the 
 fact accordant with their theory by pointing to his reverent regard for 
 the monuments and records of the past. But this was manifested only 
 with regard to those of his own country. When in his last dire struggle 
 against Debt and Disgrace, his superhuman efforts to free himself by 
 mere brain-work from the immense liabilities in which, from circumstances 
 into which I have no space now to enter, he had become involved, he 
 rendered applicable to himself the lines of Dibdin : 
 
 " While the harness sore galls, and the spurs his side goad, 
 The high-mettled Racer's a hack on the road " 
 
 and made a hopeless voyage to Italy in search of health, he showed no 
 sympathy with the ancients, and derived no gratification from the sight 
 of classical antiquities. Rome to him, as it was to some other traveller, 
 appeared naught but a " fine city, very much out of repair." No feeling 
 was awakened, even when he stood amid the galleries of the Coliseum, or 
 the ruined arches of the Baths of Caracalla ; and the Temple of Apollo, 
 the Forum, the Bay of Baiae, the Lake of Avernus, and the storied Mise- 
 num, only served to suggest a line of a Jacobite ditty ! Like the stricken 
 warrior of Virgil : 
 
 " dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos," 
 
 and it was only when he returned to the old familiar scenes that he 
 seemed for a time to regain some portion of that health and strength 
 which he had gone so far to seek. " I have seen much," he said, "but 
 nothing like my ain house." Here he lingered for a few days, and died 
 at Abbotsford, on September 17th, 1832, in the sixty-second year of his 
 age. His last intelligible words to Lockhart were, " I may have but a 
 minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man, be virtuous, be 
 religious, be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort, when 
 you come to lie here." 
 
 I have alluded to the financial liabilities of Sir Walter, a long and 
 intricate question to unravel. Lockhart's allusions to these in the life of his 
 father-in-law gave great offence to the trustees and executors of James 
 Ballantyne : and these gentlemen sought to vindicate the character and 
 conduct of their friend, " so foully aspersed," by the publication of a 
 lengthy pamphlet entitled, Refutation of the Misstatements and Calumnies 
 contained in Mr. Lockharfs Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., respecting the 
 Messrs. Ballantyne, etc. (London, 1838, 8vo, pp. 96). This was answered 
 at length by Lockhart, and the entire question is treated fairly and ex- 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 35 
 
 plicitly, though not altogether to the advantage of Scott and his biographer, 
 in a number of Chambers's Journal, about that period. 
 
 In my notes on Jerdan I have made allusion to Sir Walter's 
 liability to literary imposition. There I was thinking of one particular 
 instance, which, inasmuch as it has escaped the industry of, or been 
 intentionally overlooked by, Lockhart, may be noticed here as showing 
 that the black-letter sagacity of the " Shirra " himself might be caught 
 napping, and that with the simple credulity of his own Monkbarns, he 
 could mistake the " bit bourock of the mason-callants for a Roman 
 Praetorium. 
 
 I allude to a brochure of five pages, entitled The Raid of Feather- 
 stonehaugh : a Border Ballad. This was really written by Sir Walter's' 
 early friend, Mr. Robert Surtees, of Mainsforth, author of the History of 
 Durham, some of whose other impositions upon the poet were printed in 
 the Border Minstrelsy, or inserted in notes to his Metrical Romances. Of 
 this poem, in particular, Sir Walter entertained so high an opinion that 
 he has incorporated a verse from it in Marmion, and given it entire in a 
 note, as a genuine relic of antiquity, gravely commenting upon it in a 
 most elaborate manner, and pointing out its exemplifications of the then 
 state of society. It will be found in Marmion, Canto i. verse 13 : 
 
 " The whiles a Northern harper rude," etc. 
 
 Yet another pleasant hoax on the poet may be recorded. In a letter 
 to Southey, September, 18 10, he states that " a witty rogue had proved 
 him guilty of stealing a passage from one of Hieronymus Vida's Latin 
 poems which he had never seen or heard of." The passage in question 
 was the well-known distich in Marmion : 
 
 " When pain and anguish wring the brow, 
 A ministering angel thou ! " 
 
 The reference was to Vida's Ad Eranen, El. ii. v. 21 . 
 
 " Cum dolor atque supercilio gravis imminet angor, 
 Fungeris angelico sola ministerio." 
 
 If these lines were actually to be found among the poems of the 
 learned Bishop of Alba, the coincidence would certainly have been a 
 remarkable one ; but I need not say that they are of more modern 
 fabrication, being the production of the Rev. Henry I. T. Drury, after- 
 wards "subdidasculus" of Harrow, who took it into his head, in his 
 college days, to perpetrate this clever trick upon Scott, after the manner 
 of Lauder upon Milton. The other lines of the piece, " Marmio ad 
 Claram," are given in the Arundines Cami, p. 36. 
 
 Who wrote the Waverley Novels f This is the title of an ingenious 
 pamphlet by W. J. F., to which, and to Notes and Queries, Series i. and 
 ii., passim, the curious must be referred for a discussion of the apparently 
 futile question. 
 
 Of parodies upon, and imitations of, Scott, there are plenty. One of 
 the best known is Jokeby : a Burlesque on Rokeby, a Poem, in Six Cantos. 
 By an Amateur of Fashion (London, 8vo, 8th ed. 1813). I fail to 
 see much talent in this, although it has gone through so many editions ; 
 and of its various attributions to John Roby, Thomas Tegg (its publisher), 
 or the " Adelphi," James and Horace Smith, whose well-known imitation 
 in the Rejected Addresses is of quite different merit, probably none is 
 
3 6 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 correct. There is also " Smokeby," a parody of the same poem, in an 
 early number of the Ephemerides, a literary serial, published at Edinburgh, 
 in 1 8 13. Then we have Marmion Travestied. By Peter Pry, a Tale of 
 Modern Times (1809, 8vo), touching on the notorious scandal of the Duke 
 of York and Mary Anne Clarke ; and the Lay of the Scottish Fiddle : 
 
 a Poem in Five Cantos, supposed to be written by W S , Esq, 
 
 (London, 18 14, 8vo), which has been attributed to Washington Irving, but 
 which I would rather ascribe to his brother-in-law, the celebrated American 
 writer, James Kirke Paulding,* a classic on the other side of the Atlantic, 
 though so little known here. Lastly, there is a two volume novel entitled 
 IValladmor (1825, 2 vols. 8vo), which professes to have been "Freely 
 translated into German from the English of Sir Walter Scott, and now 
 freely translated from the German into English." In verity, there is a good 
 deal of " freedom " here. At the half-yearly literary Fair at Leipsic, trans- 
 lations from the most recent works of Europeon authors are a prominent 
 commodity, and some obliging hack is always at hand to act as proxy for 
 a lazy writer. Scott ceased to produce, so a novel was written for him 
 to meet the demand. The hoax was successful, and the Germans at 
 least were for a time duped by the forgery.f 
 
 Abbotsford, the pet creation of Sir Walter, and the home, as he 
 fondly but vainly hoped, of a long progeny, has been termed a mediaeval 
 romance in stone and cement. Like many other romances, it is charac- 
 terized by those incongruities and anachronisms of style which Maginn 
 has satirized in his humorous novel, Whitehall : or the Days of George 
 the Fourth; but is certainly imposing and picturesque in its general effect. 
 It was executed in a transitional period ; and its architect, Blore, who 
 died in September, 1879, after a retirement of thirty years from professional 
 life, gained but a questionable reputation from his 7nagnu?n opus. It is 
 well described by Washington Irving, who visited Sir Walter in 18 16, in 
 his Abbotsford a7id Newstead Abbey (London, 1835), and by N, P. Willis, 
 in his Pencillings by the Way, vol. iii. chap. xxx. 
 
 The bibliography of Scott would require a volume, and must not be 
 attempted here. But there is one volume which, standing by itself in 
 character, may fitly be recorded. This is the Descriptive Account of the 
 Portraits, Busts, Published Writings, and Manuscripts of Sir Walter 
 Scott, Bart. Collected and Exhibited at Edinburgh on occasion of the 
 Scott Centetiary in 1871. Prepared for publication by Sir William 
 Stirling Maxwell, Bart., David Laing, LL.D., James Dru?nmond, R.S.A. 
 Illustrated with Thirty-two portraits, and numerous facsimiles of original 
 Manuscripts by the author of Waverley. Edinburgh, William Paterson. 
 
 MDCCCLXXIV., 4tO. 
 
 As History repeats herself, so does Biography. I round off these 
 necessarily desultory illustrations of the great writer by the citation of an 
 extraordinary epigram, which, whether it is to be regarded as a record or 
 a prophecy, certainly merits preservation. All that I know of it is 
 that it is ascribed to "an old Greek poet who flourished after the time 
 of Hesiod." It is as follows :-* 
 
 * Paulding was, I believe, the author of a book entitled A Sketch of Old England by 
 a New Englandfnan, in a Series of Letters to his Brother (New York, 1822, 2 vols. i2mo) 
 replete with errors, misconceptions and misstatements. 
 
 f London Magazine, vol. x. p. 3^3. It is not generally known that this "free" 
 translation, with the bantering dedication prefixed, was the work of De Quincey. 
 
, * ." -' 
 
 THE A.UTJHIOK, ID IF A "LIFE OW BYHON 
 
JOHN GALT. 37 
 
 * "i.v ffKOTia 2K0T02 eirero Kal (puis 7}e <pdoa5(, 
 KiKXr](TKOv /J^'AISTON '6ov k\*6s ovpaeov 'tnei," 
 
 which may be roughly traduced for the nonce : 
 
 "In Scotland there was Scott, and a man emerged to day ; 
 They called him the Unknown, and his fame to heaven made way." 
 
 VII. JOHN GALT. 
 
 Here we have John Galt, one of the Anakim of our " Gallery," for he 
 stood some six feet three, with, as Maginn says, "a stoop in his shoulders." 
 The same authority vouches for the likeness of the face ; but adds 
 apologetically : "we think that our Rembrandt has evinced a Dutchman- 
 like liberality in the article of trousers ; we do not believe that Gait 
 procures his pantaloons from the most scientific of Schneiders, but unless 
 the garment in which he is represented be one which he has brought 
 with him ready manufactured by the axe or the saw of a Canadian back- 
 woodsman, we know not where else he could have seduced a carpenter 
 to have fashioned anything like the nether integument in which he is 
 here depicted." To this testimony as to fidelity of resemblance, may be 
 added that of another competent authority. " The likeness of John 
 Gait," says an able writer in The Hour (Nov. 12, 1873), "is one of the 
 most successful in the volume. He was tall and comely, with gentleman- 
 like and unassuming manners. There was nothing whatever about him 
 indicative of the dry and 'pawky' humour which breathes in every page 
 of his best novels, or of the amazing vanity which led him to imagine him- 
 self a great writer of tragedies." 
 
 So much for the outward man. For the rest, John Gait was born at 
 Irvine in Ayrshire, May 2, 1779. His father, the captain of a West 
 India merchantman, obtained for his son a berth in the Custom-house ot 
 Greenock, and later, a place, as clerk, with a mercantile firm. By and 
 by, the young man gravitated to London, where he purposed to establish 
 himself as a merchant. Meantime, in the years 1803-4, he published in 
 the Scots' Magazine portions of a poem in octo-syllabic verse, entitled 
 " The Battle of Largs," * on the score of which, as having preceded the 
 metrical romances of Sir Walter Scott, he was wont in after life to 
 assume no small credit. History and Political Economy also engaged 
 his attention ; so that disagreement with his partners, pecuniary em- 
 barrassment, and final bankruptcy, seem a natural sequence. Gait now 
 determined to abandon commerce, and entered himself at Lincoln's Inn 
 with a view of being called to the Bar ; but wishing to see the world, and 
 improve his health, before he settled down, he determined to spend some 
 time abroad, and left England in 1809. 
 
 He remained on the Continent nearly three years ; later on, describing 
 his peregrinations in his Voyages and Travels in the Years 1809, 18 10, 
 181 1, etc. (1812, 4to), and Letters from the Levant, etc. (1813, 8vo). 
 
 While abroad, he became acquainted with Byron, whose biographer 
 he was afterwards to become ; and subsequently called upon him in 
 
 * " Largs where the Scotch gave the Northmen a drilling." Sir Walter Scott. 
 
38 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 London, to get him to use his influence with manager Raymond, in favour 
 of one of his plays. " We are old fellow-travellers," wrote Byron of him, 
 "and with all his eccentricities he has much strong sense, experience of 
 the world, and is, as far as I have seen, a good-natured, philosophical 
 fellow." On his return from the continent he married a daughter of Dr. 
 Tilloch, the editor of the Philosophical Magazine, and proprietor of the 
 Star newspaper, on the staff of which he was placed. He next produced 
 his Life and Administration of Cardinal Wolsey (1812, 4to), and his 
 Reflections on Political and Coi7imercial Subjects (1812, 8vo). In the same 
 year he wrote a volume of Tragedies (" Maddalen," "Agamemnon," " Lady 
 Macbeth," " Antonia," and " Clytemnestra)," which Sir Walter Scott pro- 
 nounced "the worst ever seen" ; and he followed this by his Life and Studies 
 of Benjatnin West (1816, 8vo). He edited the New British Theatre, and 
 produced for it sundry contributions ; inter alia a tragedy of some power, 
 called The Witness. Another tragedy, The Appeal, appeared in 18 18. 
 
 To some extent, perhaps, dissuaded from poetry and politics by an 
 adverse article in the Quarterly, the literary organ of the party to which 
 he professed to belong, he turned his attention to fiction, and produced 
 the long series of tales, the titles of which with other works, from a pretty 
 complete collection of the original editions before me, I am enabled to give 
 in the interests of bibliography. In 1820, appeared The Earthquake, 
 George III., his Court and Fa?nily, and a sort of chronicle, called The 
 Wandering few, published under the pseudonym of Clark; in 1821, 
 Pictures Historical and Biographical, A finals of the Parish, and The 
 Ayrshire Legatees ; in 1822, Sir Andrew Wy lie of that Ilk, The Steam-boat, 
 The Provost, and Memoirs of a Life chiefly passed i7i Pennsylvania j in 
 1823, The Entail, The Spae-Wife, Ringhan Gilhaize, and The Gathering of 
 the West j in 1824, Rothelan, and The Bachelors Wife, besides a " critical 
 dissertation" on the tales of Henry Mackenzie, prefixed to an edition of 
 the works of that writer,' published by Oliver and Boyd; in 1805, The 
 Omen* ; in 1826, The Last of the Lairds j in 1830, Southennan, Lawrie 
 Todd, and the Life of Lord Byro?i j in 1831, The Club-Book, and Lives of 
 the Players j in 1832, The Member, and The Radical; in 1833, Eben 
 Erskine, Stories of the Study, The Stolen Child, Poems, and Autobiography j 
 in 1834, My Literary Life, and Bogle Corbet (without date). In the 
 cultivation of this department of fiction, Gait, like John Wilson, James 
 Hogg and Andrew Picken, was incited by the glory with which it had 
 been invested by Scott, in his Waverley Novels; and his tales of Scottish 
 life, with those strongly individualized characters of now extinct type the 
 honest " Doctor," and the inimitable " Mr. Pringle," " Sir Andrew Wylie 
 of that Ilk," beau ideal of Scotchmen, " Leddy Grippy," admired of Scott 
 and Byron, and the " Provost," whom Maginn is pleased to style the " first 
 of heroes," have possibly salt enough to keep them for awhile. They 
 exhibit, we are forced to admit, no lack of shrewd Scotch humour, pawky 
 sagacity, and occasional pathos ; but their humanity, somewhat narrowed 
 and localized by provincialism, is less catholic in its sweep than that which 
 lives and breathes in the immortal fictions of Scott ; and they are deficient 
 in those touches of nature which bring the whole world into kinship. The 
 Life of Mansie Wauch, better than any of them, and of which more anon, 
 is erroneously attributed to Gait, in the obituary notice in the Gentle- 
 
 * Reviewed by Sir Walter Scott in his Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xviii. p. 333, 
 and Blackwood's Magazine, July, 1836. 
 
JOHN GALT. 39 
 
 marts Magazine, vol. ii. p. 93. Of the long series of literary productions 
 which I have recorded, extending to nearly four-score volumes, much is mere 
 bookseller's hack-work which does not need or deserve parti cularization. 
 
 Gait, in that Life of Lord Byron, which Maginn pronounces to be 
 " the best and most honest history of the wayward course of that illustrious 
 childe," has rather spoilt a good story in the telling. Speaking of the 
 clever, but eccentric sister of Lord Carlisle, characterized by Charles 
 James Fox as 
 
 " Carlisle, recluse in pride and rags," 
 
 he talks about a " still coarser apostrophe," in the shape of " two lines " 
 written in answer to the command of her ladyship to go about his business, 
 for she " didn't care two skips of a louse for him." * Now the fact is, the 
 witty impromptu consisted of four lines instead of two ; and forms so 
 admirable an epigram, that, despite its " coarseness," it merits preserva- 
 tion. It is as follows : 
 
 "A lady has told me, and in her own house, 
 She does not regard me three skips of a louse ; 
 I forgive the dear creature whate'er she has said, 
 For women will talk of what runs in their head/" 
 
 It is hard to botanize on one's mother's grave ; and there is something 
 that jars on the mind when we read Gait's story (page 62) of Byron 
 distracting the melancholy of his thoughts by a sparring-bout with his 
 servant on the day of the funeral of her of whom he spoke as his " one 
 friend in the world." Still, it is consolatory to be told by the domestic 
 that his master " hit harder than usual : " and it is on record that another 
 poet, the " divine " Hayley, composed a sonnet on his return from the 
 funeral obsequies of his son. 
 
 No one will care a jot to learn the minute details of Gait's squabbles 
 with the Canada Company. The brief facts are these. Having been 
 instructed by the Canadians to urge their claims on the home government 
 for alleged losses during the occupation of the provinces by the army of 
 the United States, his proposal was accepted that these claims should be 
 defrayed by the sale of Crown lands in Upper Canada. A company was 
 formed in 1826 to purchase and colonize these, and he went out to value 
 them. Under his directions, the settlements were founded ; Guelph is 
 indebted to him for its existence, and the village of Gait preserves the 
 memory of its origin in its name. But his popularity, for some cause, 
 waned ; complaints were made by the Governor against him ; and he was 
 superseded by the directors, perhaps in part at least from the " nature of 
 all human assemblies to kick down the ladder by which they have been 
 raised." Anyway, Gait returned finally to England in 1839, when he was 
 compelled by external pressure to take the benefit of the Insolvent Debtors' 
 Act. His younger son, Sir Alexander Gait, is the well-known and influen- 
 tial Canadian statesman. 
 
 He now applied himself to literature, as he himself touchingly says, 
 " to wrench life from famine." He became editor of the Courier, but did 
 not hold the appointment long. His health speedily broke up ; paralysis 
 supervened ; and he died at Greenock, April 11, 1839, a few days after he 
 had undergone a fourteenth attack of palsy. 
 
 Literature produced under such circumstances, must not be judged too 
 
 * Life of Lord Byron, p. 33. 
 
4 o THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY, 
 
 harshly. The unfortunate author seemed unaware of the failure of his 
 powers, among which, invention, at the least, was active to the last. 
 Novels, tales, magazine contributions, and his immethodic autobiographies, 
 remain to attest to the manly courage with which he battled against 
 adverse fate in his latter days. Macaulay could not have thought much 
 of his literary style if, as alleged, when wishing to characterize something 
 especially vile, he said that it " reminded him of Gait when writing his 
 finest ; " and Moore has embalmed some of the choicest specimens of his 
 diction in his lines entitled, "Alarming Intelligence ! Revolution in the 
 Dictionary ! ! One Gait at the head of it ! ! ! 
 
 " God preserve us ! There's nothing now safe from assault ; 
 
 Thrones toppling around, churches brought to the hammer ; 
 And accounts have just reach'd us that one Mr. Gait 
 Has declared open war against English and Grammar 1 " * 
 
 VIII. WILLIAM MAGINN, "THE DOCTOR." 
 
 " BEAT Bentley, if you can, but omit the brutality ; rival Parr, eschewing 
 all pomposity ; outlinguist old Magliabechi, and yet be a man of the 
 world ; emulate Swift in satire, but suffer not one squeeze of his sceva 
 indignatio to eat your own heart. Be and do all this, and the ' Doctor' 
 will no longer be a unique. Long may he continue at once the star of 
 our erudition, our philosophy and our dialectics, and in his own immor- 
 tal words, 
 
 " ' A randy, bandy, brandy, no Dandy, 
 Rollicking jig of an Irishman I '" 
 
 So far, the brilliant schizzo in Fraser, for which, the Doctor's native 
 modesty not allowing to exhibit himself, the pen of his ever constant 
 friend, J. G. Lockhart, was called into requisition. Jubilant in prospect, 
 sad in retrospect, for it is sad to think that the renowned " standard- 
 bearer," a giant in literature, an erratic genius, Protean in intellect as 
 in appellation, an avbp nvpiavovs, should, in his own miserable case, serve 
 to point to the old, old moral, one of the most melancholy, because the 
 most striking, instances in the history of letters, of the utter absence, 
 amid all his splendid endowments, of that 
 
 " Prudent, cautious self-control," 
 
 which another unfortunate son of genius has told us, as the lesson of his 
 own bitter experience, 
 
 " Is wisdom's root." f 
 
 " Few men," says S. C. Hall, whose acquaintance with Maginn went 
 back to the days when the latter was a schoolmaster in Cork, " ever started 
 with better prospects ; there was hardly any position in the state to which 
 he might not have aspired. His learning was profound ; his wit of the 
 tongue and the pen ready, pointed, caustic and brilliant ; his essays, 
 tales, poems, scholastic disquisitions, in short his writings upon all 
 conceivable topics were of the very highest order. . . . His acquaintances, 
 
 * Moore's Poetical Works, Longmans, 1854, vol. ix. p. 48. f Burns. 
 
/pt/cl^i^ /^JU^*^-*^- 
 
 T HE IP (Q) T 
 
WILLIAM MAG INN, " THE DOCTOR." 41 
 
 who would willingly have been his friends, were not only the men of 
 genius of his time ; among them were several noblemen and statesmen of 
 power as well as rank. In a word, he might have climbed to the highest 
 rung of the ladder, with helping hands, all the way up ; he stumbled and 
 fell at its base." * 
 
 This is, indeed, nothing but the literal and miserable truth. What 
 can be therefore more sad than to survey, however imperfectly, this profit- 
 less and broken career ; and know that, after all, one so variously and 
 rarely gifted, of learning so profound and extensive, who, in philosophy 
 was pronounced by Dr. Moir, f "abler than Coleridge," in satire, declared 
 by Macnish " equal to Swift," as a political writer, termed by another 
 great authority, " the greatest in the world," as a companion, remem- 
 bered by Charles Knight as " one of the pleasantest and most improving 
 of his visitors," whose intellect, as the " Modern Pythagorean wrote, 
 " adorned every theme that it touched," who was characterized by his 
 biographer, Kenealy, " as a scholar, perhaps, the most universal of his 
 time, far more various in his learning than Voltaire, far more profound 
 and elegant than Johnson," of whose " abilities as a writer and conver- 
 sationist, and excellent nature as a man," Maclise could not find "words 
 powerful enough to convey his opinion," whom Richard Oastler, % who 
 was his companion in the Fleet, styled " the brightest star of intellectual 
 light," to whom the able editor of the Homeric Ballads said the " cele- 
 brated eulogy of Parr on Fox so perfectly applied that it seemed to have 
 been written for him," and who was described to Sir Robert Peel by the 
 friend who wrote to that illustrious statesman on behalf of the dying man, 
 as " an individual of exalted genius, the most universal scholar, perhaps, 
 of the age, and as good, and kind, and gentle-hearted a being as ever 
 breathed ; " should perish in the very prime and flower of life ; and this, 
 as we must infer, from his own imprudences in great measure ; and be 
 indebted to the munificence of a stranger for the support of his last days, 
 and the means of decent burial. 
 
 Passing from these anticipatory reflections, let us take a brief glance 
 at the leading events in the literary career of this extraordinary man. 
 
 William Maginn was born in 1794, and was a native of Cork, a city 
 which can also boast of having given birth to Crofton Croker, James 
 Sheridan Knowles, Forde, Hogan (the Sculptor), Barry and Maclise, 
 (the Royal Academicians), Jack Boyle (the witty editor of the Cork 
 Freeholder), the learned James Roche (the well-known "J. R." of the 
 Gentleman's Magazine), Richard Sainthill (the numismatist), Rogers 
 ("the father of landscape painting in Ireland"), Richard Millikin (author 
 of the immortal Groves of Bladney), Francis Mahony (better known as 
 "Father Prout"), Dr. Edward Vaughan Kenealy (the Barrister, a 
 scholar, a poet, and a man of genius), the early lost Jeremiah Daniel 
 Murphy, || my late friend, J. Milner Barry, M.D., of Tunbridge Wells (an 
 
 * Book of 'Memories, p. 158. 
 
 f The celebrated " Delta" of Blackwood 's Magazine. 
 
 % Author of the Fleet Papers, and one of the ablest writers on the Labour Question. 
 
 I am not sure that Mr. Sainthill was born at Cork, though he was long one of 
 the literary notables of the " beautiful city." He was fond of designating himself with 
 the genealogical pride of a true antiquary, of " Topsham, in Devonshire." 
 
 |j Son of D. Murphy, merchant, of Cork. He was only eighteen years of age at his 
 death, but had already mastered the Greek, Latin, French, Portuguese, Spanish, 
 German and Irish languages, and was said to be profoundly versed in their respective 
 
42 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 amiable man, and skilful physician, whose knowledge of literature was 
 equalled by few), cum multis aliis quos nunc perscribere longum est. 
 He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in his tenth year, and became a 
 Doctor of Laws at the unprecedentedly early age of twenty-five. While at 
 the University, he was the reputed author of a poem entitled JEneas Eunu- 
 chus, which excited much attention from the singularity of its theory, 
 sufficiently indicated by the title, and the boldness of its thought. 
 
 If I am not mistaken, Maginn commenced his career in this country 
 in the columns of the Literary Gazette, under the management of 
 Jerdan. He first corresponded with Blackwood in 1819, in the November 
 number of which year appeared his extraordinary Latin version of 
 " Chevy Chase." In the June number for the same year will be found 
 his continuation (Part iii.) of the " Christabel " of Coleridge, a poem which 
 in weird fancy, and graceful imagery, is, perhaps, hardly inferior to the 
 original. To the Literary Souvenir of 1828 he contributed his beautiful 
 story of " The City of the Demons ; " to the volume for 1829, " The Vision 
 of Purgatory ;" and he lent assistance, together with Thomas Keightley, 
 to the Fairy Legends of Crofton Croker. In 1830 was started Eraser's 
 Magazine, the early numbers of which were almost entirely written by 
 the Doctor, and his friend, Mr. Hugh Fraser, after whom, and not after 
 James Fraser, the publisher, the serial derived its name. Here in the 
 well-known Regent Street back-parlour, were written the inimitable 
 Fraser Papers: and here also were knocked off, curre?ite calamo, 
 and moistened by a ros purus, which, alas ! was not of Castalia, the 
 illustrative text to the Maclise portraits, " the most original and sparkling 
 of the Doctor's productions ;" and another evidence, when we think of 
 the manner of their production, how meteoric was the intellect from which 
 they emanated. In Eraser's Magazine, Nov., 1837, appeared a Shake- 
 spearian paper ; and in vol. xx. (Sept., Oct. and Dec.) a series of three articles 
 on the celebrated essay of Dr. Farmer, " On the Learning of Shakespeare." 
 These, with all their faults, they leave Farmer's essay, perhaps, where 
 they found it, are brilliant in treatment and discursive in illustration, 
 showing the wide and unexpected extent and direction of the Doctor's 
 reading, and I am at a loss to understand how it is that in these days of 
 " reprints," it has not occurred to some adventurous publisher to collect 
 and issue these Shaksfteariana, including old Farmer's prolusions, in 
 a substantive form. In No. lxiv. of Fraser, occurs the brilliant paper 
 u The Fraserians," and in No. lxxiii., the libellous, and certainly unjustifi- 
 able, review of the novel, Berkeley Castle. This led to the personal 
 and severe castigation, by the agency of a horsewhip, of Fraser, the 
 publisher, by the Hon. Grantley Berkeley, the author of the novel ; and 
 the action at law, " Fraser v. Berkeley and Another," which was tried 
 before Lord Abinger, in the Exchequer Court at Westminster, Dec. 3, 
 1836, resulting in damages for the plaintiff of ,100 ; an amount which 
 will not be thought excessive when we reflect that he never recovered 
 from the shock, which was, indeed, the proximate cause of his death. 
 There was also a cross action, " Berkeley v. Fraser," in which a verdict 
 
 literatures. His attainments in Science were also respectable. He was an early 
 contributor to Blackwood, where his " Adventus Regis" (No. lvi.), and his " Rising of 
 the North " (No. lxvii.), and other similar pieces, sufficiently exemplify his command 
 over the Latin language. A short obituary notice of him will be found in that 
 magazine, Feb., 1824, p. 250. (Appendix B.) 
 
WILLIAM MAGINN, " THE DOCTOR." 43 
 
 was entered by consent for the plaintiff, with damages forty shillings, 
 each party paying his own costs. 
 
 Besides these forensic tourneys, the litigant parties had recourse to a 
 more direct and speedy mode of settling their differences. On hearing of 
 the assault on Fraser, Maginn at once wrote to Berkeley, avowing the 
 authorship of the objectionable article. A challenge, in that day at least, 
 was the almost inevitable result. The meeting took place in a field on 
 the New Barnet Road, when three exchanges of shots took place between 
 the belligerents, without further damage than a graze on the heel of 
 Maginn's boot, and one on the collar of his adversary's coat. Bad blood 
 always remained between the antagonists. In the year following the 
 trial, Maginn again appeared in Fraser with a more carefully guarded, 
 but still truculent, attack on the Berkeley family ; for which Henry 
 F. Berkeley took revenge by stigmatizing the critic as u a blackguard 
 hireling of the most profligate part of the press, a stipendary assassin of 
 character, and a mean and malignant liar." Years after, when Grantley 
 Berkeley came to write his Reminiscences, he wove together that tissue of 
 lies and misrepresentations, relating to Maginn and Miss Landon, which 
 the late Mr. Gruneisen so conclusively pulled to pieces in the Globe or 
 Pall Mall Gazette (?). Grantley Berkeley died so recently as Feb. 23, 
 1 88 1, at the advanced age of 8i.* 
 
 The report in full of the trial will be found in Fraser's Magazine for 
 Jan., 1837 ; followed by Maginn's "defence," such as it is. 
 
 To the Drawing-Room Scrap-Book for 1836, then edited by Miss 
 Landon (" L. E. L."), Maginn contributed a poetical piece on the subject 
 of Albertus Magnus, at the age of 84, suddenly becoming aware, in the 
 presence of his class of pupils at Cologne, of the death, in 1274, of his 
 former pupil, St. Thomas Aquinas, " the Angelical Doctor," and bursting 
 into tears. Perhaps also by the same pen are the lines signed " W. M.," 
 The Farewell, page 33. 
 
 Turning again to Fraser's Magazine, in Nos. xcvi., xcvii. and xcix., 
 appeared that marvellous farrago of Rabelaisian wit and learning, " The 
 Doctor," a conjectural review of, and commentary upon, the celebrated 
 work of Southey, the authorship of which was then not known. But it is 
 impossible to give anything like a complete list of Maginn's contributions to 
 Regina, of which he was, from the commencement, the very soul and pre- 
 siding spirit. Again, in Blackwood (vol. xlviii.) we have his "Tobias Corre- 
 spondence," which, as he himself said, " contains the whole art and mystery 
 of writing a newspaper ; " this was written in a garret in Wych Street, 
 when hiding from the emissaries of the law, and is pregnant with his own 
 diversified literary experiences. Here, too, (vol. xi.) I would point to his in- 
 imitable song (see Appendix C), " The Wine Bibber's Glory," in English, 
 and rhyming Latin verse, equal to anything of Walter de Mapes or Vincent 
 Bourne, and reminding one of the choicest gems in the Eloge de I'Yvresse, 
 or the Vaux de Vire of the old Norman Anacreon, Olivier Basselin. 
 
 Space will not allow me to trace the course of Maginn through the 
 volumes of Blackwood. In vol. vii. is his Latin version of " Chevy Chase, 
 
 * See the obituary notice in the Times. In 1871, Mortimer Collins dedicated his 
 clever novel, Marquis and Merchant, "to the Honourable Grantley Fitzhardinge 
 Berkeley, who, both in Life and Literature, shows the true meaning of the Adage 
 Whom the Gods love die young.' " This little enigma may be safely left for my 
 readers to solve. 
 
44 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Fytte the Second," and in vol. viii., the" Semihorae Biographicas ; * and here 
 is also, in a paper entitled " Extracts from a Lost (and found) Memo- 
 randum Book," a project for getting rid of peripatetic beggars which may 
 be useful in these days, and which for the inimitable gravity and apparent 
 sincerity with which the absurd device is propounded, is almost worthy oi 
 comparison with Swift's notorious Project for Eating Children. In the 
 number for April, 1854, appeared his " Story without a Tail," since repub- 
 lished in the Pales from Blackwood. 
 
 I must not omit to point out that in Eraser's Magazine, Jan., 1838, 
 appeared the first of the celebrated " Homeric Ballads," of which there 
 are sixteen in all, the concluding one, actually dictated from his death-bed 
 to a friend, being the last poetical essay that proceeded from the Doctor's 
 facile pen, as his last prose paper was a " leader" for the Age. It is need- 
 less to speak at length of these " Ballads,'' which are well known through 
 the various reprints by Professor Conington, " the Modern Pythagorean,'' 
 and others. Gladstone himself speaks of their "admirably turned 
 Homeric tone;"* and Matthew Arnold says that they are vigorous 
 and genuine poems in their own way, and not one continued falsetto, like 
 the pinchbeck Roman Ballads of Lord Macaulay ; " f while an able anony- 
 mous critic affirms that he does not know a book " better calculated to 
 inspire a clever youth with a love of the Homeric poems." % 
 
 In the name of the Prophet, figs ! Goldsmith, with the same pen that 
 traced the undying lineaments of the Vicar of Wakefield, wrote for John 
 Newbury, the publisher, a catchpenny pamphlet on the Cock Lane Ghost, 
 not included in his collected works till the appearance of Peter Cunning- 
 ham's edition of 1854 ; Lockhart's range of subjects extended, as we have 
 seen, " from poetry to dry rot ; " and Maginn, who had sung the deeds of 
 the Trojan heroes, did not disdain, in a novel entitled the Red Barn, to 
 embody the strange story of Maria Martin, and the Polestead murder, oi 
 1828. The book sold by thousands, but the authorship was never 
 revealed. 
 
 In 1838, Maginn translated some of the dramatic pieces of Lucian for 
 Fraserj but notwithstanding their high merit, they did not seem to be 
 popular, and were not continued. 
 
 In newspaper literature, he was one of the chief contributors to the 
 John Bull; he was on the staff of the Age ; he wrote for the True Sun ; 
 he was chosen by Murray foreign editor of the unfortunate and short- 
 lived Representative, and in this capacity, resided for a while at Paris ; 
 and on the establishment of the Standard was appointed joint-editor with 
 Dr. Gifford. It must be held, moreover, a singular proof of the estimation 
 in which his abilities were held, that Murray, that &val of booksellers, as 
 Lord Byron termed him, should have made overtures to him, at that 
 time unknown to the public, so recently a junior schoolmaster in an Irish 
 provincial town, and who had written no book, to undertake a life of the 
 illustrious poet who had then just died. The letters and papers of 
 Byron were actually placed in his hands ; and it is probably true that 
 
 * Gladstone on Homer, 1858, vol. i. p. 3, note. 
 
 f On Translating Homer : Three Lectures given at Oxford by Matthew Arnold, 
 M.A., Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. i6i, 8vo, p. 50. 
 
 % Gentleman s Magazine, January, 1866, p. 105. 
 
 I must confess 'never to have seen this book, but give the statement on the 
 authority of the late John Timbs, F.S.A., in the Leisure Hair, Feb. 17, 1870, p. 605. 
 
William maginn, " the doctors 45 
 
 if he had executed the task we should have had a record emulating in its 
 shameless profligacy the Confessions of Rousseau, the Amours of Faublas, 
 and the Vie of Casanova. But Murray took alarm ; and it perhaps was as 
 well for the cause of morality and the reputation of Byron, that the task 
 of drawing up his life should have been ultimately placed in the hands of 
 one who, having been a Whig all his life, knew what would please his 
 party, and has finally given us that idealized portraiture which will convey 
 the " wayward childe " to posterity as a travelling nobleman of average 
 respectability. 
 
 The impulsive and versatile character of the genius of Maginn was 
 not favourable for the production of literary work requiring continuity 
 and concentration of effort. In this department, however, we must not 
 forget a somewhat remarkable novel from his pen, entitled Whitehall; or 
 the Days of King George IV., an octavo volume, published by W. Marsh, 
 without date (1827), or author's name. This is styled by Jerdan"a 
 singular example of wild genius," and another authority characterized it 
 as "one of the most wild and extraordinary productions of the day, over- 
 flowing with madcap wit and quaint humour, and containing sketches of 
 all the leading characters of the time, from George IV. down to Jack 
 Ketch, the hangman. To the last-named office, by an inimitable stroke 
 of humour, is appointed Mr. Tierney, who, having come up to town, with 
 an earnest desire to be made Prime Minister, and having in vain solicited 
 that or some other place, finally, in despair, accepts the office of execu- 
 tioner, and performs the last ceremonies of the law on Mr. Huskisson, 
 who, he tells us, ' amid the acclamations of surrounding thousands, died 
 easily and instantaneously.' This work is very rare, but it will well repay 
 any one who will take the trouble of searching for it through the old book- 
 shops of London." * This very curious book, in which a fair joke is some- 
 what spoiled, it must be confessed, by being wire-drawn through 330 pages 
 and encrusted with a certain amount of ill-nature and coarseness, is noticed 
 in the Qaurterly Review (Jan., 1828), where its true object is pointed out, 
 * " to laugh down the Brambletye House species of novel," and its study 
 recommended to those "well-meaning youths who imagine that a few scraps 
 of plundered antiquarianism,a prophetical beldam, a bore, and a rebellion 
 are enough to make a Waverley novel." The book may, indeed, be re- 
 garded as a satire on Horace Smith, and a series of parodies of his so- 
 called historical fictions. Just as a taste of its quality, and to serve as a 
 pendant to Byron's versified satire on the banker-poet, I shall transcribe 
 an extract, the prose portrait of " Sam Hodges " : 
 
 "This singular and eccentric man was never seen by strangers, but 
 with astonishment. Nature, which made him by profession a punster, 
 seemed to have intended his very person for a sort of joke. He was 
 about four feet high, and his head was at least a quarter of that size. It 
 hung heavily to one side, and his countenance, of an unearthly paleness, 
 drooped like an overgrown turnip hanging upon a pole. His under jaw 
 projected considerably, and gave him the appearance of a perpetual grin. 
 His lack-lustre eye shot its leaden beams from under shaggy eyebrows, 
 and his locks, untamed by brush or comb, hung in grizzly knots over his 
 wrinkled brow. Lord Byron,f with that disregard for decorum of language 
 which so conspicuously marked the conversations of that celebrated poet, 
 
 * Dublin University Magazine, vol. xxiii. p. 36. 
 
 \ Here we are referred to Conversations of Lord Byron, "by Captain Pimp," p. 337, etc, 
 
46 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 used rather blasphemously to call him a caricature of a crucifixion. Strange 
 being ! Yet under that odd and repulsive appearance he possessed wit 
 unbounded, jocularity unceasing, deliberate courage, magnanimous phil- 
 anthropy. Sage in council, jocose at table, valiant in action, luxurious in 
 ease, he was the idol of London. Wherever he went, joy brightened 
 every countenance, and the very phrase, * It's a saying of Sam's,' became 
 proverbial to express the highest degree of wit. In this particular, 
 indeed, he was unequalled ; none, in fact, approached him, except the 
 illustrious Hallam,who, we are informed by some of the principal critical 
 works of the age, wrote a jocular treatise on the Middle Ages which has 
 not come down to posterity, but which, in his own generation, appears to 
 have excited a universal laugh wherever it was mentioned." * 
 
 Another novel, which had originally appeared in Ainszvorth's Magazine, 
 was reissued in separate form, after his death, and assumes an im- 
 portance not its own from the designs of the inimitable George Cruik- 
 shank, by which it is illustrated ; this is John Manesty ; or the Liverpool 
 Mercha?it, 1844, 2 vols. 8vo. The collector, too, may care to be 
 reminded of that little pocket " La Rochefoucauld " of the diner-out and 
 man-about-town, The Maxims of Sir Morgan O'Doherty, Bart. Black- 
 wood, 1849. 
 
 I have alluded to Maginn's skill in Parody; in this branch of 
 humorous literature he was truly facile princeps, the greatest of his time, 
 if not of all time. His effusions in this way are scattered here and there, 
 but the curious reader may find some specimens in W. Jerdan's 
 Autobiography , vol. iii., p. 82. As a Song-writer he was not excelled even 
 by Procter (" Barry Cornwall ") ; and as a Conversationist, his table-talk 
 is represented by one who had enjoyed it, to be " an outpouring of the 
 gorgeous stores wherewith his mind was laden, flowing on like the storied 
 Pactolus, all golden " 
 
 *' Quidquid come loquens, atque omnia dulcia linquens," f 
 
 and to be devoid alike of the turgid pomposity of Johnson, and of the 
 often tedious monotony of Coleridge. The learned Heinsius was pro- 
 nounced by our own Selden " quam severarum turn amasnarum literarum 
 Sol " ; and Buchanan, the Scottish poet, was characterized as " omni 
 liberali eruditione non leviter tinctus, sed penitus imbutus." Such 
 hyperbolic phrases of eulogy, which the scholars of old were wont to 
 apply to each other, find a parallel in those by which the friends and im- 
 mediate contemporaries of William Maginn have expressed their estima- 
 tion of the genius and attainments of the departed scholar. Hear only 
 one, capable of judging, and who knew him from the very commencement 
 of his literary career to its mournful close, the late William Jerdan 
 "There is scarcely any species of literature of which he has not left 
 examples as masterly as any in the language. Romancist, Parodist, 
 Politician, Satirist, Linguist, Poet, Critic, Scholar, pre-eminent in all, and 
 in the last all but universal, the efflux of his genius inexhaustible." 
 
 But here I am warned to bring these notes to a conclusion, and hasten 
 to the closing scene, over which I would fain draw the curtain. With the 
 induration of intemperate habits, and the want of ordinary prudence, his 
 
 * Page 85. 
 
 t I have restored this line, which occurs among the Fragmenla of Cicero ; it seems 
 incredible that a scholar should have misquoted it as Kenealy has done. 
 
WILLIAM MAG INN, " THE DOCTOR." 47 
 
 "only fault," said Macnish, was that he was careless of the morrow, 
 Maginn had been gradually descending in the world, till at length he 
 became a prey to all the ills, barring, indeed, the fourth, which 
 
 " the scholar's life assail, 
 
 Toil, envy, want, the patron and the gaol " * 
 
 and which are happily more characteristic of the age which produced his 
 countrymen, Goldsmith, Sheridan, and Dermody, than his own. Finally, 
 a speculation to reprint, under the title of Magazine Miscellanies, the 
 choicest of his contributions to serial literature, not having been success- 
 ful, Maginn, in 1842, was thrown into the Fleet Prison for the expenses. 
 Hence he emerged penniless, and in the last stage of consumption. In 
 this sad condition, he was enabled to retreat to Walton-upon-Thames, 
 and there he breathed his last, Aug. 20, 1842, in the forty-ninth year of 
 his age, like Sheridan, utterly forsaken by the party for which he had 
 done so much, and in ignorance of the noble munificence of Sir Robert 
 Peel,t whose gift of ,100, in answer to the touching appeal made to him 
 on behalf of the dying scholar, only arrived in time to pay his burial fees. 
 Alas ! poor Yorick. 
 
 In the Dublin University Magazine for January, 1844, appeared a long, 
 affectionate and scholarly, if laboured and pedantic biographical notice 
 of Maginn. This has been attributed to D. M. Moir ; but was actually 
 written by his reverent and faithful friend and townsman, the late Edward 
 Vaughan Kenealy, LL.D. The portrait prefixed to this, a sort of imita- 
 tion of ours in Fraser, is by Mr. Samuel Skillin, of Cork ; it is pro- 
 nounced an admirable likeness, but its artistic inferiority is at once manifest, 
 on comparing it with the masterly sketch by Maclise. 
 
 In the following year, 1845, was published by Churton of Holies Street, 
 a charming little volume by the since notorious writer to whom I have just 
 alluded ; a rare mixture of Attic learning and Irish fun, which the lover 
 of classical delicioz will do well to hunt up, and place, if he has the luck 
 to meet with it, for it, too, is now a rare book, by the side of the Reliques 
 of Father P rout. It is entitled Brallaghanj or the Deip?iosophists j and 
 besides the humorous characterizations of Maginn and the other members 
 of the Fraserian party, it contains at the end an affectionate and touching 
 tribute to the deceased scholar, and a generous estimate of his character 
 as a writer, and a man. One passage from this and I have done : 
 
 u His funeral was quite private, and was attended only by a very few 
 friends, who loved him fondly while he lived, and venerate his memory 
 now that he is gone ; and the tears that fell upon his grave were the last 
 sad tribute to as true and warm and beautiful a soul as ever animated a 
 human breast. The place in which he is buried is one that his own 
 choice might have selected, for the Spirit of Repose itself seems to dwell 
 around it, and lends a new charm to its rustic beauty. ^ No noise is ever 
 heard there but the rustling of the trees, or the gay chirp of the summer 
 
 * Dr. Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes. 
 
 *f* This generous conduct on the part of the great statesman is the more to be com- 
 memorated, when we know that he had no personal knowledge of Maginn ; that he 
 had, a year or two before, contributed a like sum, through Lockjiart, with a special 
 stipulation of secresy, on the occasion of a private subscription to relieve him from 
 some instant necessity ; and that, moreover, he had been most bitterly assailed in every 
 form of satire, by Maginn, who, as an Irish Orangeman, had unflinchingly opposed Sir 
 Robert's pro-Catholic policy of 1829. 
 
48 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 blackbirds, or the echo of the solemn hymns as they ascend to heaven in. 
 music on the Sabbath. Strangely contrasted, indeed, is its peacefulness 
 with the troublous scenes of his many-coloured life, and provocative 
 of pensive reflection the gentle silence that invests it like a spell. The 
 rude villager, as he passes over his grave, little dreams of the splendid 
 intellect that slumbers beneath, or the host of sweet and noble traits that 
 lived within the heart already mouldering under his feet into a clod of 
 the valley. But his genius has already sanctified the ground, lending to it 
 the magic which entwines itself with the homes or tombs of celebrated men, 
 rendering it henceforward a classic and muse-haunted solitude, to which 
 history will point, and making it for all time a spot to which the scholar 
 will piously resort, and where the young enthusiast of books will linger 
 long and idolatrously in the soft sunlight, or beneath the radiant stars." 
 The following witty and pathetic lines, termed by one of our leading 
 newspaper critics "a vicious epitaph,"* were written on his deceased 
 friend, by Lockhart : 
 
 " Here, early to bed, lies kind William Maginn, 
 Who with genius, wit, learning, life's trophies to win, 
 Had neither great lord, nor rich cit of his kin, 
 Nor discretion to set himself up as to tin ; 
 So, his portion soon spent, like the poor heir of Lynn, 
 He turn'd author, while yet was no beard on his chin ; 
 And whoever was out, or whoever was in, 
 For your Tories his fine Irish brains he would spin ; 
 Who received prose and rhyme with a promising grin, 
 ' Go ahead, you queer fish, and more power to your fin 1' 
 But to save from starvation stirr'd never a pin. 
 Light for long was his heart, though his breeches were thin, 
 Else his acting, for certain, was equal to Quin ; 
 But at last he was beat, and sought help from the bin, 
 (All the same to the Doctor, from claret to gin), 
 Which led swiftly to gaol, with consumption therein. 
 It was much, when the bones rattled loose in his skin, 
 He got leave to die here, out of Babylon's din. 
 Barring drink and the girls, I ne'er heard of a sin, 
 Many worse, better few, than bright, broken Maginn." 
 
 Walton-on-Thames, August, 1842. 
 
 I would touch with the softest hand upon the vice which, in these 
 beautiful lines, is spoken of as having brought this gifted son of genius 
 to disgrace, disease and death. " The rock upon which Steele and Burns 
 split," says one who knew him, " the sole blot upon Addison, the only 
 stigma upon Charles Lamb, that which exiled Fox from the cabinet of 
 England, and reduced Sheridan to poverty and shame, was the ruin, too, 
 of the late William Maginn." Here, in expending the moral character 
 of the man, it is but fair to take into account the possibility that he was 
 unhappy in his domestic relations. I say "possibility," because there is 
 a discrepancy of evidence which I am unable to reconcile from my own 
 knowledge. Kenealy says that he loved his children with devotion, and 
 that "their presence always brought brightness to his eyes;" but he 
 adds, if indeed he was the author of the obituary article I have referred 
 to, that he had " the misfortune to render applicable to him the bitterest 
 part of the epigram of Phillipides, "Aurxpav ywaik? eyhnas." On the other 
 
 * The Daily News, Nov. 13, 1873. The reader will judge of the propriety of the 
 appellation. 
 

 
 AUTHOR OF "THE IRISH EAIB-Y LEGEUDST 
 
CROFTON CROKER. 49 
 
 hand, a better authority, John Gibson Lockhart, speaks of the widow of 
 his friend as " a most respectable gentlewoman ; " nor did he, it is well to 
 add, relax his exertions on her behalf, till he had secured for her " comfort- 
 able quarters in Bath," where she survived till 1859.* Of the children so 
 loved, the only son received a cadetship in the East Indies from Sir Robert 
 Peel's last government ; one daughter died young ; and a second married 
 Mr. P. Scott, H.E.I.C.S., who is, I think, known as a writer of verses. 
 
 It may be pretty safely assumed that " Charlie Shandon," of Pendennis, 
 was intended as a portraiture of Maginn, correct, doubtless, in many 
 respects, but cruel, cynical, Thackerayish I 
 
 An adequate life of Maginn would be an interesting work, and could 
 not fail to throw much light upon the journalistic and serial literature 
 of his brief period. What has become of the materials, which, it was 
 understood, the late Thornton Hunt, a man in every way fitted for the 
 performance of this desiderated task, had been long employed in bringing 
 together ? As to republication of the works themselves, the booksellers 
 seem to have in view the failure which attended Maginn's own attempt 
 to bring into collected form his scattered contributions to periodical 
 literature. The Magazine Miscellanies, to which I have referred as a 
 last link in the author's chain of misfortunes, are so rare that twenty 
 years' search among the London bouquinistes will hardly result in the 
 recovery of an odd number or two. Mr. W. Carpenter is fortunate in 
 possessing nine, probably all published, the contents of which he gave 
 in Notes and Queries (first Series, vol. ii. p. 13, 1850). Almost equally 
 difficult of procuration is the Transatlantic collection of Maginn's writings, 
 published in New York, under the editorship of J. Shelton Mackenzie, 
 LL.D., a review of which will be found in the Gentleman 's Magazine, for 
 June, 1859. What have become of the collectanea of Mr. Tucker Hunt (the 
 brother of F. Knight Hunt, author of the Fourth Estate, etc.), which we 
 were led to believe would some day see the light ? Surely the time has 
 arrived when some enterprising publisher would find his account in 
 collecting and giving forth, if not a complete, this I am afraid is 
 impossible, not only from the vast mass of material, but the death of 
 those who possessed knowledge to discriminate, at least a partial 
 gathering of Maginn's fugitive and scattered pieces. Surely a selection 
 would sell ; and if judiciously made would still serve to hand down to 
 later ages a portraiture of the man, the extent and profundity of his 
 learning, the brilliancy of his wit, the richness of his humour, the versa- 
 tility of his genius, and vindicate his claim to a proximate niche in the 
 temple of fame with the great foregone masters in his own peculiar line 
 of writing, with Lucian, with Aristophanes, with Rabelais, and with 
 Swift. 
 
 IX. CROFTON CROKER. 
 
 It has been suggested that "Crofty" was an "original nursling of the 
 Fairies " ; but whether Cluricaune, Phooka, or Lepricaune is left to 
 conjecture. This from his exiguity of bulk, Maginn gives him 4 feet 
 10^ inches of height, and 7| stone of weight, but what matters bulk or 
 
 * Illustrated Nezvs, June nth, 1859. 
 
50 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 stature ? Dr. Watts, too, was a little man ; and when taunted with the 
 smallness of his person, is said to have exclaimed : 
 
 ' ' Were I so tall to reach the Pole, 
 Or grasp the ocean with my span, 
 I would be measured by my soul, 
 The mind's the standard of the man ! " 
 
 The story may be true, or not ; it is at least ben trovato. Croker 
 might well submit to the same test ; for if he has not left the shade of 
 a great name upon the earth, he attained a respectable place in the 
 republic of letters, and has left behind him the sweet savour of an 
 honourable and useful career. 
 
 Thomas Crofton Croker, to give him his whole name, was, like 
 Maginn, a Corcagian, born in the " beautiful city," on the lovely banks of 
 " The spreading Lee, that, like an island fair, 
 Encloseth Corke with his divided flood," 
 
 on the 15th January, 1798. In a paper on " Irish Minstrelsy," which he 
 contributed to Fraser in the second month of its existence (March, 1830), 
 he, with pardonable, yet characteristic, egotism, translates, from the 
 original Irish, as "a specimen of the improvisatory power of the pro- 
 fessional Keener," a long string of impromptu verses on his departure 
 from his native city ; 
 
 1 ' I liked your dark eyebrows, 
 And eyes bright and merry, 
 And your cheeks that resemble 
 
 The hawthorn berry. 
 Master Crofton, your country 
 You leave but for dangers 
 To meet with false Saxons, 
 And cold-hearted strangers," 
 
 and then the old objurgation against fierfide Albion : 
 
 ' ' The country of Saxons 
 
 Takes all of our quality, 
 And, I've heard it from many, 
 
 Has small hospitality. 
 That little's the welcome 
 
 For the Irish among them ; 
 But their only delight is 
 
 To cheat and to wrong them," * 
 
 and so on, interminably. Well, the beldame was Irish, and I do not 
 suppose for a moment that she ever thought that her favourite had met 
 with his deserts ; but I think that a glance at his career will result in the 
 belief that it was a reasonably successful one. Upon his arrival in 
 England, his first visit was paid to his countryman, Tom Moore, at 
 Sloperton Cottage, Wiltshire ; he shortly proceeded to London, where 
 it was not long before he received from John Wilson Croker (a name- 
 sake, but in no way related), the appointment at the Admiralty, which he 
 held for nearly thirty years, retiring in 1850, as senior clerk of the first 
 class. In literature he is perhaps best known by his Fairy Legends and 
 Traditions of tlie South of Ireland, which first appeared in 1825. This 
 was translated the same year into German by the brothers Grimm, with 
 
 * The particular Keen, of which these verses form part, is appended to the volume 
 Keens of the South of Ireland, Collected, Edited, and chiefly Translated by T. Crofton 
 Croker. Printed for the Percy Society, No. xlvi., June, 1844. 
 
CROFTON CROKER. 
 
 51 
 
 an elaborate introduction ; and in 1828 into French, by P. A. Dufau. 
 The second English edition was illustrated with etchings by Maclise ; * 
 and the work, which was held to constitute its author " the honourable 
 member for Fairyland," was afterwards condensed by Murray for his 
 " Family Library/' in which form, the tales diminished in number by 
 one-fifth, and all superfluous annotations left out, with the exquisite 
 little wood-cuts after W. H. Brooke, we generally see it. Although 
 Croker has somehow managed to get all the credit of the book, it was 
 undoubtedly a composite production, of which it is probably impossible, 
 now that Thomas Keightley is not here to help us,f to apportion the 
 shares correctly to their different authors. The son of Mr. Croker, in the 
 memoir of his father, prefixed to the Walk from Lo?idon to Fulkam, gives 
 no hint that others were concerned in the fabrication of the work ; but a 
 more immediate contemporary, A. A. Watts, is severe upon the subject : 
 
 1 ' See Crofton Croker, 
 
 That dull, inveterate, would-be joker ; 
 I wish he'd take a friendly hint, 
 And when he next appears in print, 
 Would tell us how he came to claim, 
 And to the book prefix his name 
 Those Fairy Legends, terse and smart, 
 Of which he penn'd so small a part ; 
 Wherefore he owned them all himself, 
 And gave his friends nor fame, nor pelf ? " % 
 
 My friend, the Rev. Charles Arthur Maginn, M.A., Rector of Killa- 
 nally, Cork, informs me that he has in his possession a copy of the Fairy 
 Legends, in which he noted down from the direct statement of his brother, 
 the " Doctor," the tales contributed by him to the work. These were 
 four in number, "The Legend of Knocksheogowna," " The Legend of 
 Bottle Hill," " Fairies or no Fairies," and " Daniel O'Rourke," the last 
 named certainly one of the best in the collection. The remaining 
 " Legends " have to be distributed among Croker, Keightley, Humphries, 
 Lynch and others. 
 
 Crofton Croker was author also of Researches in the South of Ireland, 
 1824; Legends of the Lakes, 1829; and numerous contributions to the 
 Gentleman's and Fraser's Magazine, besides, as Maginn puts it, " various 
 pretty antiquarian papers in a thousand unheard-of vehicles." In 1837, he 
 translated and published (F. and W. Boone, New Bond Street, small 8vo, 
 pp. 139) The Tour of the French Traveller, M. de la B outlay e le Gouz, in 
 Ireland, A.D. 1644, with Notes and Illustrative Extracts contributed by 
 James Roche, Esq., of Cork, the Rev. Francis Mahony, Thomas Wright, 
 Esq., B.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the editor ; and in 1839, 
 he collected and edited, with Introduction, the Poptdar Songs of Ireland, 
 published by Henry Colbourn, small 8vo, pp. 340. 
 
 Another, and certainly not the least interesting of his publications, is 
 his Walk from London to Fulham, 8vo, Tegg, i860. This is a post- 
 humous republication of a series of papers which had previously appeared 
 
 * ' ' The etchings which have been added to this edition are from sketches by Mr. 
 McClise, a young Irish artist of considerable promise, who I trust will receive that 
 patronage which he so justly merits." Vol. i. 2nd ed. 1826, p. iv. 
 
 f Thomas Keightley, author of Fairy Mythology, the History of Rome, Greece, 
 and England, and many other books, died Nov. 4, 1872, in the 84th year of his age. 
 
 \ Literary Souvenir, 1832, p. 236. 
 
52 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 in Eraser's Magazine. They were subsequently collected, after the 
 author's death, by J. F. Dillon Croker, F.S.A., etc., who has prefaced the 
 volume by a memoir of his father, and are illustrated by the late Mr. 
 Fairholt. They constitute a literary and antiquarian itinerary of the 
 route between the extremities of which the author had for so many years 
 travelled backwards and forwards like a pendulum, to take a simile 
 from the symbolical initial letter at the beginning of the book, and 
 contain descriptions of many localities changed or forgotten, and indi- 
 vidual celebrities now long since passed away. 
 
 Croker married Marianne, daughter of Francis Nicholson, the eminent 
 landscape aquarellist, who died March 6th, 1844, aged 91 years. This 
 lady survived her husband by two months only, dying October 6th, 1854. 
 All three slumber in the same grave. 
 
 Between the years 1837 and 1846, Croker inhabited a charming cottage 
 at Fulham, which bore, as a legend on the gate-piers informed the 
 passers-by, the romantic appellation of " Rosamond's Bower." Of this 
 residence, with its garden, and its store of curiosities, pictures and books, 
 a privately printed description, of which but a very few copies were 
 distributed to his friends, was prepared by its inmate 
 
 " Parva domus ! nemorosa quies " 
 
 Here Croker was visited by Lucy Aikin, daughter of the once famous 
 Dr. Aikin, whom Lamb, or some wicked wag, styled " an aching void," 
 and a host of other celebrities. Here, when Major-General Sir Charles 
 O'Donnell was seated at lunch, Moore himself dropped in, and partook of 
 the repast. This event was commemorated by the proud and happy host 
 by an inscription on the back of the chair which the poet had occupied, 
 which produced a careless little^epigram from " Father Prout " : 
 
 " This is to tell o' days 
 
 When on this Cathedra, 
 He of the ' Melodies ' 
 Solemnly sat, agrah ! " 
 
 Among the curiosities collected by Croker was what he considered to 
 be the betrothal ring of Shakespeare, the " Gimmal Ring," which had 
 been placed by the bard's own hand upon the finger of his betrothed 
 bride, Anne Hathaway. This relic is fully described in Mr. Fairholt's 
 little book, The Home of Shakespeare ; and also in a letter from Croker 
 himself to Mrs. Balmanno, preserved in that lady's interesting volume, 
 Pen and Pencil (New York, 1858, small 4to), p. 163, where an engraving 
 of the ring is given. At the sale of Croker's effects in December, 1854, 
 this ring became the property of Mr. James Orchard Halliwell, who already 
 possessed a rival ring, of, it is said, inferior workmanship, of which a 
 representation is given in his Life of Shakespeare. 
 
 I am reminded, as I write, that the last letter written by Croker (July 
 21, 1854), was written to his friend Balmanno, and may be read in the 
 book I have mentioned (p. 170). In it he speaks of an approaching 
 " powerful operation," and hints that it may be the last letter he may have 
 it in his power to write to any one. 
 
 The literary pilgrim will seek in vain for "Rosamond's Bower," 
 unless, indeed, he is aware of the fact that the successor to Croker in its 
 tenancy, Mr. Thomas James Bell, altered the fantastic appellation to 
 " Audley Cottage." 
 

 o^JL^^ w^- 
 
 THE AUTHOR J THE TOBYUN& K"iE 
 
CROFTOM CROKER. 53 
 
 Croker was described by Sir Walter Scott, who breakfasted with him 
 at Lockhart's, as "little as a dwarf, keen-eyed as a hawk, and of easy 
 pre-possessing manners, something like Tom Moore." There is a 
 whole-length of him, in oil, by Maclise, in the possession of Richard 
 Sainthill, Esq., of Cork ; and a pen sketch in the Dubli?i University 
 Magazine, for August, 1849, greatly inferior to Maclise's outline here 
 before us, accompanied by a long memoir, of which the materials were 
 evidently furnished by himself. He will also be recognized in one of the 
 figures in his fellow-townsman, Maclise's picture, " Snap-Apple Night ; " 
 and he appears, in very characteristic miniature, in the engraving of 
 the Druidical remains at Gur Lough, in the Ge7itlemerts Magazine, for 
 February, 1833. 
 
 Lastly, should the curious reader pick up a volume which has belonged 
 to Croker's library, he will find detailed with amiable vanity upon the 
 book-plate, a veritable curiosity among ex libris, either indicating 
 the possessor's residence, " Rosamond's Bower, Fulham," or " 3, Gloucester 
 Road, Old Brompton," the various learned societies, with dates of mem- 
 bership, to which he belonged ; with the information, ad calcem, that he 
 was Founder and President (1828 to 1848), of the "Society of Novio- 
 magus." * 
 
 It was at this latter residence that our amiable antiquary died, in 
 the fifty-seventh year of his age, on August 8, 1854. 
 
 X. MRS. NORTON. 
 
 "Fair MRS. Norton!" we are tempted to ejaculate with Fraser, 
 " whom can we better choose for a beginning of our illustrious literary 
 portraits, when, diverging from the inferior sex, our pencil, dares to portray 
 the angels of the craft?" And what an exquisite delineation it is that we 
 here have of the fairest of the " Three Graces," as the Sheridan sisterhood 
 were called in their lovely spring-time, of this Sappho of our days, as 
 she was termed, the "Byron of modern poetesses," according to the 
 Quarterly, beautiful " Boudhist," as she was " baptized " by " Balaam 
 Bulwer ! " A charming portrait, truly, " whimsical," as D. G. Rossetti 
 so well puts it, " as in the spirit of the series, yet truly appreciative, of 
 that noble beauty which in Caroline Norton inspired the best genius of 
 her long summer-day." 
 
 This installation of the gifted authoress of The Undying One must be 
 taken as the fulfilment of a kind of promise, made some six months before, 
 at the close of an eulogistic review of that poem (Eraser's Magazine, ii. 
 180), to give the lovely poetess a place in the " Gallery." 
 
 The terrible " Doctor " was evidently in his softer mood, as he illus- 
 trated with pen the tracing of the pencil of Maclise ; Regina was looking 
 
 * The Noviomagians are a club composed exclusively of members of the Society of 
 Antiquaries. Their professed object is the discovery of the site of the ancient city 
 of Noviomagus, perhaps the Noviomagos of Ptolemy. Some would place it in Surrey, 
 some in Kent, and some in Sussex ; but pending identification of the precise spot, the 
 members dine together between the months of December and April. 
 
54 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 up ; the Siamese Twins * Bulwer's, I mean had received due castiga- 
 tion ; the last glass of gin-toddy was deftly mixed ; or which is more 
 probable, for the Doctor was an Irishman, he had for the nonce divested 
 himself of tooth and claw, like the amorous lion of Babrius, and was pros- 
 trate before the throne of beauty. 
 
 But it is time to ascend to the dry facts of history. Caroline Elizabeth 
 Sarah, Lady Stirling-Maxwell, otherwise and better known as the Hon. 
 Mrs. Norton, was the second daughter of Thomas Sheridan, and grand- 
 daughter of the Right Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and his first wife, 
 the celebrated Miss Linley. She was born in 1808 ; and prematurely 
 stimulated by the sense that she was co-heiress of the family genius, pro- 
 duced, when scarcely out of her teens, a satirical piece, The Dandies' Rout, 
 not the Dandies' 'Ball, as Maginn says, which was the work of an earlier 
 writer, in which the coxcombries of the day were happily touched off by- 
 pen and by pencil. By and by (1829) came the Sorrozus of Rosalie, which 
 the Ettrick Shepherd so extravagantly lauded in the Nodes Ambrosianai ; 
 and (1831) The U?idyi?ig One, a poem founded on that mysterious legend 
 of antiquity which has exercised the genius of C. F. D. Schubart among 
 the Germans, Eugene Sue among the French, and Shelley, Gait, Croly, and 
 in our own immediate day, Moncure D. Conway, among ourselves, 
 which was praised by Eraser, and thought worthy of the higher commen- 
 dation of the "blue and yellow." 
 
 In 1840, we have The Dream and other Poems, for which the Quarterly 
 hailed her the " Byron of her sex" ; in 1845, The Child of the Islands; in 
 1847, Aunt Carrf s Ballads, a book of poems for children ; in 1862, The 
 Lady of La Gar aye. 
 
 In the region of prose fiction, Mrs. Norton was equally successful ; her 
 nice discrimination of character, refined satire, sympathy with all that is 
 good and true, and absence of affectation, combining with her clear and 
 elegant style, and a captivating tone of sadness, to give her a high place 
 among the novelists of her day. I can but allude to her sad, sad story, 
 Stuart of Dwileath, 1835 ; Lost and Saved, 1863; and Old Sir Douglas, 
 1858, which are her best novels. 
 
 Beside these substantive works, Mrs. Norton's anonymous, or scattered 
 contributions to periodicals, home and foreign, poems, art-criticism, 
 tales, reviews, etc., are very numerous ; but no attempt can be made to 
 indicate them here. In Macmillan's Magazine, for Jan., 1 861, appeared 
 an important letter from her pen, in defence of the character of her grand- 
 father, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, unjustly aspersed, as she contended, by 
 the writers whose pen-names are " Grace and Philip Wharton," in their 
 work entitled The Wits and Beaux of 'Society. In this letter, she speaks 
 of. her projected Lives of the Sheridans, as " a task relinquished, with 
 many others, in the grief caused by the illness and death of her son." 
 
 Born to some competence, heir of an illustrious name, dowered with 
 high and diversified talents, and loveliest among the lovely " children of 
 
 * It was from this now forgotten satire, which had been recently reviewed in Eraser, 
 that Maginn got the phrase I have cited above : 
 
 " Here's Lady Gower, a charming face, 
 To heavenly vision to exhort one ; 
 And here, I think, we seem to trace 
 A future Boudhist, Nat, in Norton." 
 
 Siamese Twms, p. 122. 
 
MRS. NORTON. 55 
 
 the Islands," the lot of Mrs. Norton seemed to possess all the elements of 
 happiness. But there existed some fatal factor, some lurking cypher, as 
 it were to mar the sweet equation of life ; and domestic misery, wounded 
 affection, and unmerited shame, was its well-known story. In 1829, when 
 she was hardly out of her tutelage, she married Mr. George Chappie 
 Norton, a briefless barrister of small fortune, younger brother of the third 
 Lord Grantley,* and described as a selfish, worthless, indolent sensualist. 
 In 1830, on the accession to office of Lord Grey, the once gay and still 
 elegant Lord Melbourne was appointed Home-Secretary. He had been 
 the contemporary and friend of Tom Sheridan, and had cultivated the 
 acquaintance of his fascinating daughter. Giving heed to her entreaties, 
 he appointed her husband to a vacancy (Lambeth) in the Divisional 
 Magistracy of London ; obtained for him the Recordership of Guildford ; 
 and induced the king to sign a patent for the legal use of the prenominal 
 " Honourable." All went well for a time, and Norton's gratitude, always 
 fed by expectation of future benefits, was effusive. But the minister had 
 to remonstrate with the magistrate on the score of irregular attendance at 
 his court ; had no more lucrative office in his gift ; and objected to in- 
 definite pecuniary loans. Inde irce / Now came mean, petty and vicarious 
 revenge, ill-treatment of his wife, which Leycester Stanhope and Edward 
 Ellice were powerless to improve, attempts to get by threats what 
 toadyism had failed to obtain, and finally the struggle to extort from his 
 quondam patron the sum of ,10,000 damages as compensation for alleged 
 criminal intercourse with his wife. The trial took place June 22, 1836, 
 " Norton v. Melbourne," before Lord Chief-Justice Tindal and a special 
 jury. Sir William Follett led for the plaintiff, but with a bad case, broke 
 down hopelessly. The witnesses, chiefly servants who had been discarded 
 for immoral character, were laughed out of court. The verdict for the 
 defendant, given by the jury after a conference of a few seconds, was 
 received with loud bursts of applause ; and the Attorney-General, Sir 
 John Campbell (with whom was Mr. Sergeant Talfourd), who led for 
 Lord Melbourne, at the conclusion of the case late on in the evening, 
 proceeded to the House of Commons, where he received quite an ovation. 
 The examination of the witnesses for the plaintiff, in the sixpenny report 
 of the trial before me, " Embellished with a Portrait and Memoir of the 
 Hon. Mrs. Norton," led to details of the most filthy character, much, 
 indeed, being suggested by asterisks as unfit for publication. After this 
 disgraceful and scandalous affair, the couple lived apart for forty years, 
 squabbling from time to time about the management of their children, 
 financial arrangements, and the copyright of her books, which the chivalric 
 husband, who, happily for him lived before the passing of the Women's 
 Property Act, took care to legally secure for his own benefit, as soon as 
 they were severally issued. This sort of thing it was that extorted from 
 the injured authoress a privately printed volume in 1854, entitled English 
 Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century; and in the following year, 
 in pamphlet form, her impressive but too diffuse, Letter to the Queen o?i 
 
 * The Grantleys derive from the old baronial family of Coigniers (Conyers), which 
 came into England at the time of the Conquest. It was the complicity of the Nortons 
 with the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland, in an insurrection " to re- 
 establish the holy religion of their ancestors," in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and the 
 retribution which ensued, that suggested to Wordsworth his White Doe cf Rylstone, 
 or the Fate of the Nortons, and is the subject of several ballads in the Percy collection. 
 
56 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 I^ord Chancellor CranwortWs Marriage and Divorce Bill (Longmans, 
 8vo, pp. 155), in both of which will be found severe strictures on the state 
 of society and the marriage-law in England, with a narrative of the 
 circumstances connected with her own unfortunate experience. 
 
 In some sort, the ill-used lady had her revenge. Her unworthy 
 husband died Feb. 24, 1875, J ust before his elder brother, the third Lord 
 Grantley. Accordingly he missed the long expected barony, to which he 
 was next in remainder ; and this devolved upon his second son by the 
 wife who survived him to enjoy its reflected glories. 
 
 Here I am reminded of another scandal. In March, 1879, before Sir 
 James Hannen, in the Probate Division, was heard the case, Norton v. 
 Norton and Grantley," the petitioner being Colonel Norton, who had been 
 serving under the notorious and ill-used (Colonel) Baker Pasha in Turkey, 
 and the respondent the present Lord Grantley, the son of Mrs. Norton. 
 Here it was the husband's suit for a divorce on account of his wife's 
 adultery with the co-respondent. There was a claim for damages against 
 the latter ; but that having been withdrawn, Sir Henry James said he 
 could not defend the case on the part of the respondent, and there would 
 therefore be an end of it. Under these circumstances, the jury, under the 
 direction of the learned judge, gave a verdict for the petitioner ; and the 
 court pronounced a decree ?iisi with costs. 
 
 In the year following that in which the death of her husband released 
 her from conjugal thraldom, one of the oldest, the most valued and the 
 most faithful of her friends,* gave her the shelter of his name and position ; 
 and she became the wife of Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, M.P., of 
 Pollok, Renfrewshire. This gentleman, better known in literature as Sir 
 William Stirling, succeeded to the title, under the special limitation 
 assigned to the baronetcy by the patent of 1707, on the death without issue 
 of his maternal uncle, Sir John Maxwell, eighth baronet, in 1865 ; and 
 subsequently assumed the additional surname of " Maxwell." After his 
 graduation at Trinity College, Cambridge, he had lived for a considerable 
 time on the Continent, engaged in the study of literature and art. As re- 
 sult of his researches, he gave us in 1848 his Annals of the Artists of Spain; 
 and subsequently The Cloister Life of Charles V., and Velasquez and his 
 Works. In 1863, he was elected Rector of the University of St. Andrews ; 
 in 1871, Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh : in 1875, Chancellor 
 of the University of Glasgow ; and he was a trustee of the British 
 Museum, and the National Portrait Gallery. Lady Stirling-Maxwell 
 did not long survive this marriage, which seemed to promise some repara- 
 tion for her bewitched widowhood. She died three months after, on June 
 15th, 1877 ; and her husband shortly followed her to the grave, dying in 
 Venice, in the following January, in the sixty-first year of his age. 
 
 Sir William Stirling-Maxwell possessed one of the finest collections 
 of Emblemata in existence. In i860, he printed for private circulation 
 A Collection of Books of Proverbs, Emblems, Apophthegms, Epitaphs 
 and Ana, being a Catalogue of those at Keir; a volume now very 
 rarely to be met with. The number of works then chronicled was about 
 
 * " Truest of all, the friend, who at the last, 
 
 Gave her marred life the shelter of his name, 
 And a short sunshine o'er her evening cast, 
 Denied her in the morning of her fame." 
 } " Punch, June, 1877. 
 
MRS. NOR TOM 57 
 
 two hundred and twenty-five ; ten years later, he informed me that his 
 collection had increased to one thousand two hundred and fifty, but that 
 he was deterred by the bulk from printing a complete list, though his 
 MS. catalogue had been accurately kept up. He contemplated the 
 publication of a " mere list," and requested my assistance in the matter ; 
 but he died before the design was carried out, and this department of 
 bibliography sustained a loss, which will not speedily be supplied from 
 other quarters. It was rumoured that Sir William had left behind him 
 an autobiographic account of the more noteworthy incidents of his own 
 time, including facts not hitherto known, relating to the Melbourne- 
 Norton episode. Will they ever see the light ? 
 
 I have spoken of Mrs. Norton as one of the " Three Graces," an 
 appellation by which the daughters of Thomas Sheridan were known in 
 the morning of their beauty. Of the others, the elder, Helen Selina, 
 whom many would rank above her sister in the tenderness and refinement 
 of lyric verse, married, firstly Lord Dufferin, and secondly the Earl 
 of Gifford ; while the younger, Jane Georgina, became the wife of 
 Edward Adolphus, twelfth Duke of Somerset, and is still remembered by 
 grey-beards as the " Queen of Beauty at the Eglingtoun Tournament. 
 
 Within a few hours of the death of Lady Stirling-Maxwell, and to a 
 month or two, at the same age, died a lady whose life, " passed in a 
 frugal, poor, and peaceful home," offers a remarkable contrast to the 
 brilliant, but unrestful, career of her contemporary. This was Miss Mary 
 Carpenter, of Bristol, so well known for the active part she had taken in 
 the reformatory movement, and in the promotion of "ragged schools," 
 and female education. It hardly falls within my scope to attempt any- 
 thing like a Plutarchian Suy/cpicris, or comparison between these ladies 
 of such diverse paths in life ; so I refer my reader to the wise and witty 
 Punch, for June 30th, 1877, in which through a score of admirable quatrains 
 the contrast is depicted. 
 
 Shakespeare, jealously dogging the footfall of Time, implored him to 
 pass his mistress by, and leave her beauty unmarred, 
 
 *' Oh ! carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow, 
 Nor write rude lines there with thine antique pen." 
 
 Some such adjuration, one would think, had reached the ear of the 
 unstaying one, since, despite the fifty years that had slipped away, O 
 Posthumus, since Maclise traced in Fraser her lovely face and graceful 
 form, the lineaments of our Corinna are still beautiful as seen in her later 
 portraits. Those of T. Carrick and J. Hayter, in earlier life, are before 
 me ; and there is a marble bust, executed in London so far back as 1832, 
 by an admirable sculptor, my friend, Peter Hollins, still happily alive 
 among us in his native Birmingham, of which the best praise would be 
 that it was worthy of the original. (Appendix D.) 
 
 The following exquisitely polished lines, with which I cannot resist the 
 temptation to round off this notice, were written by Sir Edward Bulwer 
 Lytton : 
 
 "THE HON. MRS. NORTON. 
 
 " The queenly spirit of a Star 
 
 That longed to tread the earth, 
 Passed into mortal mould, the hour 
 Made holy by thy birth ; 
 
53 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 And kept its lustre and its power, 
 To teach the earth, 
 The wond'ring earth, 
 
 What shapes immortals are ! 
 
 " No human beauty ever bore 
 An aspect thus divine ; 
 The crown the brows of Seraphs wore 
 
 Hath left its mark on thine ; 
 Th' unconscious glories round thee bear 
 The stamp divine 
 Of One divine, 
 Who trod the spheres of yore. 
 
 " Oh ! radiant stranger, dost thou dream 
 That thine may ever be 
 The hopes and joys of human things ? 
 They were not meant for thee ! 
 Below, for thee, 
 No home for thee, 
 Bright Daughter of the Beam ! 
 
 " The yearning in thine absent eyes 
 Is for thy native shore ; 
 And heaven is heard in every wind 
 Thy heartstrings wandering o'er ; 
 In vain thou'st sought with us to find 
 The life before, 
 The light before 
 Thy spirit left the skies. 
 
 " And Mirth may flash around, and Love 
 May breathe its wildest vow ; 
 But neither Mirth, nor Love, shall chase 
 
 The shadow from thy brow ; 
 There's naught in fate that can efface 
 From that pale brow, 
 That stately brow, 
 The memories born above. 
 
 ' ' To mortals mortal change is given, 
 The sunshine as the rain ! 
 To them the comfort and the care 
 
 The pleasure and the pain ! 
 To thee and thine our very air 
 Is silent pain, 
 A heavy pain I 
 On earth thou askest heaven ! " 
 
 XL JOHN WILSON. 
 
 We most of us know the story of the circumforaneous tradesman who 
 Stole his besoms ready-made ; and some of us may perchance have 
 honoured his custom in its casual observance. This has its advantages. 
 That was not a bad epigram indited by old Townsend, sometime vicar 
 of Kingston-on-Sea, a celibate, misogynist, and old crony of Wordsworth 
 
THJ ETDITOR OF "BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE" 
 
JOHN WILSON. 59 
 
 and Southey when some burglars had made a nocturnal raid on his 
 parsonage : 
 
 " They came and prigg'd my linen, my stockings and my store, 
 But they couldn't prig my sermons for they were prigg'd before 1 " 
 
 according to which, if I avail myself of a sermo, where I find it, ready 
 to my hand, I shall be at least allowed to retain my plunder in tranquillity. 
 " What can be said of Professor Wilson worthy of his various merits ? 
 Nothing. Were we to reprint Lockhart's graphic account of him in 
 Peter's Letters, it would not tell half his fame. A poet, who, having had 
 the calamity of obtaining Oxford prizes, and incurred the misfortune of 
 having been praised by the Edinburgh Review, for some juvenile indis- 
 cretions in the way of rhyme, wrote the City of the Plague, which even 
 the envious Lord Byron placed among the great works of the age, and 
 which all real critics put higher than his poetical Lordship's best pro- 
 ductions in the way of tragedy, a moral professor who dings down the 
 fame of Dugald Stewart, a paltry triumph, we own, if truly considered, 
 over a small person, but a trial of no trivial moment, if the voice of 
 Edinburgh be counted of any avail, an orator who, sober or convivial, 
 morning or evening, can pour forth gushes of eloquence the most stirring, 
 and fun the most rejoicing, a novelist who has chosen a somewhat 
 peculiar department, but who, in his Lights and Shadows, etc., gives forth 
 continually fine touches of original thought, and bursts of real pathos, 
 a sixteen stoner who has tried it without the gloves with the game chicken, 
 and got none the worse, a cocker, a racer, a six-bottler, a twenty-four 
 tumblerer, an out and outer, a true, upright, knocking-down, poetical, 
 prosaic, moral, professorial, hard-drinking, fierce-eating, good-looking, 
 honourable, straightforward Tory. Let us not forget that he has leapt 
 twenty-seven feet in a standing leap, on plain ground ! Byron never 
 ceased boasting of the petty feat of swimming three or four miles with 
 the tide, as something wondrous. What is it to Wilson's leaping? A 
 gipsy, a magazine, a wit, a six-foot club man, an unflinching ultra in the 
 worst of times ! In what is he not great ? " 
 
 It is very hard to have to say something about a man of whose genius 
 a great master has proclaimed that nothing worthy can be said. But half 
 a century has passed over this dictum, and given me at least a few facts 
 to place upon record. 
 
 John Wilson was born May 19, 1785, at Paisley ; a town noted 
 not only for the production of shawls, but as the birth-place of Tannahill, 
 Alexander Wilson, and more than one other Scottish poet ; and where 
 Motherwell, if not born, passed his boyhood and youth. He received 
 his earlier education at the University of Glasgow, under such men as 
 Richardson, Jardine, Miller and Young ; and proceeded thence to Oxford, 
 where he graduated B.A., 1807 ; M.A., 1808 ; gaining the Newdigate 
 prize for poetry in the teeth of three thousand competitors, and the reputa- 
 tion of being the best boxer, the highest leaper, the most ardent cocker, 
 and the fastest runner among his fellow students. He was, moreover, 
 a Radical and Democrat of so advanced a type, that he thought it wrong 
 to employ a servant to black his boots, and was wont to perform that 
 necessary operation himself. 
 
 Of an inheritance of 40,000, derived from his father, a wealthy 
 manufacturer, his mother was lineally descended, on the female side 
 
60 THE MACL1SE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 from the great Marquis of Montrose, a great part was lost by the failure 
 of a mercantile concern in which it had been embarked. Soon after 
 quitting the university, he purchased the beautiful estate of Elleray, on 
 the noble lake of Windermere, which led to his intimacy with Words- 
 worth, Southey, Quillinan, Coleridge and De Quincey. Here he con- 
 tributed some fine letters to Coleridge's Friend, under the signature of 
 " Mathetes " ; and hence, quite as much as from the character of his 
 poems, his general association with the "Lake School." In 1812, 
 appeared The Isle of Palms; and in 18 16, The City of the Plague. These 
 poems, together with those by which they were accompanied, or which 
 subsequently appeared in the magazines of the day, gave the author a 
 high place among modern bards. The characteristics of his poetry are 
 exuberance of fancy ; tenderness and pathos ; sympathy with the beauties 
 of nature, and the charms of rural and contemplative life ; and touching 
 pictures of religious confidence and innocent love. These qualities 
 constitute the charm of Wilson's lesser poems, which will continue to 
 please ; but in the more sustained flights of his muse become, in spite 
 of the classical purity of their diction, almost monotonous in their even, 
 sustained and uncontrasted progression. Their early critic was Jeffrey, 
 who welcomed the new aspirant, and strove to withdraw him from the 
 " pond-poets " over the border. Of Wilson's novels, The Foresters, 
 Margaret Lindsay* The Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, it can 
 only be said that they possess excellencies and defects very similar to 
 those of his poetry. In 18 14, he came to reside in Edinburgh, and was 
 called to the bar, but never practised. In 1817, was started Blackwood's 
 Magazine, with its indiscriminate Toryism, its unjust and unreasoning 
 abuse of what it was pleased to term the " Cockney School," with Leigh 
 Hunt and Hazlitt at its head, and its glorification of everything north 
 of the Tweed, and whatever chanced to be written in what was 
 grandiloquently termed the British " Doric." Wilson, Lockhart and 
 Maginn were on the staff, and Blackwood's had already become known, 
 as was said, as the Blackguard's; when the two latter gravitating to 
 London, Lockhart in 1826, to edit the Quarterly, and Maginn, in 1830, 
 to establish Frasefs, Wilson was left to alter the character of the 
 magazine, and give it the high literary and critical standing which it 
 so long maintained. 
 
 Still, it must be admitted that John Wilson, in criticism as in other 
 walks of literature, too often made a reckless use of his vast powers, and 
 allowed judgment to be swayed by politics or nationality. Time has 
 reversed many of his verdicts ; and there is much truth, as well as beauty, 
 in the dictum of a modern writer f:" Christopher North, Cock of the 
 walk, whose crowings have now long given place to much sweet singing 
 that they often tried to drown ; and who, for all his Jove-like head, cloud- 
 capped in Scotch sentiment and humour, was but a bantam Thunderer 
 after all. . . . There they lie, broken weeds in the furrows traced by 
 time's ploughshare for the harvest which they would fain have choked." 
 One review, and one only, did Wilson write for the " blue and yellow." 
 
 * This beautiful story has been translated into French by Mme. La Comtesse 
 
 M , 4 vols. i2mo ; and is preceded by a " Notice " by M. de Barante, characterized 
 
 by a subtle and genial appreciation worthy of the author of the Hhtoire des Dues de 
 Bourgoqne. 
 
 f D. G. Rossetti. 
 
JOHN WILSON. 6 1 
 
 Tins was an article on the fourth canto of Childe Harold. He possessed 
 many of the qualities which go to form a great critic ; and was, indeed, 
 pre-eminently great, when the catholicity of his sympathies was not 
 impaired by political or national prejudice. Here, too, he was truly 
 original in style ; at once subtle in analysis, precise in discrimination, 
 genial in tone, and rich in imaginative illustration. In the union of these 
 characteristics, I do not know that he had a precursor, or that he has 
 since been surpassed. 
 
 In 1820, by the death of Thomas Brown, who, himself, had succeeded 
 Uugald Stewart, the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of 
 Edinburgh became vacant, and Wilson, to whom a fixed income had 
 become necessary, was urged by his friends, and especially by Sir 
 Walter Scott, to become a candidate. His opponent was Sir William 
 Hamilton, unfortunately his early friend, a gentleman, a scholar, a 
 logician and metaphysician of the highest rank. The contest was of 
 the keenest, but its bitterness was confined to the partisans of the 
 candidates. Wilson was as yet an untried, and comparatively unknown 
 man ; but his Conservatism, time had worked its wonders for him, and 
 he had long shed his radical skin, gained him the day, and he was 
 elected to the vacant chair mainly by political influence. This was not 
 as it should have been ; and there can be no question that Sir William 
 Hamilton was the fitter man. The experiment, however, turned out better 
 than could have been anticipated. Wilson had, perhaps, as was said, 
 to cram for his lectures ; but they were prepared with great care, and 
 delighted his auditory by their fire, originality and eloquence, and the 
 happy combination of literature, philosophy and poetry which they 
 exhibited. 
 
 Not to speak here of the immortal " Noctes Ambrosianae " would 
 indeed be an unpardonable omission. How capital is the motto, in the 
 humorously amplified rendering into English of the old Greek lines, 
 which stands at the head of each number in Blackwood ; 
 
 " This is a distich by wise old Phocylides, 
 An ancient who wrote crabbed Greek in no silly days ; 
 Meaning : "Tis right for good wine-bibbing people 
 Not to let the jug pass round the board like a cripple, 
 But gaily to chat while discussing their tipple.' 
 An excellent rule of the hearty old cock 'tis, 
 And a very fit motto to put to our Noctes." 
 
 Who is there who would not have given his very ears to be present 
 at the ever memorable noctes c<zna>qtie of our northern Athens, and listen 
 to the converse of these deipnosophists of modern times ; when North 
 and Hogg, and the rest of the Northern Lights were in their glory ; and 
 when, as has been well said, the brilliant wit, the merry song, and, from 
 time to time, the grave and interesting discussion, gave to the sanded 
 parlour of a common alehouse, the air of the Palaestra at Tusculum, 
 or the Amaltheum of Cumae. Here we have Wilson at his best, giving 
 us the reflex of his many-sided intellect, alternating poetry with politics, 
 wit with wisdom, pathos with bathos, fun with philosophy, literary gossip 
 with metaphysical discussion, gastronomy with asthetics, and this by 
 means of the most skilful and artistic ordonnajice of heterogeneous and 
 apparently unmanageable qualities and characters. Perhaps the domain 
 of literature hardly contains so remarkable an instance of the union 
 
62 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 of brilliant and diverse powers combining to form a marvellous and 
 harmonious whole. The character of the " Shepherd " is a glorious con- 
 ception ; and it is as he is made to speak, and look, and do, in the 
 Ambrosian symposia, that James Hogg will go down to posterity. 
 O'Doherty had laid down the principle that a journalist should never 
 deny a thing that he had not written, nor acknowledge one that he had. 
 Hogg found that his literary associates acted on this axiom, and deter- 
 mined that he would sign his name to every thing he published, that, 
 as he says, he might be answerable to the world only for his own offences. 
 But, says he, "as soon as the rascals perceived this, they signed my 
 name as fast as I did. They then contrived the incomparable ' Noctes 
 Ambrosianas,' for the sole purpose of putting into the mouth of the 
 Shepherd all the sentiments which they durst not avowedly say themselves, 
 and those too often applying to my best friends." 
 
 Wilson's portrait for the " Gallery " was not taken ad vivum, but from 
 the statue at Edinburgh, by Macdonald. Sic sedebat. The pugilistic 
 encounter, and the cocks dimicantes gratis, of which we catch a glimpse 
 without, remind us of the predilections of his ardent youth ; * but the 
 poet-philosopher is in his latter days, and his gaze is not upon the shows 
 of the outer world, as he sits, rapt in sublime and solitary meditation, 
 as it were, " waiting and wondering on vaster shores than lie by the 
 seas of time." f It is a fine conception, though it, perhaps, hardly recalls 
 the Christopher North of our thoughts ; and we would fain have the 
 intellectual as well as the physical Titan in his earlier years, "a cross 
 between the man, the eagle and the lion," as George Gilfillan described 
 him ; or in the guise in which rumour spoke of him to Hogg, as "a man 
 from the mountains in Wales, or the West of England, with hair like 
 eagles' feathers, and nails like birds' claws." 
 
 Wilson never entirely recovered from the shock produced by the 
 death of his wife, a beautiful and most amiable woman, in 1837 ; and his 
 writings, subsequent to this bereavement, betray more of effort with less 
 of power than his earlier productions. An attack of paralysis compelled 
 him to abandon his chair in 1853, when a pension of 200 was conferred 
 upon him by Lord John Russell. This he did not enjoy long, dying at 
 Edinburgh, in the following year, in the 69th year of his age. 
 
 The eldest daughter of W T ilson married her cousin, J. Ferrier, nephew 
 of the authoress of the novels, Marriage, The Inheritance, etc., so highly 
 praised by Sir Walter Scott. The second was the wife of the late John 
 Thomson Gordon, Sheriff of Midlothian, and died in March, 1874. In 
 1862, impelled rather by filial devotion than a recognition of the Horatian 
 precept 
 
 " versate diu quid ferre recusent, 
 
 Quid valeant humeri " 
 
 she produced a Memoir of her gifted father.. It is to be regretted that 
 the task did not fall into abler hands. Few men who have written so 
 much have left behind them such scanty materials for biography as 
 Professor Wilson, and the daughter had not the faculty, nor was it tc 
 be expected from her, of evolving the father from her inner con- 
 sciousness. Still the book, in spite of its deficiency of literary merit, maj 
 be read with interest ; and the very nature of the subject has carriec 
 
 * Athentzum, No. 1827, p. 555. f Thomas Aird. 
 
^A^ 
 A-^-- 
 
 THE ACT'HO]ROiF0lUETHl.lJkGffi . 
 
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 63 
 
 it through several editions. It is reviewed in the Quarterly, vol. cxiii. 
 Besides this may be consulted Lockhart's " graphic account of him in 
 Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, vol. iii. p. 256 ; a long chapter in one 
 of Gilfillan's Galleries; two most excellent papers on his poetry in Hogg's 
 Instructor, contributed, if I mistake not, by the Rev. P. Landreth, of 
 Cupar Fifanorum. There is also a scarce volume entitled Heartbreak : 
 tke Trials of Literary Lifej or Recollections of Christopher North 
 (1859, 8vo). 
 
 There is a good story told of " Christopher " and one other of his 
 daughters, on the occasion of her being sought to wife by William 
 Edmonstoune Aytoun, author of Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, the 
 mock-heroical tragedy of Firmilia?i (that well-directed attack on the 
 " spasmodic school " of poetry), the Bon Gualtier Ballads (in conjunction 
 with Theodore Martin), and successor to Wilson himself in the editorship 
 of Blackwood s Magazine. " You must speak to papa," naturally said the 
 young lady, when the amorous swain proposed. Aytoun acquiesced ; but 
 too diffident to attack the sire himself, the young lady undertook the task. 
 Christopher was agreeable ; but, said he, " if your suitor is so shamefaced, 
 I had better write my reply, and pin it to your back." He did so, and the 
 young lady returned to the drawing-room, where the expectant lover read 
 the answer to his request, " With the author's compliments ! " 
 
 XII. MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 
 
 " In our village," I take the description as I find it, for it is a capital 
 imitation of the manner and style of the subject of this notice, "we have 
 an authoress too, and her name is Mary Mitford. Now, let nobody sup- 
 pose that Mary, on account of the pretty alliteration of her name, is one 
 of the fine and romantic young ladies who grace pastorals in prose and 
 verse. On the contrary, our Mary is a good-humoured spinster of a cer- 
 tain age, inclined, we do not know whether with her own consent, or not, 
 to embonpoint, and the very reverse of picturesqueness. There are, how- 
 ever, very few girls in our village, or twenty villages beyond it, that can 
 dress up so pretty a basket of good-looking and sweet-smelling natural 
 flowers, all of the true English soil, not foreign and flaunting like the flaring 
 dahlias that one class of bouquet-gatherers thrust under our noses with so 
 much pretence, nor smelling of turf and whiskey like the strong-scented 
 bog-lilies which are offered to us by the basket-women of the provinces ; 
 nor yet at all resembling the faded imitation roses picked up in second- 
 hand saloons, and vended as genuine posies by draggletail damsels, who 
 endeavour to pass themselves off as ladies' maids, generally without cha- 
 racter. And Mary's basket is arranged in so neat, so nice, so trim, so 
 comely, or, to say all in one word, so very English a manner, that it is a 
 perfect pleasure to see her hopping with it to market." 
 
 This amiable and accomplished lady was born at Alresford, in Hamp- 
 shire, December 16, 1786. Her father, George Mitford, M.D., appears 
 to have been one of those men who manifest an extraordinary talent in 
 getting rid of money ; in whose cases the total disappearance, " without 
 
64 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 a wreck behind," of any given sum, whether earned, inherited, borrowed, 
 gained, accepted, or what not, is simply a question of time. In this 
 manner went allhis own fortune, which was considerable ; the sum settled 
 upon his wife ; bequests from relations ; legacies left to his daughter at 
 various times ; and a sum of 20,000, won in a London lottery, the lucky 
 number, 2224, having been fixed upon, and pertinaciously adhered to, in 
 spite of the difficulty in obtaining it, by little Mary, when just ten years 
 old! 
 
 Then came the actual necessity of literary exertion, and that of a 
 remunerative kind. At her career as a woman of letters, the briefest 
 glance must suffice. In dramatic literature she has displayed no inconsider- 
 able ability, and is known as the author of several plays which enjoyed a 
 fair share of success at the time of their appearance. Of these may be men- 
 tioned Julian, and Foscari, as most striking in dramatic power ; together 
 with Rienzi, which Macready thought " an extraordinary tragedy, 
 for a woman to have written." Another drama, Charles the First, which 
 really seems to me ultra-royal in tendency, was suppressed, like the A lasco 
 of Sir Martin Archer Shee, R.A., by George Colman, the deputy Licenser 
 for the Stage, acting under the authority of the Lord Chamberlain. 
 Both plays appear alike innocent to me, and I am at a loss to understand 
 their exclusion from the theatre. Miss Mitford has also written a volume of 
 Dramatic Scenes (1827, 8vo), marked by much vivid and pathetic action. 
 These, however, will hardly survive ; neither, too, her minor poems, spirited 
 and graceful as some of them are. It is rather by her Belford Regis, 
 and Our Village, that she must hope to be remembered by posterity. In 
 these works we are presented with a series of pictures of English country 
 life, painted at once with the minute fidelity of a Flemish, artist, and the 
 refined grace of a pure-minded and educated lady. The papers known in 
 their collected form as Our Village, were at first offered to Campbell, the 
 poet, for publication in the New Monthly Magazine, but were unaccount- 
 ably rejected by him as unsuitable ; and the Lady's Magazine (1819) had 
 the honour of giving them to the world. They were next collected in one 
 volume, in 1823 ; a second series appeared in 1826 : a third in 1828 ; a 
 fourth in 1830 ; and a fifth in 1832. These simple and natural delineations 
 of English country life at once found favour with the public, and will, in all 
 probability, continue to be read. They charm one in youth, and, like a 
 blind man's bride, retain all their freshness and beauty for us in " hoary 
 eld." When heated from the lava-flood of modern and foreign fiction, it 
 is refreshing to turn to these pure and tranquil streams, where wc seem, 
 as it were, to experience a spiritual rebaptism, and the perturbed soul re- 
 gains a wholesome serenity. 
 
 In 1837, a literary pension of 100 per annum was conferred upon Miss 
 Mitford by Lord Melbourne ; a sum the exiguity of which she did not 
 find derogatory, when she reflected that it was the same as was bestowed 
 upon Felicia Hemans and Mary Somerville. 
 
 On the death of her father in 1832, she had lost her mother in 1830, 
 she left the cottage at Three-Mile Cross, where she had lived so long, and 
 which she loved so well. Here Haydon, says S. C. Hall, in his Me?nories y 
 had " talked better pictures than he painted," here Talfourd had brought 
 the delightful gaiety of his brilliant youth, here Amelia Opie, Jane Porter, 
 Cary (the translator of Dante), and a host of others, had visited the 
 authoress in her humble home, and made her shabby little parlour more 
 
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. . 65 
 
 glorious by their presence than a regal saloon. It was to Swallowfield 
 that she migrated, a few miles from Strathfieldsaye, the doors of which 
 were ever open to her ; and Eversley, where Charles Kingsley lived and 
 laboured, and whence he would often come to enjoy a rest and chat in 
 Mary's cosy cottage. 
 
 It is sad to record that the lot of one who composed for us such 
 pure and graceful episodes of English life was not itself easy and devoid 
 of care. It was, indeed, hardly so ; a literary career, even when successful, 
 is fraught with frequent anxiety and disappointment ; and that of Mary 
 Russell Mitford was no exception to the rule. Her latter days were, to 
 some extent, clouded over by narrow means and disease ; she put the last 
 touches to her novel Atherlon, as a letter to her constant friend, Mr. 
 Bennoch, informs us, " when very few people could even have held a 
 pen." Finally, esteemed and regretted by all who knew her, she died at 
 her residence, Swallowfield Cottage, near Reading, January 10, 1855, 
 aged 68. Three days before her death, in almost her last letter, she 
 wrote : " It has pleased Providence to preserve to me my calmness of mind, 
 clearness of intellect, and also my power of reading by day and by night ; 
 and, which is still more, my love of poetry and literature, and my enjoy- 
 ment of little things." 
 
 As materials for her biography we have her own Recollections of a 
 Literary Life and Selections from my Favourite Poets and Prose-writers 
 (185 1, 3 vols. 8vo), a made-up book, singularly deficient in interest, 
 with an almost entire absence of personal recollections of any kind what- 
 soever. It must not therefore be sought for as an autobiographical 
 narrative ; but, in her own words, as an attempt to make others relish a 
 few favourite authors as she relished them herself. Then we have the 
 Memoirs and Letters of Charles Boner, with Letters by Mary Russell 
 Mitford to him during Ten Years, edited by R. M. Kettle (2 vols. Bentley, 
 1 87 1, 8vo) ; the Letters of Mary Russell Mitford, edited by Henry Chorley 
 (1872, 2 vols. 8vo) ; an article by the writer last mentioned in the 
 Quarterly Review, No. cclv., January, 1870, on "Miss Austen and Miss 
 Mitford ;" the Life of Mary Russell Mitford, etc., related in a Selection 
 from her Letters to her Friends (1870, 3 vols. 8vo) ; The Friendships of 
 Mary Russell Mitford, in Letters from her Literary Correspondence, 
 edited by the Rev. A. G. L'Estrange (1882, 8vo) ; an obituary notice in 
 the Gentleman's Magazine (vol. xliii. p. 428) ; the Memories of Mr. and 
 Mrs. S. C. Hall ; and lastly, some very interesting " Recollections of 
 Miss Mitford," published soon after her death in the Art Journal, to 
 which they were contributed by her faithful and confidential friend, Mr. 
 Francis Bennoch, a city merchant, with additions by the editor of that 
 admirable serial. 
 
 In person, Miss Mitford was certainly, if the truth must out, like 
 Thomson, "more fat than bard beseems." She was described by Jerdan, 
 with truly British lack of gallantry, as " short, rotund and unshapely." 
 My friend, Mr. S. C. Hall, from whom better things might have been 
 expected, talks of her as a " stout little lady, tightened up in a shawl," and 
 alludes to her " roly-poly figure, most vexatiously dumpy." This latter 
 is the very phrase which Jerdan says Lord Byron was wont to apply to 
 women of her build. Obnoxious, however, as all these phrases are, they 
 can hardly be thought misapplied to a lady whose appearance elicited 
 from so kindly and refined a person as " L. E. L." (Miss Landon, the 
 
66 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 poetess) the exclamation : " Good heavens ! a Sancho Panza in petti- 
 coats ! " In her manners, this much maligned lady was easy, amiable and 
 interesting, as in her writings, teste Jerdan, natural, intellectual and 
 delightful. The lineaments of her outward woman are preserved to us in 
 her portrait by Haydon, prefixed to her Dramatic Works, 1854 ; another 
 by S. Freeman, in her Recollections j a third, in La Belle Assembled, for 
 June, 1823, after a painting by Miss Drummond ; another in the New 
 Monthly Magazine, for October, 1831 ; a charming stippled head, engraved 
 by Thomson, from a drawing by F. R. Say, giving a favourable idea of 
 the kindliness of her humour, and the keenness of her powers of observa- 
 tion ; and lastly, the engraving from the well-known portrait, painted by 
 her friend, John Lucas, the preference shown to which, over that painted 
 by Haydon, awoke ill-feeling in the mind of the jealous artist, and an 
 estrangement for a time between him and the fair authoress. This latter 
 portrait, that by Lucas, I mean, was presented by Miss Mitford to her 
 friend, Mr. James S. Fields, the eminent publisher of Boston, U.S.A., 
 from whose pen we have Yesterdays with Authors (1872, 8vo), where the 
 letters of Miss Mitford, from 1848 to 1854, occupy pages 263-350 of the 
 volume. 
 
 There may be some who will thank me for recording a very charming 
 book, in which an acute and kindly foreign observer has given us his own 
 impressions of English country life, with especial reference to its institu- 
 tions, social and educational. This is entitled La Vie de Village en 
 Angleterrej ou Souvenirs dhm Exile (Paris, 1862, 8vo), and, though 
 published without the name of the author, may be stated to have been 
 written by M. Charles de Remusat. 
 
 Mary Russell Mitford was buried at Swallowfield, in a spot chosen by 
 herself, where now a simple granite cross marks the resting-place of one 
 of the most simple, graphic, and unaffected of our female writers. 
 
 XIII. DON TELESFORO DE TRUEBA Y COZIO. 
 
 " Who amongst our readers," I may ask with a genial and unusually 
 well-informed writer in The Hour * newspaper, " has ever heard so much 
 as the name of Don Telesforo de Trueba y Cozio, whom he will ever find in 
 the act of dancing, and admiring his own shadow the while through his 
 spectacles ? We remember him well, and in this very posture, and can 
 testify to the excellence of the likeness. He was one of the pleasantest 
 and most amiable of men, and when we read of the doings of Spanish 
 patriots of the present day, we are forced, in spite of ourselves, to put the 
 most favourable construction on their most outrageous vagaries, from our 
 recollection of the fine qualities and accomplishments of the author of the 
 Exquisites. " 
 
 Maginn avowed that he had little to say about this dapper, self-satisfied 
 gentleman, and I must confess that I have not much more. My readers 
 may regard him as a fly in amber, and wonder, so completely are his 
 
 * November 12, 1873. 
 
a > i 
 
 ' ^ ^^-^C^^^ 
 
 THE AUTBOa OF "TIE EXQUISITES." 
 
DON TELESFORO DE TRUE B A Y COZIO. 67 
 
 name and fame now things of the past, to what he is indebted for being 
 thus embalmed in the " Gallery," 
 
 "The thing, we know, is neither rich, nor rare." 
 
 The answer is, his pleasing appearance and gentlemanly manner, his 
 reputation as a linguist, his temporary success as a dramatic author and a 
 novelist, his membership of the Garrick Club, his fame as a contributor to 
 the Metropolitan and other magazines, and the prestige which invariably 
 attaches to a well-bred, well-educated foreigner, of assured position, in 
 lion-loving London. 
 
 However this may be, Trueba, though fond enough of notoriety, hardly 
 felt grateful for the manner in which it was conferred, and was angry 
 with the artist for handing him down to posterity, absorbed in self- 
 complacency and the solitary performance of his Terpsichorean evolutions. 
 " Why should this be ? " asks Fraser (August, 1831, p. 20). " All works of 
 art should be consistent ; one would not paint a puppy with a lion's head, 
 a goose with the wings and long neck of an ostrich, or a donkey with the 
 head and ears of the bearded pard." This occurs in a short notice of 
 Trueba's novel, Paris and London, a trashy, flippant, indecent affair, 
 dedicated to Bulwer, and now quite forgotten. Thus, attitude and 
 occupation alike appropriate 
 
 " The Don, to tune of gay quadrille, 
 Floats double, Don and shadow," 
 
 and we have Trueba himself before us, an elegant trifler, 
 " Nescio quid meditans nugarum, et totus in illis. ' 
 
 Let his shade therefore be grateful for his undeserved occupancy of a 
 place in our " Gallery," and the immortality therewith involved. 
 
 The mother of Trueba, a lady of fortune, and a staunch Liberal, left 
 Spain on the overthrow of the constitutional party, and took up her 
 residence in Paris. Her son was educated in this country ; and thus 
 English was so far his vernacular tongue that, as l^Iaginn wickedly said, 
 " he could no more write Spanish than Lord Palmerston, or Dr. 
 Bo wring." He became an author, and wrote several novels, The 
 Casiilian, The Incognito, Salvador the Guerilla, Gomez Arias, of the 
 merits of which, as I do not chance to have met with one of them, I will 
 not attempt to speak. Besides these, he was author of several farces, which 
 obtained a certain amount of success in their day : such as Call again 
 To-morrow, Mr. and Mrs. Pringle, etc. ; also a comedy, The Exquisites, 
 which may still be remembered by octogenarian play-goers, and which 
 was reviewed by Leigh Hunt in The Taller. Then came another, entitled 
 Men of Pleasure, which was unsuccessfully performed at Drury Lane, in 
 June, 1832 ; and a third, which appeared with better fate, at the Victoria, 
 in January, 1834, under the title of The Royal Fugitive; or Triu?nph 
 of Justice. I believe that he also wrote pieces in French, which achieved 
 success on the Parisian stage ; and that he is not unknown as a dramatic 
 author, in spite of the Doctor's assertion that he was innocent of 
 Castilian, in his own country and language. 
 
 In 1829, Trueba wrote for Constable's Miscellany the " Life of Herman 
 Cortes," an able and apparently impartial biography of that extraordinary 
 man ; and in the following year, for the same serial, the " History of the 
 
68 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Conquest of Peru by the Spaniards." His Romance of the History of Spain 
 (3 vols. 8vo, 1 831) is an interesting and well-written collection of tales 
 founded on the historical or legendary history of his native country. 
 
 Sydney Smith, dining on some occasion with Rogers and Tom Moore, 
 made allusion,in his own peculiar style, to literary lions, and the reception 
 they were wont to meet with, on their first appearance on the horizon 
 of London. " Here's a new man arrived ; quick ! put on the stew-pan, 
 fry away, we'll soon have it out of him ! " I don't know that this was 
 exactly the fate of Trueba ; but he was, doubtless, to some extent spoilt 
 by being petted. " A man," acutely says Maginn, " who consents to be 
 shown as a lion, runs the risk of being at last metamorphosed into an 
 ass." He was a clever fellow enough ; and if he had really and honestly 
 worked, something might have been got out of him. As it was, "he 
 wrote passable novels in irreproachable English" ; but we need no 
 Aristarchus to tell us that " they were not quite equal to the workmanship 
 of his countryman, Cervantes." Where are they now ? Echo answers, 
 "Where?" 
 
 " A boundless contiguity of waste ! " 
 
 Trueba returned to Spain in 1834, and was speedily elected a member 
 of the Chamber of Procuradores, and Secretary of Committee, where his 
 talents as a linguist, and knowledge of English life and society, must have 
 made him eminently useful. But his career was short ; his death taking 
 place October 4, 1835, at the age of about thirty, in Paris, whither 
 he had fled, as Fraser subsequently records, from Madrid, " his death 
 accelerated, as was said, by the terrors of the murderous Spanish contest, 
 into which he had thrust himself, without any suspicion of the danger 
 he was drawing upon his head." 
 
 XIV.-EARL OF MUNSTER. 
 
 A reference to that bulky volume which has been called the English- 
 man's Bible, Burke's Peerage, will show that this gentleman was the 
 eldest illegitimate son of King William IV., when Duke of Clarence, by 
 Mrs. Jordan, the celebrated actress. He distinguished himself in many 
 engagements in the Peninsular war, especially at Fuentes d'Onore, where 
 he was wounded, and again at Toulouse ; acquiring by his conduct and 
 military abilities the friendship of the Duke of Wellington, by whom he 
 was much esteemed. 
 
 In 1830, he was elevated to the peerage, under the title of Earl of 
 Munster, Viscount Fitzclarence, and Baron Tewkesbury, in the peerage 
 of the United Kingdom ; with special remainder, in default of male issue, 
 to his three brothers, primogeniturely, and their male descendants. This 
 creation of the peerage of Munster gave rise to no small amount of 
 clamour and discord in its day ; unlike the treaty known by the same 
 appellation, which gave religious peace to the Empire in 1648. 
 
 " Campaigning with the Tenth," says the authority before me, " at the 
 close of the Peninsular war, he was dismissed with the other officers of 
 that regiment, for having committed an unprecedented breach of etiquette 
 in that corps, by fighting ! Quentin knew far better what was the duty 
 
* ] 
 
 
 > : 
 
 
 
 c y^t^t^^n^ 
 
 AUTHM OF A Jf Hm NTE Y FmM IN3MA TO JBN IAN. 
 
LORD 'JOHN RUSSELL. 69 
 
 of a dandy regiment, and kept a prudent position in the rear. Fitz^ 
 clarence had the impertinence to charge and break the enemy's line ; foi 
 which he was broken himself, and sent to India." There he prepared 
 himself by hard and honest work, for honourable mention in some future 
 supplement to Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors. His Journey Over- 
 land from India has been pronounced " a masterpiece in its way " ; and 
 Miss Landon spoke of it as "one of the most interesting and able works 
 of the time." This was prepared for the press by William Jerdan, and 
 probably owes much of its finish and condensation to his practised hand. 
 The Earl of Munster was also a contributor to the United Service Journal. 
 
 His studies in Oriental strategy, and the interest which he took in all 
 matters connected with the East, led him to exert himself in the formation 
 of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he was one of the original 
 members ; he became in due course a member of Council ; and was 
 raised to the Presidency in 1841. 
 
 In 1842, he was unfortunately attacked by a cerebral disorder, and 
 destroyed himself in a fit of insanity, on March 20th of that year, in the 
 forty-ninth year of his age. At the time of this melancholy occurrence 
 he was preparing for the press an Account of the Free Bands of Military 
 Adventurers in the Middle Ages, and Memoirs of the Turkish Empire; 
 an idea of the merits of which may be gained from his observations on 
 " The Employment of Mahomedan Mercenaries in the Christian Armies," 
 published at Paris, in February, 1827, in the 56th cahier of the Journal 
 Asiatique. 
 
 I conclude with the distich, light-heartedly penned, with no fore- 
 boding of the future, by the exhibitor of the " Gallery," 
 
 " To one who can right well pen, sword, or gun stir 
 Colonel Fitz-Clarence, Earl of song-famed Munster." * 
 
 XV. LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 
 
 MAGINN, who hated a Whig more bitterly, if possible, than a water- 
 drinker, is rather severe on "little Johnny Russell," who with curling 
 locks and fur-collared coat, may be imagined as reclining on a Ministerial 
 bench, and meditating over the important and interesting contents of a 
 Blue Book. Still, amid the absurd injustice of the illustrative remarks, 
 we cannot but admit, that in citing the couplet : 
 
 " When once he begins, he never will flinch, 
 But repeats the same note the whole day like a finch, 
 
 and in attributing to the nascent statesman as his leading characteristics, 
 " pride, pertinacity and frigidity, with a taste for attempting departments 
 of literature foreign to his nature," the literary caricaturist accurately laid 
 his finger on the most conspicuous failings of the present subject of the 
 crayon of Maclise. 
 
 Professor Von Raumer, who visited England in 1835, was disappointed 
 with the appearance of Lord John. " From the engravings of him," says 
 
 * " Monomia, sweet dwelling of song." See Eraser's Magazine, June, 183^ p. 556. 
 
70 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 he, " I expected to see a tall thin man, instead of which I found a little, 
 sharp, cunning-looking fellow, with nothing of an imposing presence " ; * 
 but on the other hand, a great poet writes : 
 
 ' ' Jack R ss 11 charms me with his quiet air, 
 His simple phrase, and purpose undesigned ; 
 Smooth without languor, polished without glare ; 
 
 Feeling his way, until his coil is twined, 
 Then darting all his meaning on the mind ! " + 
 
 Everybody knows that he was the youngest son of the sixth Duke of 
 Bedford, by his first marriage, and that he was born in London, on the 
 1 8th August, 1792. 
 
 By posterity, he will be better known as a diplomatist and politician 
 than as a man of letters. " In him," said the Times, on the occasion of 
 his death, u we have lost a man who illustrates the history of England 
 for half a century better, perhaps, than any other person of his time. 
 During his long season of toil there were more brilliant political intellects, 
 more striking masters of debate, and men more gifted with the various 
 qualities of party leadership. There were, on the whole, statesmen of 
 greater foresight, and more executive ability. There were statesmen who 
 exercised a far more powerful fascination on the minds of rich and poor. 
 But there was no other man so closely identified with the political move- 
 ments which will make fifty or sixty years of our history memorable to 
 the future." 
 
 The political career of Lord John Russell extended over the period 
 allotted alike by experience and biblical authority to the life of man. To 
 understand and estimate his life and actions as a statesman, we must call 
 to mind who and what he was. Belonging to the aristocracy of the 
 realm, and born in the purple of a ducal house, his infancy and youth 
 were passed at a period when the stupid tyranny of George III. was 
 administered by men whose entire theory of government was the repres- 
 sion of opinion, and compulsory subordination to the divine right of 
 kings. But, fortunately for him, he was sent for education to Edinburgh, 
 and there imbibed the principles of constitutional liberty, without the 
 infecting prejudices which characterized the teaching of Oxford and 
 Cambridge. England then groaned under the heel of Toryism ; and its 
 people were slaves alike in politics, in religion, and in industrial life. 
 Their mouths were gagged, their progress was impeded and held 
 synonymous with revolution, books and schools were scarce and few, the 
 universities were closed, and the press for them had no existence. But 
 why proceed? The ground is wide and slippery, and must be passed 
 over with fleeting foot. Lord John Russell, whatever may be his short- 
 comings, his failures and his mistakes, was an honest and consistent 
 reformer. It was doubtless a mistake to proclaim the Act of 1832 a 
 " final n measure, whence his nickname, " Finality John ; " but he lived 
 to see his error, and in 1852 introduced a Reform Bill which went further 
 in the right direction. The ball is still rolling, and the goal of to-day is 
 the starting-point of to-morrow. It was Earl Russell who saved England 
 
 * The words in the original are, " ein kleiner, feiner, klug-aus-sehender Mann," 
 which Mrs. Austin, in her translation, euphemizes into "a small man, with a refined 
 and intelligent, though not an imposing air." 
 
 f The Modern Orlando, by Dr. Croly, 1848, 8vo, page 168. 
 
LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 71 
 
 from the cruel, bigotted, ruthless policy of the olden world ; and when 
 his long career was closed by that awful event to which piety brings no 
 indefinite delay, the unanimous feeling of her grateful people might have 
 been expressed in the words of Cicero, " Luctiwsum hoc suis; acerbum 
 ftatrice; grave bonis omnibus." 
 
 It is, however, rather as a man of letters, that Earl Russell claims 
 attention as a member of our " Gallery ; " in which character, if space 
 were at my command, I might consider his pretensions as an essayist, a 
 tragedian, a novelist, an historian, a biographer, an editor, a writer on 
 constitutional history, and a political pamphleteer. Sydney Smith it was 
 who said of him that he was " ready to undertake anything and every- 
 thing, to build St. Paul's, cut for the stone, or command the Channel 
 fleet ; " and this pretentious ambition seems to have led him into every 
 walk of literature. One of his earliest publications was a slim octavo 
 volume, entitled Essays and Sketches of Life and Character, 1820. To 
 these words was added the statement that the various pieces were 
 published from the MS. of "a gentleman who had left his lodgings ;" 
 and the volume was prefaced by a narrative, signed " Joseph Skillett," 
 the lodging-house keeper, who is supposed to publish the papers to pay 
 himself the rent which his lodger had forgotten to liquidate. These 
 bibliographical facts may be worth recording, as this preface was after- 
 wards suppressed, and the book supplied with a new title-page, on which 
 the words "second edition," with the date 1821, appeared, with the 
 addition of a dedication to " Thomas Moore, Esq., who advised the 
 publication of the following fragments." 
 
 Next to this comes The Nun of Arrouca, a tale (Murray, 1822), a 
 tome which few of my readers have ever even heard of. It was rigidly 
 suppressed by the author ; is consequently very rare ; and will fetch its 
 two guineas any day. 
 
 Of his lordship's dramatic lucubrations, which were pronounced dead 
 and buried sixty years ago, silence may be held on the principle de 
 mortuis nil nisi bonum. The best known is Do?i Carlos, which is now as 
 completely forgotten as Ot way's play under the same title. Yet this 
 latter in its day had met with unbounded applause, while the admirable 
 Orphan, and the still nobler Venice Preserved, had received but a 
 moderate share of public approbation. This error of contemporary 
 judgment is ridiculed by the Duke of Buckingham in his well-known 
 Session of the Poets, an imitation of a satire of Boileau : 
 
 " Tom Otway came next, Tom Shadwell's dear Zany, 
 Who swears, for heroicks, he writes best of any ; 
 D071 Carlos his pockets so amply had filled, 
 That his mange was quite cur'd, and his lice were all kill'd," 
 
 which may serve as a specimen of the refined criticism of the day* 
 
 But to return from my short excursus. Of the labours of Lord John 
 Russell in other departments of literature, I cannot now speak. The 
 student may gain something from his Essay on the British Constitutio?i ; 
 but his History of Europe since the Peace of Utrecht will hardly, I fancy, 
 repay the trouble of exhumation. As a biographer, in his Life and 
 Letters of Thomas Moore he has provoked an inodorous comparison with 
 Boswell and Lockhart. He was ever distinguished by his love and 
 
 * Works of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, ii. 151. 
 
72 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 reverence for literature ; and will be remembered as the friend of men of 
 letters, and for his generosity to them, when in need of assistance. 
 
 As a minister and politician men do, and will, form opinions widely 
 diverse as to his conduct and abilities. But I doubt not that the ultimate 
 verdict of posterity will be that he was, through his long career, when 
 all his solecisms and shortcomings as a diplomatist are taken into 
 account, a consistent Liberal according to his lights, an honest man, 
 and a faithful servant, alike of his queen and his countrymen. His life was 
 a life of labour, and I could enumerate, if space allowed, a score of 
 diplomatic offices which he filled with more or less distinction. He was 
 raised to the peerage, under the title of Earl Russell, in 1861, and he 
 died May 28th, 1878, in the eighty-sixth year of his age. He was suc- 
 ceeded in the peerage by a grandson, thirteen years of age, the son of the 
 late Lord Amberley. 
 
 XVI. RIGHT HON. JOHN WILSON CROKER. 
 
 It is Southey who somewhere says that bad poets make malevolent 
 critics, just as weak wine turns to vinegar ; and he elsewhere expresses a 
 doubt whether any man ever criticised a good poem maliciously who had 
 not written a bad one himself. So poor Haydon wrote, in consolatory 
 vein, to Mary Russell Mitford smarting under adverse judgment, " all 
 the critics in the papers are ci-devant poets, painters, and tragedy-writers 
 who have failed. A successful tragedy, and by a lady, rouses their 
 mortified pride, and damnation is their only balm. Be assured of this." 
 So, long before Southey and Haydon, in the prologue to his Conquest oj 
 Granada, wrote Dryden : 
 
 "They who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write, 
 Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite." 
 
 There is a seductiveness in antithesis which leads us to inquire closely 
 into the truth of any axiom where this figure of speech has place ; but I 
 believe, notwithstanding, that the principle here laid down is perfectly 
 true ; and that William Gifford and John Wilson Croker are not in any 
 respect exceptions to its applicability. Both of these men were critics of 
 the most acrimonious and venomous malignity, in whose hands the ferula 
 of Aristarchus became a poisoned dagger ; and yet both produced sub- 
 stantive works of no mean ability. One, the Magnus Apollo of Lord 
 Byron, was author of The Baviad and Mceviad. those terse and vigorous 
 satires which annihilated the school of " Delia Crusca ; " and the other, 
 in his Familiar Epistles to Frederick E. Jones, Esq., on the Present State 
 of the Irish Stage,* which drove poor Edwin, the comedian, to the bottle 
 which killed him,t gave evidence of that power of invective and sarcasm 
 which was, in the future, to become the tool of private malice and party 
 ferocity. Still these pieces themselves were purely critical in character, 
 
 * The copy before me, the presentation one from Croker to Gifford, is the fourth 
 edition, Dublin, 1805, 8vo. 
 
 f Our Actress's, by Mrs. C. B. Wilson. 
 

RIGHT HON JOHN WILSON CROKER. 73 
 
 and differing in no essential respect from their author's subsequent prose 
 diatribes in the Quarterly Review, or the Courier, cannot be held to in- 
 validate the rule so neatly formulated by Dryden and Southey. 
 
 Croker, though of English descent, was an Irishman by the accident 
 of birth, and first saw the light in County Galway, in December, 1780. 
 He was educated at the University of Dublin, where he graduated B.A. 
 in 1800. He sat for many years for Downpatrick in the House of 
 Commons, and, for the first five years of his parliamentary career, 
 represented his University ; but he had been among the most strenuous 
 opponents of the Reform Bill, and resolutely withdrew from public affairs 
 upon the dissolution which followed that momentous measure. He was 
 Secretary to the Admiralty, from 1809 to 1830 ; and, in 1828, became a 
 Privy Councillor. " He was a bigoted Tory," says Edmund Yales, " a 
 violent partisan, and a most malevolent and unscrupulous critic." * In the 
 spring of 1809, Croker, in association with Sir Walter Scott, George 
 Canning, Merritt, and George Ellis, set on foot the Quarterly Review, as 
 an equipoise to the Edinburgh, which had become obnoxious to the Tory 
 party, and hated for the reckless ferocity of its criticism. It is difficult, 
 if not impossible, at this length of time, to discriminate between the 
 articles of Gifford and those of Croker, par nobile fratrum, and no 
 doubt many are attributed to the latter which were actually written by the 
 former. But still it was undoubtedly Croker who wrote that virulent 
 review of Lord John Russell's Life of Moore, which gave such distress to 
 the poet's widow, who could not be made to believe that it was Croker's, 
 as she had believed him her husband's friend ; f it was Croker, who left 
 the munificent hospitality of Drayton Manor, only to cut up his host in a 
 political article ; and it was Croker who, in the London Courier, penned 
 that bitter notice of his friend Scott's Letters of Malachi Malagrowther, 
 which evoked such a delicate and touching rebuke from their author, then 
 succumbing to adversity and disease. It was Croker, again, at least the 
 dramatist always thought so, who wrote that trenchant review of Gait's 
 tragedy, Majolo, which was a cruel blow to the declining and ruined 
 author. It was he who was the arch-enemy of Lady Morgan, charging 
 her in the Quarterly with blasphemy, profligacy, and disloyalty, not to 
 mention that unkindliest cut of all, his epithet of " female Methuselah,'' 
 for all of which Miladi well avenged herself, when she pilloried him before 
 her readers and admirers, who were only increased in number by the 
 unreasoning abuse, in the character of " Crawley junior," in her Florence 
 Macarihy. Finally, it was Croker, of whom a competent judge of his 
 character said that he was "a man who would go a hundred miles 
 through sleet and snow, in a December night, to search a parish register, 
 for the sake of showing that a man was illegitimate, or a woman older 
 than she said she was." 
 
 The miserable man whose portrait is before us, "tasteless and 
 shameless," as Mr. Rossetti has it, so willing to wound, so fearless to 
 strike, so anxious to inflict pain, and that without the excuse of the 
 critic in Bulwer's tale, % that "he was in distress, and the only thing 
 the magazines would buy of him was abuse," met with a retribution 
 
 * Life and Correspondence of Charles Mathews, p. 251. 
 
 \ The correspondence on this subject, in which I must say Croker seemed to have 
 he best of it, first appeared in the Times, but has been reprinted in pamphlet form. 
 % The Student (' The World as it is " ). 
 
74 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 which tended doubtless, in some sort, to embitter his latter days. 
 Disraeli, in his Coningsby, under the transparent fiction of "Rigby," has 
 held up Croker and his pretensions to the ridicule and contempt of his 
 contemporaries, with a success but very imperfectly impaired by the 
 retaliative review in the Quarterly ; Macaulay, an old opponent, who had 
 long waited his opportunity, did his best by every artifice that could be 
 employed by an unprincipled and disingenuous political enemy, to destroy 
 by his article in the Edinburgh on Croker's admirable edition of BosweWs 
 Johnson, any reputation for industry, sagacity and learning which the 
 editor had enjoyed ; and finally, he must have keenly felt the injury 
 which his social footing had received by the revelations on the trial of 
 Lord Hertford's valet, though here there was to console him, his lordship's 
 bequest of 21,000, and his cellar of wine ! 
 
 The earlier works of Croker are now but little known, but many are 
 worth the trouble of hunting up. In An Intercepted Letter fro7n Canton 
 (1805, 8vo), will be found a curious satirical account of Dublin at that 
 date ; his Battle of Talavara (1809, 8vo), and his Songs of Trafalgar, 
 afford evidence, together with his fine verses on the death of his friend, 
 George Canning, of no mean poetical abilities ; his Stories fro?n the 
 History of England for Children served as model, as Sir Walter Scott 
 states in his preface, for that great novelist's Tales of a Gra?idfather j his 
 annotated edition of Boswelfs fohnson is, in the best sense, a " book 
 which no gentleman's library can be without " ; the notes and literary 
 illustrations collected by him, and incorporated in the edition of Pope 
 now publishing under the editorial care of the Rev. Whitwell Elvin 
 (Murray, 1871, etc.), conduce to render this the most valuable extant; 
 and the little volume, in appropriate sanguine cover, The History of the 
 Guillotine, is full of curious information, and worth far more than the 
 shilling it costs. 
 
 Croker died at his seat at West Moulsey, where, about his hospitable 
 " round table," the men of his time most distinguished for wit and learning 
 had been wont to assemble, August 10, 1857, in the seventy-seventh 
 year of his age. 
 
 XVII. TYDUS-POOH-POOH. 
 
 " Between my knees my forehead was, 
 My lips, drawn in, said not, Alas 1 
 My hair was over in the grass, 
 My naked ears heard the day pass." 1 ! ! 
 
 As I occasionally quote from the older poets, I rejoice that, looking at 
 this queer drawing, a quatrain comes into my head from the pen of a 
 modern poet, Mr. W. M. Rossetti ; and which the admirers of the new 
 "school" no doubt consider rhythmical, polished, and pregnant with 
 intelligent meaning. Let it serve as a specimen. 
 
 " To a grateful and discerning public, who can appreciate talent and 
 do justice to worth, we gladly submit the effigy of our Man of Genius. 
 Yes ; this is Tydus-Pooh-Pooh, the translator of the poetry of the 
 
J 
 
 <^W<^^ 
 
 TO MAN <0>F &EITIU8. 
 
TYDUS-POOH-POOH. 75 
 
 Sandwich Islands ! Behold the bard, who, erst, in his native country, 
 degenerate England, sang unhonoured and unpraised how praised, how 
 honoured now ! Not only is his Hyperion brow with 
 
 * Laureate crown adorned,' 
 
 and he reigns the undisputed monarch of Owhyheian literature, but he 
 also rejoices in the knowledge that England at length bows to the supre- 
 macy of his genius that his country proudly glories in her son." 
 
 Further on in the pages of Fraser (vol. xxi. p. 22), it may be read that 
 this queer enigmatical plate is " merely a joke, the point of which is 
 now forgotten." It was probably best so then, and even now the little 
 mystery may not be worth the pains of elucidation. I would, however, 
 just hint, suggestively and interrogatively, that the original of this odd 
 caricature portrait was no other than the celebrated scholar, linguist, and 
 political economist, Dr., more recently Sir John, Bowring, so well 
 known by his translations from the Russian, Servian, Polish, Magyar, 
 Danish, Swedish, Frisian, Dutch, Esthonian, Spanish, Portuguese, and 
 Icelandic poetry. Are we not to regard the strange effigy as a symbol or 
 type of a concealed individuality? I fancy that it is possible to trace 
 in the countenance before us, disfigured as it is, the features of the 
 eminent scholar with whom I would associate it; and comparing it, as 
 I do at this moment, with the engraved portrait by W. Holl, from the 
 painting by B. E. Duppa, I feel the more confirmed in my opinion. 
 Then again, is it not intended that the very name, " Bow-ring," is intended 
 to be evolved, rebus fashion, either from the sort of bow which may be 
 discerned in the head-gear, or more feasibly the bower in the back, and 
 the ring which adorns the nasal organ of the principal figure ? Anyway, 
 I refer the curious to Eraser's Magazine, vol. iii. p. 334, for a clue 
 which their ingenuity may enable them to follow up with success. 
 
 Sir John Bowring was born at Exeter in 1792. He became in early 
 life (1820) the friend and political pupil of Jeremy Bentham, whose 
 principles he advocated in the Westminster Review, established in 1823, 
 and carried on by the aid of funds supplied by the latter. Of this the 
 editorial duties were at first discharged conjointly by Mr. Southern and 
 himself; then by himself alone, till, later on, they fell into the hands oi 
 Colonel Perronet Thompson, the celebrated author of the Catechism oj 
 the Corn Laws, and justly considered one of the most able and eloquent 
 advocates of the Utilitarian Philosophy. Dr. Bowring subsequently acted 
 as executor to his master, wrote his life, with no very great ability or 
 success, and edited his works, in ill-arranged, ill-printed, incorrect, and 
 incomplete fashion. The following lines from his pen, are little known, 
 and are worthy of preservation : 
 
 "JEREMY BENTHAM. 
 
 " I have travell'd the world, and that old man's fame, 
 Wherever I went, shone brightly ; 
 To his country alone, belongs the shame 
 To think of his labours lightly. 
 
 " The words of wisdom I oft have heard 
 From that old man's bosom falling ; 
 And ne'er to my soul had wisdom appear'd 
 So lovely and so enthralling. 
 
76 7 HE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 " No halo was round that old man's head ; 
 But his locks as the rime frost hoary, 
 While the wind with their snowy relics play'd, 
 Seemed fairer than crown of glory. 
 
 " In him have I seen, what I joy to see, 
 In divinest union blended, 
 An infant-child's simplicity, 
 With a sage's state attended. 
 
 " He dwells, like a sun, the world above, 
 Though by folly and envy shrouded, 
 But soon shall emerge in the light of love, 
 And pursue his path unclouded. 
 
 " That sun shall the mists of night disperse, 
 Whose fetters so long have bound it ; 
 The centre of its own universe, 
 And thousands of planets round it." 
 
 But deeply versed as Dr. Bo wring was in the economics of literature 
 and commerce, it is rather as a polylinguist that he is especially to be 
 remembered. In this regard he was more remarkable than Cardinal 
 Mezzofanti himself, as his acquirements were not merely verbal, but made 
 ancillary to literary purposes. He himself estimated the number of 
 languages which he knew, at two hundred, of which he spoke one 
 hundred. Credat Judceus. Forty he is said to have known critically, 
 including many from different classes. He retained his marvellous 
 powers to the last ; and, dying at his residence, Mount Radford, in the 
 vicinity of his native city, November 23rd, 1872, in the eighty-first year of 
 his age, stood, so far as I know, at the head of the linguists of the world. 
 
 Sir John Bowring served his Government ten years in China, as 
 Plenipotentiary and Chief Superintendent of Trade. His salary for 
 the discharge of the duties of this important office was ^4000 per annum; 
 and on his retirement in July, 1859, he had a pension of one-third of the 
 amount conferred upon him, which he continued to receive till his death. 
 This may seem a large amount for a short service ; but it must be 
 remembered that he had brought special acquirements to his duties, and 
 had rendered important services to the state. 
 
 Dying thus, in easy retirement, and close to the place of his birth, the 
 prophecy of Fraser was not, in his case, fulfilled : 
 
 ' By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed, 
 By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed, 
 By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd, 
 By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourn'd." 
 
 XVIII.-WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 It is well said by Fraser, as he points to the iiluXov of Washington 
 Irving, the first, by the way, to which the pseudonymous signature, 
 "Alfred Croquis," is appended, that, "in his modest deportment and 
 easy attitude, we see all the grace and dignity of an English gentleman." 
 Here I need hardly say, in explanation, that Washington Irving was an 
 American, having been born in New York, April 3rd, 1783, and that he 
 had made his first appearance in London in 181 8, about twelve years 
 

 THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH BOOK 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING. 77 
 
 before this sketch appeared. Americans were then but little known in 
 society or literature, and the accounts of their personal and domestic 
 manners which had been given to us by such travellers as Mrs. Trollope 
 and Captain Basil Hall, had not impressed us strongly in their favour. 
 Beyond certain peculiarities of speech, and dress, a habit of sitting with 
 the feet higher than the head, the custom of smoking, chewing, and 
 expectorating on the carpet, and "a thousand other gaucheries" we 
 knew little enough of our " Transatlantic brethren " ; and it was past our 
 conception that "anything in the shape of a gentlemanly biped should 
 come from America." Thus it came to pass that Washington Irving at 
 once took, as it were by assault, a high place among us as an author and 
 as a man. He still continues to retain it ; and it would be difficult to 
 name any one, among foreigners at least, if we are so to rank this 
 genial author, who is so certain of enjoying in the future a definite and 
 permanent rank among English classical writers. He is an elegant 
 essayist, a refined humorist, a picturesque historian, and a graphic 
 biographer ; and by the kindly and altogether genial spirit with which his 
 writings are interfused, has done much, just at the moment when it was 
 most wanted, to unite by a living bond of unity two great nations, which 
 must ever have, to a great extent, a common language and literature. 
 
 It was, I have said, in 18 18, that Irving, on the failure of certain 
 commercial enterprises, came to London. Here he met with two young 
 artists who had preceded him, Charles Robert Leslie and Gilbert Stuart 
 Newton,* and the trio, all under an inspiration and promise of future 
 fame which Time has in each case to some extent fulfilled, became 
 soon united in habits of close friendship and commensality. He had 
 already gained some reputation in his native country by his Salmagundi, 
 and Knickerbocker's History of New York, which latter work may be said 
 to inaugurate American literature. His fame and name, moreover, were 
 not altogether unknown among ourselves ; and K?iickerbocker had found 
 its way even to remote Abbotsford, where Sir Walter Scott found mighty 
 enjoyment in its quaint humour, reading it aloud to his family and friends, 
 till, as he records, "our sides have been absolutely sore with laugh- 
 ing." His sister Sarah was married to a merchant at Birmingham, Mr. 
 Henry Van Wart ; and while a guest at their house, at Newhall Hill, he 
 had amused himself by writing a series of papers to which he had given 
 the name of The Sketch Book. On his arrival in London he offered 
 these, together with certain numbers already printed in America, to that 
 " Prince of Printers," as he called him, John Murray, for examination ; 
 and it cannot but appear somewhat inexplicable to us, looking at the 
 book now as an established classic, and perhaps the favourite among all 
 his writings, "typifying in its pages the pure diction and graces of 
 Addison, and a revived portraiture of the times of Sir Roger de Coverley," 
 as Fraser has it, that it was rejected as unsuitable by the great biblio- 
 pole, who failed to see in it the elements of success, and who only ulti- 
 mately took it up, when the failure of Miller, who had it in hand, compelled 
 its author to seek elsewhere for protection once more. 
 
 How comes about this state of things ? It has been said that booksellers 
 
 * It is customary to speak of these eminent artists as Americans, but the appellation 
 is hardly correct. The former, who became a Royal Academician, and died in 1859, 
 was a native of London ; the latter, who finished his days in a madhouse in 1835, 
 was born in Canada, and was a British subject at least. 
 
78 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 are the only tradesmen who are not expected to know anything of the 
 commodity in which they deal ; but one would fancy that some insight 
 at least into the commercial value of the article was requisite. And yet 
 what a host of books could be mentioned, of high genius and popular 
 acceptance, which, either " returned " at their outset, or insufficiently paid 
 for, have left their authors to starve, while they have subsequently proved 
 mines of wealth to the trading community, which at first rejected them ! 
 Thus Gay's Beggar's Opera, the most successful hit on the modern stage, 
 was " returned " ; no one would undertake Fielding's immortal Tom 
 Jones, though the author offered the copyright for ^20 ; Blair's Grave 
 was rejected by at least two publishers in succession ; Symmons estimated 
 the Paradise Lost of Milton at no higher sum than 5 ; Miller would not 
 give Thomson a farthing for Winter j Burns visited every publisher in 
 London with his Justice, and asked ^0 for the MS. in vain ; Cave 
 could get no one to join him in the Gentleman 's Magazine; Buchan 
 would willingly have sold his Domestic Medicine for ^100, but could not 
 get it, though, after it had passed through twenty-five editions, it was 
 sold in thirty-two shares at 50 each; Cowper had terribly hard work 
 with Johnson to prevail on him to publish the first volume of his poems, 
 but could get nothing for the copyright ; Bloomfield offered his Farmer's 
 Boy to Phillips for a paltry dozen copies for himself, but the bookseller 
 would have none on't; Beresford would gladly have disposed of his 
 Miseries of Human Life, which has since realized ^5000, for ^20, but 
 there was no bidder; Scott's Waverley, which has produced ; 10,000 at 
 least, was hawked about among unwilling London publishers for ^25 or 
 30; Murray refused Byron's Don Juan, though glad enough, when it 
 had achieved success, as in the case of Irving's Sketch Book, to become 
 its proprietor ; the Robbers of Schiller could find no publisher ; and the 
 only man in London who had sagacity enough to see the saleability of 
 the Rejected Addresses of the brothers Smith was Miller, again, who 
 publishing it on the half-profit system, was glad, later on, to give ^1000 
 for the copyright of it, and Horace i7i London. But why increase the 
 list ? There is a veteran author, still happily among us, Mr. Richard 
 Hengist Home, who, born with the century, remembers the battle of 
 Trafalgar and was present at the funeral of Nelson, Many years ago, 
 in 1843, he wrote an epic poem, which he could find no publisher to 
 undertake, on the ground that epics did not sell. He resolved to belie 
 the dictum, and published the poem himself, an octavo volume of 138 
 pages, at the price of 07ie farthing, as indicated on the title-page. The 
 number printed was limited, and only one copy was sold to each applicant. 
 The edition was out of print in a few hours, and it was republished at 
 five shillings. I was glad to give half a guinea for my original farthing 
 copy, and it is now worth twice the amount. But quorsum h&c? as 
 Cicero is fond of asking. Why, this same Mr. Home is author also of a 
 scarce and curious volume to which I will refer the reader for an inquiry 
 into the nature of the conspiracy which seems to exist for the purpose of 
 debarring works of merit and interest from the reading world.* 
 
 I have spoken of Birmingham in connection with The Sketch Book. 
 It was at Mr. Van Warfs house, at Edgbaston, that Irving wrote the 
 immortal Rip Van Winkle. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was suggested 
 
 * Exposition of the False Medium and Barriers excluding Men of Genius from the 
 Public. London, Effingham Wilson, 1833, 8vo. "What centuries of unjust deeds 
 aie here 1" 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING. 79 
 
 by his brother-in-law. The Stout Gentleman was written, too, at Birming- 
 ham. Many of his letters to Leslie are dated from that town, and headed 
 " Edgbaston Castle," or " Van Tromp House " ; and it was the magnifi- 
 cent mansion of the Holtes at Aston, now the property of the town, which 
 served as an ideal model for his Bracebridge Hall. Some interesting 
 reminiscences of Washington Irving in Birmingham were communicated 
 to the Illustrated Midland News, of Sept. 25, 1869, by Elihu Burritt, the 
 learned American blacksmith, who long held a Consular position in that 
 town. 
 
 When in London, Irving took up his residence for a while in Canon- 
 bury House, Islington. To the literary pilgrim from the far West, this 
 "land of the grey old past" is the Mecca and Medina of his youthful 
 aspirations. " None but those who have experienced it," says Irving, in 
 one of his own charming essays, " can form an idea of the delicious 
 throng of sensations which rush into an American's bosom, when he first 
 comes in sight of Europe. There is a volume of associations with the 
 very name. It is the land of promise, teeming with everything of which 
 his childhood has heard, or on which his studious years have pondered." * 
 We can thus understand the feelings with which the young American 
 enthusiast of letters made choice, as abode, of the ancient red-brick tower 
 of Canonbury. It derives its name from having been built upon the site 
 of the country residence of the Prior of the Canons of St. Bartholomew, 
 and was, according to tradition, a hunting seat of Queen Elizabeth, where 
 she was wont to take the air when " Merry Islington " was a woodland 
 solitude. The Tower was built by Sir John Spencer of Crosby Place, 
 whose only daughter and heiress eloped hence, concealed in a baker's 
 basket, to become the wife of William, second Lord Compton, created in 
 1 61 8 Earl of Northampton, a lineal ancestor of the ninth Earl and first 
 Marquis of Northampton, the present owner of Canonbury. Here subse- 
 quently lived Ephraim Chambers, whose E7icyclop<zdia is the basis and 
 parent of all subsequent Cyclopaedias in the English and other European 
 languages ; and here, too, he died in 1740, and was buried in Westminster 
 Abbey. Here also Newbery, the children's bookseller, lodged; and in 
 his rooms Goldsmith often hid from his creditors, and consecrated the 
 spot to all time by writing there his Deserted Village, and the immortal 
 Vicar of Wakefield. William Woodfall, too, the publisher of the letters 
 of "Junius," once had lodgings in this historic tower. Here Irving 
 installed himself; exploring the neighbourhood, and eating his solitary 
 dinners at the " Black Bull," which, according to tradition, was a country 
 seat of Sir Walter Raleigh. Here he sat and sipped his modest glass in 
 a quaint old room, wherein imagination whispered many a council had 
 been held. But all this soon came to an end. On the next Sunday the 
 world and his wife came thronging to Canonbury Castle ; the road was 
 alive with the tread of feet and the clack of tongues ; and the would-be 
 hermit found that his retreat was a show-house, and the tower and its 
 contents thrown open to cockney visitors at sixpence a head ! 
 
 Maginn would fain have known if this genial writer was affiliated to 
 the great smoke-guild, whose members are scattered all over the world, 
 in simple words, whether or not he was a smoker. " To judge," says he, 
 " by his gentlemanly appearance he ought to be one. Smoking is, and 
 always has been, a healthful and fashionable English custom ; there were 
 * Sketch Book {" The Voyage "). 
 
80 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 schools and professors established here for the purpose of teaching tl 
 mystery of smoking, on the first introduction of the Virginian weed, ai 
 the mode of exspifflicating the smoke out of one's mouth is at present, 
 it were, a Shibboleth demonstrative of an English gentleman." Tr 
 momentous query I cannot determine ; but being myself moderate 
 addicted to the occasional " taking of fumes by pipes to dry and comfor 
 as the sage of Verulam hath it, I should not be sorry to have the questi( 
 resolved in the affirmative, I should not be sorry, moreover, to knc 
 that, like Tom Campbell, he imbibed the Nicotian solace through wh 
 the " Doctor " somewhat irreverently terms the " impure channel " of 
 halfpenny pipe. This is a primitive and time-honoured method, whi 
 the cigarro is a modern and coxcombical innovation. I am acquaint* 
 with the various forms of " drinking tobacco," as our forefathers term< 
 the process, and speak not unadvisedly. I have smoked Kanaster 
 Berlin in the capacious porcelain bowl of the German student, and 
 the mighty meerschaum of the Viennese ; I have inhaled caporal throuj 
 a bride-gueule in a Parisian mansarde; I am moderately familiar wi 
 the ostentatious nargeeleh of the Persians, the hookah of the TurP 
 the simpler cutty-pipe of the Scotch, the dudheen of the Irish, and tl 
 briar-root of everybody, cum multis aliis, and solemnly declare, as tl 
 result of my experience, that nothing, in point of economy, elegance ai 
 convenience, excels the " Broseley straw," or " Churchwarden," of Engli: 
 manufacture : 
 
 " Little tube of mighty power, 
 Charmer of an idle hour, 
 
 Lip of wax, and eye of fire ; " 
 
 as Isaac Hawkins Browne has it, among his fine imitations. It was whi 
 manipulating such an instrument, for it is marvellous how little it h; 
 changed in form since the introduction of tobacco, that Raleigh < 
 Tarlton (the story is told of both) was inundated with water by h 
 servant, aghast at the unwonted incandescence of his master. It was tl 
 right thing in Shakespeare's time for your brave gallant to smoke h 
 "clay" upon the very stage (how odd it is that the great bard makes r 
 mention of Tobacco, Ben Jonson is full of allusions to it !), and there 1 
 sat : 
 
 " attended by his page, 
 
 That only serves to fill those pipes with smoke 
 For which he pawned hath his riding cloak." * 
 
 Pope allots to 
 
 " History her pot, Theology her pipe," 
 
 and truth to say, the parsons have rivalled the poets in their devotion 1 
 the herb of Santa Croce, "divine Tobacco," as Spenser has it. It 
 fine to think of Robert Hall lighting his Broseley at the pulpit-lamps ; 
 the close of his sermon, and of Samuel Parr half hidden by fuliginoi 
 clouds, a yard or so behind the bowl of a huge " churchwarden." It 
 fine, too, to think of Charles Lamb, as he was wont to think of Charh 
 Cotton, in that delectable chamber, " piscatoribus sacrum," of Hobbe 
 and Barrow, and Aldrich, and Newton, and Milton, and the host < 
 glorious intelligences who have delighted in a pipe ; and we are thankfi 
 
 * Springes to Catch Woodcocks. By Henry Parrot, 1613. 
 

 THE EDITOR OF'THE TIMES 
 
THE LORD BROUGHAM AND VAUX. 81 
 
 for the innocent enjoyment which is intensified by such a multitude of 
 pleasant associations. Let us think, at last, as we reverse the exhausted 
 bowl, and replace it in its nook, of the fine monitory symbolism that 
 resides in the familiar implement, as expressed in an ancient distich : 
 
 "Mens ignis, tubulus corpus mini, vitaque fumus, 
 Herba penus, clavus fata, suprema cinis : " 
 
 which has been thus quaintly Englished : 
 
 ' ' Of lordly man how humbling is the type, 
 A fleeting shadow, a tobacco-pipe, 
 His mind, the fire ; his frame, the tube of clay ; 
 His breath, the smoke thus idly puff' d away ; 
 His food, the herb that fills the hollow bowl ; 
 Death is the stopper; ashes end the whole." 
 
 Washington Irving never married. He was engaged early in life to a 
 young lady of rare beauty and worth. She died ; and the bereaved 
 man thenceforth contented himself with the memory of his vanished 
 love, sought no other bride, and lived for literature, friendship and 
 nature. His latter years, after long sojourn in the storied countries of 
 the elder world, were passed at his delightful residence, " Sunnyside," 
 on the banks of the Hudson river, about twenty-five miles from the city 
 of New York. Here he was visited by Frederika Bremer, who has left 
 us a charming description of the man and his home ; and here he died 
 suddenly of heart-disease, November 28th, i860, in the seventy-seventh 
 year of his age. 
 
 Thackeray, whom the death of Irving inspired with one of the best of 
 his Rowidabout Papers, styles him the " Goldsmith of our time," associ- 
 ating him with Macaulay as our " Gibbon." There is an obituary notice 
 of him in the Gentle?nan , s Magazine, vol. liii. p. 82 ; there is his Life and 
 Letters, by his nephew, the Rev. Pierre E. Irving (H. G. Bohn, 1862-3, 
 4 vols. 8vo) ; there is a Transatlantic volume, frvingiana, a Memorial of 
 Washington Irving, New York, i860, 4to ; and there is an article in 
 the new edition of the E?icyclopadia Britannica, " Washington Irving," 
 from the pen of Mr. Richard Garnett, written with characteristic taste, 
 fulness of knowledge, and delicacy of judgment. 
 
 I ought not, even in this imperfect memoir, to omit to state that it was 
 Washington Irving, who, in 1830, was selected with Henry Hallam, to 
 receive one of the two fifty-guinea gold medals of the Royal Society of 
 Literature, instituted by George IV., for eminence in historical compo- 
 sition. He also received the honorary degree of D.C.L., from the 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 XIX. THE LORD BROUGHAM AND VAUX. 
 
 The ordinary intellect that seeks repose in inactivity stands amazed at 
 the productiveness of those rarer minds which find their needful rest in 
 change of action. It is the fallowness of land compared with the rotation 
 of crops ; where it is to a difference of procedure, no less than to the 
 
 G 
 
82 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 nature of the soil, that we are to attribute the varying result. The 
 productions of genius differ from those of talent in kind rather than in 
 degree ; though nothing is more common than to see referred to the 
 former that which happens to be merely larger in quantity than the 
 ordinary effects of the latter. To Lord Brougham I should ascribe little 
 genius, in the proper acceptation of the word ; but vast natural powers 
 highly cultivated, and a mighty talent for continuity and concentration 
 of effort and attention. Some would say that this is genius, adopting 
 the accepted theory of a writer of our own times who would have it that 
 this quality consists, first of all, in a grand capacity for taking trouble ; 
 than which no definition could be more erroneous and deceptive. Labour 
 is the midwife of genius ; not itself, or its mother. If many of the most 
 laborious works are the least informed by genius, the converse is no less 
 true. 
 
 How fine is the description of Brougham by Sydney Smith : 
 
 "Look at the gigantic Brougham, sworn in at twelve o'clock, and before 
 six P.M. he has a bill on the table abolishing the abuses of a court which 
 has been the curse of England for centuries. For twenty-five years did 
 Lord Eldon sit in that court, surrounded with misery and sorrow, which 
 he never held up a finger to alleviate ; the widow and the orphan cried 
 to him as vainly as the town-crier, when he offers a small reward for a 
 full purse ! The bankrupt of the court became the lunatic of the court. 
 Estates mouldered away, and mansions fell down, but the fees came in 
 and all was well ; but in an instant the iron mace of Brougham shivered 
 to atoms the House of Fraud and Delay. And this is the man who will 
 help to govern you, who bottoms his reputation on doing good to you, 
 who knows that to reform abuses is the safest base of fame, and the surest 
 instrument of power, who uses the highest gift of reason and the most 
 splendid efforts of genius to rectify all those abuses which all the genius 
 and talent of this profession have hitherto been employed to justify and 
 protect. Look you to Brougham, and turn you to that side where he 
 waves his long and lean finger, and mark well that face which nature 
 has marked so forcibly, which dissolves pensions, turns jobbers into 
 honest men, scares away the plunderer of the public, and is a terror to 
 him that does evil to the people ! " 
 
 But on the same subject, Brougham's own words are still finer, in the 
 peroration of his magnificent speech on " The Present State of the Law," 
 February 7th, 1828 : 
 
 " It was the boast of Augustus, it formed part of the glare in which 
 the perfidies of his earlier years were lost, that he found Rome of brick, 
 and left it of marble, a praise not unworthy of a great prince, and to 
 which the present reign has its claim also. But how much nobler will 
 be our sovereign's boast when he shall have it to say that he found law 
 dear and left it cheap ; found it a sealed book, and left it a living letter ; 
 found it the patrimony of the rich, left it the inheritance of the poor ; 
 found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression, left it the staff of 
 honesty and the shield of innocence." 
 
 It was said of Brougham that though he was in the head and front 
 of the movement, he was behind the Times, this in allusion to his 
 supposed editorship, as indicated, truthfully or not, beneath the sketch 
 of Maclise. He was also said to be at the " top and bottom of the law ; " 
 for he happened to hold at the same time the highest position in that 
 
THE LORD BROUGHAM AND VAUX. 83 
 
 profession, the Lord Chancellorship ; and the lowest which a gentleman 
 can hold, that of Sergeant at Arms to the Court of Exchequer. 
 
 When this legal Hercules had spent years in attempting to cleanse 
 the Augean stable of abuse, he was raised to the peerage, and went to 
 the upper House. Thereupon the following quatrain was written : 
 
 11 Why is Lord Brougham like a sweeping-man, 
 That close by the pavement walks ? 
 Because when he's done all the sweep that he can, 
 He takes up his Broom and Valks ! " 
 
 What a pile of literature has this man left behind him ! Much necessarily 
 written in haste and open to correction. He stood high as a mathemati- 
 cian. A paper on Optics, written before he was out of his teens, was 
 judged by the Royal Society worthy of preservation among its " Trans- 
 actions ; " and he wrote much for the " Society for the Diffusion of Useful 
 Knowledge," not the " Confusion of Useless Knowledge," as its enemies 
 irreverently termed it, of which he was long chairman. It is impossible 
 to point out his share in this praiseworthy work with certainty ; but to 
 him are doubtless to be attributed some at least of the errors wittily 
 exposed by the author of a lengthy pamphlet, published at the time, 
 entitled The Blimders of a Big Wig; or Paul Pry's Peeps i?ito the 
 Sixpenny Sciences, London, 1827, 8vo. 
 
 There is little doubt that to Brougham, and not to Jeffrey, is to be 
 ascribed the celebrated article in the Edinburgh Review on Byron's 
 Hours of Idleness, which produced, by way of* retaliation, the satire 
 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, and possibly much besides : 
 
 " Facit indignatio versus." 
 
 These are of the "follies of the wise," and Brougham was full of such 
 impulsive as a woman, hasty and wayward as a child, made up of 
 inconsistencies and contradictions. Maginn describes him happily : 
 " On the woolsack, leaping through cases, as Harlequin does through a 
 hoop, without touching them ; wonderful in agility, and most dexterous 
 in dispatch ; exciting the astonishment of the audience, and winning the 
 tribute of a clap from the upper gallery of the press ; in the House of 
 Lords, as droll as Punchinello, and about as dignified ; in the Edinburgh 
 Review as airy as Jeffrey, and as deep as Mackintosh ; in the Times as 
 oracular as a Stock-Exchange reporter on the evening before settling 
 day ; in the Beefsteak Club as comical as he is in the House of Lords, 
 great over a bottle, over a case, over a debate, over an article, it is 
 impossible to say in which he is greatest ; but truth compels us to 
 lament that he had not originally turned his talents to the stage, for he 
 certainly would have beaten Mathews out of the field in the versatility 
 of the characters he could perform, and driven Yates into despair by the 
 rapidity with which he altered his dresses ! " 
 
 The following quatrain, in the same vein of humorous satire, is 
 attributed, I know not whether with truth, to Jeremy Bentham : 
 
 "Oh, Brougham, a strange mystery you are, 
 Nil fuit unquam sibi tarn dispar ; 
 So foolish and so wise, so great, so small, 
 Everything now, to-morrow nought at all ! " 
 
84 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 reminding us of Pope's antithetical summary of the character of a 
 greater Chancellor even than Brougham :- 
 
 " If parts attract thee, think how Bacon shined, 
 The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind ! " 
 
 or Tom Moore's indignant distich on Jean Jacques Rousseau : 
 
 " Be all at once that's brightest, worst, 
 Sublimest, meanest, in creation ! " 
 
 Look at the caricatures of him in Punch, especially that where we 
 have him as " citizen of all nations," with varying head-dress and upper 
 garments, while the uncouth features and the continuations of shepherd's 
 plaid, are a fixed quantity ! 
 
 There is a brilliant article on Brougham in Robert Gilfillan's Gallery 
 of Literary Portraits; Hazlitt very ably discusses his character as an 
 orator in his Spirit of the Age, treating Brougham as the representative 
 of the Scottish School, whose oratory is the result of mechanism, as 
 distinguished from the Irish, whose eloquence, according to him, is the 
 offspring of impulse. The parallel is ingeniously drawn, and the con- 
 clusion not devoid of truth. He has been termed a Marcellus in attack ; 
 he was, at least, no Fabius in defence. 
 
 In the witty and clever New Whig Guide, which is understood to 
 have been the joint production of John Wilson Croker, Sir Robert Peel, 
 and Lord Palmerston, is to be found the inimitable "Trial of Henry 
 Brougham for Mutiny," certainly the prose-gem of the collection. The 
 authorship of this has always been allotted to Peel. 
 
 To venture an opinion of my own, the Biographies of Brougham are 
 among the most valuable of his literary labours. It is impossible to 
 read without pleasure and profit his lives of the Chathams ; the liberal, 
 large-hearted estimate of Voltaire ; and the notices of the other 
 philosophers, and men of letters of the time of George III. 
 
 In olden times the epithet iriuraOXos was bestowed on Eratosthenes, 
 from his pre-eminence in various pursuits. Some such surname is applic- 
 able to Brougham, who has written on every imaginable subject, from the 
 higher mathematics to lithotomy, and of whom it was ill-naturedly said 
 that if he had only known a little of Chancery law, he would have had a 
 smattering of everything. It may astonish some to be informed that 
 this literary universalist has also adventured into the realms of fiction. 
 But the book-collector, great at least in title pages, had long known the 
 existence of a novel, in the orthodox three-volume form, and octavo size, 
 entitled Albert Lunel j or the Chateau of Languedoc, the customary 
 attribution of which to his lordship's pen had never been questioned. 
 The bibliographic history of this work is somewhat curious. The title- 
 page sets forth that it was published by Charles Knight in 1844 \ but, as 
 may be learnt from Bonn's edition of Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual, 
 it was so rigidly suppressed that only five copies, which had been pre- 
 sented to friends, remained in circulation. Its value was estimated at 
 five guineas ; and certainly, on the rare occasions when a copy has found 
 its way into the market, it has fetched an extravagant price. After the 
 death of the author, the motives or necessity for suppression would seem 
 to have ceased ; and early in 1872, a number of copies were sold off, so 
 that a set was attainable for half-a-dozen shillings. It has been reprinted 
 
THE LORD BROUGHAM AND VAUX. 85 
 
 in three volumes (?), and also, if I mistake not, in cheaper, one volume 
 form. The number, however, of the original copies evulgated in the way 
 I have mentioned, was, I was informed, very limited ; so that, in all 
 probability Albert Lu?iel will soon again be classed among rare books. 
 Moreover, the facts which I have detailed, being either unknown, or 
 conveniently ignored, the statement of " Lowndes " will be quoted in the 
 future as a justification of the character of excessive rarity, continued 
 " suppression," and the extortion of a high price from the bibliomaniac. 
 The readers of Figaro (Oct. 5th, 1872) may remember an article in which 
 the style and morality of Albert Lunel was commented upon with a 
 severity, which, whether justifiable or not, had the effect of speedily clear- 
 ing the bookseller's shelves of the copies still on hand ; and certain doubts 
 expressed as to the authorship of the book, which were set at rest in a 
 succeeding number, by a letter from Mr. C. H. Clarke, of Paternoster Row, 
 the publisher concerned with the re-issue. 
 
 There are some men whose external configuration is not less remark- 
 able and characteristic than their intellectual and moral idiosyncracies. 
 Such a man was Lord Brougham, whose lineaments, familiar to us by 
 portraits innumerable, from the time of his early renown as the fearless 
 champion of Queen Caroline, to the later transcripts from photographs, 
 are thus portrayed in an able parallel between him and Canning (1823), 
 in the Leisure Hour for Aug. 1st, 1868, probably from the pen of William 
 Jerdan. 
 
 "The features of Brougham were harsh in the extreme, while his fore- 
 head shot up to a great elevation ; his chin was very long and square ; 
 his mouth, nose, and eyes seemed huddled together in the centre of his 
 face the eyes absolutely lost amid folds and corrugations ; and while he 
 sat listening, they seemed to retire inward, or to be veiled by a flimsy 
 curtain, which not only concealed the appalling glare which shot away 
 from them when he was aroused, but rendered his mind and his purpose 
 a sealed book to the keenest scrutiny of man." 
 
 The ancients termed the Nose honestamentum faciei, and Lavater held 
 that it was the foundation, or abutment, of the brain. With the Romans, 
 the word used to designate this remarkable organ was also employed, by 
 metonymy, to express sagacity j and a man of shrewd judgment was styled 
 " nacutius," or said to be homo emu7icta> naris. Some individuals have 
 received nick-names from certain peculiarities of their nasal organs. 
 Thus Ovid, the poet, is known to us as "Naso"; our own Wilson, the 
 landscapist, earned the appellation of " Nosey " ; Michael Angelo, 
 Davenant and Thackeray had received injuries which fix their features 
 upon our memory ; and Lord Elgin, on whose face this organ was 
 conspicuous by its absence, will go down to posterity in the epigram : 
 
 " Noseless himself, he brought home noseless blocks," 
 
 for the completion of which my reader may turn to his Byron. 
 
 An ingenious gentleman, inspired at once by the importance of the 
 subject, and the fame of the learned Slawkenbergius, immortalized by 
 Sterne in the pages of Tristram Shandy, has written a treatise entitled 
 Nasology; or Hints towards a Classification of Noses (1848, 8vo ; reprinted 
 by Bentley, under the title of Notes on Noses, 1852). The writer gees on 
 pretty well in illustration of his system, till he is fairly brought to a stand- 
 still by the consideration of the olfactory protuberance appertaining to the 
 
86 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 subject of this memoir, which he is finally forced to regard as entire] 
 sui generis, and requiring a class for itself alone. After speaking of th 
 various orders in which noses may be arranged, and the significance < 
 these as to the character of their possessors, he says : 
 
 " It now only remains to treat of some obstinate noses which will n< 
 come within our classification. 
 
 " One of these is that curious formation, a compound of Roman, Greel 
 Cogitative, and Celestial, with the addition of a button at the end, prefixe 
 to the front of my Lord Brougham. We are bound from its situation, \ 
 admit that it is a nose, and we must therefore treat of it ; but it's a que< 
 one. ' Sure, such a nose was never seen.' 
 
 " It is a most eccentric nose ; it comes within no possible category ; it 
 like no other man's ; it has good points, and bad points, and no points ; 
 all. When you think it is going right on for a Roman, it suddenly become 
 a Greek ; when you have written it down Cogitative, it becomes as shai 
 as a knife. At first view it seems a Celestial ; but Celestial it is not ; i 
 celestiality is not heavenward, but right out into illimitable space, poin 
 ing we know not where. It is a regular Proteus ; when you have caugl 
 it in one shape, it instantly becomes another. Turn it, and twist it, an 
 view it, how, when, or where you will, it is never to be seen twice in tr 
 same shape, and all you can say of it is, that it's a queer one. And sue 
 exactly is my Lord Brougham ; verily my Lord Brougham, and n" 
 Lord Brougham's nose, have not their likeness in heaven or earth an 
 the button at the end is the cause of all ! 
 
 " Thus Lord Brougham's nose is an exception to our classification ; it 
 not, as has been asserted, an exception to our system. On the contrar 
 it is manifestly a strong corroboration of it. The only exceptions ai 
 those when the character does not correspond with the nose, and of thos 
 we have yet to hear." 
 
 I fancy all this might be summed up in a few lines : 
 
 Your nose of all noses the nose is, 
 
 Tremendous Lord Brougham and V. ; 
 To you all the way down from Moses, 
 
 Such an organ who ever did see ? 
 In character truly Protean, 
 
 'Tis a snorter a snout, a proboscis, 
 Now African, now European, 
 
 The classificator it poses. 
 
 But to be serious. Decade after decade rolled away ; allies an 
 opponents alike vanished from the scene ; it was hardly that here ar 
 there a veteran of the old battle-fields lagged now superfluous on the stag 
 Still, Time, edax rerum, seemed to pass oblivious by the granite form i 
 Henry Brougham : 
 
 " Strange that a harp of thousand strings 
 Should keep in tune so long ! " 
 
 He was already an octogenarian when, in a dedication which has bee 
 pronounced by no mean authority, a model of propriety and grace, he pn 
 sented his treatise upon the Constitution of England Xo that Queen und< 
 whose reign that constitution has been observed alike in letter and i 
 spirit. In the same year that he thus inscribed a political work to tr. 
 Queen of England, he dedicated a scientific work to the University < 
 
> 3 O 
 
THE .AUTHOR <Q> F SAT. 
 
ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 87 
 
 Edinburgh, which had selected him for its Chancellor in i860. This 
 volume is a collection of various treatises upon mathematics and physics, 
 written between 1796 and 1858, upon the most diverse subjects, general 
 theorems of geometry, the problems of Keppler, the principles of dynamics, 
 the differential calculus, the architecture of the cells of bees, analytical 
 and experimental researches into the nature of light, the attraction of 
 forces, and lastly, the admirable speech which he delivered at Grantham 
 upon the occasion of inaugurating the monument to Sir Isaac Newton. 
 
 This illustrious man and extraordinary character was born at Edin- 
 burgh, in September, 1778, and died at his seat at Cannes, in the south of 
 France, May 8th, 1868. If he had lived four months longer, he would 
 have entered upon his ninety-first year. 
 
 I shall conclude with an eloquent passage from an address delivered 
 by the eminent French historian, M. Mignet, at one of the annual public 
 meetings of the "Acade'mie des Sciences Morales et Politiques," a branch 
 of the French Institute : 
 
 " Henry Lord Brougham belongs to the number of the great men of 
 his time and of his country. Endowed with extraordinary genius, possessed 
 of vast knowledge, gifted with brilliant talents, animated by incomparable 
 ardour, he devoted the thoughts of his mind, the enthusiasm of his soul, 
 the resources of his knowledge, the brilliancy of his talents to the service 
 of the noblest causes to the progress of justice, of law, of intelligence, of 
 humanity. A Reformer without a chimaera, a Conservative without a 
 prejudice, he never separated, either in his writings or in his actions, 
 what was expedient from what was right, and it was his pride to keep in 
 accord the free advancement of man, and the moral order of society. He 
 was also the defender of political liberty, the persuasive advocate of civil 
 equity, the zealous promoter of public education, the eloquent supporter 
 of human emancipation. Illustrious by his works, memorable by his 
 services, Lord Brougham must be counted among those great men who 
 honour the country whose glory they sustain, who maintain what is right, 
 and strengthen what is good, and who, by the brilliancy of their talents, 
 and the generosity of their souls, are held by posterity in everlasting 
 esteem." 
 
 XX. ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 
 
 " Bob Gomery there, on tilted chair, 
 Sits double, Bob and shadow ; 
 E'en Satan's fire failed to inspire, 
 His verses all so bad, oh ! " 
 
 When Miss Betsey Trotwood is informed by the mother of David Copper- 
 field of the title of her husband's "residence," the old lady asked with 
 asperity, " Why ' Rookery ' ? " In like interrogative spirit my reader may 
 demand, " Why ' Gomery ' ? " Well, there seems some reason to believe 
 that the gentleman so styled was actually the issue of Gomery, a celebrated 
 clown ; and that, consequently, the aristocratic addition to his patronymic 
 is a self-authorized assumption. The fact is, Montgomery, in his early 
 satire, The Age Reviewed (1827 ', 8vo, p. 145), had attacked A. A. Watts 
 
88 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 under the appellation of " Scriblerus," and accused him of assuming the 
 name of " Alaric," in reference, as he was pleased to imagine, " to the 
 similarity of his disposition with that of the Goth." Watts retaliated upon 
 his assailant in the Literary Souvenir, for 1832, as 
 
 " that thing of trick and flummery, 
 
 The maudlin, mawkish, mock Montgomery ! " 
 
 asserting in a note that the poet was " the son of Gomery, the well-known 
 clown of Bath," and charging him, in turn, with having appropriated a 
 name to which he had no just claim. However this may be, vulgarity of 
 origin can only, now-a-days, be taken as conferring additional credit upon 
 literary or social eminence ; and as for mere name, one has surely a per- 
 fect right to alter one's own, to change it for another,, or, as probably in 
 this case, to supply a prefix which had been previously elided. 
 
 The career of Robert Montgomery is soon told. His first attempt in 
 literature, so far as I know, was the metrical satire to which I have alluded. 
 This is an imitation, longo intervallo, of Byron's English Bards and 
 Scotch Reviewers, and hardly repays reference, except here and there for 
 forgotten literary gossip. Then came another satire of smaller size, The 
 Puffiad{\% , z%, 8vo) not now often met with. In the same year appeared 
 The 0?n?iipresence of the Deity, written, it is said, in the author's nineteenth 
 year, and which has gone through something like thirty editions. Of 
 this poem I will indulge in no further criticism than to record that it was 
 wickedly said the book itself was a perfect refutation of the theory in- 
 volved in its title : 
 
 " ' God's Omnipresence' I believed, 
 And yet was wondrously deceived ; 
 For not long since I chanc'd to look 
 In young Montgomery's maudlin book, 
 And can with confidence declare 
 That not a trace of God is there!" 
 
 But, on the other hand, the poem had its admirers, even among men 
 of talent, who possibly in admiration of its tone of piety, were blind to 
 the bad taste which characterized it throughout. In this way, Sharon 
 Turner manifested his approbation by transmitting to the poor and 
 struggling poet a welcome present of ten guineas, gave him an introduction 
 to his domestic circle, and thus by refining his taste and manners con- 
 duced in no slight degree to the prosperity and esteem which he after- 
 wards attained. The poem was praised, too, by other competent judges, 
 such as Professor Wilson, Crabbe, Southey, Bowles and Alison ; it received 
 in Blackwood (vol. xxiii. p. 751) a notice, on the whole, favourable ; and 
 it was eulogized by the minor papers, the Literary Gazette, the Athenamm, 
 and the Literary Chronicle. There can be little doubt that Montgomery 
 was a sincerely pious man, and an earnest minister of religion ; and if this 
 was the case, it matters little what the world thought of his poetry. This 
 was doubtless turgid, bombastic, florid, and characterized by every exist- 
 ing variety of bad taste. But still it took. The subjects, absurdly 
 ambitious, were awfully momentous, and had an interest for every one. 
 Moreover, loudness and pretence are always pretty sure to attract attention ; 
 for, as Bishop Jewel has it, " vessels never give so great a sound as when 
 they are empty." Still, in this case, there is little doubt that the calmer 
 
ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 89 
 
 judgment of the critics had been disturbed by their religious sentiments, 
 for the final verdict is certainly on the other side. Macaulay, perhaps 
 remembering the epithet "pert" {Age Reviewed, p. in), and disgusted 
 with the literary puffery of the author of The Puffiad, cas'igated this offence 
 with a scorpion lash in the Edinburgh Review for April, 1830, where the 
 following passage may serve to give a taste of the critic's quality : " His 
 works have received more enthusiastic praise, and have deserved more 
 unmixed contempt, than any, which as far as our knowledge extends, have 
 appeared within the last three or four years. His writings bear the same 
 relation to poetry which a Turkey carpet bears to a picture . . . ." The 
 great critic could not in this case have been inspired with the feelings of 
 political antagonism which influenced him in his savage articles on Croker 
 and Sadler ; and it was an act of gratuitous cruelty to reproduce in his 
 collected essays a criticism which the editor of his Life and Letters admits 
 poisoned, if it did not really destroy, the life of its object. William Jerdan* 
 asks how it is that Montgomery's poems have become " a bye-word for 
 all that is contemptible in poetry, and his name abused, as of the worst in 
 the Dunciad" ; and adds that "to the dispassionate and competent judge 
 there is enough to warrant his extensive popularity, many beauties in 
 style and composition, and the suasive inculcation of moral and religious 
 sentiment." The fact is, it was the fashion then-a-days to abuse Robert 
 Montgomery, as it is now Martin Farquhar Tupper. It is pleasant to 
 censure, for the man who blames asserts himself to be superior to the 
 object of his reprehension ; and the ball of opinion once set rolling, the 
 herd are ready to pursue its direction, with cry of parrot-imitation, or like 
 the silly flock that follow the bell-wether. 
 
 Besides the attack of Macaulay, Blackwood had a severe article on 
 " Canting Poetry," of which that of Montgomery furnished the text, in the 
 number for August, 1829, p. 239. As for the poem Oxford, it was very 
 severely handled by the author of a contemporary satire, A Poetical 
 Epistle, addressed to Robert Montgomery, etc. An Hyperborean Sacrifice, 
 (Oxford, 1 83 1, 8vo), who is unable to express his opinion of the author 
 of that unfortunate poem with proper decorum : 
 
 " For your name of itself sets with laughter a twitching 
 The face of each college from chapel to kitchen ; 
 It has pass'd to a bye-word, we tell it with pain, 
 For all that is vacant, and vague, and inane." f 
 
 Presently, the bard who had sung the praises of the Deity proceeded, 
 as Eraser has it in a condemnatory article (vol. i. p. 95), to " take 
 hold of Satan by his horns." The poem thus alluded to was published 
 by Maunder in 1830, and gained for the youthful bard the distinctive 
 appellation which differentiates him from James of Sheffield, who some- 
 where alludes to the "other Montgomery who writes Satanic poetry," 
 and which made Tom Hood speak of him as " Robert the Devil." It 
 is as the author of this particular poem that he figures in our plate, 
 where, if the source of his inspiration is delicately suggester, a closer 
 inspection will show that there is just that little " miss " between pen- 
 point and finger-tip which is as good as a thousand miles. Thus the 
 writer of one of the many-imitations of a popular satire makes the author 
 
 * Men I have Known, p. 443. f Page 9. 
 
90 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 and the subject of his poem pass each other without recognition, at least 
 on the side of the poet : 
 
 " Then meeting the Brummagem Milton next, 
 Full of theological flummery, 
 They passed, for the bard knew nothing of ' Satan,' 
 Though Satan knew Mont. . . . y," * 
 
 where the explanation of the epithet is given in a note, " Brummagem, 
 or Bromicham, synonym of the adjective base, of no sterling value." 
 
 In opposition to these adverse criticisms, a champion stepped forward 
 to do battle for the poet. This was a Mr. Edward Clarkson, who, in 
 1 830, published a book entitled Robert Montgomery and his Reviewers j 
 with some Remarks on the Present State of English Poetry a?id the Laws 
 of Criticism, London, 8vo, pp. 164. This little volume is well and 
 generously written, but hardly hits the mark. Its errors, verbal and 
 critical, are pointed out in Eraser's Magazine, vol. i. p. 721 ; and latei 
 in the same periodical it is proclaimed, " Regina said, ' Let Bob Mont- 
 gomery, the rhyming monkey, and Ned Clarkson, his accompanying 
 bear, be utterly annihilated from the face of the earth,' and lo ! annihilatec 
 they were immediately, and no one wastes a moment about the existence 
 or small doings of such puny worthless pismires." f 
 
 As I write, an epigrammatical quatrain comes to my memory, thougr 
 without the wide derivator to make it complete : 
 
 "ONA VERY WORDY VERSE BUILDER. 
 
 *' That Homer sometimes sleeps they say, 
 His readers think a bore ; 
 With Bob it goes the other way, 
 He wakes, his readers snore ! " 
 
 A man of Montgomery's vanity would often have his portrait painted 
 There is one before me by Thomson from a painting by Derby ; then 
 is another by C. Grant ; while Maclise has had in his eye the Byronk 
 portrait by Hobday, the original of which, according to Macaulay 
 " appears to be doing his very best to look like a man of genius, thougl 
 with less success than his strenuous exertions deserve." Poet or poetaster 
 he may think himself well off; "damned with faint praise," or consignee 
 to the lower depths of Tartarus with unmitigated condemnation, it is much 
 as I take it, to have obtained a permanent niche in Eraser's Pantheon 
 where he sits serene in imperturbable complacency, 
 
 " iEternumque tenet per ssecula nomen." 
 
 I think that it was just after the publication of the Omnipresence 4 
 the 'Deity that Montgomery entered himself at Oxford, with a view of read 
 ing for holy orders. He properly, says his critic in Fraser, chose Lincoh 
 as his college, " of which he may rival its glorious bell, the might; 
 Tom, in the volume, sonorousness and emptiness of its windy music. : 
 He graduated B.A., 1833 ; M.A., 1838 ; being placed in the fourtl 
 class, in Uteris humanioribus, at the examination at the end of Easte 
 term, 1833. When ordained, he speedily took rank as a popular preacher 
 and was ever ready to give his services for the benefit of religion o 
 
 * The Real Devil's Walk, p. 23. f Vol. iv. p. 8. 
 
THE AUTHOR OF^THE CHALDEE MAKUSCRIPTo" 
 
JAMES HOGG. 91 
 
 chanty. He became eventually minister of Percy Chapel, St. Pancras ; 
 and died at Brighton, December, 1855, in his forty-ninth year. 
 
 I ought not to omit to mention that the critical remarks by Fraser on 
 Robert Montgomery are among those of which it was admitted, at a 
 later period, that " though not remarkably harsh, they were uncalled for 
 and unjust." In fact, the poetry of this writer still finds readers and 
 admirers, while better is forgotten ; and for the justification of such, 
 I do not hesitate to conclude by the expression of my full belief that, in 
 the words of old Fuller, taken literally, it " will be admired by 
 judicious posterity, while Fame has. a trumpet left her, and any breath to 
 blow therein." 
 
 " Farewell to the poet of fustian and flummery, 
 Whose verses, said ' Fraser,' were metrical mummery ; 
 Imitation Miltonics, and such like mere Brummery, 
 But I'm sure if you read of his works the mere summary, 
 (If his stilted heroics don't render you too merry, ) 
 ' Omnipresence,' and 'Satan,' and ' Woman,' a rum array, 
 You'll think that the critics were writing in some hurry, 
 When they said that his poems were stupid humdrummcry, 
 Magniloquent twaddle, and trite fee-faw-fummery ; 
 That detraction should merit pursue is custommary, 
 And the strings of the lyre of Apollo to strum awry, 
 Debars not from Fraser's ' Illustrious ' chummery, 
 And a niche in the ' Gallery,' sunshiny and summery, 
 So sing ' Io, Psean ! ' for Robert Montgomery ! " 
 
 XXI. JAMES HOGG. 
 
 SURELY, if any country in the world, it is " invincible romantic Scotia '' 
 who has just cause to be proud of her peasant-poets, those glorious 
 avrdxOoves, who, drawing their inspiration from the natural scenes and 
 oral traditions of their own storied land, and with small aid from society 
 or education, pour forth their souls in untutored song, with all the glee 
 and spontaneity of the lark at heaven's gate. Many there are ; but of 
 all who have thus strung their names upon time's eternal bead-roll, three 
 stand forth in the foremost rank. These are Robert Burns, James 
 Hogg, and Allan Cunningham, verily a triad, an equal to which 
 Scotland may safely challenge the whole world to produce. 
 
 Of these, Burns is essentially the poet of human feeling and passion, 
 whose burning thoughts find response in every bosom, and whose 
 utterances kindle sympathetic feeling with all the rapidity of the electrical 
 current. HOGG, on the other hand, has little footing on the nether 
 world ; he is the bard of a weird and imaginative realm, of the spirits 
 that haunt the lonely glen and the storied stream, of the fairy, the 
 brownie, and the mournful wraith of the unburied victim. Cunningham, 
 lastly, is the minstrel of the border foray and feud, the knightly joust, 
 the men and the deeds of other times, which he brings before us with 
 a picturesqueness and reality perhaps excelled by no other lyrist. 
 
 What's in a name ? Charles Lamb once wrote a farce entitled Mr. H. t 
 which is, as Talfourd says, the apotheosis of the alphabet, and teaches 
 
92 THE MACL1SE PORTRAIT-GALLERY, 
 
 the value of a good patronymic. The little piece was not even ephe- 
 meral, for it only had a stage existence of one night. It is charming to 
 read, but had not body enough for continued dramatic life ; nor does 
 the name of its hero, which turned out to be " Hogsflesh," seem suffi- 
 ciently cacophonous to afford a raison d'etre for the mystery by which it 
 was surrounded. u Hogg" maybe thought less objectionable, as abstract 
 in nature, and indicating the "whole animal." However this may be, 
 it is as the " Ettrick Shepherd " that James Hogg, of whom I now have 
 to say a few words, is generally known. This extraordinary being was 
 born in the forest of Ettrick, in Selkirkshire, Jan. 25th, 1772 ; was bred 
 up as a shepherd and cowherd, and never had more than six months 
 education in his life. He first began to write ballads at twenty-four years 
 of age, in the very year of the death of Burns, who, as Hogg did not 
 learn till the following one, had been a ploughman-poet, had been born 
 on the same day of the same month as himself, and whose Tarn 
 O'Shanter, then heard for the first time, fairly ravished its hearer, whose 
 favourite it ever after remained. This was the crisis of his life ; the 
 very pivot on which his destinies were to turn. He thought within himself 
 that he, as a shepherd, had more time on his hands than a ploughman ; 
 but then wept at the reflection that he was not able to write. However, 
 he resolved to be a poet, and follow in the steps of his great predecessor. 
 We must now pass over a decade during which our Shepherd had written 
 and sung many a song, published the Mountain Bard, and written 
 Hogg on Sheep, for which Constable gave him 86, and the Highland 
 Society a premium, and arrive at the year 18 10. Then it was that poor 
 Hogg, brought to insolvency by the farming speculations into which the 
 unwonted possession of capital had seduced him, " in utter desperation 
 took his plaid about his shoulders," and wended his way to " Embro," 
 to push his fortunes as a literary man. At this epoch he says of himself, 
 " I never had been once in any polished society, had read next to nothing, 
 was now in the thirty-eighth year of my age, and knew no more of human 
 life and manners than a child." In 181 3, when forty years of age, he pub- 
 lished The Queerts Wake, and in 1832, when he prefaced the solitary 
 volume that appeared of the projected Altrive Tales, with so interesting 
 an autobiography, he could enumerate some three-score of volumes as the 
 production of his pen, which, as he truly says, " if the quality were at 
 all proportionate to the quantity, are enough for any man's life." 
 
 Of Blackwood s Magazine, Hogg boasts of being " the beginner and 
 almost sole instigator; and here, in October, 1817, was published the 
 thrice-celebrated ' Chaldee Manuscript,' " of which, at the foot of the 
 portrait before us, he appears as the author. This curious piece, written 
 certainly in part by him, and in part by Wilson and Lockhart, professed 
 to give in Scriptural phraseology, a sort of history of the magazine, in 
 course of which, the seceders, Pringle and Cleghorn, and the supporters 
 of the rival publisher, Constable, together with most of the literary 
 notables of the day, are saterized, or alluded to, under the guise of beasts 
 and birds. The appearance of this witty lampoon caused the greatest 
 excitement ; the number of the magazine containing it went off like wild- 
 fire. A " second edition " was issued ; but lo ! the reprehensible jeu 
 desprit was withdrawn, and its place supplied with inoffensive matter. 
 Hence the rage for "private copies," as they were termed ; that is, those 
 containing the libellous article, with MS. marginal explanations. These 
 
JAMES HOGG. 93 
 
 have, of course, been carefully hoarded up, or destroyed in many cases, 
 and are now rarely met with. The one of which I am the lucky possessor 
 contains, besides other relevant matter, a MS. key to the characters in 
 the handwriting of the great James Watt, to whom the magazine and the 
 information would doubtless be furnished by some of his old literary 
 associates in the North. 
 
 One of the victims who supposed himself injured, proceeded against 
 Blackwood, and recovered damages to a considerable amount ; numerous 
 pamphlets and broadsides appeared on both sides, all of which are now 
 of the utmost rarity. William Hone cited the article, as a religious 
 parody, in his celebrated and successful defence from the charge of 
 "printing and publishing a certain impious, profane and scandalous libel 
 on that part of our Church-service called the Catechism, with intent to 
 excite impiety and irreligion in the minds of his majesty's liege subjects, 
 to ridicule and scandalize the Christian religion, and to bring into con- 
 tempt the Catechism," before Mr. Justice Abbott, in Guildhall, Dec. 18th, 
 1817, stating that it was "written with a great deal of ability," and that 
 it was based on a certain chapter of Ezekiel.* Space does not allow me 
 to say more on the subject, and I must content myself with referring 
 those among my readers who may desire to see this once celebrated 
 satire to the Nodes Ambrosianai, vol. iv., where, with the elision of a few 
 verses, it is reprinted ; and to articles in [Notes and Queries, third series, 
 vol. v. pp. 314, 317 ; and vol. vii. p. 469. 
 
 The most concise certainly, and perhaps not the least correct of the 
 criticisms upon Hogg is that pronounced in the Nodes upon one of his 
 novels, The Three Perils of Man, which is said to be "like all his things, 
 a mixture of the admirable, the execrable and the tolerable." The critic 
 adds, " Hogg is a true genius in his own style one of the most wonder- 
 ful creatures in the world, taking all things together." Perhaps it is to 
 his beautiful poem, Kilmeny, that I should point as the best specimen of 
 his peculiar power. This is an episode in the larger poem, The Queer? s 
 Wake, and purports to be a narrative of the reminiscences of a child who 
 has been spirited away in her sinless purity, into fairy-land, and after a 
 time permitted to return to the habits and duties of mundane life. In 
 this beautiful piece the genius of Hogg is in its proper element. The 
 story is told in a spontaneous strain of the most exquisite imaginative 
 poetry, so vaguely picturesque in its descriptions, so abstract and ideal 
 in its imagery, so resonant with tones which are not of this world, that 
 the fancy is taken captive with its wild, unearthly charm. 
 
 Hogg is one of the chief compotators of the Nodes. Till he got to 
 Edinburgh, he had led a very temperate life ; but he was evidently to the 
 manner born, and took to his grog like a poet. One of his first pub- 
 lishers, Jamie Robertson, he describes happily as "a kind-hearted, con- 
 fused body, who loved a joke and a dram." The two worthies met each 
 day to consult about the publication, and uniformly proceeded to " a dark 
 house in the Cowgate," where they drank with the printers till Hogg's 
 brain was so dizzy, that on leaving, he could hardly walk. Long before 
 this, however, he records how, when the two Cunninghams, father and son, 
 had sought him out when herding his master's ewes on a Nithsdale hill, 
 the elder produced a "strong bottle," with which they retired into the 
 lonely bothy, and talked, and boozed, far into the afternoon. It was 
 
 * First Trial of William Hone, page 18. 
 
94 - THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Lockhart's store of Jamaica rum which enabled the Shepherd, as he con- 
 fesses, to overcome his rustic timidity ; while Sym the " Timothy 
 Tickler " of Blackwood 's and he were wont to fiddle and fuddle the long 
 night through, to prove which of the twain had the softest heart and the 
 strongest head. 
 
 These are poor Hogg's own ingenuous confessions, and are, moreover, 
 in strict accordance with a certain fixed principle and theory of life held 
 by him. This was sorely disturbed when, visiting Keswick, and having 
 sent an invitation to Greta Hall, asking Southey to come to his inn, and 
 " drink one half-mutchkin with him ; 5; the poet indeed came and stayed 
 an hour and a half, but showed no disposition to imbibe. " I was," says 
 Hogg, "a grieved as well as an astonished man when I found that he 
 refused all participation in my beverage of rum-punch. For a poet to 
 refuse his glass was to me a phenomenon ; and I confess I doubted in my 
 own mind, and doubt to this day, if perfect sobriety and transcendant 
 poetical genius can exist together. In Scotland I am sure they cannot. 
 With regard to the English, I shall leave them to settle that among 
 themselves, as they have little that is worth drinking." 
 
 Well, this is a position I am not prepared to dispute. Plutarch tells 
 us that the Muses themselves were given to fuddling ; and Horace says 
 that their breath of a morning indicated addiction to stronger waters than 
 those of Helicon. The latter bard, indeed, goes so far as to assert that 
 no teetotaller can possibly write pleasing or lasting verse : 
 
 " Nulla placere diu, nee vivere carmina possunt, 
 Quae scribuntur aquae potoribus, " * 
 
 thus paraphrased by a witty modern : 
 
 " If with water you fill up your glasses, 
 
 You'll never write anything wise ; 
 For wine is the horse of Parnassus, 
 Which hurries a bard to the skies." t 
 
 In like vein John Phillips says : 
 
 the Muses still require 
 
 Humid regalement, nor will aught avail 
 Imploring Phcebus with unmoistened lips." J 
 
 Even Milton is on this side of the question, and in his Epistle io Carlo 
 Deodati, asks : 
 
 ' ' Quid quereris refugam vino dapibusque poe'sin ? 
 
 Carmen amat Bacchum, carmina Bacchus amat." 
 
 It is true that on the other side we have Wordsworth somewhere de- 
 claring himself 
 
 "A simple water-drinking bard," 
 
 and Huetius, the learned bishop of Avranches, forsaking the vine so dear 
 to his countrymen, imputes special poetic gifts to the not inebriating cup 
 which our own Cowper has immortalized : 
 
 " The^e quisquis crebro se proluit haustu, 
 
 Tradidit huic artes dexter Apollo suas, 
 
 Et caput impllcuit lauro, curruque levatum 
 
 Sacra coronatis ad juga vexit equis." 
 
 * Epist. xix. f Horace in London. % Cider, ii. 397. 
 
 P. D. Huetii, Poemata, 1700, i2mo, p. 22. 
 
JAMES HOGG. 95 
 
 with which, perhaps, insufficient counterpoise, I must leave the vexed 
 question for the consideration of my readers. 
 
 Maginn had a high opinion of the Ettrick Shepherd. Of him, he said, 
 " In his simplicity consisted his excellence. Had he attempted anything 
 great he would have made himself ridiculous. He was every inch a man ; 
 full of fun and feeling, without the heaviness of Scott." 
 
 It is pleasing to know that this artless, genuine child of Nature saw 
 no reason to be discontented, in retrospect, with the part it had been 
 allotted him to play on this world's stage. " One may think," said he, on 
 trailing his Memoir, in 1832, " that I must have worn out a life of misery 
 and wretchedness ; but the case has been quite the reverse. I never knew 
 either man or woman who has been so uniformly happy as I have been ; 
 which has been partly owing to a good constitution, and partly from the 
 conviction that a heavenly gift, conferring the powers of immortal song, 
 was inherent in my soul. Indeed, so uniformly smooth and happy has 
 my married life been, that, on a retrospect, I cannot distinguish one part 
 from another, save by some remarkably good days of fishing, shooting 
 and curling on the ice." The autobiographical sketch, a piece of 
 inimitable artlessness and egotism, from which I have transcribed the 
 foregoing passage, was prefixed by Hogg to " vol. i." it was the only 
 one published of a projected selection of " the author's most approved 
 writings," which was to be completed in twelve volumes, appearing on 
 alternate months, and "printed uniformly with the Waverley Novels." 
 The title was Altrive Tales j collected among the Peasantry of Scotland 
 and from Foreign Adventurers. By the Ettrick Shepherd. With Illus- 
 trations by George Cruikshank (London, James Cochrane and Co., Pall 
 Mall, 1832, 8vo). Some of the Tales had appeared before, and some 
 were to be original ; and the assemblage was made, "not as an ostenta- 
 tious display,' 5 as the Shepherd declares in his prospectus, u but as an 
 Inheritance to his Children, and a Legacy to his Country." The design, 
 I presume, did not appear to promise success ; it was never carried out, 
 as I have stated, and three years later, at his farm at Altrive, on Nov. 21, 
 1835,- 
 
 ' ' Death upon the braes of Yarrow, 
 Closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes," 
 
 and James Hogg departed from the life in which he had found so much 
 innocent enjoyment. His " Poetical Works," with his life by Professor 
 Wilson, were published by Blackie, in 1850-2, 5 vols. i2mo, and there is 
 an account of him in Cha7nbers's Miscellany of Useful and Entertaini?ig 
 Tracts, No. 123. There is an earlier gathering of his smaller poetical 
 pieces, a charming little volume for the pocket, now scarce enough, en- 
 titled. Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd. Now first collected. (Blackwood, 
 Edinburgh, and Cadell, London, 1831, small 8vo.) Each ballad is intro- 
 duced to the reader by a short prose note, written in a tone of the most 
 delicious and artless vanity. One, " The Minstrel Boy," he says, " was 
 written as a. per contra to Mr. Moore's song to the same air ; but either 
 he, or his publishers, or both, set up their birses, and caused it, and a 
 greai many more to be cancelled, the most ridiculous of all things in my 
 opinion, I ever knew. It was manifestly because they saw mine were the 
 best." Of another, " The Maid of the Sea," he says, that he was forced 
 by Moore to cancel it also, " for nothing that I know of, but because it 
 
96 THE MAC LIS B PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 ran counter to his." He adds, " I have neither forgot nor forgiven it ; 
 and I have a great mind to force him to cancel Lalla Rookh, for 
 stealing it wholly from The Queen's Wake, which is so apparent in the 
 plan, that every London judge will give it in my favour. . . . He 
 had better have left my trivial songs alone." The ballad, "Donald 
 M'Gillavry," was originally published in the Jacobite Relics (vol. i.), 
 and Hogg chuckles mightily to think that by omitting to state that it 
 was an original composition of his own, the Edinburgh Review was 
 "entrapped into a high but unintentional compliment to the author," 
 and that the sagacious critic selected, as the best specimen of the 
 true old Jacobite song, " a trifle of his (Hogg's) own, which he put in to 
 fill up a page ! n 
 
 XXII. THE BARON VON GOETHE. 
 
 For the exquisite prose sketch which accompanied this portrait on its first 
 appearance at the court of " Regina," was called into requisition the pen 
 of an Englishman of letters who, at that time, and even now, may be 
 said to have done more than any other scholar to bring his countrymen 
 acquainted with the riches of German literature. I need hardly say that 
 I allude to Thomas Carlyle, among whose Critical and Miscellaneous 
 Essays this smaller gem is included. Nothing would have given me 
 greater satisfaction than to quote so beautiful and characteristic a piece of 
 writing in its entirety ; but as it is so readily accessible, I content myself 
 with pointing out its character, and the place where it is to be found. 
 The portrait which it so happily illustrates, and which is here before us, 
 was not taken ad vivum, but copied from one by Stieler of Munich. "It 
 proved," says a note to my edition, an American one, of Carlyle, " a 
 total failure and involuntary caricature, resembling, as was said at the 
 time, a wretched old-clothes man, carrying behind his back a hat which he 
 seemed to have stolen." This passage I only transcribe to express some 
 dissent from the opinion expressed in it, the portrait, this copy of which 
 is set down to Thackeray, with much probability, in the Autographic 
 Mirror, 1864, appearing to me, in many respects, a worthy and suggestive 
 resemblance of the great patriarch of German literature, and indicating 
 to some extent that decision of character and potency of will, by means of 
 which, as we are told, he was once able to ward off an infectious fever by 
 which he was menaced. 
 
 It is as the author of Faust* that Goethe here appears before us, and it 
 is probably with this divine production that his name is still, and ever will 
 be, more intimately associated, than with any other of his works, trans- 
 cendantly great as many of them are. I was yet young in German when 
 I commenced the study of this immortal work, and knew little of it besides 
 
 * This poem, which is styled by Bunsen "Die Tragodie der Seele," was com- 
 menced as far back as 1774, when some of the episodes were sketched out. The 
 whole was remodelled in 1790 by the author, when the first separate edition, entitled 
 Faust ein Fragment, was given to the world. But the complete poem, such as we now 
 possess it, was not published till 1806. 
 
THE AUTHOR. OF FAUST? 
 
 
THE BARON VON GOETHE. 97 
 
 the contents of my Lesebuch, and the " Studenten Lieder," carolled nightly 
 in a Parisian 7nansarde by a joyous group from the Fatherland, myself 
 the only "Englander" dispersed for ever this many a long day, like that 
 " gallant company " whose fate awoke the regrets of him who sung, in 
 Byron's line, how Corinth of the double sea was lost and won. Strong was 
 the dissuasion from friendly voices, who told of the manifold difficulties 
 of a work the interpretation of which had baffled the strongest minds of 
 Germany ; still, nothing daunted, I adventured, and soon found, to my own 
 surprise, that, aided by my Wbrterbuch and Mr. Hayward's admirable 
 prose translation, I was making easy and satisfactory progress in my 
 delightful task. The obstacles arising from grammatical construction I 
 found to be neither numerous nor important ; while the obscurities of 
 meaning, of which, doubtless, there are many and great, hardly affected 
 the continuity of progress, or diminished the pleasure which the mere poetry 
 afforded. I therefore have said thus much in venturing to recommend a 
 like experiment to those other students of High Dutch to whom the 
 fancied difficulties of Faust have hitherto made it a sealed book. 
 
 Many a deep impression have the waves of time washed away since 
 those early days, but I yet recall, in all their vivid glow, the feeling which 
 the first reading of this sublime poem awakened in my soul. It was 
 as a wind to awaken each slumbering emotion of the mind ; a lightning 
 flash to kindle every current of sympathy ; a mirror reflecting to the 
 spirit's gaze its own unfamiliar characters and lineaments. It possesses 
 an infinite variety which is never staled by custom, and each new 
 perusal will bring you under the dominion of words that ring in the brain 
 and take possession of the thoughts as no other poem or work but this, 
 and Shakespeare, alone can ever do. I read it wandering through 
 Rhineland, in native Frankfort, in friendly Weimar, and in beautiful 
 Berlin, "light of the world ;" * and longer study and wider apprehension 
 have only increased the opinion I then formed of the beauty of its poetry, the 
 profundity of its meaning, and the almost universality of its significance. 
 
 What manner of book, then, is this? What is its meaning and 
 object ? Primarily, Faust may be considered simply as a dramatic poem, 
 having for its object, like the Doctor Faustus of our own " Marlowe of 
 the mighty line," the exhibition and illustration of the old tradition of a 
 scholar, who, made mad by hard study and much learning, has, or believes 
 that he has, intercourse with the Evil One, in the guise of Mephistopheles.t 
 This is the superficial, and, as far as it goes, a correct view. But then, 
 if we would gain a clue to its further interpretation, and a better hope 
 of fairly plucking the heart out of its mystery, we must not forget that 
 we have the author's own testimony as to the almost entirely subjective 
 character of the work, and the passionate and perplexed condition of 
 his mind at the time of its composition ; % and thus endeavour to regard 
 it as an autopathography, shadowing forth the spiritual life of its author, 
 and the pains and sorrows through whose purging fires his soul passed 
 to its eventide grandeur and serenity. 
 
 But this is not all. Faust is a work of supreme genius, and con- 
 sequently possesses in a superlative degree, quite apart from its mere 
 
 * " Lumen Orbi," anagram of Berolinum. 
 
 f See a paper on "The Devil and Dr. Faustus," in the Cornhill Magazine, 
 December, 1866. 
 
 % Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, vol. ii. p. 342, 
 
98 THE MACL1SE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 objective and exoteric form, that invariable and critical characteristic 
 of all works of genius, by virtue of which they become interfused with, 
 and reciprocated by, the various idiosyncrasies, mental and moral, to 
 which they gain access, in such manner that, imparting and deriving, 
 informing and informed, generating and acquiring new life, their assimila- 
 tion with the receptive soul and intellect becomes so complete, that the 
 mutual agencies and relations of these with them are thenceforth and 
 evermore indissoluble and indiscriminable. 
 
 Hence it is that the esoteric interpretations of Faust are almost as 
 numerous as its readers ; each one giving that of which his own mind 
 is the unconscious factor. In this way, one student has held that the 
 poet merely intended to convey a body of practical lessons on the wisdom 
 of life ; another, that his object was a delineation of the eternal struggle 
 between the component elements, corporeal and psychical, of the human 
 dualism ; a third, that the poem is to be regarded as an iip-fjvevo-is, a 
 striving to reconcile the great contradictions of the world, and establish 
 peace between the real and the ideal ; a fourth, that the leading idea, 
 as in the Apuleian fable of Cupid and Psyche, is the redemption of the 
 soul, polluted by sensual passion, through the purifying influence of 
 a childlike and innocent love ; a fifth, and this, if my memory does not 
 lead me astray, was the opinion of our own Coleridge, who thought, in 
 this view, that the book was a failure,* that the dramatic action was 
 intended to evolve the consequences of a misology, or hatred and depre- 
 ciation of learning, caused by an originally intense thirst for knowledge 
 baffled, like that which in Cornelius Agrippa produced his ever memor- 
 able diatribe on the Vanity of the Arts and Sciences ; t while others, 
 lastly, have regarded the piece as nothing more nor less than a daring 
 attempt to afford a pantheistic solution of the great enigma of the 
 universe. 
 
 Now there is an entire absence of evidence, external as well as internal, 
 as to the truth and value of either, or any, of these fanciful hypotheses. 
 The student is therefore free to adopt which he pleases, to evolve a new 
 one for himself if he thinks fit, or simply luxuriate sensuously in the 
 objective beauties of language and rhythm. But in any case, the theory 
 formed must be regarded and pursued as a radiating path from a common 
 central standpoint, the exhibition and illustration of the nursery story, 
 suggested emphatically to the mind of the poet by the similarity of his 
 own feelings, with regard to the acquisition of knowledge and the 
 conviction of its vanity and ineptitude, to those of the hero of the old 
 familiar tradition. 
 
 Faust is, I repeat, a work of supreme genius ; worthy to take its 
 place, as it undoubtedly will through the ages, in succession to the four 
 or five sublime cardinal productions of the human intellect, to the 
 (Edipus of Sophocles, to what time has left us of the divine trilogy of 
 yEschylus, to the Divine Comedy of Dante, and to the Ha?nlet of Shake- 
 speare. But if it is thus grand in conception, it is no less perfect in 
 mechanical execution. In this aspect it is perfect. It has none of the 
 affected ruggedness and the studied obscurity, which seems now-a-days 
 necessary to tickle a palate cloyed with the vapid graces and luscious 
 
 * Quarterly Review, vol. iii. p. 21. 
 
 f De Incertitudine et Vaniiate Omnium Scientiarum et Artium, Francofurti, 1714. 
 
THE BARON VON GOETHE. 99 
 
 sweets of the old school. I do not believe that there is a halting rhythm, 
 a faulty line, or an imperfect rhyme in the entire poem, which thus stands 
 forth in antipodal majesty and beauty, contrasted with those monstrous 
 superfcetations of conceit upon inanity, if not mere impostures, which, 
 native in origin or imported from America, have in these latter years 
 brought burning disgrace upon the sacred name of poetry.* 
 
 To revert for a brief moment to Faust. I do not know that a 
 Goethiana has yet been published, though Goethe, like Shakespeare and 
 Voltaire, has created a literature of his own, and needs a bibliographer. 
 The Meisterstiick itself has, either in part or whole, been translated a 
 score of times into English by Lord Francis Leveson-Gower, Hayward 
 (prose), Talbot, Anster, Blackie, Syme, Sir George Lefevre, Captain Knox, 
 Filmore, Archer Gurney,f Bernays (prose), Anna Swanwick (for Bonn's 
 Library), John Hills, Theodore Martin, Bayard Taylor, Galvan,and others, 
 in part by Shelley and Carlyle, and anonymously (1834), and there is 
 already a whole library of Vorlesungen and " Essays." A paper, on " The 
 English Translations of Goethe's Faust" will be found in the Cornhill 
 Magazine, for September, 1872 ; but the English reader may be well 
 content with the prose translation of Mr. A. Hayward, of which many 
 editions have already appeared, % with its admirable introduction and 
 elucidatory notes ; the "Remarks" upon this by D. Boileau (1834, 8vo) ; 
 Dr. Roller's Faust Papers (1835, small 8vo) ; and the metrical version 
 of Anna Swanwick, published by H. G. Bohn, which is at once faithful 
 and mellifluous. In the original German, the editions are of course 
 innumerable ; from the duodecimo at half a thaler, to the magnificent 
 folio (Stuttgardt, 1854) with the twenty-four beautiful illustrations of 
 Engelbert Siebertz, which will take the heart out of a ten-pound note. 
 
 To the " second part " of Faust, I cannot now do more than briefly 
 allude; and can neither here attempt to offer a solution, or a demon- 
 stration of its relative continuity in respect to the earlier poem. According 
 to Eckermann, who was a kind of "Boswell" to the great man, Goethe 
 affirmed that in it was displayed a far richer world than in the former 
 part ; that it was less subjective in character : and that the atmosphere 
 was higher, broader, clearer and more passionless. For a paper on it, 
 reference may be made to Fraser's Magazine, October, 1863. It has been 
 
 * Take, for instance, the notable " Walt Whitman" hoax. An eminent literator, 
 Mr. W. M. Rossetti, laid a cunning plot to test the gullibility of the public in matters 
 of taste and criticism. He dug up an American "poet " who had never written a word 
 of poetry in his life ; and who, in all he had written, was bombastic, coarse, conceited, 
 and irreverent, or generally meaningless. He reprinted him in England, wrote an 
 eulogistic preface, and engaged some really clever fellows, Professor Dowden, A. C. 
 Swinburne, Robert Buchanan, etc. to aid the scheme by unstinted and indiscriminate 
 iaudation. The bait took. Men who had never read Washington Irving or Whittier 
 echoed the cuckoo-cry, and " Walt Whitman " was the noblest Transatlantic "tone " 
 yet heard ! Professor Bayne, in an able article in the Contemporary Review (December, 
 1875), pretty well shook the bran out of the puppet " poet ; " but the impetus he got 
 at starting still carries him on, and like a spent ball, he may yet roll on languidly for 
 a time. The book is worth having, too, as a literary curiosity. 
 
 f The manifold faults and errors of Mr. Gurney's version are pointed out in the 
 Westminster Review, vol. xxxviii. p. 532. 
 
 % The eighth edition lies before me, published in 1864, i2mo ; but I question 
 whether the translator has made any alterations or additions of any importance since 
 the second (Moxon, 1834), a handsome volume in octavo. Mr. Hay ward's translation 
 is reviewed in Fraser's Magazine, May, 1833, p. 532. 
 
100 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-CALLERY. 
 
 translated into prose by Dr. Bernays ; into verse by Archer Gurney 
 (1842), and later (1S71) by the late Mr. Bayard Taylor. 
 
 It is a natural enough transition from Faust to Reynard the Fox. 
 Of this charming apologue of the Middle Ages, which Grimm would 
 claim to be of German or Flemish origin, but which is clearly traceable 
 to that fertile source of fictitious story, the fables of Bidpai, an English 
 version was among the earliest productions of the press of Caxton, 
 re-edited by Mr. Thorns for the Percy Society in 1844. Retaining its 
 hold upon the public through the intervening centuries, it has continued 
 to appear in every variety of form, in prose and in verse, down to the 
 version by Mr. Holloway in 1852. But it is in the Rei?ieke Fuchs of 
 Goethe that the still verdant allegory has been wrought to a pitch of 
 consummate perfection, as an exhibition of the triumph of cunning and 
 hypocrisy, and a trenchant satire upon the world and its ways. This, 
 too, may be had of any size, and at any price ; but the lover of luxurious 
 editions will look out for an original copy of the pracht-Ausgabe, in quarto 
 form, with the exquisite illustrations, either on steel or wood, according 
 to price, from the designs of Wilhelm von Kaulbach. If, on the other 
 hand, he is innocent of German, he may console himself with the spirited 
 and Hudibrastic rendering of Goethe's version by Thomas James Arnold 
 (1855, 8vo, pp. 320), with the clever illustrations of Joseph Wolf; or the 
 later issue of the same (royal 8vo, 1861), with the seventy wood-cut 
 designs of Von Kaulbach, from the larger work ; or, finally, the version 
 by E. W. Holloway, 1852, quarto, with the thirty-seven engravings on 
 steel from the designs of H. Leutemann. 
 
 Such is the fullness and manysidedness of the genius of Goethe, and 
 so full of energy and activity his long literary career, that the briefest 
 notice of his various productions would demand a far greater space than 
 I have here at my disposal. It is to him that the Germans are, in a great 
 measure, indebted for the present condition of their noble language, and 
 their appreciation of its qualities and capabilities. When the Sorrozvs of 
 Werther, in 1774, announced the dawn of a genius which was destined 
 for immortality, the dispute between the adherents of Gottsched and 
 Bodmer was yet unsettled, and it was still an open question whether the 
 nascent literature was to receive its early influence from the traditions 
 and examples of the French or English writers. It was Goethe un- 
 questionably, who, by his earlier works, helped, in the face of reproach 
 and ridicule, to decide the wavering national taste. It was mainly by 
 his example that the language was freed from formal restraint ; that 
 heterogeneous accretions were excluded ; and its powers of expression 
 developed by the formation of notional compounds, in accordance with 
 the rules of verbal analogy. Hence it is that the German language, by 
 an ever-changing co-ordination of its own primal elements, is, after the 
 Greek, perhaps the richest and most flexible of the various modes of 
 human speech ; and that the Germans possess the advantage, enjoyed to a 
 large extent by ourselves, of being able to study, in almost archetypal per- 
 fection, the masterpieces of other literatures. The French, on the other 
 hand, have scarcely a good translation in their language, while their 
 " creaking lyre," once the envy of the Germans, is ill adapted, at least 
 for the higher forms of poetical expression. The German, indeed, it 
 essentially the language of poetry; while, were I called upon to assign 
 to the other idioms of Europe the department for which each was best 
 
THE BARON VON GOETHE. ioi 
 
 fitted, I should indicate the English for oratory, the French for conversa- 
 tion, the Italian for song, and the Spanish for Ivve^ iliac is, the expression 
 of the tender passion. 
 
 More than one generation has passed away since that which first 
 wept over the sufferings of the youthful Werther (1774), or imitated his 
 eccentricities. It is a work of true genius, instinct with profound pathos 
 and energic passion. We have two or three translations ; but all are 
 more or less inadequate, and this may account for the comparative 
 oblivion into which it has fallen. 
 
 There is one little point in Wilhehn Meister (1795) which may be 
 worthy of mention, as it exhibits Goethe, who, it will be remembered, 
 was educated for the bar, as an original and accurate observer of medical 
 symptoms. He states that his father was attacked by right hemiplegia, 
 and describes, in a clear and simple manner, how this was accompanied 
 by aphasia, or loss of the proper use of speech. Now this is interesting, 
 inasmuch as we have no description of the phenomenon by a ?nedical 
 author before 1836, in Trousseau's Clinical Medichie (Sydenham Society), 
 and Reynolds's System of Medicine, 2nd ed. vol. ii. p. 454. I need not 
 say that Wilhehn Meister, with its exquisite creation of Mignon, is known 
 to us by the powerful version of Carlyle. 
 
 In the drama of Egmont occurs the character of " Clara," than which 
 exists no more lovely example of the constancy and devotion of woman. 
 The Iphigenia auf Tauris is a classical production, refreshing to the 
 vexed spirit as a Greek statue. It has been pronounced almost worthy 
 of Sophocles himself; but fine as it undoubtedly is, it must be held 
 inferior, alike in theme and treatment, to the Samson Agonistes of Milton, 
 the most successful attempt of a modern, according to Goethe himself, 
 to catch life from the breath of the antique spirit. Those who are curious 
 to see how it reads in Greek may turn to the masterly version of Theodore 
 Koch, or those parts of it which have been translated by Professor 
 Hermann of Leipsic. 
 
 An evergreen favourite is Hermann and Dorothea (1797), an idyllic 
 epos of truly Homeric character, written after the ancient models in 
 hexameters, full of pastoral beauty and axiomatic wisdom. Then there 
 is the Wahlverwandschaften (1809), a romance of great beauty and power, 
 but, perhaps to some minds, dangerous in theory; Cellini (1803), in its 
 Italianized German ; * Dichtung und Wahrheit, a biopathography of 
 intense interest ; ballads, songs and minor poems, exhibiting elegance, 
 facility and consummate finish ; and lastly, his correspondence with 
 Lavater, Schiller, Von Bernsdorff, Zeller, Schultz, and Bettina von Arnim, 
 geborene Brentano, embodying a vast amount of literature and criticism. 
 
 In English, we have Mrs. Austin's Characteristics of Goethe; the 
 various essays of Thomas Carlyle ; Eckermann's Conversations j and the 
 masterly and exhaustive life by the late G. H. Lewes. Reference may 
 also be made with profit to the Critical Essays and Literary Notes of the 
 late Bayard Taylor (New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1880, 8vo). Here 
 especially are two chapters on Weimar, in which are graphic sketches 
 of the still surviving members of the circle of which Goethe was once the 
 centre. The admirable Lectures on Goethe of Hermann Grimm had not 
 appeared when these essays were originally printed ; but the essential 
 estimate of Goethe's moral character by the two men will not be found to 
 
 * Transited i n to English by the late John Oxenford, (H. G, Bohn, 1848, 8vo. ) 
 
102 THE MACLLSE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 differ greatly. Anyway, we have much yet to learn from the unpublished 
 diaries and otb.er important, documents still in the possession of the great 
 man's gran dsc+n's^ and Avhich they, have yet refused to impart to the public. 
 Bayard Taylor 'has no" great, opinion of the Life by Lewes, which he 
 considered not a biography, but an elaborate apology ; written by a 
 man, clever no doubt, but informed by no real sympathy with the spirit 
 of the master's life. 
 
 The external lineaments of the great author are well preserved for us 
 by the excellent portrait in the ordinary German editions of Faust; 
 the engravings from the portrait by George Dawe, R.A. ; the monument 
 in Frankfort by Schwanthaler ; the jove-like bust of Rauch ; and the 
 marble effigy in the library of his native city, where we see him in sitting 
 posture, by Marchesi. 
 
 To this illustrious man a long and prosperous career was allotted. 
 Born at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, August 28, 1749, he reigned for more 
 than half a century at Weimar, the acknowledged primate of the 
 intellectual life of Germany. Of him, Lord Byron, in the dedication of 
 Werner \ professed himself "one of his humblest admirers;" and in 
 that of Sarda?iapalus, addressed him as "the first of existing writers, 
 who has created the literature of his own country, and illustrated that 
 of Europe." He belonged to the ministry, was the friend and counsellor 
 of his own sovereign, and received honourable distinctions from other 
 monarchs. But the " paths of glory," and those of obscurity, converge 
 alike to one common centre ; and after an existence of nearly a century, 
 which had been entirely devoted to science, literature, and art, Johann 
 Wolfgang von Goethe rendered up his spirit at Weimar, on the 22nd 
 of March, 1832, in the eighty-third year of his age, with the memorable 
 words upon his lips, to which some would apply a secondary meaning, 
 " Dass mehr Licht hereinkomme." 
 
 " Rest thou soft in heavenly slumbers, 
 
 Near thy friend and prince reclined ; 
 For thy life was nobly spent, 
 
 In culturing thine age's mind. 
 Till space and time have passed away, 
 
 Thy name shall live in mortal breast ; 
 Then rest thee on thy tranquil couch 
 
 By earth adored : in Heaven thrice blessed. 
 
 A last word upon the first. Fraser, in the heading of this portrait, 
 fell into the same error which Byron had previously done, in his letter to 
 " Baron Goethe." (Prefatory matter to Marino Faliero^) The fact is, 
 Goethe was ennobled, having the " Von " prefixed to his name ; but he 
 never received the title of " Baron." To speak of him with this prefix 
 to his name is no less absurd than to say " Lord Gladstone." 
 
 XXIII. ISAAC D'ISRAELI. 
 
 Whether I regard his long and honourable life, exclusively devoted to 
 the best interests of literature, the pure and elevating pleasure which his 
 writings have bestowed, the influence which they have had in diffusing 
 

 -^ 
 
 ^* 
 
 vtd'jL*+. 
 
 AVTUSOk OF"MEE & CHARACTER OF CHARLES I T 
 
ISAAC D ISRAELI. 103 
 
 that taste for historical and literary investigation which is a marked 
 characteristic of the age, the impartiality of his judicial decisions, the 
 catholicity of his sentiments, the philosophic tone of his criticism, or 
 the industry and conscientiousness of his research, I commence a few 
 notes upon the literary career of ISAAC D'Israeli, with feelings of pro- 
 found respect and gratitude. 
 
 He was born at Enfield, May, 1766, and was the only child of Benjamin 
 D'Israeli, a Venetian merchant, long settled in this country, and descended 
 from a line of merchants, whose home for generations had been the once 
 proud Queen of the Adriatic. His early education was received in this 
 country, whence he proceeded to Holland, acquiring at Amsterdam and 
 Leyden several modern tongues ; and then to France (1786), where he 
 became imbued with that taste for the French language and literature 
 which never afterwards left him 
 
 It must have been shortly after his return that he wrote those two 
 curious letters to Dr. Vicesimus Knox, dated severally April joth and 
 20th, 1786, which were printed for the first time in the Gentleman 's 
 Magazine, July, 1848 (vol. xxx. p. 29), and which exhibit his early 
 ambition to distinguish himself in a literary career. In 1789 he wrote 
 A Poetical Epistle o?i the Abuse of Satire, and in 1790, A Defence oj 
 Poetry* which he afterwards suppressed, burning the entire edition, 
 except a few copies which had been sold. In 179 1-3 appeared the 
 Curiosities of Literature, a work which was the first to make revelation 
 of the fact that we possessed in our own literature materials for historical 
 and literary investigation hardly inferior to the celebrated Memoires pour 
 Servir of the French. Next appeared the Dissertation on Anecdotes 
 (1793), Essay on the Manners and Genius of the Literary Character (1795), 
 a favourite with Lord Byron and Bulwer ; Miscellanies; or, Literary 
 Recreations (1796). All of these are standard works, and have been often 
 reprinted. Besides these, D'Israeli was author of many books which are 
 not so well known ; he was a literary projector, full of industry and 
 energy, and much of his earlier career as an author is buried in obscurity. 
 I believe he had a hand in the compilation of two bulky tomes, entitled 
 Varieties of Literature, from Foreign Literary Journals and Original 
 MSS., now first published (London, Debrett, 1795, 2 vols. 8vo). W. 
 Tooke was also engaged in this, and assistance was lent by Pratt, Mavor, 
 and other literary friends, whose respective parts it is impossible now to 
 ascertain. Buy the book when you can get it ; it is full of curious matter. 
 Just after this appeared Vaurienj or, Sketches of the Times : a philoso- 
 phical novel (1797, 2 vols. 8vo), the title of which was, perhaps, prophetic ; 
 and Romances (1798, 8vo, 2nd ed. 1801), the principal tale in which 
 " Mejnoun and Leila, the Arabian Petrarch and Laura," is worth 
 mentioning, as it is said to be the first Eastern story written by a Euro- 
 pean, .in which the proprieties of custom and manner have received 
 careful attention, f though in this respect it is still inferior to that mar- 
 vellous Oriental romance, The Wondrous Tale of Alroy, written by the 
 gifted son of the author. The notes, moreover, to this tale exhibit con- 
 siderable diversity of reading. Next we have a volume of Narrative 
 
 * I give the title of this scarce book for the benefit of those whom it may con- 
 cern : A Defence of Poetry, addressed to Henry James Pye, Esq. ; to which is added a 
 Specimen of a new Version of Telemachus. By I. D'Israeli, 1790, 4to. 
 
 f W. C. Taylor, LL.D., in Bentleys Miscellany, vol, xxiii. p. 219. 
 
104 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Poems (1803, 4to) ; and a novel, entitled Despotism; or, the Fall of the 
 Jesuits (181 1, 2 vols. 8vo). I have also before me the curious Rabelaisian 
 piece, commonly attributed to D'Israeli, entitled Flim- Flams J or, the 
 Life and Errors of my U?ide and his Friends. With Illustrations and 
 Obscurities by Messieurs Tag, Rag and Bobtail. A literary roma?ice 
 (London, Murray, 3 vols. i2mo, 1806). This very curious medley is 
 profusely illustrated by clever satirical etchings, by Richard Dagley, 
 author of Death's Doings (2 vols, 8vo, 1827), and to the "curious reader'' 
 is well worth the trouble and cost of acquisition. 
 
 The work may be described as an account of a supposed Uncle by a 
 supposed Nephew. It does not profess to give a life of this worthy, but an 
 account of his character and pursuits. The class of individuals to whom 
 the author states that he belonged, has, not unhappily, the appellation of 
 " Philos," or lovers of anything, bestowed upon them. This uncle, des- 
 cribed as having a face like a snipe, and a very small receptacle for brains 
 in his skull, is conducted in the narrative through almost every walk of 
 Literature and Philosophy ; attaching himself rather to that which is new, 
 than to that which is useful. The tone of satire is not ill-natured, and 
 even the allusions to particular persons are hardly of a nature to give 
 offence. There is a large amount of learning in the notes, where the 
 authority will be found for all the absurdities ridiculed. 
 
 The unfortunate J. Selby Watson the awful termination of whose 
 social career was brought before us some years ago would throw some 
 doubt upon the. authorship of this book, which he characterizes as " a 
 production filled with pointless attempts at satirical description and 
 dialogue, and abortive efforts at wit, and written altogether in a style and 
 manner utterly at variance with D'Israeli's acknowledged works." * 
 These remarks, however, are especially in allusion to the passage in 
 which Professor Porson is ridiculed (vol. iii. p. 262), which Mr. Watson 
 would ascribe to Edward Dubois.f 
 
 D'Israeli had doubtless met with the rare work of J. Pierius Valerianus, 
 De Literatorum Infelicitate (Venetiis, 1620),$ or the curious lines by 
 Thomas Heywood, De dura et misera sorte Poetarum. These may 
 have not improbably suggested to him his treatises on the Quarrels and 
 Calamities of Authors titles which hardly convey a just idea of the wide 
 range of literary history which they embrace. To the collected edition 
 of these is now appended the Inquiry into the Literary and Political 
 Character of James the First, including a Sketch of his Age. 
 
 I have spoken of D'Israeli's early education at Amsterdam and 
 Leyden. There can be little doubt, even if we had not the internal 
 evidence of his later works in support of the belief, that, inspired by the 
 Jewish influence of these cities, no less than by his own tastes and family 
 traditions, he became deeply initiated in Hebrew and Rabbinical litera- 
 ture. Upon a mind like his the works of Maimonides, Moses Ben 
 Mizraim, Aben Ezra, Manasseh Ben Israel, and Moses Mendelssohn, 
 would have a deep and abiding influence ; and taking the last great writer 
 as a model the Jews say " from Moses to Moses there is none like 
 Moses," he was wise enough to escape the snares of Rabbinism and 
 
 * Life of Porson, by J. Selby Watson, p. 383. 
 
 f Author of The Wreath (1799) ; My Pocket-Book (1807) ; died Jan. 10th, 1850. 
 
 % Reprinted by Sir Egerton Brydges (Genevae, 1821, 8vo). 
 
 Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels, 1635, folio, p. 245. 
 
ISAAC D ISRAELI. 105 
 
 Talmudism ; to have small regard for the authoritative commentaries 
 with which the authors of the Mishna and Gemara have overlaid and 
 perverted the Mosaic legislation ; and, standing aloof as a cool and 
 speculative philosopher, to shun association with political and religious 
 parties. It is to the pervading spirit and habit of thought thus acquired 
 that we are indebted for his Genius of Judaism (London, Moxon, 
 8vo, 1833), a work at once philosophic in tone, able in treatment, and 
 learned in illustration. It is now a scarce book, and has fallen into 
 an oblivion so complete that ordinary readers are not even aware of its 
 existence. 
 
 It was an article by D' Israeli on Spencers A7iecdotes, in the 
 Quarterly Review, in which he attempted a vindication of the moral and 
 poetical character of Pope, which produced the famous controversy as to 
 the merits of that poet, which was carried on in some score of pamphlets 
 by Bowles, Lord Byron, Gilchrist, M'Dermot, Thomas Campbell, and 
 others. 
 
 At a later period of his literary career, D'Israeli's character for 
 accuracy of research was somewhat rudely assailed by the publication 
 of Mr. Bolton Corney's Curiosities of Literature Illustrated, of which I 
 have before me the second edition, "revised and acuminated," 1838, 8vo. 
 A review of this will be found in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. ix. p. 61. 
 D' Israeli replied in a pamphlet entitled The Illustrator Illustrated 
 (1838), which is also noticed in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. ix. p. 369. 
 
 About 1839 tn i s useful and interesting writer was stricken with 
 blindness. As in the case of our own Milton, the American Prescott, 
 and the French historian Thierry, this awful calamity did not altogether 
 interrupt his valuable labours. By the aid of his daughter, who, to use 
 his own touching expressions of paternal gratitude, "so often lent the 
 light of her eyes, the intelligence of her voice, and the careful work of 
 her hand," the stricken author " in the midst of his library, distant from 
 it," surrounded by " unfinished labours, frustrated designs," was enabled 
 to revise and correct his Miscellanies of Literature, for Moxon's collec- 
 tive edition of 1840; to produce that interesting series of papers which 
 form a kind of sequel to the Curiosities and the Miscellanies, and bear the 
 title of Amenities; and to revise his great work on the Life and Reign of 
 Charles the First, which, on its first appearance, had procured for its 
 author the honorary title of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford, con- 
 ferred as a mark of respect by the authorities of that ancient seat of learning, 
 in the words of its public orator, " optimi regis Optimo defetisori." 
 
 Isaac D'Israeli was fortunate in his own career in having steered clear 
 of the two misfortunes which formed the subject of his best known works. 
 Although one of the genus irritabile, he managed to escape except, 
 indeed, in his squabble with Bolton Corney, participation in the 
 " Quarrels of Authors " ; and although a literary man by profession, he 
 was not an instance, unless, again, we think of his blindness, of the 
 " Calamities " of the tribe. As a Jew by origin, he may be cited, himself, 
 as a " Curiosity of Literature" ; for "among all the writers of the present 
 day there was none who had so thoroughly imbibed the English feeling 
 of affectionate regard for our history, even in its most minute branches, 
 whether literary or political ; or was so deeply impressed with a reverent 
 love for all the great institutions of our country. No Tory Doctor of 
 Oxford was a warmer champion of the good old cause; not Anthony 
 
106 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Wood himself, a more unwearied searcher into the history of our litera- 
 ture." Thus the course of Isaac D'Israeli was fitly described by Eraser 
 as "prosperous and quiet, from agreeable youth to respectable old age." 
 He attained to patriarchal years ; dying at the age of 81, at his seat, 
 Bradenham House, Bucks, Jan. 19th, 1848. He had lost his wife, to whom 
 he had been united more than forty years, in the spring of the previous 
 year ; and he left behind him four children, a daughter, alluded to 
 above, and three sons, of whom the eldest, the late Lord Beaconsfield, 
 the celebrated novelist and statesman, is known as an author wherever 
 the English language has penetrated, and as a diplomatist wherever 
 English politics are a matter of importance or interest. 
 
 There is a portrait of Isaac D'Israeli by Drummond, in the Monthly 
 Mirror, for January, 1797 ; another by Denning in Bentlefs Miscellany, 
 and prefixed to Moxon's edition of the Curiosities j and a sketch by 
 Count D'Orsay, in 1848, a woodcut from which illustrates the notice of 
 the original in the Illustrated London News, Jan. 29th, 1848. Madden, 
 in his Life of Lady Blessington (iii. 78), speaks of this as "one of the 
 best likenesses " ; but he falls into the natural error, in which he is fol- 
 lowed by the writer of the obituary notice of D'Israeli, in the Gentlema?r*s 
 Magazine (vol. xxx. p. 99), of attributing the sketch before us from Eraser, 
 by "Alfred Croquis," the signature of Maclise, to "Alfred Crowquill," 
 the recognized fiseudo?iym of the well-known comic draughtsman, Alfred 
 Henry Forrester, who died in May, 1872, in the sixty-seventh year of 
 his age. 
 
 XXIV. THE ANTIQUARIES. 
 
 This cartoon requires a "key," and I borrow one, for the nonce, from the 
 original exhibitor of the " Gallery." 
 
 " Behold," says he, "a selection of no unfair specimens of the com- 
 ponent parts of 'The Antiquaries,' from its noble president, 'Athenian 
 Aberdeen,' to the 'Atlas of the Society,' as the facetious Sir Harris 
 Nicholas, the ex-fellow, justly styled that energetic pourer-out of coffee, 
 its broad-shouldered, and square-built clerk, Mr. Martin ! Vice-presi- 
 dents, secretaries and members, are here also displayed, not ' tricked out,' 
 as the heralds say, with their holiday faces, but as they actually look and 
 talk, and congregate into groups, at three-quarters past eight of the clock 
 upon the evenings of Thursday in each week respectively, between the 
 months of November and May inclusive. Here stand and sit the 
 A.S.S.es, great and small, long and short ; in witness whereof behold the 
 lengthy Jerdan, peering through his glass at every person and thing 
 around him ; while the five-feet nothingness of Crofty Croker has taken 
 up a position under Jerdan's elbow, sipping his coffee in the blessed 
 unconsciousness of the fairyhood of his situation. Behind this size-ace 
 of our species we think we recognize Mr. John Bowyer Nichols, to whom 
 Mr. Secretary Ellis is explaining some passage which his want of articu- 
 lation, and breathless and sputtering haste to close the reading punctually 
 at the half-hour, has rendered doubtful to Mr. Nichols in order that it 
 may be satisfactorily reported by Sylvanus Urban. Next to Ellis we 
 have no difficulty in identifying his coadjutor, the ingenious Nicholas 
 
THE ANTIQUARIES. 107 
 
 Carlisle, who simpers with becoming complacency at the agreeable 
 manner in which the evening has gone off. Why the Society has two sec- 
 retaries, is a question that has been asked in these reforming times. The 
 necessity is obvious because one can't read, and the other can't write. 
 
 " In the elderly young gentleman seated at the coffee end of the table 
 we acknowledge the Deputy Keeper of His Majesty's State Papers, Mr. 
 Lemon to wit, full of wonder and delight at everything. Beyond him is 
 the Byronic Mr. William Henry Rosser, who has the courage to display 
 his pomum Adaini to the keenness of the east wind and the unerring pencil 
 of our Croquis. Of whom the group may be composed which has 
 assembled beneath the vacated chair of the president, we pause not to 
 inquire ; but, shaping our course from thence down the table, we behold 
 the ghost-like resemblance of the ex-Medico-Botanico Star-bearer of the 
 ex-Emperor Don Pedro the illustrious Johnny Frost ! Mr. Kempe, we 
 think we may conclude from the action of his hand, is turning a deaf ear 
 to ex-Director Frost, and giving all his attention to the remarks of Mr. 
 Rosser. Beneath the classic Kempe we behold the wood-cutter Brooke, 
 poring over some old print or other one of antiquated costume, perhaps, 
 of which, in a week or two hence, we shall see a translation by him, with 
 all the embellishments of a rich and poetic fancy, yet strictly preserving 
 its antiquarian character. 
 
 "A full-length of old Caley is before us there is no mistaking him ; 
 the build of his head, and his hands in the true antiquarian attitude, 
 behind his back, leave no doubt upon the subject ; and he is talking to 
 our friend D' Israeli, of whom having spoken in our last number, we need 
 say nothing more here than to correct an error of the press by which this 
 curiosity of literature was called Israel instead of Isaac. The bald, 
 square-faced, round-headed gentleman, whom Mr. Martin is so actively 
 engaged in assisting to coffee, it strikes us, must be intended for the late 
 President of the Royal Society, Mr. Davies Gilbert. If our conjecture 
 be correct, we think our friend Croquis has not been so happy in the 
 portrait as usual. But who can question the group exhibiting the Presi- 
 dent, supported by his Vices, right and left, Whig and Tory the historian 
 of the Middle Ages, the ' learned Hallam, much renowned for Greek' 
 and the shrewd-looking Hamilton ? " 
 
 An antiquary, says "Hudibras" Butler,* is "an old frippery philo. 
 sopher, that has so strange a natural affection to worm-eaten speculations, 
 that it is apparent he has a worm in his skull, and says that, with Scaliger, 
 he would sell the empire of Germany for an old song." In similar vein 
 of satire, another quaint old writer of "characters" describes such a 
 person as " a man strangely thrifty of times past, and an enemy indeed 
 to his maw, whence he fetches out many things when they are now all 
 rotten and stinking. . . . He never looks at himself till he is grey-haired, 
 and then he is pleased with his own antiquity. His grave does not fright 
 him, for he has been used to sepulchres, and he likes death the better 
 because it gathers him to his fathers."! Puckle admits an Antiquary 
 into his "Club," and depicts him as "an idolater of ages past, and who 
 seems to esteem everything, as Dutchmen do cheese, the better for being 
 mouldy." Poor " Shakespeare" Ireland, who, when a lad in his teens, had 
 so finely bamboozled the black-letter buzzards and coney-catching com- 
 
 * Remains of Samuel Butler, vol. ii. p. 62. 
 
 \ Microcosmografhy ; or, a Piece of the World Discovered, Ed. 1811, pp. 22-24. 
 
108 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 mentators of his day, does not forget our friends when manning his 
 Modem Ship of Fools : 
 
 " Dolts, by whom a trifle's cherish'd, 
 
 Which 'neath Time's withering hand hath perish'd ; 
 Whose sapient brain from modern works no pleasure knows ; 
 Dotes on crack'd urn Etruscan bust without a nose." * 
 
 Well, the " Antiquaries n can bear this innocent fun-poking, or I 
 should not have revived it. Not but that there are among them yet, and 
 always will be, fit subjects for the satirist feeble, credulous, shallow- 
 brained men, who, 
 
 "Vetera extollentes, recentium incuriosi," 
 
 ride their stumbling hobby to the very death, miss the end in devotion 
 to the means, and expend their minds amid les infinime?its petits, whether 
 of bibliography, verbal criticism, book-collecting, or any other pursuit 
 connected with " antiquarianism." 
 
 But these are the weaker brethren, from whom we may turn, when 
 our laugh is over, to pay our respects to the " antiquaries " proper men 
 really deserving of the name unobtrusive and earnest scholars, to whom 
 we are indebted for all that we know of the past ; for correct texts, 
 elucidatory comments, recovered manuscripts, instructive collections, and 
 the preservation of the evanescent memorials, the " trivial fond records " 
 of bygone days, from which, better than formal chronicles or splendid 
 monuments, we gain the form and pressure of the elder time. 
 
 What a funny question that is of Wordsworth's, 
 
 " Is it a party in a parlour ? 
 Cramm'd just as they on earth were cramm'd : 
 Some sipping punch, some sipping tea, 
 But, as you by their faces see, 
 
 All silent and all damn'd ! " f 
 
 Charles Lamb was amazingly tickled by it, and it will be sought for in 
 vain in the later editions of Peter Bell. These facts must justify its 
 introduction here ; for, now I have written it, I cannot, for the life 
 of me, see the applicability of any part of it ; except, indeed, the latter 
 half of the third line, and then for " tea " we must read " coffee." 
 
 The present is naturally all in all to the u young man," and it is gene- 
 rally when Time has thinned the flowing locks, and written strange 
 defeatures in the face, that we become addicted to the study of the past. 
 Hence it is that the individuals of our group are already elderly, " by'r 
 lady, inclining to threescore," and that it comes to pass that not one 
 now remains to be reminded of other days by this happy reproduction of 
 a symposium of five brief decades ago. 
 
 The first to obey the dread summons was " old " John Caley. This 
 gentleman died August 28th, 1834, aged 71. He held the office of Keeper 
 of the Records in the Augmentation Office and Chapter House, West- 
 
 * Stultifera Navis: the Modem Ship of Fools, 1807, p. 125. 
 
 f An erudite critic in the Examiner, for January 3rd, 1874, tQ ok upon himself to 
 assert that these lines were not by Wordsworth. He will find them, all the same, in 
 the original edition of Peter Bell, 1819, 8vo. If their relevancy in this place may not 
 appear such as to justify their retention, I must fall back, for my excuse, upon the 
 opinion of the late Mortimer Collins, who, writing of Wordsworth, asks "Why, O 
 why, did his friends advise him to expunge that immortal stanza, superior to almost 
 anything in Dante?" 
 
THE ANTIQUARIES. 109 
 
 minster. He was author of many communications to the Gentleman's 
 Magazine, and, in conjunction with the late Sir Henry Ellis and Dr. 
 Bandinel, edited the new edition of Dugdale's Monasticon. He was also 
 Secretary to the National Record Commission, from 1801 till its dissolu- 
 tion in 1 83 1, and was joint editor of fourteen works published by the 
 Commission, a list of which willl be found in the Gentleman's Magazine^ 
 April, 1834, page 374. 
 
 The next death demanding record is that of Robert Lemon, which 
 took place in his fifty-seventh year, July 29th, 1835. This gentleman was 
 Deputy Keeper of his Majesty's State Papers, formerly in Scotland Yard, 
 and more recently in St. George's Street, and a long gallery over the 
 Treasury-passage. This Augean stable was thoroughly cleansed by the 
 indefatigable labours of this officer in 1823 ; one result being the discovery 
 of the MS. of the lost work of Milton, De Doctrifid Christiana", which was 
 presented to George IV., and entrusted to Dr. Charles Sumner, afterwards 
 Bishop of Winchester, for publication. A house was built for the reception 
 of the State Papers in St. James's Park, with private accommodation for the 
 keeper, and here it was that Mr. Lemon died. The name of this gentle- 
 man is mentioned, with a well-deserved compliment, by Sir Walter Scott, 
 in a postscript, appended in 1829, to the " cabinet" edition of Rob Roy, 
 in alluding to some documents relating to that extraordinary person. 
 
 The third to depart was John Frost perhaps the youngest of the 
 party who died at Berlin, March 17th, 1840, at the early age of 27- He 
 was born in 1803, and is now best known as the founder of the Medico- 
 Botanical Society of London. He was early admitted to a fellowship in 
 the Society of Antiquaries, and became a candidate for a like honour 
 in the Royal Society. Here he was blackballed, and thereupon perpetrated 
 the inconceivable folly of challenging the secretary to fight a duel ! But 
 he was a man full of foibles, inordinately vain and conceited, and per- 
 tinacious, even to impudence, in the attainment of an object. He was 
 Secretary to the Royal Humane Society ; but resigned this respectable 
 and lucrative post without due consideration, and was unable, when he 
 regretted the step too late, to regain his position. Becoming involved 
 in certain responsibilities, which he had unwisely taken upon himself, he 
 was forced to leave London. He first went to Paris, where he resided 
 under the name of James Fitzjames ; and next proceeded to Berlin, where 
 he was said to be practising the medical profession with some success, 
 when death overtook him. He married Mdlle. Harriette Yosy, daughter 
 of the well-known authoress of Switzerland and its Costumes. The best 
 account of him is given by the Rev. John Barham, the author of The 
 Ingoldsby Legends, in a letter published in his Life and Letters, edited by 
 his son. This letter is reproduced in J. F. Clarke's Autobiographical 
 Recollections of the Medical Profession (1874, 8vo, p. 267), where also will 
 be found ample details of the founder of the Medico-Botanical Society. 
 
 . A few months later was summoned Davies Gilbert, a gentleman of 
 high scientific and literary attainments, who died December 24th, 1840, in 
 the seventy-third year of his age. He belonged to a family of high respect- 
 ability long settled in Cornwall ; his paternal name was Giddy, but this 
 he exchanged, by Royal permission, for that which he subsequently bore, 
 on his marriage with the daughter and heiress of Thomas Gilbert, Esq., 
 of Eastbourne, Sussex. It is worthy of note that Mr. Giddy was one of 
 the first to recognize the latent talents of Humphry Davy, and did much 
 
no THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 to promote their development, introducing him to his friend, the cele- 
 brated Dr. Beddoes, who became afterwards notorious for his democratic 
 proclivities. Later, when Davy had become a great chemist and had 
 earned a title, he became President of the Royal Society. His old friend 
 and patron, Mr. Gilbert, was then treasurer, and when the philosopher 
 was forced by ill-health to leave England for a time, filled the vacated 
 chair. He was subsequently elected to the honours of the Presidency, 
 but, three years later, upon its being understood that H.R.H. the Duke 
 of Sussex was ambitious of occupying the position of scientific primate in 
 England, he resigned the post (1831), continuing, however, to act as Vice. 
 He had graduated M.A. at Oxford, and received from that University, in 
 1832, the degree of D.C.L., the highest compliment which that body has 
 it in its power to bestow. He was author, inter alia, of A Collection of 
 Ancient Christinas Carols, with the Times to which they were formerly 
 sung in the West of 'England '(1823, 8vo), and some valuable works on the 
 Cornish topography and language, of which latter philology has to lament 
 that the memorials preserved are so sparse and imperfect. 
 
 He was followed, after a short interval, by A. J. Kempe, who died 
 August 2 1 st, 1 846, in his sixty-second year. Early in life this gentleman was 
 author of a poem The Battle of Trafalgar (4to, 1806). He was editor of 
 the Losely Ma?iuscrifits (8vo, 1836), and he contributed the letterpress 
 to his brother-in-law's (Mr. C. A. Stothard) beautiful work, The Monu- 
 mental Effigies of Great Britain. He was an unfailing contributor to the 
 Archojologia and the Gentlemen? $ Magazi?ie, in which he published a 
 series of papers, entitled "Londiniana," and an article (in 1830), "Tavistock 
 and its Abbey, " partly written by the Rev. E. A. Bray, vicar of Tavistock, 
 and incorporated by Mrs. Bray, in her work on The Borders of the Tamar 
 a?id Tavy, in letters addressed to Southey, the Poet Laureate. Mr. Kcmpe 
 was also interested in Archery, and contributed some interesting papers 
 to the Gentlema?i^s Magazine on the subject ; a few copies of these were re- 
 printed, for private circulation only, in 1832, with the contributions of Sir 
 Samuel Rush, and a bibliography of archery, by Mr. John Gough Nichols. 
 
 (The lady mentioned above was formerly Miss Anne Eliza Kempe, 
 and was the only sister of the antiquary. Her former husband was 
 Charles Alfred Stothard, F.S.A., the second son of the historical painter, 
 and himself a draughtsman of consummate ability. He died from an 
 accident, being killed on the spot by a fall from a ladder, when making 
 a drawing from some ancient stained glass in the church of Beer-Ferrers, 
 Devon. His widow afterwards married the Rev. E. A. Bray, vicar of 
 Tavistock, and is well known as Mrs. Bray, by her novels, Trelaw?iy, Tales 
 of the Heart, etc. ; and by her Life of Thomas Stothard, R.A. (Murray, 
 4to, 1 851), a work of deep interest, exquisite beauty, and most refined 
 taste, although open to the charge of exaggeration of eulogy. She has also 
 written a life of her former husband, Charles A. Stothard, F.S.A. The life 
 of this lady was protracted till Jan. 1883, when she died in the ninety-third 
 year of her age, leaving to the British Museum the beautiful collection of 
 drawings made by Charles Stothard, for his Monumental Effigies. 
 
 The next on the fatal list is Nicholas Carlisle, F.R.S. He was 
 half-brother of the celebrated surgeon, Sir Anthony Carlisle, and is known 
 by his Concise Description of the E?idowed Grammar Schools of Engla?id 
 and Wales (18 18, 2 vols. 8vo) ; his Collections for the History of the 
 Ancient Families of Carlisle (1 822), and Bland (1826), in 4to ; his Hints on 
 
THE ANTIQUARIES. Hi 
 
 Rural Residences (1825, small 4to), a cento of extracts from Price, Repton, 
 Papworth, and others ; his Memoirs of the Life and Works of William 
 Wyon, Esq.,A.R.A., Chief E?igineer of 'the Royal Mint, with postscript and 
 supplement as to the relative merits of Wyon and Pistrucci (1837, 8vo) ; his 
 Concise Account of Foreign Orders of Knighthood, etc. (1839, royal 8vo) \ 
 and other works. He died August 27th, 1849. 
 
 Then follows W. H. Rosser, who died May 27th, 1848, aged 56. He 
 became a Fellow in 1823, and was a constant attendant upon the meetings, 
 the reports of which he had the credit of contributing to the Literary 
 Gazette. In 1835 he exhibited the body of an Egyptian ibis, or ardea, 
 the mummy of which he had unrolled. (See Archozologia, xxvi. 483.) 
 He. afterwards amplified his paper, and published it, with engravings, 
 in the Gentleman's Magazine, August, 1836, p. 145. Among other 
 peculiarities of costume or appearance, it may be noted that Mr. Rosser 
 refused to muffle his neck in the fashionable " stock " or cravat, and dis- 
 dained to adopt the Wellingtonian investment for his nether limbs, 
 adhering to the manly Hessian boot as long as he lived. 
 
 With short interval, departed Francis Martin, Clarenceux King of 
 Arms, who died June 3rd, 1848. He entered the College of Heralds as 
 Bluemantle Pursuivant, June 17th, 1797 ; was made Windsor Herald, 
 April 24th, 1819; Norroy King of Arms, February 5th, 1839; and 
 Clarenceux, April 28th, 1846. He had also filled the office of Treasurer 
 of the College of Arms since 1840. 
 
 Just two months later, alas ! 
 
 How soon has brother follow'd brother, 
 From sunshine to the sunless land," 
 
 died, at the early age of 49, in the vicinity of Boulogne, Sir Nicholas 
 Harris Nicolas, a Knight of the Hanoverian Guelphic Order, and 
 Chancellor and Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and 
 St. George. Few names on the roll of antiquarian literature, especially 
 that branch of it which is devoted to Genealogy, deserve so high a place 
 as that of this gentleman, who may claim a place after Camden, Dugdale, 
 and Selden. I can only just allude to his Notitia Historica (1824), 
 on which was modelled the very useful Chronology of History (1833), 
 published in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia j the Synopsis of the Peerage 
 (1825) ; his edition of Davidson's Poetical Rhapsody (1826), and of the 
 curious Flagellum Parliamentarium, attributed to Andrew Marvell (1827, 
 i2mo) ; the Me7noirs and Letters of foseph Ritson (1833, 2 vols. 8vo) ; 
 the Literary Remains of Lady Jane Grey (1826) ; and a long shelf-ful 
 of other works of equal value and interest. In 1826 he became, in con- 
 junction with Henry Southern, editor of the Retrospective Review, of 
 which a new series was then commenced. 
 
 The next to depart of our group was Henry Hallam, 6 irdw, the 
 celebrated historian of The Middle Ages, and The Literature of Europe, 
 etc., works which are too well known to need comment here. He died in 
 January, 1859, in the eighty-second year of his age. It was to his son, Arthur 
 Henry Hallam, a young man of remarkable promise, who died in 1833, 
 that his friend Tennyson inscribed that remarkable series of poems, which 
 are published under the title of Ln Memoriam. All this is known ; but 
 how the historian became " renowned for Greek " may be forgotten, and 
 will bear telling again. It appears that Richard Payne Knight had 
 
H2 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 inserted some Greek verses in his Analytical Inquiry into the Principles 
 of Taste (1805, 8vo). Hallam was credited, in error, with having reviewed 
 this in the Edinburgh, and consequently with being the author of certain 
 severe remarks on one of the verses, " which he did not discover were 
 Pindar's till the press rendered it impossible to cancel the critique, which 
 still stands an everlasting monument of Hallam's ingenuity." * 
 
 On July nth, of this year also, at his residence, Bolton Row, Mayfair, 
 died W. R. Hamilton, F.R.S., aged 82. 
 
 On January 12th, i860, died at Chichester, in the eighty-eighth year of 
 his age, W. H. Brooke, an artist of great merit, belonging to a class which 
 is probably now extinct. He studied under Samuel Drummond, A.R.A., 
 who, in his etching from his own painting of " The Death of Nelson," has 
 introduced a portrait of his pupil as one of the sailors. He was a friend 
 of Singleton and Stothard, whom, in grace of composition and outline, he 
 much resembled. He was " the faithful and cherished friend " of C. A. 
 Stothard, and was held in the highest esteem by the more illustrious 
 father, who considered that, as an artist, he possessed great genius, and 
 regretted that he could not devote himself more entirely to the study of 
 the higher branch of the art for which Nature had designed him.f It 
 was Mr. Brooke to whom we are indebted for the charming vignettes in 
 Major's first illustrated edition of The Complete Angler of Izaak Walton 
 (1823, 8vo) ; for those for the first authorized edition of Moore's Irish 
 Melodies, the Fairy Legends, of the South of Ireland, and the Fairy 
 Mythology, of Keightley. In 181 5 he was engaged on the Satirist, for 
 which he produced some clever etchings ; many of his drawings on wood, 
 about this time, were engraved by Thomson, Branston, and other eminent 
 xylographers. He illustrated the earlier editions of Carleton's Traits a?id 
 Stories of the Irish Peasantry; The Siamese Twins, of Bulwer ; and con- 
 tributed several etchings to the Collectanea of his friend, Mr. Roach 
 Smith, and the elegant Book of Archery of G. A. Hansard, 8vo, 1841. 
 
 On December 14th, i860, at the age of 76, was gathered to his fathers 
 the fourth Earl of Aberdeen, long the President of the " Society of 
 Antiquaries." He is " the travelled Thane," the " sullen Aberdeen," of 
 Byron, whose anger, as a poetic pilgrim, was awakened by what he con- 
 sidered the desecration of classic sites, by the removal of their monuments 
 to a northern and uncongenial clime. This nobleman was a contributor, 
 when very young, to the Edinburgh Review; wrote An Inquiry i?ito the 
 Principles of Beauty in Grecian Architecture (1822), which, I think, is 
 appended, as an introduction, to Wilkins's translation of Vitruvius. As a 
 Minister, the Earl of Aberdeen was not popular. His foreign policy was 
 censured, as supposed, perhaps wrongly, to indicate a preference for absolute 
 rather than constitutional government. H is manner, moreover, was somewhat 
 cold and austere ; and he was supposed not to sympathize with the public 
 mind in the war with Russia in the Crimea. Hence the clever lines, which 
 appeared at this period, and of which I cite the first and last stanzas : 
 " ' There's cauld kail in Aberdeen,' 
 
 When blood runs quick in all besides ; 
 The dilettante Scot serene, 
 
 Shows his blank face, whate'er betides. 
 
 * Note to English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. See also Hypocrisy : a Satin. 
 By the Rev. C. C. Colton. Tiverton, 1812, 8vo, p. 22. 
 
 f See Life of Thomas Stothard, R.A., by Mrs. Bray, p. 205, note. 
 
THE ANTIQUARIES. 113 
 
 When Russian treason's dragg'd to bar, 
 
 Despite each diplomatic screen, 
 When England brands the lying Czar, 
 ' There's cauld kail in Aberdeen.' 
 " Still ' cauld kail in Aberdeen,' 
 
 At lies and truth at loss and gain ; 
 But what are we, thus meek and mean, 
 To brook command of such a brain ? 
 Up ! England, up ! and with a shout 
 To startle e'en that stoic spleen, 
 In honest Saxon, thunder out, 
 
 Down with 'cauld kail ' and Aberdeen ! " 
 
 We next have to record the death of the literary veteran, John Bowyer 
 Nichols, the middle term in a series of printers, who, by their high 
 characters and learned labours, have conferred additional lustre on the 
 typographic art. He was born July 15th, 1779, and died October 19th, 
 1863, in the 85th year of his age. He succeeded to a share in the 
 Gentleman's Magazine, which he held in common with the descendants 
 of Edward Cave, and David Henry ; in 1833, ne became sole pro- 
 prietor, and in the year following, transferred a share to the late William 
 Pickering, when the editorial management was placed in the hands of the 
 Rev. John Mitford. This share he repurchased, and in 1856, conveyed 
 the whole property to Mr. J. H. Parker, of Oxford. This celebrated 
 serial, which has been called " The Old Parr of Magazines," was com- 
 menced in 1 73 1, and continued to flourish for upwards of one hundred 
 years, under the conduct of three editors only, each of whom had been a 
 journeyman printer. " Peter Pindar " Dr. Walcot wrote of it : 
 " John's Magazine all Magazines excels ; 
 And what's still better too for John, it sells," 
 
 a distich, of which if the former line continued to express a fact, the 
 latter ceased, unfortunately, for some years, to be truthful. We must 
 infer that this veteran favourite for a time lost its hold on the fickle 
 public, a circumstance for which I would fain find some other cause 
 than the decline, as a class, of the " Gentlemen " who had upheld it. 
 Sundry changes took place in its form during its later years of existence ; 
 and the magazine which bears the old name is a different thing alto- 
 gether from the original Gentleman's, and, in the eyes of those old 
 fogies, as I suppose they would be termed, who loved and reverenced 
 its progenitor, what the reprint of Burton's Anatomy was to Charles 
 Lamb, " a heartless sight." Mr. Nichols was a frequent contributor to 
 its pages, under the signature of " N. R. S.," the final letters of his 
 name ; he republished that curious book. The Life and Errors of John 
 Dimton, in 2 vols. 8vo ; he continued and completed the very important 
 work of his father, The Illustrations of the Literary History of the 
 Eighteenth Century, a sequel to the equally well-known Literary Anec- 
 dotes, from which Macaulay said that he had derived more pleasure and 
 information than from any other books with which he was acquainted ; 
 he was also, like his father, a commentator upon Hogarth, having pub- 
 lished, in 1833, a volume very useful to the collector, entitled Anecdotes 
 of William Hogarth, written by himself etc., a work which, it is 
 well to observe, has no relation whatever to that under a similar title,* 
 
 * Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth, with a Catalogue of his Works 
 chronologically arranged, and Occasional Remarks, 1785, 8vo. 
 
 I 
 
ri 4 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 by his father John Nichols, of which the third edition, "enlarged and 
 corrected," appeared in 1785, and is one of the most interesting books of 
 art-anecdote with which I am acquainted. The library of Mr. Nichols 
 was sold by Sothebys, on May 24th, and six following days, 1865, and 
 realized ^6175 is. id. Edward Lord Thurlow, a "true poet," according 
 
 to Leigh Hunt, though Lord Byron did style some of his verses " d d 
 
 nonsense," indited an eulogistic sonnet to " the Amiable and Learned 
 Historian and Antiquary, John Nicholls (sic), Esq., F.S.A." ; and there is 
 a caricature etching of him by Thomas Rowlandson, in 1790, which 
 represents him seated at a rustic table, the Gentlemaiis Magazine at his 
 feet, and his literary productions scattered about : 
 
 " With anger foaming and of vengeance full, 
 Why belloweth John Nichols like a bull? " 
 
 The last name on our mortuary bead-roll is that of the venerable, and 
 highly-respected Sir Henry Ellis, who died at his residence, 24, 
 Bedford Square, January 15th, 1869, in the ninety-second year of his age. 
 He was the responsible editor of the important edition of the Monasticon 
 of William Dugdale, published in 1817-30, 6 vols, folio ; and was author 
 of the general introduction to the Doomsday Book. To literary students he 
 was equally well known as the principal librarian of the British Museum, 
 an office to which he was appointed in 1827, and which he held for thirty 
 years. 
 
 Of the other " characters " of whom I have not made mention, Jerdan, 
 Croker, and D' Israeli have had separate portraits and notices, and 
 need no further record here. They, too, have passed away ; all are gone 
 alike ; the guests have departed, and the banquet-hall is deserted. The 
 harmless revelry is over ; the learned gossip hushed ; the quaint forms 
 have vanished for ever ; the curious collections are dispersed ; and were 
 I permitted to compare small things with great, this, our Antiquaries' 
 parlour, with that larger chamber, the world, I might close these brief 
 records with the magnificent peroration with which Raleigh concludes 
 the last page of his Historic : 
 
 " O eloquent, just, and mighty Death ! whom none could aduice, thou 
 hast perswaded ; what none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom all 
 the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised ; 
 thou hast drawne together all the farre-stretched greatnesse, all the 
 pride, crueltie, and ambition of man, and couered it all ouer with these 
 two narrow words, Hicjacet? * 
 
 XXV. LOUIS EUSTACHE UDE. 
 
 a The Shepherd's crook beside the Sceptre," says Claude Melnotte, the 
 ladle of the cuisinicr compared with the pen of the poet, ejaculates my 
 reader Louis Eustache Ude check by jowl with Goethe ; the 
 French Cook alongside of Lalla Rookh ! Well, why not ? If the " Devil 
 sends Cooks," according to Garrick's often quoted saying, there is, too, 
 
 * Historie of the World, ed. 1614, p. 669. 
 
LOUIS EUS7ACHE UDE. 115 
 
 the " Satanic school " of poetry ; a state of things which led Byron, its 
 Coryphaeus, to see the propriety of the collocation : 
 
 " Along thy sprucest bookshelves shine 
 The works thou deemest most divine (?) 
 The Art of Cookery and mine, 
 
 My Murray ! " 
 
 "Aristology" was defined by the late Mortimer Collins to be "the 
 science which provides for man his best meal in the best way." The 
 question, "Do you think God made good things only for fools?" was 
 once put by Descartes to a Marquis who twitted him on his fondness for 
 tit-bits ; and Dr. Johnson, we know, expressed great contempt for folks who 
 professed indifference as to what they ate. " Sir," said he, " I look upon 
 it that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else." 
 The best definition of man, that which most precisely demarcates him, 
 is that he is " a cooking animal " ; a question as to his opinion of 
 which put by Boswell to Burke, elicited the reply, " Your definition is a 
 good one, and I now see the force of the old proverb, ' There is reason in 
 the roasting of eggs.'" Homer is as great on the cookery of his heroes, 
 and their prowess at the board, as on their deeds in battle and at council ; 
 and the science of cookery might be traced through Athenaeus, Diogenes 
 Laertius, Seneca, Pliny, Plutarch, Apicius and Petronius Arbiter. But 
 we have not now to do with the loathsome memories of Vitellius, and 
 such questionable luxuries as puppies (a dainty in old Rome as in China 
 now-a-days), asses' colts (which Pliny tells us were in high favour with 
 Maecenas), sows' udders, camels' heels, dormice fattened on acorns and 
 walnuts, assafcetida salad, and a forphyrio which had committed suicide 
 by hanging ! It is modern Gastronomy that engages our attention ; the 
 tracing of which would be an interesting study, from classic times, through 
 the Middle Ages, down to our own days, and its gradual development as 
 a branch of the fine arts among our Gallic neighbours. There, surviving 
 the Revolution and the distractions of the First Empire, it awoke with 
 new vigour under Louis XVIII., and the classic restaurateur of the period, 
 Beauvilliers, who induced the ecstatic Brillat-Savarin to construct and 
 elaborate, in his immortal work, the true aesthetics of the palate, and the 
 philosophy of the art described by Lady Morgan, as the standard and 
 gauge of French civilization. 
 
 Gastronomy, I venture to assert, is a recondite art and science, whose 
 professors are entitled to be considered gentlemen and men of learning. 
 Witness such men as Vatel, the maitre d ''hotel of Conde, that Cato or 
 Decius of the gridiron, who transfixed himself with his own skewer because 
 the fish failed to arrive in time for his master's dinner ; the Chevalier 
 Gaudet, who, driven penniless from France at the outbreak of the first 
 Revolution, made a fortune here by preparing salads at ten guineas 
 apiece, always approaching the sacred bowl in full-dress costume, with 
 his sword by his side ; and Soyer, who has written a history of Cookery, 
 in which the mere perusal of the titles of the authorities cited is a liberal 
 education.* Further than this, I hold the theory, which I have not 
 space to develop here, that Gastronomy has claims to be considered one 
 of the Fine Arts, the appreciation of which is a natural faculty, born with 
 
 * The Pantropheon ; or History of Food and its Preparations from the earliest Ages 
 of the World. London, 1853, 8vo. 
 
u6 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 us, and not acquired, though it can be improved and developed. I would 
 urge that flavours have their gamut, like soimds j and thus, resembling 
 the notes of a musical instrument, blend, like them, in various harmonious 
 combinations. Thus, one set forms a distinct octave ; a second, another ; 
 so that, by the unscientific admixture of different octaves, feeble and 
 unpalatable flavours result. Perhaps Dugald Stewart had some inkling 
 of this, when, discussing sweets and bitters, he said that " both are 
 equally essential to those effects which, in the art of cookery, correspond 
 to that composite beauty which it is the object of the painter and of the 
 poet to create";* and Arbuthnot, too, before him, when he boldly 
 asked, " What is a bagpipe, the mother of all music, but a pudding of 
 harmony ? Or what is music itself but a palatable cookery of sounds ? " f 
 
 But this is a transcendental view of the question, which demands a 
 high order of intellect for its reception and comprehension, and I 
 descend, for it is necessary to lower one's self to the intelligence of one's 
 readers to a more practical consideration of the subject. 
 
 In old times, ^Esop informs us, a misunderstanding took place between 
 the Belly and the Members ; the latter struck work and the former was 
 compelled by cogent necessity to show its place and importance in the 
 harmonious whole before its recalcitrant colleagues could be induced to 
 resume their laborious functions. For "colleagues," indeed, I should 
 have said " subjects," for, as a quaint old poet has it : 
 
 ' Qui stomachum regem totius corporis esse 
 Contendunt, vera niti ratione videntur," J 
 
 and thus the Art which ministers to the necessities and pleasures of the 
 monarch must be one of gravity and importance. 
 Some French versifier has the quatrain : 
 
 " Plus moraliste que gourmand, 
 Ami, si j'aime uu peu la table, 
 Je n'ai pas tort ; la table rend 
 L/homme plus doux, et plus traitable." 
 
 He is quite right in his philosophy. All those great minds who have 
 sought to sway others have acted upon the principle that the stomach 
 was the way to the heart. Eamus quo ducit gulaj the mouth, perhaps, 
 should have been said, for to pursue my former analogy, just as the 
 man who has no music in his soul, that is, who is incapable of appre- 
 ciating the difference between one note and another, is fit for everything 
 that is bad, so the owners of those palates to which all tastes are 
 indifferent, and which 
 
 ' ' Distinguish not rare peacock from vile swan , 
 Nor Mareotic juice from Caecuban," > 
 
 are hard to be dealt with by the argumentum ad gulam, which 
 diplomatists have ordinarily found so potent. "A hungry belly has no 
 ears," says the proverb ; and wise men have long laid the truth to their 
 hearts. Tacitus informs us that the ancient Germans never undertook 
 
 * Philosophical Essays. 
 
 f " A Dissertation on Dumpling," etc. {Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 65). 
 
 % Q. Serenus Samonicus de Medicind, etc. 
 
> o a m 
 
 -V^/-^ 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE FRENCH COOK". 
 
LOUIS EUSTACHE UDE. 1 17 
 
 anything of importance without a feast, and that those who gave the best 
 dinners were the most popular. When Napoleon deputed the Abbe' de 
 Pradt to gain Poland to his cause, his sole instructions were, " Tenez 
 bonne table, et soignez les femmes." It is much the same with us in 
 England. " To this hour," says Carlyle, " no public matter, with whatever 
 serious argument, can be settled in England, till it have been dined upon, 
 perhaps repeatedly dined upon." There can be no doubt that the 
 dinners at the houses of Lansdowne and Holland have converted to 
 Whiggery many a vacillating politician ; and Tom Moore dispatched the 
 Foreign Secretary and a fine turtle together on a sea-voyage, in order 
 
 "To soften the heart of a Diplomats 
 Who is known to dote upon verdant fat, 
 And to let admiring Europe see 
 That calipash and calipee 
 Are the English forms of diplomacy." * 
 
 Brillat-Savarin says, u Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es ; " 
 and Esquiros believes that a man is of Teutonic or Celtic descent as he 
 is addicted to the juice of the hop or the vine as a beverage. Whatever 
 truth there may be in these theories, it is, at least, a matter of interest 
 to know what manner of meat or drink great men have held in especial 
 preference. But they have been more reticent about their eating than 
 their reading, and we know less about their favourite meats than their 
 favourite books. We like to listen to their gastronomic whims and fancies, 
 Father Prout on Eggs, Thackeray on Bouillabaisse, Sala on Caviar. 
 We take pleasure in learning, it may be that the authority is bad, that 
 the favourite dish of the great Careme was " bullock's liver and onions." 
 Dr. Johnson, Mrs. Piozzi tells us, took especial delight in " a leg of pork 
 boiled till it dropped from the bone, a veal pie with plums and sugar, and 
 the outside cut of a salt buttock of beef." These are not bad things, 
 though the taste which dictated them has been pronounced in these 
 denationalized days, somewhat coarse ; but many of us would have joined 
 issue with the lexicographer, when, during the second course, he called for 
 the butter-boat of lobster sauce, and poured its contents over his plum- 
 pudding ! Parr, I mean the "Brummagem Doctor" and not him of 
 " life-pill " celebrity, whose fame Taylor, the Water-Poet, has sung, says, 
 " There are certainly one or two luxuries to which I am addicted : the 
 first is a shoulder of mutton not underroasted, and richly incrusted with 
 flour and salt ; the second is a plain suet pudding ; the third is a plain 
 family plum-pudding ; and the fourth, a kind of high festival dish, 
 consists of hot boiled lobsters, with a profusion of shrimp sauce." It was 
 the opinion, indeed, of this renowned scholar, that " particular tastes in 
 eating went with scholarship, such as liking fries and stews, <nr\d,yxva 
 iraaavTo, liver, heart, etc., ; whilst whole joints are the favourites of men of 
 grosser propensities." This idea is corroborated by Posidonius, who 
 says that, in his time, the Barbarians of the North were wont to dine on 
 whole joints brought to table. William IV., not that it much matters, 
 delighted in a roast fowl and a black bottle of sherry. Burns has written 
 a poem in praise of a Scotch "haggis"; and O'Doherty admits the 
 excellence of this national dish. Charles Lamb has left us a Disserta- 
 
 * Moore's Poems (" Dream of Turtle by Sir William Curtis " ). 
 
n8 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Hon on Roast Pig, not less exquisite in savour than the dish which he has 
 immortalized ; and, in this connection, Southey, too, boasts himself as one 
 
 -who. in all forms 
 
 Of pork, baked, roasted, toasted, boil'd, or broil'd, 
 Fresh, salted, pickled, season'd, moist or dry, 
 Whether ham, bacon, sausage, souse, or brawn, 
 Leg, blade-bone, bald-rib, griskin, chine, or chop, 
 Profess myself a genuine philopig," * 
 
 though whether he was acquainted with that celebrated preparation of 
 swine-flesh in which the ancients so delighted, the "porcus Trojanus," 
 the quondam Laureate leaves to conjecture. 
 
 Hume, when accused by a lady of being an epicure, replied, " No, 
 madam ; I am only a glutton." That is, he was a gourmand, rather than 
 a gourmet, solicitous rather as to the qua?itity than the quality of his 
 viands. This, at least, is the signification which these terms have now 
 come to possess, even among the French, whatever they may have had 
 in former times. They indicate, moreover, classes of eaters who do not 
 well come together. Thus, while in the latter category I should place 
 the nervous and dyspeptic author of Pelham, and indeed see many 
 reasons in that clever novel to induce to this opinion, I should have 
 little doubt that to the former class belonged that ireful guest, who, 
 leaving the classic and refined table of his Amphitryon with the cravings 
 of hunger still unappeased, indited the epigram : 
 
 ' ' You see,' says Sir Ned, as we enter his doors, 
 ' I have furnished my rooms a la Louis Quatorze* 
 ' Then I wish,' said a guest, ' when you ask us to eat, 
 You would furnish your board a la Louis Dixhuit ; 
 The eye cannot feast when the stomach is starving, 
 So, pray, less of your gilding, and more of your carving.' " 
 
 I suppose that this is a case where it may be said with truth of the 
 lines, which by the way are attributed to Egerton Warburton, -facit 
 indig?iatio versus. 
 
 To sum up the foregoing. Eaters may be divided into three classes, 
 according to the manner of their eating. The lowest in the scale of taste, 
 is the Glutton, the victim of the disease known in medicine as bulimia. 
 He is all practice and no theory. Next comes the Gourmand, who unites 
 
 * " Epistle to Allan Cunningham " ( The Anniversary, 1829, p. 20.) 
 The modern pork-butcher dissects after a different fashion ; and it has already 
 become a matter of some difficulty, when put to it, to state definitely what joint of the 
 carcase is indicated by a term which still seems familiar enough. The following 
 passage, from a still older poem, may, in this way, exercise the ingenuity of the reader, 
 and place on record here some old-fashioned terms : 
 
 "RECITATIVE. 
 "Hog ! Porker ! Roaster ! Boar-stag ! Barbicue ! 
 Cheeks ! Chines ! Crow ! Chitterlings ! and Harselet new ! 
 Springs ! Spare-ribs ! Sausages ! Sous'd-lugs ! and Face ! 
 With piping-hot Pease-pudding plenteous place ! 
 Hands ! Hocks ! Hams ! Haggis ! with high seas'ning filled ! 
 Gammons ! Green Griskins ! on grid-irons grill'd I 
 Liver and Lights ! from Plucks that moment drawn ! 
 Pigs' Puddings ! Black and White ! with Canterbury Brawn ! " 
 
 The Rolliad, 1799, 8vo ("Probationary Odes for the 
 Laureateship," p. 273). 
 
LOUIS EUSTACHE UDE. 119 
 
 theory with practice, and occupies the juste milieu. Highest of all, we 
 have the Gourmet, who is purely theoretical, and cares little about 
 practice. An individual specimen of Class 1, I should term a "Gastro- 
 phile " ; of Class 2, a " Gastronomer " ; and of Class 3, a " Gastrologer." 
 
 It is difficult to tell stories about dining without half a score of Sydney 
 Smith's, that most brilliant of diners-out, coming into one's head. 
 Paley chose a watch as an evidence of " design ; " but the witty Canon 
 Residentiary of St. Paul's made effectual use of a cook. One day, at 
 a dinner table, it chanced that an atheistic Frenchman, who did not 
 remember Voltaire's happy line,* was strong on the non-existence of 
 a creative deity, and proved, at least to his own satisfaction, that the 
 world was a fortuitous concourse of atoms. But he was but a Frenchman 
 after all, and the excellence of the dishes touched him in a tender place. 
 " What a capital cook they must have here ! " whispered he to his 
 neighbour. " Surely," replied Sydney, " you don't believe in a cook ! " 
 
 Another good thing was said by him of a poet's dinner. It was the 
 custom of Sam Rogers not to have his lights on the dinner-table, but to 
 dispose them so as to illuminate the fine pictures overhead, a custom 
 which extorted from the witty parson the remark that " above, all was 
 brightness, while below was darkness and gnashing of teeth." 
 
 That was no bad idea of Quin's, I know not who put it into his 
 head, when he saw the body of Duke Humphrey at Saint Alban's : 
 
 "A plague on Egypt's arts, I say, 
 Embalm the dead! On senseless clay 
 
 Rich wines and spices waste ? 
 Like Sturgeon, or like Brawn, shall I 
 Bound in a precious pickle lie, 
 
 Which I shall never taste ! 
 
 " Let me embalm this flesh of mine, 
 With Turtle fat, or Bordeaux wine, 
 
 And spoil th' Egyptian trade ! 
 Than Humphrey's Duke more happy I 
 Embalm'd alive old Quin shall die, 
 
 A mummy ready made 1 " 
 
 There is a very charming book entitled The Secret of Long Life 
 (London, 4to, 1872), the production of a genial and scholarly writer, 
 poor Mortimer Collins, who, if he possessed, did not avail himself of the 
 secret of which he treats, for he died, a victim in great measure to the 
 worry and labour of a literary life, before he had completed his half 
 century. In this volume he takes occasion to break the prose of an 
 aristological chapter by adding to it " a cycle of sonnets adapted to the 
 dinners of the year," that is, one for each month. " Careless trifles," 
 the writer calls them ; but as they are not only germane to the matter 
 on hand, but, as I judge them, most exquisitely polished and classical 
 compositions, I should hold it sin, when writing on the subject, to fail, 
 since I cannot transcribe, at least to indicate to my readers the book 
 in which these " pure and perfect chrysolites " may be found. 
 
 It is one of the maxims of Sir Morgan O'Doherty that, "in whatever 
 country one is, one should chose the dishes of the country." The dictum 
 is a wise one ; we have in England a national cookery which in the 
 opinion of the great Ude himself, is, " when well done, superior to that 
 
 * " Si Dieu n'existait pas it faudrait 1'inventer." 
 
120 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 of any country in the world." Under the same conviction, one cannot 
 help recording one's absolute contempt for the snobby, servile custom 
 of neglecting our admirable indigenous cookery, as those knowing 
 gentlemen who have visited the gourmands' haunts in the Paris of the 
 past are wont to do, for such abominations as cartes a la Francaise and 
 diners d la Eusse, things which on the table of a British citizen are 
 about as execrable, and bear about the same relation to their originals, 
 as rosbif on the Boulevards, or a bifteck in the Palais Royal. Horace 
 had an honest abhorrence of all such exotic kick-shaws : 
 " Persicos odi, puer, apparatus, 
 Bring me a chop and a couple of ' tatus.' " 
 
 " We do not want," says a clever writer, " cunning culinary contrivances 
 in the land of the shorthorn sirloin and the southdown saddle, in 
 a country whose esquires have venison in their parks and pheasants 
 in their coverts." It is a mistake, too, of analogous character to intrude 
 into one epoch the style of cookery that belonged to another and long 
 anterior one. Hence the humorous catastrophe which befel the 
 gastronomic experiment on the culinary properties of land-snails, made, 
 as Sir Walter Scott informs us, by Drs. Black and Hutton, respectively 
 of chemical and geological fame. These gentlemen had learnt that the 
 epicures of old considered these testacece great delicacies, and that 
 the Italians still esteem them ; and thought it a pity that they should be 
 lost to the modern kitchen. The Snails were accordingly caught and 
 stewed ; and a huge dish of them was placed before the friends, whose 
 stomachs already revolted at the aspect of the filthy mess. They slowly 
 began their meal, and managed to swallow a few mouthfuls. But 
 philosophers are but men, after all ; and with a little hesitancy as to who 
 should take the initiative, the modern-antique dish was ordered away 
 with every expression of disgust and abhorrence. I wonder if the learned 
 doctors had ever read that most racy and comical " Dinner after the 
 Manner of the Ancients," described by Smollett, in his Peregrine Pickle 
 (vol. ii. chap. 10), and so inimitably illustrated by George Cruikshank, 
 in his Points of Humour (1823, Part i. " Point 6 "). Of equal absurdity, 
 if we may judge from the sesquipedalian titles, barbarous hybrids of 
 Greek and Latin formation, which they give to their dishes are the 
 annual dinners of the Palceontographical Society. Their Bill of Fare, 
 to use the good old English phrase, is entitled (for 1871) "Scheda 
 Prandii," in ignorance of the fact that "Prandium" is not Latin for the 
 meal in question. Let me recommend to the consideration of the dinner 
 committee a curious book entitled : Tabella Cibaria : The Bill of Fare, 
 a Latin Poem implicitly translated and fully explained in copious and 
 interesting Notes, relating to the Pleasures of Gastronomy, and the 
 Mysterious Art of Cookery (London, 1820, 4to).* 
 
 * The author of this very clever and amusing book, one of the wittiest jeux d % esprit 
 of the day, was the Abbe Angel Denis McQuin, a frequent and valuable contributor 
 to the Literary Gazette in its best days. In that magazine he wrote a series of papers 
 entitled Etymological Gleanings ; an able essay on the Satyricon, attributed to Petronius 
 Arbiter (1882) ; and an historical account of Fonthill Abbey, with a biography of the 
 family of Beckford, of the wealthy representative of which he was a personal friend. 
 On the restoration of Louis XVIII., in 1814, he returned to France, where he regained 
 a considerable part of his funded property ; though his landed possessions were gone 
 for ever. He came back eventually to London, where he died in 1823. The Tabella 
 Cibaria is now a scarce book. 
 
LOUIS EUSTACHE UDE. 121 
 
 I am not writing entirely without " book," or rather " books," for, 
 besides the work I have just mentioned, I have at my elbow a whole 
 shelf of " Gastronomiana." There is the De Arte Coqui7iarid, attributed 
 to Caelius Apicius, and republished in London in 1705 by Dr. Martin 
 Lister; together with the happy Horatian satire upon it, The Art of 
 Cookery, by the witty Dr. William King, of the Commons ; there is the 
 Diceteticon, sive de Re Cibarid of Ludovicus Nonnus (Antverpiae, 1627, 
 8vo) ; there is the Physiologic du Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomi& 
 Transcendante of Brillat-Savarin a (i828, 2 vols. 8vo) ; La Gastronomie, 
 Po'eme. Par I. Berchoux (Paris, 18 19); the Code Gourmand, Manuel 
 Complete de Gastrononiie (Paris, 1828) ; the Curiosites Gastronomiques de 
 tous les temps et de tous les pays, Par Louis Nicolardot (Paris, 1868) ; 
 and La Gastronomie Historique par Le Marquis de Cussy ; there is the 
 Pantropheo?i, or the History of Food, and its Preparations from the earliest 
 Ages of the World, by A. Soyer (1853, 8vo) * ; Calebs in Search of a Cook, 
 with divers Recipes and other delectable things relating to the Gastronomic 
 Art j The Art of Diiiing, or Gastronomy a?id Gastro?iomers (1853, 8vo) ;1 
 What shall we have for Dinner? by Lady Maria Clutterbuck (185 1) ; 
 Memoirs of Alexis Soyer, the "Regenerator" (1859) > The Hand-Book oj 
 Dining, by Leonard Francis Simpson (1859, 8vo) ; Memoirs of a Stomach, 
 edited by a Mi?iister of the Interior, nth ed. ; Gastronomy, or the School 
 for Good Living (1822, 8vo) ; Essays, Moral, Philosophical a?id Stomachi- 
 cal, on the Important Science of Good Living, by Launcelot Sturgeon 
 (1822, 8vo) ; The Epicure's Almanac, and Diary of Good Living, by 
 Benson E. Hill (1 841-3, 2 vols. 8vo) ; Apician Morsels, or Tales of the 
 Table, Kitchen and Larder (1834, 8vo) ; Illustrations of Eating, dis- 
 playing the Omnivorous Character of Man, and exhibiting the Natives oj 
 Various Countries at Feeding Time, by a Beef-Eater (1847, i2mo) ; 
 The Knife and Fork for 1849, laid by the " Alderman" with Cuts by Kenny 
 Meadows (1849, i2mo) ; London at Dinner, or Where to Dme (1858) ; 
 Hints for the Table, or the Economy of Good Living (1859) ; Table 
 Traits and something on them, by the late Dr. Doran ; A Book about the 
 Table, by John Cordy JeafTreson (2 vols. 1875, 8vo) ; cu?n ?nultis aliis. 
 
 But I must not quite forget Ude himself, though I do not suppose 
 that any one cares much about him personally. The career of this 
 gentleman was so diversified at to earn for him the title of the " Gil 
 Bias " of the kitchen. Dedicated to the service of the Dieu ventru in his 
 early years, he seems, with that strange misapprehension of his own 
 talents and true destiny which has possessed so many of the sons of 
 genius, to have abandoned the career thus opened to him, and became, in 
 turn, a jeweller, an engraver, a printer, a haberdasher, a commercial 
 traveller, an agent de change, and an inspector of gambling houses. Re- 
 linquishing the latter function, he reverted to his original calling, and 
 became in due time mditre d 'hotel to Madame Letitia Buonaparte. Arith- 
 metic is called one of the fixed sciences, and yet hundreds of situations 
 are hastily abandoned, characters lost, and enmities made, on account of 
 some speculative difference of opinion arising between employers and 
 employed, with regard to some purely elementary question. Something 
 
 * Reviewed in the United Service Gazette, September, 1853 ; and by the late Dr. 
 Doran, in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xl. p. 450. 
 
 f By A. Hayward : originally published in the Quarterly Review, July, 1835, and 
 February, 1836. 
 
122 THE MACL1SE PORTRAIT-GALLERY, 
 
 of this paltry character led to a rupture between Madame Buonaparte and 
 her chef, and the latter transferred his talents to this country. Here he 
 soon found an engagement under the Earl of Sefton at three hundred 
 guineas per annum. He was also, at one time, chef de cuisine to the 
 Duke of York, and at another, head of the culinary department of the too 
 celebrated establishment in St. James's of the ex-fishmonger, Crockford. 
 It is pleasing to record that a provision for the old age of the artiste was 
 thoughtfully made by his former master, the Earl of Sefton, who, at his 
 death, left him an annuity of ^100. It was the demise of his former 
 employer, the Duke of York, that extorted from Ude the touching ejacu* 
 lation, "Ah, mon pauvre Due! how moche you vill miss me vere you are 
 gone ! " 
 
 A few words, and those not my own, about the portrait before us. 
 "Our artist," says Fraser, "has taken him in a moment of inspiration, 
 when resting his chin upon a ladle, he is meditating the divine things to 
 be produced by the hour of repast. Visions of Cookery sublime, courses, 
 entrees, hors d'osuvres, chase one another through his prolific brain. The 
 thought now kindling in his culinary eye will ripen into a dinner, and the 
 curl of his nose is prognosticatory of perfumes far surpassing any which 
 come upon the perfumed breezes of Araby the blest ! " Ude had been 
 long resident in this country, and had acquired the right to the title of an 
 " Anglicised Frenchman." Whether he knew enough of the language to 
 write the book which led Fraser to style him " the first author of the day," 
 even with revision, or whether he was like the Frenchman spoken of by 
 Dickens, whose ignorance of English was intelligible if you considered 
 that he had been only thirty years in the country, I cannot say ; but in 
 any case, with his higher opinion of English cookery, he could not put in 
 the plea of the French hotel-keeper at Dresden, who, although a resident 
 for twenty years, could not speak a word of German, and replied to the 
 astonishment expressed by a guest with the simple query, " A quoi bon, 
 monsieur, apprendre la langue dhm peuple qui ne posstde pas une 
 cuisine t " 
 
 " Valete, et favete Unguis" 
 
 XXVI. REVEREND DOCTOR LARDNER. 
 
 I can testify that the portrait before us is a graphic and suggestive 
 representation of the outward form of the learned Professor, having albeit 
 when very young not only seen him in the flesh, but enjoyed the advan- 
 tage of an introduction to, and conversation with, him. This must have 
 been very shortly before his exodus from Britain, of which more anon. 
 
 Dr. Lardner was born in Dublin, April 3rd, 1793. He was the son of 
 a solicitor, and commenced life early in his father's office. Not liking this, 
 he entered himself at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1812. Here he took 
 several prizes, and graduated B.A. in 1817. For the next ten years he 
 remained in the University, and in 1828 published his edition of the First 
 Six Books of Euclid, which became established as a class-book, and still 
 remains, in my opinion, the most comprehensive and philosophical of the 
 various editions of Euclid, and the best adapted to the requirements of 
 
TEE EDITOR OF "THE CABINET CYCLOPEDIA. 
 
REVEREND DOCTOR LARDNER. 123 
 
 the solitary student. On the establishment of the University of London 
 (now University College), in 1827, Dr. Lardner, at the invitation of Lord 
 Brougham, accepted the chair of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, 
 and shortly afterwards projected his well-known Cabinet Cycloficedia, in 
 which he himself wrote the treatises on " Mechanics," ** Hydrostatics and 
 Pneumatics," " Heat," " Arithmetic," and " Geometry." It was to be 
 commenced with the History of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland, 
 respectively by Sir James Mackintosh, Sir Walter Scott and Thomas 
 Moore. It was in 1829 that the last entered into the engagement ; but it 
 was not till 1835 that the first volume was completed. It was a piece of 
 grievous task-work to Moore, and certainly contributed a " nail to his 
 coffin." All must join in the regret expressed by Lord John Russell that 
 he did not, as originally proposed, confine himself to one volume. His 
 time was absorbed, his health impaired, and his faculties dragged down 
 to an uncongenial task. On the conclusion of the work with the fifth 
 volume in 1846, his energies were so completely annihilated that he was 
 positively unable to write the preface. Of course Lardner had frequently 
 to apply the spur, for which Moore took revenge by styling him 
 " Dionysius the Tyrant." In addition to these, the most eminent men of 
 the day collaborated, and the series was completed in 135 volumes. It 
 was for this work, in 1830, that Sir John Herschel wrote that "Pre- 
 liminary Discourse upon Natural Philosophy," which has been pronounced 
 to be the complement of the " Novum Organum," and, indeed, the greatest 
 book of its class since the days of Bacon. Engaged in the prosecution of 
 these and other literary enterprises, the career of the Doctor went on 
 prosperously till it received a rude shock in 1840. Without going deeply 
 into particulars, I briefly state that in this year, at the Lewes Assizes, 
 an action was brought against Dr. Lardner, by Captain Heaviside, of 
 Brighton, for criminal conversation with his wife. The damages were 
 laid at ,10,000, and it was shown in evidence that a large property was 
 settled on Mrs. Heaviside, who was the mother of three children (the 
 eldest being fourteen years of age), and whom Dr. Lardner had only 
 known for thirteen weeks when the elopement took place. This was the 
 only fact alleged in mitigation of damages, which the jury with a verdict, 
 of course, for the plaintiff, who had already administered personal castiga- 
 tion, with detriment, as was alleged, to the wig and spectacles of the 
 amorous philosopher, assessed at 8000. Now here was a term, the 
 arbitrary introduction of which into the already stated equation of ways 
 and means, baffled even the mathematical skill of the Doctor, and he 
 only effected its elimination by the abandonment of his country and 
 position. He at once proceeded to the United States, in the various 
 towns of which, and in Cuba, he lectured with success. In 1845 he 
 returned to Europe, and took up his residence in Paris, Here he held the 
 appointment of foreign correspondent to the Daily News* and died April 
 29th, 1859, aged 66. 
 
 The Fraserians may laugh at the pretensions of Dr. Lardner, and 
 " Father Prout " dub him " a man of letters," from the number that he 
 appended to his name ; but it must be admitted that he was possessed of 
 great abilities, and that the public is largely indebted to him as a pioneer 
 of education. Few men have done more than he to extend and popu- 
 
 * Men of the Time, ed. 1856. (This writer is surely in error when he states that 
 Dr. Lardner was a graduate of, and resident in, Trinity College, Cambridge). 
 
124 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 larizc scientific knowledge among the people, a task for which he was 
 well qualified by his experience and acquirements, and the elegance, 
 perspicuity, and precision of his style. 
 
 Dr. Lardner was married, in 1815, to Miss Cecilia Flood, a niece of 
 the celebrated Irish orator, the contemporary of Grattan. In 1820 the 
 parties separated by mutual consent, and in 1849 a formal divorce took 
 place, when the Doctor married Mrs. Heaviside. In 1864 some discredit- 
 able family disclosures were made in the Rolls Court/Dublin, in the case 
 " Re Lardner's Trusts, ex parte Boyd," from which it appeared that the 
 divorced wife died in 1862. I have the documents before me, but do 
 not know that they contain much of interest to the general reader, while 
 they might inflict pain on survivors. So much, however, was necessary 
 for an explanation of an allusion in the facetious song with which I 
 conclude these " Notes," and concerning the concoction of which " Father 
 Prout" hatches an amusing story. 
 
 According to the veridical narration of the learned incumbent of 
 Watergrasshill, Dr. Lardner made a special trip to Paris to induce 
 Be'ranger, the poet, to whom he had previously conveyed a " handsome 
 remuneration," through Dr. Bowring, to sing or say a good word about the 
 Cabinet Cyclopedia, which the latter translated the Encyclopedic des 
 
 Cabinets d (I leave the reader to fill in the word). Lardner gave 
 
 the poet a dinner, we are informed, " on the strength of the expected 
 commendatory poem, when the following song was composed after the 
 third bottle " : 
 
 "L'EPEE DE DAMOCLES. 
 
 " De Damocles l'^pde est bien connue, 
 
 En songe a table il m'a semble" la voir ; 
 Sous cette pee, et menacante et nue, 
 
 Denis l'ancien me forcait a m'asseoir. 
 Je m'ecriais que mon destin s'acheve, 
 
 La coupe en main, au doux bruits des concerts, 
 O vieux Denis, je me ris de ton glaive, 
 Je bois, je chante, et je siffle tes vers I 
 
 " ' Que du me"pris la haine au moins me sauve t ' 
 
 Dit ce pedant, qui rompt un fil leger ; 
 Le fer pesant tombe sur ma tgte chauve, 
 
 J'entends ces mots, ' Denis scait se venger I ' 
 Me voila mort, et poursuivant mon reve, 
 
 La coupe en main, je repete aux enfers, 
 O vieux Denis je me ris de ton glaive, 
 Je bois, je chante, et je siffle tes vers 1 " 
 
 "THE DINNER OF DIONYSIUS. 
 
 " Oh ! who hath not heard of the sword which old Dennis 
 
 Hung over the head of a stoic ? 
 And how the stern sage bore that terrible menace, 
 
 With a fortitude not quite heroic ? 
 There's a Dennis, the ' tyrant of Cecily ' hight * 
 
 (Most sincerely I pity his lady, ah !). 
 Now this Dennis is doom'd for his sins to indite 
 
 A ' Cabinet Cyclopaedia.' 
 
 * This is in allusion to the bill, then before the Lords, for divorce from his wife 
 whose Christian name was Cecilia* 
 
AUTHOR OP"THE SIAMESE TWINS". 
 
EDWARD LYTTON BULWER, 125 
 
 " He press'd me to dine, and he placed on my head 
 
 An appropriate garland of poppies ; 
 And lo ! from the ceiling there hung by a thread 
 
 A bale of unsaleable copies. 
 ' Puff my writings,' he cried, ' or your skull shall be crush'd t ' 
 'That I cannot,' I answer'd, with honesty flush'd. 
 
 ' Be your name Dionysius, or Thady, ah ! 
 Old Dennis, my boy, though, I were to enjoy 
 But one glass, and one song, still one laugh, loud and long, 
 
 I should have at your Cyclopaedia I ' " 
 
 XXVII. EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 
 
 Whatever may be the place allotted to Lord Lytton in the future 
 history of English literature, it must be conceded that, not only in the 
 judgment of ourselves, but in that of Continental Europe, he stood forth 
 in his own time as the most prominent and typical representative of the 
 " Literary Character." This position, honourable in itself, whether to 
 be confirmed by the judgment of posterity or not, he owed to that love 
 of literature, and earnest devotion to it as an art, which was the prevailing 
 characteristic of his life. With the prayer of the Mantuan, 
 
 " Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae 
 Quarum sacra fero ingenti perculsus amore, 
 Accipiant," 
 
 he chose his high vocation when yet a school-boy, and ever obedient to 
 its demands, devoted his after life to the development of his powers with 
 a love which no other object could alienate, and an industry which neither 
 difficulty nor disappointment could tire. Inheriting an historical name, 
 and the fortune and position of an English gentleman, he regarded these 
 accidents, in the words of his own " Melnotte," "as the incentives to 
 exertion, not the title-deeds of sloth ; " and closing his ears to the siren 
 voices of pleasures and indolence, laboured more intensely in his art 
 than any bookseller's hireling drudge, toiling after the ever-fleeting 
 Perfection with a fixity of purpose which the golden apples of life had 
 no charm to relax or divert. There is no muse whom he did not woo in 
 her turn, and there is none who refused him her favouring smile. He 
 was the " Admirable Crichton " of modern literature ; succeeding in all 
 that he undertook, Novels, Histories, Satires, Essays, Poems, Orations 
 and Dramas ; great in all branches, a supreme master in some ; touching 
 every kind of writing, and touching none which he did not adorn ; and 
 thus rendering applicable to himself, in a greater degree than to any 
 other contemporary man of letters, the celebrated eulogy of Johnson on 
 Goldsmith. 
 
 Is there for instance, a cleverer novel, of its kind, in the language 
 than Pelham f Of an altogether different school, what can be named to 
 surpass My Novel and The Caxtons? Money is one of the finest 
 comedies in the language, "worthy to be put on the same boards, 
 played by the same actors, and before the same audience as The School 
 for Scandal." The Lady of Lyons is perhaps the most charmingly 
 beautiful of all the productions of the modern drama, and there is not 
 an actress on the stage who does not prefer the part of "Pauline" to 
 
126 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 every other. The Lost Tales of Miletus will ever charm the scholar with 
 their elegant diction and playful fancy. The translations from Schiller 
 are stated by Carlyle himself to be those from which an English reader 
 can gain the most adequate idea of the lyrics of the great German poet. 
 The Student contains essays, never duly appreciated, of singular power 
 and brilliance. There is a terseness, a power, and a polish in the poem 
 St. Stephens, which prove its author a successful disciple in the school 
 of Dryden and Pope. A speech of his in the House, it was delivered 
 on the occasion of one of Lord John Russell's abortive Reform Bills, 
 may be cited as one of the finest pieces of oratory of our own times. 
 As a satirist, his Siamese Twins and the New Timon, place him above 
 mediocrity. His Athens is a brilliant historical fragment, though now 
 the least known of all the productions of his various and fertile brain . 
 And, lastly, his early poem, Milton, his minor fugitive pieces in verse, 
 and his King Arthur, are all pervaded with such graces of language 
 and fancy, as to give their author a high place, though not, it must be 
 admitted, the highest, in the Walhalla of British poetry. 
 
 It is to this very manysidedness and fertility of the genius of Bulvver 
 that is to be ascribed much of the doubt and detraction with which it has 
 been viewed by his contemporaries. The hojno unius libri was regarded 
 in mediaeval times as a dangerous adversary, and one to be guarded 
 against with sedulous anxiety. That the " Jack of all trades is master of 
 none" is a proverb of our own, not the less true because vulgar and 
 homely. By the widening of the horizon of knowledge, and the discovery 
 of vast territories in the domain of mind unknown to former voyagers, 
 the attempt at universality has become more and more, in these latter 
 days, futile and injurious. It was said happily of Edouard Fournier by 
 Jules Janin, " Cet homme-la sait tout ; il ne sait que cela ; mais il le sait 
 bien " : yet Fournier remains an obscure litterateur. In art, in litera- 
 ture, in the professions, this is a day for specialism. Universality ot 
 knowledge is held incompatible with sterlingness and profundity ; and 
 the ambition for omniscience, which might once have been indulged in 
 with advantage and reputation, will certainly conduct its votary, whatever 
 may be his talents, and however favourable his circumstances, to the 
 secondary position allotted to the Bowrings and the Bulwers of our own 
 immediate times. 
 
 It does not fall within my purpose to attempt a critical examination 
 of the works and genius of this great writer, a task for which space, and 
 the requisite knowledge are alike wanting, and I must confine myself to 
 the few desultory reflections that may occur to me. 
 
 It is now getting on for seventy years since a young Englishman 
 fresh from college printed at Paris for private circulation a hundred 
 copies of a volume of poems entitled Weeds and Wild Flowers (1820, 
 royal 8vo). The book was dedicated to a brother-collegian, then reading 
 for the Bar, whose future success in his chosen profession, he became 
 subsequently Lord Cockburn and Solicitor- General for Scotland, was, 
 with keen prescience, foretold by the neophyte author. The slender 
 tome is excessively rare, as most of the copies were called in by the 
 writer , in his anxiety, it is said, to suppress the satiric sketch " Almacks " 
 (pp. 46-61), with the bitter lampoon on the Duke of Wellington, whom 
 the youthful bard, in a still earlier poem, had characterized as " godlike." 
 In the self-same year, too, was printed at London another little volume, 
 
EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. 
 
 127 
 
 which is more readily to be met with, though still of considerable rarity. 
 This is entitled : Ismael : an Oriental Tale, with other Poems. By 
 Edward George Lytton Bulwer. Written between the age of thirteen 
 and fifteen. London, 1820, i2mo, pp. 198. 
 
 But these priniitice I merely mention as bibliographic curiosities ; 
 with perhaps little enough in them to excite much astonishment, or 
 announce the advent of a great poetic genius. This, however, can hardly 
 be said of the prize poem, Sculpture, which carried off the Chancellor's 
 gold medal, in 1825 ; a set of verses which, though scarcely worthy to 
 rank with the Palestine of Heber, the Athens of Praed, the Apollo 
 Belvidere of Milman, or the Timbuctoo of the present Laureate, contains, 
 among much that is yet crude and juvenile, many indications of poetic 
 ability. It is the custom to decry " prize-poems," and Jerdan * has the 
 remark that Cambridge has scarcely produced a single one worthy of the 
 after-fame of a successful writer ; but I quite concur with Professor 
 Wilson, who held them in high estimation, and mentions many with the 
 warmest eulogy, f 
 
 Although, as I have said, there are hardly any departments of English 
 literature in which Bulwer has not made essay attaining supreme 
 excellence in some, and rising above mediocrity in all, it is as a 
 novelist that, first and foremost, his pretensions have to be regarded. 
 Here we have several marked distinctions of class. Of one, Pelha?n 
 (1828) may be taken as a type. A first work is always most characteristic 
 of the mind of its author ; and this, which at once raised its youthful 
 author to a high rank among living writers of fiction, is a witty, smart, 
 epigrammatic novel, exciting wonder as to how its precocious knowledge 
 of men and manners had been come at, and delighting by its thrilling 
 incident, powerful descriptions, and the vividness of its dramatic situa- 
 tions. What more picturesque than the ride home from the races, and 
 the finding of the body of the murdered Tyrrell ? What more patheti- 
 cally humorous than the visit to the old college chum, Christopher 
 Clutterbuck ? % What more graphic than the visit to the flash crib, and 
 the escape with the repentant accomplice from the clutches of Brimstone 
 Bess? One often hears the assertion that Bulwer has written "nothing 
 better" than Pelham; and this may be accepted as a truth, with the 
 modifying words " in this line." Zanoni belongs to a different class, and 
 in this, too, the author reaches his culminating point. Here we have 
 not to do with the heroes and villains of everyday life, but with beings 
 who belong, in part, to another sphere, and deal with mysterious and 
 occult agencies. The forgotten lore of the Cabala is unfolded ; the 
 extinguished furnace of the alchemist lighted anew ; the solitary lamp of 
 the Rosicrucian re-illumed. The motto of this extraordinary book might 
 well have been taken from the Introduction, " It is a romance, and it is 
 not a romance. It is a truth for those who can comprehend it, and an 
 extravagance for those who cannot." Here, then, we have another of 
 those works, which, like Faust, dealing in types or symbols, as, indeed, 
 every work of true art does, is objectively correlated with the thoughts and 
 feelings of other minds, and has, according to the diversities of these, 
 
 * Literary Gazette, vol. 155, p. 586. \ Nodes Ambrosiance, vol. i. p. 59. 
 
 % It was a remark in this chapter, indicating no great respect for verbal criticism, 
 which called forth the late Dr. Donaldson's cparse attack upon the author. See The 
 Theatre of the Greeks, 6th edition, 1849, note to p. 44. 
 
128 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 an instructive and various significance. It is nothing that the author 
 cannot, or does not choose, to tell us himself what lesson he intended 
 to convey, or pronounce which of the many " keys " or explanations which 
 readers, some, no doubt, acting upon Leigh Hunt's instructions, 
 " Make all you read on him 
 
 Seem what you thought of it ; 
 Palm your own creed on him, 
 Though he knew nought of it ; " 
 
 have forwarded for his approbation. The most cursory student of the 
 book must have some dawning of the fact that something is intended to 
 be suggested to his mind more subtle and impalpable than that which is 
 embodied to his senses. Then comes the attempt to discover what this 
 is, and the absurdities into which interpreters fall, from unaided and 
 unskilful search. The science of signs is the very folly of wisdom, as 
 Rabelais * has shown with equal wit and truth. But in this case a clue 
 is offered to the reader, which, though not the author's own, is at least 
 so far admitted and adopted by him as may be signified by his selecting 
 it from others as the production of " one of the most eminent of living 
 writers," f and appending it to his edition of the novel of 1853. Accord- 
 ing to this "key," by the character of Mejnour we are to understand 
 Science; by Zanoni, Idealism ; by Viola, the Hnma?i Intellect and Heart; 
 by the child, Newborn Instinct; by Aidon-ai, Faith; by the Dweller on 
 the Threshold, Fear; by Mervale, Conve?itionalism ; by Nicot, Passion; 
 by Glyndon, Unsustained Aspiration; and so on, while the main 
 object of the whole is to show that the universal Human Lot is, after all, 
 that of the highest privilege. Thus, Conventionalism goes plodding on ; 
 Selfish Passion perishes ; Ittstinct sleeps ; and Idealism learns the lesson 
 that self-sacrifice is the means of true redemption. Here, then, is one 
 interpretation, and this is truth to him that troweth it. But it will not be 
 true to all ; for, as an old Platonist has it, " a hundred men may read the 
 same book by the aid of the same lamp, yet all may differ on the text ; 
 inasmuch as the lamp only lights the characters, the mind must divine 
 the meaning." 
 
 A third class of Lord Lytton's novels consists of those comprised in 
 the " Caxton " series, where, it has been observed, the genius of the writer, 
 when grafted on a stock of Sterne, attained to a power which the scion, 
 in its own roots, never obtained. Here we have the most minute, and, 
 at the same time, broad and masterly delineations of character and 
 incident, in language of the utmost polish and refinement. So perfected, 
 indeed, has the style become, that it is almost vicious from the absence 
 of vice. We miss the sparkling vivacity of the earlier novels, and long, 
 now and then, for the negligentia non ingrata which Cicero advises the 
 orator to let appear in his discourse. But it is natural not to admire 
 perfection ; and, after all, we cannot but wonder at the artistic skill by 
 which the novelist has avoided monotony by the alternation of pathos, 
 humour, and the various elements of his narration. Pelham, perhaps, 
 sinned by being too pointed and epigrammatic ; since its composition 
 the author had laboured and studied as few men have done, and he had 
 to avoid another extreme, and beware of that excess of strength which 
 becomes the most certain weakness. Again, regarding Lord Lytton as 
 
 * Pantagruel, liv. ii. chap. xix. 
 
 f It need hardly be said that the mystagogue in this instance was no other than 
 the late Harriet Martineau. 
 
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 129 
 
 one of our most representative men of letters, it is curious to observe 
 how little national he was as a writer. Scott and Gait were eminently 
 Scotch ; Carleton and Banim, Irish ; Dickens and Thackeray, English ; 
 Paul de Kock and Balzac, French ; and so on ; but Lord Lytton is 
 cosmopolitan, and gives little or no indication of his nationality in his 
 works, which might, indeed, be translations from another language. 
 This arises, in part, from the subjective character of his intellect, and 
 the prevalence of his imaginative over his reasoning faculties. 
 
 I have already spoken of The Student, that brilliant series of essays, 
 which, light and discursive as they may be, seem to bring us into more 
 intimate communion with the mind of Bulwer than his more pretending 
 and laboured works. They have hardly met with the appreciation they 
 deserve ; but it appears to me that they cannot be read without pleasure, 
 and the reflection, like to that which Bentley made on Bishop Pearson, 
 that " the very sweepings of his study are gold dust." 
 
 Criticism has its teetotum as well as Time. As a minor curiosity of 
 literature, and an illustration of the worthlessness of anonymous opinion, 
 at least in this country, it is amusing to find that the same Blackwood, 
 which became the scene of Bulwer's latest triumphs, could write but a few 
 short years before : " If we were called upon to point out the most dis- 
 gusting abominations to be found in the whole range of contemporary 
 literature, we have no hesitation in saying we should feel it our duty to 
 lay our finger on the Bolingbroke-Balaam of that last and worst of an 
 insufferable charlatan's productions, Devereux." * 
 
 After The Siamese Twins, a Tale of the Times \ (1831, 8vo), a serio- 
 comic satire, with its clever outline plates by W. H. Brooke, and the fine 
 fragment of Milton, % appended thereunto, Bulwer's first important work in 
 rhyme was The New Timo?t, which appeared anonymously in 1846. I mention 
 it specially here because it was in its pages that the attack on Tennyson 
 appeared which called forth that memorable retort in the columns of Punch, 
 which constitute the first and last appearance of the Laureate in the pages 
 of that wise and witty serial. The casus belli lay in the following lines : 
 
 " Not mine, not mine O Muse, forbid ! the boon 
 Of borrow'd notes, the mock-bird's modish tune, 
 The jingling medley of purloin'd conceits, 
 Outbabying Wordsworth, and outglittering Keats ; 
 Where all the airs of patchwork pastoral chime, 
 To drown the ears in Tennysonian rhyme ! 
 
 Let school-miss Alfred vent her chaste delight 
 On ' darling little rooms, so warm and light ' ; 
 Chant ' I'm a-weary ' in infectious strain, 
 And catch the ' blue fly singing i' the pane ' ; 
 Though prais'd by critics and ador'd by Blues, 
 Though Peel with pudding plump the puling Muse, 
 Though Theban taste the Saxon purse controls, 
 And pensions Tennyson while starves a Knowles." 
 
 * Blackwood's Magazine, October, 1829, p. 562. 
 
 f Reviewed in Fraser's Magazine, vol. iii. p. 195 ; and the Quarterly Review, No. cv. 
 
 \ This poem, written in Bulwer's college days and previously printed in Paris, is 
 based on the tradition of the Italian lady seeing Milton asleep under a tree, and leaving 
 verses behind her expressive of her admiration of his beauty. 
 
 These lines were eliminated from subsequent issues ; for instance, they are not 
 found in the " Fourth edition, Corrected " (1846, Henry Colburn), which is before me. 
 
 K 
 
130 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT- GALLERY. 
 
 As may be imagined, the outraged poet did not allow the attack to 
 remain unnoticed long. The Quarrels of Authors serve at least to give 
 us a keener relish for the Amenities of Literature; and as the present 
 generation was in its long-clothes when the Laureate penned his " retort 
 courteous," and possibly has never even heard of the lines, it may thank 
 me for reproducing them here. They are as follows : 
 
 "THE NEW TIMON AND THE POET. 
 
 " We know him, out of Shakespeare's art, 
 And those full curses which he spoke 
 The old Timon, with his noble heart, 
 That strongly loathing, gently broke. 
 
 " So died the Old ; here comes the New, 
 Regard him : a familiar face 
 I thought we knew him. What ! it's you, 
 The padded man that wears the stays ; 
 
 " Who kill'd the girls, and thrill'd the boys 
 With dandy pathos when you wrote ; 
 O Lion ! you that made a noise, 
 And shook a mane en fapillottes / 
 
 " And once you tried the Muses too 
 
 You fail'd, sir ; therefore, now you turn ! 
 You fall on those who are to you 
 As captain is to subaltern. 
 
 ' ' But men of long enduring hopes, 
 
 And careless what the hour may bring, 
 Can pardon little would-be Popes 
 And Brummels, when they try to sting. 
 
 " An Artist, sir, should rest in Art, 
 And waive a little of his claim ; 
 To have a great poetic heart 
 Is more than all poetic fame. 
 
 " But you, sir, you are hard to please, 
 You never look but half content, 
 Nor like a gentleman at ease, 
 With moral breadth of temperament. 
 
 "And what with spites, and what with fears, 
 You cannot let a body be ; 
 It's always ringing in your ears 
 
 ' They call this man as great as me 1' 
 
 " What profits how to understand 
 The merits of a spotless shirt, 
 A dapper boot, a little hand, 
 If half the little soul is dirt ? 
 
 " You talk of tinsel ! Why, we see 
 
 Old marks of rouge upon your cheeks 1 
 You prate of nature ! You are he 
 That split his life upon the cliques. 
 
 " A Timon you ! Nay, nay, for shame- 
 It looks too arrogant a jest, 
 The fierce old man, to take his name ! 
 You band-box, off, and lei him rest ! " 
 
 Poor stuff, this, the reader may exclaim. Weak, washy and diffuse ; 
 much of it mere abuse, and the rest obscure and meaningless. The satire 
 of Bulwer, on the other hand, was fair enough ; and legitimately evoked 
 
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 131 
 
 to castigate the puerilities and affectations of the u school" to which 
 Tennyson belongs. 
 
 Was Buhver, himself, a great poet ? This is a question, our answer 
 to which must depend, I imagine, on the rank which is, or rather will be, 
 assigned to King Arthur, among the great poems of the world. It is by 
 this that he himself is willing to be judged, and in the preface to the later 
 editions he alludes with dignity and grace to the comparative estimates 
 formed of it by himself and by others. The verdict is, it is not a great 
 poem ; nor is it a poem which a great poet could possibly have written. 
 Like all the writings of its author, it is pervaded by the spirit of poetry. 
 In it there are numberless passages of power, of beauty, of tenderness 
 and of grace. It has variety of language, as a contemporary critic has 
 well said, grace of style, melody of versification, abundance of striking 
 images, boldness, delicacy, taste, picturesqueness, but, as the Italians 
 say, ci manca il quasi, it lacks that indefinable something which con- 
 stitutes poetry. " The trail of the prose writer, though the poetic prose 
 writer, is over all." 
 
 The sketch by Maclise before us may be regarded as another attack 
 upon the author of The Siamese Twins. At least, Bulwer himself always 
 regarded and spoke of it as such ; considering it as part of the system of 
 abuse and misrepresentation of which he was the subject in the pages of 
 Eraser. In a letter to myself, one of the last he ever wrote, he alludes 
 in a tone of sadness to these early satires upon his writings and his 
 person. " There seldom at that time appeared," writes he, " a number of 
 Eraser's Magazine which did not contain some notice of myself or my 
 writings couched in language more scurrilous than has ever in my ex- 
 perience been applied to any other author by contributors to the Periodical 
 Press, and the portrait you refer to was intended to be an offensive cari- 
 cature by the artist, Maclise, with whom I was then unacquainted, though 
 many years later we became friends. I have no feeling of soreness left 
 for the uncivil notices, and whether the portrait be a caricature or not, 
 matters very little now." There is, by the way, among the drawings of 
 the Forster bequest, in the South Kensington Museum, another sketch 
 of Bulwer by Maclise (1832), representing him in an easy chair, with his 
 legs fully stretched out, and smoking a pipe, the straight stem of which 
 almost reaches down to his slippers. 
 
 The infelicity of Bulwer's domestic life is too generally known to allow 
 its mention here, especially as connected with literature, to be a matter of 
 impropriety. In 1827, he married Rosina, the daughter of Francis 
 Wheeler, Esq., an Irish gentleman of property. The lady was beautiful, 
 witty and intelligent ; but she was capricious, and self-willed, and Bulwer 
 would have done well had he listened to the advice of his best friends, 
 Disraeli among the number, who endeavoured to convince him how unfit 
 she was to be the wife of a man of his exacting disposition, and nervous, 
 sensitive temperament. The ill-matched couple soon separated ; and 
 Paris was for a time kept alive by the scandals which ensued. Bulwer's 
 elder brother, Henry, the late Lord Dalling, unwisely set on foot a 
 system of espionage, with the view of obtaining grounds for an application 
 for divorce ; but this was unsuccessful, for though aided by his agents, 
 the English Embassy, and the French police, he failed to discover the 
 slightest circumstance affecting the reputation of the object of their super- 
 vision. She was one of the wittiest women of her day, and possessed an 
 
132 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 unrivalled power of virulent and incisive satire. Such, indeed, was her 
 reputation for cleverness that it was currently reported by the rivals and 
 detractors of Bulwer that he was indebted to her for important aid in the 
 composition of some of his best works, The Pilgrims of the Rhine being 
 especially indicated. Thackeray styled her " The Countess Guiscard," 
 and likened her to that character mentioned by Addison, who appeared 
 either angel or devil, according as it happened to be light or shadow in 
 which she met your view. In 1839, appeared Cheveley j or the Man of 
 Honour, dedicated to " No One Nobody, Esq., of No Hall, No Where," 
 of which her husband is the hero. If we do not know Bulwer, the fault 
 lies with ourselves. The most subjective of writers, he has depicted 
 himself in every novel he has written, starting up before us everywhere 
 unexpectedly, the very Proteus of self-representation. Miss Landon has 
 portrayed him in her Romance and Reality j and here, in Cheveley, his 
 own wife turns him inside out, and shows us the seamy side of the 
 garment. There is brilliant writing in the book, and a promise of 
 literary talent which was not fulfilled by her subsequent works. The 
 Budget of the Bubble Family, another three-volume novel, abounds with 
 a personality and vulgarity which alienated many of the friends of the 
 authoress, and did much to avenge the husband for the bitterness of his 
 wife's attacks. Here, her mother-in-law, whose efforts to effect a 
 reconciliation were known to all, was exhibited as a vulgar, illiterate 
 woman ; Henry Bulwer is the hateful scoundrel of the story ; and the 
 French political barrister, and ex-minister of State, Odillon Barrot, who 
 had acted against her interests in the old Parisian miseries, is depicted 
 in the most odious light that resentment could suggest. A full account 
 of the persecutions to which she had been subjected was given by her 
 ladyship in a volume entitled, A Blighted Life, in which Bulwer is 
 described as one of the worst of men, " false, cunning, cruel and un- 
 scrupulous." * Finally, on the occasion of his presenting himself as a 
 candidate for Parliament, she made a sudden rush upon the hustings, at 
 the conclusion of his speech, harangued the mob in a strain of coarse 
 and impassioned invective, and revealed to the world the odious secrets 
 of the prison-house. After this sad affair, she disappeared from the 
 world, and remained in obscurity till her death, so recently as March, 
 1882, recalled to greybeards the beauty and the wrongs of Rosina, Lady 
 Lytton. 
 
 During the Melbourne Administration of 1835, Bulwer was created a 
 baronet. In 1836, he was elected, for the second time, Lord Rector of 
 the University of Glasgow ; and in 1866, he was raised to the Peerage as 
 Baron Lytton. He died at Torquay, January 18th, 1873, leaving special 
 instructions in his will that he should be buried in the family mausoleum 
 at Knebworth, that his epitaph should be written in the English language, 
 and that the cost of his funeral should be restricted to that fitting for an 
 English gentleman. It has been said, and probably with some truth, 
 that he was the last literary man, of the present day at least, concerning 
 whose place of sepulture a care will be felt ; and thus it seems well to 
 record that the final wishes of the poet-novelist were so far disregarded, 
 that, in accordance with an universal desire, the great Abbey received all 
 that was mortal of his remains. From the minute instructions which 
 
 * This book was reprinted in 1880, and sold for the consideration of half-a-crown, 
 at 3, Falcon Court, 32, Strand. 
 
AUTHOR OFTHEXIVE8 OF THE BRITISH PAINTERSr&c. 
 
ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. *33 
 
 he gave as to the disposal of his body, one would suppose that he suffered 
 from a morbid apprehension of premature interment. It was not to be 
 removed, or placed in its coffin, till three medical men of standing had 
 inspected it separately, and declared in writing that the signs of decom- 
 position had commenced ; all dissection or autopsy of the remains was 
 forbidden, except there should be a suspicion that he had not died a 
 natural death ; and every approved means, short of mangling the body, 
 was to be used to restore it to life, if any doubt of decease existed, or 
 there appeared a possibility of catalepsy or trance. 
 
 Of Bulwer's two children by his ill-starred marriage, one, a daughter, 
 died early. He was succeeded in the title by his son, the Hon. Edward 
 Robert Bulwer-Lytton, late Viceroy of India, and advantageously known 
 in literature by the pseudonym of" Owen Meredith." 
 
 XXVIII. ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 
 
 " Tradition's lyre he plays, 
 With firm and skilful hand, 
 Singing the olden lays 
 Of his dear native land," 
 
 so sings a "brither Scot," the "Modern Pythagorean" hight, of this 
 the last in the glorious trinity of peasant-poets whom I linked together in 
 my notes upon the " Ettrick Shepherd." Nor is Allan Cunningham 
 unworthy of this honourable association ; for we have the authority of Sir 
 Walter himself to justify our opinion that, in regard to the noble volume 
 of Scottish song, " no man not even Burns has contributed more 
 beautiful effusions to enrich it." * Whence comes it, we are tempted to 
 ask, that the spirit of Poetry, forsaking the verdant Mount of Phocis, 
 and Castalia's spring, beloved of old, finds her chosen home amid the 
 misty hills and heather-covered moors of this wild and rugged land ? Why, 
 rather than those who have lingered awhile in the groves of Aeademus, 
 does she choose for her exponents the large-handed, rough-featured sons 
 of toil, and voices unmodulated by the culture of learning and society ? 
 The answer is manifold. First, there is the national character, that 
 prcefervidum ingenium Scotorum, which carries the hardy Northmen, and 
 keeps them erect, wherever the cause is noblest, and the battle of life the 
 fiercest. Then there is the sublime, inspiring, natural scenery of their 
 own historic land, their 
 
 " Caledonia, stern and wild, 
 Meet nurse for a poetic child ; " 
 
 and the traditions with which their infancy is fed, of a country which has 
 for centuries been the battlefield of national and religious liberty. The 
 pastoral occupation, again, with its day-long hours of solitary self-commune 
 and introspection, conduces, among other causes, to the development of 
 the poetic temperament, and kindles an enthusiasm for the unknown and 
 
 * Letter to Allan Cunningham (Lockhart's Life of Scott, p. 441). 
 
134 THE MACLlsi' PORTRAIT-GALLBA v. 
 
 1 1 it- unseen, which is prompt to break forth into ardent, unbidden son*. 
 
 There Is yel another potent agency. If the Scottish peasant owes little 
 oi nothing to education, his imagination is unrestrained by the trammels 
 
 ( .l" < lav.M i ,in, .-ii)*l unpolluted by the lore of an outworn and effete 
 mythology. I'.ut, deep down in his soul, a part of his very self, is 
 
 (ii led a profound religious feeling, that sense of relation with, and 
 
 dependence upon, the Bupreme Spirit of the universe, without which 
 nothing great nas ever been, or ever will be, said or done ; it is with the 
 living coal from the altar that his bou! is enkindled; and the very 
 
 language in whii Ii lie spontaneously utters his thoughts, is informed by 
 
 that sublime strain of poetry and prophecy which was his earliest tea* hing 
 
 al his mother's knee, and which now, in his hardy manhood, he does not 
 
 neglect, as he seeks the daily lesson of humility and piety in that Sacred 
 Book, 
 
 "The big ha' Bible, ance hii father's pride," 
 
 whose well-worn leaves serve at once to remind him of the past, instruct 
 linn in the present, and speak to him of the future. 
 
 James Hogg, in one ol his man) autobiographical narratives, givi 
 pleasant account of the visit paid to him, when herding his masters ewes 
 on Ihe great hill ol Ouecnsberry, by the brothers, J. ones and Allan 
 Cunningham. The Latter is described as "a dark, ungainly youth of 
 about eighteen, with a boardly frame for his age, and strongly -marked, 
 manly features, the very model of Burns, and exactly such a man. Had 
 they been of the same age, it would not have been e.isy to distinguish the 
 one from the other." They .spent the afternoon reciting their own v< , 
 partaking of the Shepheid's "scrip and store of sweet milk;" and 
 linishing up with a ''strong bottle,' - which the elder Cunningham h.ul 
 with him, and which "served to keep up their spil its to a late hour." ( >n 
 another occasion, the youthful haul, when gaining his daily bread as a 
 stone -cutter in Nithsd.de, made pilgrimage on foot to Kdinburgh, for the 
 
 sole purpose ol seeing the author ol Marmion^ afterwards t<> become 'a 
 fast friend, as he passed along the street. 
 
 The title, " Honest Allan," so applicable thai it has " stuck," was given 
 to him by Sir Walter Scott, who pronounced him "a leal and true 
 Scotsman of the old cast." In this sponsorial act, Sir Walter doubtless 
 had in his mmd the same epithet bestowed upon another Allan, the 
 "Scottish Theocritus," by Robert Burns,in those beautiful stanzas which 
 
 are as applicable to the one as to the Other of the peasant-poets, though 
 
 their lives were separated by half a century of time"; 
 
 " In thli braw age of wit and lear, 
 
 \\ ill nanc ilu Shepherd's whistle mair 
 Blaw iweetly in its native air 
 
 And rural grace ; 
 And \vi' the far-iani'il GncUm, share 
 
 A rival place ? 
 
 Yes 1 there is anc ; a Scottish callan ! 
 There's ane ; come forrit honest Allan f 
 Thou need na jouk behind the iiaii.m, 
 
 A chid sac clew 
 The teeth o* Time may gnaw TantaUtm, 
 But thou's for ever. 
 
allan Cunningham: 135 
 
 " Thou paints auld Nature to the nines, 
 In thy sweet Caledonian lines ; 
 Nae gowden stream thro' myrtles twines, 
 
 Where Philomel, 
 While nightly breezes sweep the vines, 
 
 Her griefs will tell I " * 
 
 But after all, was the title applicable? Let us hear Christopher 
 North, who tells another story: "The most famous thieves in our 
 time have been Rob, James, and Allan. But the thief of all thieves is the 
 Nithsdale and Galloway thief. . . . Thief and forger as he is, we often 
 wonder why ho is permitted to live. Many is the sweet stanza he has 
 stolen from Time, that silly auld carle who kens not even his own, 
 many the life-like line, and many the strange single word that seems to 
 possess the power of all the parts of speech, f This is partly in allusion 
 to the share which the young poet had in the Nithsdale a?id Galloway 
 Relics of Cromek, much of which was unquestionably the composition 
 "i Allan, or had been so happily "tinkered up" by him (as Hogg has it) 
 
 > become his own. A good deal lias been done in this way to meet 
 the demand of the lovers of antiquity. There was a certain Rev. Robert 
 Lambe, who, half a century ago, was a capital hand at the fabrication of 
 M ancient ballads." lie it was who foisted the well-known Laidly 
 Worm on Evans, who included it in the first edition of his collection. 
 The plan of this gentleman was to get his " innocent impostures " printed 
 at Newcastle. Hence they were distributed among the peasantry by 
 hawkers and Hying stationers, and thus fell under the notice of collectors, 
 who received them without demur as genuine relics of antiquity. In this 
 way, sonic of them arc supposed to have gained admission as others 
 
 lurtees certainly have into Scott's Border Minstrelsy, and similar 
 collections. Hogg, the moment Cromck's book came to his hand, dis- 
 cerned the strains of his friend, and, describing the sensations of delight 
 with which he heard Morrison read "The Mermaid of Galloway," kept 
 naming the author at every verse. It was his constant belief and assertion 
 that his friend Allan was author of all that was beautiful in the work. 
 Scotl was of the same opinion, and Hogg wrote a review, in which he 
 "laid the saddle," as he says, " on the right horse " ; but Jeffrey, though 
 " convinced of the fraud which had been attempted to be played off on 
 the public, did not think it worthy of exposure." and returned the article. 
 Maginn, himself, saw through the deception. " Who," asks he, " that has 
 any taste for ballad-poetry will have let slip from his memory those 
 beautiful specimens of that style of composition in its most exquisite 
 perfection which, under the pretence of being fragments of Galloway and 
 Nithsdale songs, were published by an especial ass of the name of 
 Cromek, on whom Allan in that particular not honest Allan, but about 
 as dishonest as Chatterton palmed them as genuine ? They are simply 
 chefs-d'oeuvre, and are almost, but not entirely, equalled by the Jacobite 
 relics, which he, at an earlier period, but in a similar mood of humbug 
 and inspiration, gave to the not-altogcther-unsuspccting, nor the alto- 
 gether-in-such-arts-unpractised, Hogg. It is foolish to compare either 
 him or Hogg with Burns, they are all three Scotch, and all three 
 makers of verses ; but there the similarity ends. Cunningham has his 
 
 * On Pastoral Poetry. 
 
 \ " Winter Rhapsody." Fytte the First (Blackwood's Magazine, vol. xxix. p. 300). 
 
136 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 own merits, he will never be able to write a song with Burns ; but Burns 
 never could have have turned off. a ballad like him." If, however, there 
 was any doubt about these north-country ballads, it was laid at rest by 
 the publication, a few years ago, of a letter from Allan himself to his 
 brother James, dated from London, September 8th, 1810. "Well," writes 
 he, " we have at last printed that volume of Remains of Nithsdale and 
 Galloway Song. It is beautifully printed and hot-pressed in octavo, and 
 contains 400 pages. I am convinced it will edify you greatly, but it may 
 not be made public until December. I will try to send you a copy, so 
 don't buy one. The thing which pleases me in it, every article but two 
 little scraps was contributed by me, both poetry and prose.* 
 
 In 1822 appeared Sir Mannaduke Maxwell, a Dramatic Poem, etc., 
 the time of which is at the close of the Commonwealth, under the second 
 Cromwell ; the scene, the Castle of Caerlaverock, on the Scottish side 
 of the sea of Solway ; and the story partly traditional and partly imaginary, 
 Sir Walter Scott expressed a high opinion of the beauty of its poetry, and 
 the " fine tone of supernatural impulse " spread over the action ; but he 
 justly thought it unfit for dramatic representation by reason of its length, 
 and some obscurity in the development of the plot. 
 
 But the genius of Cunningham, unlike that of Hogg, was essentially 
 lyrical. It was incapable of continued flight, and was best evinced in the 
 poetry of songs and ballads, where concentration was necessitated, as Allan 
 did not know when to hold his hand. Scott classed " among the best 
 songs going," "The Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea," and the touching piece, 
 " It's Hame, and it's Hame," which Mrs. Lockhart, his daughter, sang so 
 charmingly. The magnificent ballad " Sir Roland Graeme" is one of 
 the finest specimens of word-painting out of Homer, full of dash, vigour, 
 and energy. Then there are " The Mermaid of Galloway," t which 
 suggested to Hilton, the Royal Academician, a picture which once formed 
 part of the collection of Sir John Fleming Leicester, " She's gane to 
 dwell in Heaven," " Bonnie Lady Anne," " The Lord's Marie," and many 
 others, which are, in their way, of the very highest order of merit. It is, 
 indeed, upon these, and his contributions to Cromek's Relics, that his 
 reputation must rest. His genius, unlike, again, in this respect, that 
 of Hogg, ripened in early life, before he had mixed with the world, 
 or derived any assistance from books. His prose, it is true, was improved 
 by culture, but his verse deteriorated, or, at any rate, lost that particular 
 merit which gave it its value. Among his prose works the most remark- 
 able, and the one by which he is now chiefly remembered, is his Lives oj 
 the Most Emine?it British Painters, Sculptors, a?id Architects (6 vols. 
 i2mo), written for Murray's "Family Library," in 1830-3. These volumes 
 will ever be read with a certain amount of pleasure on account of their 
 subject, and the fluent style in which they are written. But it must be 
 admitted that the several lives are wanting in that breadth of knowledge 
 and sagacity of discrimination which must be possessed by any one who 
 pretends, at the present day, to the character of an art-critic. The 
 spirit, moreover, in which the lives are written is not free from partiality ; 
 
 * Life of Allan Cunningham, by the Rev. David Hogg. Dumfries and London, 
 1875, p. 79. 
 
 f This must not be confounded with the poem, The Maid of Galloway, which 
 was written by James Murray, the "Blind Bard of Galloway," who died so recently as 
 August, 1880. 
 
ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 137 
 
 there is little reference to authority ; the tone is not unfrequently con- 
 temptuous ; and the frequent errors incurred the strictures of the German 
 critic, Passavant, in his Kunstreise durch England (p. 346). Cunningham 
 was also the author of a Life of Burns, which, though a contribution to the 
 biography of the poet of some value, is yet inferior in delicacy and refine- 
 ment to those of Currie and Lockhart. We have also a Life of Sir David 
 Wilkie (1843, 3 vols. 8vo), a posthumous publication ; Paid Jones and Sir 
 Michael Scott, novels ; The Maid of Elvar, a poem ; Lord Roldan, a 
 romance ; and other productions for the booksellers, now forgotten, of 
 whose merits, or otherwise, I do not remember enough to enable me to 
 speak. 
 
 Few men have been more esteemed in life than the subject of these 
 notes. He was described by one who knew him well as " a self-educated 
 self-reliant, self-asserting man, open-handed and straightforward, with 
 unusual sagacity and rare common sense." The warm-hearted Hogg, 
 alluding to his first interview with Allan, says, " Thus began at that bothy 
 in the wilderness a friendship and a mutual attachment between two 
 aspiring Scottish peasants, over which the shadow of a cloud has never 
 yet passed," and further says of his friend, " He is all heart together : 
 without reserve either of expression or manner ; you at once see the 
 unaffected benevolence, warmth of feeling, and firm independence of 
 a man conscious of his own rectitude and mental energies." Nor has the 
 Shepherd less regard for the intellectual capabilities of his early friend. 
 " I was astonished," says he, " at the luxuriousness of his fancy. It was 
 boundless ; but it was the luxury of a rich garden overrun with rampant 
 weeds. He was likewise then a great mannerist in expression, and no 
 one could mistake his verses for those of any other man. I remember 
 seeing some imitations of Ossian by him, which I thought exceedingly 
 good ; and it struck me that that style of composition was peculiarly 
 fitted for his vast and fervent imagination." Lockhart, Jerdan, and Sir 
 Walter Scott were his friends through life ; and it was through the 
 interest of the latter that cadetships were obtained for his two sons. In 
 London, besides his literary engagements, he obtained an honourable 
 employment as a kind of "clerk of works" in the studio of Sir Francis 
 Chantrey, the eminent sculptor. Here the poetical character of his mind, 
 no less than his connection with publishers and the press generally, was 
 of great service to his employer, while the pecuniary honorarium, and tho 
 association with the literary and other celebrities who crowded to the 
 studio of the fashionable artist, were of no less advantage to himself. His 
 lot would thus, in its externals, seem to have been pretty prosperous. 
 But such a career as his is attended with worry and anxiety, care and 
 disappointment, that the world knows not of ; and its recompense is 
 inadequate, even when successful. All this wears a man out before his 
 time, and so it was, I am afraid, with " honest Allan," who died at the 
 early age of 56, October 29th, 1842. 
 
 I was well acquainted with the late Peter Cunningham, F.S.A., the 
 eldest son of Allan ; a genial man, a careful antiquary, and an elegant 
 writer. For many years he contributed the column of antiquarian gossip 
 and " Table Talk " to the Lllustrated London News; he wrote the Life of 
 Drummond of Hawihomden; the Life of Lnigo Jones (for the Shake- 
 speare Society) ; the Handbook of London (Murray) ; the " Memoir " 
 of J. M. W. Turner, prefixed to John Burnet's Turner and His Works; 
 
138 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 the Handbook of Westminster Abbey j The Story of Nell Gwynn a,7id the 
 Sayings of Charles the Second (London, 1852, 8vo) ; Modern Lo7ido?ij the 
 Songs of England and Scotland ; and edited and annotated fohnsoiis 
 Lives of the Poets, the Letters of Horace Walpole, and the Works of Oliver 
 Goldsmith. He held a clerkship in the Audit Office till failing health 
 compelled him to leave London, when, in i860, he retired on a pension. 
 He married in 1841, Zenobia, daughter of John Martin, the celebrated 
 painter of "The Deluge," and "The Feast of Belshazzar " ; and died 
 at St. Alban's, Herts, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, in May, 1869. 
 P lures crapula quam gladius j Peter Cunningham ought to have been 
 alive at the present moment. 
 
 XXIX. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " There's something in a flying horse, 
 There's something in a huge balloon," 
 
 as the poet of Peter Bell says ; and we may add, there's something in 
 an easy chair for in one, as our readers will observe by casting their eyes 
 upon the opposite picture, sits that poet aforesaid, namely William Words- 
 worth himself, in propria persona. So far Fraser. 
 
 The influence which the genius of William Wordsworth has had 
 upon our poetic literature, and the position which will be allotted to him 
 in its future history, involve questions of too great importance to allow of 
 their being discussed with anything like commensurate amplitude in the 
 limited space at my command. A brief attempt may, nevertheless, be 
 made. 
 
 A broad glance over the domain of English literature results in its 
 division into three great epochs, or ages. The first, or Elizabethan, at 
 the latter part of the sixteenth, and extending over the seventeenth 
 century, and deriving its pervading influence, in great measure, from the 
 literature of Italy ; the second, or Augustan, during the earlier years of 
 the eighteenth century, and indebted to France for its imitative impulse ; 
 lastly, the third, which, rather taking its inspiration from Germany, 
 sprang into birth with the century which has now entered upon its 
 latter quarter. In the first great era of our national poetry, after Minot, 
 Chaucer, and Gower, we have Spenser, Shakespeare, and Sir Philip 
 Sidney. Then Milton, and Donne, and Cowley, and for we may include 
 these, too, among poets Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, Bacon, and Sir Thomas 
 Browne. This literature was, what literature ever has been and ever will 
 be, the reflex of the age its habits and modes of thought of which it is 
 the offspring, and we find it, accordingly, natural, impetuous, unrestrained, 
 heroic and tender. Civilization now became diffused ; polish and refine- 
 ment of manners followed ; and nature shrank back before the approach 
 of art and luxury. The seconders, now comes on, with Dryden, Pope, 
 and Swift as its presiding genii. Tumultuous passion, effervescent 
 emotion, the grandeur of humanity, and the sublimity of nature, are no 
 longer the themes of the poet. It was rather with those artificial and 
 
\ . '* ! l; l\l ! 
 
 o 3 o 
 
 "S^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^/^^y^ 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE EXCDRSIO: 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 139 
 
 conventional materials so happily summarized by Cowper, that he sought 
 and with consummate ability, too, to co-ordinate in his polished 
 verse : 
 
 " Roses for the cheeks, 
 
 And lilies for the brows of faded age ; 
 
 Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald ; 
 
 Heaven, earth, and ocean, plundered of their sweets ; 
 
 Nectareous essences, Olympian dews, 
 
 Sermons, and City feasts, and favourite airs ; 
 
 Ethereal journeys, submarine exploits ; 
 
 And Katerfelto, with his hair on end 
 
 At his own wonders, wondering for his bread." * 
 
 Here, too, the poetry of the age was representative of its character, 
 artificial, imitative, licentious and frivolous. Nature herself was pruned 
 into regularity ; the lawn shaven, the tree clipped, and the garden cut up 
 in geometrical parterres. But Dryden had manly energy, and transcen- 
 dant ability : Pope was a " poet of a thousand years " ; and their 
 influence extended to the commencement of the present century. At that 
 period the classical school had become degenerate and effete in the hands 
 of such poets as Darwin, Hayley, Pye, Seward, and the Delia Cruscans. 
 Reversing the rules of art, as illustrated by Homer, Hesiod, and Theo- 
 critus, in the earliest times, some of these writers, Darwin especially, who 
 was a man of great talent, had endeavoured to treat poetically scientific 
 and other subjects, which, being wholly incompatible with pathos and 
 passion, were deficient in the essential elements of poetry. The others 
 were entirely false, feeble, and artificial, and owed their evanescent popu- 
 larity to florid metaphor, command of language, and polish of versification. 
 But already there were glimpses of a brighter dayspring. Goldsmith and 
 Johnson had appeared ; Akenside and Thomson followed ; and broader 
 daylight shone before the path of Cowper. Ridicule became once more 
 the test of truth ; Frere and Canning, in the Antz-Jacobi?i, laughed down 
 the Loves of the Plants, and Gifford in his Baviad and Mceviad, anni- 
 hilated the pretensions of Laura Matilda and the Delia Cruscans. In 
 Scotland, Burns had poured forth his heart in passionate song, and 
 untimeously passed away ; but he had left behind him, like Cowper, an 
 influence over the nascent era which cannot be overrated. Crabbe, too, 
 was sternly painting nature ; and Campbell and Southey, each more or 
 less influenced by old traditions, were preparing for less restricted 
 flight. Society had been rudely upturned. Old modes and habits of 
 thought were disturbed by the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau among 
 the French ; by the great political and social Revolution, of which they 
 were the precursors ; by the speculative theories of the French Acade- 
 micians ; by the Illuminati, the mysticists, and the transcendental school 
 of German philosophy. 
 
 It is now time to speak of Wordsworth. Born April 7th, 1770, 
 at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, he was educated at Cambridge, where 
 he graduated M.A. Wandering over to France, full of hope and 
 enthusiasm, he was an eye-witness of those terrible scenes by which 
 the sacred cause of liberty was polluted, and the progress of democracy 
 almost hopelessly checked. Disillusioned and regretful, he returned 
 to his native home, in the mountain district of the North of England. 
 
 * The Task, book iv. 
 
140 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Here, in the midst of the most glorious scenery in the world, he laid 
 down that plan of future life to which he ever after adhered with a 
 singleness and tenacity of purpose to which we shall hardly find a parallel. 
 His main object was the studious culture of his faculties as a poet, by 
 communion with nature in her grandest aspects ; by the study of books ; 
 by intercourse with congenial minds ; and lastly, by the enjoyment of 
 those amenities of social and domestic life which had so marked and 
 purifying an influence over the lives of Cowper, Southey, and Scott. 
 
 It was in 1798, in conjunction with Coleridge, that he published the 
 first volume of his Lyrical Ballads* In them he first gave examples of 
 that peculiar theory of poetry which he developed, to a greater or less 
 extent, throughout the entire course of his subsequent poems. He 
 considered that incidents and situations might be chosen from ordinary 
 life, and described or related in the general language of men, and yet have 
 the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader, by the colouring which 
 they might receive from the imagination, and their reference to the 
 primary and universal laws of human nature. In 1800 appeared the 
 second volume, in the preface to which the author defines his object to be 
 an experiment as to how far the purposes of poetry might be fulfilled, " by 
 fitting to material arrangement a selection of the real language of men, 
 in a state of vivid sensation." It is quite out of my power to discuss here 
 the truth of the principle involved in these propositions, or the extent to 
 which the author has carried it out in his works. Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 has been accused of having laid down rules, and achieved his own fame 
 by their infringement. So Wordsworth, I think, has set at nought his 
 own precepts in those higher flights of his muse by which he will be 
 remembered ; though, at the same time, I cannot deny that his theory 
 has had a certain influence upon his practice, sometimes by rendering 
 his poetry commonplace, puerile, and affected, but more generally by 
 investing it with that noble and dignified simplicity which is one of its 
 greatest charms. 
 
 It was in the nature of things that so daring an innovator would meet, 
 on the one hand with warm support, on the other with strenuous opposition. 
 " No man of his generation," said Eraser, " has been so much praised and 
 abused." That this should be the case accords with his own prophecy 
 in the preface to his Lyrical Ballads, which was accordingly described in 
 the Edinburgh as the most puerile and insane trash that poetaster ever 
 produced. Brougham, actuated possibly by some local feeling, led the 
 cry. Byron caught it up, even when he was lashing the pack from which 
 it emanated ; though, later on, he saw its injustice, and recanted. Jeffrey, 
 who boasted that he had crushed The Excursion, " He might as well 
 attempt to crush Skiddaw ! " said Southey, commenced an article on this, 
 the greatest didactic poem in the language, with the ominous words, 
 " This will never do ! " Nevertheless The Excursion survives, and where 
 is the crusher ? 
 
 Yet, after all, it is a matter of question whether the glory of having 
 been the pioneer of the new school, and thus inaugurating the return to 
 simplicity and nature from which the feebler imitators of Dryden and 
 Pope had so widely diverged, is not due, in part at least, to another writer. 
 The Songs of Innocence (1789), and The Songs of Experience (1794), of 
 William Blake, the vales ignolus, appeared some years before the enuncia- 
 tion of Wordsworth's principles of poetry, and yet these volumes abound 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 141 
 
 with passages, which in manner and feeling, in subject and metre, cannot 
 but strike the reader with their resemblance to the earlier poems of the 
 bard of Rydal. 
 
 How beautiful is the tribute of Felicia Hemans : 
 
 " True bard and holy ! Thou art even as one 
 Who, by some secret gift of soul or eye, 
 In every spot beneath the smiling sun, 
 Sees where the springs of living waters lie," 
 
 and of Sergeant Talfourd, in the House of Commons : 
 
 "He has supplied the noblest antidote to the freezing effects of the 
 scientific spirit of the age ; and while he has done justice to the poetry of 
 greatness, has cast a glory round the lowest conditions of humanity, and 
 traced out the subtle links by which they are connected with the highest." 
 A discordant key is, however, struck by another great poet : 
 " What a pitiful wretch that Wordsworth ! That such a man should 
 be a poet ! I can compare him but with Simonides, that flatterer of the 
 Sicilian tyrants, and, at the same time, the most natural and tender of 
 lyric poets." * But here the reprobation is purely political. 
 
 Wordsworth is already a classic ; his name is canonized in the world's 
 breviary as one of its best and noblest poets. It is in him, as Wilson 
 hints, that is to be found a union of the severe grandeur of the Grecian 
 with the wilder charm of the romantic school. Scott knew no man more 
 to be venerated for uprightness of heart and loftiness of genius, f Hogg 
 points out the richness of his poetry, especially for quotations : " For 
 these they are a mine that is altogether inexhaustible. There is nothing 
 in nature that you may not get a quotation out of Wordsworth to suit, and 
 a quotation, too, that breathes the very soul of poetry. There are only 
 three books in the world that are worth the opening in search of mottoes 
 and quotations, and all of them are alike rich. These are the Old 
 Testament, Shakespeare, and the poetical works of Wordsworth ; and 
 strange to say, The Excursion abounds most in them." Wordsworth was 
 essentially the poet of Nature ; the world has never witnessed a self- 
 dedication nobler or more complete than his to his great mistress, and to 
 the general cultivation of his art for its highest and purest purposes. It 
 is on the sure foundation of nature and truth that his reputation is laid, 
 and not on the shifting sands of fashion and conventionalism. It is thus 
 that may be predicted for him a certain immortality, together with the 
 increasing gratitude and reverence of mankind for the noble moral lesson 
 of his life, and the teachings of the whole body of his poetry. For what 
 have these been but the fostering of love between man and man ; the 
 avoidance of the insidious materialism into which the love of nature may 
 degenerate ; that dignity and grace reside in humble feelings, and 
 susceptibility in humble bosoms ; that the forms of nature, lovely as they 
 are, have no life, except as related to man and his Maker ; that there is a 
 certain correlation between the mind and the external world ; that the earth 
 is dark, unless illumined by the imagination ; and, finally, that noble 
 poetry can be constructed without the aid of supernatural machinery, or 
 artificial excitants. For these, and many more such precepts, and for 
 the restoration of our poetical literature to truth and nature, let us be 
 
 * Letter from Shelley to J. L. Peacock. See Fraser's Magazine, March, i860, p. 302. 
 f Memoirs by Lockhart, p. 441. 
 
142 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 fervently grateful to William Wordsworth, and piously repeat his owr 
 words, 
 
 " Blessings be with him, and eternal praise, 
 The Poet, who, on earth, has made us heirs 
 Of Truth, and pure delight, by heavenly lays." 
 
 When Mortimer Collins visited Wordsworth, at Rydal Mount, in 1848, 
 walked with him upon the terrace that commanded a line of lakes, anc 
 passed by the noble laurels which the poet had planted from slips he had 
 cut off those set by Petrarch over Virgil's tomb, he listened to many a 
 noble sentence, " pregnant with meaning." The conversation turned upor 
 longevity. Wordsworth "speaking as if he were an old Roman senatoi 
 dressed like an English farmer," remarked, " Height of hill, and move- 
 ment of water are health-giving. They are associated with primeval soil, 
 and an air always fresh and stimulant. If you want to judge of the truth 
 of this, look at the obituary notices in the Westmoreland Gazette? 
 
 To him also was allotted great length of days, of which it may be 
 said with perfect truth that his own wish was fulfilled in their being 
 
 " Bound each to each by natural piety," 
 
 so uninterruptedly did they pass in the unostentatious discharge oi 
 religious duty, the performance of his self-allotted tasks, and the cultiva- 
 tion of the sweet and ennobling charities of domestic life. 
 
 The office which he had long held of Stamp Distributer for the district 
 he had been permitted to resign in favour of his son. In 1843, he had 
 succeeded Southey as poet laureate ; and his life was rendered easy by a 
 pension of ^300 conferred upon him in 1842, from the government of Sir 
 Robert Peel. That he remained a poor man, may seem strange to those 
 who are accustomed to hear talk of the golden rewards which, in these 
 latter days, are conferred upon men whose productions are to those oi 
 William Wordsworth as so many mediaeval gurgoyles to a row of 
 Corinthian capitals. " But that he aimed at achieving a loftier purpose 
 than temporary applause," says S. C. Hall, " he would long since have 
 thrown aside the pen ; for the fact will be classed among the marvels of 
 the age, that the poetry of Wordsworth scarcely paid the cost of publica- 
 tion." * 
 
 William Wordsworth died April 23rd, 1850, at the age of 80, and 
 was buried in the little centry-garth of St. Oswald's, Grasmere, between, 
 as De Quincey records, "a yew-tree of his own planting, and an aged 
 thorn." On his tombstone is an inscription from the pen of Keble, in 
 which he is styled, " a chief minister, not only of noblest poesy, but of 
 high and Sacred truth." Surely the tender lover of Nature, and high- 
 priest of her mysteries, could have no fitter resting-place than this West- 
 moreland churchyard, where, as some one has written, " the turf is washed 
 green by summer dew, and winter rain, and in early spring is beautifully 
 dappled with lichens and golden moss?" This reads very prettily, and 
 represents the thing as it should be. But what are the facts ? The literary 
 pilgrim who may chance to visit the spot will follow a narrow muddy path 
 among the grave mounds, till he reaches a gloomy dingy corner, with a 
 group of blue-black head-stones of funereal slate. Everything round the 
 place is decayed and blighted ; do green grass is there ; all is dull, dark 
 
 * Book of B alia as, p. 314. 
 
f^&^r -*" ^^ 
 
SIR DAVID BREWSTER. 143 
 
 and depressing. The poet's corner is ill-drained ; and there is a tiny 
 moat of water round the base of the stone curb, in which is fixed the iron 
 railing that surrounds the grave. Yet here is a remarkable group of 
 memorial tombs. Near to the poet lie all the beloved members of his 
 household. Here slumbers his favourite sister, Dorothy ; here, too, Mrs. 
 Wordsworth, Dora Wordsworth, her husband, Edward Quillinan, the 
 poet, and translator of the Lusiad, the two infant children of Words- 
 worth, and behind these, Hartley Coleridge, that " inheritor of unfulfilled 
 renown," whose bier the poet followed one snowy day in January, unwitting 
 that, before the trees were again clad with verdure, he would be borne 
 along the same narrow path to his own long rest. Surely something 
 should be done to rescue the poet's monument from decay, and render it 
 more in accordance with the verdant foliage and the sunbright hills around, 
 of which he sung so lovingly and so well. 
 
 As to the fidelity of the portrait before us, we have the testimony of a 
 well-informed writer.* "It is," says he, " exceedingly good, that of a 
 man wrapped up in himself, like Buddha, absorbed in his own excellence, 
 and with a mind so full of its own resources, as to be quite independent 
 of companionship." To myself, I must confess, it is hardly satisfactory. 
 It seems to want dignity, and to smack too strongly of the lean-and- 
 slippered pantaloonism of the fifth age. There is, besides, no lack of 
 portraitures of Wordsworth ; among which may be mentioned the one by 
 R. Carruthers, where the poet, in meditative mood, leans- his head upon 
 his hand. But, the best likeness is afforded by Chantrey's bust, executed 
 for one of the poet's best friends, Sir George Beaumont, of which it was 
 said by Coleridge that it was more like than the original. His portrait 
 was also introduced by B. R. Haydon, in his well-known picture, " Christ's 
 Entry into Jerusalem." 
 
 There are names which ring, even at second-hand, with an echo which 
 hushes all others. So I felt the other day when I read an obituary notice 
 of William Wordsworth, the last surviving son of the poet, who died 
 at the Stepping-Stones, Rydal, Feb. 7, 1883. He was magistrate and 
 Deputy Lieutenant for Cumberland, and Stamp Distributer for that 
 county. 
 
 XXX. SIR DAVID BREWSTER. 
 
 It may be doubted whether, in technical excellence, fidelity of resemblance, 
 or subtlety and refinement of characterization, the entire circuit of the 
 " Gallery " has anything to exhibit superior to this most charming portrait. 
 It suggests at once, the man, in the midst of that " home-life " which his 
 daughter has described so well, and the Philosopher, pondering upon 
 eternal truths ; while, at the same time, in its purity and simplicity, it 
 seems to present the very personification of abstract thought. 
 
 David Brewster was born, December 10th, 1781, at Jedburgh, where 
 his father was master of the Grammar School. He was intended for the 
 ministry, and at the age of twelve entered the University of Edinburgh, 
 
 * All the Year Round, December 13th, 1873. 
 
i 4 4 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 where, at the age of nineteen, he received the degree of M.A. He duly 
 obtained his licence to preach ; but finding early that science had superior 
 charms, the youthful minister soon quitted the pulpit for the workshop 
 and the observatory. Before he was fairly out of his teens he had gained 
 some repute as a scientific investigator, and became editor of the Edin- 
 burgh Magazine. He speedily was made LL.D. of the University of 
 Aberdeen, "M. A. of Cambridge, a member of the Royal Society of Edin- 
 burgh, and, in 1816, member of the Royal Society of London. He was also 
 elected a member of the Institute of France, which, in 1816, awarded him 
 half the prize of 3,000 francs, offered by that body for the two most 
 important discoveries made in Europe, in physical science, during the 
 preceding two years. It was just at this period that he invented that 
 beautiful scientific toy the Kaleidoscope, to the leading principles of which 
 he was led by an accidental circumstance which occurred to him in the 
 course of a series of experiments on the polarization of light by successive 
 reflections between plates of glass, an account of which was published in 
 the Philosophical Tra?zsactions for 181 5, and rewarded by the Royal 
 Society of London with the Copley medal. It is difficult now to realize 
 the sensation caused at the time by this discovery. Honours flowed upon 
 the inventor, and men of science from all parts of the world sought him 
 out in his quiet retreat at Allerley, near Melrose. Having brought the 
 instrument to perfection, the inventor was, by the advice of his friends, 
 induced to take out a patent for it. It was described under two different 
 forms in the specification, and opticians in London and elsewhere were 
 duly authorized to fabricate and sell it. The demand was at once pro- 
 digious, and Brewster ought to have realized a large fortune. But, 
 " though it made a hundred shopmen rich, it never brought the inventor 
 sixpence," an extreme statement, perhaps, though true in spirit. He 
 had, it appears, divulgated the principles of the instrument, before he had 
 secured the invention to himself. It was, moreover, simple in construction 
 and capable of pleasing, even when made without scientific accuracy. 
 Hence it was largely pirated ; no fewer than two hundred thousand, it is 
 calculated, having been sold in three months in London and Paris alone. 
 Of this number it is asserted by Sir David, himself, that not perhaps one 
 thousand were constructed upon true scientific principles, or gave any- 
 thing like a correct idea of the power of the instrument. An apology, it 
 is true, has been made for the freebooters, to the effect that the invention 
 did not belong to Brewster, and that he did nothing more than work out 
 the ideas of other men. This is hardly the place to discuss the question, 
 but I may just observe that it is a well-known fact that the multiplication 
 of images by the inclination of reflecting surfaces, or mirrors, at small 
 angles, had long previously been treated of in works upon optics. Both 
 Father Kircher that great mechanical genius and Baptista Porta had 
 given descriptions of a polygonal speculum ; that is, of an instrument 
 consisting of mirrors united at their edges, and opening like a book, so as 
 to multiply the images of objects. Bradley, the astronomer, had also, in 
 1717, constructed an instrument in which, by the inclination of two mirrors 
 placed upon an object, such as an engraving, several images were obtained 
 and disposed, by successive reflections, about a centre. But neither these, 
 nor also a theorem of Professor Wood's which has been brought forward, 
 have any further analogy with Brewster's invention than that they, too, 
 multiply the reflected figures ; whereas the essential property of the 
 
SIR DAVID BREWSTER. 145 
 
 Kaleidoscope is, that it is applicable to objects which may be movable, 
 and placed at any distance from the eye of the observer. But this is 
 somewhat dry, I am afraid ; so, by way of relief, and to show that this 
 popular instrument possesses another, and perchance unsuspected property, 
 that of symbolizing the passions and phases ot life, as well as symmetri- 
 cally reflecting bits of coloured glass, I transcribe the following sonnet : 
 
 " LIFE. 
 
 c< I saw a child with a Kaleidoscope, 
 
 Turning at will the tesselated field ; 
 
 And straight my mental eye became unseal'd, 
 I learnt of life, and read its horoscope : 
 
 Behold, how fitfully the patterns change ! 
 The scene is azure now with hues of Hope ; 
 
 Now sober'd grey by Disappointment strange ; 
 With Love's own roses blushing, warm and bright , 
 
 Black with Hate's heat, or white with Envy's cold ; 
 Made glorious by Religion's purple light ; 
 
 Or sicklied o'er with yellow lust of Gold : 
 So, good or evil coming, peace or strife, 
 
 Zeal when in youth, and Avarice when old, 
 In changeful, chanceful phases passes Life." * 
 
 Sir David Brewster has given an account of his invention in his 
 Treatise on the Kaleidoscope (Edinburgh, 18 19), which has gone through 
 several editions. Dr. Roget has shown how the properties of the instru- 
 ment may be enlarged by employing a number of mirrors, instead of 
 two, united at their edges, so as to form a hollow prism. These are 
 called " polycentral," and are triascopic, tetrascopic, or hexascopic, 
 according to the number of mirrors.f 
 
 Another of Sir David's contributions to practical science may here 
 be mentioned, on account of the interest which it excited at the time, 
 from the advantage to the maritime navigation of the kingdom which it 
 was supposed would result from it. This was an improvement in the 
 construction of the illuminating department of lighthouses, by the 
 substitution of polyzonal lenses instead of parabolic reflectors, an adap- 
 tation, if I mistake not, of an invention of Buffon, the naturalist. 
 Notwithstanding the supposed importance of this principle, I believe 
 that its practical application has been confined to France. In connection 
 with photography, may be mentioned the important invention of the 
 refracting stereoscope. 
 
 It would be a pleasant task, had I space, to enumerate the honours 
 of which this eminent man was the recipient. In 1832 he was knighted 
 by William IV., and in January, 1849, he was elected one of the eight 
 foreign associate members of the National Institute of France, vacant 
 by the death of the celebrated chemist Berzelius. The Royal Society 
 awarded him, in 1819, the Rumford gold and silver medals ; and he was 
 corresponding member of most of the chief scientific associations in 
 Europe. His contributions to literature also were important. He edited, 
 and largely wrote in, the Edinburgh Encycloftcedia^ which was not com- 
 pleted till 1830. He wrote the treatise on " Optics" for Lardner's Cabinet 
 Cyclopedia. In 1819, conjointly with Professor Jameson, he founded the 
 Edinburgh Philosophic Journal \ and subsequently the Edinburgh Journal 
 
 * An Author s Mind ; the Book of Title Pages, p. 36. London, 1841. 
 f Annals of Philosophy, vol. xi. 
 
 L 
 
146 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 of Science. For more than twenty years he had a paper in nearly every 
 number of the North British Review. We have also from his pen a 
 series of memoirs entitled The Martyrs of Science, and a Life of Sir 
 Isaac Newton, which is a most valuable contribution to scientific 
 biography. It is, indeed, more than this ; for he has had the honesty 
 to supply, no doubt in violence to his own feelings and prejudices as a 
 Trinitarian, the matter which Horsley, styling "rubbish," suppressed by 
 pious fraud, but which is of the highest value as indicative of the theo- 
 logical opinions of the great philosopher. "What the gifted mind of 
 Newton believed to be truth," says he, " I dare not pronounce to be 
 error." While speaking of the scientific labours of Brewster, it should 
 not be forgotten that it was he who, in 1831, proposed that meeting at 
 York which led to the establishment of the British Association for the 
 Advancement of Science. 
 
 One of the later, and not the least interesting, of the incidents in the 
 career of Sir David Brewster as a man of letters, was his controversy 
 with Dr. Whewell on the subject of the " Plurality of Worlds." The 
 latter, who had perhaps felt some difficulties connected with the doctrine 
 of the Incarnation, had written a book teeming with that universality of 
 learning and richness of illustration of which he was master, to show the 
 improbability that the planets were inhabited by other races similar to, 
 but yet distinct from, the human family ; and arguing, further, that they 
 were as yet unfit for habitation. Brewster, whose interest in clerical 
 matters had not ceased when he quitted the Scottish pulpit, but formed 
 an insoluble compound with his scientific predilections, was strangely 
 excited by this book. He first criticised it somewhat angrily in the 
 North British Review, and then wrote a more lengthy answer, in which 
 he endeavoured to show that the existence of more worlds than one is 
 not only the " creed of the philosopher, but the hope of the Christian." 
 
 As another proof of the interest which Sir David took in matters 
 ecclesiastical and religious, it must not be forgotten that he was one of 
 the foremost in the movement which led to the establishment of the Free 
 Church of Scotland. Connected, too, with this, or rather with his peculiar 
 mental idiosyncrasy, is the interest which he ever took in Magic, Clair- 
 voyance, and Spirit-rapping ; phenomena which he at first sought to 
 explain away, but latterly, it was said, was disposed to attribute to 
 Satanic agency. It was the same tendency of inquiry which led, earlier 
 in life, to his Letters on Natural Magic, addressed to Sir Walter Scott, 
 Bart., written in 1832, for Murray's Family Library, and which have 
 been pronounced " as diverting as so many Arabian tales." 
 
 This eminent man died at his seat at Allerley, "just forenent Melrose," 
 February 10th, 1868, in the eighty-seventh year of his age. It is worthy 
 of note that his first wife, whom he married in 18 10, and who died in 
 1850, was Juliet, the youngest daughter and co-heiress of James Mac- 
 pherson, Esq., of Belleville, M.P., who will be remembered in all time as 
 the translator, or author, of The Poems of Ossian. 
 
 On December 10th, 1881, was celebrated the centenary of the birth 
 of Sir David Brewster. There has been a "Burns Centenary," and a 
 " Scott Centenary," but these differ from that of Brewster, inasmuch as 
 their heroes had, at their occurrence, long passed into the realms of 
 song and story ; while, by reason of the length of age to which he had 
 attained, the memory of the Border philosopher was yet green in the 
 memory of thousands who had known and loved him. 
 
< .** 
 
 AUTHOR OF TEE LIFE OF LOBENZO JO i ME 31 CI ! 
 
WILLIAM ROSCOE. 147 
 
 Jedburgh, the little town of his birth, was on this occasion in a state 
 of vast excitement. This is a peculiarly interesting place, of great 
 antiquity, and the scene of perpetual raids and forays up to the time of 
 the junction of the two Crowns. Its Castle was one of the strongest of 
 the Border forts, and stood on the site now occupied by the county 
 prison. It was of great importance as being on the very line of separa- 
 tion, and close to one of the chief passes through the Cheviot Hills. The 
 Abbey has been pronounced the most perfect and beautiful example of 
 the Saxon (Norman) and early Gothic in Scotland. It was at Jedburgh 
 that Mary of Scotland was staying when she was seized with that illness 
 her recovery from which became, in her after years of misfortune, a 
 subject of regret. The very house in which she stayed for a month was, 
 at the close of last century, occupied by a Dr. Lindsay, the charms of 
 whose daughter, "sweet Isabella Lindsay," were sung by Burns, who 
 lodged here for some time, at 27, Canongate, and speaks of the " charming 
 romantic situation, with gardens and orchards intermingled among the 
 houses." Jedburgh has also been honoured with the company of the 
 "Young Pretender," and Wordsworth, the poet. The Lordship and 
 Barony have been for the past two hundred and fifty years in the pos- 
 session of the family of Lothian ; and, at the expense of the present 
 holder of the title, the house in the Canongate in which Brewster was 
 born has been fitted up as a model lodging-house. 
 
 I have already alluded to the interesting, if rather desultory, Ho?ne 
 Life of Sir David Brewster , by his daughter, Mrs. Gordon, 1869, i2mo. 
 
 XXXI. WILLIAM ROSCOE. 
 
 " But, hark what solemn strains from Arno's vales 
 Breathe raptures wafted on the Tuscan gales ! 
 Lorenzo rears again his awful head, 
 And feels his ancient glories round him spread ; 
 The Muses, starting from their trance, revive, 
 And, at their Roscoe's bidding, wake and live."* 
 
 " Liverpool," says Fraser, " is proud of having produced Roscoe. 
 Washington Irving's observations, in his Geoffrey Crayon, on the 
 occasion of his landing in that city, and his reflections on the sale of 
 Roscoe's library, will be recollected by all who have any feeling for 
 generous writing." Among such there cannot, by any possibility, be 
 included any of the readers of this memoir ; and I shall accordingly 
 waive all further notice of the paper in The Sketch-Book, and content 
 myself with a reference to the hardly less admirable parody upon it, 
 which will be found in a witty little volume, entitled Warreniana." f 
 Here it is no longer "Geoffrey Crayon," and the Liverpool A thenceumj 
 but an anonymous American, and " No. 30, Strand ; " it is not ROSCOE 
 the historian who excites the reverential emotions of the traveller, but 
 Warren the Blacking-maker ; he is not thinking of the " voice that has 
 
 * Pursuits of Literature, ed. 1808, p. 234. 
 
 f Warreniana ; with Notes Critical and Explanatory, (byW. F. Deacon.) London, 
 1824, i2mo. 
 
148 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 gone forth to the ends of the earth," but " the blacking with which he has 
 cleaned his shoes even in the solitudes of America ! " Warren, in short, 
 " is the literary landmark of the place ; " and though " the popular graces 
 of his poetry " had made the pilgrim familiar with the name, " it could not 
 diminish the reverence which his immediate presence inspired." But to 
 be serious. 
 
 William Roscoe was born March 8th ; 1753, at Mount Pleasant, 
 Liverpool, where his father was a publican and market gardener. He 
 commenced life as a bookseller's assistant, but after a month's trial, not 
 liking the confinement, left the occupation, and became articled in the 
 following year to an attorney at Liverpool. He practised law with 
 success in his native town for some years, but finding his aversion for 
 business increase in direct ratio with his love for art and literature, he 
 retired, in 1796, from his practice, with a moderate competency. In the 
 following year he visited London, and with a view to practise at the bar, 
 entered himself at Gray's Inn. Here, however, he did not keep more than 
 one term ; and returning to Liverpool, purchased a part of the Allerton 
 estate, on which he proposed to fix his future residence, and devote the 
 remainder of his life to the cultivation of literature, and the pursuits of a 
 country gentleman. 
 
 Happy would it have been for William Roscoe if he had adhered to the 
 plan which he had thus laid down. But if man proposes, he disposes not, 
 
 " We do but row, 'tis fate that steers ; " 
 
 and after an anchorage of a brief twelve months in the quiet haven of 
 domestic and literary life, he found himself once more out at sea, on the 
 storm-tossed ocean of commerce. His friend William Clarke, who, when 
 residing for his health at Florence, had rendered such service to the 
 historian by collecting materials to illustrate the age and life of " Lorenzo," 
 was at the head of an extensive banking-house. The year 1799 found 
 this in a position of some embarrassment, and the aid of Roscoe was, in 
 turn, sought as confidential adviser. The difficulties were removed, 
 chiefly through his instrumentality ; and the continuance of his aid and 
 influence was sought as an active partner. In an evil hour, whether 
 through a desire to make a sacrifice to friendship, whether from anticipa- 
 tion of pecuniary advantage, Roscoe bade farewell for ever to his 
 lettered ease, and exchanged the "golden reign" of Leo, for that of the 
 Banker, a metaphorical reminiscence for an anticipation still more 
 unreal and illusive. Hocfonte derivata clades / 
 
 Before the taking of this fatal step, the History of Lorenzo the 
 Magnifice?it had been given to the world. Happily, in one sense, at 
 least, after Roscoe had become a banker, he enjoyed a few years of 
 tranquillity, during which he had time to produce the necessary con- 
 tinuation of that important work, the History of the Life and Pontificate 
 of Leo X., the illustrious son of the subject of his former labours. I 
 need not speak of these works, which have long been classical. They 
 elicited in this country the approbation of such men as Matthias, Parr, 
 Hayley, Vincent, Currie, Heber, and Malone ; they were welcomed with 
 enthusiasm by the scholars of the Continent, especially those of Italy, 
 and translated into Italian, French, and German ; reprinted in America, 
 and have gone through many editions in the country of their production. 
 If further proof of their excellence be needed, I have only to mention, 
 
WILLIAM ROSCOE. 149 
 
 that the whole body of professed critics, with the Edifiburgh Review at 
 its head, fell foul of the later work, on account of the liberality and 
 generosity of its sentiments, and more especially the view which the 
 author took of the cruelties perpetrated by the early Reformers ; and 
 that the ultra Romanists themselves were no better pleased, as evinced 
 by the fact that the Italian version was consigned by Leo XII., to the 
 l?idex Exfinrgatorins. Other unfavourable opinions have, it is true, 
 found occasional expression. Sismondi* has dealt with their alleged 
 historical faults in no reticent spirit ; and English critics have repre- 
 hended the too uniform smoothness and elegance of the style, which 
 belongs to that school of Blair, which, it has been said, has done so much 
 to debase and emasculate the language. Bishop Hurd found Lorenzo 
 " ingenious and learned ; " but was inclined to tax the author with 
 Infidelity and Jacobinism. The following quatrain is from his Common- 
 place Book : 
 
 "ON SOME LATE HISTORIANS. 
 
 " Teach me, Historic Muse, to mix 
 Impiety with politics, 
 So shall I write, nil aliud posco, 
 Like my lov'd Gibbon, Hume, and Roscoe." f 
 
 I remember, in bygone days (about 1846), once hearing Michelet, 
 himself but a second-rate writer, speak in disparaging terms of Roscoe, in 
 a lecture-room in Paris ; but these are exceptions, and it can hardly be 
 doubted that these histories will continue to be read as long as a taste for 
 elegant literature shall exist among us. 
 
 It is well for the fame of Roscoe as a man of letters, that he had thus 
 early completed the great works on which it must rest. In 18 16, the 
 banking-house with which he was connected fell once more into those 
 difficulties, the occurrence of which has now unhappily become, at least 
 in this country, a recognized feature of a commercial career. Time and 
 opportunity were granted for extrication, chiefly from confidence in 
 Roscoe and respect for his character. But this proved in vain, and the 
 necessity becoming apparent of realizing, not only the assets of the 
 concern, but the private property of the partners, Roscoe at once, with 
 heroic fortitude, resolved to offer to public sale his whole personal effects, 
 including his library, pictures, engravings, and other works of art, which 
 it had been an important part of the business of his life to bring together, 
 and of which he made such a noble use. After the deprivation of sight, 
 the calamity of Homer, Milton, D'Israeli, Prescott, and Thierry, 
 surely the greatest misfortune which can happen to a man of letters is the 
 loss of his books. There is a noble class of intellect which, dealing rather 
 with the abstract, knowing, as it would seem, much from intuition, and 
 retaining, moreover, all that has ever come within its grasp, may come, 
 at length, to be able to dispense, in great measure, with that from which 
 it derived its fulness. The possessor of such a mind can say, with a fine 
 old poet : 
 
 " I scorne fortune, and was ever free 
 
 From that dead wealth depending on her power ; 
 
 * In the Histoire des Reptiblique Italiennes du Moyen Age. 
 
 + Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Richard Hurd, D.D., etc., by the Rev. 
 Francis Kilvert. i860, 8vo, p. 251. 
 
150 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 My treasure still I beare about with me, 
 
 Which neither time nor tyrants can devoure." * 
 
 But there is also another and inferior order of mind, as well as a more 
 concrete branch of literary work, which has to do with facts or figures ; 
 and neither of these can dispense with the extraneous aid of books. As 
 was said of old, Scire ubi aliquid invenire ftossis magna pars ernditionis 
 est, and in this case the learning perishes with the means of reference, as 
 well as the labour and the pleasure of a life. The world cannot estimate 
 the extent of such a loss, and may thus receive pardon for allowing it to 
 occur. " The scholar only knows," says Washington Irving, " how dear 
 these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent 
 hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns 
 to dross around us, these only retain their steady value. When friends 
 grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid simplicity 
 and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance of 
 happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived 
 hope, nor deserted sorrow." 
 
 Here is an expression of feelings which cannot fail to find a responsive 
 echo in the mind of every lover of books ; and who, among these, is there 
 who will not sympathize with Roscoe in the anguish which the forced 
 severance from these objects of his love brought to his soul, and admire 
 the manly philosophy with which he prepared his mind to meet the blow ? 
 The following exquisite sonnet was composed by him at this period, and 
 expresses at once his grief and his fortitude : 
 
 "As one who destined from his friends to part, 
 Regrets his loss, but hopes again erewhile 
 To share their converse, and enjoy their smile, 
 And tempers, as he may, affliction's dart ; 
 Thus, loved associates, chiefs of elder art, 
 
 Teachers of wisdom, who could once beguile 
 My tedious hours , and lighten every toil, 
 I now resign you ; nor with fainting heart ; 
 For pass a few short years, or days, or hours, 
 And happier seasons may their dawn unfold, 
 And all your sacred fellowship restore ; 
 "When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers, 
 Mind shall with mind direct communion hold, 
 And kindred spirits meet to part no more." 
 
 An eminent man of letters on the other side of the Channel, " Le 
 Bibliophile Jacob," alias M. Paul Lacroix, a writer to whom all lovers of 
 books must owe a debt of gratitude, appears to have suffered a loss 
 similar to that of Roscoe, and alludes to it in touching language. In the 
 preface to his reprint of the Moyeii de Parve?iir of Beroalde de Verville, 
 the following passage occurs : " Mon commentaire n'est qu'une faible 
 reminiscence de celui que j'avais prepare', il y a cinq ans, et qui a ete 
 e'gare' pendant un voyage. I'avais, a cet e'poque, comme instrumens et 
 comme materiaux, une excellence bibliotheque que des revers de fortune 
 m'ont force de vendre aux encheres. Sous Louis XIV. ce fut Boileau qui 
 acheta la bibliotheque de Patru ; sous Louis XV., ce fut Catherine II. 
 qui acheta celle de Diderot ; sous le gouvemement parlementaire, ou les 
 gens de lettres deviennent ministres, un homme de lettres qui vend sa 
 bibliotheque ne peut s'addresser qu'au public, et n'a pas la consolation de 
 
 * Recreations with the Mvses, by William Earl of Sterline. Folio, 1637. 
 (" Tragedy of Croesus.") 
 
WILLIAM ROSCOE. 151 
 
 voir ses livres passer tous a la fois dans des mains royales'ou lettrdes. Mais, 
 comme je ne me lasse pas de le repeter, qu'importent les livres ? qu'impor- 
 tent les dcrivains qui les font ? " 
 
 The " Catalogues " of Roscoe's various collections were very extensive, 
 and were prepared by their owner with his own hand, in order that they 
 should be considered worthy a place in libraries, and thus remain a 
 permanent record of the literary and artistic treasures once possessed by 
 him. The sales were well attended, and the biddings high : the books 
 realized .5,150 ; the engravings and etchings, ,1,915 : and the paintings 
 and drawings, ,2,826. Besides these sale " Catalogues," which are now 
 difficult to meet with, there is another and later memorial of the famous 
 collection, in the shape of a slender tome, entitled Roscoe's Library j or, 
 Old Books and Old Times, by the Rev. James Aspinall, M.A. (London 
 and Liverpool, 1853, 8vo, pp. 77), a volume which, in addition to its 
 bibliographic information, contains some interesting details of celebrated 
 libraries and their dispersion. 
 
 It would probably have been better, alike for the character of Liverpool 
 and the happiness of Roscoe, had these collections been preserved to 
 him. The merchants of his native city are doubtless clever book-keepers ; 
 but in their ledger account with their distinguished townsman, they had 
 strangely miscalculated the amount at his credit. But at Liverpool, as 
 Irving found, he who was known as an author elsewhere, was " spoken of 
 as the banker" and here the balance was on the wrong side. A good 
 deal, too, may be said per contra. Roscoe's independence of feeling 
 would probably have led him to refuse the gift ; much of the collection 
 was merely ornamental ; and the total value was little short of ,10,000. 
 An attempt was, indeed, made by a few liberal-minded friends * to secure 
 for his use the working portion of his library. It was found, ultimately, 
 that he could not retain even this ; and the volumes, which had been 
 carefully selected by Mr. Shepherd, were finally presented to the Liver- 
 pool Athenaeum ; the use of them, and the faculty of their removal from 
 the library, being reserved, for his lifetime, to their former possessor. 
 
 Four years of intense business labour and anxiety now ensued ; at the 
 close of which it became obvious that the proposed plan for settling the 
 affairs of the bank could not be carried out. Actions at law were com- 
 menced ; the personal liberty of Roscoe was imperilled ; and it became 
 necessary, after all, to seek relief in bankruptcy. He obtained his certifi- 
 cate in 1820, and found himself, at the age of 70, bookless and a beggar, 
 in infirm health and broken spirits. Here, once more a few friends 
 stepped forward, collected a sum of 2, 500, and vested it in trustees for the 
 benefit of the historian and his family. In 1822, he published his im- 
 portant Illustrations of the Life of Lorenzo d Medici, with a reply therein 
 to the strictures and criticisms of Sismondi, who, it is pleasing to know, 
 subsequently visited his literary antagonist at Liverpool, and passed 
 several pleasant days with him, as his guest. In the same year, too, he 
 drew up a very curious account of a poor Welsh fisher-lad, t who, though 
 in the utmost indigence, and of weak intellect in other directions, had 
 
 * The Rev. W. Shepherd, author of the Life of Poggio Bracciolini ; Mr. William 
 Rathbone ; J. Brooke Yates, etc. 
 
 f Memoir of Richard Roberts Jones, of Aberdaron, in the County of Carnarvon, in 
 North Wales, exhibiting a remarkable instance of a Partial Power and Cultivation 
 of Intellect. London, 1822, 8vo, pp. 50. 
 
152 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 managed to obtain an extraordinary knowledge of languages. He was 
 critically acquainted with Hebrew, Greek and Latin ; Welsh was his 
 mother-tongue ; English he had learnt as a foreign language ; and he 
 both read and spoke with fluency French and Italian. This extraordinary 
 character had an interview with the eminent scholar, Dr. Samuel Parr. 
 Latin was too simple to engage their attention, but they discussed the 
 refinements of Greek, and the works of the critics who had illustrated it. 
 They then went off into Hebrew and its analogous tongues, when it 
 became apparent that the lad, who in point of attire, would have shamed 
 a beggar, was getting the best of it. The Doctor now tried to take 
 refuge in Chaldee, but soon had to beat a precipitate retreat. When Jones 
 was asked what he thought of his interlocutor, he replied with faint praise, 
 " He is less ignorant than most men." Roscoe draws a parallel between 
 the circumstances of the early life of the subject of his memoir, and those 
 of Moses Mendelssohn, the Jewish philosopher ; and compares him, in 
 the character of his mind, and the earnestness of his pursuits, with 
 Magliabechi, the learned librarian of the Grand Duke's library at Florence. 
 Under more favourable circumstances, he might also have been no mean 
 rival to the Cardinal Mezzofanti, whose linguistic acquirements will be 
 the marvel of all succeeding ages to the end of time. I have said this 
 much from the curiosity of the subject, for the authorship of the pamphlet 
 is not generally known, and I do not think that Canon Williams has 
 mentioned " Dick of Aberdaron " in his Dictionary. A fine portrait is 
 prefixed to Roscoe's memoir, from which it is apparent that the plate 
 was etched by Mrs. Dawson Turner, of Great Yarmouth, from a drawing 
 by John Williamson, an eminent portrait-painter of Liverpool. When 
 this portrait was shown to Dick, he turned it about from side to side, and 
 at length exclaimed, "It is my own." Roscoe then asked him to write 
 a suitable inscription of his name, etc., to put under it ; when the 
 ragged lad, who had not the least idea of his head being engraved, or an 
 inscription required, opened his waistcoat, and unwound from his body a 
 piece of white calico, five or six feet long by three broad, on which there 
 appeared in large leters, inscribed by himself, the words, " Verbum Dei 
 Libertas," and beneath, the legend : " R. Johannes, Caernarvonensis, 
 Linguae Hebraeaa professor, Rabbi Nathan unus e discipulis, et veritatis 
 libertatisque indignissimus Martyr." There is also a spirited wood-cut, 
 showing the eccentric scholar, at full length, reading from a book sup- 
 ported by his two hands. 
 
 Roscoe joined proficiency as a draughtsman to his other varied 
 accomplishments. Many of the etchings in his great work on monandrian 
 plants were produced from drawings by himself. He etched with the 
 dry-point several book-plates for his friends ; and executed the admission 
 ticket for the Exhibition for Promoting Painting and Design in Liver- 
 pool, in 1787 ; and to the exhibition of the previous year he contributed 
 two drawings in crayon (" Portrait of a Gentleman," and " Boy Sleeping," 
 Nos. 142 and 143). 
 
 Perhaps it may be new to some that it was his pen which furnished 
 the admirable preface to the Catalogue of the Etchings of Rembrandt ol 
 his friend and brother-in-law, Daulby. He also wrote the preface to 
 Strutt's Dictionary of Engravers (1785-6, 2 vols. 4to), an admirable 
 introduction to the subject, which has been translated into most of the 
 modern languages. He translated the Nurse of Luigi Tansillo (Liverpool, 
 
WILLIAM ROSCOE. 153 
 
 McCreery, 1798, 4to), a beautiful specimen of local typography ;'* and 
 produced many other works of minor importance, pamphlets on the 
 slave-trade, speeches, addresses on various occasions political and literary, 
 etc., of which I cannot even make mention. 
 
 As a poet, he is known by those beautiful verses, " O'er the vine- 
 covered hills and gay regions of France," of which an imitation is given in 
 the Nodes A?nbrosia?i(z, No. 53. His poetical works were, for the first 
 time, collected and published by Ward and Lock, London, small square 
 8vo, 1857, pp. 104. 
 
 About the year 1821, George IV. founded the Royal Society of 
 Literature, which was incorporated by Charter in 1825. The King made 
 a contribution to the new society of one thousand guineas a year, to be 
 distributed among ten literary men, who were to receive the title of 
 " Royal Associates," and be chosen at the discretion of the Council. The 
 gentlemen selected as the original recipients of this bounty were : 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rev. Edward Davies, Rev. John Jamieson, D.D., 
 Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas James Matthias, James Millingen, 
 Sir William Ouseley, William ROSCOE, Rev. Henry John Todd, and 
 Sharon Turner. 
 
 To the credit of Roscoe's discrimination it should not be forgotten, 
 that he early discovered and encouraged the genius of the late John 
 Gibson, the eminent sculptor, who was a frequent visitor at Allerton Hall, 
 and by whom, in 1827, a bust of the historian in marble was presented to 
 the Liverpool Royal Institution, "in gratitude to one to whom he was 
 indebted for what little merit he might possess as a sculptor ; who first 
 inspired him with ideas worthy of his profession, and kindled within him 
 an ardent love of fame in the pursuit of it." 
 
 It was well said by old George Buchanan : 
 
 " Sola doctorum monumenta vaturn 
 Nesciunt fati imperium severi ; 
 Sola contemnunt Phlegethontis et Orci 
 Jura super bi, ' 
 
 and William Roscoe, who in the chances and changes of life had 
 ennobled prosperity, dignified adversity, and thus showed himself equal to 
 either fortune, has cast a lustre by his genius over the town of his nativity 
 which will shine bright when the story of her commerce shall be as vague 
 as that of Tyre and Sidon. He died at his residence, Toxteth Park, 
 Liverpool, June 30th, 1 831, in his eighty-first year, " ultimus suorum ; " and 
 at the close of his long career saw occasion to "thank the Almighty 
 for having permitted him to pass a life of much happiness, which, though 
 somewhat chequered by vicissitude, had been, on the whole, one of great 
 enjoyment." 
 
 * There is a second edition, Liverpool, 1800, 8vo. In looking over Roscoe's preface 
 to his translation, I perceive that he has omitted to make mention of a very rare book 
 by Tansillo, entitled Stanza di Cultura sopragli Horte de le Donne, 1587, i2mo. This 
 is a poem of extreme licentiousness, and is probably one of those which led Pius IV. to 
 insert his writings in the Index. Tansillo was deeply grieved by this, and begged hard 
 for removal of the censure, pleading that if his verses were dirty, his life was cleanly : 
 
 ** Fu, gran Padre, la carta 
 Vana talor, la vita sempre onesta, 
 E tal sara quanto di lei mi resta." 
 
154 THE MACL1SE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 The life of Roscoe was written by his son Henry (London, 1833, 2 vols. 
 8vo), and has two portraits prefixed, one from a painting by Tohn 
 Williamson, the other engraved from the medallion by Gibson. The best 
 miniature of Roscoe is said to be one by Thomas Hargreaves. The bust 
 by Sir Francis Chantrey, at the Gallery of Arts, is said to be " one of those 
 mistaken idealizations which are too often indulged in by the most 
 eminent of artists." * There is, besides, the monument, with bust, by 
 Davis, in the Renshaw Street Chapel ; a bust by Spence, of which an 
 engraving is before me ; a portrait, drawn and engraved by Thompson, in 
 the European Magazine, July, 1822 ; another engraved by Hopwood 
 " from an original picture ; " and perchance others which have not found 
 their way into my portfolio. 
 
 XXXII. PRINCE DE TALLEYRAND. 
 
 As in the conflict and turmoil of the elements principles are evolved which 
 would otherwise have remained in unsuspected latency, so in the anta- 
 gonism of men's passions and interests qualities become developed which 
 bring their possessors into prominence, and claim for them important 
 parts upon the stage of life. Of this the great French Revolution, at the 
 close of the last century, may be taken as an illustration, where, mighty 
 as were its immediate and subsequent influences upon society, an amount 
 of energy and intellect was quickened into action commensurate in impor- 
 tance with the event itself. Of all the actors in that great and terrible 
 drama, those extraordinary men who, born of the circumstances, in their 
 turn acted upon these, and seemed to mould them to their will in the 
 working out of their destinies, two personages, closely associated, yet 
 widely diverse in aim, character, and fate, stand forth alike in majesty of 
 genius, and the historic interest which attaches to their careers. One of 
 these was Napoleon Buonaparte, the son of an obscure Corsican ; the 
 other, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, the scion of an 
 ancient and illustrious family of France. 
 
 As this extraordinary man belonged to a profession in which words 
 are employed to conceal thought ; in which, to use his own words in his 
 dloge of M. de F. Reinhard which constitute his portrait, it was necessary 
 that he should possess the "faculty of appearing open at the same time 
 that he remained impenetrable ; of being in reality reserved, although 
 perfectly frank in his manners w ; and in which, as Sir Walter Scott said, 
 if he wished to be communicative, " he would have a thousand reasons 
 for perverting the truth " ; it is not remarkable that his real character is 
 yet, and probably ever will remain, an impenetrable mystery. Here, at 
 all events, I can scarcely attempt an elucidation. 
 
 His career was truly a wonderful one. Born February 13th, 1754, he 
 had more than attained his majority when Voltaire made his memorable 
 visit to Paris. Talleyrand was introduced to him, and received an 
 
 * Roscoe, and the Influence of his Writings on the Fine Arts. " Read before the 
 Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. By Joseph Mayer, Esq., Honorary 
 Curator." Liverpool, 1853, 8vo, page 36. 
 
ateuc^vjA^ 
 
 AUTHOR QF tt KfiliMBB6TON, UNE COMEDIE BE DEUX ANSf 
 
 *%./< 2 t /.*$ Vj>.jf3 
 
PRINCE DE TALLEYRAND. 155 
 
 impression from the two interviews which resulted, which remained till 
 the close of his life. The effects of a fall having rendered him lame, and 
 therefore unfit for a military career, he entered the Church as a profession. 
 He became, in due course, Abbe* de Perigord, and Bishop of Autun (1788). 
 In this capacity he became a member of the Etats Gmeraux; but soon 
 resigned his bishopric, renounced his ecclesiastical character, and devoted 
 himself to diplomacy. In 1792 he visited England on a secret mission ; 
 having returned to France, and, through Danton, narrowly escaped 
 assassination, he went to the United States, where he remained till 1796, 
 when he was recalled by a decree of the Convention. When Napoleon 
 became First Consul, Talleyrand remained in office as Foreign Minister. 
 In 1803, released from ecclesiastical restraints by a brief from Pius VII., 
 he married. Then came the day of his rivalry with Fouch, resulting in 
 his ultimate advantage, and his elevation by Napoleon (1806) to the rank 
 of Prince Benevento, and Grand Chamberlain of the Empire. He was 
 Commissioner for France at the Congress of Vienna ; on the return of 
 Louis XVIII.. in 181 5, he resumed the portfolio of Foreign Affairs as 
 President of the Council ; soon resigned this, but remained about the 
 person of the King, in virtue of his title as Chamberlain ; and became the 
 leader of the Opposition in the Chamber of Peers. At the Revolution of 
 1830, Talleyrand was a septuagenarian. His powers, however, had under- 
 gone no declension, and he proceeded to London, as Ambassador, residing 
 there till 1835. The story is probably of the ben trovato order, that, when 
 he swore allegiance to Louis Philippe, he exclaimed, " Thank God, this is 
 the thirteenth I have taken." Three years later, after an illness of only 
 six days, on May 20th, 1838, and in the eighty-fourth year of his age, the 
 marvellous career of this extraordinary man was terminated by death, an 
 event which he met with the same imperturbable fortitude with which he 
 had passed through all the grand crises of his life. 
 
 " Everybody knows that he is a rogue," said Maginn, " but nobody 
 thinks he is a fool." Still, Talleyrand, if a selfish, does not appear to have 
 been, in any sense of the word, a bad man. No act of cruelty has been 
 substantiated against him. He was a friend of freedom of thought and 
 expression ; sought to abolish feudalism, and establish constitutional 
 government and national religion ; he was a promoter of education, and a 
 lover of art and literature. His weapons were witticisms, rather than 
 daggers and dungeons ; he attracted by grace of manner ; retained 
 affection by acts of real kindness ; and made long friendships. The son 
 of Theobald Wolfe Tone bears grateful testimony to the interest taken by 
 Talleyrand in the fate of the " patriot's " widow and children, and his 
 exertions in their behalf.* The estimate of the historian Mignet f is favour- 
 able to his character ; and his eloge of Reinhard, pronounced at the 
 Academie only three months before his own death, is a masterpiece of 
 elegant and laudatory declamation. J 
 
 On the other hand, there is a character of Talleyrand in the Historic 
 Fancies of the Hon. George Sydney Smythe, M. P. (London, 8vo, 1844), 
 which I cannot forbear transcribing, though the writer may have been led 
 too far by a love of epigram. " Such," says he, " was treachery in theory. 
 Another aristocrat it was, who raised its practice into a science, and 
 
 * Autobiography of Theobald Wolfe Tone. 
 
 f Notices Historiques, par M. Mignet. Paris, 1853, 2 vols. 8vo. 
 
 % Eloge de M. le Comte de Reinhard. Paris. 1838, 8vo. 
 
156 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 realized a standard of falsehood which the Borgias were unequal to attain. 
 That De Talleyrand, of whom it has been said that he regarded speech 
 only as a means to conceal his thoughts ; oaths only as stepping-stones to 
 personal advancement ; whose eulogy has been written that he elevated 
 silence into eloquence, talent into genius, experience into divination ; who 
 exercised these rare gifts to undo every authority, and betray every power 
 which employed him, was as fine a gentleman as Voltaire. He, too, was 
 the idol of a drawing-room. His epigrams would have been caviare to the 
 multitude ; but they were aptly seasoned to the palate of a worn-out and 
 paradoxical society. His wit was never so brilliant as among applauding 
 Duchesses and delighted coxcombs. The monarchy, as a principle, he 
 despised, because he despised its obligations. The people he hated, 
 because he feared them ; and the last years of his life were devoted to 
 defeat and thwart every endeavour to enfranchise and enlighten them." 
 
 Talleyrand had been married, as I have said. His wife was a Madame 
 Grant, to whom he was legally united at the Mairie of the ioth Arrondisse- 
 me?it, in Paris, in 1803. He had previously been in cohabitation with her, 
 and made her his wife on her divorce from M. Grant, in 1798. Twenty 
 years before, Sir Philip Francis had seen and admired her in India. 
 
 Who has not heard of the bo?is mots of Talleyrand. Perhaps the best 
 is the monosyllabic " Deja ! " to the friend who in sickness told him he 
 was experiencing the tortures of hell. In his quarrel with Fouche', on the 
 latter saying, " You need not triumph in your rank ; under a usurpation, 
 the greatest scoundrel may be the Prime Minister if he pleases." " How 
 fortunate," was the caustic reply, " that you co7idescended to be Minister oj 
 Police P When he met the Due de Montmorency at the same party with 
 M. de Rothschild, after the latter had been ennobled by the Emperor of 
 Austria, Talleyrand seized the opportunity to "present M. le premier 
 Baron Juif to M. le premier Baron Chrdtien." To his secretary, who was 
 blotting the superfluous ink from a memorial, he said, " You will never do 
 for a French ambassador. Don't you know that blotting-paper reveals 
 secrets ?" and, with like caution, when a lady requested his autograph for 
 her album, he wrote at the top of the page, to prevent such a contingency 
 as a promissory note appearing some day above it. To a man afflicted 
 with strabisinus vulgo, a squint, who asked him, " Comment vont les 
 affaires ? " he tersely replied, " Comme vous voyez." It was he who gave to 
 the young diplomatist the counsel, now become proverbial, " Surtout, point 
 de zele, mon jeune ami, point de zele ! " * To Bobus Smith, who spoke 
 casually in conversation of the beauty of his mother, he said with an 
 inimitable air of simple assumption, " C'e'tait done votre pere qui n'etait 
 pas beau." When Rhalliere (according to Champfort) said to him, " Je 
 ne sais pourquoi j'ai la reputation d'etre me'ehant, je n'ai fait qu'une 
 me'ehancete' dans ma vie," he responded by the question, ' Et quand 
 finira-t-elle ? " He could also act a good thing as well as say one, as 
 when, take the anecdote for what it may be worth, on the death of 
 Charles X., he is said to have driven through the city for a couple of days 
 wearing a white hat, on which he placed or removed a piece of crape as 
 he passed through the quartier of the Carhsts or that of the Tuileries. 
 
 The portrait by Maclise before us is certainly sufficiently hideous, 
 reminding one of a morbid preparation in spirits, or one of those objects 
 
 * Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xii. p. 481. 
 
JAMES MORIER. 157 
 
 of natural history which we see in glass cases, impaled on a pin. Still, 
 it is an admirable drawing, and probably hardly caricatured as to like- 
 ness. Fraser says subsequently of its appearance in the " Gallery," that 
 " perhaps it should not have been there at all, but how could we resist 
 the opportunity of giving another, and, as we know, a most characteristic 
 sketch, of the wonderful old man ? " 
 
 But I must say a further word or two on this portraiture before us, 
 inasmuch as it has been thought by competent critics to be the most 
 remarkable and important of the entire series. The following are the 
 remarks of Mr. D. G. Rossetti, in the very able paper in the Academy 
 which followed that by myself in Notes and Queries, in which I first drew 
 attention to the great merit and interest of the Maclise sketches.* "But 
 one picture," writes he, " stands out from the rest in mental power, and 
 ranks Maclise as a great master of tragic satire. It is that which grimly 
 shows us the senile torpor of Talleyrand, as he sits in after-dinner sleep 
 between the spread board and the fire-place, surveyed from the mantel- 
 shelf by the busts of all the sovereigns he had served. His elbows are on 
 the chair-arms ; his hands hang ; his knees, fallen open, reveal the waste 
 places of shrivelled age ; the book he read, as the love he lived by, has 
 dropped between his feet ; his chap-fallen mask is spread upwards as the 
 scalp rests on the cushioned chair-back ; the wick gutters in the wasting 
 candle beside him ; and his last Master claims him now. All he was, is 
 gone ; and water or fire for the world after him, what care had he ? The 
 picture is more than a satire ; it might be called a diagram of Damnation ; 
 a ghastly historical verdict which becomes the image of man for ever. 
 This is one of the few drawings which Maclise has signed with his nom- 
 de-plume at full length ; and he had reason to be proud of it." A fine 
 description, truly, of a fine work ; yet illustrative of the subjectiveness of 
 art, and the fact that we can only get from it that which we take to it, 
 when we find that this same portrait elicits from the writer of an article 
 in All the Year Round nothing but the exclamation : " What a guy was 
 Talleyrand ! " f 
 
 The library of the Prince-Bishop was sold by Sotheby and Co., 18 16, 
 May 8th, and seventeen following days ; and realized ,8,399. 
 
 The character of this remarkable man may be studied in the Memoirs 
 of his Public and Private Life, and Intrigues in Boudoirs and Cabinets 
 (1805, 2 vols. i2mo) ; and in the Correspondence of Prince Talleyrand and 
 King; Louis XVI II., during the Congress of Vienna, with Notes, etc., by 
 M. G. Pullain (2 vols. 8vo). 
 
 Some years ago a life of Talleyrand by W. M. Thackeray was 
 announced by Messrs. Chapman and Hall ; but it never saw the light. 
 
 XXXIII. JAMES MORIER. 
 
 "Pray, General, can you tell us who this Morier really is?" asks of 
 old Damar one of the returned officers in the Lady of Lyons j and I can 
 
 * The date of my article in Notes and Queries was March nth, 1871 ; that of Mr. 
 Rossetti, in the Academy, was April 15th, in the same year. 
 
 f "Forty Years Ago," All the Year Round, December 13th, 1873. 
 
j 58 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 fancy a similar question as to this other Morier, from many of my more 
 juvenile readers, who, if they ever heard of "Hajji Baba" at all, think 
 of him as flourishing in some remote antiquity, just as those who remember 
 his advent on the literary horizon, then regarded the " Turkish Spy," or 
 the " Citizen of the world !" James Morier, who is here fitly represented, 
 in his Persian character as a fire-worshipper, and in his English one as 
 occupying the position so characteristic of his countrymen, was an author 
 of much repute in his day ; the occupant of a handsome house in Charles 
 Street, Berkeley Square ; and the possessor of almost as many nick- 
 nackeries as Rogers or Soane. He was, according to the Quarterly, 
 at least so states Eraser, the best novelist of his day ; his novels, says 
 Eraser himself, show a more intimate acquaintance with the manner and 
 literature of Persia than those of Bulwer do of England ; and he was an 
 amateur artist of such excellence that the conductor of our " Gallery " 
 had serious thoughts of laying his portfolio under contribution. 
 
 It was happily said of Morier that, in his writings, he was never at 
 home but when he was abroad ; which may possibly mean that our com- 
 parative ignorance of the manners and customs of the East render us 
 less susceptible to falsity of local colour than when these are committed 
 in English delineations. One of the best of his novels was Zohrab, the 
 Hostage (1832), where we find described the life of that Aga Mohammed 
 Shah, from whose strategy the Russians took a lesson where they made 
 a desert before the French. Next came Ayesha, the Maid of ICars (1834) 
 in which we have a clever picture of Persian life and manners, and the 
 Kuzzilbash, of which I remember nothing beyond the title. But Morier's 
 most celebrated book is The Adventures of Hajji Baba, where the hero, 
 a sort of Oriental Gil Bias, and the son of a barber at Ispahan, enacts 
 almost every part in the drama of life, and narrates his adventures in 
 the East and the West. These novels were clever, and held their ground 
 in spite of its occupancy by the clever Anastatius of "Furniture" Hope, 
 but are now not so much asked for as the latter, which has the reputa- 
 tion of being " scarce," and has got to be considered, moreover, one of 
 those books that " no gentleman's library can be without." The satire in 
 Hajji Baba was so truthful, says Dr. Angus, that the Minister of State 
 of Persia, where Morier was for some time secretary to the Embassy, was 
 instructed by the King to complain of that " foolish business of a book," 
 as reflecting unduly on the Persian Court. 
 
 Morier was apparently among those authors who have gradually faded 
 out of sight and memory, chiefly, perhaps, from their not having followed 
 up in their later years the impression produced by their earlier writings ; 
 and he seems to have slipped out of the world, almost without notice, in 
 the year 1849. ^ n that same year was re-issued by Bentley a sort of novel, 
 entitled Martin Toutro?idj or the Advejitures of a Frenchnian in London. 
 To this work, which appears to me but the rinsings of a testa which did 
 not retain the merest suspicion of the Falernian with which it may have 
 been se?nel imbuta, the publisher prefixed a statement to the effect that 
 he was permitted by the family of Mr. Morier to announce that it was 
 the production of that distinguished novehst, and moreover that it was 
 originally written in French, but never published, and was translated by 
 the author himself into English. 
 
AfTTHOa OJ'"'CO^'yESA ? i , iiO.'NS"WlTH..I J C'Jt i I> BYROJT7 
 
 
COUNTESS OF BLESSING TON. . 159 
 
 XXXIV. COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON. 
 
 ' ' Lady Blessington ! ' cried the glad usher aloud, 
 
 As she swam through the doorway, like moon from a cloud ; 
 
 I know not which most her face beam'd with, fine creature 1 
 
 Enjoyment, or judgment, or wit, or good nature. 
 
 Perhaps you have known what it is to feel longings 
 
 To pat silken shoulders at routs, and such throngings ; 
 
 Well, think what it is at a vision like that ! 
 
 A Grace after dinner ! A Venus grown fat ! 
 
 Some ' elderly gentleman risk'd an objection ; 
 
 But this only made us all swear her ' perfection.' 
 
 His arms the host threw round the liberal bodice, 
 
 And kiss'd her, exactly as god might do goddess." * 
 
 It is Leigh Hunt who thus introduces the "brilliant Countess," the 
 "most gorgeous Lady Blessington," to use the "liquorish epithet" which 
 the " Brummagem Doctor," Parr of Hatton, bestowed upon her ; and as 
 she thus swims before us, in his graphic lines, as queen regnant of the 
 brilliant coterie of Gore House, we sadly contrast her with the fugitive, 
 and broken-spirited exile, who, a few years later, had a passing dream 
 of emulating, in another and foreign home, the historic glories of the 
 Hotel Rambouillet or the Abbaye-aux Bois. 
 
 The early life of Lady Blessington cannot be described without the 
 upturning of a vast amount of scandalous history. I do not feel disposed 
 to undertake the task, for which, indeed, there is the less necessity, as it 
 is told without much reticence by Madden,f Grantley Berkeley^ and the 
 anonymous writer of an amusing book of gossip. 
 
 She was born September 1st, 1790 or thereabouts, as there is some 
 doubt as to the exact year. Her father, whose name was Power, farmed 
 and hunted in Tipperary, and was one of those small Irish gentlemen 
 who are designated in that country as squireens. She married unhappily ; 
 returned home ; lost her husband (18 17), and four months after she had 
 thus become a widow by law, as she had long been in fact, married 
 Charles John Gardiner, second Viscount Mountjoy and first Earl of 
 Blessington. This eccentric nobleman had a rent-roll of some ,30,000 
 per annum ; and so, as Dr. Madden remarks, " the Blessingtons' splendid 
 mansion in St. James's Square in a short time became the rendezvous of 
 the elite of London celebrities of all kinds of distinction ; the first literati, 
 statesmen, artists, eminent men of all professions, in a short time became 
 habitual visitors at the abode of the new-married lord and lady." 
 
 Well, a coronet and ,30,000 a year cover a multitude of sins in moral 
 London. There is an awkward decade in the lady's career about which 
 her more respectable biographers are discreetly silent ; and the gentle- 
 man, who had for his first wife married his former mistress, now, for his 
 
 * Blue-Stocking Revels ; or the Feast of the Violets. 
 
 f Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington. byR. R. Madden. 
 London, 1855, 3 vols. 8vo. 
 
 % Life and Recollections of Hon. Grantley Berkeley. 1865, vol. iii. p. 201. 
 
 Anecdotes and Pasquinades, and Mess-Table Stories: a Book of After-dinner 
 Entertainment, to promote mirth and good Digestion. London, 1857, 8vo, p. 17. 
 
160 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 second, married her who had been his friend's. But what is vice in the 
 poor is merely eccentricity in the rich ; and the remembrance which years 
 of repentant virtue will not live down in the one case, fades away in the 
 other before such a tribute to moral prejudices as an aristocratic marriage. 
 Three or four years of this splendid hospitality wearied the noble couple ; 
 the London establishment was broken up, and the Blessingtons started 
 for the Continent, accompanied by one of her ladyship's sisters, and 
 Charles Mathews, the celebrated comedian, who died so recently as 
 June, 1878. 
 
 This was in 1822, in which year it is worthy of note that Lady 
 Blessington had made her debut in the literary world by the publication 
 of a slender volume entitled The Magic Lantern j or, Sketches of Scenes 
 in the Metropolis (London, 8vo, pp. 72), which, in the succeeding year, 
 was followed by another, now, like its predecessor, quite forgotten, which 
 was called Sketches and Fragments (London, Longmans, 8vo, pp. 166). 
 The fruit of her Continental experiences was her Idler i7i Italy, and her 
 Conversations with Lord Byron : the former perhaps the best, because 
 the most genuine of her works ; the latter, according to Grantley Berkeley, 
 about as real as the " Conversations " of Walter Savage Landor. Byron 
 was greatly taken by the wit and beauty of his fair interlocutress, and, to 
 prolong her stay, wished her to take a pretty villa near Genoa, called 
 " II Paradiso," a title which suggested what Moore calls an "impromptu," 
 in apparent ignorance that the lines are only a modification, to suit the 
 new circumstances, of the verses which Pope had addressed, a century 
 before, to Lady Mary Wortley Montague : 
 
 " Beneath Blessington's eyes, 
 
 The reclaim'd Paradise, 
 Should be free as the former from evil ; 
 
 But if the new Eve 
 
 For an apple should grieve 
 What mortal would not play the Devil ? " (1823.) 
 
 In 1829 Lord Blessington was carried off by apoplexy, and his lady 
 left with an income of ,2,000 a year. In 1829 she took up her abode in 
 London first at Seamore Place, Mayfair ; and, later, at Gore House, 
 Kensington. There were, at this epoch, three centres of fashionable 
 society in London, where all that had acquired celebrity in literature, art, 
 or social talent, were wont to congregate. These were severally presided 
 over by three remarkable women, the Countess of Blessington, Lady 
 Holland, and the Countess of Charleville, the rival queens of the 
 intellectual life of London. Here, in the house which had been the quiet 
 home of Wilberforce,* the first of these three modern graces sought to 
 
 * James Smith, in a letter dated November 10th, 1836, has left us a capital 
 epigram on this varied occupancy of Gore House : 
 
 "GORE HOUSE: AN IMPROMPTU. 
 1 ' Mild Wilberforce, by all beloved, 
 
 Once owned this hallowed spot, 
 Whose zealous eloquence improved 
 
 The fettered Negro's lot ; 
 Yet here still Slavery attacks, 
 
 When Blessington invites ; 
 The chains from which he freed the Blacks, 
 She rivets on the Whites." 
 
 27, Craven Street. 
 
COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON. 161 
 
 rival the social fame of a Sevigne' or a Recamier, and soon presided queen 
 of a brilliant court, composed of all that was witty or distinguished 
 among, at least, the masculine notorieties of London. Here, in the words 
 of her biographer, she became "accustomed to an atmosphere of adula- 
 tion. . . . The swinging of the censer before her fair face never ceased 
 in those salons, and soft accents of homage to her beauty and her talents 
 seldom failed to be whispered in her ear, while she sat enthroned in that 
 well-known fauteuil of hers, holding high court in queenly state ' the 
 most gorgeous Lady Blessington.' . . . She lived for distinction on the 
 stage of literary society before the footlights, and always en scene." Mean- 
 time she was editing Keepsakes and Books of Beauty, feeding and 
 flattering literary lions, and producing in rapid succession novel after 
 novel : The Repealers, The Two Friends, The Victims of Society, The 
 Governess, The Confessions of an Elderly Lady, The Confessions of an 
 Elderly Gentleman, Strathern, Meredith, and others. These were the 
 productions of a naturally clever woman, with much acquired knowledge 
 of the world, keenness of perception, and goodness of heart. They are 
 smart, witty, and frequently awake and retain interest ; but they display 
 no original talent, or constructive ability, and can hardly be said to rise 
 above mediocrity, or take their place in the first class even of fashionable 
 novels. Besides these, an elegant little book is before me a sort of 
 companion to O'Doherty's maxims, Desultory Thoughts and Reflections 
 (1838, i2mo), which is specially interesting, as exhibiting the mind of its 
 fair authoress in its more genuine and significant workings. 
 
 In 1840 was published by Longmans an elegant quarto volume 
 entitled, The Belle of the Season. By the Countess of Blessington. 
 Splendidly illustrated from Drawings by A. E. Chalofi, R.A., Painter to 
 the Queen, etc., Under the Superintende?ice of Mr. Charles Heath. Here 
 the progress of a fashionable beauty, from her "presentation" to her 
 " marriage," is traced in easy verse by her ladyship, and illustrated by 
 the facile and mannered artist, himself one of the most courtly and 
 polished of gentlemen for whose charming aquarelles the fair authoress, 
 and her lovely sister, the Countess of St. Marceault, served as models 
 and prototypes. One of these, "The Maiden's Chamber," perhaps 
 the best and most interesting of the series, as representing the lady 
 alone, and with the greatest strictness and fidelity is before me as I 
 write. She is seated in her boudoir, book in hand, in soft abstrac- 
 tion ; harp, easel, writing-desk and embroidery frame are round about 
 her ; and in all the glory of the costume of the period, flowered cap 
 with silk " streamers," lace " Bertha," " Bishop sleeves," bordered 
 "tablier" and open-work mitaines, she seems the very ideal of the 
 fashionable bas-bleu in general, and the titled editress of the Keepsake in 
 particular. 
 
 It was during this brilliant part of her career, the fact is trivial, but 
 may seem worthy of record, that Lady Blessington astonished the fly- 
 catchers of the Parks by the novel style of her carriage, the body of 
 which was usually green, and the wheels white picked out with green and 
 crimson. She was the first to introduce "picking out" in carriage- 
 architecture, and she persevered in its use for ten or a dozen years before 
 it became generally adopted. Seated in this splendid equipage, accom- 
 panied by her sister, " dressed in the wildest Grecian fashion of the day," 
 drawn by "high-stepping dark thorough-breds," and with coachman 
 
 M 
 
1 62 THE MACL1SE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 and footman to match, the whole " turn-out " has been well described as 
 " a feast for vulgar eyes." * 
 
 This gilded but wretched existence went on for a time ; then the 
 crash came, exciting only wonder at the tardiness of its advent. This 
 was in the spring of 1849. Duns of every variety appeared upon the 
 scene, and Howell & James put in an execution for a debt of ,4,000. 
 Then came the auction. " Every room," says Dr. Madden, " was 
 thronged ; the well-known library-saloon, in which the conversazioni 
 took place, was crowded, but not with guests. The arm-chair, in which 
 the lady of the mansion was wont to sit, was occupied by a stout, coarse 
 gentleman of the Jewish persuasion, busily engaged in examining a 
 marble hand extended on a book, the fingers of which were modelled 
 from a cast of those of the absent mistress of the establishment. People, 
 as they passed through the room, poked the furniture, pulled about the 
 precious objects of art and ornament of various kinds that lay upon 
 the table, and some made jests and ribald jokes on the scene they 
 witnessed. ... It was a total smash a crash on a grand scale of ruin : 
 a compulsory sale in the house of a noble lady a sweeping clearance of 
 all its treasures." The only person affected, be it recorded to his credit, 
 was the author of Vanity Fair. " M. Thackeray est venu aussi," wrote 
 to his mistress the French valet of the Countess, "et avait les larmes aux 
 yeux en partant. C'est peut-etre la seule personne que j'aie vu reellement 
 affectee a votre depart." It is singular, by the way, that the first sketch 
 in Lady Blessington's first book is entitled "The Auction," and gives 
 a graphic account of the scene of ruin, and the heartless conduct of 
 attendant "friends," in language which is exactly applicable to her 
 own domestic catastrophe of thirty*years later. The sale at Gore House 
 realized upwards of ^13,000 ; the Marquis of Hertford being the purchaser 
 of Sir Thomas Lawrence's famous portrait of Lady Blessington for ,336, 
 which was about four times its original price. That of Lord Blessington, 
 also by Sir Thomas, only commanded 68 ^s. 
 
 Lady Blessington went to Paris. In that great centre of social refine- 
 ment, the unfortunate lady, to whom was not inappropriate the phrase 
 which had been applied to the Duchesse d'Etampes, who, in the time of 
 Francis I., was styled " la plus belle des savantes, et la plus savante des 
 belles," and of whom it might almost be said, as Brantome has written of 
 another, but not a fairer, Marguerite,f that " elle dtoit si parfaite en scavoir 
 et sapience qu'on lui donna le nom de Minerve de France," endeavoured 
 to revive her unforgotten London glories. On the 3rd of June, 1849, sne 
 moved into her new apartments, which she had had fitted up in the 
 old luxuriousstyle, in the Rue du Cirque, Champs Elysees, where her 
 delightful reunions were looked forward to as oases in the Republican 
 desert ; and on the following day, just twenty years after the Earl, her 
 husband, had experienced his fatal seizure, and as it were on the same 
 spot of the same city, she was stricken with apoplexy, which, compli- 
 cated as it was with heart-disease of twenty-five years standing, carried 
 her off in the afternoon of the same day. She died in the arms of M. 
 Simon, her homoeopathic medical attendant, and this so peaceably, " that 
 it was impossible to perceive the moment when her spirit passed away." 
 
 * Patmore's My Friends and Acquaintance, vol. i. p. 195 ; The Story of the 
 London Parks, by Jacob Larwood, p. 261. 
 
 i Duchesse de Berri, afterwards Duchesse de Savoie, circa 1550. 
 
/j^^uz^^o^u^Uy 
 
 AUTHOR OF SKETCHES OF UPPE.lt CANADA. 
 
THE TIGER. 163 
 
 On the wall of the sepulchral chamber where the remains of Lady 
 Blessington, embalmed by Ganal, are deposited, are two inscriptions : 
 one in English by " Barry Cornwall " (Bryan W. Procter) of no very 
 great merit, the other, in Latin, altered ftom one written by Walter 
 Savage Landor, which was not adopted literatim, possibly because it 
 contained no reference to a future state. As it is superior as a lapidary 
 inscription to the one substituted for it, and its author wrote a long letter 
 to the Athenceum complaining of the alterations, by whom effected I 
 do not know, it may not seem unfitting to round off this notice by its 
 transcription : 
 
 " Infra sepvltvm est id omne qvod sepeliri potest 
 
 mvlieris qvondam pvlcherrimas. 
 
 Ingenivm svvm svmmo stvdio colvit, 
 
 aliorvm pari adjvvit 
 
 Benefacta sva celare novit ; ingenivm non ita. 
 
 Erga omnes erat larga bonitate 
 
 peregrinis eleganter hospitalis. 
 
 Yen it Lvtetiam Parisiorvm Aprili mense : 
 
 qvarto Ivnii die svpremvm svvm obiit." 
 
 XXXV. THE TIGER. 
 
 " Quis novus hie nostris sueeessit sedibus hospes ? " What manner of 
 man is this whose portraiture is before us ? To what deed of bravery in 
 the jungle did he owe his apellation? What has he done to be entitled 
 to a place among " Illustrious Literary Characters ?" Well, kissing goes 
 by favour ; and so, in more instances than this one, the smiles of Regina. 
 William Dunlop was a disciple of ^Esculapius, and practised the art 
 and mystery of physic in the Northern Athens ; where I fancy he 
 delivered certain lectures on Medical Jurisprudence, and published an 
 edition, but of this I am not at all sure, of Beck's treatise on Eorensic 
 Medicine. Here Maginn made his acquaintance, and many were the 
 noggins of " cock-tail, flip, gin-sling and other antifogmatics " which the 
 bibulous doctors utriusque facilitates, consumed together. In 1825, Dunlop 
 left Edinburgh, and proceeded to London ! Here, in 1826, he strenuously 
 assisted John Gait in the formation of the Canada Company ; and finally 
 left England with him for the opening paradise of Ontario. As a fruit of 
 his sojourn in the far west, he gave us his Letters of a Backwoodsman, 
 published by Murray in 1832, and reviewed by Maginn in Fraser, and 
 by John Wilson in Blackwood. For boldness of outline, and firmness of 
 touch, the " Gallery " presents few more striking specimens than the 
 portrait before us ; while the energy displayed in the expression of the 
 face, and in the natural language of the attitude, indicate that the original 
 must have been a man about whom something might be said. But I 
 must frankly confess that I am not, at this writing, in the possession of a 
 single additional fact in his career to entertain my readers withal ; so, 
 following the example of Herodotus, the grand-sire of all history, when he 
 is tired of a subject, or thinks that he has tired his readers, or perchance 
 has nothing more to say, I simply add, let it suffice to have said thus 
 much of William Dunlop, "The Tiger!" 
 
164 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 XXXVI. BENJAMIN D'ISRAELI. 
 
 This graceful portraiture of the great novelist and statesman in his 
 younger days, looking, for all the world, like Apollo masquerading in a 
 suit of Beau BrummelPs, and waiting, it might be, for the announcement 
 of the cab which was to convey him to one of the brilliant reunions ot 
 Gore House, cannot be more appropriately introduced than by a prose 
 description of the glories of his dress and person, at that now distant time. 
 " His ringlets of silken black hair," says my authority,* who has, it may 
 be well to remark, a strong literary and political prejudice against his 
 subject, "his flashing eyes, his effeminate and lisping voice, his dress- 
 coat of black velvet, lined with white satin ; his white kid gloves, with 
 his wrist surrounded by a long hanging fringe of black silk, and his 
 ivory cane, of which the handle, inlaid with gold, was relieved by more 
 black silk, in the shape of a tassel. Every one laughed at him for being 
 affected, but the women declared that his was an affectation of the best 
 style, and they felt his personal vanity was a flattering homage to their 
 most notorious weakness. Such was the perfumed boy-exquisite who 
 forced his way into the salons of peeresses. Men held him in light 
 esteem ; but observant women, who, as a rule, are more discerning 
 judges of young men than themselves, prophesied that he would live to 
 be a great man." To complete the depiction, I may add the portrait 
 of another writer, who knew him about the same period, and rather 
 regarded the mental promise and qualities of the youthful exquisite : 
 " Many years ago, upwards of twenty, I frequently met Mr. D'Israeli at 
 Lady Blessington's abode in Seamore Place. It needed no ghost from 
 the grave, or rapping spirit from the invisible world, to predicate, even 
 then, the success of the young D'Israeli in public life. Though in general 
 society he was usually silent and reserved, he was closely observant. It 
 required generally a subject of more than common interest to produce 
 the fitting degree of enthusiasm to animate him, and to stimulate him 
 into the exercise of his marvellous powers of conversation. When duly 
 excited, however, his command of language was truly wonderful, his 
 power of sarcasm unsurpassed, the readiness of his wit, the quickness of 
 his perception, the grasp of mind that enabled him to seize on all the 
 parts of any subject under discussion, persons would only call in question 
 who had never been in his company at the period I refer to." f Once 
 more: "D'Israeli," writes ' Namby Pamby' Willis, describing an 
 evening party at the Countess of Blessington's, " had arrived before me, 
 and sat in the deep window, looking out upon Hyde Park, with the last 
 rays of daylight reflected from the gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly 
 embroidered waistcoat. Patent leather pumps, a white stick with a black 
 cord and tassel, and a quantity of chains about his neck and pockets, 
 served to make him, even in the dim light, a conspicuous object. . . . 
 D'Israeli has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He is lividly 
 pale, and but for the energy of his action and the strength of his lungs, 
 
 * Jeaffreson's Novels and Novelists. 
 
 \ Literary L'fe and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington, by R. R. 
 Madden. 1855, 
 

 author of Vivian ctiey." 
 
BENJAMIN D' ISRAELI. 165 
 
 would seem to be a victim of consumption. His eye is black as Erebus, 
 and has the most mocking, lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable. 
 His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient nervousness, 
 and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a particularly 
 successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn 
 that would be worthy of a Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraordinary 
 as his taste in waistcoats. A thick heavy mass of jet-black ringlets falls 
 over his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, while on the right 
 temple it is parted and put away with the smooth carelessness of a girl's, 
 and shines most unctuously 
 
 ' With thy incomparable oil, Macassar ! ' " 
 
 It is almost superfluous to state that the remarkable personage thus 
 described was the eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli, the well-known author 
 of the Curiosities of Literature, etc. ; and was born in 1805. Two 
 centuries before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had banished to 
 our own shores so much of the industrial talent and energy of France, 
 the similar bigotry of Torquemada and the Inquisition had caused the 
 exodus from the Iberian peninsula of those two heretical races, the 
 Moors and the Jews, who were the quickening intellect to the haughty 
 and impassive people among whom they dwelt. Among those thus 
 banished from the land, which, according to tradition, had been the 
 home of his family for more than a thousand years, was the ancestor of 
 the subject of these notes. He belonged to that pure Sephardim race 
 whose boast is that it has never left the shores of the Mediterranean. 
 He proceeded to Venice, and there, abandoning the name which he had 
 been forced to assume in Spain, he made choice of one which, while it 
 indicated his nationality and his creed, had never been borne, so far as 
 he could ascertain, by any other family. For four centuries the family 
 lived and traded with success in their new home ; till, at length, about 
 1748, the grandfather of Benjamin was induced to remove to England, 
 attracted at once by commercial considerations and the prospect of 
 more perfect religious tolerance. Of his son Isaac, I have already 
 sufficiently spoken. As his ancestors had been sagacious and practical 
 merchants, and he was a complete and typical man of letters, so 
 the characteristics of both seemed to be combined in the character of 
 their illustrious descendant ; the clear-headed, far-seeing ability of the 
 former, with the more imaginative and literary tendencies of the latter. 
 This is the man who has been taunted, as occasion served, as a "Jew," 
 and an "adventurer." The Jews! as a modern writer* says, "the 
 mystery of their very name is enough to break the head, and perhaps 
 the heart ;" and what, if D'Israeli did belong to this wonderful race, of 
 whose fate, characteristics, position, and destiny, he has himself said so 
 much and so well? Why, if antiquity of origin, purity of blood, and 
 isolation of caste, constitute nobility, this man must have been a noble 
 amongst nobles, a very aristocrat of aristocrats ; and knowing, to a 
 mathematical demonstration, that his lineal ancestor was present at the 
 building of the Temple, have treated with the most perfect and absolute 
 scorn the pretensions of shoddy wealth and mushroom aristocracy, 
 rejoicing in the fond belief that its ancestor was turnspit in the kitchen 
 of a Norman marauder, or bastard of his denationalized and profligate 
 * Charles Auchester, vol. ii. p. 20. 
 
1 66 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 successor ! But while Christians, with a singular disregard of what 
 they owe to the Jewish race, have taunted D' Israeli with being a Jew, 
 the Jews themselves have censured him for being a Christian. But both 
 are wrong ; inasmuch as he is not a Jew, except, indeed, ethnologically, 
 which, as I take it, does not mean much, nor an apostate. It is true, 
 that, in his infancy, he was admitted into the community of Israel ; but 
 his father, who had quarrelled with his synagogue, did not educate his 
 son in Judaism. The precocious talents of the youth attracted the notice 
 of Samuel Rogers, the poet, who was wont to visit the elder D'Israeli at 
 Hackney, and who, regretting to see so intelligent a youth without 
 religious instruction, took him to Hackney Church. The parent made 
 no opposition, and from this event dates the complete severance of the 
 son from the communion of his fathers. He became a Christian, and a 
 great genius was, so at least it has been said, lost to the Jewish people. 
 
 But is this indeed so ? It is somewhat curious, while reflecting on 
 the so-called "apostasy" of D'Israeli, to remark that when his long 
 career came to an end, none of his biographers ventured to name him as 
 a thinking and believing Christian. On the other hand, the orthodox 
 Jewish organs of this country and of the Continent, claimed him as a 
 true adherent of the religion of his race. In the vestry of the Spanish 
 and Portuguese synagogues may be seen the registry of his birth, and 
 his circumcision. On the occasion of his last illness, prayers were 
 offered for his recovery in various synagogues, notably in that of 
 Belgrave Street, Leeds ; and in the Norwich synagogue, on the seventh 
 day of Passover, a special yiskah was made hy Rabbi Benjamin Samuel. 
 The significance of this need not be pointed out to those who are 
 sufficiently acquainted with Jewish observances to know that Jews 
 neither seek to make converts, or pray otherwise for Gentiles, than that 
 the Lord may pour forth the vials of his wrath on unbelievers. A Jew, 
 moreover, Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild, Bart., M.P., was one of the 
 executors named in his will. All this for what it may be worth. 
 
 A general misconception exists with regard to the social circumstances 
 under which Benjamin D'Israeli commenced his career. It is believed 
 that he began life in an humble position, and had a hard struggle with 
 the res angusta domi, which the Roman poet tells us hinders the 
 emergence of those whose virtues it impedes. But such was not the 
 case. His grandfather accumulated a fortune as a merchant ; retired 
 early from commerce to a pleasant house at Enfield ; was the host of 
 Sir Horace Mann, the friend of Walpole ; played whist with the neigh- 
 bouring gentry ; and enjoyed a luxurious existence till he was nearly 
 ninety. His father inherited a fortune, and made money by his books ; 
 lived finally at his spacious mansion at Bradenham, Bucks ; gave his 
 son a liberal education, and enabled him to indulge in prolonged Eastern 
 travel ; and was fully entitled to rank with the county families, a privilege 
 of which his entire devotion to literature rendered him careless. Thus 
 the D'Israeli family were in opulent circumstances, and the subject of 
 these notes enjoyed from boyhood an excellent social position, and the 
 example and companionship of men eminent in literature and politics. 
 
 "Born in a library," as he himself has told us, "and trained from 
 early childhood by learned men who did not share the passions or the 
 prejudices of our political and social life," it is not surprising that the 
 sensitive, ambitious, imaginative youth early sought to attain distinction 
 
BENJAMIN D 'ISRAELI. 167 
 
 in the domain of literary fiction. When about twenty years of age he 
 burst upon the world with his Vivian Grey. As the history of a youth 
 of genius and ambition, panting for political and literary fame, the book 
 may be considered as an autobiography. It is full of faults in style, 
 taste, conception, and execution ; and yet perha*ps, regarding it as a first 
 essay, a more remarkable book can hardly be found in the history of 
 literature. A "Key" was published, of which such was the interest 
 excited by the novel the tenth edition appeared in 1827. According to 
 this, "Vivian Grey "was the author ; "Sherborne," D'Israeli the elder ; 
 " Marquis of Carabas," Lord Lyndhurst ; " Stanislaus Hoax," Theodore 
 Hook ; " Duke of Juggernaut," Duke of Norfolk ; " Prince of Little 
 Lilliput," Prince Leopold ; " Mrs. Million," Mrs. Coutts ; " Foaming 
 Fudge," Brougham ; " Lord Prima Donna," Lord William Lennox ; 
 " Prince Xtmnpqrtosklw," Prince Gortschakof ; " Fitzborn," Sir Robert 
 Peel ; " Charlatan Gas," Canning ; " Lord Past Century," Eldon ; " Mar- 
 quis of Grandgout," Lord Hertford ; " Mrs. Felix Lorraine," Lady 
 Caroline Lamb ; while Southey, Brummell, Esterhazy, Metternich, and 
 other celebrities of the period, are freely introduced and satirized. 
 
 In 1826, John Murray started the Representative, which was placed 
 under the editorial management of Lockhart. It is often said that our 
 juvenile author was connected with this unfortunate paper, and that the 
 unpleasantries resulting from its fate and discontinuance, led to a disrup- 
 tion of the friendship which had for many years existed between the elder 
 D'Israeli and the publisher, to whom he had long acted as general literary 
 adviser. This is stated even in so respectable an authority as the Gentle- 
 man's Magazine, in the " obituary " of the former ; but is entirely at 
 variance with the fact, as we have the explicit statement of the son that 
 he never wrote, or was asked to write, one single word in it. 
 
 An author is born, not made ; it is seldom that a father, however 
 great a lover of literature himself, attempts to devote his son to it as a 
 profession. Thus D'Israeli the elder determined to bring up his clever 
 boy to the law, and he was duly articled to a legal firm, Messrs. Swain 
 and Co. in the Old Jewry, still in existence under another style. But here 
 he was discontented, and it is a tradition in the office that he passed the 
 hours of business, " when he should engross," in reading poetry. This led 
 to a change of plan. Benjamin was released from his indentures ; his 
 brother James succeeded to the vacant stool, completed his articles under 
 the firm, and, in the fullness of time, became an attorney. 
 
 It is impossible in this place to do more than briefly allude to the 
 literary career of Benjamin D'Israeli. The Revolutionary Epic, a poem 
 written on his return from the East, though a fragment, gave evidence, in 
 its conception and scope, of a noble ambition and a wide capacity. Only 
 fifty copies were printed for presentation to friends ; but it was reprinted 
 in 1 864. Contarini Fleming; a Psychological A utobiography, was probably 
 inspired by the Wilhehn Meister of Goethe, and elicited the remark from 
 Heine that it was one of the most original works ever written. Next came 
 a book the style of which is adumbrated in Maginn's happy parody : " O 
 reader dear ! do pray look here, and you will spy the curly hair and fore- 
 head fair, and nose so high and gleaming eye, of Benjamin D'Is-ra-e-li, the 
 wondrous boy who wrote Alroy, in rhyme and prose, only to show, how 
 long ago, victorious Judah's lion-banner rose, etc." This is The Wo?idrous 
 Tale of Alroy ; a romance, the scene of which is laid in Syria in the twelfth 
 
168 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 century, and whose hero, David Alroy, " the Prince of the Captivity," is 
 supposed by his followers to be a descendant of David, King of Israel. Of 
 this, and The Rise of Iskander, it may be said that amid the rhetorical 
 extravagance which has brought some ridicule upon them, there is yet a 
 fine Oriental glow of colouring, and poetry of description, and that Alroy 
 is the finest Eastern romance since Vathek. The Voyage of Captain 
 Popanilla is a satire in the manner of Swift. The Letters of Runny - 
 mede, which first appeared in the Times, possess great ability ; but while 
 inspired by, are yet inferior to, those of Junius. Of his other political 
 works, Ixion in Heaven, Speeches, Essays, I cannot speak ; and must con- 
 tent myself with the bare mention of The Life of Lord George Bentinck. 
 Two works of fiction may claim more than a word, Henrietta Temple 
 and Venetia. The former is a love story, in which the rise and progress 
 of the tender passion is traced in natures fitted to refine and intensify 
 its development. Love is made the subject of destiny, and treated as a 
 principle, which, though latent, only awaits occasion and circumstance 
 to burst into flame, and enkindle the whole soul. In the latter, the 
 characters of Shelley and Byron, the fate of the one and the conjugal 
 misfortunes of the other, are, with perhaps somewhat questionable taste, 
 made the subjects of delineation, and afford a study of enthralling interest. 
 It is rather unfortunate with regard to the greater part of one of the 
 chapters (that in which "Lord Cadurcis," i.e. Byron, is described), that it 
 had been previously written by one Macaulay, in his essay on Moore's Life 
 of Byron, in the Edinburgh Review for 1831. Perea?it qui ante nos nostra 
 dixere I Of Coningsby, Sybil, Tancred, Lothair and Endymiofi, I cannot 
 here pretend, if indeed it were needed, to offer a criticism. 
 
 Of Coningsby there has also been published a " key " (Sherwood and 
 Co., 1844), in which sixty of the prototypes are indicated. Here the author 
 himself is not among the number ; and by " Sidonia," is said to be 
 represented Baron A. de Rothschild, of Naples. 
 
 In the autumn of 1839, he published a tragedy, entitled Count Alar cos. 
 The plot was taken from an old Spanish ballad, which, in his preface, he 
 tells us, he first heard sung in the sierras of Andalusia, and which then 
 seemed to him "rife with all the materials of a tragic drama." There is 
 something terrible, and even revolting, in the story, which required a 
 larger amount of dramatic and poetic power than the play can be said to 
 possess, to render it attractive. When produced on the stage at Astley's, 
 it did not meet with great success. 
 
 The political history of Disraeli is that of his epoch, of which he was 
 the most conspicuous figure, and must be sought for elsewhere. Its salient 
 episodes have been told over and over again, and are within the know- 
 ledge of all. There was his maiden speech at Marylebone in December, 
 1837, when, being asked "on what he stood," he made the memorable 
 reply " On my head ! " There was his logomachy with O'Connell, who 
 taunted him with being the "heir-at-law of the blasphemous thief who 
 died upon the cross ; " and his challenge to the son of the Agitator to give 
 " satisfaction " in duello, vicariously for his father. Then there was his 
 memorable laugh-down in 1837, when he prophesied that the day would 
 come when the House would hear him, and hear him it did, a week after- 
 wards, when he made a brief but effective speech in support of Sergeant 
 Talfourd's Bill to amend the law of Copyright. His quarrel with Sir 
 Robert Peel and his connection with the " Young England " party, help 
 
BENJAMIN D' ISRAELI, 169 
 
 us on to the time when he unfolded his first budget, as Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, in 1852, and those still more recent events which are yet fresh 
 in memory. 
 
 In February, 1868, Lord Derby, whose health was failing, recom- 
 mended the Queen to appoint Mr. Disraeli First Lord of the Treasury ; 
 when Punch had a cartoon, " Vivicrn Grey sent for ! " Thus the finical 
 Dandy, the romantic novelist, the mystical speculator, the man of whom 
 John Bright so absurdly said that he " had not a drop of English blood 
 in his veins," the theoretic dreamer who preached the supremacy of a 
 despised race, the bombastic orator who twenty-two years before had 
 been laughed down in the House of Commons, became Prime Minister of 
 England ! When he resigned in the following December, a Peerage was 
 offered him ; but this he declined, accepting, however, the distinction on 
 behalf of his wife, who became accordingly Viscountess Beaconsfield. 
 This lady, it may be well here to mention, was the widow of Wyndham 
 Lewis, of Hughenden Manor, Bucks, the colleague of Disraeli in the 
 representation of Maidstone. As daughter of Captain Viney Evans, R.N., 
 of Bramford Speke, Devon, and heir-at-law of General Sir James Viney, 
 of Taynton Manor, Gloucestershire, she brought her husband the Hughen- 
 den estate and an ample fortune. But she brought him much more, 
 practical wisdom, good sense, brilliant accomplishments, and the most 
 affectionate devotion. This met with a fitting return. Disraeli dedicated 
 Sybil to her, as " the most severe of critics, but a perfect wife " ; at a 
 harvest-home at Hughenden, he spoke of her as "the best wife in 
 England;" at Edinburgh, in 1867, he made allusion to "that gracious 
 lady to whom he owed so much of the happiness and success of his life " ; 
 and, in short, he took every opportunity of testifying to the warmth and 
 depth of his feeling for her. His marriage to this lady took place in 
 September, 1839. 
 
 In like manner the wife of Pitt was made Lady Chatham in 1761, 
 whereas he did not receive the honours of the peerage till 1766 ; and, in 
 later times, the wife of Lord Campbell became Lady Stratheden, while her 
 husband, the future Lord Chancellor, was still in the House of Commons. 
 
 Lady Beaconsfield died in December, 1872, at the age of 83 years ; 
 and in 1876, a peerage being once more offered to her husband, he 
 accepted the honour and became Earl of Beaconsfield and Viscount 
 Hughenden. 
 
 Both one and the other title awaken historic associations. Beacons- 
 field and Hughenden are within an easy walk of each other, in a district 
 great with the memories of the illustrious. Beaconsfield was, a century 
 ago, the loved home of another great English statesman ; and it was as 
 Earl Beaconsfield that he too was to have been raised to the peerage. 
 The writ, indeed, was already made out ; but the death of his son broke 
 the heart of Burke ; and he refused the distinction which he could not 
 transmit to his beloved child. Perhaps, under the circumstances, it would 
 have been better to have held the appellation sacred, and sought else- 
 where for a virgin title. Hughenden, about a mile from the important 
 and ancient town of High Wycombe, is a spot rich with historic interest. 
 Within a short distance is Great Hampden, where lived the celebrated 
 patriot of the same name. His very house is still to be seen ; and hard 
 by, Chalgrove, where he received the wound of which he died, and the old 
 village churchyard where his remains are lying. The Manor House of 
 
170 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Hughenden is a square handsome building, built upon the site of the hall 
 of the old lords ; and will now be to all time a hallowed spot. Here the 
 favourite peacocks, in which the late Earl so delighted, used to strut and 
 scream ; and here are growing to lofty maturity the cedars of Lebanon, 
 which spring from slips brought by him from Palestine. On the northern 
 side of the house is a tree which was planted by the Prince of Wales, 
 when he visited his mother's friend in 1880 ; and on the south lawn are 
 two fir-trees which were planted by her Majesty and the Princess Beatrice,- 
 when the Queen paid a visit to the Earl in 1877. 
 
 The Jews are a long-lived race ; and the Disraeli family exemplify the 
 rule. The father of the new Earl the " Curiosity of Literature," lived 
 to be 82 ; his mother, daughter of George Basevi, of Brighton, the Hebrew 
 architect who designed the fine Fitzwilliam Museum, at Cambridge, died 
 early at 71 ; his grandfather, Benjamin also, lived to be 86 ; and the 
 mother of this latter, Mrs. Seybrook, was a nonagenarian. Earl Beacons- 
 field, himself, was destined to enjoy his new honours yet for a few years. 
 On the 19th March, 1881, he dined with the Prince of Wales at Marl- 
 borough House ; on the following day he became unwell, and sent for 
 his old friend and medical adviser, Dr. Kidd. Exactly one month later, 
 19th April, 1881, "calmly, as if in sleep," to quote the official bulletin, this 
 most remarkable man passed away, in full possession of his faculties, and 
 his hands clasped in those of friends who loved him for his noble and 
 endearing qualities. His last words were, " I am overwhelmed ! " 
 
 An able writer commenting on the career which I have so imperfectly 
 sketched, remarks : " Marvellous, indeed, has that career been. It is 
 unlike anything in the biography of other English statesmen. . . . What is 
 the secret of success by which a man who, at one time, had coquetted with 
 O'Connell, at another time had been a suitor to Mr. Joseph Hume, next a 
 panegyrist and then an assailant of Sir Robert Peel, has attained a position 
 in Parliament and the country to which Burke never ventured to aspire, 
 and which Canning attained at the cost of health, peace of mind, and life 
 itself? " * 
 
 Success like that of the Earl of Beaconsfield can hardly be attained 
 without the creation of enemies, political and literary ; but even these 
 must admire the indomitable energy, the tenacity of purpose, and the 
 brilliance of ability which gained for their possessor the position he 
 reached. To these qualities other and unbiassed observers of his career 
 will be disposed to add the higher praise of goodness of heart, purity of 
 morals, rectitude of purpose, and honesty of principle, to cumulate the 
 name which had descended to him through long centuries, without even 
 the shadow of a reproach. 
 
 The "brown tree" of Sir George Beaumont seems an occasional 
 necessity in literary as well as pictorial description. I here introduce it 
 in the shape of a passage from that notorious print, The Englishman 
 (June, 1878), " edited by Kenealy," with the feeling that the writer was not 
 to be envied in whose mind such reflections could be excited by the 
 appearance of the aged statesman and man of letters : " How pitiable 
 was the spectacle of Disraeli the other day, as I passed him in Whitehall, 
 crawling slowly like a snake up towards the statue of Charles I. The 
 lack-lustre, lifeless, squint-eye, swivelling towards the banqueting-house. 
 Pie wore dirt-colourecl trousers, and a frock tightly buttoned across his 
 * Ediiibiirgh Revieiv, April, 1868. 
 
BENJAMIN D % ISRAELI. 171 
 
 quivering frame. But the expression of the man, oh, how mean it was ! 
 The kicked of Lord Lyndhurst, the loathed of Peel, the despised of 
 O'Connell, the flunkey who allowed Lord Derby to pay for his political 
 dinners ; the lineal descendant and heir-at-law of Judas Iscariot, the 
 betrayer of Christ ; the shambling, sneaking tool of Cairns ; the man 
 who always smiles and sniggers when John Brown condescends to 
 shake his hand, all these were there ; and I sighed as I saw this 
 wretched trickster." This is vitriolic in its mordency ; but it's pleasant to 
 find that one is at the last drop. 
 
 It has been said with truth that when the history of the Jewish race 
 in the nineteenth century comes to be written, no name will occupy a 
 more important place in its pages than that of Benjamin Disraeli, 
 Lord Beaconsfield.* He will be cited as a brilliant example of the 
 precocity of the Jewish intellect, of its enduring vitality, of its power to 
 erect its possessor to the loftiest place among his fellow-men, and of its 
 entire beneficence as a factor in the culture of humanity. The inheritor 
 of social degradation, he achieved the highest dignity and nobility ; 
 born with maimed and defective rights, he soared to the highest grade 
 of citizenship ; living in an age of change, and amid the collision of old 
 monopolies with the new and licentious spirit of equalism, he persist- 
 ently strove for one definite and intelligible cause with the tenacity, the 
 courage and the practical wisdom of the great historic race from which he 
 was so proud to trace his descent. Of the results of his policy it is 
 premature to speak ; it is time alone which is the test of statesmanship. 
 But it may at least be said that it was by no unworthy means that he 
 attained his ends ; it was by no personal vices that he rose to power. 
 The most impressive figure in the Victorian era, it was simply by the right 
 of the fittest that he became the ruler of a great party, that, through it, 
 he was the true governor of a mighty empire, and, to a certain extent, 
 swayed even the destinies of the world. And this wondrous influence, 
 early acquired, he retained long, a striking example at once of the early 
 maturity and long endurance of intellectual power. He was famous by his 
 writings before he had attained his majority ; when he had long exceeded 
 the limit assigned by Moses to the life of man, he presided in the Areo- 
 pagus of Europe. 
 
 Solomon said there was nothing new, I do not know how many 
 thousand years ago ; and it is doubtless as difficult, in these later days, 
 to do anything which has not been done before, as to construct a name 
 which has not, at some period or other, been borne by some one. That 
 Sephardim Jew, who, centuries ago, invented as he thought, the patronymic 
 which was destined in his progeny to become so illustrious, was unaware 
 that the designation had been hit on before. Among the papers of the 
 Home Office may be found the "Petition of Benjamin Disraeli, for a 
 patent in England for his invention of making women's chip-hats and 
 bonnets, and the materials called platt or platting." The date of this 
 document is 1767. Again, in Stewart & Watson's Dublifi Almanack for 
 1810, the name of "Benjamin D'Israeli, of Beechey Park," appears as 
 High Sheriff" for the County of Carlow. He was a stock-broker in Dublin, 
 and realized a fortune. Nothing is known of his progenitors, and he left 
 no male issue. An inscription on a tombstone in St. Peter's Churchyard, 
 Dublin, records that " The Remains of Benjamin Disraeli, Esq. are 
 * The Jevjish Chronicle and the Jezvish World, 
 
172 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 deposited here. He departed this life on the 9th day of August, in the 
 year 18 14, aged 48." * Of course there is the possibility that these two 
 Benjamins were, in some way, descended from the Venetian merchants. 
 
 In Beaconsfield Churchyard, on a spot selected by her Majesty 
 Queen Victoria, immediately above the seat habitually occupied by the 
 Earl, is a monument commissioned by her from Mr. R. C . Belt, to per- 
 petuate his memory. In the centre is a profile portrait, and beneath a 
 tablet bearing an inscription which was written by her Majesty, and forms 
 a touching memorial of that friendship which so rarely exists between 
 sovereign and subject : 
 
 "To 
 
 The Dear and Honoured Memory of 
 
 BENJAMIN, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD, 
 
 This memorial is placed by 
 
 His grateful and affectionate 
 
 Sovereign and Friend 
 
 Victoria R.I. 
 
 ' Kings love him that speaketh right.' 
 
 Proverbs xvi. 13, 
 Feb. 27, 1882." 
 
 XXXVII. THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 There are certain anecdotes by which, through an impulsive act, or an 
 unpremeditated saying, a better insight may be gained into character, 
 and a more certain key to the hidden springs of thought, than is afforded 
 by whole pages of minute and laborious analysis. Of such nature I take 
 to be one, which is related in The New Spirit of the Age, by R. Hengist 
 Home : 
 
 Leigh Hunt and Carlyle were once present among a small party of 
 equally well-known men. It chanced that the conversation rested with 
 these two, both first-rate talkers, and the others sat well pleased to listen. 
 Leigh Hunt had said something about the Islands of the Blest, or El 
 Dorado, 01 the Millennium, and was flowing on in his bright and hopeful 
 way, when Carlyle dropped some heavy tree-trunk across Hunt's pleasant 
 stream, and banked it up with philosophical doubts and objections at 
 every interval of the speaker's joyous progress. But the unmitigated Hunt 
 never ceased his overflowing anticipations, nor the saturnine Carlyle his 
 infinite demurs to those finite flourishings. The listeners laughed and 
 applauded by turns, and had now fairly pitted them against each other, 
 as the philosopher of hopefulness and the unhopeful. The contest con- 
 tinued with all that ready wit and philosophy, that mixture of pleasantry 
 and profundity, that extensive knowledge of books and character, with 
 their ready application in argument or illustration, and that perfect ease 
 and good nature, which distinguished each of these men. The opponents 
 were so well matched, that it was quite clear that the contest would 
 never come to an end. But the night was far advanced, and the party 
 broke up. They sallied forth, and leaving the close room, the candles, 
 and the arguments behind them, suddenly found themselves in presence 
 of a most brilliant, starlight night. They all looked up. " Now," thought 
 * Notes and Queries, 5th Series, vol. vi. p. 47. 
 
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 7 dy^ 
 
 TRAIT SLAT OB. OF WILHELM MEISTEB.. 
 
 
7 HO MAS CARLYLE. 173 
 
 Hunt, " Carlyle's done for ; he can have no answer to that." " There," 
 shouted Hunt, " look up there ! look at that glorious harmony, that sings 
 with infinite voices an eternal song of hope in the soul of man." Carlyle 
 looked up. They all remained silent to hear what he would say. They 
 began to think that he was silenced at last, he was a mortal man. But 
 out of that silence came a few low-toned words, in a broad Scotch accent. 
 And who on earth could have anticipated what the voice said ? " Eh, it's 
 a sad sight ! " Hunt sat down on a stone step. They all laughed, then 
 looked very thoughtful. Had the finite measured itself with infinity, instead 
 of surrendering itself up to the influence ? Again they laughed, then bade 
 each other good night, and betook themselves homeward with slow and 
 serious pace. There might be some reason for sadness too. That 
 brilliant firmament probably contained infinite worlds, each full of 
 struggling and suffering beings, of beings who had to die, for life in 
 the stars implies that those bright worlds should also be full of graves. 
 But all that life, like ours, knowing not whence it came, nor whither it 
 goeth ; and the brilliant universe, and its great movement, having, 
 perhaps, no more certain knowledge of itself, nor of its ultimate destina- 
 tion, than hath one of the suffering specks that compose this small spot 
 we inherit. 
 
 Here we have once more the pendant shield, where the surface appears 
 to be gold or silver, according to the direction by which the wandering 
 knights approach it ; here, this lower earth, a subject of grief or gratula- 
 tion to the one or the other type of mind, as the possessors of which every 
 observer worthy of the name may be classified. " I have often said," 
 remarks Horace Walpole, " and oftener think, that this world is a comedy 
 to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel, a solution why 
 Democritus laughed, and Heraclitus wept . . . the quintessence of all 
 f have learnt in fifty years." So, the last words of Rabelais were : " Tire 
 le rideau, la farce est joue'e " ; and our own Gay proclaimed that death 
 had only taught him that life was the farce he had always thought it to 
 be. But this is hardly seemly. Not to speak of the awfulness of that 
 supreme moment, which precludes a jest, when Adrian would check his 
 soul's wonted hilarity, 
 
 " Nee, ut soles, dabis jocos," 
 
 we have the highest authority for the belief that " sorrow is better than 
 laughter " ; and we are told that Christ wept more than once, while we 
 have no record even of a smile. But, enough. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle was born in 1795, at Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire, 
 where his father was a small farmer ; entered the University of Edinburgh 
 at the age of 14 ; and was intended for the ministry. But this was 
 probably the view of his parents rather than his own ; for, after the 
 fashion of Dionysius of Syracuse among the ancients, and Milton and 
 Johnson among the moderns, he became a pedagogue, and taught 
 mathematics in a Fifeshire school, where he remained about a couple of 
 years. His next step was to choose a priesthood and a church after his 
 own fashion ; for, says he, " of all priesthoods, aristocracies, governing 
 classes, at present extant in the world, there is no class comparable for 
 importance to that priesthood of the writers of books ; " and further, " the 
 writers of newspapers, pamphlets, books, these are the real working, 
 effective Church of a modern country." By all which, I mean to imply 
 
174 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 that he determined to devote himself to literature as the profession and 
 business of his life. He commenced his literary career in 1823 by 
 writing for Brewster's Edinburgh E?icyclopcedia, in which his articles on 
 Montaigne and Montesquieu may be pointed out. From this> starting 
 point, the life of Carlyle, as a man of letters, may be conveniently divided 
 into three periods. During the first, extending to the year 1827, he 
 produced his various translations from the German, including Wilhelm 
 Afeister, which was not very courteously received by the critics, notably 
 Jeffrey ; and others, which Maginn says are so " Teutonical in raiment, in 
 the structure of sentence, the modulation of phrase, and the round-about, 
 hubble-bubble, rumfustianish, roly-poly growlery of style, that it is with 
 difficulty we can recognize them to be translations at all." Now, too, he 
 effected a translation of Legendre's Geometry (Edinburgh, 1824, 8vo), 
 which was edited by Sir David Brewster, and to which he prefixed, to 
 borrow the words of Professor de Morgan, " a thoughtful and ingenious 
 essay on Proportion, as good a substitute for the fifth book of Euclid as 
 could have been given in the space, and quite enough to show that he 
 would have been a distinguished teacher and thinker on first principles." 
 The Life of Schiller, too, was produced during this period, and first 
 appeared by instalments in the London Magazine. The second period, will 
 commence in 1827, in the thirty-second year of his age, when he married 
 Miss Jane Welch, a lineal descendant of John Knox, and a lady of some 
 property. At this time, he lived alternately at Comely Bank and 
 Craigenputtock, contributing to Reviews, and manifesting the first decided 
 proofs of individuality of opinion. It was in 1830-3 that he produced the 
 extraordinary work Sartor Resartus, which, rejected by all the leading 
 publishers, had to be cut up into sections, and appear piece-meal in 
 Eraser's Magazine. In depth and originality of thought, dry humour, 
 tender pathos, and quaint Gothicism of style, this book has no equal in 
 English literature. With the subtle wit of Sterne, the fantastic spirit of 
 Richter, and the power of Rabelais, it propounds, with a purity and 
 exaltation of tone, a system of philosophy as profound as that of Fichte. 
 But these are days when we have to read as we run ; and even then can 
 only half read. What chance, then, has a book which can be characterized 
 as one, in the words of M. Philarete Chasles,* " qu'il faut relire au 
 moins cinq fois pour le comprendre un peu " ? Thus, Sartor Resartus was 
 to many foolishness and a stumbling-block ; while some, even among 
 earnest readers, like "A. K. H. B," f had to confess that they could see 
 nothing in it, and tried in vain to get through it. It is somewhat curious 
 that it was first published in separate form in America ; and that the best 
 burlesque of the " second-hand pen-mongery " of Carlyle is by an 
 American author, James Russell Lowell, at the end of his Biglow Papers. 
 It was business connected with the publication of this remarkable book 
 which led Carlyle to London ; and with his final settlement in the 
 Metropolis, in 1834, the third period of his career may be said to have 
 commenced. 
 
 In 1837, appeared that series of brilliant and graphic episodes which 
 is called the History of the French Revolution, the only one of his 
 works, if I mistake not, which has been translated into French, and 
 where, if we do not find the dignity and simplicity of history, the various 
 episodes of that terrible period are brought before us, in Homeric fashion, 
 
 * Revue de Deux Monde's, f Fraser's Magazine, May, 1861. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 1 75 
 
 with most impressive and life-like reality. To read it, it has been said, 
 constitutes an epoch in one's intellectual life, so wonderfully is the past 
 revivified with the generative breath of a vast and energic imagination. 
 Then there is the life of his friend, John Sterling, which has been pro- 
 nounced one of the finest biographies ever written ; and that record of 
 patient and conscientious industry, The Letters and Speeches of Oliver 
 Cromwell, with Elucidations, which gave Englishmen a new conception 
 of the hero of the Commonwealth. In these books, the soul of the writer 
 is so completely thrown, every faculty employed, and such labour in the 
 collection and presentment of facts evinced, that one can well give credit 
 to his saying that he never wrote a book of any importance without 
 making himself ill by it. Another important work is The Life of Frederick 
 the Great (of Prussia), of whom the author once said to an Edinburgh 
 friend that he " tried to put some humanity into him, but found it a hard 
 task." The contents of five volumes of essays, collected from the Edi?i- 
 burgh Review, the Foreign Quarterly, the W estminster Review, Eraser, 
 the Examiner, etc., I cannot particularize ; or do more than merely 
 mention Hero- Worship, Chartism, the Latter-day Painphlets, etc. Past 
 a?id Present, a vast favourite with many readers, was reviewed by Mazzini 
 in the British and Foreign Review, with an energetic protest against 
 some of its teachings. This was just at the time that the opening of the 
 letters of the Italian patriot stirred up so much indignation in the minds 
 of Carlyle and others, who were apparently in happy ignorance that the 
 very raison d'etre of the Post Office is that the correspondence of the 
 kingdom should be under the inspection of government, as " the best 
 means to discover and prevent many dangerous and wicked designs 
 against the commonwealth. 5 '* In all these works, amid much that is 
 startling in paradox, plenty of sound sense and generous philosophy may 
 be found, always provided that the reader has undergone the necessary 
 "baphometic fire-baptism," to qualify him to penetrate the author's 
 melodramatic extravagances of style. From these, I must remark, the 
 earlier writings are comparatively free ; they are fresh, nervous, and 
 vigorous, though yet with a certain originality of diction which marks the 
 author. " Le style," said Buffon, " e'est l'homme meme." It is in the 
 later works that we find " the fierce fuliginous fire " that so often scares 
 the on-looker ; Smelfungus, Sauerteig, and Dryasdust come before us 
 with "damnable iteration;" and "phantasms," "galaxies," and "sea-green 
 heroes " dance before us in all the " mazes of metaphorical confusion." 
 Carlyle himself, in his essay on Richter, has drawn the distinction between 
 " singularity," and " affectation," and warned us against too lightly im- 
 puting the latter, which " is the product of falsehood, a heavy sin, and 
 the parent of numerous heavy sins," in cases of the former, where, " if the 
 nature and condition of man be really and truly, not conceitedly and 
 untruly, singular, so also will his manner be, so also it ought to be." 
 Thus, it is not meet lightly to decide upon the merits or demerits of 
 Thomas Carlyle, as a writer of English. We all know that apart from 
 superficial affectations, or singularities, as they may be, he was a 
 vigorous word-wielder, and an original thinker. He was a hater of 
 humbugs, a demolisher of shams, a pricker of wind-bags, a shaker out of 
 bran ; a genuine man, of generous impulses, honest hate, enduring affec- 
 tion, and tender memories. Whatever difference of opinion may exist as 
 * Blackstone's Commentaries, book i. ch. viii. 
 
176 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 to his characteristics, and his influence and value as a man of letters, 
 all thoughtful readers must admit their large indebtedness to him, and 
 object to his mannerisms as they may, be forced after all to admit, in his 
 own words, that " on the whole, genius has privileges of its own ; it 
 selects an orbit for itself ; and be this never so eccentric, if it is indeed 
 a celestial orbit, we mere star-gazers must at last compose ourselves ; 
 must cease to cavil at it, and begin to observe it, and calculate its 
 laws."* 
 
 In 1868, Carlyle accepted the invitation to be nominated as Lord 
 Rector of his Alma Mater, the University of Edinburgh. His rival in the 
 candidature wasj^enjamin Disraeli ; whom, about this period, he described 
 as " a clever conscious juggler ; a superlative Hebrew conjurer, spell- 
 binding all the great Lords, great Parties, great Interests of England, and 
 leading them by the nose like helpless, mesmerized, somnambulent cattle." 
 He gained the election by a considerable majority, and in due course 
 delivered the rectorial address which is before the public. 
 
 In 1873, the services which he had rendered to the literature and 
 history of Germany were recognized by the Emperor, who conferred upon 
 him the " Ordre pour le me'rite " of the Chapter of the Civil Class, vacant 
 by the death of Alessandro Manzoni. 
 
 In 1875, tne degree of LL.D. was offered to him by the University 
 of Harvard College, U.S. This he refused, on the ground that American 
 Universities are mere " semblances," their degrees, " the silliest sham 
 feathers," and that he was unwilling to join in " heading the long line of 
 D.D.'s and LL.D.'s, a line of pompous little fellows hobbling down to 
 posterity on the crutches of two or three letters of the alphabet, passing 
 to the oblivion of all universities and small potatoes." But still, notwith- 
 standing this righteous scorn, Harvard College is a time-honoured institu- 
 tion, and on the roll of its graduates are men in whose company it is no 
 disgrace to be seen. Among its professors or students are the names of 
 Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Agassiz, Channing, Clarke, Ticknor, 
 Everett and Alger ; while among those who have accepted the honorary 
 distinction rejected by Carlyle are such men as Franklin, Washington, 
 Lafayette, Jefferson, Granville Sharp, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, 
 Washington Irving, Sir C. Lyell, Sir Henry Holland, Lord Ellesmere, 
 John Stuart Mill, and doubtless a host of others who do not come to my 
 mind. 
 
 On April 21st, 1866, Carlyle lost the wife who had been "the true 
 and loving help-mate of her husband for forty years, and by act and 
 word unweariedly forwarded him, as none else could, in all of worth that 
 he did or attempted." In the inscription which he wrote for her tomb- 
 stone, he says : " In her bright existence she had more sorrows than are 
 common ; but also a soft invincibility, a capacity of discernment, and a 
 noble loyalty of heart which are rare." By her death, which was sudden, 
 as he says, "the light of his life went out." A pleasantly suggestive story, 
 relating to this much-loved wife, will not be known to my readers. Leigh 
 Hunt had brought to the Chelsea home some intelligence or other of so 
 gratifying nature, we may be sure that it bore specially on the Seer him- 
 self, that Mrs. Carlyle jumped up from her chair, and kissed the herald. 
 On the following morning, the poet sent her some little present, with the 
 following verse, worthy of a place among the Basia of Secundus : 
 * Miscellanies, i pp. 15, 16. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 1 77 
 
 "Jenny kissed me when we met, 
 
 Springing from the chair she sat in ; 
 Time, you thief, who love to get 
 
 Sweets into your book, put that in ! 
 Say I'm ugly say I'm sad, 
 
 Say that health and wealth have missed me, 
 Say I'm growing old but add 
 
 Jenny kissed me 1 " 
 
 On February 5th, 1881, in the tranquil exhaustion of a ripe old age, 
 this true Sage of modern times passed away at his home in Cheyne 
 Row, Chelsea, where he had lived for fifty years ; and, as the Times 
 remarked, the world seemed duller, colder, and darker, in that this one 
 grey old man had left it. 
 
 No time was lost in collecting funds to provide for a public monu- 
 ment of the philosopher. The work was entrusted to Mr. J. E. Boehm, 
 R.A., with the result of a most admirable statue in bronze, life-size, 
 representing Carlyle as he was in his latter days, in an attitude ot 
 thought, seated in an arm-chair, and wearing his well-known dressing- 
 gown. " For this noble piece of portraiture," Mr. Ruskin wrote of it, 
 " I cannot trust myself to express my personal gratitude, or to speak at 
 all of the high and harmonious measure in which it seems to me to 
 express the mind and features of my dear master." It is appropriately 
 placed in the little public garden, at the end of Great Cheyne Row, 
 Chelsea, where Carlyle had spent the last forty years of his life. There, 
 on October 26th, 1882, in presence of many of those who were his 
 attached friends in life, it was unveiled by Professor Tyndall, who 
 delivered an eloquent address on the occasion. Among those who 
 assisted were Lord Houghton, Mrs. Oliphant, Miss Swanwick, Moncure 
 D. Conway, Robert Browning, Dr. Martineau, Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, and 
 others. A simple inscription on the massive pedestal, of Aberdeen 
 granite, records the dates of the birth and death of the remarkable man 
 in whose honour it is erected. 
 
 With that recognition of true nobility and desire to give it the mint- 
 mark of society, which is characteristic of a lofty and generous mind, 
 titles were offered, at the same epoch, by the Earl of Beaconsfield, to 
 Carlyle and Tennyson. The intended honour was, in each case, declined. 
 
 It was said by Margaret Fuller Ossoli that she never appreciated 
 the work Carlyle had done for his age till she visited England ; * and we 
 ourselves stand in a like inability, unless we look upon our country 
 abstractedly, and, as it were, with the eyes of an intelligent foreigner. 
 But however cursorily we may regard the purport of his mission, and 
 the scope of his teaching, we can but see that beneath, and apart from, 
 philosophic mysticism, Teutonic garb, and Puritan spirit, there is evident, 
 in the entire series of his writings, a general and earnest striving to raise 
 humanity to a more exalted conception of Duty, and the necessity of 
 its accomplishment ; a consignment of all human shams and unrealities 
 to " universal burning-up, as in hell-fire " ; a revolt against Mammon- 
 worship, and a contempt for the mockeries and frivolities of society ; an 
 implacable antagonism against the falsehood, the hypocrisy, and the 
 scepticism which, in the world, are more and more relaxing the chain 
 of sentiments and ideas which link earth to heaven. Imbued with 
 
 * Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, by R. W. Emerson and W. H. Charming. 
 
 N 
 
178 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 prejudices that sometimes obscured his sagacity, he yet had a profound 
 reverence for Truth when he encountered and recognized it. Holding 
 the opinion that a man was his own high-priest in the hierarchy of his 
 individuality, he has been ranked among unbelievers by the utterers of 
 a formal shibboleth, and the professors of the " religion of the rotatory 
 calibash." The keynote of his teaching was sincerity, truth, earnestness, 
 and duty. In his apprehension the material conquests of man had small 
 significance ; and all those marvels of science as applied to industrial 
 invention, on which the age so prides itself, he counted as nought in the 
 progress of humanity ; holding as his loftiest ideal of true manhood that 
 the individual man should become a tabernacle of the living God. 
 
 Of biographic records there are already plenty. There are the Re- 
 miniscences by J. A. Froude (1881, 2 vols. 8vo) ; Memoirs of the Life and 
 Writings, by R. H. Shepherd (1881, 2 vols. 8vo) ; Thomas Carlyle, a 
 History of the First Forty Years of his Life, 1 795-1 835, by J. A. Froude 
 (1882, 2 vols. 8vo) ; Bibliography of Thomas Carlyle, by R. H. Shepherd 
 1 881, 8vo) ; 'Thomas Carlyle, the Man and his Books, Illustrated by Personal 
 Reminiscences, Table-Talk, and Anecdotes of himself a?id his Friends, by 
 William Howie Wylie (1881, 8vo) ; Thomas Carlyle, by Moncure D. 
 Conway (188 1, 8vo) ; and articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes, April 
 15th, 1849, June 15th and September 1st, 1850, and (" Carlyle and Sterling") 
 July 1st, 1852. 
 
 It may not be amiss to mention for the benefit of those who may, in 
 future days, wish to make a more extended study of the genius of this 
 extraordinary man, that a bibliographic record of the various books, 
 
 Eamphlets, and essays in the periodical press on his life and works, will 
 e found in Notes and Queries, 6th Series, vol. iv. 
 
 XXXVIII. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 Coleridge, whose effigy is now before us in the third step of that 
 animal which formed the subject of the Sphinx's riddle, the " notice- 
 able man with large grey eyes," the "founder of the romantic school 
 of poetry," the " Platonist of the nineteenth century," the " pourer 
 forth of wisdom in language as mellifluous as that of Nestor," may 
 be regarded, as these epithets indicate, under the triform aspect of 
 a Poet, a Thinker, and a Talker. To take first the last, which 
 was, perhaps, not least, as a Talker he was doubtless superlatively 
 great ; that is, in a certain sense ; and it is by his talking that the out- 
 come of his life is partly to be measured. Nor improperly so ; for 
 although talking and doing are incompatible, the one ceasing when the 
 other begins, yet, inasmuch as the extremes meet, when talking exists in 
 a certain quantity and quality, it arrives at the dignity and importance of 
 doing. And thus it comes to pass that, in the case of Coleridge, his son 
 Derwent, and some few others, talki?ig and doing are one and the same 
 thing. It was in monologue, not conversation, that Coleridge shone. He 
 rambled on uninterruptedly for hours ; his auditors intoxicated by the 
 ambrosial ichor that fell from the lips of the " old man eloquent," and 
 
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SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 179 
 
 careless about the logical sequence, or even the very subject, of his 
 rambling discourse. Like the knightly hero of Butler, in Hudibras^ 
 
 -he could not ope 
 
 His mouth, but out there flew a trope." 
 
 " Did you ever hear me preach ? n said he to Lamb. " I n-n-nevcr heard 
 you do anything else," was the stuttering reply. " Coleridge was a mar- 
 vellous talker," said Rogers ; * " one morning when Hookham Frere also 
 breakfasted with me, Coleridge talked for three hours without intermission 
 about poetry, and so admirably, that I wish every word he uttered had 
 been written down." The same authority goes on to say : " Sometimes 
 his harangues were quite unintelligible, not only to myself but to others," 
 an illustration of which we gain from another source better than from the 
 reminiscences of Mr. Dyce. "Wordsworth and myself," said Rogers, 
 " had walked to Highgate to call on Coleridge, when he was living at 
 Gillman's. We sat with him two hours, he talking the whole time without 
 intermission. When we left the house, we walked for some time without 
 speaking. 'What a wonderful man he is!' exclaimed Wordsworth. 
 * Wonderful, indeed,' said I. ' What a depth of thought, what richness 
 of expression ! ' continued Wordsworth. ' There's nothing like him that 
 ever I heard !' rejoined I. Another pause. ' Pray,' inquired Wordsworth, 
 1 did you precisely understand what he said about the Kantian philosophy ? ' 
 R. ' Not precisely.' W. ' Or about the plurality of worlds ? ' R. ' I can't 
 say I did. In fact, if the truth must out, I did not understand a syllable 
 from one end of his monologue to the other.' W. ' No more did I.' " t 
 Thus these honest interlocutors unconsciously echoed the words of Saint 
 Augustin, who records of the speech of some Coleridge of his day : 
 " Verborum flumen ubique vidi, mentis et judicii vix guttam." If all 
 spectators, hearers, and readers were as candid, many a wind-bag would 
 fall to earth for want of the puff of spurious praise which keeps it aloft. 
 But the flock will continue to follow the bell-wether, vanity fear the im- 
 putation of ignorance, and omne ignotum pro magnijico be the rule of 
 common judgment to the end of time. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, who made a journey to England for the 
 special purpose of visiting Carlyle, does not seem to have been greatly 
 impressed by Coleridge, and diagnosed of his case that he " suffered from 
 a determination of words to the mouth." Leigh Hunt, on the other hand, 
 said, " If the world is to remain always as it is, give me, to all eternity, 
 new talk of Coleridge, and new essays of Charles Lamb ; they will 
 reconcile it beyond all others, and that is much ; " and Gotzenburger, a 
 German artist who visited England records, " I saw there many men of 
 talent, but only three men of genius, Coleridge, Flaxman and Blake ; 
 and of the three, Blake was the greatest." % 
 
 As a Poet, Coleridge is unquestionably great ; and here, too, greater 
 by his influence and principles than his actual achievements. He had no 
 " finger industry," as he said to Cottle, who was pressing him for " copy," 
 though his brain was always at work, small comfort to the expectant 
 compositor ! Hence it is, to his ill-health and his fatal habits, that 
 his morning promise, probably no other poet had done what he had 
 
 * Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, by Rev. Alexander Dyce, p. 207. 
 
 f Edinburgh Review, No. ccxi. p. 103. 
 
 % Gilchrist's Life of William Blake, 1st ed. vol. i. p. 337. 
 
180 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 done at thirty, has never been fulfilled, and that the monument of his 
 fame in the British Walhalla is a mere Torso, showing only by its 
 fragmentary magnificence what the entire figure seemed destined to be. 
 
 His most graceful poem, Christabel, remained twenty years unpub- 
 lished ; but, says Fraser, " not unknown. And when its example had 
 raised the ballad epic, or poetical novel, to its highest and most magnifi- 
 cent state, it made its appearance, in the eyes of the general reading 
 public, an imitation of its own progeny." Pope had, a century before, 
 bidden the aspirant : 
 
 "From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part, 
 And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art ; " 
 
 but had still, by his practice, cast a cold spell over English poetry. 
 Coleridge was one of the first to free himself from the restraint of the icy 
 fetters, and led the way with this weird, beautiful creation, in which " the 
 spiritual and material are so exquisitely blended that it is difficult to know 
 where they run into each other." * There is no noubt that he, eminently 
 a copyist and a follower of other minds, had been largely influenced by 
 Goethe, Herder, and the ballad and romantic poets of the German 
 "Sturm und Drang" period, just as this had cast off the authority of 
 classical tradition, and followed the unrestricted flight of Homer, Shake- 
 speare, Ossian, and the ballad literature so industriously collected by 
 Percy, Ritson, and Evans. With rapid infection, Scott caught the sacred 
 flame, and the whole cope of heaven was soon ablaze with new and 
 unfamiliar fires. 
 
 Christabel or rather Christ obeli still remains a fragment ; 
 
 " Ah ! who shall lift the wand of magic power, 
 And the lost clue regain ? 
 The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower 
 Unfinished must remain." 
 
 An attempt, however, has of course been made to complete this beautiful 
 poem. A " continuation " will be found in the Europea7i Magazine, April, 
 i8i5,No. 57 ; and there is a clever parody, under the title of Christabess, by 
 S. T. Colebritche, Esq., a right woeful Poem, translated from the doggerel 
 by Sir Vinegar Sponge (London, 8vo, 1816). No burlesque, however, 
 on the style and manner of Coleridge could possibly be happier than that 
 of the late Mr. Prowse, in Tom Hood's Comic Almanac for 1868 : 
 
 " It is an old Philosopher, 
 
 He stoppeth one of three : 
 ' By thy gleaming face and snowy hair, 
 
 Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ? ' 
 He held aloft a mystic scroll, 
 With the letters ' S. T. C.,' " etc. 
 
 This capital parody, I wish I could give it in its entirety leads me 
 to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, an extraordinary work as to the 
 true scope and purport of which a misapprehension exists which I cannot 
 now attempt to correct. Of this a parody will be found in Blackwood 's 
 Magazine, vol. iv. p. 571, and there is an excellent translation into 
 German in the Gedichte of Ferdinand Freiligrath (1843, 8vo, p. 387). 
 It is in this poem that the passage occurs which has been cited to show 
 that Coleridge had a prevision of the Atmospheric Railway : of which said 
 
 * D. M. Moir. 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 181 
 
 passage it may be asked, if it does not mean this, what on earth or in 
 heaven does it mean ? 
 
 " But why drives on that ship so fast? 
 Without or wave or wind ; 
 The air is cut away before, 
 And closes from behind." 
 
 This suggestive poem was, about the year 1868, illustrated by twenty- 
 five " poetic and dramatic scenes, designed and etched by David Scott, 
 S.A.," (imperial folio); and in 1863, the Art Union of London issued 
 twenty plates, in oblong folio, designed in outline by J. Noel Paton, R.S.A. 
 
 Leigh Hunt considered the poetry of Coleridge " on the whole to have 
 been the finest of its line, that is to say, the most quintessential, the 
 most purely emanating from imaginative feeling, unadulterated by thoughts 
 and matter ; " * and elsewhere expressed the opinion, that, in the pro- 
 duction of this kind of verse, there has been " no greater name than his 
 since the days of Milton." f Of its extreme beauty of rhythm it is 
 remarked by Mr. Monkhouse, in his recent Life of J. M. W. Turner 
 (p. 160), that "Coleridge, whose verses exceed almost all other English 
 verses in beauty of sound, could not tell one note of music from another." 
 No wonder. What is called a "musical ear," and the perception of 
 melody of versification, are two totally different things, entirely uncon- 
 nected with each other. 
 
 What about Coleridge as a Philosopher. Those still among us, in 
 whose ears the music of his voice yet lingers, may exclaim exultingly to 
 us, who only know his conversational glories by tradition, " quid si ipsum 
 audiissetis ? " as ^Eschines said to the Rhodians, when they were en- 
 chanted by the mere perusal of the speeches of Demosthenes. It is 
 doubtless in a great degree to the suasive power of this marvellous elo- 
 quence that is to be attributed the impress which he made upon the 
 intellectual life of Cambridge. He must be regarded as the true founder 
 of a school, whose influence is, day by day, gaining expansion ; the author, 
 as it has been said, of the latitudinarian culttis, " the order of whose 
 succession may be indicated in the names of Maurice, Julian Hare, and 
 Charles Kingsley," whose tutor on Dartmoor had been Derwent, the poet's 
 son. But as for the vaunted "philosophy" of Coleridge, we have it in 
 many forms before us, and can now judge of it, abstractedly, for ourselves. 
 The Times newspaper says somewhere that it is wholly incredulous as to 
 his depth, and that it regards his "philosophy" as "the most monstrous 
 sham since Swedenborg." J Tenneman, too, places him as " no systematic 
 writer, but a metaphysical dilettante." To his "philosophy" may, 
 indeed, be applied the epigram, which he is said to have written himself 
 upon Christabel: 
 
 " Your poem must eternal be, 
 Dear sir, it cannot fail ; 
 For 'tis incomprehensible, 
 
 And wants both head and tail ; " 
 
 and to himself, as a metaphysician, the lines of Shelley : 
 
 * Leigh Hunt's Autobiography, p. 281 ; Imagination and Fancy, p. 286. 
 *f* Preface to the edition of the Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt, published by Moxon 
 in 1846. 
 
 1 Bentley's Miscellany, vol. xl. p. 211. 
 
 History of Philosophy, Bohn's ed. p. 490. 
 
182 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 "All things he seemed to understand, 
 Of old or new, at sea or land, 
 But his own soul, which was a mist." 
 
 Lovers of obscurity should be reminded that it is because of the 
 muddiness, not the depth, of the water, that they cannot see the pebbles 
 in the bed of the stream. I should almost be vain enough to say with 
 Madame de Stael, when reproached for not understanding Goethe, 
 " Monsieur, je comprends tout ce qui merite d'etre compris ; ce que je ne 
 comprends pas n'est rien." But this seems, like every other thing, a 
 matter of taste. Chalmers complained to Irving of the obscurity of 
 Coleridge ; but the latter replied, " You Scotchmen would handle an idea 
 as a butcher handles an ox. For my part, I love to see an idea looming 
 through the mist." Very good ; but it should be remembered that natural 
 objects are magnified when seen through a hazy medium, and that a 
 street-lamp must not be set down as the sun because a London fog has 
 invested it with a portentous halo. I have honestly tried to make 
 myself acquainted with the general views and bearings of Coleridge's 
 " Philosophy," but without success. I have found it obscure, turgid, 
 immethodic, and mystical ; a pathless forest, horrent with transcendental 
 terminology, and penetrated by no straggling ray of the lumen siccum of 
 the Baconian metaphysics. Besides, what there is cannot be called his 
 own. It has already been pointed out, beyond the power of refutation, 
 that he is largely indebted for his philosophy and his profoundest views 
 on the aesthetics of art to Schelling, a philosopher of the German school. 
 From this writer Coleridge has adopted much, garbled more, and often 
 translated, without the slightest acknowledgment, entire pages verbatim. 
 Another less-known metaphysician, Maasz, he has laid under heavy con- 
 tributions. The brothers Stolberg afforded him the original, almost word 
 for word, for his fine lines, " To a Cataract " ; Frederica Brun {see Preface 
 to Table Talk), many of the principal ideas in his admired u Hymn 
 before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni " ; and lastly, Schiller, the exquisite 
 distiches, in which the classical metres are so happily described and exem- 
 plified,* as follows : 
 
 Homeric Hexameter. 
 " Strongly it bears us along, in swelling and limitless billows ; 
 Nothing before, and nothing behind, but the sky and the ocean. 
 
 Ovidian Elegiac Metre. 
 " In the Hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column ; 
 In the Pentameter aye falling in melody back." 
 
 This is a somewhat painful subject, and opens up a curious question, 
 not only as to the psychological condition of the man who could thus 
 appropriate the thoughts and very words of others without acknowledg- 
 ment, but also the critical character of the readers, who accepted as a 
 marvellous system of " philosophy " the garbled and mutilated transcen- 
 dentalism of a young German philosopher who had just left his teens ! 
 But I have no further space to discuss the matter, and refer the curious 
 reader to Taifs Magazine ', September, 1834 ; the British Magazine, 
 January, 1835 ; and Blackwood's Magazine, March, 1840. It is but fair, 
 
 * For the originals, see Schiller's Werke, bandi. p. 62, ed. Stuttgart u. Tubingen, 
 1852. 
 
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 183 
 
 however, to state that there is good evidence that Schelling himself held 
 Coleridge in high esteem, and said that it was an "utter shame" to 
 accuse him of plagiarizing from him.* 
 
 It has been pointed out, in an able paper in the Cornhill Magazine. 
 (October, i860, p. 426), that Coleridge, in his Essay towards the Formation 
 of a more Comprehensive Theory of Life, though giving utterance to some 
 opinions which are doubtful or obscure, seems to have anticipated, so 
 far as his general view is concerned, almost the entire advance of physio- 
 logical knowledge since his day. His idea is, that physical life is a 
 process, or a mode of operation, of the same powers which we recognize 
 under other names, as magnetism, electricity, or chemical affinity. These, 
 by their own properties, effect all the results observed in life, but they are 
 grouped in a special way, the various forms of action being so united, as 
 to constitute, out of many parts, a mutually dependent whole. The dis- 
 tinctive character of living things is the exhibition in them of a "principle 
 of individuation," which constitutes them units, separated from, while yet 
 partakers in, that which is around them. "Life," he says, "supposes an 
 universal principle in nature, with a limiting power in every particular 
 animal, constantly acting to individualize, and, as it were, figure the 
 former. Thus Life is not a thing, but an act and a process." And, 
 tracing the chain of organic being upwards, through its various grades, 
 he points out how the great characteristic of advancing elevation in the 
 scale of life consists in the ever more perfect individualization of the 
 creature ; its being marked off from the rest of creation, and placed in an 
 attitude of freedom to use and subordinate her process. 
 
 It would appear that to some extent a charge of ingratitude and dis- 
 ingenuousness may lie against Coleridge. In the Gentle7nart s Magazine^ 
 for June, 1838 (pp. 577-590), an account of the various writings of the 
 poet for the newspapers is given by Daniel Stuart. Here his misstate- 
 ments as to the inadequacy of the remuneration he had received from the 
 proprietors of the Mor?iing Post, the Courier, etc., are pointed out, both 
 in the Biographia Literaria, and the IJfe by Mr. Gillman, and also by 
 Henry Nelson Coleridge, in his Reinains of the poet. Here also his 
 pecuniary obligations to Mr. Sharp are mentioned, and letters given in 
 extenso, full of expressions of gratitude and friendship, all which was 
 forgotten in the Biographia. 
 
 A few hasty facts in the life of S. T. Coleridge. He was born at Ottery 
 St. Mary's, Devon, October 21st, 1772; educated at Christ's Hospital; 
 entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1791, where he gained the Browne 
 Medal for his Greek ode on the Slave-trade, and was one of four selected 
 candidates for the University Scholarship, vacant by the election of Porson 
 (who was examiner on the occasion) to the Greek Professorship ; left the 
 University without a degree, and enlisted as a private in the 15th 
 Dragoons ; got his discharge ; joined Southey at Bristol, and started the 
 Watchman; married in 1795 ; became a Unitarian preacher at Taunton ; 
 was enabled by the Wedgwoods to go to Germany, 
 " The land where Professors in plenty be, 
 
 The land that produces a Kant with a K, 
 
 And many a cant with a C ; 
 Where Hegel taught to his profit and fame, 
 That something and nothing were one and the same ; " 
 
 * Poems and Remains of A. H. Clough, 1869, vol. i. p. 103. 
 
1 84 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 studied at Gottingen ; returned, and betook himself to the Lakes ; in 1804, 
 visited his friend, Dr. Stoddart, at Malta, and for fifteen months acted 
 there as secretary to Sir Alexander Ball, the governor of the island ; 
 returned to England ; undertook the literary and poetical department of 
 the Morning Post; delivered a course of lectures in 1808, on poetry and 
 the fine arts, at the Royal Institution ; published the Friend; left the 
 Lakes finally in 18 10 ; took up his abode in London with Basil Montague, 
 the " water-drinking barrister " (son of Lord Sandwich and the murdered 
 Miss Reay) ; went, about i8i6,to stay a week with his friend Mr. Gillman, 
 a surgeon residing at the Grove, Highgate, and remained there for the 
 rest of his life, dying, after a long illness, July 25th, 1834, in the sixty-second 
 year of his age. 
 
 There are some capital lines, as good as if they had proceeded from 
 the beery pen of " Drunken Barnaby," himself, by the late Mortimer 
 Collins, in his clever novel The Marquis and Merchant (vol. iii. p. 206). 
 He speaks of " the capital of Berkshire, " where John Bunyan, in days 
 of persecution, came to preach, disguised as a waggoner, where Coleridge 
 was discovered as a private of cavalry, under the name of Silas Tomkin 
 Comberbatch : 
 
 "At Reading too, when trial was warmest, 
 Bunyan, that sturdy Nonconformist, 
 Whose Pilgrim's Progress is the raptest 
 Of books, came preaching at the Baptist 
 Chapel, in the frock of a waggoner. 
 Time passes : lo, who draws his fiaggon here ? 
 Who, in a tap-room vowed to Bacchus, 
 Lovingly reads Horatius Flaccus ? 
 How came that queer fish to arrive at 
 The level of a cavalry private ? 
 Who shall, in magic irresistible, 
 Hereafter clothe the tale of Christabel; 
 And make his Ancient Mariner's glistening 
 Eye compel the world to listening." 
 
 The romantic incident in the career of Coleridge alluded to in these 
 lines is so well known, and so clearly indicated here as to render any 
 further elucidation superfluous. 
 
 If, in the former half of the present century, the hates were bitter and 
 unreasoning, the loves were strong and the praise exaggerated. Each 
 clique seemed to resolve itself into a society for mutual adulation, and its 
 members sought to outdo each other in the laudation they bestowed. 
 Thus the " Opium Eater," De Quincey, absurdly styles Coleridge " the 
 largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and most comprehensive, 
 that has yet existed among men." W. L. Landor calls this " impiety to 
 Shakespeare," and " treason to Milton ; " but, in an equally absurd spirit of 
 hyperbole, expressed the thought that every one besides, including Bacon, 
 Byron and Scott, is to him as a gun-flint compared to a granite mountain ! # 
 From such an eulogist one may well pray to be spared : 
 
 ' ' 'Tis hard to say, so coarse the daub he lays, 
 Which sullies most, the censure or the praise." 
 
 Lamb loved his early friend to idolatry, and never overgot his death. 
 h What was his mansion," said he, " is converted into a chapel." The 
 
 * Letter to Lady Blessington (Madden's Life of Lady Blessington, ii. 370). 
 
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 185 
 
 tablet to his memory in Highgate church records " that his disposition 
 was unalterably sweet and angelic. He was an ever-enduring, ever- 
 loving friend, the gentlest and kindest teacher, the most engaging home 
 companion." This is proved, to a great extent, by the love which he 
 excited. But he cannot be said to have possessed strength or decision 
 of character ; he may have loved truth, but he failed to attain it ; he was 
 a slave to the use of opium, and sacrificed his social obligations for it ; he 
 broke engagements, and " knew not the sanctity of a pledged word." * 
 J. and T. Wedgwood allowed him ^150 per annum to finish his education 
 in Germany ; Joseph Cottle, of Bristol, was profuse in liberality to him ; 
 Southey kept his wife and children ; he received for many years a pension 
 of ,100 per annum as one of the ten Royal Associates of the Royal 
 Society of Literature ; t and, finally, was indebted to the Gillmans, of 
 Highgate, for a home, and all the comforts of life, from middle life to its 
 close, when he might almost have said, with the younger Scaliger, 
 " Ego ab obitu patris mei semper eleemosynis vixi." 
 
 Coleridge wrote, in his lifetime, an epitaph for himself, which is 
 perhaps worthy of record here, though what is meant by the last two 
 lines, if my life depended upon it, I could not say : 
 
 "Stop, Christian passer-by ; stop, child of God, 
 And read with gentle breath. Beneath this sod 
 A poet lies, or that which once seemed he 
 O, lift a thought in prayer for S. T. C. 
 That he, who many a year with toil of breath 
 Found death in life, may here find life in death ; 
 Mercy for praise to be forgiven for fame 
 He asked and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same." 
 
 XXXIX. GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 
 
 " Here we have the sketcher sketched ; and, as is fit, he is sketched 
 sketching. Here is George Cruikshank, the George Cruikshank 
 seated upon the head of a barrel, catching inspiration from the scenes 
 presented to him in a pot-house, and consigning the ideas of the moment 
 to immortality on the crown of his hat." 
 
 This is all very well ; and George at the time, as he has often con- 
 fessed to myself, felt hugely flattered at being thus early nitched among 
 the " Illustrious " in Regina's " Gallery." But qualms came over him 
 with the progress of time ; and in a letter to a friend he expressed 
 
 * Essays from the Times, 1851, p. 205. 
 
 f "George IV., the vilest wretch in Europe, gave him ,100 a year; enough, in 
 London, to buy three turnips and half an egg, a day. Those men surely were the most 
 dexterous of courtiers, who resolved to show William that his brother was not the 
 vilest, by dashing the half egg and three turnips from the plate of Coleridge. No 
 such action as this is recorded of any administration in the British annals, and I am 
 convinced that there is not a state in Europe, or Asia, in which the paltriest minister 
 of the puniest despot would recommend it." W. S. Landor to Lady Blessington 
 {Life of Lady Blessington, vol. ii. p. 362). Landor's indignant remarks will be hardly 
 thought uncalled for. Coleridge received the annuity during the remainder of the life 
 of George IV. In the first year of the next reign, the payment was stopped without 
 notice, and in the middle of a current quarter. See Preface to Coleridge's Table-Talk. 
 
1 86 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 " horror " at being so depicted, and that a Rechabite such as he, should 
 go down to posterity indebted for support to a beer-barrel, and able to 
 pursue his graphic labours in the obnoxious propinquity of a tankard and 
 a tobacco-pipe ! He had, moreover, other grounds for objecting to the 
 portrait ; and these, as stated in a letter to myself, under date of April 30th, 
 1873, are worthy of being placed on record. "I think it right to tell 
 you," writes he, " that Maclise and I were friends, and that I held him in 
 esteem as a worthy man and a great artist ; but you will please to observe 
 that this sketch was made by him before we became acquainted, and is 
 therefore not only not like me, but represents me doing what I never did 
 in the whole course of my life, that is, making a sketch of any one. All 
 the characters which I have placed before the public are from the brain 
 after studying and observing Nature, and not from any sketches made 
 upon the spot." 
 
 I have read of an ingenious gentleman who succeeded in cramming 
 the Iliad into a nut-shell ; and John Poole, in Peter Priggins, mentions 
 a waiter at the Star Hotel, Oxford, who boasted that he was clever 
 enough to pack a quart of wine in a pint decanter ! But these seem 
 minor feats when compared with the attempt to set forth upon this 
 narrow page a hundredth part of what I think and feel about the genius 
 and character of my old friend, George Cruikshank, or anything like 
 a commensurate summary of his life and works. 
 
 He was born in London, September 27th, 1792, where his father, Isaac 
 Cruikshank, of Scotch descent, was an artist of some eminence ; his carica- 
 tures being equal to those of any of his contemporaries with the exception 
 of Gillray and Rowlandson, his book illustrations showing much of the 
 elegance of the elder Corbould, and his miniature portraits combining 
 grace, fidelity and careful execution. The lad's earliest playthings were 
 the pencil and the etching-point, and there is extant a drawing by him, 
 dated 1799, when he was seven years old. In 1804, he received payment 
 for a child's lottery picture ; and in 1805, made a sketch of Nelson's 
 funeral car, and a caricature etching of the fashions of the day. It was 
 doubtless a fortunate thing for the young caricaturist that the two leading 
 artists in his own especial line had already had their day. Rowlandson 
 was getting on in years, and his art was, to some extent, becoming 
 obsolete. Gillray had fallen into habits of drinking; and when, in 181 1, 
 he finally sunk into mental imbecility, the rising etcher, who must 
 already have gained some reputation, was employed to complete the 
 plates left unfinished by that lurid genius. A year or two later, he was 
 getting into full work ; and just then produced, inter alia, the folding 
 coloured frontispiece, full of life, vigour, and Hogarthian humour, to a 
 work entitled Metropolitan Grievances, and etched for his brother, 
 Robert, the capital " Sparring Match at the Fives Court," which gives a 
 fictitious value to the first volume of Pierce Egan's Boxiana. His work 
 at this time is, more or less, in the manner of his predecessors ; and 
 many a large cartoon, satirizing Buonaparte, the Regent, or some 
 obnoxious bishop, is still preserved in the " cabinets of the curious," and 
 bearing his name, attest his industry and gradual improvement in the 
 branch of art which had fallen to his lot. 
 
 But a circumstance which greatly influenced his career, and made 
 every section of the public acquainted with his name and talents, was his 
 connection with William Hone, so celebrated for his religious parodies, 
 
GEORGE CRU1KSHAN1C 1 87 
 
 and the political prosecutions of which they were made the instruments. 
 It is the fashion to decry* this writer, and speak of his anti-Georgian 
 squibs (1819), as only deriving currency from the designs of the 
 caricaturist. But this is an error ; for Hone was a man of much ability, 
 and possessed a large store of literary and antiquarian information. As 
 the friend of Charles Lamb and " Barry Cornwall," he could hardly be a 
 stupid or worthless person ; and the pamphlets of which I speak the 
 Political House that Jack Built, the Queers Matrimonial Ladder, and, 
 above all, the Political Showman atHoine ! are not only clever in them- 
 selves, but possess now an historical importance, which, together with their 
 illustrations, is raising them every day in value to the collector. In 1827, 
 their author put together as many complete sets as he could ; appended two 
 pamphlets in answer to Rose's bitter attacks upon him in the Quarterly 
 (October, 1821, and August, 1824); added a preface and title-page, on which 
 is a vignette of author and artist seated together at a table, with the epigraph 
 from Burns, " We twa hae paidl't ; " and styled the volume Facetice and 
 Miscellanies. There is nothing more interesting, characteristic, and 
 valuable in the whole cycle of " Cruikshankiana." Buy it when you can ; 
 but see that it contains the often eliminated " toy," in " black and white," 
 called " The Queen's Matrimonial Ladder ; " and the equally rare " Bank 
 Restriction Note, Not to be Imitated," signed by "Jack Ketch," and 
 symbolically adorned with fetter, halter and gibbet. This piece demands 
 more than a passing notice, as its production was always spoken of by 
 George as "the great event of his artistic life ; " and a work upon which, 
 as a successful effort in the cause of humanity, he ever looked back with 
 the liveliest satisfaction. It came about in this way. Happening to pass 
 Newgate on his way to the Royal Exchange, in 18 18, he was struck with 
 the grim spectacle of a row of unfortunates, among whom were two 
 women, dangling from the gallows ; and on inquiry learnt that they had 
 been convicted of passing one-pound forged Bank of England notes. 
 With the terrible sight in his memory, he hurried home, and drew and 
 etched the " Note." Hone happened to come in, and with an eye to 
 business, took possession of the plate. The next thing the careless artist 
 heard of his work, he has often told it me with a laugh, was that the 
 exhibition of the " Note" had caused such an amount of excitement, that 
 the Lord Mayor had had to send the constabulary to clear away the 
 crowd from Hone's window in Ludgate Hill. In fact, the demand was so 
 great that the " Notes " could not be printed fast enough to satisfy it, and 
 George had to sit up all night to etch another plate. Hone cleared 
 nearly a thousand pounds by the sale, at one shilling each ; and the 
 artist, the satisfaction of knowing that no man or woman was ever 
 hanged after this for a similar delinquency. Much has been said of the 
 exiguity of his remuneration for this and similar work, and Maginn says 
 that all that he knew of a "press," in the hands of his employers, was as 
 a " screw." Be this as it may, I imagine that Hone, whose interest it 
 obviously was to keep him content, paid him just as well as others ; and 
 I can testify, from my own conversations with the artist, that he made no 
 complaint. Among the rarer pamphlets of the time is a virulent attack 
 
 * In a contemporary satire of great bitterness, he is described as : 
 " Pimp general to this boasted age of reason, 
 Huckster of lechery, blasphemy and treason." 
 
 Slop's Shave at a Broken Hone, 1820, p. 6. 
 
1 88 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 upon the pamphleteer, entitled Slopes Shave at a Broken Hone (1820, 8vo), 
 in which are the following lines : 
 
 " I grant exceptions sometimes may occur ; 
 
 For instance, such dull boggling slang as you sell, 
 However coarse, attention would not stir, 
 
 Nor barrow-women of their pence bamboozle, 
 Without a wood-cut to explain the sense, 
 And help along its lame incompetence. 
 
 " Therefore the wisest job that ever you did 
 
 (Next to your well-known ' Trial,' and ' Subscription '), 
 
 Was your flash bargain with a wag concluded, 
 To aid your theadbare talent for description , 
 
 For who, in fits at Cruiky's droll designs, 
 
 Can stay to criticize lop-sided rhymes ? 
 
 " Make much of that droll dog, and feed him fat : 
 
 Your gains would fall off sadly in amount, 
 Should he once think your letter-press too flat, 
 
 And take to writing on his own account : 
 Your libels then would sell about as quick, sir, 
 As bare quack labels would without th* elixir." * 
 
 At a later period, Hone paid an affectionate tribute to the friend 
 whose talents had been of such inestimable'service to him. He rejoiced 
 that his "little pieces acquainted every rank of society in the British 
 dominions with the power of the artist, whose genius had been wasted 
 on mere caricature till it embodied his ideas and feelings." He praises 
 the " multiform fertility of the freest pencil that ever drew a line on a 
 block " ; and adds, " his conception of original fancy seems intuitive, 
 and yet his elaboration of a facsimile would glisten the peering eye of a 
 bibliomaniac." t 
 
 Poor Hone, whose admirable Every Day Book, Table-Book, and Year- 
 Book, are still favourites with all, from the scholar to the mechanic, 
 having failed successively as bookseller, publisher and author, came 
 finally to grief as an eating-house keeper, in Gracechurch Street. His 
 troubled career closed in utter poverty on November 6th, 1843, an( i 
 Cruikshank attended his funeral in company with Charles Dickens. On 
 this sad occasion, the warm-hearted artist was so incensed by some 
 disparaging remarks which fell from the Independent minister who 
 conducted the service, on the religious character of the defunct, that he 
 whispered to his companion, in a voice broken by sobs, that, "if it 
 wasn't a clergyman, and if it wasn't a funeral, he'd punch his head ! " 
 
 This, however, is somewhat anticipatory, and I must retrace my 
 steps. But before I leave the subject of Political Caricature, which 
 Cruikshank, early in his career abandoned for more congenial paths of 
 art, I will just notice one volume which perhaps belongs to this depart- 
 ment more strictly than to any other. This is The Life of Napoleon : a 
 Hudibrastic Poem in Fifteen Cantos, by Doctor Syntax (1817, 8vo), a 
 rare and covetable curiosity now, albeit the verse is mere doggerel, and 
 the thirty coloured plates by George Cruikshank are equally coarse in 
 sentiment and execution. It was one of the numerous books suggested 
 by the success of the united labours of Combe and Rowlandson. 
 
 * Page 8. 
 
 t Aspersions Answered, by William Hone, 1824, 8vo, p. 49. 
 
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 189 
 
 It is now as a Caricaturist of Social Life, and an Illustrator 
 OF Books, that I shall speak of the artist. It was just about the same 
 period, 1821, when he was drawing on wood for Hone caricatures of 
 a profligate Prince and an obnoxious Ministry, that an epidemic infatua- 
 tion was caused by the appearance of one of those typical books which 
 are, in the highest degree, significant of the form and pressure of their 
 social epoch. This was the famous Life in London; or the Day and 
 Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq., and his Elegant Friend, 
 Corinthian Tom, accompanied by Bob Logic, the Oxonian, in their 
 Rambles and Sprees through the Metropolis; embellished with thirty- 
 six coloured "scenes from life," designed and etched by I. R. and G. 
 Cruikshank, and many very clever designs on wood by the same artists. 
 The author of the book, which created a perfect furore, was " Fancy's 
 child," the once celebrated Pierce Egan ; * and the story is, as the artist 
 has often related it to myself, that finding that he had misconceived the 
 object of the author, and that the book was rather a guide to, than a 
 dissuasive from, the vicious haunts and amusements of the Metropolis, 
 he soon retired from the firm, in which, from relative age, he figured as 
 junior partner. Certain it is that the greater part of the work was done 
 by the elder brother, the plates throughout, some of which are of great 
 excellence, showing unmistakable traces of his style. The text I will not 
 attempt to criticize ; but, though alluded to by a contemporary writer as 
 " a curious specimen of the most singular and superlative stupidity that 
 the thrice-sodden brains of a hireling scribbler ever yet inflicted on the 
 patience of the public," f merit of some kind must be conceded to it, if 
 only that of exactly hitting the taste of the day. Thus the book attained 
 a popularity only equalled, on grounds to us more obvious, by the works 
 of Dickens, at a later date. It was dramatized by Jerrold, Barrymore, 
 and the Dibdins ; by the author himself for Covent Garden ; and by 
 Moncriefffor the Adelphi, under the management of Yates, where it had 
 a run of three hundred nights. It was pirated and imitated in various 
 forms ; \ balladized ; translated into French ; turned into " a Whimsical 
 and Equestrian Drama" for Davies's Royal Ampitheatre, and a " Mill- 
 Dramatic Burletta " for the Surrey. The " Rambles and Sprees " of Tom 
 and Jerry were depicted on tea-boards, the "laughable phiz of the 
 eccentric Bob Logic " grinned on snuff-box lids, while the actors of the 
 parts, who, notwithstanding the applause they nightly received, became 
 actually tired and worn-out by the repetition of their characters, Mr. 
 Russell and Pierce Egan himself as " Bob Logic," Oxberry and Reeves as 
 "Jerry Hawthorn," and Wrench as "Corinthian Tom" (the prototype of 
 whom was said to be the Marquis of Worcester, afterwards Duke of 
 Beaufort), were handed down to posterity by engravings. 
 
 Ten years later, Pierce Egan published the Finish to his immortal 
 work, a volume of the same size as its predecessor, and illustrated by an 
 equal number of coloured plates, this time all by the elder brother, 
 Isaac Robert. Both volumes have been reprinted ; but I need not say 
 
 * This worthy died August 3rd, 1849, aged 77 years ; and must not be confounded 
 with his son, of the same name, author of The Pilgrims of the Thames in Search of 
 the National, and other novels, who died at Ravensbourne, Kent, July 6th, 1880. 
 
 f Warreniana, by W. T. Deacon. London, 1824, p. 192. 
 
 % Pierce Egan states in the Finish that the notorious Catnach, in less than twelve 
 hours after the publication of the original, produced a pirated edition for street sale 
 for twopence. 
 
i 9 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 that one and the other are, in the original issues, sufficiently rare. More- 
 over, though a more squeamish generation, that hides its head under its 
 wing like a hunted ostrich, may relegate them to an upper shelf, they 
 are well worthy of preservation and remembrance, as a picture of the 
 manners, and a record of the taste and doings, of a by- gone day.* 
 
 One of the numberless imitations of the Life in London, published in 
 the succeeding year (1822) deserves a special mention. This is David 
 Carey's Life in Paris, comprising the Rambles, Sprees a?id Amours of 
 Dick Wildfire of Corinthian celebrity, a?id his Bang-up Companions, 
 Squire Je?ikins, and Captain C Shuffle ton, with the Whimsical Adven- 
 tures of the Halibut Family. This volume contains twenty-one clever 
 coloured plates, all by George Cruikshank, "representing scenes from 
 real life." Hogarth had visited Paris, and described it admirably in four 
 words, which will not bear reproduction ; but his successor had never 
 seen the French capital, and with the intuition of true genius, must have 
 evolved the " real life " from his inner consciousness. 
 
 The next two decades of work must be glanced over in the briefest of 
 summaries. In 1823, appeared the admirable Points of Humour, a. series 
 of etched illustrations of various chosen passages from Smollett, Burns, 
 etc. In 1825-7, the amusing volumes known as Mornings in Bow Street, 
 a selection of the more humorous Police Reports from the Morning 
 Herald, interpreted by a series of most exquisite wood-cuts. In 1826, 
 the artist may be said to have made his first appearance as an author, 
 by the publication of his admirable Illustrations of Phrenology, which he 
 followed up in the next year by the companion series, Illustratio?is of 
 Time, of which both, in simple effective etching, and broad, innocent 
 humour, are equal to anything from his hand. In 1828, he produced 
 the etchings for J. Payne Collier's learned and interesting dissertation 
 on Punch and Judy, and the capital illustrations for Charles Wilson's 
 catalogue of his collection of engravings. In 1830, appeared the Three 
 Courses and a Dessert of Mr. Charles Clarke, an author who has some- 
 how slipped out of knowledge, with its excellent wood-cut designs ; and 
 in 1833, Sunday in London, with its charming vignettes, also on the 
 block. 
 
 In 1 83 1-2, Cruikshank illustrated Fielding, Smollett, and Goldsmith 
 for the Novelist's Library of Thomas Roscoe, in 17 vols., 8vo, for which 
 he executed upwards of forty etchings ; and in 1835-45, the novels of 
 Sir Walter Scott, in 36 vols., which contain thirty-five etchings from his 
 hand. 
 
 It was in 1835 also, that the Comic Almanack made its first appear- 
 ance. This once popular annual, in various forms, and under the 
 successive editorship of Horace Mayhew, Henry Mayhew, and Robert 
 B. Brough, continued to appear year by year, till 1853, with original 
 contributions by Thackeray and other wits, and some of the artist's most 
 spirited and characteristic designs. 
 
 In 1836, was published the Elysium of Animals of the late Egerton 
 Smith, of Liverpool, with one etching by our artist, " The Knacker's 
 
 * Robert, or more properly, Isaac Robert, Cruikshank, an artist highly esteemed 
 in his day, but whose fame has been unjustly absorbed in that of his younger and 
 abler brother, died of bronchitis, March 13th, 1856, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. 
 His old friend, and literary coadjutor in Cumberland's British Theatre, the late 
 George Daniel, of Islington, has left a feeling tribute to his memory in his interesting 
 little volume, Love's last Labour not Lost (Pickering, 1863, i2mo), p. 173. 
 
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 19 1 
 
 Yard, or the Horse's last Home." I mention it here because this 
 admirable plate has been pronounced by a competent authority " scarcely 
 below Rembrandt in force and largeness of style, while it is informed by 
 an earnestness of purpose which the art of Rembrandt never aims at," 
 the critic adding, that, "in this respect, Cruikshank has a close affinity 
 with Bewick." * 
 
 It was also in this same year, that George Cruikshank associated 
 his name for all time with that of Charles Dickens, by his truly 
 inimitable designs for the immortal Sketches by Boz, and in February, 
 1837, in the second number of Bentley's Miscellany, he commenced the 
 illustration of Oliver Twist. In these celebrated designs, which are too 
 familiarly known to need individualization, the artist may be said to 
 have shown an inventive capacity equal to that of the author. He has 
 here manifested his supreme competence to depict the low, squalid, 
 criminal and tragic aspects of that life he knew so well, his instinctive 
 seizure on the most dramatic incidents, and his power of suggesting a 
 complete story by a few isolated and striking scenes. It cannot be 
 denied that " Phiz," the late Hablot Knight Brown, who next took 
 up the needle, proved a coadjutor of extraordinary skill and congeniality 
 of humour ; but all must feel a shade of regret that the association 
 between the greatest humoristic writer and artist that the century has 
 produced, was not more permanent and continuous. Cruikshank illus- 
 trated, in all, fourteen volumes of Bentley's Miscellany ', contributing no 
 fewer than one hundred and twenty-nine plates, to illustrate successively 
 Oliver Twist, Jack Sheppard, Guy Fawkes, the Ingoldsby Legends, 
 Nights at Sea, Stanley Thorn, and various miscellaneous articles. 
 
 In 1841, thinking that he might just as well carry the public for his 
 own benefit as for that of others, he determined to start a vehicle for 
 himself. This he termed The Omnibus; and with the assistance of poor 
 Laman Blanchard as conductor, drove it to the extent of an octavo 
 volume. This he discontinued in 1842, in order to collaborate with 
 Ainsworth in the magazine, just then set on foot, in rivalry with Bentley. 
 Here and elsewhere, in all, he illustrated seven novels for Ainsworth, 
 Rookwood, Jack Sheppard, Guy Fawkes, The Tower of London, The 
 Miser's Daughter, Windsor Castle, and St. James's, or the Court of 
 Queen Anne, making for them, to use his own words, "one hun- 
 dred and FORTY-FOUR of the very best designs and etchings, which 
 he had ever produced." Meantime had appeared his amusing Bachelor's 
 Own Book, being the Progress of Mr. La?nbki?i in the Pursuit of Plea- 
 sure and Amusement, and also in Search of Health and Happiness, 
 having engraved title, and twenty-four humorous plates, with engraved 
 descriptions. 
 
 In 1845, Ainsworth having sold his "Magazine" to the publishers, 
 to the infinite chagrin of the artist, and in violation, as he would imply, 
 of a tacit understanding, Cruikshank attempted once more to gain the 
 favour of the public by a serial of his own, and issued the first number 
 of a still handsomer and more elaborately illustrated magazine, under 
 the title of the Table Book, edited by his friends, Mark Lemon, and 
 Gilbert a Beckett. The etched illustrations in this volume are very 
 admirable, barring a growing puerility of sentiment. The one entitled 
 "Sic Transit" is, however, in the artist's best style, free, vigorous, and 
 
 * Essays on Art, by F. T. Palgrave, p. 181. 
 
192 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 natural ; while the first in the book, " The Triumph of Cupid," gives an 
 excellent portrait of the artist seated in a " reverie " before his fireplace, 
 and smoking a huge pipe, in the fumes from which are developed 
 hundreds of tiny figures, in various conditions of subjection to the mighty 
 son of Venus. This was in George's unregenerate days, while yet a 
 lover of the weed, for he says in his opening paper, that " if his brain is 
 ever illuminated by an electric spark, the bowl of his meerschaum is the 
 place in which it is deposited ; the pipe acting as a conductor, along 
 which flashes of inspiration are conveyed with every whiff, while the 
 smoke curls itself into a variety of objects." This plate is also remark- 
 able for the executive elaboration of its detail, though, in this respect, 
 like that other curiosity of etching, " Passing Events, or the Tail of the 
 Comet of 1853," and certain plates of this period and later, finish and 
 minuteness are perhaps carried further than the style of the artist could 
 bear without deterioration. Another most admirable plate demands 
 some indication before I put the Table Book out of my hands. This is 
 inscribed " The Folly of Crime," and represents, as the centre piece, a 
 murderer, knife in hand, falling into an abyss in pursuit of a bowl of 
 treasure, held aloft by a mocking demon, eluding by his own descent, 
 the frenzied clutch of the madman. Winged fiends exultingly hover 
 above ; and in compartments around, the rewards of crime are strikingly 
 depicted. Of this piece, an able critic remarks, "There seems to me 
 quite as much thought, and art, and moral power about this work, as 
 about any of Hogarth's or Diirer's ; and I am firmly convinced that 
 Cruikshank, when he dies (which may God long avert) and death has 
 given a sacred character to his works, in our national collection of 
 English art (if we ever have one) will be one of our most venerated old 
 masters." * 
 
 With the twelfth number, the Table Book came to a close. The 
 artist considered it to be the first volume of an annual series, and on the 
 last page, announced a successor, to be called Our Own Times, but it 
 never saw the light. 
 
 The same year, 1845, marks the appearance of Maxwell's graphic 
 History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798, with twenty most admirable 
 etchings, the original drawings for which, finished works of art of mar- 
 vellous delicacy and feeling, are now preserved in the Westminster 
 Aquarium. As for the etchings, I do not know that the artist has ever 
 produced anything more remarkable, whether we regard the technical 
 excellence of the work, the wonderful comprehension of Irish character, 
 or the dramatic intensity of the awful scenes depicted. 
 
 Of equal, if not of still greater, excellence in the more serious branches 
 of art, are the elaborately finished etchings to illustrate Brough's Lije 
 of Sir John Falstqf, which bears date 1858, and on the feeling and 
 pathos of which, I regret not to be able to say more. 
 
 Thus George Cruikshank was not a mere comic artist, for he took 
 the whole domain of literature and human life for his subject. After the 
 fashion of him of whom Churchill speaks : 
 
 lt When Humour was thy province, for some crime, 
 Pride struck thee with the frenzy of Sublime," 
 
 Cruikshank, like Liston and Charles Matthews (the elder), who 
 
 * British Artists from Hogarth to Turner, by Walter Thornbury, vol. ii. p. 64. 
 
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 193 
 
 thought their forte was Tragedy considered the Epic, or Historic, his 
 proper domain. In this idea, however, it must be remembered that he is 
 supported by Ruskin, who asserts that his " tragic power, though rarely 
 developed, and warped by caricature, is as great as his grotesque." Hence 
 the wide range of his art ; and we stand amazed at the versatility of the 
 genius which now illustrates a play of Shakespeare, and now the works of 
 "Tim Bobbin;" now Paradise Lost and now John Gilpin j one day 
 makes designs for Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, and another for 
 Bo?nbastes Furioso and Tom Thumb j impartially caricatures Whig and 
 Tory alike ; is just as familiar with the King and the Ministry as with a 
 Jew " fence " or a flying dustman ; and elaborates the careful designs for 
 Pettigrew's treatise on Egyptian Mummies with the same gusto as he 
 hunts up the itinerant showman, and sketches the historic episodes of 
 Punch and Judy / 
 
 I must hold my pen. The mere designation of the landmarks in this 
 artist's long and industrious career demands more than the whole space 
 that I have at my disposal. It was the boast of Rowlandson that he had 
 etched as much copper as would sheathe a first-rate man-of-war. Cruik- 
 shank might not have been able to say this, for his works were on a smaller 
 scale; but his productiveness was something quite amazing, especially 
 when we consider that it was all marked by honesty and earnestness, never 
 bore a trace of " scamping," and was wholly irrespective of fee or reward, 
 the artist taking whatever offered, and doing what he had to do with his 
 whole might, and the utmost simplicity and directness of purpose. Thus 
 one may well believe that his life was, as he once described it to myself, 
 like that of a squirrel in its cage, illustrating by the paddling movement of 
 his hands the rotatory labours of the little animal. Some idea of this 
 may have been gained by the " Cruikshank Exhibition " of more than a 
 thousand etchings, at Exeter Hall, in July, 1863, to which Mr. F. T 
 Palgrave devotes a paper in his Essays on Art^ where this able critic 
 points out our artist's affinity to Bewick, and styles him " decidedly the 
 first illustrative designer of the time." 
 
 I have briefly spoken of Cruikshank as a Political Caricaturist,. 
 an Illustrator of Books, and a Satirist of Social Manners ; but 
 there was yet another department of art in which he was supremely great, 
 the Supernatural. Here he was truly facile princeps, the most 
 graphic explorer of the realms of Fairy-land, the most sagacious ex- 
 pounder of Demonry and Goblindom. It was said by Peter Pindar of 
 Fuseli, that he was the " fittest artist on earth to be appointed hobgoblin 
 draughtsman to the Devil ;" and it may with equal truth be said of George 
 Cruikshank that he was, or deserved to be, sergeant-painter to Queen 
 Mab, Titania, and the entire " Court of Fayrie." I cite in evidence his 
 weird illustrations to Peter Schlemihl in 1824; those for Victor Hugo's 
 Hans of Iceland in 1825 ; the twelve admirable etchings for Sir Walter 
 Scott's Letters on Demo?tology and Witchcraft in 1 830 ; the twenty-two 
 etchings for the German Popular Stories of the Brothers Grimm, of 
 which Hamerton says that "he has not found their equal in comic etching 
 anywhere," and Ruskin, that they are "unrivalled in masterfulness of 
 touch since Rembrandt, and in some qualities of delineation unrivalled 
 even by him ; " his pictures in oil to illustrate Shakespeare's Midsummer 
 Night's Dream; the exquisite etchings to the Pentai7ierone of Giambattista 
 Basile j the Discourse concerning Ghosts (1864), written as well as illus- 
 
194 7 HE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 trated by himself ; and the inimitable Fairy Library, his manner of treat- 
 ing which is noteworthy as having occasioned a controversy and a quarrel 
 between Charles Dickens and himself. 
 
 A few words must be said of Cruikshank's labours in the cause of 
 Temperance. He was an earnest and single-hearted man, throwing 
 himself into whatever cause he embraced with a devotedness which 
 colder blooded mortals are apt to term fanaticism. He was a man of a 
 single eye, and could not serve two masters. Thus his style suffered by the 
 contraction of his ideas and sympathies, his art became associated with 
 the vulgarity which characterizes the movement, old friends were alienated, 
 and remunerative work passed into other hands. In 1848, appeared the 
 celebrated Bottle ; with, shortly after, its sequel, The Drunkard's Children. 
 Here in sixteen Hogarthian plates, with a poetical commentary of merit 
 by Dr. Charles Mackay, is traced the progress of a drunkard and his 
 family from respectability to ruin. In view of the expected largeness of 
 demand, which precluded the use of the copper-plate, recourse was had to 
 the then new process of glyphography, with the result that the effect of 
 the illustrations is flat and lifeless. Nevertheless the thing was a huge 
 success. Many thousands were sold in a few days at a shilling each ; it 
 was pirated in America ; dramatized ; represented at eight London 
 theatres at once ; and it suggested a fine sonnet from the scholarly pen 
 of Matthew Arnold. A volume would be needed to chronicle his labours 
 in the cause. The artist gave himself up, heart and soul, thereto ; and 
 was ever ready with gratuitous help, or what amounted to this, in its 
 promotion. His huge picture, or rather cartoon, in oils, " The Worship 
 of Bacchus," measuring thirteen feet by eight feet, and containing a 
 thousand figures, was commenced when a septuagenarian, and occupied 
 years of labour. The artist, who regarded it as his 7nagnu?n opus, 
 exhibited it before the Queen, and accompanied it on a lecturing tour 
 through the provinces, by which he incurred a heavy pecuniary loss. 
 This picture, painted in 1862, was presented to the National Gallery in 
 1869, by sundry friends of the painter. It has been engraved ; the artist 
 himself outlining the figures, and Mr. H. Mottram completing the work. 
 Whatever may be the shortcomings of this picture in a strictly art point 
 of view, it will remain at once an evidence of the painter's genius, and an 
 exemplification of the evils of that giant vice which is rampant among us, 
 our great national shame of drunkenness, which has probably produced 
 more misery and crime than all other vices put together. George Cruik- 
 shank may have carried his hatred of this vile habit beyond reasonable 
 limits ; but be this as it may, all honour must be given to the great artist, 
 with whom the desire to benefit his kind became the mainspring of action, 
 and who devoted the maturity of his talents to improve and reform the 
 world, that, in his younger days, he was contented to amuse. 
 
 The artist whose career covers three quarters of a century finds at 
 last that he has alike survived his generation, his art, and himself. Thus 
 it was with George Cruikshank, who became an old master during his 
 life-time, and had to make public exhibition of the continuous work of 
 over sixty years, with the professed object of convincing a doubting public 
 ; ' that he was not his own grandfather ! " It is something certainly for a 
 man to 
 
 ' ' Enjoy the honour destined to his name, 
 And live instanter with his future fame ; " 
 
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. I95 
 
 but this kind of thing "butters no parsnips," and it is hard to find that 
 your talent has ceased to " draw," or procure you the means of subsistence, 
 while collectors are giving fabulous prices for early scraps, long since out 
 of your hands, and the very existence of which you have forgotten. 
 Cruikshank had lived and worked before the days of liberal art-remunera- 
 tion ; he had done his work honestly and well ; he had " muddled away 
 his income by paying his debts ; " he had kept a respectable establish- 
 ment ; given and lent freely ; and had sustained heavy losses in enter- 
 prises connected with his profession. A new generation had come on 
 which knew not George, or, knowing him, regarded him as already 
 belonging to the past. His income had never been very large ; and in 
 1875, he assured a friend that for the last ten years he had not made a 
 shilling by his art. Moreover he was a crochety man ; somewhat 
 impracticable in business ; and was apt to offend, or take offence at, his 
 best friends. Thus, when pressed by the late Mark Lemon to draw on 
 his own terms for Punch, that admirable print which must have given 
 John Leech, during his twenty-three years' connection with it, upwards of 
 ^40,000, he definitely refused to have anything to do with it, on account 
 of what he termed its " personalities," and, in fact, never made a single 
 design for it. Hence we may find some explanation for the circumstance, 
 which at first may seem strange, that an artist of such amazing energy of 
 productiveness, whose name was a household word in our homes, and 
 whose work would seem to have given popularity and value to anything 
 with which it was associated, failed to accumulate wealth for himself as 
 well as for others. " He has been obliged to sell his wit for bread, week 
 by week," says Thackeray, in that generous article in the Westminster 
 Review (1840), which did so much to quicken the public appreciation of 
 the higher qualities of the artist, and on the composition of which the writer 
 ever looked back with such peculiar gratification, " to wring laughter, day 
 by day, sometimes, perhaps, out of want, often certainly from ill-health or 
 depression, to keep the fire of his brain perpetually alight, for the greedy 
 public will give it no leisure to cool." It is something, however, to 
 remember that his honourable poverty was, in some measure, alleviated 
 by a pension of ^100 from the Civil List, since, by the direction of the 
 Earl of Beaconsfield, continued to his respected widow, and that he also 
 enjoyed a pension of ^50 from the Royal Academy's "Turner" Annuities. 
 Thackeray had asked if there was no way in which the country could 
 acknowledge "the long services and brave career of such a bene- 
 factor;" and in 1866, it was sought to give practical answer to this 
 question by the collection of a " Subscription Testimonial," by way of 
 viaticum for the evening journey of the pilgrim whose day-march had 
 been so nobly and independently accomplished. A committee was 
 formed, under the presidency of John Ruskin, composed of several 
 hundred men of eminence in art and literature, all anxious to promote 
 the object proposed. The labours of this body were brought to a close 
 with, I regret to chronicle, an altogether inadequate result. Whether 
 the artist, who had long become, in the best sense of the word, an old 
 master, had outlived his art and his generation ; whether his self- 
 sacrificing labours in the cause of temperance had interfered with his 
 reputation and productiveness as an artist, and caused him to be regarded 
 rather as a philanthropist, to be rewarded in inverse proportion to 
 ihe benefits he confers, I know not ; in either case, the testimonial 
 
196 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 amounted to a few paltry hundreds only, a sum of little use to a mar* 
 who had sacrificed so much money, time, and labour, in the cause of 
 humanity. Thackeray began and ended his essay in the Westminster 
 with a charge of ingratitude. Its iteration here seems hardly misplaced j 
 but it is to be hoped that George Cruikshank, if ever so lightly stung 
 by the thanklessness of his age, found consolation in the retrospect of his 
 illustrious and useful career ; the high estimation in which his character 
 was held by his contemporaries ; and his certain acceptation by posterity 
 as the skilfullest etcher after Rembrandt, and the greatest master of 
 moral satire in art since the days of Hogarth. 
 
 Yet another dozen years, and the artist approached the conclusion of 
 his ninth decade. In 1875, he produced two illustrations for a volume 
 published by Simpkins, entitled Peeps at Life by the London Hermit j and 
 in the same year was published by Chatto and Windus, Mrs. Octavian 
 Blewitt's story, The Rose and Lily, how they became the Emblems of 
 England and France, a fairy tale, with an impressively suggestive 
 frontispiece. " Designed and etched by George Cruikshank, age 83 
 1875." This was probably the last book illustrated by his hand ; as a 
 letter in the Times of December 6th, 1877, concerning the statue of Bruce 
 for the battlefield of Bannockburn, of which he claimed to be the rightful 
 designer, was his last appearance before the public. Retaining even in 
 this advanced age much of the exuberant vitality, the sprightliness of 
 fancy, the warmth of heart, and the cheerfulness of disposition which 
 had characterized him through life, he seemed to realize Sir Walter Scott's 
 beautiful description of King Rend : 
 
 " A mirthful man he was ; the snows of age 
 Fell, but they did not chill him. Gaiety, 
 Even in life's closing, touched his teeming brain 
 With such wild visions as the setting sun 
 Raises in front of some hoar glacier, 
 Painting the bleak ice with a thousand hues. " 
 
 But, alas ! though Art is immortal, the Artist dies, 
 
 nee pietas moram 
 
 Rugis, et instanti senectas 
 Afferet, indomitaeque morti." 
 
 Early in 1878, George Cruikshank was attacked by bronchitis, 
 the same madady which just at the same period carried off two honoured 
 veterans in literature, Professor Creasy and Doctor Doran. He made 
 successful battle against the disease, and hopes were entertained of his final 
 recovery. But this was not to be ; and on February 1st, 1878, a universal 
 feeling of sorrow was occasioned by the intelligence that the great master 
 who had lived in the reigns of four English monarchs, and delighted by 
 his art as many successive generations of men, had passed away from 
 among us. In compliance with a generally expressed public wish, the 
 Dean of St. Paul's gave his consent for the final deposition of the remains 
 of the artist in the Crypt of the Cathedral. 
 
 George Cruikshank may be considered as the last of a quaternion of 
 great typical masters of Pictorial Satire, the order of whose succession is 
 indicated by the names of William Hogarth, James Gillray, Thomas 
 Rowlandson, and himself. These men, with the individuality of true 
 genius, moved in separate orbits, with such infrequent tangentiation that 
 
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 197 
 
 the suggested comparison is impracticable and nugatory. Confining my- 
 self, then, to the subject of these remarks, it is sufficient to say, that, while 
 he may be pronounced inferior to each of the artists I have named in one 
 or more points, he yet reached the highest eminence in certain peculiar 
 walks of his own. In the depiction of low, vicious, and vulgar life, in 
 the ludicrous, the quaint, the weird, the pathetic, and the terrible, he was 
 unsurpassed. No one has touched with a nicer humour the manners of 
 liis day, and the frivolities and affectations of fashionable life ; no one so 
 felicitously illustrated the mysteries of folk-lore and popular superstition. 
 Like Hogarth, he possessed a supreme faculty of graphic narration, and 
 an unerring tact in the seizure of dramatic incident. Not that it is to be 
 inferred that he is a perfect artist, that his genius had no limitations, or 
 that he was entirely free from mannerism and puerility. He had no eye 
 for aesthetic beauty ; and was at sea when he attempted to delineate the 
 refinement of a gentleman, the elegance of a lady, or the simplicity of a 
 child. " He cannot hit," said Blackwood, " the quiet arrogance of the 
 only true aristocracy in the world." The habitual license of the carica- 
 turist, no less than the absence of early training, is evidenced in the 
 conventionality of his forms, and the frequent incorrectness of his drawing. 
 But he possessed a rare talent of preserving to every figure an individuality 
 of its own, of fixing evanescent motion, and crowding his design with life 
 and action without confusion. As an Etcher, if he cannot with justice 
 be said to possess supreme mastery over all the technical resources of the 
 needle, he is broad, simple, honest, and effective ; uses no superfluous 
 means ; pervades his work with colour ; and exhibits a command of light 
 and shade only inferior to that of Rembrandt. In this branch of art, he 
 was contented to follow the traditions of his immediate predecessors, as 
 received by them from Hogarth and Mortimer, in contradistinction to the 
 French school, which, inaugurated by Tony Johannot, has effected a so- 
 called " revival " among ourselves ; and which, aiming at effect, atmosphere, 
 and chiaroscuro, is often slovenly in technics, deficient in simple fidelity 
 of form, and " tricky " in execution. 
 
 Looking upon the life-work of Cruikshank as a humouristic artist, we 
 are forced to recognize that by his example and influence he emancipated 
 Comic Art from the grossness and brutality with which, till his day, it had 
 been associated ; that he raised it to a higher point than it had before 
 attained ; and that he did much to gain for it the position which it ought 
 to occupy. He never transgressed the narrow line that separates wit from 
 buffoonery, pandered to sensuality, glorified vice, or raised a laugh at the 
 expense of decency. Satire never, in his hands, degenerated into savagery 
 or scurrility. A moral purpose ever underlaid his humour ; he sought to 
 instruct or improve when he amused. "He has told us," finely says 
 Thackeray, " a thousand new truths in as many strange and fascinating 
 ways ; he has given a thousand new and pleasant thoughts to millions of 
 people ; he has never used his wit dishonestly ; he has never, in all the 
 exuberance of his frolicsome nature, caused a single painful or guilty 
 blush. How little do we think of his extraordinary power, and how 
 ungrateful we are to him ! " 
 
 As a man, few have evoked so large an amount of love and esteem 
 from their contemporaries ; as an artist, perhaps no one has been at 
 once so favoured by the public, and received such commendation from 
 those who assume the function of judgment in matters of taste. Simple, 
 
198 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 intelligible, and popular, in all that he did, he had gained an impregnable 
 lodgment in the hearts of the people, a generation before his merits as an 
 artist had been recognized by the critics. His talents and his energy 
 might have gained him success in any of the ordinary branches of art ; 
 but he instinctively took a domain or walk of his own, and made it and 
 himself famous. His genius was strictly autochthonic ; he was a man 
 sui generis j belonged to no School or Academy ; held no diploma or 
 titular distinction ; had neither rival nor imitator ; studied under no 
 master ; had no disciple ; and left no successor. " None but himself can 
 be his parallel." The Men and Women who figure in this "Gallery" 
 which I am attempting to illustrate, are no ordinary mortals, run by a 
 prentice hand into one common mould by the gross, "for Human Nature's 
 daily food," but, nevertheless, to the one singular character which has 
 formed the subject of the foregoing memoir, I cannot help thinking is 
 supremely applicable the predicate so neatly formulated by Ariosto : 
 
 " Natura il fece, e poi ruppa la stampa." * 
 
 XL. DOCTOR MOIR. 
 
 As there is an M, in Monmouth and in Macedon, so there is a A in Egypt 
 and in Edinburgh, at least, if by this latter is understood the magazine 
 of old Ebony, whose pages for thirty long years and more, from the 
 period when a lad of 19 he committed his first verses to the press, 
 
 " Delta, triangular bard," 
 
 as some one styles him, continued to enrich with a supply of poetical 
 contributions, the last, " The Lament of Selim/ ; leaving his hand little 
 more than a fortnight before his death. 
 
 This eminent physician, poet, and critic was born January, 1798, at 
 that ancient borough whose antiquity in the past, and proud continuance 
 in the future, is announced in the prophetic quatrain : 
 
 " Musselburgh it was a burgh 
 When Edinburgh was nane, 
 And Musselburgh will be a burgh 
 When Edinburgh is gane." 
 
 The long series of poems which he contributed to Blackwood is 
 uniformly distinguished by command of language, piety of tone, delicacy 
 of fancy, and purity of thought. " Delta," says Professor Wilson, " has 
 produced many original pieces, which will possess a permanent place in 
 the poetry of Scotland." Jeffrey wrote to him, thanking him for the 
 gratification which he had received from his poems, and ascribing to 
 them " more genuine pathos than anything almost that he had ever read 
 in verse" ; and Dr. Butler, the Bishop of Lichfield, singled out his lines 
 on Mount St. Bernard, as worthy of a Latin version, which forms one of 
 the happiest pieces in the Arimdines Camz. 
 
 * Or I. Fur. cant. x. st. 84. 
 
AUTKOK. F LIFE JS> MAN SEE WAIT C IT? 
 
MISS LANDON. 199 
 
 It was also in Blackwood that was commenced one of the most 
 felicitous pieces of Scotch humour that has ever appeared, the " Life of 
 Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith/' This admirable imaginary biography 
 was subsequently completed, dedicated to Gait, " by his sincere friend and 
 admirer," and issued by Blackwood in 1828. In the depiction of Scottish 
 character in the humbler walks of life, in quiet, refined humour, in 
 simple pathos, I know nothing superior to it, and rank it with The 
 Cottagers of Glenburnie of Miss Hamilton, the Castle Rackrent of Miss 
 Edgeworth, and the Cranford of our own Mrs. Gaskell. Regarding this 
 as an original creation, I consider that it alone is sufficient to obtain for 
 its author a high place among those authors who, like Scott and Gait, 
 have used fiction as a vehicle for the delineation of national character ; 
 while it is, as Maginn truly observes, " admirably descriptive of a class of 
 persons fast wearing out even in that land of originals, Scotland, as well 
 as of manners that are no longer common." 
 
 The position of Dr. Moir as a critic depends upon his Sketches of the 
 Poetical Literature of the Past Halfce?itury (Blackwood, 8vo, 1851). 
 This is a reprint of six lectures, originally delivered at the Edinburgh 
 Philosophical Association, in the session of 1 850-1. A notice of it forms 
 the subject of an essay in Gilfillan's Literary Portraits, where its merits 
 and demerits are fairly pointed out. His definition of poetry, " Objects 
 or subjects seen through the mirror of imagination, and descanted on in 
 harmonious language," he admits to be imperfect. So is that of Aristotle, 
 Dr. Johnson, and Leigh Hunt ; and we still await a satisfactory explana- 
 tion. The book, however, is genial, eloquent, and enthusiastic ; but 
 erroneous in classification, and mistaken as to the fate of poetry and its 
 necessary declension, in an era of science and discovery. 
 
 Dr. Moir also edited the poems of Mrs. Hemans, the greatest female 
 poet that this country has yet produced ; wrote a Life of John Gait; and 
 was author of Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine, being a View 
 of the Progress of the Healing Art among the Egyptians, Greek, Romans, 
 and Arabians (1831), a work of great erudition and research. 
 
 In private life, the subject of this brief notice was greatly and 
 deservedly beloved. " The world," says Fraser, "has but the moiety of a 
 notion of a little part of his worth, when it thinks that his poetry com- 
 prehends all the merit which entitle him to the praise and goodwill of our 
 courteous readers." 
 
 It was when visiting his old and valued friend Thomas Aird that he 
 was attacked with peritonitis. Dr. Christison, of Edinburgh, was called 
 in ; but he grew worse, and died on the Sunday morning, three days after 
 his attack, July 6th, 185 1, aged 53. On the nth of July he was buried at 
 Musselburgh, where he had so long practised, and was interred near to 
 that fondly loved boy whose early fate he had sung in his well-known 
 " Casa Wappy," a poem hardly less true and pathetic than Cowper's lines 
 " On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture." 
 
 His poetical works have been collected and published by his friend 
 Thomas Aird, himself a poet of rare poetical genius, who has prefaced 
 the volumes with a Life, which in power of language and generosity of 
 feeling may be pronounced a model of appreciative biography. 
 
20O THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 XLI. MISS LANDON 
 
 ' LADY ! for thee a holier key shall harmonize the chord 
 In Heaven's defence, Omnipotence drew an avenging sword ; 
 But when the bolt had crush'd revolt, one angel, fair though frail, 
 Retain'd his lute, fond attribute ! to charm that gloomy vale. 
 The lyre he kept, his wild hand swept ; the music he'd awaken 
 Would sweetly thrill from the lonely hill where he sat apart forsaken ? 
 There he'd lament his banishment, his thoughts to grief abandon, 
 And weep his full ; 'twas pitiful to see him weep, fair Landon. 
 
 " He wept his fault ! Hell's gloomy vault grew vocal with his song ; 
 But all throughout, derision's shout burst from the guilty throng : 
 God pitying view'd his fortitude in that unhallow'd den ; 
 Freed him from hell, but bade him dwell amid the sons of men. 
 Lady, for us, an exile thus, immortal Poesy 
 Came upon earth and lutes gave birth to sweetest minstrelsy ; 
 And poets wrought their spell-words, taught by that angelic mind, 
 And music lent soft blandishment to fascinate mankind. 
 
 " Religion rose ! men sought repose in the shadow of her wings ; 
 Music for her walk'd harbinger, and Genius touch'd the strings : 
 Tears from the tree of Araby cast on her altar burn'd, 
 But earth and wave most fragrance gave where Poetry sojourn'd. 
 Vainly, with hate inveterate, hell labour'd in its rage, 
 To persecute that angel's lute, and cross his pilgrimage ; 
 Unmoved and calm, his songs pour'd balm on sorrow all the while : 
 Vice he unmask'd, but virtue bask'd in the radiance of his smile. 
 
 " Oh ! where, among the fair and young, or in what kingly court, 
 In what gay path, where Pleasure hath her favourite resort, 
 Where hast thou gone, angelic one ? Back to thy native skies ? 
 Or dost thou dwell in cloister'd cell, in pensive hermit's guise? 
 Methinks I ken a denizen of this our island nay, 
 Leave me to guess, fair poetess ! queen of the matchless lay ! 
 The thrilling line, lady ! is thine ; the spirit pure and free ; 
 And England views that angel muse, Landon ! reveal'd in thee ! " 
 
 These fine lines, addressed to L. E. L., as the " Angel of Poetry," are 
 a paraphrastic translation by " Father Prout," of that exquisite poem, 
 
 "Je veux pour vous prendre un ton moins frivole," 
 
 one of the noblest and highest-wrought amid the songs of B Granger, and 
 may seem a not inappropriate introduction to my few remarks upon this, 
 the brightest, best-loved, earliest-lost, of the daughters of Song. 
 
 But first a word about the portrait before us, the "funnily drawn 
 plate of Miss Landon," as Rossetti terms it. It may, by the uninitiated 
 in matters of art, be, at first sight, thought somewhat stiff and artificial ; 
 but Mr. Rossetti would cite it as an instance where the artist " allowed 
 himself to render character by playful exaggeration of the most obvious 
 kind " ; and poi.n* " out that " the kitten-like mignonnerie required is 
 attained by an amusing excess of daintiness in the proportions, with the 
 duly charming result nevertheless." There is, also by Maclise, a charming 
 stipple portrait, engraved by J. Thomson, as vignette title to the Drawing- 
 Room Scrap-Book, for 1840, the editorship of which was then assumed by 
 
, P o , 
 
 X/. 4 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ROMANCE AND REALITY. 
 
MISS LAND ON. 201 
 
 Mary Howitt. The three-line epigraph has a mournful note of pre- 
 vision : 
 
 " Alas ! hope is not prophecy, we dream, 
 But rarely does the glad fulfilment come, 
 We leave our land and we return no more." 
 
 Laman Blanchard, who wrote her Life and edited her Remains 
 (Colburn, 1841, 8vo), wrote a baker's dozen of quaint, clever quatrains, 
 " On first seeing the Portrait of L. E. L." After exhausting the possible 
 significance of the familiar trinity of initials, he concludes : 
 
 "Now fancy's dead ; no thought can strike, 
 No guess, solution, stricture ; 
 And L. E. L. is simply like 
 This dainty little picture. 
 
 " Life to her Lays ! However Fame 
 
 'Mongst brightest names may set hers, 
 These three initials nameless name 
 Shall never be dead letters / " 
 
 Poor L. E. L. ! Many of us may yet remember the shock of grief, 
 the vague terror, the dark surmise, that succeeded the news of her early 
 fate, and the pity for one, of nature so tender, so refined, and so suscep- 
 tible, who had thus early perished among strangers, in an unfamiliar 
 home, and on a savage coast. But I anticipate. 
 
 Letitia Elizabeth Landon was born at Hans Place, Chelsea, 
 August 14th, 1802. I shall not dwell upon her early life, of which it is sup- 
 posed that she has given the history in the last tale in her Traits a?id 
 Trials of Early Life (1837). She had plenty of anxiety and trouble, we 
 know. She was thrown an orphan upon the world ; deprived of the patri- 
 mony that should have been hers, and neglected by the family that should 
 have educated and provided for her. But she pushed bravely on, and 
 found friends. Jerdan had sight of the earliest fruits of her muse, and en- 
 couraged them with his approbation (1822). To the Literary Gazette she 
 was a very copious contributor for years, and the friendship of its genial 
 conductor did much to stimulate her efforts, and gain for her acceptance 
 with the public. Her earliest substantive work was published by Warren, 
 of Bond Street, and is now quite forgotten. It is entitled The Fate of 
 Adelaide, a Swiss Tale of Romance, and other Poems. Then followed her 
 other works ; first, The Improvisatrice and other Poems, in 1824, and in 
 due succession, The Troubadour, The Golden Violet, The Venetian Bracelet, 
 and The Vow of the Peacock, all poems. These are full of elegant fancy 
 and tender feeling ; conventional rather than natural ; wanting in indi- 
 viduality of character, and deficient in the concentration of thought and 
 evidence of culture which characterize the higher orders of poetry. Many 
 of these defects are probably due to early education and impulsiveness of 
 character ; and there is evidence that she was endeavouring, at the time 
 of her death, to increase and systematize her knowledge, and refine her 
 taste. In prose fiction, I only call to mind, at the present moment, her 
 novels Romance and Reality, Francesca Carrara, and Ethel Churchill. 
 Like her poems, these are marked by brilliant beauties and striking defects. 
 In the two latter, which exhibit a marked improvement, the fair authoress 
 has shown, under the characters of " Guido " and "Walter Maynard," her 
 admiration of genius, and the view which she took of its probable fate ; 
 
202 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 under those of " Francesca " and " Ethel," the sufferings which fall to the 
 lot of high-minded and sensitive women. 
 
 Of the Drawing-Room Scrap-Book, which was edited by L. E. L., 
 from its commencement in 1832 to 1839, an d in which she was wont to 
 say that some of her best poetry had appeared, I have already spoken. 
 Another set of volumes of miniature size, bear on their title-pages the 
 same well-known initials, and deserve special mention, as veritable 
 curiosities of bibliography. I allude to the Bijou Almanachs, the pro- 
 prietor of which was a personage well known to the London press, 
 \. Schloss, sometime secretary to Staudigl, the singer, and afterwards 
 employed in the office of Dickens's Household Words. The issue of 
 1837 was dedicated to Queen Adelaide. It was richly bound in gilt 
 vellum ; illustrated with miniature portraits of Malibran, Pastor and 
 others, with fairy-like leaves of music ; was enclosed in a case of purple 
 velvet ; and actually supplied with a magnifying glass to enable the reader 
 to master its contents ! It was in the issue of 1839 tnat tne editress bade 
 farewell to England. 
 
 Latet anguis in herbd. If the childhood of L. E. L. was not devoid of 
 care, a dark cloud hangs over her womanhood, which I shall hardly feel 
 inclined here to dispel or penetrate. Rumour was busy with her name,, 
 and slander whispered dark suspicions as to her maiden purity. Mrs. 
 Thomson, in her Recollections of Literary Characters, speaks of " one 
 false step " ; Laman Blanchard, in his Life and Remains of L. E. L.> 
 vaguely hints at a mystery ; Madden, in his Life of Lady Blessington, 
 does the same ; and Grantley Berkeley, in his Life and Reminiscences \ 
 offers (vol. iii. p. 185) "The true story of L. E. L.," but does not 
 conclusively solve the enigma. According to the latter authority, on 
 which I do not place much reliance, the fair poetess appealed to him 
 to protect her from the persecutions of Dr. Maginn, who was making use 
 of the critical power which he wielded, to compass her "personal 
 seduction." Acting upon the advice of her chosen champion, Miss 
 Landon excluded the" Doctor" from her house. The latter learnt the 
 cause of the novel treatment, and revenged himself, by his truculent and 
 scurrilous review of Berkeley Castle, upon its supposed cause. Hinc 
 HI03 lacrymce, Fraser's flogging, Maginn's duel, the action-at-law, and 
 the final kicks at the dead lion in the Reminiscences of the honourable 
 author. Other stories are afloat, and other names have been mentioned. 
 A letter from Lady Blessington (January 29th, 1839) speaks of two 
 editors, both married men, as by public report, Miss Landon's lovers. 
 Mrs. S. C. Hall, while defending her purity, conflictingly acknowledges 
 that her conduct with Maginn was " extremely imprudent" ; and admits 
 that she engaged in a correspondence with him that excited the jealousy 
 of his wife ; while Berkeley styles one of her alleged paramours " a hoary 
 ruffian," and openly calls Maginn her " murderer." S. C. Hall and no 
 one was more competent to judge speaks of the "misconception which 
 embittered her whole life, which made Fame a mockery, and Glory a 
 deceit " ; and, attributing it, in the main, to the " large secretiveness 
 which was her bane," says that " a slander more utterly groundless was 
 never propagated." Bulwer, in a noble vindicatory letter* to Laman 
 Blanchard, alludes to the " calumny," to which, he says, he would never 
 
 * See "Memoir of Laman Blanchard," prefixed to his Poetical Works (London, 
 1876), p. 56. 
 
MISS LANDON. 20$ 
 
 listen ; and exclaims, " even if partially true, what excuses ! Friendless, 
 alone, with that lively fancy, no mother, no guide, no protector. Who 
 could be more exposed ? Who should be more pitied ? " But I have 
 said enough, and leave the matter for the further investigation of the 
 curious reader, in aid of which I have given the foregoing indications. 
 Certain it is that Maginn was deeply attached to Miss Landon ; his 
 feeling for the fair poetess constituting, according to his biographer,. 
 Kenealy, " one of the most remarkable features of his life." He is said 
 to have contributed at least a fourth of the poetry in the Drawing-Roo?n 
 Scrap-Book^ when it was under her guidance ; he was disconsolate at her 
 death, and almost lost his senses for two days ; and he fancied that he 
 saw, and conversed with, her attendant spirit, in the last hours of his 
 life. 
 
 About 1826, the time approached for the marriage of L. E. L. to a 
 gentleman who had long been her literary adviser and firm friend ; and 
 it was thought right that the reports which affected her fair fame should 
 be traced, if possible, to their source. This was done ; and I believe 
 that it was satisfactorily shown to all parties that they were destitute of 
 foundation. The name of the gentleman in question has been hitherto 
 withheld ; but I see no cause for reticence now, and believe that I am 
 correct in stating that it was the late John Forster, the biographer of 
 Dickens, who was to have been honoured with the hand of the poetess. 
 His behaviour throughout was of the most honourable character, and he 
 was perfectly willing to carry out the engagement. But the lady deter- 
 mined to break it off; the mental worry and pain brought a severe illness 
 upon her ; and a few months after her recovery, to the astonishment of 
 all her friends, she accepted a proposition of matrimony from Mr. George 
 Maclean, Governor of Cape Coast Settlement, in West Africa. She was 
 married June 7th, 1838, by her brother, the Rev. Whittington Landon, 
 and " given away " by her staunch friend and admirer Sir Edward Lytton^ 
 Bulwer ; sailed from Portsmouth July 5th ; landed at the Cape August 
 1 6th, after a prosperous voyage, during which her pen was not idle ; and 
 was at once installed as the responsible mistress of Cape Coast Castle. 
 
 Two short months of apparent peace and contentment passed away 
 in her new home, to the duties and habits of which she seemed to be 
 growing accustomed, when on October 15th, 1838, she was found dead 
 on the floor of her bedroom, with an empty bottle in her hand, labelled 
 " Acid. Hydrocyanicum Dilutum Pharm. Lond. 1836," that terrible agent 
 which Shelley termed the " golden key to the chamber of perpetual rest," 
 and which he said it was a comfort always to have about one. An 
 inquest took place, on which her husband deposed that she was subject 
 to spasms and hysterical affections, and had been in the habit of using 
 the medicine as a remedy, as prescribed by her former medical attendant 
 in London. Mr. Cobbold, her then medical adviser, gave his opinion 
 that death had been caused by an improper use of the medicine ; and 
 the jury returned the verdict that it was the result " of her having in- 
 cautiously taken an overdose of prussic acid, which from evidence, it 
 appeared she was in the habit of taking as a remedy for spasmodic 
 affections to which she was subject." With the opinion thus expressed' 
 we must be content, though doubt and dissatisfaction prevailed at the 
 time. The husband, whose reluctance to fulfil his matrimonial engage- 
 ment, had been subject of public comment, fell under grave suspicion ;: 
 
204 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 and dark hints were rife of a treacherous page, a poisoned cup of coffee, 
 and a native mistress. A rigid inquiry into all the circumstances of the 
 fearful tragedy was made by Dr. Madden, who visited Cape Coast a few 
 months after its occurrence, and resulted in the conviction that the 
 unfortunate lady had actually died of an overdose of prussic acid, 
 administered by herself ; but whether accidentally or designedly, there was 
 no further evidence to show. Here, however, it is right to mention, as 
 militating against the conclusion involved in the latter supposition, that 
 two letters are extant, the one written probably on the evening before 
 her decease, and the other on the fatal morning. The latter was pro- 
 duced by Mr. Maclean at the inquest, as affording evidence of the happy 
 and contented state of the writer's mind ; and the former, which was on 
 its way to England, is not less cheerful in tone. Both are addressed to 
 Mrs. S. C. Hall, one of the earliest and most esteemed of her friends ; 
 were published by that lady in the Times; and thence transferred to the 
 Gentleman's Magazine for February, 1839, P* I 5- Other important 
 evidence in the elucidation of the mystery is not wanting. Bulwer, in 
 the letter to Blanchard which I have already cited, writes, " I conclude 
 from your letter that the persecutors were not contented with exile, and 
 that their malice found her in Africa." Shortly after the news of the 
 sad occurrence, the suspicious death became the subject of conversation 
 at the table of Dr. Anthony Todd Thomson the eminent physician. " I 
 knew her well," said he, " and attended her from her infancy ; she was 
 the last woman whom J. should have supposed likely to destroy herself. 
 She was said to have died from prussic acid. Now I fitted out the 
 medicine chest she took with her to Cape Coast Castle, and know that 
 there was no prussic acid in her possession. I am convinced that she 
 did not die from its effects, and we must seek for her death from some 
 other cause." * 
 
 I must conclude. As Lord Byron was wont to date the later events 
 of his life from u his funeral with Miss Milbanke,'' so the "baked meats" 
 of poor L. E. L/s marriage might have furnished forth her burial break- 
 fast. It has been remarked that the features of Charles Stuart bore an 
 expression of sadness prophetic of .his doom ; and in like manner, a 
 peculiar and marked characteristic of Miss Landon's writings is the 
 pervading feeling of blight, disappointment, and misery, and the prevision 
 of untimely and solitary death : 
 
 ' ' Sad were my shades ; methinks they had 
 Almost a tone of prophecy 
 I ever had from earliest youth, 
 A feeling what my fate would be." f 
 
 " Whether," writes the late William Howitt, " the melancholy belief 
 -in the tendency of the great subject of her writings, both in prose and 
 poetry ; this irresistible annunciation, like another Cassandra, of woe and 
 desolation ; this evolution of scenes and characters in her last work, 
 bearing such dark resemblance to those of her own after-experience ; this 
 tendency in all her plots to a tragic catastrophe, and this final tragedy 
 itself, whether these be all mere coincidences, or not, they are still but 
 
 * Autobiographical Reminiscences of the Medical Profession, by J. F. Clarke, 1874, 
 ,8vo, page 308. 
 
 f The Improvisatrice, p. 3. 
 
MISS HARRIET MAR TINE A U. 205 : 
 
 the parts of an unsolved mystery. If they be, they are more than 
 strange, and ought to make us superstitious. But surely, if ever 
 
 'Coming events cast their shadow before,' 
 
 they did so in the foreboding tone of this gifted spirit." 
 
 Still, after all, this kind of thing may be but the natural reaction of a 
 gay and joyous temperament, delighting in contrast, just as Thomson^ 
 who used to lie in bed all day because there was nothing worth getting up 
 for, was eloquent in praise of early rising. But this peculiarity is, never- 
 theless, curious as a coincidence ; as also is the frequent mention of 
 prussic acid in connection with one of her characters " Lady March- 
 mont/ 5 in Ethel Churchill. 
 
 As I began with verse, so do I round off with some fine stanzas, hy 
 Charles Swain, to the memory of L. E. L., in the Friendships Offering- 
 shortly after her death : 
 
 " Still mourns Erinna ever by that coast, 
 
 Whose dismal winds shriek to each weeping cloud ; 
 Whose waves sweep solemn as a funeral host, 
 
 Still mourns the Loves' own Minstrel, in her shroud ; 
 The Sappho of that Isle, in genius proud ; 
 
 The Improvvisatrice of our land ; 
 The daughter of our soil our fame-endow'd ! 
 
 For her Erinna seeks the fatal strand, 
 And lifts to distant shores her woe-prophetic hand ! 
 
 "The blighted one ! the breast, whose sister-tear 
 
 Sprang to each touch of feeling heaves no more ! 
 Our Landon, silent on her funeral bier, 
 
 Far from our hearth, sleeps on a foreign shore. 
 The voice of her, the song-inspired, is o'er. 
 
 Oh ! she who wept for others, found no tone 
 To soothe the many parting griefs she bore ; 
 
 Nor had a tear for that sweet spirit lone, 
 All sorrows found a balm save that fair minstrel's one ! 
 
 " Thou, who receivedst her rose-encircled head, 
 
 Our Minstrel, in the bloom of her young fame, 
 Give back our lost and loved ! Restore our dead 1 
 
 Return once more her first and dearest name 1 
 We claim her ashes ! 'tis a nation's claim ! 
 
 Her, in her wealth of mind, to thee we gave ; 
 Yet plead we for the dust of that dear frame ; 
 
 Oh, bear our world-lamented o'er the wave ! 
 Let England hold at last, 'tis all she asks her grave ! " 1840. 
 
 The plea was never answered ; and L. E. L. sleeps on in the barren 
 sands of Africa, where " the mournful music of the billows, to which she 
 listened in her solitary sea-girt dwelling, is now the dirge that resounds 
 o'er her distant grave." 
 
206 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 XLII.-MISS HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 " Ah ! welcome home, Martineau, turning statistics 
 To stories, and puzzling your philogamistics ; 
 I own I don't see any more than Dame Nature, 
 Why love should await dear good Harriet's dictature, 
 But great is earth's want of some love-legislature." 
 
 So, in his Blue Stocking Revels, or the Feast of the Violets, sings genial 
 Leigh Hunt, whom we summon once more, as Master of the ceremonies, 
 to usher in another of the fairer members of this, our " Gallery." Wel- 
 come, once and again, Miss Martineau ; who, though you may rather 
 belong to the Marthas, who are " careful about many things," than the 
 Maries who choose " the better part," have yet earned our respect and 
 gratitude for a long and consistent life of labour, whose sole object was 
 the improvement and benefit of your generation. 
 
 Miss Martineau was born at Norwich, June 12th, 1802, and was 
 descended from a French family, which settled in that city, after the 
 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and carried on there the manufacture 
 of silk for several generations. She was the youngest of eight children, 
 and when her father, who was supposed to be wealthy, fell into com- 
 mercial difficulties, she determined to cultivate a talent for composition, 
 which she had early shown, and bravely turned to literature as a means of 
 independent support. Her first appearance in print was about the year 
 1 82 1, in the organ of the Unitarian body, The Monthly Repository, in 
 which Talfourd first made essay of his nascent power. In 1823, she pub- 
 lished a volume of Devotional Exercises for Young People j in 1824, her 
 Christmas Day; and in 1825, the sequel, The Friend. In 1826, appeared 
 The Rioters, and Principle and Practice j and in 1827, The Turn-Out, and 
 Mary Campbell. In 1828, we have a tale, My Servant Rachel; a series 
 of " Tracts," on questions concerning the operative classes ; and a sequel 
 to Principle and Practice. In 1830, a work entitled Traditions cf Palestine 
 enabled her to present a series of interesting and graphic sketches of the 
 Holy Land at the time of Christ. In 1830, the committee of the British 
 and Foreign Unitarian Association offered premiums for the best essays 
 on the " Introduction and Promotion of Christian Unitarianism among 
 the Roman Catholics, the Jews, and the Mahometans." The comparative 
 merits of the competitive essays were decided upon by three distinct sets 
 of arbitrators ; and by each set, the prize was awarded to the essay 
 written by Miss Martineau. One is entitled The Faith as unfolded by 
 many Prophets j the second, Providence, as manifested through Israel; 
 and the third, which I have alone read, and which is certainly an able 
 performance, The Essential Faith of the Universal Church deduced 'from 
 ihe Sacred Records (1831, 8vo, pp. 88). 
 
 It was about this same time that Miss Martineau, stimulated by the 
 perusal of Mrs. Marcet's Conversations, conceived the idea of writing a 
 series of tales, of monthly issue, with the object of exemplifying the leading 
 doctrines of Political Economy by imaginative illustration. She submitted 
 her plan to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge ; but the 
 
j?U. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "itMJSTRATlONS OF POLITICAL ECO.NO.MV 
 
MISS HARRIET MA R TINE A U. 207 
 
 committee of that body rejected it, on the ground that facts could not be 
 clothed with advantage in the garb of fiction. Perhaps this is generally 
 true. The novelist may take history, if he chooses, as the foundation of 
 his story, but it will always be read with the suspicion that facts have 
 been moulded, as, indeed, they generally are, to suit the writer's idea 
 of poetic justice or artistic development. Thus, very little is gained ; and 
 though the book may keep its place as a work of imagination, it will fail, 
 however truthful it may be, as a relation of historical or biographical facts. 
 
 However this may be, between those who objected to the teaching of 
 political science by the aid of fiction, and those who did not want fiction 
 to have any didactive purpose, the authoress encountered no small amount 
 of discouragement and difficulty before she found a publisher with suffi- 
 cient enterprise for the proposed undertaking. At last, however, the first 
 volume or number of the Illustrations of Political Economy saw the light, 
 and proved by its immediate and great success, that its writer had formed 
 no undue estimate of her own abilities, or erroneous judgment as to the 
 propriety of her method of treating the subject. The succeeding volumes 
 were expected with impatience ; edition after edition was exhausted ; and 
 the tales were translated, one by one, into French and German. As 
 felicitous illustrations of important truths they are of great and enduring 
 value ; and they will doubtless continue to be read for their interest as 
 works of fiction and admired for the ingenuity which the writer has 
 shown in avoiding that artificiality of construction which seems necessi- 
 tated by the restriction of a plot to the special object which it is intended 
 to subserve. 
 
 To this series, may be added six tales, entitled Illustrations of Taxa- 
 tion; and four others, called Poor Law and Paupers. These are, perhaps, 
 unequal in merit ; but they were no doubt the means of inducting many a 
 reader into the mysteries of Political and Social Economics, who, but for 
 the attractive guise of the mystagogue, would never have ventured to lift 
 the veil. 
 
 To make adequate pause at each landmark in the literary career of so 
 industrious and prolific a writer as Miss Martineau would require a volume. 
 In 1837, she paid a visit to the United States, where she remained for a 
 period of two years. This sojourn resulted in the production of her 
 Society in A??ierica, which is full of interesting details as to the politics, 
 domestic economy and social life of that country ; and, a year later, to a 
 work entitled Retrospect of Western Travel, in which are recorded those 
 more personal impressions which did not find place in the earlier work, 
 <md reminiscences of the eminent persons with whom she had come in 
 contact. In 1839, appeared her first novel, Deerbrook, in the orthodox 
 three-volume form ; a production which, perhaps, hardly sustained the 
 reputation which her political tales had gained her as a writer of fiction 
 certainly not as a teacher of social economy. To her next novel, which 
 exhibits a marked improvement in dramatic interest and constructive 
 skill, may be applied the remarks which I have already made on the pro- 
 priety of employing fiction to enforce or illustrate fact. This novel, The 
 Hour and the Man, of which the sable patriot, Toussaint L'Ouverture, is 
 the hero, would probably have attained a higher estimation, if it had 
 appeared professedly as a simple biography.- Lamartine, it will be 
 remembered, has also chosen, as the subject of a drama, the career of 
 this extraordinary man, who has, once for all, vindicated the capacity of 
 
208 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT- GALLERY. 
 
 the Negro race for moral and intellectual greatness ; and by his own cruel 
 fate in a French dungeon, reconciled us to the lingering death of Napoleon 
 at St. Helena, if only on the principle of retributive justice : 
 
 -nee lex aequior ulla est, 
 
 Quara necis artifices arte perire sua. 
 
 About this time, also, she produced the beautiful series of tales for 
 children, entitled The Playfellow, including " The Settlers at Home," 
 " The Peasant and the Prince,' 5 " Feats on the Fiord,' 5 and " The Crofton 
 Boys," a collection which placed her in a high rank as a writer for the 
 young. 
 
 At this period, Miss Martineau fell into ill-health, of which her Life in. 
 the Sick Room affords the details. This went on for several years ; till,, 
 all hope of recovery by orthodox means having been abandoned, she 
 determined to make trial of the curative powers of Mesmerism. The 
 result of the experiment, as related by herself in the columns of the 
 Athenceum, was the perfect restoration of her mental and physical 
 energies. Of this she gave evidence, more suo, by the production of her 
 Forest and Game Law Tales, three volumes in which the effect of these 
 enactments in ancient and modern times is discussed, and their special 
 bearing on the classes of society more immediately affected by them. In 
 1846, she wrote a pretty tale, The Billow and the Rock; and in this year 
 started on an expedition to the East, in company with her brother, the 
 Rev. James Martineau, and other friends. This resulted in the publica- 
 tion of Eastern Life Past and Present, a work in which her impressions 
 are recorded in her usual graphic and vigorous style, albeit impaired to- 
 some extent by a certain tone of speculative scepticism which shocked 
 religious readers to no small extent. This culminated, a year or two later, 
 in downright Atheism, as expounded in her Letters on the Laws of Man's 
 Social Nature and Develop?nent, being a correspondence between herself 
 and Mr. H. G. Atkinson, a Mesmerist, and published in 185 1. This 
 book is duly pronounced by good, religious people " shallow and illogical 
 in reasoning " ; based, it would seem, solely on a profound faith in her 
 correspondent's infallibility as a teacher, to which faith all higher and 
 purer beliefs are sacrificed ; a book that could injure no one " whose 
 judgment was not warped by a similar influence." Since, then, " her 
 arguments refute themselves," and her statements are " too silly to do any 
 harm," why do pious folk wax angry about the book ? 
 
 " Tantaene animis caelestibus irae? " 
 
 Well, so it is, and always will be. A certain wise man once, on being, 
 questioned as to his " religion," replied that he was of the religion of all 
 wise men ; and on being further pressed as to the nature of that religion, 
 said that that was just what wise men kept to themselves. It is perhaps 
 to be regretted that Miss Martineau was not "wise" in the same sense. 
 Anyway, the conclusions, long established, are : (1) That the question of 
 the existence, or the non-existence of a God, by the a priori mode, or 
 any other, is best left alone ; and (2) that so far as your estimation by" 
 society is concerned, it is better (as some Frenchman has said) to believe 
 in a God with a hundred arms, and a hundred legs, than none at all ! 
 
 Just at this time Charles Knight was in want of some able hand to 
 take up his History of E?igla?id during the Thirty Years' Peace, which he 
 
MISS HARRIET MARTINEAU. 209 
 
 had already commenced, but was forced to relinquish. He applied to 
 Miss Martineau, with the result that the History was carried on and con- 
 cluded with a vigour and impartiality which ensured its reception by the 
 public, and did vast credit to her in her new character of historian. 
 
 To Charles Knight's series she contributed a useful little manual, How 
 to Observe ; and with that regard for usefulness in the abstract which ever 
 characterized her labours, descended from her higher platform, to engage 
 in the compilation of four "Guides," The Maid of all Work, The House- 
 maid, The Lady's Maid, and The Dressmaker. Her Household Educa- 
 tion, a very popular work, originally appeared in The People's Journal; 
 and she was also author of a Complete Guide to the Lakes. 
 
 I can only glance at the literary occupations in which the later years of 
 the life of Miss Martineau was unceasingly employed. She wrote leading 
 articles for the Daily News ; reviews for the Westminster; a series of 
 papers in Household Words, in which the industries of Birmingham, a 
 town in which she took a keen interest, her brother being a leading 
 merchant and manufacturer there, and her nephews, at the present 
 moment, ranking among its most useful and honourable citizens, are 
 treated of in a popular and engaging style ; social sketches for Once a 
 Week; a work entitled British Rule i7i India (1857) ; another on army 
 reform, England and her Soldiers (1859) ; Health, Husba?idry and 
 Handicraft (1861) ; pamphlets on political and educational questions, 
 too numerous to particularize ; and a free and epitomized translation of 
 the Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte. 
 
 In 1846, she had purchased a little farm, the " Knoll," near Ambleside, 
 and here she continued to reside, applying herself to agricultural matters 
 with an energy and success, which showed her fitness also to conduct the 
 practical business of common life. Here she employed her later years in 
 the composition of an Autobiography, which was published after her 
 death by Smith, Elder & Co. This she divides into six periods, of which 
 the most interesting are the third and fourth, which include the space 
 between her thirtieth and forty-third year. The book abounds with 
 sketches of personal character, of which it may be said that the general 
 tone is hardly characterized by the good-nature and liberality of interpre- 
 tation which the reader might have wished to find. She has nothing kind, 
 for instance, to say of the gifted family of the Kembles, who are shown 
 forth, one and all, as conceited, vulgar and insincere. She accords to the 
 distinguished artist, Sir Charles Eastlake, but a " limited understanding." 
 Macaulay she pronounces to have had " no heart," and his nephew and 
 biographer, Trevelyan, " no head." Thackeray, the snob-taker, was appro- 
 priately, a snob himself. She considers N. P. Willis a lying dandy. 
 Lord Althorp she holds to be " one of nature's graziers." She falls foul 
 of Earl Russell, and the whole Whig party as conceited incapables ; and 
 she pronounces Lord Brougham to be a creature at once obscene and 
 treacherous. Lord Jeffrey was " one of the most egregious flatterers of 
 vain women in general." Finally, she is equally unjust to herself, for she 
 makes no attempt to set adequately before her readers the physical and 
 other disadvantages under which she herself laboured. Her description 
 of Sydney Smith is good when she depicts him in a morning call, sitting 
 down " broad and comfortable " in the middle of her sofa, " with his 
 hands on his stick, as if to support himself in a vast development of voice," 
 and then beginning, " like the great bell of St. Paul's, making her start at 
 
 P 
 
210 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 the first stroke." The mischief of the thing is, that no effective answer 
 can be made to the injurious opinions expressed in this posthumous book, 
 which, as it waited her own decease for its publication, should have been 
 delayed till the death of the parties named, and even that of their imme- 
 diate descendants. 
 
 It is well to mention that a Government pension was on three 
 occasions offered to the subject of these notes. One by Lord Grey, or 
 Lord Brougham, J forget which, in 1832; again, in 1839, by Lord 
 Melbourne ; and lastly, by Mr. Gladstone. Unlike Dr. Johnson, who 
 vilified pensioners, and then himself accepted a pension, Miss Martineau 
 firmly declined the proposed honour, although naturally gratified by 
 such an admission of her claims, on the ground that acceptance was 
 inconsistent with her expressed opinions on the subject of taxation. 
 This noble and disinterested sacrifice to principle was, it must be 
 remembered, made at a time when failing health rendered literary 
 exertion impossible, and pecuniary anxieties were impending which a 
 certain income, however small, would have removed ; and must gain 
 the respect even of those who consider erroneous her notions on the 
 metaphysical nature of the Deity. 
 
 It was at Ambleside, on June 27th, 1876, that this existence, which 
 may be said to have been entirely and unselfishly devoted to the promo- 
 tion of the happiness and well-being of mankind, came to a close. Her 
 Will, by which her personalty, sworn under ,10,000, is suitably divided 
 among her brothers and sisters, an old servant, and a few friends, contains 
 one peculiar provision which indicates the desire of the testatrix, even 
 when dead, to benefit the living. "It is my desire," she says, "from an 
 interest in the progress of scientific investigation, that my Skull should 
 be given to Henry George Atkinson, of Upper Gloucester Place, London, 
 and also my Brain, if my death should take place within such distance 
 of his then present abode, as to enable him to have it for the purposes of 
 scientific observation." By the second codicil, dated October 5th, 1872, 
 this direction is revoked ; " but," the codicil proceeds, " I wish to leave 
 it on record that this alteration in my testamentary directions is not 
 caused by any change of opinion as to the importance of scientific 
 observation on such subjects, but is made in consequence merely of a 
 change of circumstances in my individual case." The " circumstances " 
 alluded to were doubtless these. When the removal of Miss Martineau 
 to London took place, the " Burke and Hare " murders, and " body- 
 snatching" generally, were the special horrors of the day. The only 
 authorized supply of " subjects " for dissection was from the gallows ; 
 and philanthropic persons sought by selling the reversion of their bodies 
 (a transaction which, legally, does not hold good), or like Jeremy 
 Bentham, leaving them to some institution, or medical expert, by a 
 special bequest (also nugatory), to dissolve the association of disgrace 
 with the necessary procedure of dissection. The difficulty was, in great 
 measure, relieved by the passing of Mr. Warburton's Bill ; and hence 
 the necessity for such an arrangement as that made by Miss Martineau 
 ceased to exist. The singular provision had, however, become known ; 
 and shortly after the execution of the document, the testatrix received a 
 letter from the celebrated aurist, Mr. Toynbee, asking her point-blank to 
 bequeath him a " legacy of her ears." She had suffered from deafness 
 all her life ; a large amount of mischief and misery was caused by the 
 
MISS HARRIE T MARTI NE A U. 211 
 
 ignorance of surgeons with regard to the auditory apparatus ; and this 
 ignorance could only be removed by such means as he proposed. The 
 lady to whom this strange request was made, says with grim humour, 
 that she felt "rather amused when she caught herself in a feeling of 
 shame, as it were, at having only one pair of ears, at having no dupli- 
 cate for Mr. Toynbee, after having disposed otherwise of her skull." 
 She, however, told him how the matter actually stood ; and a meeting 
 took place between the doctor and the legatee, "to ascertain whether 
 one head could, in any way, be made to answer both their objects." 
 
 An autopsy of her body was eventually made by Dr. T. M. Greenhow, 
 of Leeds ; a full detail of the appearances at which will be found in the 
 British Medical Journal, for April 14th, 1877, p. 449. 
 
 Sincere conviction and fearless utterance are of vast benefit to society, 
 even when the former is erroneous, and the latter unpopular. Nothing 
 is more remarkable in the character of Miss Martineau than the decision 
 with which she formed opinions, and the courage with which she ex- 
 pressed them. At her day, this was a matter of greater singularity and 
 difficulty than at the present one ; and the amount of suspicion, ridicule, 
 misconception, and dislike which it engendered was correspondingly 
 greater. The sketch of Maclise is, of course, a caricature ; but an 
 innocent one. Croker's article in the Qicarterly, bearing on Miss 
 Martineau's adoption of the principles of Malthus, is coarse and un- 
 generous. Tom Moore addressed her in a parody, " Come live with 
 me and be my Blue." Maginn ungallantly hints that no one who inspects 
 her portrait can wonder at her celibate proclivities, or is likely to attempt 
 the seduction of the "fair philosopher" from her doctrines on the popu- 
 lation question. He further adds with reference to Maclise's caricature : 
 " There she sits cooking 
 
 Of chubby duodecimos ' ; 
 
 certain of applause from those whose praise is ruin, and of the regret of 
 all who feel respect for the female sex, and sorrow for perverted talent, 
 or, at least, industry." Of the personal appearance of the strong-minded 
 lady, William Howitt enables us to form an amusing conception by 
 giving us the words of an old woman who met her at Ambleside : " Is 
 it a woman, or a man, or what sort of an animal is it ? said I to myself ; 
 there she came, stride, stride, stride, great heavy shoes, stout leather 
 leggings on, and a knapsack on her back ! they say she mows her own 
 grass, and digs her own cabbages and taturs !" There is no harm in 
 any of this ; nor will there be thought to be, I hope, in the verses with 
 which I round off these notes, notes, which so far as my own judgment 
 is concerned, are intended to be entirely respectful, and appreciative of 
 the character and abilities of one of the most remarkable and admirable 
 women whom this country and century have produced. 
 
 "AN ODE TO MISS HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 Come, let us touch the string, 
 And try a song to sing, 
 
 Though this is somewhat difficult at starting, O ! 
 And in our case more than ever, 
 When a desperate endeavour, 
 
 Is made to sing the praise of Harry Martineau ! 
 
212 THE MACLISE. PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 "We might get on pretty well, 
 With the pretty L. E. L. , 
 
 Our compliments unlimitedly carting, O ! 
 We'd call her fair, not wise, 
 And we'd laud her laughing eyes, 
 
 But this would never do with Harry Martineau ! 
 
 " For wisdom is her forte ; 
 And, Lord knows, to pay your court 
 
 To women who talk wisdom is departing, O ! 
 From the very laws of chatter, 
 Which, like the laws of matter, 
 
 Shine clear before the soul of Harry Martineau ! 
 
 " Oh ! how she shows her reading, 
 When she writes about good breeding, 
 
 And tells us what good housewives have their heart in, O 1 
 She points the way to riches, 
 If they would resign the breeches 
 But that is all my eye to Harry Martineau 1 
 
 " She'll also tell you how, man, 
 To be a perfect ploughman, 
 
 And how to give a pound a touch at parting, O ! 
 That'll bring it back again, 
 With a rich attendant train ; 
 
 But that we fear's my eye and Harry Martineau ! 
 
 " Of bacon, eggs, and butter, 
 Rare philosophy she'll utter ; 
 
 Not a thing about your house but she'll take part in, O ! 
 As to mine, with all my soul, 
 She might take (and pay) the whole 
 
 But that is all my eye and Harry Martineau 1 
 
 Her political economy 
 Is as true as Deuteronomy ; 
 
 And the monster of Distress she sticks a dart in, O ! 
 Yet still he stalks about, 
 And makes a mighty rout, 
 
 But that we hope's my eye and Harry Martineau ! 
 
 ** So having said my say, sir, 
 And done my best to praise her, 
 
 A task, which, when a youngster, I'd some art in, O I 
 As perhaps I may have now, sir, 
 With this I make my bow, sir, 
 
 All lustre to the eyes of Harry Martineau 1 " * 
 
 XLIII. GRANT THORBURN. 
 
 " OUR well-informed readers do not require to be told that upwards of 
 thirteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine regular subscribers to any- 
 monthly work is an acquisition not to be attained without great assiduity, 
 and, we may add, some talent. We shall not, however, descant on our 
 
 * Fraser's Magazine, May, 1834. 
 
jrf-~&rL<te ^AtrK^ccyf^T^ 
 
 THE ORIGINAL LAWRUE T<0>23>H3>. 
 
GRANT THORBURN. 213 
 
 own laudable endeavours ; although the portrait which faces this article 
 of the celebrated Mr. Thorburn, the original ' Lawrie Todd/ bears 
 witness that they are of no ordinary kind. 
 
 " As soon as our number of the autobiography of this eminent gentle- 
 man reached America, the whole Republic was set astir, as if the election 
 of the president was contested. Mr. Thorburn was obliged to forego the 
 weighing of seeds, the feeding of birds, and the culling of flowers ; in 
 short, to do nothing all day but to state to the ladies and gentlemen who 
 resorted to his store, the reasons which had hitherto prevented him from 
 visiting London, with his precious manuscript of the instances of special 
 providence which he himself had experienced. Indeed, the crowd became 
 so great to hear him that he was obliged to ascend into one of his galleries ;, 
 and there, mounted on a barrel-head, by which he became visible to the 
 crowd below, to hold forth on the subject. 
 
 " All, however, that he could urge was of no avail. The ladies and 
 gentlemen assembled on the occasion highly applauded, no doubt, his 
 eloquent speech ; but they could not listen to his argument. ' London/' 
 they said, ' was the mart of the mind ; and though it was becoming his 
 innate modesty to profess his contentation at the great Sclat he had 
 attained, still they thought that the candle of so rare a genius should not 
 be hidden under such a bushel as New York.' Accordingly, his blushes 
 and diffidence were overcome, and he was constrained to come over the 
 sea ; and here he is, his likeness illuminating the pages of Regina, and 
 his person irradiating the streets and social parties of London the press 
 is big with his important work, and the day of the deliverance of which is 
 at hand as may be seen by the following advertisement, published 
 verbatim in all the London daily papers : 
 
 "'TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 '"As Mr. John Gait in his Lawrie Todd, and Sundrie other Periodicals, Magazines,. 
 Newspapers, etc., in Europe and america have published So many Scraps and Frag- 
 ments of my Life, I think its a duty I owe the Public and myself to send forth a true 
 Copie. I think the events of my life are more Strange in realietie, than many which I 
 have read in fiction, and as I owe the giver of all good a Large Debt of Gratitude 
 I think its my dutie to make Sure that the world shall know it, it will be published in. 
 a few days by Mr. James Fraser, No. 215, Regent Street, which is the only true history 
 of my Life ever printed in Britain. 
 
 (Signed) " ' Grant Thorburn, Seedsman, New York. 
 
 " 'Now at No. 14, Tavistock Row, Covent Garden, 
 
 16th Novr. 1833.' 
 
 " It is not, however, so much by this announcement that the curiosity 
 of our numerous particular readers, nor that of the public in general, ought 
 to be excited, as by the nature of the book itself. For of late it has not 
 been quite so much the fashion as it ought to have been, for literary men 
 to acknowledge their experiences of a special providence ; although it 
 cannot be supposed that the teachers of the earth are less sensible of its 
 aid than the rest of the human race. We therefore solicit attention to 
 this great feature of the forthcoming volume, convinced that it will not 
 only afford amusement in the perusal, but edification in that somewhat 
 obsolete manner which our ancestors, with all their often-referred-tc* 
 wisdom, deemed not unbecoming to feel and to confess. To be serious,. 
 Mr. Thorburn's book, written entirely by himself, will be no ordinary treat 
 to those who discern the hand of Sustaining Succour in the various 
 
2i 4 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 vicissitudes of private life, as well as in the more obstreperous transactions 
 of the world, and humbly recognize that Impartial Power which beholds 
 alike, unmoved from its purposes, 
 
 " ' A hero perish and a sparrow fall.' " 
 
 So far Maginn, in December, 1833; even at this time of writing, half 
 a century further on in the grooves of time, it is just within the range 
 of possibility that some literary ghoul of the present day may have 
 read Lawrie Todd and will not be sorry to make acquaintances with the 
 original (in every sense of the word) " Simon Pure," whose career forms 
 the subject of that once famous book, just as the adventures of Alexander 
 Selkirk suggested Robinso?i Crtisoe to Defoe, and the leading incidents in 
 the lives of Byron and Shelley furnished Disraeli with the plot of Venetia. 
 
 In Eraser's Magazine for June, 1833, is commenced the publication of 
 " Mr. Thorburn's MS.," which occupies two numbers of the magazine, 
 being concluded in that for July. It is prefaced by the following re- 
 marks : 
 
 " Mr. Adam Fergusson, in his clever and graphic practical notes, 
 made during a tour in Canada, mentions that he became acquainted with 
 Mr. Thorburn, of New York, the ' very identical Lawrie Todd] and that, 
 so far as the first volume of that entertaining work goes, Gait had exactly 
 recorded his life and adventures." 
 
 This is not quite correct : Lazvrie Todd is in nine parts, and only the 
 first part contains the history of Mr. Thorburn. Here and there, anecdotes 
 derived from him are interspersed through the narrative, but the first forty 
 pages of the work comprehend the main part of his communication ; and 
 even in it there are some fictitious additions introduced. 
 
 In the last edition of Lawrie Todd, Gait mentions in the first note, 
 that the outlines of the following pages are derived from Mr. Thornton 
 (Thorburn), of New York. "I have retained in them," says he, "all the 
 truth and beauty of his original narrative : in the pathetic parts I have 
 not ventured to offer any amendment, because I could not ; but I have 
 dealt with more freedom in those that were lighter. I have enlarged the 
 narrative, and added to the incidents ; but I have not presumed to think 
 that I could improve a story which Nature had taken so much pains to 
 relate. In this matter our readers are enabled to judge for themselves. 
 We have obtained Mr. Thorburn's original manuscript, which is sub- 
 joined," etc. 
 
 I need not transcribe further, as the reader possesses the necessary 
 indications to pursue the story for himself. There is a good deal that is 
 interesting and worthy of preservation in Lawrie Todd, which may be 
 placed by the side of such books as the " Lives " of William Hutton and 
 Benjamin Franklin. The Shepherd pronounces it " maist amusin' " in one 
 of the Noctes, and it would probably ere this have received the honours 
 of republication, but from the dilution which its valuable part has under- 
 gone from the cruel necessity of spinning out into three poor volumes the 
 materials which might have made one good one. Still it is interspersed 
 with quaint Scotch humour, shrewd philosophy, and practical wisdom ; 
 and at the. time of its publication though in this respect it is now obsolete 
 had a certain value for intending emigrants, which helped its sale. 
 Lawrie Todd, I repeat, is still an interesting book, and its worthy 
 original no bad illustration of that principle of " self-help," or " help-self," 
 

CAPTAIN ROSS. 215 
 
 which, I take it, is much about the same thing, about which so much 
 has been said or written of late. Not that examples are rare ; they tread 
 on one's toes, and blow their trumpets in one's ears everywhere. It might 
 seem better and nobler to " help others ; but where are we to find ^e 
 illustrative examples ? 
 
 XLIV. CAPTAIN ROSS. 
 
 " As the season is yet young, any animal will do for a lion ; and the 
 animal now dressed in the skin is Captain Ross, who is playing the part 
 at the various soirees and conversazioni, such as they are, which are now 
 giving. In one respect it will be admitted that he is well qualified for 
 showing off; for both in movement and countenance he bears no small 
 similitude to a walrus, one of the greatest personages about the Pole ; and 
 he gets through the various straits, creeks, and bays of a miscellaneous 
 party of prattlers, with the same kind of heavy alacrity that we may con- 
 ceive distinguished his attempts to find a north-west passage. 
 
 " He is depicted in the process of undergoing the suffering of his 
 voyage. It is evident that when we all thought him dead, he was not 
 only alive, but in excellent spirits, and making gallant battle against the 
 cold. If Croquis be correct in his sketch, and he took as much pains as 
 possible to insure correctness, the Captain was in full thaw, and as little 
 likely to be congealed as any of us. On this point, however, we shall 
 suspend our opinion, keeping it as stationary as the needle on the magnetic 
 pole, which we are told Captain Ross has found, until his quarto makes 
 its appearance in due season. 
 
 " But we regret to say that considerable doubt exists, not, indeed, as 
 to the appearance of the work, because that is a necessary appendage to 
 the voyage " Go slide make book," but as to the value of its contents. 
 If the Captain has seen the magnetic pole, to use the language of a Scotch 
 newspaper, which evidently considered it to be somewhat like a barber's 
 pole stuck up in the way of a fingerpost for the loadstone, he has seen 
 nothing else. His discoveries, as far as we can learn, have been precisely 
 nothing always excepting Lake Landon (a queer compliment, by the 
 way, to a poetess to connect her name with all that is cold, frozen, hard, 
 and cheerless) ; and a punster might be tempted to say that, as he lost 
 his Fury in a Sound, so does his Tale signify nothing. We have stories, 
 indeed, of skies darkened for months, in which the only indication of mid- 
 day was a glimmering streak on the verge of the horizon, of tribes who 
 never drank water or heard of fire, of unwashed natives sitting on beds 
 of eternal ice, waiting for the appearance of a seal to catch him, their only 
 article of food, of Esquimaux ladies, though not exactly of the fair sex, 
 perpetually oiled, if not perfumed, of omens, dreams, and portents of 
 expectant widowers in the ice, and anticipating widows on shore, of bears 
 paying visits occasionally through the roofs of houses concocted of snow, 
 of a pining after greenery, the want of which prevailed to an extent that 
 would have broken the heart of Leigh Hunt, and five hundred other 
 pastorals of Hampstead and the adjacent parishes, and a few more 
 
216 THE MACLISE FORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 anecdotes of the same kind ; but we believe that even they are very" 
 scanty, and that neither geography nor science in any of their branches 
 have profited a whit by the embedding of Captain Ross within the regions 
 of thick-ribbed ice. Nous rcrrois ' In the meantime we leave him to 
 the contemplation of our readers, in the act of sipping his brandy and 
 water with thirsty lip ; which we think our excellent friend the sketcher 
 has drawn in a manner to excite the emulation of all the wine, or brandy, 
 or beer bibbers on the face of the terraqueous globe. 
 
 " Let nobody fancy for a moment that we are blaming Captain Ross for 
 taking care of himself while out upon his chilly voyage. Far be from us 
 such a thought. The only thing for which we think he ought to be con- 
 demned was for going at all. He had failed once, and that should have 
 been quite satisfactory. We take it for granted that he will never think 
 of failing a third time. He should now be satisfied with the full glory 
 that he has proved, if not exactly that there is no north-west passage at 
 all, yet that he decidedly is not the man to find it. 
 
 " This is quite fame enough for any one, and upon the strength of it he 
 may continue to lionize until some worthier specimen of the species is 
 caught in the due season, and then he will melt and dissolve away. We 
 confess that we shall be happy to find ourselves altogether mistaken in 
 our anticipations as to the contents of his forthcoming book ; but from all 
 that we can gather we fear that our account will prove correct. We must 
 conclude our notice by assuring our readers that the likeness in the 
 accompanying sketch is very striking ; and though we happen never to 
 have seen the Captain dipping with so much alacrity into a tumbler, we 
 can easily conceive that Croquis, having caught him in the fact, has, with 
 great fidelity, 
 
 " ' Fixed him in that glorious shape.' * 
 
 Captain Ross was so much better known in his own day than in ours 
 that I willingly avail myself of the services of a contemporary, to manu- 
 duct him to the honours of our " Gallery." Indeed, however " Illustrious :> 
 the grog-sipping old worthy may have seemed as an Arctic explorer, the 
 title, now at least, hardly seems appropriate as a " literary character." He 
 has, however, written Memoirs of Lord de Saumarez, Letters to You?; 
 Officers, and a Treatise on Steam Navigation, which give him a place 
 in_ the great guild of literature. He was born in 1777, was fifteen years a 
 midshipman, and was appointed a commander of the Briseis in 181 2, on 
 the Baltic station. In 181 8 he was named to the command of an expedi- 
 tion to explore Baffin's Bay, and search for a north-west passage to the 
 Pacific. One of the vessels was commanded by Lieutenant, afterwards 
 Sir Edward, Parry, who subsequently, in his own discoveries, followed 
 out the indications of his less fortunate superior. Captain Ross, who was 
 now obliged to have recourse to private enterprise, sailed once more from 
 the Thames, in 1827, to solve, if possible, the question of a north-west 
 passage. Not returning, an expedition was fitted out in 1833, under 
 Captain Back, whose outfit was provided by a sum of jooo, raised by 
 subscription. Captain Ross and his companions returned to England in 
 the October following, and gave the narrative of his expedition in a quarto 
 volume, published in 1835. In 1838 he became British Consul at Stock- 
 holm, and remained there in that capacity till 1844. He had, in former 
 days, pledged himself to make search for his friend Sir John Franklin, it 
 
/m/-^^-.^ 
 
 AUTHOR OF MARY BE CLIFFORD;* 
 
SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. 217- 
 
 he should be lost ; and when the fate of the latter became a matter of 
 fear, he remembered this, and, at the age of seventy-three, set sail in a 
 small vessel of 90 tons only (the Felix), wintered in the ice, and would' 
 have stayed a second year had his means allowed. For this cause, for 
 which he gave up his half-pay and his pensions, he was unsuccessful 
 in obtaining the smallest help from the Admiralty. He was, moreover, 
 excluded altogether from the Arctic counsels, in which, one would have 
 thought, his experience would have been valuable, and published a 
 pamphlet exposing the treatment to which he had been subjected. Still 
 he had received many honours : was knighted in 1834 ; received a pocket- 
 ful of gold medals, the freedom of many important seaports, swords, and 
 other acknowledgments; besides a pension of i$o per annum, with 
 which, and his reputation of a hardy gallant seaman, an experienced 
 commander, and a stanch faithful friend, he might well be content. 
 k Rear-Admiral Sir John Ross, Knt., C.B.,died in 1856, at the age of 79. 
 
 XLV. SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. 
 
 The name of this literary veteran is especially sweet to the ear of the biblio- 
 phile, not from the number of books he has written, but the small number 
 he has printed, not from the productions of his own intellect, but rather 
 the " restitution " he has afforded to those of others, by his critical notices 
 or his elegant reprints. Many of these were fifty years ago, black swans 
 of the book-hunter. " Several," says Fraser, ' are already dear to the. 
 bibliomaniac, and, as years roll by, others will become so, in consequence 
 of the very few copies he has allowed to be printed ; and this remark is 
 more particularly applicable to those published on the Continent." 
 
 Of one of his earlier, and, indeed, more valuable works, Lord Byron 
 speaks," Redde the Ruminator, a collection of essays by a strange,, 
 but able, old man." These volumes,* which numbered among the con- 
 tributors to their pages, R. P. Gillies, Archdeacon Wrangham, the Rev. 
 Montague Pennington, and Capel Lofft, have always been favourit s of 
 my own ; and I endorse the opinion of Dr. Nathan Drake, who says, 
 " I am acquainted with no essays which display a more exquisite taste, 
 and excite a higher relish for the productions of genius." Another early 
 work is the tale, Mary de Clifford, first published, I think, in 1800, the 
 mention of which, I confess, recalls little or none of the "pensive 
 pleasure," spoken of by Maginn, as produced by its perusal in years gone 
 by. The wiiter speaks in his preface of the "exquisite delight" which 
 he has received from the " novels of Mrs. Smith," and as he attributes, 
 this to a "peculiar congeniality of all the ideas in which he has been 
 habituated to indulge," I presume that he has taken those admired pro- 
 ductions as a standard, and am not surprised that they, and his own 
 sentimental story, are allowed to slumber together. There is an interest- 
 ing essay on Sir Egerton Brydges in the Literary Leaves \ of David. 
 Lester Richardson. Here his struggles to obtain a permanent and con- 
 
 * 2 vols, small 8vo, 1813. f London, 1840, 2 vols. 8vo ; vol. i. p. 289. 
 
2 1 8 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 spicuous place in literature are contrasted with the small success he has 
 obtained. This is the more remarkable, as he was always ready to swim 
 with the stream of popular taste. During the rage for poetry, from the 
 time of Cowper to Byron, he courted the Muses with toil and ardour ; 
 when Minerva-press novels were the rage, Sir Egerton was ready with a 
 whole shelf-ful of sentimental fictions ; when Charlotte Smith and W. L. 
 Bowles had made the " sonnet" fashionable, our poet cultivated this form 
 of poetic composition ; and when Lord Byron died, our aspirant was soon 
 ready with a bulky volume of Letters on the Character and Poetical Genius 
 of the lamented bard, of which Moore says that " they contain many just 
 and striking views." Among other causes of failure were haste and want 
 of concentration. In the preface to one of his rarer books, he says, 
 " he who cannot throw out his ideas at once must fail : with every retouch 
 the spirit evaporates. No one, while correcting, can resume the same 
 train of ideas, and he will therefore unconsciously break the natural 
 associations. The right word is always that which rises with the idea." * 
 Now, this maybe right in theory ; but it is not found to answer in practice. 
 Easy writing, as we know, is often very hard reading. Horace will 
 always please, whose rule for poetry was " nonum prematur in annum," 
 before publication ; and the Rime of Cardinal Bembo will never fail to 
 be admired, which are said to have passed through forty divisions in their 
 composer's desk, receiving correction at each transition before they were 
 committed to the press. Again, a man with a grievance is always a bore : 
 "Curse leves loquuntur ; ingentes stupent," 
 
 or, as a French writer, Bertaud, tersely puts it : 
 
 " Les grandes douleurs sont muettes," 
 
 "both axioms on which the world acts, whether they express a truth or not, 
 and gives little sympathy to those who are always grumbling. This was 
 the case with Sir Egerton Brydges, who was ever complaining of his own 
 " wrongs," the " malice and hard-heartedness of the world," his " struggles 
 to court the balm and oblivion of literature," and the " innumerable arts 
 to wrest this from him, or make him abandon it." Like Rousseau, he 
 seems to have believed that all the world was in a conspiracy against him, 
 and that just as the Lords had debarred his access to the House of Peers, 
 the critics were striving to exclude him from the Temple of the Muses. 
 To expose these machinations was the main object of his otherwise 
 interesting Autobiography, Times, Opinions and Co?itemporaries of Sir 
 Egerton Brydges, Bart., per legem terroe Baron Chandos of Sudeley 
 (1834, 2 vols. 8vo). f This had been preceded by a much more interesting- 
 book, which is hard to get hold of, as it appeared in Paris, and the few 
 copies printed were all for presents. This is entitled A Note on the Sup- 
 pression of Mei7ioirs, announced by the Author in June, 1825, containing 
 numerous Strictures on Co?itemporary Public Characters (Paris, Septem- 
 ber, 1825, i2mo, pp. 92). Sir Egerton had intended to publish a private 
 autobiography, but, changing his plan, he determined to make it public 
 in character : hence the smaller Note, and the larger subsequent work. 
 With regard to the often-iterated charge of malice, persecution, and 
 injustice, a few words maybe said. In 1790, on the death of the last 
 
 * The Lake of Geneva: a Poem (Geneva, 1832, 2 vols. 4to). Twenty-five copies only. 
 t Reviewed at considerable length in the Quarterly Review, No. cii. 
 
SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. 219 
 
 Duke of Chandos, the subject of these remarks induced his elder brother, 
 the Rev. E. T. Brydges, to prefer a claim to the barony, alleging his 
 descent from a younger son of the first Brydges who bore the title. The 
 claim was considered at full length by the House of Peers, who, in 1803, 
 pronounced its decision, " that the petitioner had not made out his claim 
 to the title and dignity of Baron Chandos.' That this decision was in 
 accordance with right and justice is conclusively shown by Mr. G. F. Beltz, 
 the Lancaster Herald, in his Review of the Chandos Peerage Case, 
 adjudicated 1803, and of the Pretentions of Sir S. E. Brydges ; Bart., to 
 designate himself per legem terroe, Baro?i Chandos of Sudeley (8vo, 
 1834). From this laborious and minute analysis, it appears that the 
 claim was entirely groundless ; that the connection between the Bridges 
 of Harbledown, near Canterbury, yeoman, and the Brydges, Lords Chandos, 
 was at once imaginary and fabricated; and that, moreover, John Bridges, 
 the great-grandfather of Sir Egerton, was nothing more nor less than a 
 grocer at Canterbury ; that both his wives were grocers' daughters, and 
 that all their kinsmen were of the same rank in life. It was on his mother's 
 side alone that he had any cause for genealogical pride ; that it was that 
 directed his mind to the subject, and incited him to grasp at a peerage, 
 which was just becoming extinct, on the failure of a family, whose name 
 happened to be similar to his own. His elder brother died without issue 
 in 1807, and on his death Sir Egerton began to sign himself, per legem 
 terras, B. C. ofS., maintaining that although his claim had been negatived 
 by Parliament, he could, when he chose it, assert his rights by common law. 
 
 Allusions to his titled ancestry and noble connections appear on nearly 
 every page of the writings of Sir Egerton Brydges ; and one is irresistibly 
 led into the subject of pedigree when talking about him. I have referred 
 above to the mother of Sir Egerton, as having claim to aristocratic descent. 
 It may not be amiss therefore to state that she was daughter and co-heiress 
 of the Rev. William Egerton, LL.D., Prebendary of Canterbury, who was 
 grandson of John, second Earl of Bridgwater by Lady Elizabeth Caven- 
 dish, daughter of William, Duke of Newcastle. The younger brother of 
 Sir Egerton was Sir John William Head Brydges, Knt, who married Lady 
 Isabella Anne Beresford, daughter of George, first Marquis of Waterford, 
 and sister of the Lord Archbishop of Armagh. He resided at Wootton 
 Court, Kent, where he died September 6th, in his seventy-fifth year. 
 
 Reverting from a subject, on which it is the most charitable conclusion 
 that Sir Egerton had become a monomaniac, it would be agreeable, if 
 space permitted, to speak at length of the services which he so dis- 
 interestedly rendered to literature through a long life, more especially 
 by such serials as the Censura Literaria* and Restituta,\ and his 
 charmingly tasteful reprints of our older and less known authors. I 
 have a list before me which, including original works, amounts to no 
 less than one hundred and twenty separate publication. A summary 
 of the more important of these is given in the Gentleman's Magazine, 
 vol. viii. (New Series) p. 537 ; in Martin's Catalogue of Privately Printed 
 Books, pp. 370-544 ; and at the end of a poem by him, entitled Modern 
 Aristocracy ; or the Bard's Reception (Geneva, 8vo, 1831, pp. 52), where 
 will also be found some genealogical details, and the "arms and quarter- 
 ings" of the author, amounting in number to thirty! It was in 18 10, 
 that he took up his residence at Lee Priory, in Kent ; and here, in 18 13, 
 * 10 vols. 8vo, 1805-9. +" 4 vols- 8vo, 1816. 
 
220 THE MACLISE FORTRATT-GALLERY. 
 
 he established the Private Press, from which so many original pro- 
 ductions and charming reprints were issued. A few details respecting 
 this from one of the works which it produced, which, from its rarity, 
 will not be accessible to many of my readers, may not inappropriately 
 find a place here. After some egotistical matter on Continental travelling, 
 etc., the writer proceeds : 
 
 " The Lee Press was set up at the earnest and repeated desire, and 
 for the exclusive benefit, of the two printers, originally engaged in it. 
 As I would have disdained to have had any concern with the produce, 
 so I deemed it prudent to take every precaution which I could suggest, 
 to protect myself from every part of the expense. 
 
 "These precautions were vain : the expenses were heavy to me while 
 in England, and have been heavy to my Son, since my absence. 
 
 " The publications which I have given to the world in thirty-seven 
 years, are beyond my power of enumeration. Of all, which have been 
 at my own risk (and they have been not a few), neither the expenses, 
 nor probably one-half the expenses in printing and paper, have ever 
 been returned to me. Of those undertaken by Booksellers, I have never 
 received, nor asked, one shilling of copy-money. I am forced to make 
 this declaration, because the base heart of mankind, thirsting only for 
 lucre, thinks that I, like them, could only be actuated by mercenary 
 motives in my multifarious labours. 
 
 " I have now completed my fifty-ninth year, and the pecuniary 
 returns of literature have never, up to this hour, reached the value of a 
 single sixpence, except in the voluntary presents of books, which the 
 publishers made to me for the immense labour in editing the new edition 
 of Collins's Peerage. 
 
 " On the other hand, I have spent a little fortune amongst Printers, 
 Stationers, and Engravers ! This has been among the prime amusements 
 of my life : and how could I have endured the gigantic injuries and 
 oppressions by which I have been pursued, unless my mind had indulged 
 itself in some favourite and oblivious recreation ? 
 
 " The same passion adheres to me amid the inconveniences of a 
 migratory life, and in the three last years I have equally sought occupa- 
 tion in the employment of Foreign Presses." * 
 
 The operations of the Lee Priory Press were carried on till the year 
 1823, although its owner had quitted England for a Continental residence 
 five years previously. 
 
 It was not the first time in this country that the art and mystery of 
 typography had been carried on, in his own private residence, by a gentle- 
 man and a scholar. More than two centuries earlier, in the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth, Archbishop Parker had a Press and a staff of artists, in his own 
 Palace of Lambeth ; and there he printed, in sumptuous form, a few copies 
 of his celebrated work on Ecclesiastical History, with' the lives of the 
 Archbishops of the See which he so admirably filled, a folio volume of 
 equal beauty and rarity, a copy of which is in the British Museum. Sir 
 Horace Walpole afterwards Earl of Orford had also set the example 
 of such a Press, at his beautiful villa of Strawberry Hill ; and thus gave 
 an additional charm to his historic residence. This press continued in 
 occasional employment for half a century, and produced a number of 
 
 * Letters from the Continent, by Sir Egerton Brydges. Kent : Printed at the 
 Private Press of Lee Priory by John Warwick. 1821, 8vo. Part ii. Preface, p. 10. 
 
SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. 221 
 
 works distinguished for curiosity and typographic elegance. Later on, 
 at his romantic seat of Hafod, in South Wales, was established by 
 Colonel Johnes the Private Press, where, in 18 16, he printed the first 
 edition of his translations of the French Chroniclers, Froissart, Joinville, 
 Brocquiere and Monstrelet. Of the Private Press in more recent days, 
 that of the late Beriah Botfield at Norton Hall, that of the late Charles 
 Clarke at Great Totham, and others, I have not now to speak. 
 
 After his departure from England, Sir Egerton Brydges wandered 
 over France and Italy ; finding employment, with ever ready pen, for 
 the Press of every city where he sojourned for a time. Thus I have 
 before me a series of works, in various sizes and languages, original or 
 re-edited, with the imprints of Lee Priory, London, Paris, Rome, Naples, 
 Florence, and Geneva. It was at the last mentioned city, at the 
 Campagne de Watteville, near to " Les Delices," once the residence of 
 Voltaire, that he took up his abode ; removing, later on, to the Campagne 
 Gros Jean, where he died, September 8th, 1837, in the seventy-fifth year 
 of his age. 
 
 I will not attempt a cold criticism of the original work of this strange, 
 wayward, sensitive and disappointed old man. To me, as an early lover 
 of books, I must confess that his very name has a charm which hardly 
 depends upon the abstract merit of his writings ; and when, years back, 
 I took up my abode for a time in the city of the lake, I thought more of 
 him, I am afraid, than of Milton and Diodati, Voltaire and Rousseau, 
 Calvin and Beza, Lord Byron and Madame de Stael. I sought the 
 acquaintance of Vignier, his printer, and Cherbuliez, his publisher, and 
 obtained from them, and the bookstalls of the place, many a rare 
 memorial, in the shape of book, pamphlet, and autograph letter. Many 
 of these it is impossible now to lay hold of. Of the Res LiteraricE only 
 seventy-five copies were printed, and the three volumes into which it is 
 divided, were issued respectively at Naples, Rome and Geneva. The 
 Anti-Critic, 50 copies only, printed at'Geneva, is as scarce. Of the Libellus 
 Gebensis. Poemata Selecta Latina Medice et Infimce AZtatis (Gebenis, 
 1822), there were " yj exemplaria sola." And of the Lamento di Pietro 
 Strozzi (Geneva, 1821), only twelve copies were struck off. Others I 
 have already alluded to, all more or less scarce. But one volume, 
 penes me, I may place on record, as it is of the most absolute rarity, and 
 among the most interesting and valuable of my Brydgesiana. It is of 
 folio size, containing forty double columns, and is privately printed, 
 without indication of place, date, or title-page. I believe, however, that 
 \\. issued from the Genevan press, and that the year of its appearance 
 'was 1 831. The title, as gained from the heading of chapter i., is The 
 Green Book; or Register of the Order of the Emerald Star; and it 
 purports to be an examination of the claims of nearly all the literary 
 characters of the day to be admitted into this Chapteral Order, with the 
 reasons for their acceptance or rejection. A list of some forty successful 
 claimants enrolled at a previous meeting is given, among which are 
 many members of our " Gallery," Wordsworth, Bowles, Roscoe, Hogg, 
 Hallam, Godwin, and Brougham. Sir John Sinclair is rejected as a 
 mere statistician ; Ricardo, although he insisted that he was the first 
 genius in Europe, because the Order would have nothing to do with the 
 Stock Exchange ; Samuel Butler, of Shrewsbury, on account of pedantry 
 and self-conceit \ Pinkerton, because he talked of the u tinsel of Virgil/ 
 
222 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 and as an un veracious writer ; Mitford, for the harsh and barbarous 
 style of his History of Greece; Archdeacon Nares, for his conduct as 
 editor of the British Critic; and Dr. Rees, in spite of his Encyclopedia? 
 which he brings with him as a voucher. On the other hand, the claims 
 of several men of letters are heard with favour ; and John Nichols, 
 Warren Hastings, John Henry Todd, and Samuel Parr, are elected 
 without opposition. 
 
 Among the poems of this writer is one which, in delicacy of concep- 
 tion and beauty of imagery, is superior to any other of his original produc- 
 tions. This is his " Sonnet on Echo and Silence," in which his muse is 
 so far i?nftar si&i, that we are not astonished at the author's desire to 
 vindicate his claim to its composition, especially as it had been attributed 
 to Henry Brooke, in a collection of sonnets edited by Coleridge, at 
 Bristol, some time afterwards, and spoken of by Wordsworth and Southey 
 in the highest terms of praise. "It ought," said the author, "to be 
 original, for it cost me intensity of thought to bring it into so narrow a 
 shape." It was first published as one of his juvenile poems in 1785, and 
 had then been "corrected over and over again," under the advice of 
 Lord Chief Justice Abbott (Lord Tenterden), till, by repeated labour, it 
 was brought as near perfection as its author could carry it.* Having, 
 perchance, raised the curiosity of the reader, I here present this little 
 gem, accompanied by the exquisite Latin version of Archdeacon 
 Wrangham : 
 
 "SONNET 
 "On Echo and Silence. 
 " (Written in the Author's 20th year.) 
 "In eddying course when leaves began to fly, 
 And Autumn in her lap the store to strew, 
 As mid wild scenes I chanced the Muse to woo, 
 Through glens untrod, and woods that frown'd on high, 
 Two sleeping nymphs with wonder mute I spy ! 
 And, lo, she's gone ! In robe of dark green hue 
 'Twas Echo from her sister, Silence, flew, 
 For quick the hunter's horn resounded to the sky I 
 In shade affrighted Silence melts away ; 
 Not so her sister. Hark ! for onward still, 
 With far-heard step she takes her listening way, 
 Bounding from rock to rock, and hill to hill. 
 Ah, mark the merry maid in mockful play 
 
 With thousand mimic tones the laughing forest fill 1 '* 
 
 "SONNET. 
 
 "Echo et Taciturnitas. 
 
 " Hac arbor um atque iliac ferebantur comae, 
 Autumnus et fruges sinu collegerat : 
 Sylvestribus Musam in locis, per devios 
 Calles vagus nemorumque noctem, dum sequor, 
 Somno graves Nymphas stupens video duas 
 Enque evolavit ! Viridi amicta tegmine 
 Echo soror Taciturnitatem deserit, 
 
 * Recollections of Foreign Travel; or, Life, Literature, and Self-Knowlcdge, by 
 Sir Egerton Brydges. London, 1825, vol. ii. p. 18. The author was indebted for the 
 primal idea to a short poem by John Walters, of Ruthen, who died about 1797, in 
 which the suggestive words occur, " Echo and Silence, Sister-maids." 
 
AGITATION 
 
 AUTHOR 
 of tke 
 
 POS TATE 
 
DANIEL CTCONNELL. 227, 
 
 Venantium nam que ivit ad coelum fragor, 
 
 Umbrisque territa liquefit Taciturnitas ; 
 
 Secus ac soror, properantibus quae saltibus, 
 
 Rupes per collesque pernix emicat 
 
 Audita longe, celere prsecipitans iter, 
 
 Jocosa jamque Virgo voces millies 
 
 Imitata laetum replicat, audin? per nemus." * 
 
 It only remains to be added that Sir Egerton Brydges was born at 
 Wootton Court, in Kent, November 30th, 1762 ; entered at Queen's, 
 College, Cambridge, 1780, which he left without obtaining a degree ; 
 was called to the Bar in 1787 ; elected F.A.S., 1795 ; removed to Lee 
 Priory in 18 10, where he established his private press in 1813 ; received 
 the Knighthood of the foreign Order of St. Joachim in 1808 ; became 
 M.P. for Maidstone in 1812 ; obtained patent for baronetcy in 1814; 
 quitted England for Continental residence in 18 18 (the press at Lee 
 Priory being finally discontinued in 1823) ; and that he died at Campagne 
 Gros Jean, near Geneva, in his seventy-fifth year, September 8th, 1837. 
 He was married twice, and had fifteen children, the fourth of whom, by 
 the first marriage, became the wife of Edward Quillinan, the well-known 
 poet. 
 
 It is probable that Maclise had no opportunity of making his sketch 
 advivtim. In the Forster collection, in the South Kensington Museum, 
 is a carefully executed water-colour drawing of Sir Egerton Brydges, by 
 F. Danby, which is the prototype of this in our " Gallery." 
 
 XLVI. DANIEL O'CONNELL AND RICHARD LALOR 
 
 SHIEL. 
 
 DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 The great Agitator has very little claim upon our attention as a 
 " Literary character," and it is hardly within my scope to trace, however 
 briefly, his political life. 
 
 He was born on August 6th, 1775, the very year in which the 
 Americans first asserted their claims to independence, and passed his 
 boyhood in a home, the crumbling ivied walls of which now alone remain, 
 on a jutting promontory of the romantic harbour of Valencia. He 
 received his early education, with his brother Maurice, at the seminary of 
 the Rev. Mr. Harrington, at Redington, near the Cove of Cork, as 
 Queenstown was then called, the first school kept by a priest of the 
 Roman communion, since the abolition of the penal laws. From this 
 establishment, the lads proceeded in due course to the ecclesiastical 
 colleges of Douay and St. Omer, the president of which, Dr. Stapylton, 
 thus, on their departure, prophetically wrote to the uncle of his pupils : 
 "With respect to the elder, Daniel, I have but one sentence to write about 
 
 * F. W. Cestriae, Jamiar., 1831, in Anglo-Genevan Critical Journal. Geneva,. 
 1831, part U. P- 230. Only fifty copies. 
 
.224 
 
 THE MAC USE TORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 him ; and that is, that I was never so much mistaken in my life as I shall 
 be, unless he be destined to make a remarkable figure in society." 
 
 It was on the 21st December, 1793, the very day in which Louis XVI. 
 was beheaded at Paris, that the brothers set out for Calais, on their return 
 to England. They had witnessed the horrors of the French Revolution ; 
 and the elder often said that the sight and remembrance almost made 
 him a Tory in heart. In 1794, he became a law-student in Lincoln's Inn ; 
 and in 1798 that unhappy year for his country, he was called to the 
 Bar, being one of the first admitted after the removal of Roman Catholic 
 disabilities. With his career as an Advocate I have not now to do. If 
 he had chosen to pursue it, the highest rewards of professional ambition 
 were within his grasp. He had the reputation of being one of the ablest 
 lawyers of his day ; and there was some truth in his boast that he could 
 drive a coach and four through any Act of Parliament. No advocate at 
 .the Irish Bar was so successful in gaining verdicts. He swayed a jury 
 by an irresistible influence ; and, as was said, played upon the passions, 
 the sympathies, and the prejudices of men, as if they were the chords of 
 some musical instrument. He possessed, moreover, a subtlety of argument 
 which baffled the ingenuity of the subtlest judicial intellects. He declined 
 to be Chief Baron of the Exchequer ; he refused the Mastership of the 
 Rolls ; he might have been Lord Chancellor with a peerage. But he 
 gave all up to follow a chimsera ; and declined office and title that he 
 might serve his country as he judged best, with undivided energy and 
 talent. 
 
 As a Statesman and Patriot, the life-long watchword of O'Connell 
 was " Repeal." His first political speech, on the 13th January, 1800, was to 
 oppose the not then accomplished, Union ; his last, in Ireland, in 1847, was 
 against the same measure, and in favour of elevating his country from the 
 condition of a mere province to a place among the nationalities of Europe. 
 Here was consistency at least, however diverse may be the opinions as to 
 his sincerity and the effects of his policy. In 1828, he became Member 
 of Parliament for Clare ; and was enabled in the following year to take 
 his seat by the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, being the first 
 member of his creed who had sat in the house since the time of James the 
 Second. But here crept in a little difficulty. On being introduced to the 
 House by Lord Duncannon, he refused to take the oath of Supremacy ; 
 and, as he was elected before the passing of the Emancipation Act, he had 
 to be re-elected by his constituency. He sat successively for Waterford, 
 Kerry (his native county), and Dublin" (1832-6). Having been petitioned 
 against, and unseated, he became representative for Kilkenny ; but at the 
 general election in 1837, he was once more returned for Dublin ; and in 
 1 841, for County Cork. Thus, altogether, he had a seat in the House 
 of Commons for eighteen years, in seven several parliaments, and for six 
 different constituencies. 
 
 In 1841, came renewed "agitation" for Repeal in Ireland; and 
 monster meetings were held on the Royal hill at Tara, the Curragh of 
 Kildare, the rath of Mullaghmast, and other spots of traditionary interest. 
 At the proposed meeting at Clontarf, Government interfered. O'Connell 
 was prosecuted, sentenced to pay a fine of ,2000, and suffer a year's 
 imprisonment. The judgment was reversed, it is true, by the House of 
 Lords ; but the prosecution had its effect, and the credit of O'Connell, 
 and the resources of the Repeal Association, were alike impaired. Every 
 
DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 22$. 
 
 one has heard of the " begging-box " of O'Connell, which " Father Prout " 
 likened to the copper money of Woods, in a former day, and cries, " Oh, 
 for a Drapier to expose that second and most impudent scheme for 
 victimizing a deluded and starving peasantry ! " 
 
 I have already spoken of what O'Connell gave up when he undertook 
 the career of professional agitator ; and this should be fairly taken into- 
 account when we are disposed to stigmatize him as the " big beggar-man," 
 and count up the few thousands, per annum, which he collected in pence 
 from his poorer countrymen. Anyway, notwithstanding the vast sums 
 which passed through his hands in the disposal of the entire patronage of 
 Ireland with which he was entrusted by Government, he died without a. 
 shilling. Indeed, during the latter years of his life he was in circum- 
 stances of pecuniary embarrassment ; and we have it on the authority of 
 Mr. Percy Boyd, that having occasion for the sum of ^500, he was 
 compelled to mortgage his law-library, that when the advance was called 
 in, another lender was applied to, and that the mortgage, thus transferred 
 from time to time, was in existence till the day of his death. 
 
 O'Connell is well described by Lord Lytton in his powerful poem, the 
 New Timon : 
 
 " But not to Erin's coarser chief deny, 
 
 Large if his faults, time's large apology ; 
 
 Child of a land that ne'er had known repose, 
 
 Our rights and blessings, Ireland's wrongs and woes, 
 
 Hate at St. Omer's into caution drilled, 
 
 In Dublin Law-courts subtilized and skilled ; 
 
 Hate in the man, whatever else appear, 
 
 Fickle or false, was steadfast and sincere ; 
 
 But with that hate a nobler passion dwelt, 
 
 To hate the Saxon was to love the Celt, 
 
 Had that fierce railer sprung from English sires, 
 
 His creed a Protestant's, his birth a Squire's, 
 
 No blander Pollio, whom our Bar affords, 
 
 Had graced the Woolsack, and cajoled My Lords 
 
 Pass by his faults, his art be here allowed, 
 
 Mighty as Chatham, give him but a crowd ; 
 
 Hear him in Senates, second-rate at best, 
 
 Clear in a statement, happy in a jest. 
 
 Sought he to shine, then certain to displease ; 
 
 Tawdry, yet coarse-grained ; tinsel upon frieze. 
 
 His Titan strength must touch what gave it birth, 
 
 Hear him to mobs, and on his native earth." 
 
 In 1846, soon after the foregoing description was penned by Bulwer, 
 the Whigs returned to power ; and O'Connell found that his day was over. 
 He turned his back upon the scene of his triumphs, and set forth on a 
 devotional pilgrimage to the great capital of his faith. This he was not 
 destined to reach ; he was seized with a fatal illness at Genoa, and in that 
 lovely city, on May 15th, 1847, in the seventy-second year of his age he 
 closed by a tranquil death, a long and troublous career of excitement and 
 agitation. His body was embalmed, and transferred to the cemetery of 
 Glasnevin in the city of Dublin ; his heart was deposited in a cinerary 
 vase of silver, and deposited in the Church of San Andrea della Valle, in 
 Rome, where magnificent obsequies were celebrated by the command of 
 the Pope. 
 
 His excellent wife, a relation of his own, daughter of Edward 
 O'Connell, M.D., of Tralee, had died in 1836. She brought him four 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 sons and thiee daughters ; and what with the survivors of these, their 
 children, their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren, there may 
 be reckoned up at the present moment, nearly one hundred direct 
 descendants of Daniel O'Connell. 
 
 In August, 1875, the Centenary of the birth of this remarkable man 
 was celebrated at Dublin. It consisted of a procession of all the trades 
 and Religious Orders of Ireland, including five hundred teetotallers 
 from Liverpool, and other bodies ; and the placing of a bust on a 
 pedestal in Sackville Street, while an oration was read, which was to have 
 been delivered by Lord O'Hagan, who was unable to attend on account 
 of the illness of his daughter. The Lord Mayor, the Roman Catholic 
 priests, and the more aristocratic part of the visitors, assisted at a grand 
 banquet at the Exhibition Hall ; while the trades dined together, in 
 humbler fashion, at the Rotunda. On the following day, there was a 
 banquet, with a like motive, in London, Mitchell Henry, M.P., in the 
 chair ; and the centenary was also held in various cities in England, 
 Scotland, Italy and the United States. It was then determined to 
 erect in Dublin a fitting monument to the memory of the great patriot. 
 The cost was to be ,18,000, and this was raised, with no small difficulty, 
 by public subscription. The people who owed their emancipation to 
 O'Connell, did not show their gratitude by the liberality of their subscrip- 
 tions ; and but for the constant spurring and whipping of the Press, and 
 the accumulation of interest, the matter would probably have altogether 
 lapsed. The entire amount collected in two years was a little over ^8000 ; 
 and the foundation stone was then laid, on August 8th, 1864. The 
 monument was at last completed ; and on August 15th, 1882, with suitable 
 formalities, presented to the Irish nation. The sculptor was Foley ; and 
 the work is said to be worthy at once of the artist and his subject. It 
 consists of a granite base (still unfinished), supporting a massive column 
 on which are emblematic figures in bronze, admirably sculptured by Foley 
 himself, with the colossal figure of the " Liberator," in his characteristic 
 cloak, surmounting the whole. The likeness is said to be good, and the 
 attitude easy, natural and dignified. The sculptor died before his work, 
 so long in hand, was completed ; and much credit is due to his successor, 
 Mr. Brock, who seems to have caught his master's inspiration, and 
 wrought out his ideal to final perfection. 
 
 It was greatly to be regretted that this centenary celebration of one 
 of the greatest and sincerest of Ireland's sons, which might have served 
 to unite Irishmen of all creeds and parties in the spirit of freedom and 
 patriotism, should have been allowed to degenerate into a display of 
 Ultramontane bigotry, and the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of Repealers 
 and Home Rulers. This culminated in the post-prandial row at the 
 banquet in the Exhibition Hall, so essentially Irish and characteristic of 
 the soil. But it must be remembered, though it was somewhat difficult 
 to realize the fact amid the universal national psean which was then 
 uplifted over the name and fame of the Liberator, that he was looked 
 upon, even in his own day, with contempt and suspicion by the leading 
 patriots of the opposite party. The maxim of O'Connell was, " Consti- 
 tutional agitation, and absence of physical force." As Bulwer so well 
 says : 
 
 " Vain every mesh this Proteus to enthrall, 
 He breaks no statute and he creeps through all ; 
 
DANIEL O'CONNELL. 227 
 
 First to the mass that valiant truth to tell, 
 
 * Rebellion's art is never to rebel, 
 
 Elude all danger, but defy all laws,' 
 
 He stands himself the safe sublime he draws ! 
 
 In him behold all contrasts which belong 
 
 To minds abased, but passions rous'd, by wrong ; 
 
 The blood all fervour, and the brain all guile, 
 
 The patriot's bluntness, and the bondsman's wile." * 
 
 On the other hand, the Young Ireland party, headed by the writers of 
 the Natid?i, Smith O'Brien, Thomas F. Meagher, Terence B. McManus, 
 John Mitchel and others advocated the same doctrines as the Fords, 
 Devoys, and O'Donovan Rossas of the present day, viz. the liberation of 
 Ireland by force of arms, the accomplishment of her severance from 
 the Empire, and entire national independence. One of the foremost of 
 this band, Michael Doheney, a barrister of peasant extraction, of great 
 natural ability, managed, after the arrest of his fellow rebels, to escape ; 
 and after wandering about for a time in the company of James Stephens, 
 the Fenian head-centre, got safely to America. There he wrote a graphic 
 account of the Irish struggle of 1848, which he called The Felon 's Track, 
 and in it drew the character of O'Connell with unsparing hand. " It is 
 impossible," says he, " fully to appreciate the pernicious effect of Mr. 
 O'ConnelFs teaching, without reviewing in minute detail the leading 
 circumstances of his wonderful career, and the matchless and countless 
 resources with which he upheld his fatal system. ... In view of his 
 recent struggles, there can be no doubt of the tendency of his policy to 
 demoralize, disgrace, enfeeble and corrupt the Irish people. ... So 
 successful had he been in deceiving the champions of intolerance, that of 
 all the great qualities displayed in that wonderful struggle, that which 
 was most prized was the cunning of evasion. It left behind it an enduring 
 and destructive influence. Dissimulation in political action began to be 
 regarded as a public virtue, and long afterwards, when men sought to 
 assert the dignity of truth, their candour was charged against them as a 
 heinous crime." 
 
 From the same standpoint, John Mitchel, in his remarkable publica- 
 tion, The Jail Journal, draws a vigorous and graphic portrait of the 
 great orator, as he organized and worked the movement for Catholic 
 Relief: 
 
 " At the head of that open and legal agitation, was a man of giant 
 proportions, in body and in mind, with no profound learning indeed, even 
 in his own profession of law, but with a vast and varied knowledge of 
 human nature, in all its strength, and especially in all its weakness ; with 
 a voice like thunder and earthquake, yet musical and soft at will, as the 
 song of birds ; with a genius and fancy tempestuous, playful, cloudy, 
 fiery, mournful, merry, lofty and mean by turns, as the mood was on him ; 
 a humour broad, bacchant, riant, genial and jovial ; with profound and 
 spontaneous national feeling, and superhuman and subterhuman passions ; 
 yet with a boundless fund of masterly affectation, and consummate 
 histrionism. Hating and loving heartily, outrageous in his merriment, 
 and passionate in his lamentation, he had the power to make other men 
 hate or love, laugh or weep, at his good pleasure, insomuch that Daniel 
 O'Connell, by virtue of being more intensely Irish, carrying to a more 
 
 * The New Timon, fourth edition, 1846, p. 38. 
 
228 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 extravagant pitch all Irish strength, and passion, and weakness, than other 
 Irishmen, led and swayed his people by a kind of divine, or else a diabolic, 
 right. He led them, as I believe, all wrong, for forty years. He was a 
 Lawyer, and never could come to the point of denying and defying ali 
 British law. He was a Catholic, sincere and devout, and would not see 
 that the Church had ever been the enemy of Irish freedom. He was an 
 Aristocrat by position and taste, and the name of a Republic was odious 
 to him. Moreover, his success as a Catholic Agitator ruined both him 
 and his country. By mere agitation, by harmless exhibition of numerical 
 force, by imposing demonstrations (which are fatal nonsense), and by 
 eternally half unsheathing a visionary sword, which friends and foes alike 
 knew to be a phantom, he had, as he believed, coerced the British 
 Government to pass a Relief Bill, and admit Catholics to Parliament, and 
 some offices." 
 
 The same writer subsequently gives us his own estimate 01 the 
 character and temperament of his political rival : 
 
 " Poor old Dan ! wonderful, mighty, jovial, and mean old man, with 
 silver tongue, and smile of witchery, and heart of melting ruth, lying' 
 tongue, smile of treachery, heart of unfathomable fraud ! What a royal, 
 yet vulgar soul, with the keen eye and potent sweep of a generous eagle 
 of Cair Tual, with the base servility of a hound, and the cold cruelty 
 of a spider ! Think of his speech for John Magee, the most powerful 
 forensic achievement since Demosthenes, and then think of the ' gorgeous 
 and gossamer ' theory of moral and political agitation, the most astound- 
 ing organon of public swindling since first man bethought him of 
 obtaining money under false pretences. And after one has thought of all 
 this, and more, what then can a man say ? What but pray that Irish 
 earth may lie light on O'Connell's breast, and that the good God, who 
 knew how to create so wondrous a creature, may have mercy on his 
 soul." 
 
 The opinion formed by Thomas Carlyle of O'Connell may be seen in 
 a very characteristic letter from him to his friend, the late James Hannay, 
 dated Addiscombe Farm, Croydon, September 5th, 1855, an d communi- 
 cated by Mr. Dillon Croker to the AthencBum. After expressing the " real 
 regard and great affection" which he felt for Duffy, and his constant 
 recognition of " his fine truthful intellect, and ardent human character, in 
 the worst tumult of Irish confusion," he speaks of his troublous course, 
 "tumbling in the wake of that monster of blarney Big O, and his 'justice 
 for Ireland,' the ugliest impostor generated in my time," and expresses 
 "a permanent wish to steer clear to windward of O'Connellism, and of 
 anti do, in all their branches." 
 
 In the plate before us, the "bulky and swaggering" figure of O'Connell 
 as, with patronizing hand, he paws the " slim, cowering, ill-cut, and 
 haunchless " body of the member for Tipperary, is admirably rendered. 
 " The countenance of O'Connell," says Maginn, " is that of ten thousand 
 of his countrymen, good-humoured in surface, but indicative of deep, 
 deep, treachery within. It says as plainly as features can say, ' I have 
 you now, my good fellow there, then, I pat you on the back ; and if 
 you are to be hanged to-morrow, I shall feel great pleasure in sending 
 you the gallows.' " 
 
 Reference may be made to the Memoirs of O^Connell, by Huish (1836, 
 Virtue, 8vo) j Reminiscences by a Munster Farmer (1847, Tallis, 8vo); 
 
RICHARD LALOR SHIEL. 229 
 
 Last Days of O'Connell, by Maccabe (1847, Dolman, 8vo) ; Life and 
 Conduct (1847, Strange, i2mo) ; Personal Recollections (1848, Chapman 
 and Hall, 2 vols. 8vo) ; the Times Newspaper, August 16th, 1882 ; and 
 the admirable summary by Mr. Lecky of the general effect of O'ConnelFs 
 life upon Irish parties and politics, in his Leaders of Public Opinion in 
 Ireland. 
 
 John Mitchel, in the passage I have cited, speaks of Daniel O'Connell 
 as an "Aristocrat by position and taste." He was, indeed, the head of a 
 Milesian Sept, which had held sway in Limerick and in Kerry as Kings 
 or Chiefs in olden times, till its territories were wrested from it by the 
 right of the stronger. But however rival parties may differ as to the 
 result and effects of his policy, his marvellous genius and abilities must 
 ever give him a high rank among the foremost of his age and nation ; 
 his untiring advocacy of their civil rights must ever entitle him to the 
 gratitude of his co-religionists ; and it must not be forgotten that the 
 warmth of his heart and the sincerity of his friendship gained him 
 the unmeasured love and esteem of his followers and contemporaries. 
 
 RICHARD LALOR SHIEL. 
 
 Far different he, who in a later day, 
 Shot o'er those floors a sportive meteor ray, 
 The glittering wisp of that morass, Repeal, 
 Delighting all, convincing no one, ShieL, 
 The Kean of Orators ; with equal art 
 He cons a whisper, and prepares a start 
 What fire, what freshness ! why suspend the praise? 
 Does he believe one syllable he says ? 
 Perhaps ! Who knows ? it is the old debate ; 
 Do actors feel the rage they simulate?" 
 
 So far Bulwer, in his fine poem, St. Stephen's (part iii.) of the 
 remaining member of the dual unit now under consideration ; and who, 
 perhaps, can lay somewhat better claim to a place among literary 
 celebrities than his more imposing companion. He was born in Dublin 
 in 1793 ; and after receiving his education at Stoneyhurst and Trinity 
 College, Dublin, where he graduated with distinction, entered himself at 
 Lincoln's Inn, with a view to practice at the English Bar. His father, 
 .however, who had been a successful merchant at Cadiz, having become 
 unfortunate, the student was compelled to return to Ireland, where, in 
 1814, he was called to the Bar. Here he was achieving already some 
 success, when the formation of the Catholic Association opened another 
 .and more seductive field for his oratory and talents. In that famous 
 assembly he was second to O'Connell alone ; often, indeed, surpassing his 
 chief in power of captivation, by the grace of diction and the elegant 
 play of imagination. As an author, and it is in this aspect that he 
 especially claims our notice here, he achieved a considerable reputa- 
 tion. He wrote several successful tragedies, one of which, Evadnej or 
 the Statue, still retains possession of the stage. Another, Adelaide, to 
 -which the splendid histrionic ability of Miss O'Neil secured a temporary 
 favour, as also the dramas, The Apostate, Bellamira (together with 
 Evadne, of which I have spoken), were written by him to provide funds 
 for his expenses, and produced him some ^2000. His articles, also, in 
 
230 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 the New Monthly Magazine, in the palmy days of Campbell's editorship, 
 attracted considerable notice, especially his able sketches of the Irish 
 Bar. As a barrister, he never attained much success ; for, although his 
 oratorical powers were admitted, he never inspired great confidence in 
 his legal knowledge. By and by, on the passing of the Emancipation 
 Act, he entered the British Parliament, where I do not care to follow him 
 too closely. His impassioned eloquence, though his voice was wanting in 
 compass and power, soon gave him a high rank in the House ; and on 
 the subsidence of O'Connell, it was thought by many that the sceptre of 
 the great Agitator would fall into his hands. But his strong alliance with 
 the Whig party forbade this ; and with the change of a word, the line 
 became applicable to him which Goldsmith wrote upon Burke : 
 
 " To place he gave up, what was meant for mankind." 
 
 He continued, indeed, to be occasionally heard ; but he constantly enjoyed 
 some appointment of profit under the crown. Besides being a Queen's 
 Counsel, in 1839 ne accepted office as Vice-President of the Board of 
 Trade, and was sworn in as Privy Councillor. He was also successively 
 a Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital, and Judge Advocate General. 
 In 1850, he accepted the post of British Minister Plenipotentiary at 
 Florence ; a step by which he adroitly escaped the necessity of either 
 supporting or opposing the anti-Papal measure* of her Majesty's 
 Ministers, from whom he held the office of Master of the Mint. 
 
 He was destined to enjoy his new position for a short time only. His 
 first wife was Miss O'Halloran, niece of Sir William McMahon, Bart, 
 Master of the Rolls in Ireland ; his second, whom he married in 1830, 
 was Mrs. Power, a lady of some fortune, daughter of John Lalor, Esq., of 
 Crana, near Clonmell, and the relict of Edmund Power, Esq., of Gurteen, 
 in the county of Tipperary. This lady had a son by her former husband ; 
 and his melancholy end by suicide, from the pressure, as was said, of 
 pecuniary difficulties, produced such a shock to the highly nervous 
 organization and enfeebled constitution of his step-father, that he suc- 
 cumbed to the blow. He died at Florence, May 25th, 1 851, in the fifty- 
 eighth year of his age ; the immediate cause of his death being gout in 
 the stomach. 
 
 Biographical records of the great orator are not wanting. There are 
 the Memoirs of Shi 'el, by Ton -ens McCullagh (1855,2 vols. 8vo) ; Sketches^ 
 Legal and Political, edited by Savage (1855, 2 vols. 8vo) j and Speeches^ 
 with Memoir ) by T. McNevin (2nd ed. i860, 8vo). 
 
 * The " Ecclesiastical Titles Bill." 
 
AtJTHOH F SAYINGS AND DOINGS: 
 
THEODORE E. HOOK. 231 
 
 XLVIL THEODORE E. HOOK. 
 
 " Lord of the squib, and primate of the pun, 
 Fat Theodore, thy wreaths for these are won ! 
 The ton's hired Comus thou, thy brains each week 
 Can void in columns puns thou dar'st not speak ; 
 Who, prompt like thee, can hatch an unclean joke, 
 
 Or give to b y wit the master-stroke ? 
 
 So meaningly, who throw the smutty hint, 
 Thou punning improvisator in print? 
 May George enrol thee for his Windsor fool, 
 A dinner wit, surpassing Villiers' school ! " 
 
 So far, with indignant pen, our old acquaintance, " Holy Bob," in his 
 once famous satire, The Age Reviewed. Each of us knows the original, 
 whether the portrait be faithful or not, and can say with George Colman, 
 " Hook and I (eye) are old friends !" 
 
 Theodore Hook commenced life in the possession of everything 
 that should have made it prosperous and happy. He inherited musical 
 talent from his father and literary from his mother, He was educated at 
 Harrow, where he was a contemporary of Lord Byron. Campbell spoke 
 of him as a " wonderful creature " ; and Coleridge declared him to be " as 
 true a genius as Dante." His manners and person were elegant ; he was 
 endowed with a natural wit, which, probably has never been surpassed, 
 and which enabled him, as Charles Lamb said, " even to make nonsense 
 respected " ; and he early secured friends by whom a prospect of fortune 
 and honour was opened before him. Yet, in face of all, we are compelled 
 to regard him, as we do his old friend and ally, Maginn, as an illustration 
 of the sententious proposition of Dr. Johnson, in allusion to the fate of 
 another literary man about town, the unfortunate Savage, that " those 
 that disregard the common maxims of life will make knowledge useless, 
 wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible." 
 
 Hook was born in London, September 22nd, 1788. It was not he, but 
 his elder brother, Dean Hook, who died in 1828, who wrote the novels, 
 Pen Owen, and Percy Mallory j but Theodore, himself, made an early 
 debut, at the age of seventeen, by his comic opera, The Soldier's Return, 
 which was acted in 1805, and produced him ^50. This was followed by 
 a great number of farces, monologues, and comedies, including the better 
 known Invisible Girl, written especially to exhibit the talent of his friend 
 Jack Bannister; and Tekeli, a melodrama (1806), which produced a vast 
 sensation in the world of playgoers. 
 
 In 1809 occurred the much-talked of " Berners-street Hoax," in which 
 it is pretty well known that Hook had a hand ; if, indeed, he was not its 
 inventor and prime mover.* His joking proclivities had burst forth before 
 this, and nearly cost him his matriculation. When asked by the Vice- 
 Chancellor if he was prepared to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, the flippant 
 candidate briskly replied, * Oh yes, sir, quite ready ; Forty, if you 
 please " ; and an apology was necessary to soothe the ire of the dignitary. 
 
 * See Life and Remains of Theodore Hook, by the Rev. R. H. Dalton Barham, 
 vol i. p. 72. 
 
232 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Hook is the " Stanislaus Hoax" of D'Israeli's Vivian Grey ; and a record 
 of his practical jokes, " boisterous buffooneries," mad adventures, and fits 
 of frolic and drollery, would fill a volume. Many of these are, indeed, 
 narrated in his Sayings and Doings, Gilbert Gurney, and Jack Brag;; but 
 as Lockhart says, " they are nothing without the commentary of that 
 bright eye, the deep gurgling glee of his voice the electrical felicity of 
 his pantomime, for, in truth, he was as great an actor as could have been 
 produced by rolling up Liston and Terry and Matthews into one." Much, 
 therefore, of Hook died with him, or only survived in the memory of 
 friends, soon to pass away like himself. He has been blamed for thus 
 expending his genius at dinner-tables, and with boon-companions, or of 
 being one of those who, 
 
 " To parties give up what was meant for mankind ; " 
 
 but it must be remembered that much of the charm of a joke often 
 depends upon the graces of its utterer, and that this was especially the 
 case with Hook, of whom it might emphatically be said, as Cicero wrote 
 -of Antony, " In eo facetiae quae nulla arte tradi possunt." Many of his 
 best things, too, would hardly bear repetition, for there is doubtless some 
 ^ruth in Montgomery's satire. " Hook," says the author of The Modern 
 Dunciad* "is a good table companion, and well worth his dinner to 
 -entertain a company. His levities, when they steer clear of indecency 
 and profaneness, are amusing, and to those not read in Joe Miller have 
 an air of novelty." I must not leave the subject of Theodore Hook's 
 witticisms without recording my own abhorrence of practical jokes and their 
 perpetrators. Nothing is at once so vulgar, so cruel, and so dangerous 
 in its possible consequences. Deriving pleasure from the infliction of 
 pain on another, the practical joker is devoid of the essential property of 
 true gentlemanliness, and deserves to be branded as a common nuisance. 
 When Hook took upon himself to invite poor " Romeo " Coates to a fete 
 at Carlton House, it is greatly to the credit of the Prince Regent that he 
 expressed regret that entrance had been refused him, and sent his secretary 
 next morning to apologize in person. 
 
 In 1813 came Hook's appointment to the offices of Accountant- 
 General and Treasurer at Mauritius, at a salary equivalent to ^2000 per 
 annum. Here he remained five years, at the end of which time a de- 
 ficiency of some ,12,000 was discovered in his accounts, and he was 
 compelled to return, not, as he said to an inquiring friend, exactly from 
 ill-health, for here, too, he could not help a joke, but " on account of 
 something wrong in the chest. n Not having it in his power to make good 
 this serious deficit, he was provided with a lodging in the prison of King's 
 Bench, where he remained for two years. In March, 1825, he was set at 
 liberty ; but informed that he was " in no degree exonerated from his 
 liability, if he should hereafter have the means of discharging it." Lock- 
 hart, in his excellent article on Theodore Hook, f has investigated this 
 affair with sufficient minuteness. He is inclined to exculpate Hook from 
 everything but negligence, and expresses great regret that the latter did 
 not apply his superfluous means to the reduction of the debt, which he 
 himself admitted. He received 1000 for each series of Sayi?igs ana 
 Doings j the editorship of the John Bull, of which he was almost the 
 
 * The late George Daniel, of Islington, of bibliomaniacal celebrity. 
 
 J* In the Quarterly Review, vol. lxxi. p. 53 ; reprinted by Murray, 1852. 
 
THEODORE E. HOOK. 233 
 
 sole writer, long produced him 2000 per annum ; and his other novels 
 and literary works must have been a large source of profit. Surely, out 
 of these sums he could have paid something into the Exchequer from 
 time to time in liquidation of the liability, and thus not only maintained 
 his self-respect, but possibly obtained a chance of enjoying, at some 
 future day, the renewed patronage of the Crown or its Ministers. 
 
 It was in 1830 that Hook started his magazine, The Arcadian. Lock- 
 hart says that he never saw but one number, and that this " contained a 
 long ballad of provoking pungency, satirizing Holland House, and styled 
 * The Silver Po. 5 " This ballad is now before me ; it will be found in the 
 number for April 1st, 1820, p. 1 17, and consists of twenty-five stanzas, signed 
 " M. B." It is too long to give here, even it were quite suitable for repro- 
 duction in this more modest age. The magazine is certainly of excessive 
 rarity; as is also the pamphlet, penes me of which, too, Lockhart says 
 he has " in vain endeavoured to recover a copy," entitled Tentamenj or, 
 an Essay towards the History of Whittington, some time Lord Mayor of 
 London. By Vicesimus Blenkinsop, A.S.S., etc. (1821, 8vo, pp. 43). In 
 this satire, which occasioned considerable attention, and went through 
 three or four editions, Whittington represents Alderman Wood, and " hys 
 catte," Queen Caroline. It is, of course, on the Georgian side of the 
 question.* 
 
 Hook wrote many novels ; besides those I have already named, 
 Maxwell, The Parsorfs Daughter, Love and Pride, and others qua nunc 
 fterscribere lo7igum est. Here are the good and evil qualities which I have 
 had to signalize in other cases. Knowledge of the world, insight into 
 character, dramatic ability ; marred by diffusiveness, prolixity, and repe- 
 tition. We long for the "harvest of the quiet eye" ; the terse narrative, 
 the quiet characterization, the unobtrusive yet telling incident. Hook 
 was the parent of the modern fashionable novel ; and some of his tales 
 may yet live in spite of their faults. " Confound haste and hurry," says 
 Tickler, in the Nodes (No. lviii.). " Who that has read his Sayings a?id 
 Doings, and, above all, Maxwell, will doubt that had he given himself 
 time for consideration and reflection, we should have been hailing him ere 
 now, nem. con., as another Smollett, if not another Le Sage ? " 
 
 Theodore Hook was doubtless a very smart fellow, and few men were 
 better qualified to judge of intellectual capacity than William Maginn ; 
 but it must be admitted that in the literary vaticination of the latter there 
 is more of the partiality of the crony, than the judicial calmness of the 
 critic : 
 
 " His novels are the only ones of the day that will go down to posterity, 
 except those of Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth ; he, Theodore, being 
 the sole English, and, more especially, the sole town representative in this 
 narrow circle of immortals. His songs will be edited with curious notes 
 a hundred years hence by some Tory Lord Holland, if, at that period of 
 mundane history, there should be any such animal as either a Tory or a 
 Lord. His good sayings will be bound up with those of Talleyrand, 
 Jekyll, Rogers, Hill, Somerville, Murray, Alvanley, Rothschild, and 
 Luttrell ; and perhaps the party who were contented to be sustained by 
 his arguments, and cheered with his merriment, but who never gave them 
 anything but their claret and their " hip, hip, hurrah ! " will by that time 
 have erected a "round tower" to his memory also, and inscribed it with 
 
 * My copy is the third edition, with portrait of the Alderman on the title-page. 
 
234 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 the unadorned name and surname of a Great Wit and a Good Fellow, 
 who long ago ought to have belted a riband, broad as Charles, Lord 
 Farnborough's, across the manly chest of Theodore, Viscount Hook, 
 Baron Crook of Fulham." 
 
 It would never do to speak of Theodore Hook without alluding to his 
 talents for improvisation. A genius for this is rare among us ; and our 
 language is hardly so well adapted for its display as the plastic Italian to 
 which it is native. Here Hook was facile princeps, undoubtedly the 
 greatest which this country has ever produced. " We remember once," 
 says one who knew him, " to have heard Mr. Hook sing a song upon a 
 company of sixty persons, each verse containing an epigram. Sheridan 
 was present, and was perfectly astounded at his extraordinary faculty. 
 He could not, he declared, have imagined such power possible, if he had 
 not witnessed it. No description, he further said, could have convinced 
 him of so peculiar an instance of genius, and he protested that he should 
 not have believed it to have been an unstudied effort, had he not seen 
 proof that no anticipation could have been formed of what might arise to 
 furnish matter and opportunities for the exercise of this rare talent." * 
 
 Fancy, to cite an illustration of this marvellous gift which just occurs 
 to my memory, an interruption in the midst of an improvisation at his 
 own house, by the announcement of a servant, in unintentioned rhythm : 
 
 " Please Mr. Winter has called for the taxes," 
 
 and Hook, nothing put out, rattling on, 
 
 "I advise you to give him whatever he axes ; 
 Mr. Winter's a man who stands no sort of flummery, 
 For though Winter's his name, his process is summery!'* 
 
 Even when in the " durance vile " of Shire Lane, under an Exchequer 
 writ (August, 1823), with Maginn for a companion in misfortune, he had 
 no reluctance to make sport for the Philistines, out of his own calamity 
 and disgrace. He had become a great favourite with the sheriffs officer, 
 Mr. Hemp ; and when the eve of his departure arrived, after a sojourn of 
 some nine months, he was regaled by the hospital functionary with a fare- 
 well banquet. At its close an improvisation took place, in course of which 
 the prison officers and inmates were shown up in successive verses, each 
 rounded off with the chorus : 
 
 " Let him hang with a curse, this atrocious, pernicious 
 Scoundrel that emptied the till at Mauritius ! " 
 
 I must hasten to the end. Regret for the past, mental worry and 
 labour in the present, and anxiety for the future, made Theodore Hook an 
 old man when he ought still to have been a young one. Add to these 
 agencies, dinners, drink (he got at last to be able to take nothing but 
 brandy), and late hours, which poor Theodore had a way to avoid by 
 going home at three or four in the morning, and we need not wonder 
 that his constitution gave way. He died, after an illness of three weeks, 
 at his residence at Fulham, August 24th, 1841, in the fifty-third year of 
 his age ; deeply in debt, and leaving five children, whose existence was 
 unsanctioned by law or religion, entirely unprovided for. The sale of his 
 
 * See note by Edmund Yates to his abridgment of the Life and Correspondence of 
 Charles Mathews (Routledge, i860, 8vo). 
 
THEODORE E. HOOK. 23$ 
 
 books and other effects produced ^2500, which was surrendered to the 
 Crown, as the privileged creditor. A subscription was, however, 
 promptly set on foot for his illegitimate children and their mother. This 
 amounted to nearly ^3000, of which the late King of Hanover, to his 
 credit, gave ,500. 
 
 There is a well- written little book, published by the Religious Tract 
 Society, entitled The Mirage of Life. It consists of a series of 
 biographical sketches of certain chosen " men of the world," who have 
 had the misfortune to seek for happiness in worldly pursuits, and meet 
 with the disappointment which those Eastern travellers incur, who are 
 induced to follow the delusive atmospheric phenomena which present 
 themselves in the desert. Beau Brummell is selected as the type of the 
 "Man of Fashion"; William Beckford, of Fonthill, as the "Man of 
 Wealth" ; Lord Clive as the " Hero " ; William Pitt as the " Statesman " ;. 
 Sheridan as the " Orator " ; B. R. Haydon as the "Artist" ; Sir Walter 
 Scott as the " Man of Literature " ; Lord Byron as the " Poet ; Lord 
 Chesterfield as the " Man of the World " ; Emma, Lady Hamilton, as the 
 "Beauty"; Napoleon Buonaparte as the "Monarch"; and Theodore 
 Hook as the " Man of Wit and Humour," the chapter to this last con- 
 cluding with the verse : " There is a way which seemeth right unto a 
 man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Even in laughter 
 the heart is sorrowful ; and the end of that mirth is heaviness " {Proverbs 
 xiv. 12, 13). It may readily be admitted that true happiness is not to be 
 found in the world, but rather in the cultivation of a devotional spirit. 
 Thus it is hardly worth while to cavil at the choice of the personages 
 thus held up to the pity and censure of the Christian reader, on the ground 
 that none of them, with the exception perhaps of Scott and Chesterfield, 
 can, in the face of their serious personal indiscretions, be set forth as 
 typical instances of a wise and temperate use of the advantages offered 
 them by the world. But the little well-intentioned book is worthy of 
 mention here on account of its illustrations by John Tenniel, one of which 
 represents Theodore Hook, at a gay social party, singing an extempore 
 comic song, and accompanying his own voice with the piano. 
 
 For the rest, it should not be forgotten that Theodore Hook was a 
 man warm in his friendships ; of humane and charitable disposition ; and 
 of open-handed, generous nature. He was beloved and regretted by all 
 who knew him ; and possessed to the last such charm of grace and 
 manner, that, at the Athenaeum, his favourite club, it is said that the 
 dinners fell off to the extent of ^300 per annum when he disappeared 
 from his accustomed corner, near the door of the coffee-room. 
 
 In The Life and Remains of Theodore Hook, by the Rev. R. H. Dalton 
 Barham, B.A. (Bentley, 1849, 2 vols., 8vo), will be found two portraits of 
 the humorist, one after a drawing by Bennett, the other from a painting 
 by E. W. Eddis, 
 
236 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 XLVIII. CHARLES MOLLOY WESTMACOTT. 
 
 EXCEPT as belonging to a typical period, and associated with events to 
 which Time has given an extraneous interest, I cannot confess to much 
 sympathy with the impudent, self-satisfied, rosy-gilled little journalist 
 whose admirable portraiture we have now before us. The account given 
 of his genealogy by Maginn, who seems, from some cause or other, to 
 have regarded with especial kindness a man whom he should have held 
 as the very dirt beneath his feet, is, in the main, correct ; and I believe 
 that his title to the high artistic appellation of " Westmacott " depends 
 solely on his own arrogant assumption. I will not dispute his right to 
 that of " Molloy," which was the name of his mother, the pretty widow of 
 Kensington, who kept the King's Arms, close by the gate, now some 
 ninety years ago, and was derived from the son of a respectable master 
 chimney-sweeper, whose shed and premises were aforetime to be seen in 
 a narrow street or court running from the lower end of Drury Lane to the 
 Church of St. Mary-le-Strand. But enough of this. Stemmata quid 
 faciunt ? asks the poet ; and I was only led to rake among forgotten 
 rubbish by the consideration that if it was ever fair to revive a scandalous 
 story, it was so in the case of one who notoriously made market of the 
 scandals of others. 
 
 Those who have penetrated the arcana of London journalism need 
 not be informed of what is meant by the terms " ink-making " and " black- 
 mail/' by which is implied that detestable system of literary terrorism 
 which, although existing before his time, and suspected, at least, in far 
 more reputable quarters, was further methodized and perfected by West- 
 macott than any free-pen of his own licentious period. Of similar 
 practices, the late Barnard Gregory, Renton Nicholson, and others, have 
 been, at a more recent day, accused ; but however true the charges may 
 be in their cases, I believe that the offences were of minor character, and 
 venture to assert, for the credit of journalism, that their known commis- 
 sion at the present day would entail upon the guilty exclusion from the 
 guild on which their practices bring disgrace and contempt. The modus 
 opera?idi was as follows : Sometimes a vague rumour, or hint of scandal, 
 .accompanied perchance by a suggestive newspaper paragraph, was con- 
 veyed to one or more of the parties implicated, with a threat of further 
 inquiry into its truth, and a full exposure of the circumstances which 
 excited the sender's virtuous indignation. This, if the selected victim 
 was a man of nervous, timid temperament, often produced the desired 
 .effect ; and, although possibly entirely innocent of the allegation, he pre- 
 ferred to purchase silence, and escape the suspicion which publicity does 
 not fail to attach to a name. If, on the other hand, no notice was taken 
 of the communication, the screw received some further turns. A narrative 
 was drawn up, and printed off, in the form of a newspaper paragraph ; 
 this was transmitted to the parties concerned, with a letter, intimating 
 that it had been " received from a correspondent," and that the publisher 
 thought fit, prior to publication, to ascertain whether those whose names 
 were mentioned desired to correct, modify, or cancel any part of the state- 
 ment. There is no doubt that very large sums have been extorted by these 
 
THE. EBSTffi. E THE 'AGE. 
 
CHARLES MOLLOY WESTMACOTT. 237 
 
 scoundrelly means, and a vast amount of anxiety and misery occasioned. 
 Not to grope in the mud for forgotten slander, I shall content myself here 
 by saying that Westmacott became acquainted, in the course of his 
 excavations, with a certain scandalous intrigue, in which members of the 
 Court, a general officer, and even persons of a loftier station, were impli- 
 cated. The usual means were had recourse to, and the screw " put on " ; 
 till finally he was induced to deliver up the pieces justificatives for the 
 consideration of a sum amounting, if I am not greatly mistaken, to not 
 much less than ^5000. This, with sundry other " pulls," and the more 
 legitimate gains of his editorship, enabled Westmacott to fit up a classic 
 Tusculamtm between Barnes and Richmond, with books and pictures 
 within, as befitted an owner of Ciceronian tastes, and surrounded by 
 grounds, in which might be seen, as in the Groves of Blarney, 
 
 " All heathen gods, 
 
 And nymphs so fair, 
 All standing naked 
 In the open air ! " 
 
 How long this lasted, I know not ; neither am I acquainted with the- 
 circumstances which led to his exodus from these shores. He took up 
 his residence in Paris, where I knew something of him ; and in that city 
 he died about August, 1868. 
 
 In 1823, we have from his pen a rival volume to George Cruikshank's 
 inimitable Points of Humour. This is entitled Points of Misery, or Fables: 
 for Mankind : Prose and Verse, chiefly original. By Charles Westmacott. 
 Illustrated with Twenty Designs by Robert Cruikshank (royal 8vo, Sher- 
 wood & Co.) ; in 1824, we have British Galleries of Painting and Sculp- 
 ture, comprising a General, Historical, and Critical Catalogue, with 
 Separate Notices of Every Work of Fine Art in the Principal Collections t 
 etc. (Sherwood & Co., 8vo, pp. 240). In 1825, he visited Paris, in com- 
 pany with the admirable caricature artist, Thomas Rowlandson ; and in 
 that year was published, also by Sherwoods, a collection of extracts which 
 had appeared in the previous season, entitled The Spirit of the Public 
 foumals for the Year 1824, with Explanatory Notes. Illustrations on 
 wood by T. Rowlandson, R. and G. Cruikshank, Lane, and Findlay. 
 Westmacott also wrote the Annual Critical Catalogue to the Royal 
 Academy. 
 
 It is proverbially unwise to stir up dirty puddles, and it must be 
 admitted that Grantley Berkeley hardly acted with sound discretion when 
 he chose for the subject of a novel the historical achievements of a family 
 so rife of scandals as that to which he belonged. To some of these I 
 must take permission now to refer. Frederick Augustus, the 5th Earl oi 
 Berkeley, married, May 16th, 1796, Miss Mary Cole, the daughter of a. 
 butcher at Gloucester. This lady had, however, previously borne him 
 four children, the eldest of whom was the notorious William Fitzhardinge, 
 better known as Colonel Berkeley, from the position which he held in the 
 South Gloucester Militia. On the death of the Earl in 1810, this Colonel 
 Berkeley, who sat in the lower House under the courtesy title of Viscount 
 Dursley, presented a petition to the Crown for a writ of summons as Earl 
 Berkeley, basing his claim to the peerage on an alleged private marriage 
 of his parents, previous to that which was generally acknowledged. 
 The petition was referred by the Prince Regent to the House of Lords,. 
 
23 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 who, after due investigation of the matter, came to the decision that the 
 petitioner had failed to substantiate his claim. The inheritance of the 
 family distinction was confirmed by the committee of privilege to Thomas 
 Moreton Fitzhardinge, the fifth son actually, but the first after the marriage 
 of 1796 ; he, however, with great magnanimity, refused to claim the 
 earldom, inasmuch as his doing so would imply acquiescence in the 
 decision of the Lords,, which bastardized his brothers, and cast a slur 
 upon the fair fame of his mother. 
 
 Now, this Colonel Berkeley, who was a man of considerable personal 
 attractions, was passionately devoted to the stage, and possessed histrionic 
 ability of no mean order ; and so it came to pass that when the lovely 
 and celebrated Maria Foote came to star it at Cheltenham, he gallantly 
 offered his services to perform for her benefit. As the great man of the 
 place, and having some reputation for dramatic talent, the performance 
 attracted a crowded audience ; and the lady was grateful for the oppor- 
 tune assistance. On his side, the aristocratic Lothario, who was already 
 notorious for his gallantries, did not neglect his opportunity. He could 
 not marry, he declared, as he was just then petitioning the Crown to grant 
 him the dormant peerage, and a marriage with an actress could not fail 
 to prejudice his suit. To cut matters short, the lovely but frail Maria 
 yielded to his vows, and continued to live under his protection, till, at the 
 birth of her second child, she was forced to the conviction that he did 
 not intend to fulfil his promise. During the five years that this con- 
 nection had lasted, she was not without offers from suitors of wealth and 
 distinction ; and at the very moment when she formed the resolution of 
 breaking for ever with her noble seducer, she found in the person of one 
 of these a suitable object for the transference of her affection. This was 
 a gentleman of considerable fortune, Joseph Hayne, Esq., of Burderop 
 Park, Wiltshire, known to his contemporaries by the soubriquet of " Pea- 
 Green," which he gained in that dandiacal epoch from the colour of his 
 coat. Large as was his income, it was much less than that of another 
 favoured child of fortuno, named Hughes, the son, as was said, of a slop- 
 seller in Ratcliffe Highway, who, having succeded to the enormous fortune 
 some ^40,000 per annum of his uncle, Admiral Sir Alexander Ball, 
 added the name of this latter to his own, and became known as the 
 <l Golden Ball." Thus it was that Hayne, as a lunar light, acquired the 
 nickname of the " Silver Ball " ; and, by and by, that of the " Foote- 
 Ball," when it became notorious that he had fallen under the sway of the 
 lovely actress. Well, this gentleman seems to have had such attachment 
 to our heroine as his nature permitted, and to have been really desirous 
 of carrying out his engagement, even when acquainted with the facts, 
 which, indeed, were sufficiently notorious, of her connection with Berkeley. 
 But he appears to have been a weak-minded creature, and could not 
 withstand the influence of his friends. Promise after promise was made 
 and broken, and the pardon of the outraged lady as often sought and 
 obtained. Tired out at last by his vacillating conduct, Miss Foote was 
 advised to bring an action against her pea-green lover for breach of 
 promise of marriage, the damages being laid at ,10,000. The trial took 
 place in 1825, in the Court of the King's Bench ; and created such 
 excitement in the public mind, that the Lord Chief Justice directed that 
 if order could not be maintained, a requisition for assistance should be 
 dispatched to the office of the Secretary of State. Mrs. Foote, the mother 
 
CHARLES MOLLOY WESTMACOTT. 239 
 
 of Maria, was under examination for upwards of four hours ; but the 
 ingenuity of Scarlett failed to weaken her evidence, and the jury finally 
 returned a verdict for the Plaintiff, with damages ,3000. 
 
 In a story like this, Westmacott could not fail to see admirable 
 materials for his purpose, and having somehow become possessed of 
 certain documents of importance, came to the conclusion that an honest 
 penny was to be turned, either by the publication or the suppression 
 of the facts. Negotiations for the latter failed, and accordingly, in 1825, 
 were published by Sherwood & Co., two octavo volumes entitled Fitz- 
 alleyne of Berkeley : A Romance of the Present Times. By Bernard 
 Blackmantle, author of The English Spy. The circumstances which 
 I have detailed as an induction to these precious tomes constitute the 
 farrago libelli j and the dramatis perso7ice are, under a colourable 
 disguise, those whom I have mentioned. Thus " Samuel Pous " is 
 Samuel Foote ; " Maria Pous," his lovely daughter ; " Fitzalleyne of 
 Berkeley n is the lady-killing Colonel, " William the Conqueror," as he 
 was termed by the buxom damsels of Cheltenham ; u Lord A y" is 
 
 the Regent's friend, Alvanley ; " Major H r" is George Hanger, not 
 
 so well known as Lord^ Coleraine ; "Mr. Optimus " is Tom Best, under 
 whose fatal pistol poor Lord Camelford fell ; " Mary Carbon " is Mary 
 Cole, the butcher's daughter of Gloucester, afterwards Countess of 
 Berkeley; and the "Pea-green Count" is the nincompoop, Hayne. 
 The book was bought and read, for newspapers in those days were fewer 
 and more reticent than they now are. Suppression was attempted, and 
 partially effected ; but Fitzalleyne, though rare, occasionally turns up 
 at the booksellers' ; and the curious reader, who chances to meet with 
 a copy, may find the key which I have afforded him, serviceable to the 
 due intelligence of the contents. It is, of course, beyond my province 
 to pursue with minuteness the further careers of the hero and heroine. 
 The "black Earl," for he was raised to the peerage under the title 
 of Baron Segrave, by letters patent, dated September, 1831, and ten 
 years later elevated to the Earldom of Fitzhardinge, continued notorious 
 for his devotion to the fair daughters of Thespis, and died in the solitary 
 grandeur of his castle, unmarried, in 1857. The lovely Maria, who had 
 missed one husband whose distinction was the colour of his coat, 
 managed, without much delay, to secure another who had achieved 
 reputation for the cut and material of the same garment, and who was, 
 moreover, a peer of the realm. Her marriage, in 1831, to one of the 
 butterflies of fashion, Charles Stanhope, Viscount Petersham, who had, 
 by the recent decease of his father, the third earl, acceded to the dignity 
 of the Earldom of Harrington, was a nine days' wonder of an epoch 
 fruitful in such surprises. The frailties of her early career were not 
 forgotten, you may be sure, by a faultless world and a moral Court, albeit 
 the new Countess admirably conformed to her high position, and no 
 breath of suspicion sullied her private conduct. Her noble husband felt 
 acutely this ostracism of his wife ; he took little part in public affairs, 
 and according to the gossip of the day, when the Queen, who happened 
 to be in Derbyshire, expressed a wish to see Elvaston Castle, his lordship 
 intimated that it was not open to the public, but that if her Majesty put 
 her desire as a command, he should, of course, obey. Frequenters of 
 the park five and twenty years ago were familiar with the appearance 
 of the Earl and his lady in their elegant, but eccentric, equipage. Here 
 
240 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 everything was brown, the body of the coach, the horses, the harness, 
 the livery, even the glazed top-hats of the coachman and outriders, in 
 testimony, as was said, of the gallant Earl's quondam devotion to the fair 
 widow, Mary Browne, who became the wife of Viscount Mountjoy, Earl of 
 Blessington, and mother to the accomplished and unfortunate lady who 
 was sacrificed to the pecuniary requisitions of Alfred, Count D'Orsay. 
 The Countess of Harrington outlived the lover of her youth by a decade 
 of years, dying so recently as December 27th, 1867. 
 
 I now have to record a singular brace of volumes, also known to be 
 the production of Westmacott, and to which, as a veritable chronique 
 scandaleuse of the time, a value is now attached which would hardly be 
 due to their merits proper. These were entitled The English Spy : an 
 Original Work, Characteristic, Satirical, and Hztmorous, co?nprising 
 Scenes and Sketches in every Rank of Society j being Portraits of the 
 Illustrious, Emitient, Eccentric, and Notorious, drawn fro?n the Life by 
 Bernard Blackmantle (Sherwood & Co., 1826, 2 vols, royal 8vo).* In 
 the pages of this extraordinary work figure all the notabilities of the day, 
 either openly or under slight disguise ; and Tom Best, White-headed 
 Bob, " Pea-green " Hayne, Colonel Berkeley, Beau Brummell, Pierce 
 Egan, the "Golden" Ball, Dr. Kett (known as "Horse Kett," from his 
 equine length of visage), Charles Mathews, Jemmy Gordon, and a host 
 of others of equal notoriety, mingle, cheek by jowl, in the vivid and 
 moving panorama. The volumes contain no less than seventy-two large 
 coloured engravings, after the fashion of those in the Life in London. 
 The great majority of these are by Robert Cruikshank, and contain 
 numerous portraits. One or two were contributed by G. M. Brightly 
 and J. Wageman, and two by the inimitable Rowlandson, one of which 
 (vol. i. p. 411) gives a most admirable delineation of the Life Academy 
 at Somerset House, in which the R.A.'s, West, Shee, Haydon, Lawrence, 
 Westmacott, Flaxman, and the rest, their identity indicated by the 
 initials on their mill-boards, are gloating over the nude charms of a 
 blonde and Rubensesque female model. Portraits of the author are liberally 
 introduced, and we find him especially in one of the admirable vignettes 
 on wood, the last in the book, where " Bob Transit," his companion, 
 is a likeness of Robert Cruikshank. 
 
 In the following year (1826) we have The Punster's Pocket-Book j or, 
 the Art of Punning enlarged. By Bernard Blackmantle. Illustrated 
 with numerous original Designs by Robert Cruikshank. (8vo.) This 
 somewhat elegant volume is a rifacimenlo of the Ars Punica of Dr. 
 Sheridan, as enlarged by Swift ; and is dedicated to George IV. in 
 appropriate terms, "with the most fervent loyalty, the most sincere 
 admiration, and the most profound respect." 
 
 Charles Molloy Westmacott belonged to a " rowdy " class of editors 
 which may now be pronounced obsolete. In his days an organ of 
 defamation was necessary to both political parties alike. The Tories 
 had the Age; the Liberals the Satirist; two scandalous prints long since 
 gone to their unhonoured graves, and whose resuscitation is impossible 
 in these decent days, when the same business is done in an altogether 
 different manner. Westmacott's paper may yet survive in some dusty 
 file ; but it is a matter of less consequence to disturb it, as its editor has 
 
 * I believe this work was continued under the title of the St. James's Royal 
 Magazine. 
 
CHARLES MOLLOY WESTMACOTT. 241 
 
 left us The Spirit of" The Age " Newspaper, Containing a Choice Selection 
 of all the Exquisite and Extraordinary Articles, feux oVE sprits, Epigrams, 
 Parodies a?id Political Satires which have appeared in Weekly Succession 
 in " The Age" (London, 1829, 8vo, pp. 268), from which we may get an 
 idea of the wretched stuff that passed for wit in the days " when George 
 the Fourth was king." 
 
 The dog-whip nestling in the hat was a necessary ally to a man whose 
 hand had been as that of Ishmael. But his weapon was sometimes 
 turned against himself. On October 10th, 1830, a severe, and no doubt 
 well-deserved, castigation was administered, at Covent Garden Theatre, 
 upon him, by Charles Kemble, in return for some opprobrious epithets 
 which, it was alleged, the editor of the Age had bestowed on his daughter 
 Fanny. When this lady, now, perhaps, better known as Mrs. Butler, 
 first appeared at that theatre in the character of "Juliet," the part of 
 "Romeo" was sustained by her father. In some critical remarks upon 
 her performance, Westmacott styled her a " doxy," which so incensed the 
 latter, that, a few nights after, seeing the impudent scribbler in one of 
 the dress boxes, he proceeded, as soon as the piece was over, and still 
 in costume, to the place where he was seated, took him by the collar, 
 dragged him into the lobby, and then and there, gave him a sound 
 thrashing. The wounded critic repaired to the neighbouring Brydges 
 Street for surgical aid ; and generously offered the assistant whom he 
 disturbed from his bed, the sum of one shilling for dressing his wounds, 
 which the latter refused, saying that he would " put him on the pauper 
 list." * The incensed actor was taken into custody ; but I suppose that 
 it was considered that he had justification for the assault, as the case 
 was dismissed by the magistrates, though the injured person was unable 
 to attend, by reason of his wounds. A horsewhipping, too, was threatened 
 by the author of Pelham, who probably had good grounds for such 
 a proceeding. The threat, however, was not carried out, and the " critic " 
 revenged himself by his coarse and vulgar Letter to E. L. Bulwer, from 
 C. M. Westmacott (Ridgway, 1833, 8vo, pp. 16). 
 
 Upon the death of the " worthy n or " unworthy " to whom these 
 notes refer, his collections found their way over to England. I recollect 
 the late Joseph Lilly having in his possession a manuscript, the divulgation 
 of which, he said, would have struck with consternation a certain noble 
 family. What became of it I do not know. Several of Westmacott's note- 
 books were also offered for sale in the catalogue of Mr. Thomas Arthur 
 for December, 1868, and contain some curious particulars. One gives an 
 account of a conversation between George IV. and Beau Brummell, on the 
 night of the Prince's marriage, indicating the cause of his estrangement 
 from the Princess Caroline, and was obtained by Westmacott from Brum- 
 mell himself; another relates to the dealings of the Duke of Gloucester 
 and his executors with regard to a Mrs. Maguire and her son, and gives 
 the history of Miss Jane Burdett, a natural daughter of the Duke of Kent : 
 a third touches on the banishment of Sir John Conroy, the Queen's foster- 
 father, Lady Flora Hastings and the Palace Tragedy ; a fourth gives 
 details of the Princess Charlotte's first lover, the Princess Amelia and 
 
 * The young gentleman who had thus the spirit to refuse his patient's paltry 
 honorarium was Mr. J. F. Clarke, M.R.C.S., to whose very interesting A utobiographical 
 Recollections of the Medical Profession (London, Churchill, 1874) I am indebted for 
 the details. 
 
 R 
 
242 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 her offspring, Talleyrand's heartless conduct, the Cottage in Windsor 
 Park, CU7H midtis aliis, all of which I have only alluded to in illustra- 
 tion of what I have said about the character, habits, and pursuits of 
 Charles Molloy Westmacott. 
 
 A writer in The Bookseller (September i st, 1 868) gives a graphic account 
 of Westmacott in the character of a host. " He made a grand display 
 of himself, his talents, his intimacies with titled characters, and his 
 ambitious views. So vulgar and presumptuous an exhibition, with all 
 the self-conceit of Jack Brag, we had never witnessed ; it was absolutely 
 enjoyable from its arrogance and extravagance. . . . His impudence was 
 so supreme that if the Creator of the world and man were the subject, 
 Molloy would assert that he would have advised things better ; and if 
 pressed as to the modus, would condescend to particulars, to show that 
 the whole management was not equal to what he would have contrived ! * 
 
 I have before me an excellent portrait in stipple of " The Author of The 
 English Spy, etc., engraved from an exhibition drawing by T. Wageman." 
 
 XLIX. LEIGH HUNT. 
 
 In the long and eventful career of this charming writer is so essentially 
 involved the literary and political history of the present century, that 
 it is impossible to give adequate consideration to any one of its varied 
 aspects without occupying a larger space than I can here afford to all. 
 Thus I can only offer a " fierce abridgment," leaving much that occurs 
 to me altogether untouched ; for, like Dr. Johnson, I find it more easy 
 to be abstinent than temperate. 
 
 James Henry Leigh Hunt, for such was his name in extenso, 
 was born at Southgate, in Middlesex, his father a West Indian, and his 
 mother a Philadelphian, October 19th, 1784. Like his life-long friends, 
 Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and Barnes, afterwards editor of the Times, 
 he was educated at Christ's Hospital, London ; and while yet a school- 
 boy evinced his natural bent for literature by the composition of numerous 
 pieces of poetry, which were published by his father in 1802, under the 
 title of Juvenilia : or a Collection of Poems written between the Ages oj 
 Twelve and Sixteen; a volume a good deal sought for now-a-days on 
 account of its fine frontispiece by Bartolozzi. At the age of fifteen, he 
 left the Hospital ; and after a short time passed in the office of one of 
 his brothers, a lawyer, he obtained an appointment in the War Office. 
 About this period, his elder brother, John, had established a weekly 
 paper called The News j and to this he contributed a series of criticisms 
 on the drama, in a style entirely new, a selection of which he republished 
 in 1807, under the title of Critical Essays on the Performances of the 
 London Theatres. These papers entitle their author to a high rank 
 as a dramatic critic, the highest, indeed, after Hazlitt himself. His 
 judgments are marked by refinement of taste, felicity of expression, and 
 nicety of discrimination ; and the little volume is charming reading, even 
 at this lapse of time. I am not, however, unaware that the author seems 
 to have looked upon it with some disfavour, and says that " if he thought 
 
,35,3 > 3 5 , ' 3 
 
 Q^/^tC ^W^ 
 
 AUTHOR OF BYRON & MIS CONTEMPORARIES' 
 
LEIGH HUNT. 243 
 
 that it had a chance of survival, he should regret and qualify a good deal 
 of uninformed judgment in it respecting the art of acting." 
 
 In 1808 he resigned his appointment at the War Office, to become 
 joint editor and proprietor of the Examiner newspaper, a journal which, 
 under the management of the brothers, soon acquired a high reputation 
 for the liberality of its politics and the ability of its criticism. But these 
 were troublous times, and although his articles were rather literary than 
 political in their motive, his paper managed to get involved in three 
 several Government prosecutions. The first was in 18 10, for an article 
 on the Regency, in which the rule of George III. was commented on 
 in a manner that gave offence : this prosecution was, however, abandoned. 
 The second was in the following year, when the casus belli was a leader 
 in which flogging in the army was denounced. He and his brother were 
 tried before Lord Ellenborough, but, being defended by Brougham, were 
 acquitted by the jury. The third occasion, however, paid for all. Hunt, 
 in a rather severe article, called the Prince Regent an "Adonis of Fifty," 
 and awoke the spretce injuria formce of the " first gentleman of Europe." * 
 Here the sentence was a fine of ^500 each, and two years' imprisonment. 
 Like Beranger in La Force, Leigh Hunt passed the period of durance 
 not unpleasantly amid books and flowers ; solaced by public sympathy ; 
 and cheered by the visits of friends, such as Byron, Moore,f Charles 
 Lamb, Hazlitt, Cowden Clarke, Jeremy Bentham, " Aristophanes " 
 Mitchell, Barnes of the Times, Alsager and others. The fine sonnet 
 by John Keats, " written on the day that Mr. Hunt left prison," is a proof 
 of the affection and respect with which the prisoner was regarded by 
 his friends. He employed his enforced leisure in literary composition ; 
 
 * The following, which is severe enough in all conscience, is one of the passages from 
 the article, which was suggested by the fulsome adulation of the Prince, in the Morning 
 Post : ' ' Who would have imagined that this ' Adonis in loveliness ' was a corpulent 
 gentleman of fifty ; in short, that this delightful, blissful, wise, pleasureable, honourable, 
 virtuous, true, and immortal prince was a violator of his word, a libertine over head 
 and ears in debt and disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers 
 and demireps, a man who has just closed half a century, without one single claim on 
 the gratitude of his country, or the respect of posterity." The Examiner, No. 221, 
 March 22nd, 1812. 
 
 f The following beautiful and serious lines occur, where we should hardly expect 
 to find them, in the " Twopenny Post- Bag " of Thomas Moore : 
 " Go to your prisons, though the air of spring 
 
 No mountain coolness to your cheeks shall bring ; 
 
 Though summer flowers shall pass unseen away, 
 
 And all your portion of the glorious day 
 
 May be some solitary beam that falls 
 
 At morn and eve upon your dreary walls 
 
 Some beam that enters, trembling as if awed, 
 
 To tell how gay the young world smiles abroad ! 
 
 Yet go for thoughts, as blessed as the air 
 
 Of spring or summer flowers await you there ; 
 
 Thoughts such as he, who feasts his courtly crew 
 
 In rich conservatories never knew ! 
 
 Pure self-esteem the smiles that light within 
 
 The zeal whose circling charities begin 
 
 With the few lov'd ones Heaven has placed it near, 
 
 Nor cease till all mankind are in its sphere ! 
 
 The pride that suffers without vaunt or plea. 
 
 And the fresh spirit than can warble tree, 
 
 Through prison bars, its hymn of liberty ! " 
 
244 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 and The Descettt of Liberty, a Masque (1815), The Feast of the Poets, 
 with Notes, and other Pieces in Verse (18 15), and the Story of Rimini 
 (1816), published after his release, gave him a high place among the 
 poets of the day. In 181 8, appeared his Foliage; or Poems Original 
 and Translated frojn the Greek of Homer, Theocritus, Bion, Moschus and 
 Anacreon, and from the Latin of Catullus. 
 
 He who judges, will be judged by others. Hunt made bitter enemies 
 by his Feast of the Poets, greatly abridged and modified in succeeding 
 editions, as also are many of his other pieces, the original issues of which 
 should be sought for. His severe remarks on Sir Walter Scott, repented 
 of afterwards, and among the passages cancelled, brought down upon 
 him the undying enmity of the Scotch critics, who were never tired of 
 laughing at his alleged Cockneyisms, his immortal "yellow breeches" 
 and the "Cockney School of Poetry" generally.* The matchless im- 
 pudence of these Northern lights, themselves imbued with the narrowest 
 provinciality, is amusing enough ; and we can afford to laugh at their 
 Petrarchian Sonetto, in the great Edinburgh magazine : 
 
 " Signor Le Hunto, gloria di Cocagna, 
 
 Chi scrive il poema della Rimini, 
 
 Che tutta apparenza ha, per Gemini, 
 D'esser cantato sopra la montagna 
 Di bel Ludgato, o nella campagna 
 
 D'Amsted, o sulla margi Serpentinini, 
 
 Com'esta Don Giovanni d'Endyimini, 
 II gran poeta d' Ipecacuanha? 
 Tu sei il Re del Cocknio Parnasso, 
 
 Ed egli il herede apponente, 
 
 Tu sei un gran Giacasso ciertamente, 
 Ed egli ciertamente gran Giacasso ! 
 Tu sei il Signor del Examinero ; 
 Ed egli soave Signor del Glystero ! " f 
 
 Besides the stings of these Scottish gad-flies, Leigh Hunt was long 
 the chosen mark for the Zoili of his own city, all eager to strike the 
 politician through the poet. Thus Gifford, the cobblering editor of the 
 Quarterly, whose unmanly sneer at the crutches % of poor Mary Robinson, 
 actress, poetess, and cast-off mistress of the Prince Regent, had 
 excited the indignation of the poet, went on misquoting and ridiculing 
 the Story of Rimini, till pilloried by its author in his pamphlet Ultra- 
 Crepidarius (1823, 8vo, pp. 40), reviewed, savagely of course, in Black- 
 wood (vol. xv. p. 86), where its writer is politely styled " the weakest and 
 wishy-washyest satirist, without exception, whose pen ever dribbled," etc. 
 
 * Leigh Hunt says he cared little for their jests about Londoners and Cockneys, 
 which did not affect him, so far as his faith was concerned. "The Cockney School 
 of Poetry," he adds, "is the most illustrious in England ; for to say nothing of Pope 
 and Gray, who were both veritable Cockneys, 'born within the sound of Bow Bell,' 
 Milton was so, too ; and Chaucer and Spenser were both natives of the city. Of the 
 four greatest English poets, Shakespeare only was not a Londoner." Autobiography, 
 ed. i860, p. 405. 
 
 t " Noctes Ambrosianse," No. 1 {Blackwood 's Magazine, March, 1822, p. 363). 
 
 % " See Thrale's gay widow with a satchel roam, 
 
 And bring, in pomp, her labour'd nothings home ; 
 
 See Robinson forget her state, and move 
 
 On crutches tow'rds the grave, to ' Light o* Love.' " 
 
 The Daviad, 24. 
 
LEIGH HUNT. 245 
 
 There is a choice page of ribaldry, too, in The Age Reviewed of " Satan " 
 Montgomery (p. 196), which I must leave my reader to search out for 
 himself, if he thinks it worth his trouble. It was nothing but his friend- 
 ship with Leigh Hunt that brought doom on poor Keats. The alliance 
 between the men was well known, and the fiat went forth that he must 
 be slain, as Byron has it : 
 
 "Who killed John Keats? 
 ' I,' says the Quarterly, 
 So savage and tartarly, 
 ' It was one of my feats ! ' " 
 
 It was in 1822, just before the publication of this satire, that Leigh 
 Hunt made his memorable visit to Italy, on the invitation of Shelley and 
 Byron, to assist them in carrying on the Liberal, a magazine, the opinions 
 of which, both in literature and politics, were to be in entire accordance 
 with its title. The death of Shelley, by drowning at sea, just upon his 
 arrival (July, 1822), was a great blow to his fortunes. He was one of 
 the sad party that assisted at the cremation of the- poet, and his com- 
 panion in fate, Captain Williams, on the desolate sea-shore of Via Reggio. 
 It must have been an impressive and melancholy ceremony. The marble 
 mountains behind, the yellow sand and the blue sky, the tideless wave 
 before, Byron, Trelawney, Captain Shenley, and the soldiers of the 
 guard standing over the burning pile,- Leigh Hunt remaining in Byron's 
 carriage, "now looking on, now drawing back with feelings that were 
 not to be witnessed," the fire " bearing away towards heaven in vigorous 
 amplitude, waving and quivering with a brightness of inconceivable 
 beauty," but yet which had no power over the poet's heart, which, 
 asbestos-like, remained unconsumed, though the pyre was fanned by the 
 soft sea-breeze, and fed with salt, wine, frankincense, and the volume of 
 Keats which was found hand-clutched in Shelley's bosom. 
 
 Byron, in a letter to Murray, speaks of the desolate condition of Hunt 
 and his family. " I have done all for him," he wrote, " since he came 
 here, but it is almost useless, his wife is ill, his six children not very 
 tractable, and in the affairs of this world he himself is a child. The death 
 of Shelley left them totally aground, and I could not see them in such a 
 state without using the common feelings of humanity, and what means 
 were in my power, to set them afloat again." Hunt lived, indeed, for a 
 time under Byron's roof; but friendship was hardly possible where, as 
 the latter says, there was little or no community of feeling, thought or 
 opinion. They parted, with less of mutual good feeling than when they 
 met. The Liberal was discontinued; Byron himself died in 1824; and 
 by and by the Hunts returned to England. In 1828 was published the 
 well-known Lord Byron and so?ne of his Contemporaries, with Recollec- 
 tions of the Author's Life and his Visit to Italy (8vo, 2 vols.) ; a work 
 which seemed a stumbling-block and foolishness to the friends of Byron, 
 especially his biographer Moore, and broached opinions regarding the 
 character and habits of the noble poet which their author afterwards 
 admitted were unnecessarily harsh and unjust. The book, indeed, was 
 a serious mistake, and hurt his reputation. 
 
 While still in Italy, and at a period of his life beset with trials and 
 difficulties, Leigh Hunt had employed himself by the composition of a 
 volume, which, of great subjective interest, is now a bibliographic curiosity 
 of no small value. This is entitled Chrisiianism, or Belief and Unbelief 
 
2 4 5 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Reconciled, and consists of a series of cardiphonic thoughts, feelings and 
 aspirations, connected with the best hopes and interests of man, both 
 with regard to this world and the next. The manuscript of this having 
 come under the eye of John Forster, this faithful friend and admirer of 
 the author conceived that by printing it, and ensuring its circulation 
 among men of letters, the real state of Leigh Hunt's opinions upon points 
 on which he had been greatly misunderstood, would be made known, and 
 an ultimate benefit conferred upon the literary world. The author readily 
 gave his consent, and Mr. Forster, the circumstance is not generally 
 known, but I do not think that I am wrong in the attribution, printed 
 seventy-five copies only, at his own expense, and stated, in an anonymous 
 preface, the circumstances attendant on the issue of the volume. 
 
 So early as 1818, he had set on foot a modest weekly periodical of 
 essays, after the model of the Spectator of Addison, and the Rambler and 
 Idler of Dr. Johnson. This was called The Indicator j and he now 
 (1828), while contributing largely, with Lamb, Hazlitt and others to the 
 serials of the day, including the London Magazine, determined to issue 
 a kind of sequel to this, which was appropriately called the Co?npanion. 
 The two, which had become scarce, were republished together in 1834 ; 
 and again by Moxon, in 1841, together with a collection of fugitive papers 
 from the Londo?i Journal, the Liberal, the Monthly Repository, the 
 Tatler, the Round Table, etc., undr the title of The Seer, or Common 
 Places Refreshed, the whole constituting one of the most delightful 
 volumes of light and fanciful essays in the language. It was, indeed, as 
 an Essayist that the genius of Leigh Hunt especially shone. As a 
 Journalist he cannot be placed in the foremost rank. His thought was 
 refined, rather than vigorous ; and his strong individuality was unfavour- 
 able to united working for a common object. He was, nevertheless, a 
 hardy and pungent writer, who made the literature of politics respected. 
 He was a fearless Liberal, striking those in high places where the blow 
 was merited ; and one who fought well for us that long fight for political 
 freedom, the results of whose victory we enjoy to-day. But that which 
 was, in some sort, the defect of his political writings, is the very charm 
 of his light and discursive essays. With much of the quaint humour of 
 Charles Lamb, though perhaps somewhat inferior to that unique genius 
 in form and mode of expression, he has an equal, if not a greater breadth 
 of thought, reminding us at times of Addison and Steele, with a delicacy 
 and sensitiveness which is sometimes even morbid. He made himself 
 the friend of those whom he addressed, and loved to regard his subject 
 in all its bearings. Truth was to him a polygon, courting examination at 
 each of its angles, and changing its character with the various stand- 
 points at which it was seen. Many of these " Essays " will live with the 
 language, and be the delight of great men of other generations, as they 
 were of those who are gone. Thus, the favourite paper of Hazlitt was 
 that on "Sleep" ; Charles Lamb loved " Coaches and their Horses," the 
 essay on the " Death of Little Children," and " Thoughts and Guesses on 
 Human Nature"; Carlyle held in especial favour the charming paper, 
 " My Books," written while the author was in Italy ; the humour of 
 Shelley was captivated by " Fair Revenge " ; and Keats loved the piece 
 on a hot summer day, entitled "A 'Now'"; while the prime favourites 
 of Lord Holland were " The Old Gentleman," and " The Old Lady." 
 I must pass with rapid pen over the subsequent literary career of this 
 
LEIGH HUNT. 247 
 
 voluminous writer. In 1834, he founded another serial, the London 
 Journal, which he continued to edit during that and the following year. 
 In 1835, he published for the first time separately his celebrated poem 
 Captain Sword and Captain Pen. In 1840, he gave to the world his 
 Legend of Florence, which, previously neglected as it had been by a 
 leading manager, was a great favourite with the Queen, who went several 
 times to see it at Covent Garden, and commanded its performance before 
 her at Windsor ; and he also edited the Dramatic works of Wycherley, 
 Congreve, Vanbrugh and Farquhar. In earlier life, Leigh Hunt had 
 had a propensity to write for the stage, and had produced certain other 
 blank verse plays, of which, inasmuch as they were, even in his own 
 recorded opinion, failures, much need not be said. One was called The 
 Secret Marriage (afterwards The Prince's Marriage) ; another, Lover's 
 Amazements, in three acts ; a third, The Double, a. piece of mixed prose 
 and verse in two acts ; a fourth, Look to your Morals, a prose afterpiece, or 
 petty comedy. Of these, Lover's Amazements appeared upon the stage at 
 the Lyceum Theatre so late as 1858, and met with a reception as favourable 
 as that which greeted the Legend of Florence. In 1842, we have The 
 Palfrey, a Love Story of Old Times; and in 1 843, One Hundred Romances of 
 Real Life, Selected and Translated. Next came a more important work 
 of fiction, Sir Ralph Esher, or Memoirs of a Gentle?nan of the Court oj 
 Charles II., reprinted in 1850. I must content myself also with a bare 
 enumeration of still later literary labours, either original works or com- 
 pilations. Imagination and Fancy, an analytical examination of the 
 older poets, with a preliminary essay, appeared in 1844. Wit and 
 Humour, a sort of companion, in 1846. Stories from the Italian Poets, 
 with Lives, came out in 1846, and exhibit, in marked degree, his admir- 
 able quality, previously and elsewhere displayed, as a translator from the 
 Italian. In this respect Leigh Hunt is truly facile princeps. In his 
 hands our rugged Northern idiom is as flexible as the German. His 
 Bacchus in Tuscany (1825, small 8vo), which I might have mentioned 
 earlier, from the fine dithyrambic of Francesco Redi, is, as far as my 
 knowledge extends, the best translation in verse in the language ; and 
 his version of the exquisite Lutrin of Boileau is, in its way, hardly less 
 excellent.* In 1846 also, he published an edition of the Dra7natic Works 
 of Sheridan, with biography and notes. In 1847 appeared Men, Women 
 and Books, a Selection of Sketches, Essays and Critical Memoirs; and in 
 the same year, A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla, to which the wood- 
 cut illustrations of Doyle have given an added charm and value. Horatio 
 Smith bought the book, unwitting, till he opened it, that it was dedicated 
 to himself, a compliment which he felt very acceptable. " I cannot," he 
 wrote to the author, " imagine anything more pleasant than to be thus 
 embalmed in a Jar of Honey, and such honey, and such a jar ! " 
 
 In 1848, Leigh Hunt published a work on a subject which his 
 various and extensive knowledge of London and its celebrities enabled 
 him to invest with a peculiar charm and interest. This was The Tow?i : 
 its Remarkable Characters and Events (2 vols. 8vo), a most delightful 
 book of gossip about the streets of the metropolis, and the notable men 
 who have inhabited them. Passing over The Religion of the Heart, a 
 
 * Frank Mahony ("Father Prout"), in a letter to the translator, alludes to this 
 version of the Italian poem, which, the padre happily says, "you have truly rendered 
 a ' Redi made easy ' for all Cockneydom." 
 
248 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Manual of Faith and Duty (1853), an expanded reprint of the privately- 
 printed volume, Christianism, to which I have already referred at length, 
 and a series of Stories in Verse, collected from his earlier writings 
 (1855), we come to another pair of charming volumes, which form a 
 companion to the Town. These were entitled The Old Court Suburb, 
 or Memorials of Kensington, Regal, Critical and Anecdotical (1858), 
 since republished in a single volume. 
 
 In 1850, Leigh Hunt gave to the world his Autobiography, in 3 vols. 
 8vo, of which, just ten years later, appeared " a new edition, revised by 
 the auther, with further revision, and an introduction, by his eldest son," * 
 in one volume, 8vo. This is a charming book. The career of its writer 
 had not been marked by striking events, except, indeed, the Examiner 
 attack on the Regent, the consequent imprisonment for two years in 
 Horsemonger Lane Gaol,f and the visit to Italy, and the interest 
 consists in its subjective tone of thought, and the literary gossip about 
 the brilliant men who were his friends and contemporaries. What 
 Thomas Carlyle thought of the book may be seen by an extract from a 
 letter, written " out of the fulness of the heart " after perusal, to its author,. 
 than which a more generously appreciative and large-hearted expression 
 is not to be found in the entire range of epistolary literature : 
 
 "Well, I call this an excellent good book, by far the best of the 
 autobiographic kind I remember to have read in the English language \ 
 and indeed, except it be Boswell's of Johnson, I do not know where we 
 have such a picture drawn of human life, as in these three volumes." 
 Again : " A pious, ingenious, altogether human and worthy book ; 
 imaging with graceful honesty and free felicity, many interesting objects 
 and persons on your life-path, and imaging throughout, what is best of 
 all, a gifted, gentle, patient, human soul, as it buffets its way through the 
 billows of time, and will not drown, though often in danger ; cannot be 
 drowned, but conquers, and leaves a track of radiance behind it ; that, I 
 think, comes out more clearly to me than in any other of your books ; 
 and that, I can venture to assure you, is the best of all results to readers 
 in a book of written record. In fact, this book has been like a written 
 exercise of devotion to me ; I have not assisted at any sermon, liturgy, or 
 litany, this long while, that has had so religious an effect on me. Thanks 
 in the name of all men." % 
 
 On the 28th of February, 1847, an amateur performance was held at 
 the Theatre Royal, Liverpool, for the benefit of Leigh Hunt, who was 
 described in the programme as being " in unprosperous worldly circum- 
 stances, and in bad health." The play was Ben Jonson's comedy, Every 
 Man in his Humour, and the " cast " might well justify a vidi tantum 
 boast. I had the good fortune to be present, and the mise-en-scene comes 
 vividly before me as I write. " Kiteley " was John Forster ; " Old 
 
 * This was the late Thornton Hunt, born September 10th, 1810 ; died June 25th, 
 1873. He had been all his life connected with the press, and at the time of his death, 
 was chief of the staff of the Daily Telegraph. The only substantive work of his with 
 which I am acquainted is The Foster Brother, published in 1845, an historical romance- 
 of the fourteenth century. 
 
 \ The two brothers, in accordance with the terms of their sentence, passed the 
 period of their imprisonment in different gaols. John Hunt was consigned to Coldbath 
 Fields. 
 
 X See Carlyle's Oration On the Choice of Books, Hotten's ed. p. 39 ; the Athenceum* 
 June 18th, 1881, No. 2799, p. 815. 
 
LEIGH HUNT. 249 
 
 Knowell," G. H. Lewes; "Young Knowell," Frederick Dickens; "Well- 
 bred," T. J. Thompson ; " Master Stephen," Douglas Jerrold ; " Master 
 Matthew," John Leech; "Justice Clement," Dudley Costello ; "Down- 
 right," Frank Stone ; " Captain Bobadil," Charles Dickens ; " Cash," 
 Augustus Dickens ; " Formal," George Cruikshank ; " Cob," Augustus 
 Egg ; " Brainworm," Mark Lemon ; " Mrs. Kiteley," Miss Emmeline 
 Montague ; " Bridget," Mrs. A. Wigan ; and Cob's wife, Mrs. CaulfiekL 
 The interlude was Turning the Tables; and the entertainment concluded 
 with Peake's farce of Comfortable Lodgings, or Paris in 1750, when the 
 same actors took part. An admirable address in verse, written for the 
 occasion by Sir E. L. Bulwer Lytton, at that time personally unacquainted 
 with Hunt, was delivered, after the overture, by John Forster, who 
 occupied the same post on the Examiner, as theatrical critic, which the 
 beneficiary had held in former days. The following passage occurs 
 in it : 
 
 " So comes this night to no rebellious throng, 
 
 That kingliest claim, the poverty of song ! 
 
 The base may mock, the household asp may sting, 
 
 The bard, like Lear, is ' every inch a king. ' 
 
 Want but anoints his head with holier balms 
 
 He claims your tribute, not implores your alms ! 
 
 Mild amid foes, amidst a prison free, 
 
 He comes, our grey-hair'd bard of Rimini ! 
 
 Comes with the pomp of memories in his train, 
 
 Pathos and wit, sweet pleasure and sweet pain ! 
 
 Comes with familiar smile and cordial tone, 
 
 Our hearth's wise cheerer ! Let us cheer his own." 
 
 Mr. Forster gives an account of these amateur performances in his 
 Life of Charles Dickens (vol. ii. p. 342), and expressing his inability to find 
 a copy of Bulwer's prologue, questions whether it was ever in print. Of 
 course it was ; I have it before me, and transcribe from it. On the Monday 
 following, the same company performed with the same object at Man- 
 chester. On this occasion the opening address, of which I have also a 
 printed copy, was written by Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. 
 
 But though Leigh Hunt was poor, he cannot be said to have been in 
 circumstances of destitution. It was his fortune, by reason of protracted 
 days, to see effected much of that change in public feeling and opinion 
 which he had worked so strenuously to speed. In 1847, the same Govern- 
 ment which forty years before had consigned him to a prison, found him 
 worthy of a pension. Carlyle, it is pleasant to know, was one of the most 
 strenuous promoters of the movement to obtain this, and the " Memoranda 
 concerning Mr. Leigh Hunt," drawn up by him, is a most interesting 
 document, equally honourable to himself and his friend. Here, inter alia^ 
 we are informed : 
 
 "That Mr. Hunt is a man of most indisputably superior worth ; a Man 
 of Genius in a very strict sense of that word, and in all the senses which it 
 bears or implies ; of brilliant varied gifts, of graceful fertility, of clearness, 
 lovingness, truthfulness ; of childlike open character ; also of most pure, 
 and even exemplary private deportment ; a man who can be other than 
 loved only by those who have not seen him, or seen him from a distance 
 through a false medium. . . . 
 
 " That such a man is rare in a Nation, and of high value there ; not to 
 be procured for a whole Nation's Revenue, or recovered when taken from 
 
250 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 us ; and some 200 a year is the price which this one, whom we now 
 have, is valued at ; with that sum he were lifted above his perplexities, 
 perhaps saved from nameless wretchedness ! It is believed that, in 
 hardly any other way could ,200 abolish as much suffering, create as 
 much benefit to one man, and through him to many and all." * 
 
 The matter, thus advocated, was at length brought to a successful 
 issue; and the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, "in whom," says 
 Carlyle, "great part of England recognizes (with surprise at such a 
 novelty) a man of insight, fidelity, and decision," had the gratification of 
 informing the veteran of literature that an annuity of 200 a year 
 should be settled upon him from the funds of the Civil List, adding : 
 " the severe treatment you formerly received, in times of unjust persecu- 
 tion of liberal writers, enhances the satisfaction with which I make this 
 announcement." He also enjoyed an annuity of half this amount,t settled 
 upon him, in the same year, by Sir Percy Shelley, in accordance with the 
 known wish of his illustrious father, in defence of whom were the last 
 words he ever wrote. 
 
 With this provision for the quiet evening of that day whose heat and 
 burthen had been so well and bravely borne, Leigh Hunt continued 
 to enjoy, in his Hammersmith cottage, his old books, and such old 
 friends as time had spared him. He contributed occasionally to the 
 serials of the day, to Household Words, and to The Spectator, for 
 which he wrote a paper the week before his death. In 1859, he was 
 planning a removal to London, to be nearer to his eldest son, and other 
 friends ; but rapidly failing health seeming to render immediate change 
 of air desirable, he was induced to remove to the house of his friend, Mr. 
 Reynell, at Putney, the printer, by the way, of The Examiner, the paper 
 which he had founded just half a century before, and here he breathed 
 his last, without suffering, in the possession of all his faculties, and without 
 a sigh or struggle, on Sunday, August 28th, 1859, in tne seventy-fifth year 
 of his age. He was buried in the place of his choice, the cemetery at 
 Kensall Green, where his funeral was attended by his sons and grand- 
 sons, Severn, the friend of Keats in Italy, and Trelawney, the "Younger 
 Son," the associate of Byron and Shelley. For the space of ten years 
 there was nothing to mark the spot where he slept ; but at length, mainly 
 through the exertions of S. C. Hall, the disgrace has been removed. A 
 sum was raised by subscription ; and on October 19th, 1869, a graceful 
 monument by Joseph Durham, A.R.A., was placed on the spot, and 
 formally presented to the family in an impressive and eulogistic address 
 by Lord Houghton. On one side of this memorial may be read the date 
 of his birth and death ; on the other, the line 
 
 " Write me as one who loves his fellow-men," 
 
 from the beautiful little poem, Abou Ben Adhem, significant as em- 
 bodying his own theory of religion, in which theology is conspicuous 
 by its absence contributed by him many years before to the album of 
 
 * The entire document is given by Mr. Alexander Ireland, in an interesting com- 
 munication to the Athenceum, of June 18th, 188 r. 
 
 t Mr. S. C. Hall states that the annuity, which was to be continued to his wife, if 
 she survived him, was ^120, and that Sir Percy gave it at the suggestion of his mother, 
 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley [Book of Memories, p. 248). Leigh Hunt, himself, mentions 
 the smaller amount {Correspondence, ii. 80) , so I adhere to it. 
 
LEIGH HUNT. 251 
 
 Mrs. S. C. Hall. With regard to the scope and tendency of his long 
 literary career, it would be impossible, as I regard it, to convey t a more 
 correct and adequate idea than that expressed in the concluding sentence 
 of his son's " Introduction" to the edition of the Autobiography \ published 
 by him : " To promote the happiness of his kind, to minister to the more 
 educated appreciation of order and beauty, to open more widely the door 
 of the library, and more widely the window of the library looking out upon 
 nature, these were the purposes that guided his studies, and animated 
 his labour to the very last." 
 
 The assertion is made to this day, and will be repeated in the future, 
 that Dickens, in Bleak House, pilloried his friend for public contempt, 
 by grafting his incapacity for business, his airy frivolities and childish 
 mannerisms, upon the selfishness and dishonesty of " Harold Skimpole." 
 As Dickens warmly repudiated the imputation, and so affectionately 
 referred to Leigh Hunt in Household Words, we are bound to believe that 
 he had no such intention. It is not, however, denied, either by Dickens 
 or his apologists, that " some of the innocent eccentricities of the fictitious 
 character had been suggested by some of the humorous qualities of the 
 poet's air, temper, etc. " ; # and the question remains how far it was 
 consistent with gentlemanliness of feeling to make such use of those 
 peculiarities of his friend, which private and confidential intercourse alone 
 could have made him acquainted with, and thus, without his knowledge or 
 permission, exhibit his portrait, caricatured or not, to the world. I 
 imagine that if John Tenniel, in a Pmich cartoon, chose to surmount the 
 body of a gorilla with the head of Gladstone, he would have some 
 difficulty in convincing the public, that he had no intention of bringing 
 contempt on the Minister. 
 
 What a fine stanza that is of Shelley, in his Adonais, where he depicts 
 Leigh Hunt, much as he was, says G. L. Craik, " to the last, in outward 
 form, forty years later " : 
 
 " What softer voice is hushed o'er the dead ? 
 
 Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown ? 
 
 What form leans sadly o'er the white death-bed, 
 
 In mockery of monumental stone, 
 
 The heavy heart heaving without a moan ? 
 
 If it be he, who, gentlest of the wise, 
 
 Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one ; 
 
 Let me not vex with inharmonious sighs, 
 The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice." 
 
 It was to Leigh Hunt that Shelley dedicated his fine tragedy, The Cenci. 
 He says in his prose epistle : " Had I known a person more highly 
 endowed than yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I had 
 solicited for this work the ornament of his name. One more gentle, 
 honourable, innocent and brave ; one of more exalted toleration for all who 
 do and think evil, and yet himself is free from evil ; one who knows better 
 how to receive, and how to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer 
 far more than he can receive ; one of simpler, and in the highest sense 
 of the words, of purer life and manners, I never knew ; and I had 
 already been fortunate in friendships when your name was added to the 
 list." 
 
 * See the Athenaeum, No. 2221, May 21st, 1870, p. 673. 
 
252 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY 
 
 Shelley elsewhere describes his friend as 
 
 -one of those happy souls, 
 
 Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom 
 This world would smell like what it is, a tomb ; 
 Who is, what others seem." 
 
 I have already spoken of Leigh Hunt as a Journalist, an Essayist, 
 a Theatrical Critic and a Dramatist. There is yet another aspect 
 in which he may be regarded. 
 
 As a Talker, he was pre-eminently great, and had the faculty of 
 throwing "light as from a painted window" on any subject which 
 occupied his attention. How well does his friend Hazlitt bring before 
 us his style and manner : " Hunt has a fine vinous spirit about him. 
 He sits at the head of a party with great gaiety and grace ; has an 
 elegant manner and turn of features ; has continual sportive sallies of wit 
 or fancy ; tells a story capitally ; mimics an actor or an acquaintance to 
 admiration ; laughs with great glee and good humour at his own and 
 other people's jokes ; understands the point of an equivoque or an observa- 
 tion immediately ; has a taste for, and a knowledge of, books, of music, 
 of medals ; manages an argument adroitly ; is genteel and gallant ; and 
 has a set of by-phrases and quaint allusions always at hand to produce 
 a laugh." Keats, too, was mindful of the varied charms of his friend's 
 discourse : 
 
 " He who elegantly chats and talks, 
 
 The wrong'd Libertas, who has told you stories 
 
 Of laurel chaplets, and Apollo's glories, 
 
 Of troops chivalrous marching through a city, 
 
 And tearful ladies made for love and pity. " 
 
 As a Poet, Leigh Hunt has written much that will live with the 
 language, and crystallized into expression many a thought that assuredly 
 will 
 
 -on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time 
 
 Sparkle for ever." 
 
 The Story of Rimini (1816) * is the longest, and perhaps the best of 
 his poems ; and being, as Professor Craik observes, " indisputably the 
 finest inspiration of Italian song that had yet been heard in our modern 
 English literature," it gave its author a high and distinct place of his own 
 among the poets of his day. It may, indeed, be pronounced one of the 
 finest, if not the very finest, narrative poem in the language since 
 Dryden. Its charm is its simple beauty and delicacy of expression ; and 
 although these qualities are obsolete in a day of spasm, fleshliness > 
 ruggedness and obscurity, they will embalm it for the admiration of a 
 future time when 
 
 '* Multa renascentur quas jam cecidere, cadentque 
 Quas nunc sunt in honore po'emata. " 
 
 The poem also is worthy of especial note and study as a leading specimen 
 of that fourth, or composite school, to which Shelley, Keats and " Barry 
 
 * "O ! Crimini, Crimini ! 
 What a nimini, pimini, 
 Story of Rimini ! " 
 
 Barham's Life of Theodore Hook, ii. 250. 
 
LEIGH HUNT. 253 
 
 Cornwall " also belong. In origin, Italian, it has also received an 
 influence from France and Germany, and is probably destined to be, in 
 its further development, the cardinal mode of poetical expression among 
 us. Byron selected the couplet on a fountain, in this poem, as one of the 
 most poetical descriptions of a natural object he was acquainted with : 
 
 " Clear and compact, 'till at its height o'errun, 
 It shakes its loosening silver in the sun." 
 
 Of Leigh Hunt's other poems, at which I have already glanced, I can 
 only speak generally, worthy, as many of them are, of separate and 
 extended notice. Genius is apparent in all that he wrote ; originality 
 marks his handling of the commonest things. His pronounced individu- 
 ality ; his keen perception of delicacies and refinements, unessential and 
 often unremarked ; his penetrative insight into the subtleties of art, and 
 his vast literary culture, enabled him, in spite of mannerism, and even 
 occasional puerility, to inform every sentence which he wrote, as it were, 
 with a living soul. While speaking, even thus briefly, of his poems, one 
 fact should be noticed. The later editions of these earlier pieces differ 
 greatly, from capricious alterations and cancellings, from the original 
 issues. Of those especially in Rimini, the author spoke with regret in his 
 Autobiography, and intimated his intention to restore the narrative to its 
 first course. It was right, perhaps, to reverse some of the harsher and 
 more palpably erroneous judgments in The Feast of the Poets, and we are 
 thus afforded the very curious study of comparing the growth and altera- 
 tion of opinion in the writer's mind. He had planned " a complete and 
 final edition " of his poetical Works, and had brought his task almost to 
 a close, so far as arrangement, classification and selection were concerned, 
 when it was broken off by his death. The volume, edited by his eldest 
 son, was published by Routledge in i860, and in typography, illustrations, 
 binding and general " get up," is a wretched, tawdry, vulgar affair, utterly 
 unworthy of the poet and the poetry. But what annoys one the most is 
 to find that the author, with that discritical perversity which made Hogarth 
 think that by his Sigismunda he had rivalled Correggio, Milton that his 
 Paradise Regained was superior to his greater and earlier epic, Liston and 
 Charles Mathews that their true sphere was tragedy, and George Cruik- 
 shank that he was intended by nature to be an historical painter, has left out 
 some of his very best and most characteristic pieces ! That the mother's 
 favourite is the most ill-favoured bantling is a matter of daily notice, and 
 possibly a wise ordination ; still it is remarkable that Leigh Hunt, with 
 all his known capriciousness of feeling, should have excluded, as "not 
 equal in conception or execution, to the estimate of his own maturer 
 judgment," the very piece which was selected by a very competent critic, 
 the late Professor Craik, as a characteristic specimen of the poet's 
 manner and style of treatment, " attesting as powerfully as anything he 
 has ever produced, the master's triumphant hand, in a style which he has 
 made his own, and in which, with however many imitators, he has no 
 rival.* But the reader, who will thank me the more for preserving the 
 piece, inasmuch as he will not find it where he would naturally look for it, 
 shall judge for himself : 
 
 * Sketches of the History of Learning and Literature in England, etc. By Geo. 
 L. Craik, M.A., vol. vi. p. 199. 
 
254 TIIE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 "THE FANCY CONCERT. 
 
 "They talk'd of their concerts, their singers, and scores, 
 And pitied the fever that kept me indoors ; 
 And I smiled in my thought, and said, ' O ye sweet fancies, 
 And animal spirits ! that still in your dances 
 Come bringing me visions to comfort my care, 
 Now fetch me a concert, imparadise air. 
 
 " Then a wind, like a storm out of Eden, came pouring 
 Fierce into my room, and made tremble the flooring, 
 And fill'd, with a sudden impetuous trample 
 Of heaven, its corners ; and swell'd it to ample 
 Dimensions to breathe in, and space for all power ; 
 Which falling as suddenly, lo ! the sweet flower 
 Of an exquisite fairy-voice open'd its blessing ; 
 And ever and aye, to its constant addressing, 
 There came, falling in with it, each in the last, 
 Flageolets one by one, and flutes blowing more fast, 
 And hautboys, and clarinets, acrid of reed, 
 And the violin, smoothlier sustaining the speed 
 As the rich tempest gather'd, and buzz-ringing moons 
 Of tambours, and huge basses, and giant bassoons ; 
 And the golden trombone, that darteth its tongue 
 Like a bee of the gods ; nor was absent the gong, 
 Like a sudden fate-bringing oracular sound 
 Of earth's iron genius, burst up from the ground, 
 A terrible slave come to wait on his masters 
 The gods, with exultings that clank'd like disasters ; 
 And then spoke the organs, the very gods they, 
 Like thunders that roll on a wind-blowing day ; 
 And, taking the rule of the roar in their hands, 
 Lo ! the Genii of Music came out of all lands ; 
 And one of them said, ' Will my lord tell his slave 
 What concert 'twould please his Firesideship to have?* 
 
 11 Then I said, in a tone of immense will and pleasure, 
 ' Let orchestras rise to some exquisite measure ; 
 And let there be lights and be odours ; and let 
 The lovers of music serenely be set ; 
 And then, with their singers in lily-white stoles, 
 And themselves clad in rose-colour, fetch me the souls 
 Of all the composers accounted divinest, 
 And, with their own hands, let them play me their finest/ 
 
 " Then lo ! was perform'd my immense will and pleasure, 
 And orchestras rose to an exquisite measure ; 
 And lights were about me and odours ; and set 
 Were the lovers of music, all wondrously met ; 
 And then, with their singers in lily-white stoles, 
 And themselves clad in rose-colour, in came the souls 
 Of all the composers accounted divinest, 
 And, with their own hands, did they play me their finest. 
 
 ** Oh ! truly was Italy heard then, and Germany, 
 Melody's heart, and the rich brain of Harmony ; 
 Pure Paisiello, whose airs are as new, 
 
 Though we know them by heart, as May-blossoms and dew ; 
 And nature's twin-son, Pergolesi ; and Bach, 
 Old father of fugues, with his endless fine talk ; 
 And Gluck, who saw gods ; and the learned sweet feeling 
 Of Haydn ; and Winter, whose sorrows are healing ; 
 And gentlest Corelli, whose bowing seems made 
 
LEIGH HUNT. 255 
 
 For a hand with a jewel ; and Handel array'd 
 
 In Olympian thunders, vast lord of the spheres, 
 
 Yet pious himself, with his blindness in tears, 
 
 A lover withal, and a conqueror, whose marches 
 
 Bring demigods under victorious arches ; 
 
 Then Arne, sweet and tricksome ; and masterly Purccll, 
 
 Lay-clerical soul ! and Mozart universal, 
 
 But chiefly with exquisite gallantries found, 
 
 With a grove in the distance of holier sound ; 
 
 Nor forgot was thy dulcitude, loving Sacchini ; 
 
 Nor love, young and dying, in shape of Bellini ; 
 
 Nor Weber, nor Himmel, nor Mirth's sweetest name, 
 
 Cimarosa ; much less the great organ-voiced fame 
 
 Of Marcello, that hush'd the Venetian sea ; 
 
 And strange was the shout, when it wept, hearing thee, 
 
 Thou soul full of grace as of grief, my heart cloven, 
 
 My poor, my most rich, my all-feeling Beethoven. 
 
 O'er all, like a passion, great Pasta was heard 
 
 As high as; her heart, that truth-uttering bird ; 
 
 And Banti was there ; and Grassini, that goddess ; 
 
 Dark, deep-toned, large, lovely, with glorious bodice ; 
 
 And Mara ; and Malibran, stung to the tips 
 
 Of her fingers with pleasure ; and rich Fodor's lips 
 
 And, manly in face as in tone, Angrisani 
 
 And Naldi, thy whim ; and thy grace, Tramezzani ; 
 
 And was it a voice? or what was it? say 
 
 That, like a fallen angel beginning to pray, 
 
 Was the soul of all tears and celestial despair ! 
 
 Paganini it was, 'twixt his dark and flowing hair. 
 
 " So now we had instrument, now we had song 
 Now chorus, a thousand-voiced one-hearted throng ; 
 Now pauses that pamper'd resumption, and now 
 But who shall describe what was play'd us, or how ? 
 'Twas wonder, 'twas transport, humility, pride ; 
 'Twas the heart of the mistress that sat by one's side ; 
 'Twas the Graces invisible, moulding the air 
 Into all that is shapely, and lovely, and fair, 
 And running our fancies their tenderest rounds 
 Of endearments and luxuries, turn'd into sounds ; 
 'Twas argument even, the logic of tones ; 
 'Twas memory, 'twas wishes, 'twas laughter, 'twas moans ; 
 'Twas pity and love, in pure impulse obey'd ; 
 'Twas the breath of the stuff of which passion is made. 
 
 " And these are the concerts I have at my will ; 
 Then dismiss them, and patiently think of your ' biH.' 
 [Aside) Yet Lablache, after all, makes me long to go, still." 
 
 Leigh Hunt complained sadly, we are told, of the " pickpocket look, 
 which the malice, or want of skill, of an engraver had conferred on that copy 
 of his countenance which decorated his book about Lord Byron." Here 
 we have him from the pencil of Maclise, somewhat later on, and already 
 " beyond that mezzo ca?nmin of which Dante sings," in his own words : 
 
 " The thigh broad spread, the pressing thumb upon it, 
 And the jerk'd feather swaling in the bonnet," 
 
 " pursuing all the cockneyisms of his youth, fresh and verdant as when 
 first they flourished in all the pride of amber-coloured silk inexpressibles, 
 over the ' half mountain region of Hampstead.' " There is no lack of 
 other portraits ; of which I have several, but they are artists' proofs, and 
 I cannot indicate the painters or engravers. His face, worn and sensitive 
 
SL& THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 as that of Pope, is seen to advantage in the vignette by Armytage, after 
 a drawing by W. F. Williams, prefixed to the Autobiography ; and there 
 is a characteristic likeness of him, book in hand, photographed from the 
 unfinished picture, painted from the life, in 1837, by Samuel Lawrence, in 
 The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, edited by his eldest son (London, 
 Smith, Elder & Co., 1862, 2 vols. 8vo). 
 
 L. WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH. 
 
 This delicately drawn portrait of the novelist, just at the time that he 
 had achieved his reputation, hair curled and oiled as that of an 
 Assyrian bull, the gothic arch coat-collar, the high neckcloth and the 
 tightly strapped trowsers, exhibits as fine an exemplar as we could wish 
 for, of the dandy of D'Orsay type, and pre- Victorian epoch. 
 
 The birth of Ainsworth took place at Manchester in 1805. His father 
 was of the law ; and the lad was articled to a local solicitor with the view 
 of adopting the paternal profession. Coming, however, to London to 
 finish his terms, he became afflicted with the caco'ethes scribendi, the 
 result of which was a slender volume of verse, published under the pen- 
 name of " Cheviot Tichebourne," and dedicated to Charles Lamb. For 
 that fine writer, Ainsworth had great veneration, and wrote some letters 
 to him, accompanying a present of books, and pressing him to visit 
 Manchester, the answers to which are preserved in Lamb's correspon- 
 dence, as edited by Talfourd. 
 
 About a year later (1825) appeared a novel entitled Sir John Chiverton, 
 which, with much of the erudity of youth, was characterized by a certain 
 amount of talent, and even genius. It was fortunate enough to attract 
 the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who noted in his diary (October 17th, 
 1826), that he had read it with interest, and thought it " a clever book," 
 coupling with it in his praise the Bra?nbletye House of Horace Smith, and 
 claiming to be the originator of the style in which they were both written : 
 "Which I was born to introduce, 
 Refined it first and shew'd its use." * 
 
 This novel is generally ascribed to Ainsworth ; but the attribution is 
 erroneous, it having been actually the production of his friend and fellow- 
 clerk in the office of Alexander Kay, of Manchester, Mr. John P. Aston, 
 who is still practising his profession in London. The first edition bears 
 the name of Ebers, of Bond Street, as publisher ; but the second, which 
 was a mere re-issue, was published by his friend Ainsworth himself, who 
 then, having in 1826 married the daughter of Ebers, had given up the 
 law for book-selling. 
 
 It may be supposed that, during the next eight years, the energies of 
 the young publisher were absorbed by business, as it was not till 1834 
 that his next important work, Rookwood, made its appearance. Our 
 author was now twenty-nine years of age ; and was by the vast success 
 of his book, at once lifted into fame and notoriety. This novel was 
 avowedly modelled on those stirring productions of the leading French 
 romancists, Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo, and Alexandre Dumas, the 
 
 * Swift. 
 
> '3 
 
 -^-~*S> 
 
 AUtHOR OF "ROOXWOOID'I 
 
WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTII. 25? 
 
 forcibly dramatic character of which had strongly excited his admiration, 
 and, indeed, for a time, for posterity will certainly reverse the judgment, 
 thrown into some eclipse even the fictions of Scott, and our own romantic 
 school. In the concentration of his power upon the dramatic action of the 
 story, and the avoidance of whatever did not seem subservient to the evolu- 
 tion of the plot and the proper comprehension of the situation, the young 
 novelist sought to apply the treatment of the renowned French writers to- 
 episodes and personages of English story. Rookwood is a work of con- 
 siderable, but unequal power ; and with its once well-known " Romany 
 Chant," and the brilliant episode of Dick Turpin's ride to York, estab- 
 lished the author as a favourite with the novel-reading public. This latter 
 chapter is a masterpiece of descriptive power, and, though its hero is but 
 a subsidiary character, in great measure made the fortune of the book. 
 " I wrote it" (the fourth book), says he to an interlocutor, " in twenty -four 
 hours of continuous work. I had previously arranged the meeting at 
 Kilburn Wells, and the death of Tom King a work of some little time, 
 but from the moment I got Turpin on the high road, I wrote on and on 
 till I landed him at York. I performed this literary feat, as you are 
 pleased to call it, without the slightest sense of effort. I began in the 
 morning, wrote all day, and as the night wore on, my subject had 
 completely mastered me, and I had no power to leave Turpin on the: 
 high road. I was swept away by the curious excitement and novelty of 
 the situation ; and being personally a good horseman, passionately fond, 
 of horses, and possessed moreover of accurate knowledge of a great part 
 of the country, I was thoroughly at home with my work, and galloped on> 
 with my pet highwayman merrily enough. I must, however, confess 
 that when the work was in proof, I went over the ground between. 
 London and York to verify the distances and localities, and was not a- 
 little surprised at my accuracy." This is to the point ; and its citation 
 is the more necessary here to refute a statement, made by R. Shelton* 
 Mackenzie, D.C.L., upon the authority of the late Dr. Kenealy, and inserted 
 in the fifth volume of an American edition of the Nodes Ambrosianoe, (in- 
 British Museum), to the effect that Maginn wrote the whole of Turpin's 
 " Ride to York," as well as all the slang songs in Rookwood. There calk 
 be no truth in the statement ; which should be regarded with suspicion r 
 if ouly in consideration of the " authority " on which it depends. There is 
 a smart review of Rookwood, comparing Ainsworth and Bulwer, to the- 
 advantage of the former, under the title of " High- Ways and Low-Ways,, 
 or Ainsworth's Dictionary, with Notes by Turpin," in Fraser's Magazi?ie y 
 for June, 1834. 
 
 Still emulous of the success of Dumas, and under the influence of that 
 admiration which begets an imitative tendency, Ainsworth next applied 
 himself to the production of a romance, the characters and incidents of 
 which belong to the Renaissance period. In 1837 appeared Crichton, 
 in 3 vols. 8vo. The hero is that "admirable" and almost mythical 
 personage, whose traditional character and reputed accomplishments 
 have been so capitally summed up by Ainsworth himself : 
 
 ' A song I'll write on Like great Busbequius ; 
 
 Matchless Crichton ; Knoweth the Cabala 
 
 In wit, a bright one, Well as Mirandola ; 
 
 Form, a slight one, Fate can reveal to us, 
 
 Love, a light one ! Like wise Cornelius ; 
 
 Who talketh Greek with us Reasoneth like Socrates, 
 
 S 
 
258 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Or old Zenocrates ; Diceth like Spaniard, 
 
 Whose system ethical, Danceth like galliard, 
 
 Sound, dialectical, Tilts like Orlando, 
 
 Aristotelian, Does all man can do 1 
 
 Pantagruelian, ' Qui pupas nobiles 
 
 Like to Chameleon, Innumerabiles, 
 
 Choppeth and change th, Amat amabiles ; 
 
 Everywhere rangeth ! Atque Reginam 
 
 Who rides like Centaur, Navarrae divinam ! ' 
 
 Preaches like Mentor, Whose rare prosperity, 
 
 Drinks like Lyseus, Grace and dexterity, 
 
 Sings like Tyrtaeus, Courage, temerity, 
 
 Reads like Budseus, Shall, for a verity, 
 
 Vaulteth like Tuccaro, Puzzle posterity !" 
 Painteth like Zucchero, 
 
 This novel sustained, if it did not greatly increase, the reputation of its 
 author ; and besides its picturesque and graphic style of narrative, 
 exhibited considerable reading and research. By its all accomplished 
 hero, if we are to credit Mr. Madden {Life of Lady Blessi?igton, iii. 475), 
 Ainsworth intended to portray the varied talents and graces of his 
 friend, Alfred Count d'Orsay. 
 
 Fielding and Defoe had chosen heroes from the criminal class ; but 
 since their day the knights of the pistol, the crow-bar and the centre-bit 
 had died, the majority of them suddenly " unwept, unhonoured and 
 unsung " by the ungrateful world that benefited by the catastrophe. But 
 now arose a new school of criminal romance. Bulwer put himself under 
 a course of instruction such as that which u . Mr. Job Jonson " imparts to 
 Pelkam, and achieved by his Paul Clifford a vast temporary success ; 
 and Charles Dickens, in Oliver Twist, gave us the result of the patient 
 observation and keen perception which he had brought to bear on the 
 study of the London burglar and the Jew "fence." Ainsworth had 
 discovered a new land of romance, and he now saw other adventurers 
 invading the soil. He therefore cast about for another hero ; and speedily 
 finding in " Jack Sheppard " a fit rival for " Turpin," he produced, in 
 1839, the novel which bears the name of this noted unworthy. The 
 story, as the then rising novelist told it, pleased young and old alike ; 
 and became so extraordinarily popular that no fewer than eight different 
 versions were produced upon the London stage, and the sale exceeded 
 that even of Oliver Twist. Nor was this popularity merely evanescent ; 
 for I have seen it stated upon good authority that so long after its 
 publication as the second half of the last decade, " Jack," found twelve 
 thousand purchasers in five years. Anyway, whatever may be the 
 abstract merits or demerits of the book, it is certain to enjoy a permanent 
 life, if only from the inimitable etchings of GEORGE CRUIKSHANK, who 
 has made the subject truly his own : 
 
 " Cruikshank, 'tis thine to gild with fame 
 Th* obscure, and raise the humble name ; 
 To make the form elude the grave, 
 And Sheppard from oblivion save. 
 
 " Tho' life in vain the wretch implores, 
 An exile on the farthest shores, 
 Thy pencil brings a kind reprieve, 
 And bids the dying robber live. 
 
 "This piece to latest time shall stand, 
 And show the wonders of thy hand. 
 
WILLIAM HARRISON AINS WORTH. 259 
 
 Tims former masters graced their name, 
 And gave egregious robbers fame. 
 
 " Apelles, Alexander drew, 
 Caesar is to Aurelius due ; 
 Cromwell in Lely's work doth shine, 
 And Sheppard, Cruikshank, lives in thine ! " 
 
 To confess the truth, Sheppard enjoys a double immortality ; for the 
 foregoing verses, which I transcribe from The Malefactors' Registers or, 
 a New Newgate and Tyburn Calendar (p. 408), were actually written to 
 celebrate a former delineation, in oils, of the notorious burglar by Sir 
 James Thornhill, who visited him in Newgate for the express purpose 
 of taking him ad vivum, and whose first sketch, now before me, bears, in 
 its vigour, not to speak of the autograph below, better evidence of its 
 genuineness than a certificate "with five justices' hands to it, and 
 witnesses more than a page would hold." Walter Thornbury, with that 
 detestable spirit of detraction so peculiarly British, holds these novels 
 of Ainsworth very cheap. " Even Dickens," says he, "had his fine gold 
 jewelled by Cruikshank. Ainsworth's tawdry rubbish now all but 
 forgotten, and soon to sink deep in the mudpool of oblivion, was illumi- 
 nated with a false splendour by this great humorist " ; * and elsewhere 
 points out the great artist's " Rembrandtic nightmare of the * Headsman 
 sharpening his Axe,' from Ainsworth's melodramatic novel, The Tower of 
 Lo?idon, a wonderful weird dusk, with no light but that which glimmers 
 on the bald scalp of the hideous headsman, who, feeling the edge of his 
 axe with his thumb, grins with a devilish foretaste of his pleasure on the 
 morrow. I need scarcely say that all the poetry, dramatic force, mystery, 
 and terror of the design is attributable to Cruikshank." I have already 
 alluded to the controversy as to whether artist or writer has claim to the 
 origination of these illustrated novels ; whether, in short, these were 
 u written up" to Cruikshank's etchings, or the latter merely illustrated 
 what the novelist had already written. Cruikshank complained that his 
 name was ignored in the announcements of The Miser's Daughter, as 
 dramatized by Mr. Andrew Halliday ; and I think that Mr. Ainsworth was 
 -entitled to a counter-growl, like Master Pierce Egan in old days, on the 
 score that his works were catalogued by the booksellers under Cruik- 
 shank's name, and their currency attributed to that artist's illustrations. 
 The first edition of Rookwood was published before any acquaintance 
 existed between artist and novelist ; but Cruikshank's services were called 
 in to illustrate a later issue. Jack Sheppard was published in Bentlefs 
 Miscellany j Cruikshank made the designs for this, and asserts that it 
 was the "only bit of MS. of the author that he ever saw in the whole 
 course of his life." Guy Fawkes appeared in the same serial, and 
 received, too, the advantage of the artist's master-hand ; then came The 
 Tower of London, of which Cruikshank claimed the " original idea," 
 published in monthly numbers, and in which he and Ainsworth were 
 equal partners ; The Miser's Daughter; Windsor Castle, the first part of 
 which was illustrated by Tony Johannot, and the remainder by Cruik- 
 shank ; and, finally, St. James's; or, the Court of Queen Anne, which 
 was the last of Ainsworth's novels which Cruikshank illustrated. 
 
 I have pointed out elsewhere f that the capital drinking-song, * Jolly 
 
 * British Artists from Hogarth to Turner, vol. ii. p. 59. 
 t Notes and Queries, December 19th, 1863, p. 488. 
 
2 6o THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Nose," which, put into the mouth of " Blueskin," in the novel, Jack 
 Sheppard, became so famous by Paul Bedford's impersonation of the 
 character, is a translation of one of the Vaux-de-Vire of the fine old 
 Norman Anacreon, Olivier Basselin. These, with other chansons-a-boire 
 of the same period, have been collected by the Bibliophile Jacob, and 
 published by A. Delahays (Paris, 1858, 8vo), and thus placed within reach 
 of lovers of the esprit gaulois. I give both versions for comparison : 
 
 "A SON NEZ. 
 " Beau Nez, dont les rubis ont couste mainte pipe 
 De vin blanc et clairet, 
 Et duquel la couleur richement participe 
 Du rouge et violet ; 
 
 ' Gros Nez ! Qui te regarde a travers un grand verre 
 Te juge encore plus beau. 
 Tu ne ressembles point au nez de quelque here 
 Qui ne boit que de 1'eau. 
 
 " Un coq d'Inde, sa gorge a toy semblable porte : 
 Combien de riches gens 
 N'ont pas si riche nez ! Pour te peindre en la sorte, 
 II faut beaucoup de temps. 
 
 " Le verre est le pinceau, duquel on t'enlumine ; 
 Le vin est la couleur 
 Dont on t'a peint ainsi plus rouge qu'une guisgne 
 En beuvant du meilleur. 
 
 "On dit qu'il nuit aux yeux ; mais sdront-ils les maistres 
 Le vin est la guarison 
 De mes maux : j'aime mieux perdre les deux fenestres 
 Que toute la maison." 
 
 "DRINKING SONG. 
 
 "Jolly Nose ! the bright rubies that garnish thy tip 
 Were dug from the mines of Canary ; 
 And to keep up their lustre I moisten my lip 
 With hogsheads of claret and sherry. 
 
 "Jolly Nose ! he who sees thee across a broad glass, 
 Beholds thee in all thy perfection ; 
 And to the pale snout of a temperate ass 
 Entertains the profoundest objection. 
 
 " [For a turkey-cock's neck one might surely mistake thee : 
 Why there's many a well-to-do fellow 
 Can't boast such a nose ! What a time it must take thee 
 
 To get to a colouring so mellow.] * - 
 
 " For a big-bellied glass is the palette I use, 
 And the choicest of wine is my colour ; 
 And I find that my nose takes the mellowest hues, 
 The fuller I fall it, the fuller. 
 
 "Jolly Nose ! there are fools who say drink hurts the sight : 
 Such dullards know nothing about it ; 
 'Tis better with wine to extinguish the light, 
 Than live always in darkness without it." 
 
 In an interesting paper in Belgravia for November, 1881, I find it 
 stated by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, that the enumeration of the works of 
 
 * For the sake of completeness, I have supplied the stanza in brackets, which Mr.. 
 Ainsworth, judiciously for his purpose, omitted. 
 
WILLIAM HARRISON A INS* WORTH $gi 
 
 Ainsworth occupy no fewer than forty pages of the British Museum 
 Catalogue. I cannot thus be expected to give a complete bibliography 
 here, or do otherwise than pass over without mention many productions 
 worthy of separate notice. Amid a whole library of works of fiction, 
 manifesting the extraordinary fecundity and versatility of their author, 
 and underlaid by a basis of historical knowledge and research, it is not 
 easy to select any for special mention. In his Tower of London (1840) 
 he dealt with a higher class of criminals, and thus conciliated that large 
 class of readers which takes a vast interest in the depiction of vice when 
 it is clad in velvet and broad-cloth, but finds it vulgar and repulsive when 
 it is presented in fustian and high-lows. In St. James's, or the Court of 
 Queen Anne (1844), we find a vivid picture of Court life, and a spirited 
 defence of the private character of Marlborough. In the Lancashire 
 Witches (1848), dedicated to his old friend, James Crossley, F.S.A., the 
 President of the Chetham Society, he has, with considerable artistic 
 skill, made use of the materials afforded by two works of the Chetham 
 series Potts's Discovery, and the Journals of Nicolas Assheton to 
 illustrate in a powerful and striking manner the grand superstition of his 
 native county. To The Flitch of Bacon (1854), we owe a temporary 
 revival to one of the most curious of our old English customs, that 
 instituted more than seven hundred years before at Great Dunmow in 
 Essex, of giving a " Gamon of Bacon " to a man and his wife who had 
 taken an oath, pursuant to the ancient " Custom of Confession," if ever 
 
 -you either married man or wife, 
 
 By household brawles or contentious strife, 
 
 Or otherwise, in bed or at boord, 
 
 Did offend each other in deed or word, 
 
 Or, since the Parish Clerk said Amen, 
 
 You wish't yourselves unmarried agen, 
 
 Or in a twelve months' time and a day, 
 
 Repented not in thought any way ; 
 
 But continued true and just in desire, 
 
 As when you joyned hands in the holy quire," etc.* 
 
 Two others, Mervyn Clitheroe (1857) and Ovingdean Grange (i860), 
 may be finally mentioned, from their more or less autobiographic 
 character ; the former graphically bringing before us the localities and 
 school associates of Ainsworth's boyhood, the latter, describing life on 
 the South Downs, a part of England with which he was well acquainted. 
 
 The various Editorial and Proprietary engagements of Ainsworth 
 must have involved a vast amount of anxiety, labour, and responsibility. 
 Very early in his career he published a literary serial, under the title of 
 The Manchester Iris; and I am not sure that the first volume of The 
 Keepsake was not edited by him. In 1840, on the retirement of Charles 
 Dickens, he undertook the management of Bentlefs Miscellany, in which 
 he published Guy Fawkes and the Tower of London. To the Sunday 
 Times he contributed Old St. Paul's, in weekly instalments. At the close 
 of 1841, he, in turn, retired from Bentlefs, and started the magazine 
 which bore his own name, in which also several of his romances appeared. 
 In 1845, he added to his already onerous tasks, the editorship of the 
 New Monthly Magazi?ie, in which he published his Star Chamber, and 
 
 * See Brand's Popular Antiquities; Hone's Every Day Book, vol. ii. p. 802; 
 History of the Dunmow Flitch, by W. Andrews, (Tegg & Co., 1877) ; Notes and 
 Queries, 6th S. vii. 135. 
 
262 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 other novels ; and he subsequently became proprietor of the serial, with 
 which, in London, he was earliest associated. 
 
 In 1855, was published Ballads, Ro?nantic, Fantastical and Humorous, 
 re-issued in later days by Routledge, in the usual tawdry, dateless 
 fashion, which London publishers perversely suppose to be favoured by 
 the public, with illustrations on wood by Sir John Gilbert. The volume is 
 of unique character, and contains pieces of such originality and merit, 
 that one is led to regret that the author did not further cultivate a kind of 
 composition for which he showed a special talent. Here will be found 
 many lyrics, the titles of which will recall to grey-beards the days of their 
 youth, "Nix my doll, pals," "Will Davies and Dick Turpin," "The 
 Carpenter's Daughter," " Old Grindrod's Ghost," " The Headsman's 
 Axe," "The Corpse-Candle," "Jolly Nose," "The Carrion- Crow," "The 
 Mandrake," " The Churchyard Yew," and especially, a piece of a 
 different class, "The Combat of the Thirty," written in 1855, an d 
 appended to the more recent edition, being a most spirited and 
 picturesque version of a " Breton Lay of the Fourteenth Century," giving 
 an account of the " Battle of Thirty Englishmen against Thirty Bretons, 
 which took place in Brittany in the Year of Grace, One thousand thre*. 
 hundred and fifty, on Saturday, the Vigil of Sunday L^etare Jerusalem," * 
 the details of which are further supplied by a missing chapter o. 
 Froissart, discovered among the MS. collections of the Prince de Soubise. 
 and first published in 1824, by the finder, M. Buchon, in his Chroniques 
 Nationales et Etrangeres. 
 
 One of Ainsworth's earliest residences was the " Elms " at Kilburn 
 From this he removed to Kensal Manor House, on the Harrow Road 
 where, for a long series of years, he dispensed his genial and libera 
 hospitality to the large circle of friends, chiefly literary men and artists 
 who made it a rallying point. From this he removed to Brighton, and 
 later on, to Tunbridge Wells. Subsequently, in the retirement befitting 
 his advancing years, he resided with his eldest daughter, Fanny, al 
 Hurstpierpoint. He had also a residence at St. Mary's Road, Reigate, 
 Surrey ; and here he died, on Sunday, January 3rd, 1882, in the seventy- 
 seventh year of his age. On the 9th of the same month, his remains 
 were interred at the Kensal Green Cemetery ; the ceremony being o: 
 very quiet and simple character, in accordance with his express wish. 
 
 Among the ancestors of the novelist were, if I mistake not, Robert 
 Ainsworth, the celebrated Latin lexicographer ; and his parental grand- 
 father was Jeremiah Ainsworth, one of the founders of the Lancashire 
 school of Geometry. A connection, on his mother's side, was Mr. John 
 Badcock, who, under the pseudonym of " John Bee," or, more properly, 
 " Ion Bee," is the author, inter alia, of The Dictionary of the Turf, th 
 Ring, the Chase, the Pit, of Bon Ton, and the Varieties of Life, etc. (1823 
 8vo), and The Living Picture of Lo?ido?i (1828, 8vo). 
 
 To the later editions of Rookwood is prefixed an interesting memoir 
 of Ainsworth by Laman Blanchard ; and his own early friend, and his 
 father's partner, James Crossley, F.S.A., of Manchester, contributed a 
 biographical sketch of the novelist to the Manchester School Register, 
 vol. iii. pp. 122-5, which also serves as an introduction to the Routledge 
 reprint of the Ballads. 
 
 * March 27th, 1351. (New style). 
 
fern* Wy dbtffy/u 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE"MDRJR]R OF FASHIOH? 
 
THOMAS HILL. 
 
 LL THOMAS HILL. 
 
 As the " Paul Pry of Poole and Liston, the " Hull" of Gilbert Gurney, 
 and the no less immortal "Jack Hobbleday" of Little Pedli?tgton, if 
 not as an * Illustrious Literary Character/' the " thrice-centenarian 
 Tom Hill, the "Tom Hill of all the realm of Cockayne," demands 
 some record here, although he with Louis Eustache Ude and Grant 
 Thorburn, are inserted in the " Gallery," as " no more than curiosities." * 
 As to age, he was always considered quite a Methuselah. James Smith 
 said that it was impossible to discover it, because his parish-register had 
 been burnt in the Fire of London, and he took advantage of the circum- 
 stance to conceal the year of his nativity ; and Theodore Hook capped 
 this with a u Pooh, pooh ! " Hill's characteristic exclamation, "he's one 
 of the little Hills that are spoken of as skipping in the Psalms ! " I 
 hardly make him out to be quite so old as this would come to ; but there 
 is little doubt that he had past his 8oth year, when he died, December 
 2nd, 1 84 1, where for the preceding thirty years he had lived, in the 
 second floor chambers, No. 2, James Street, Strand, and " London lost 
 one of its choicest spirits and humanity one of her kindest-hearted sons." 
 
 As to the character of " Hull " in Gilbert Gurney, Lockhart says, 
 " Hook has painted that good-natured, harmless little gossip to the life " ; 
 and adds (which one is glad to know), that the chapters were read in 
 MS. to the prototype himself, who felt flattered by the notice given to 
 him, and gave a joyful imprimatur. The same authority further says, 
 " As a mere octogenarian he was wonderful enough. No human being 
 would from his appearance, gait, or habits, have guessed him to be sixty. 
 Till within three months of his death, he rose at five usually, and brought 
 the materials for his breakfast home with him to the Adelphi from a 
 walk to Billingsgate ; and at dinner he would eat and drink like an 
 adjutant of five-and-twenty. One secret was, that a "banyan-day" 
 uniformly followed a festivity. He then nursed himself most carefully on 
 tea and dry toast, tasted neither meat nor wine, and went to bed by eight 
 o'clock. But perhaps the grand secret was the easy imperturable serenity 
 of his temper. He had been kind and generous in the days of his 
 wealth, and though his evening was comparatively poor, his cheerful 
 heart kept its even beat." f 
 
 It is as the proprietor of the Monthly Mirror, to which Kirke White 
 contributed, that Southey makes allusion to Hill, speaking of him as "a 
 gentleman who is himself a lover of English literature, and who has 
 probably the most copious collection of English poetry in existence." 
 This is perhaps the "puffery" to which Maginn alludes ; for Lockhart 
 styles Hill, in reference to this collection, " the most innocent and 
 ignorant of the bibliomaniacs." This library was formed by him in his 
 palmy days, when he carried on a prosperous business at Queenhithe, as 
 a drysalter ; and afterwards, when he lost the greater part of the fortune 
 he had accumulated, by an unsuccessful speculation in indigo, was valued 
 
 * Fraser's Magazine, vol. xxi. p. 22. 
 
 \ Theodore Hook : a Sketch (Murray, 1852, p. 25). 
 
-6 4 THE MACLISE PORTRAITS *A LLERY. 
 
 at 6000. Hill was, too, a Mecaenas in his way, and was an early patron 
 of Bloomfield and Kirke White. He read The Farmer's Boy in manuscript, 
 and had sufficient judgment to recommend it to a publisher. He was a 
 regular quidnunc in his manners ; was always about, knew everything, 
 and had always, in some mysterious way, seen what was to be seen 
 before any one else. In allusion to this and his constant presence at the 
 " private views " of exhibitions, it is recorded by a wag, that when he was 
 asked if he had seen the new comet, he replied, " Pooh, pooh ! I was 
 present at the private view." Hill led a long life and a merry one. He 
 did not suffer the loss of his property to affect him greatly, and retired 
 contentedly to the quiet haven of the Adelphi. His death took place 
 from the natural progress of decay, his physician telling him, " I can do 
 no more for you ; I have done all I can. I cannot cure age." 
 
 A better idea of the Hillian interlocution could hardly be gained than 
 that afforded by Maginn's happy imitation : "Well, Hill, how do things 
 look at Billingsgate this morning ? Covent Garden lively, Tom ? What 
 'do you think of John Black permitting Bear Ellice to put his paw in the 
 leader ? Pooh, pooh, Hill ! All Heber's concern gone yet ? How does 
 Cochrane get on with your worthy young friend, Lord Shammus, of 
 Should-be? stirring, eh? When did you dine with Murray, Tom? 
 What is Wright about now ? I think I could trace a certain fine Roman 
 hand in the last Fraser. Ah, you wag! how could you do Hogg so? 
 Pot and kettle, Tom, eh ? Any more Ramsbottoms coming ? Theodore 
 hearty this summer ? What's Lockhart thinking of for next number, old 
 . cock ? Ah, those pea and thimble rogues ! Now do tell me, what's 
 -Brougham's regular dose, Hill ? Does Fricour still keep up his fame for 
 the roast turbot ? What has Southey got for his edition of Cowper ? My 
 -eye ! how the laureate puffed you in his preface to Kirke White ! Why 
 
 was Lady T so werry dolorous when Grizzle made his blubbering 
 
 exit? What the deuce is that new print you've stuck up alongside of 
 Parr ? Ah, Tom ! those were merry days when you, and I, and Perry, 
 and John Kemble, ran our rigs together, sic transit. Have you had a 
 tumbler with Sir Morgan lately? How's James ? Come, now, what did 
 you turn by your tickets for the abbey, Tom? What's all this about 
 Mulgrave, Hillock ? You'll take the thing up at the Garrick, won't you ? 
 Fie ! do you think we've forgotten all about you and the Bellamy ? Ah, 
 Tom, the White Hermitage ! How you floored Dubois, Andrews, Smith, 
 Twiss, every mother's son of them, and then went up to sup with the 
 Duchess, you dog ! Lord, Lord ! if you ever do make a die of it, how 
 your cellar will cut up ! Why the mischief don't you write your memoirs, 
 Hill ? Do by all means ! Life and Works, in the same shape with 
 Byron's, Crabbe's, and so forth. Plenty of facts pooh ! pooh ! bushels, 
 bushels. I dare say the Emperor would not mind a thousand, eh, 
 Chimborazo ? Come, Tommy, 'tis eleven o'clock ; get on your boots 
 again ; don't you forget your umbrella, my boy ! Oh, Jupiter, how 
 capitally Mathews hits off your grunt ! Little Davy never did you 
 better at Hampton." 
 
 Here is a passage which, as I transcribe it, suggests all that liberality 
 of annotation which overrides the text of Grey's Hudibras, Warton's 
 Milton, or a Variorum classic ; but I must really leave the reader, who 
 may think that the game is worth the candle, to hunt up the " Who's 
 Who," and " What's What " for himself, while I seek to extract, for a 
 
THOMAS HILL. 265 
 
 brief moment, the once well-known Amphytrion from his long and un- 
 disturbed slumber in the limbo of obliviosities. 
 
 Leigh Hunt was an occasional partaker of the Dominical Symposia 
 at Sydenham. Here he would meet Thomas Campbell, the poet, who 
 was a neighbour of the host ; the brothers Smith, of the Rejected 
 Addresses, of whom more anon ; Theodore Hook, who has already 
 received befitting notice ; Mathews (the elder), the comedian ; * the 
 classical and witty barrister, Dubois,f who edited the Monthly Mirror, 
 of which Hill was the proprietor ; and others of more or less note. " Our 
 host," says Hunt, " was a jovial bachelor, plump and rosy as an abbot ; 
 and no abbot could have presided over a more festive Sunday. The 
 wine flowed merrily and long ; the discourse kept pace with it ; and next 
 morning, in returning to town, we felt ourselves very thirsty. A pump 
 by the roadside, with a plash round it, was a bewitching sight." 
 
 As I have spoken of John Poole and his Little Pedlington, a few 
 words may not be inopportune here about one of the wittiest writers, 
 and cleverest social satires, of the former half- century. About 18 10, when 
 scarcely out of his teens, the date of his birth I do not know, he gained 
 some reputation in literature by the publication of a slender volume 
 entitled Hamlet Travestie, with Burlesque A?i7iotations after the manner 
 of Dr. Johnson and Geo. Steevens, Esq., and the various Com7ne?itators, 
 of which the sixth edition (18 17, 8vo) is before me. This he followed up 
 in 1 81 2 by a similar parody of Romeo and Juliet, which hardly met with 
 equal favour. About the same period he commenced a dramatic career 
 of extraordinary success by a one-act interlude entitled Int?*igue j which 
 was succeeded by some half-century of pieces, many of which, such as 
 Simpson &" Co., Turning the Tables, Deaf as a Post, etc., still keep 
 possession of the stage. But Poole's most remarkable production was 
 Paul Pry, already alluded to, which, with such artists in the original cast 
 as Farren, Pope, Mrs. Glover, Mrs. Waylett, Madame Vestris and Liston, 
 ran through two seasons (1825-6), at the Haymarket, and achieved a 
 popularity, which has been kept up to the present day by the talent of 
 Wright and Toole. In 1 831, he wrote a quasi autobiographic sketch of 
 himself, to accompany his portrait, in the New Monthly Magazine, and 
 therein gave an account of the origin of that immortal character, which 
 he never would admit had been suggested by Tom Hill. Farce-writers 
 are prone, in the titles of their pieces, to affect a certain alliterative 
 
 * The widow of the actor has given us an account of these pleasant ' ' Sydenham 
 Sundays," as they were called. See her Memoirs of Charles Mathews, iii. 626. 
 
 t It was this Edward Dubois who was actually author of a curious volume which 
 I have seen ascribed to Thomas Hood and others. This was a humorous attack 
 upon the " Tours " of Sir John Carr, and was entitled, My Pocket Book ; or Hints for 
 ** A Ryghte Merrie and Conceitede" Tour in Quarto; to be called " The Stranger in 
 Ireland" in 1805, with humorous plates, by a Knight Errant (3rd ed., London, 1808, 
 8vo). This excited the ire of the worthy knight, who brought an action for libel 
 against Hood and Sharpe, the publishers, which resulted, July 25th, 1808, in a verdict 
 for the defendants. In the same year, too, emanated from the press a "retort 
 courteous " to the satire of Dubois. This was called Old Nick's Pocket Book; or Hints 
 for "a Ryghte Pedantique and Manglynge" Publication to be called "My Pocket 
 Book." By Himself (London, 8vo, 1808). Dubois was also author of a charming 
 volume entitled The Wreath ; composed of selections from Sappho, Theocritus, Bion and 
 Moschus, etc., to which are added Remarks on Shakespeare, etc. (London, 1799, 8vo). 
 He became a magistrate in the Court of Requests, and died so recently as January 
 toth, 1850, "in spite of his love of port." 
 
266 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 association, of which the familiar a Who's Who " of Poole is an example ; 
 and Mr. Blanchard points out that the same principle is illustrated in the 
 names of the authors, inasmuch as, fifty years ago, Poole, Pocock, Peake 
 and Planche" had possession of the stage, just as Boucicault, Brough, 
 Byron and Burnand, have, in later days, held the sovereignty of the 
 boards. At this period, the reputation of Poole, as a humorous and 
 witty writer, was such that, on the first appearance of the Pickwick Papers, 
 the authorship was by many ascribed to him. To the New Monthly 
 Magazine, at that time under the editorship of Mr. S. C. Hall, he was a 
 favourite contributor ; and in that serial appeared from his pen, by 
 monthly instalments, one of the most remarkable, witty and genial satires 
 which this century has produced. It was at first entitled A New Guide 
 Book; and its purport was, not to puff into notoriety some newly dis- 
 covered watering-place, but to ridicule the complacent ignorance, the 
 fussy inanities, and the petty jealousies of a small provincial town. All 
 this is done in the happiest vein imaginable ; and the typical characters 
 of such a place, the local antiquary, with his " Museum," the Master of 
 the Ceremonies, the leading Publican, the Portrait Painter, whom the 
 jealousy of his Metropolitan brethren has kept out of the Academy, the 
 small-beer Poet and Poetess, not to forget the officious and pertinacious 
 busy-body, little "Jack Hobbleday," of whom Hill, perhaps without much 
 reason, has been supposed to be the prototype, are all touched off in 
 the most masterly and felicitous manner. As the papers were greatly 
 admired, the writer was induced to continue them beyond his original 
 intention. They became perhaps at last somewhat wire-drawn ; and 
 were finally republished in two volumes, under the title of Little Pedlington 
 and the Pedlingtonians (1839, 2 v l s - 8vo). With the publication in 1842 of 
 Phineas Quiddy or Sheer Industry a novel in three volumes, octavo, which 
 had also appeared in the New Monthly, the literary career of Poole may 
 be said to have closed. He betook himself to Paris, where, falling into 
 poverty and ill-health, a subscription was made for him. The Queen gave 
 him a nomination to the Charter House, but, like poor John Timbs, he 
 could not conform to the wholesome and necessary restraint of such an 
 institution. He afterwards obtained, mainly through the instrumentality of 
 Charles Dickens, a Crown pension of one hundred pounds, the quarterly 
 instalments of which were, after the death of the great novelist, regularly 
 conveyed by his son, together with the welcome news of the world, to 
 the aged author, in his solitary lodgings in Kentish Town. Mr. S. C. 
 Hall, who devotes a couple of pages to him in his charming Book oj 
 Memories, says that the last decade of his life, which was a scarcely ever 
 interrupted course of self-sacrifice to eau de vie, was passed in Paris ; and 
 that he died in 1862. But this is erroneous. John Poole, it is true, 
 disappeared from Paris about this time ; but it was to take up his abode 
 in London. As to the cognac I cannot speak ; but his devotion to this 
 beverage, even if Mr. Hall is right, can hardly be termed a "self- 
 sacrifice," inasmuch as the consummation was not effected till ten years 
 later, February 5th, 1872, when he died in the eighty-eighth year of his 
 age. He had long outlived his generation, and few stood around the 
 grave in Highgate Cemetery, where, on February nth, were deposited 
 the remains of the last survivor of one of the most brilliant literary 
 brotherhoods that has ever catered for the amusement of the public. 
 
 One word more to " Hillock," the jovial and the jolly, before I betake 
 

 S*y 
 
 ASTTHOR OF THE.SHTBlAJLTERN 
 
REV. GEORGE ROBERT GLEIG. 267 
 
 myself to "fresh fields and pastures new." Besides the library of which 
 I have spoken, he also possessed a large collection of literary curiosities 
 and relics, the sale of which, library I think included, by auction, 
 occupied an entire week. Among them was Garrick's cup, formed from 
 the mulberry-tree planted by Shakspeare in his garden at New Place, 
 Stratford-on-Avon. This fetched forty guineas. A small vase and 
 pedestal, carved from the same mulberry-tree, and presented formerly 
 to Garrick, was sold, with a coloured drawing of it, for ten guineas ; and 
 a block of wood, cut from the celebrated willow planted by Pope at his 
 villa at Twickenham, brought a guinea. Now I need not tell my reader, 
 who is tant soil fteu a curio-hunter, that Shakespeare's mulberry-tree is 
 distinguished by the same remarkable property of reproduction, which is 
 possessed by the vera crux; and that, between one and the other, if the 
 membra disjecta could be only brought together, we should have about 
 enough timber for the construction of an old-fashioned "three-decker." 
 Another Shakespeare cup, I believe the very identical one presented to 
 Garrick, at the time of the Jubilee, by the Mayor and Corporation of 
 Stratford-on-Avon, was purchased by Mr. J. Johnson, on May 5th, 1825, 
 for the sum of one hundred and twenty-one guineas ; and was by him 
 sold, July 4th, 1846, for the lower amount of ^40 8s. 6d., to Mr. Isaacs, 
 of Upper Gower Street.* A third was in the possession of the late 
 eminent bibliopole, Joseph Lilly ; and I have seen, or heard of, many 
 others. Garrick, at all events, could hardly have been " a cup too few." 
 
 LI I. REV. GEORGE ROBERT GLEIG. 
 
 As the idtimns Romanorum. the only simulacrum in our " Gallery (if I 
 may use a figure of speech), which the ruthless iconoclast, Time, has not 
 hurled from its pedestal and shivered in the dust, as the facile atavus of 
 our existing literature, and one who through a long and honourable 
 course of nearly nine decades has done good service to the cause of 
 religion, letters, and education, it is impossible to regard, or speak of, 
 the venerable subject of this memoir otherwise than with a feeling of the 
 deepest interest and the profoundest respect. 
 
 There is a story in an early volume of Blackwood, called u The First 
 and Last Dinner." It tells how a jovial party of young fellows, in the 
 heyday of life, entered into a compact to dine together every year. No 
 new member was to be added to their number, but the vacant chairs of 
 any who should die were to be placed around the board at the successive 
 meetings. One of the party, if I remember rightly, was drowned on the 
 very day that the agreement was made ; but still some years passed 
 before the original number suffered diminution in the ordinary course of 
 nature. But the mills of Time grind surely, if slowly ; and year by year 
 
 "A narrower circle seemed to meet 
 Around the board, each vacant seat 
 A dark and sad remembrance brought " 
 
 Curiosities of London, etc., by John Timbs, F.S.A., 1868, 8vo, 2nd ed. p. 2. 
 
a6$ THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GAltERY. 
 
 till, at last, himself in extreme old age, the last survivor of the merry 
 brotherhood, took his solitary seat on the appointed day, with the 
 lenantless chairs all in grim array to meet his eye, the echo of stilled 
 laughter and past voices to fill his ears, and the memory of buried friend- 
 ships to throw their dark shadow over his saddened retrospect ! The 
 last look, the last word, the last farewell, are all phrases of awfully 
 suggestive import. Thus there is no room for wonder that the con- 
 sideration of the last term of any series has ever had a powerful charm 
 for thoughtful men. Chateaubriand has left us Le Demier Abencerage j 
 Cooper, The Last of the Mohica7is; Eugene Sue, Le Dernier Jour dhm 
 CondamnS ; John Gait, The Last of the Lairds; Cumberland, The Last 
 of the Family ; Colley Cibber, Lovers Last Shift (which a clever French- 
 man translated La Der?iiere Che7iiise de V Amour) j E. M. Ward has 
 painted The Last Sleep of Argylej and Bulwer, who has harped pretty 
 well on the string, has written The Last Days of Pompeii, The Last of 
 the Barons, The Last of the Tribunes, and The Last of the Saxon Kings. 
 The imagination of Campbell has dared to anticipate that awful day, 
 when the stars shall fall unto the earth, and heaven depart as a scroll ; 
 and his Last Ma?i is a picture of terrible and ghastly significance. There 
 is a Last Matt also of Thomas Hood ; and this, though depicted from a 
 different standpoint, is not without a weird and grim suggestiveness of 
 its own. Moreover, if placed among Whims and Oddities, it is only the 
 more characteristic of that unique genius, in whom the grotesque and the 
 pathetic so often intermerged. What is true of the race, is true also of 
 the generation, the family, or the circle. And it is a sad and sorrowful 
 thing, however we regard it, this superfluous lagging of the veteran on 
 the stage, to use Johnson's phrase,* this hanging of the " Last Leaf" on 
 the tree, to which Oliver Wendell Holmes so pathetically likens the 
 forlornness of the old man who has survived the friends of his youth, 
 this "blooming alone" of The Last Rose of Szwnmer, in Tom Moore's 
 exquisite song, this "staying to the last" at the feast of life, which 
 suggested to the same poet one of his most touching verses : 
 
 " When I remember all 
 
 The friends so link'd together, 
 I've seen around me fall 
 Like leaves in winter weather, 
 I feel like one 
 Who treads alone 
 Some banquet-hall deserted, 
 Whose lights are fled, 
 Whose garland's dead, 
 And all but he departed 1 " 
 
 Well, this is a train of reflection into which I have been, as it were, 
 imperceptibly led, and which, perhaps, I may have followed too far, 
 by the contemplation of the inimitable cartoon which stands at the fore- 
 front of this volume. I wondered if the LAST SURVIVOR of that gay 
 Fraserian symposium ever gazed in like manner at the pictured represen- 
 tation, and what tricks might be played on his wandering thought by 
 imagination and memory. Do wit and scholar vanish from the board, 
 the hum of converse cease like a tale that is told, and he alone remain to 
 do the honours of the feast, there where he sits, on the left hand of 
 
 * The Va?iity of Human Wishes. 
 
REV. GEORGE ROBERT GLEIG. 269* 
 
 Maginn, between Frank Mahony and Sir Egerton Brydges? Or da 
 shadowy forms fill the vacant chairs, and jest, anecdote and repartee, 
 sound, in lingering echo, on the ear of the dreamer? Does he ever visit,., 
 in fancy or reality, the once festive chamber ? and has he ever wished, 
 like " Master Humphrey" in the story of Dickens, that when he too, like 
 all, should be dead, the house itself should be shut up, and the vacant 
 chairs left in their accustomed places round the table ? for it would be 
 pleasant, the old man fondly thought, to reflect that the shades of the 
 departed might, perhaps, still assemble as of yore, and still join in ghostly 
 converse. 
 
 But enough of this ; let me try to get at a few facts. The Rev. George 
 Robert Gleig was born in 1796, the son of a Scottish bishop. He was 
 fitly educated at the knees of the "great mother of Churchmen and 
 Tories " ; but, fired with military zeal, enlisted himself as a volunteer in 
 a regiment which chanced to pass through Oxford, on its way to Lisbon. 
 He, by and by, obtained a commission in the 85th Regiment of Light 
 Infantry ; and enjoyed a career in the Peninsula which furnished materials. 
 for his most interesting book, The Subaltern, published in 1825. He 
 served with distinction in the American campaign, and was severely 
 wounded at what Fraser calls the ft righteous capture " of Washington by 
 the British forces, under General Ross ; and, if I am not mistaken, he 
 fought, and was again wounded, at Waterloo. He then retired on half- 
 pay, completed his studies at Oxford, took holy orders, married, and was, 
 in 1822, presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the living of 
 Ivy Church, Kent, valued in the Clergy List at ^405 per annum. In. 
 1844, he was appointed to the Chaplainship of Chelsea Hospital. In 
 1846, he became Chaplain-General to the forces ; shortly after, a Pre- 
 bendary of St. Paul's ; and, having devised a scheme for the education of 
 soldiers, he was appropriately made Inspector-General of Military Schools. 
 
 Mr. Gleig is a somewhat prolific author. Besides his Subaltern, 
 of which I have spoken, he has written an account of the Campaigns oj 
 Washington and New Orleans; a History of India ; The Chronicles of 
 Walt ham j The Story of the Battle of Waterloo j Military History of 
 Great Britai?ij The Country Curate (a collection of tales) ; Traditions 
 of Chelsea Hospitals Lives of Clive, Hastings, Munro and Wellington ; 
 and many others. 
 
 He has also been a large contributor to the leading critical serials. 
 Many of his scattered papers have been collected under the title of 
 Essays : Biographical, Historical and Miscellaneous, Contributed to the 
 Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews (London, Longmans, 1858, 2 vols. 
 8vo). The essays in these volumes are as follows : Vol. I. " Dr. 
 Chalmers," " Defensive Armaments," " Natural Theology," " Military 
 Bridges," and "The War in the Punjaub;" Vol. II. "The Puritans," 
 " General Miller," " India and its Army," " The Madchenstein," and 
 " Military Education." 
 
 There are also two volumes of Sermons from his pen, and he has 
 edited a useful series of School-books. 
 
 According to Maginn, he is " a very good fellow, of course a decided" 
 enemy to cant in every form ; but a stanch Churchman, orthodox as 
 Lefroy, devout as Wetherel*, kind-hearted as Inglis, jolly as Boyton, and 
 zealous as Billy Holmes." But the Doctor hints at a contingency that 
 has never happened, when he speaks of the reclaimed soldier perchance,. 
 
270 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 " in case of accidents," throwing off his gown, to "gird the sword upon his 
 thigh, and go forth to batter other substances than the * drum ecclesi- 
 astic'": 
 
 " Thus if The Row were opening now, 
 
 Would flame once more the soul of Gleig ; 
 The surpliced crew he'd then eschew, 
 
 To sport claymore and philibeg. 
 One rub-a-dub brings Parson Sub, 
 
 Where beams the banner of ' The Beau '; 
 Nor Hume nor Place find softer grace 
 Than savage Soult, or scamp Junot, 
 In fields Iberian long ago ! " 
 
 Mr. Gleig seems by this time thoroughly" indurated in that " habit of 
 Jiving of which someone speaks ; and I sincerely hope that he will not 
 be called on to break it till he has contributed an instance of centen- 
 arianism to the scanty list admitted by my friend, Mr. Thorns. Not but 
 what there is a certain degree of longevity, which, all unwitting that he 
 himself should furnish an example of it, is termed " preposterous " by 
 poor John Poole, who so amusingly touches upon the subject in one of 
 his humorous essays, that I shall transcribe the passage, if only as an 
 anti-climax : " At sixty-nine, a man will look with complacency on the 
 approaching termination of his career, as an event to be expected in the 
 ordinary course of nature. Once allow him to turn seventy, he has then 
 escaped the fatal three-score and ten, and would consider himself an ill- 
 used person, if he received notice of ejectment a day short of ninety. 
 Ninety comes, and he grows insolent. Death, he thinks, has passed on 
 and overlooked him. He asks why Nature has so long delayed to claim 
 her debt. She has suffered thrice seven years to elapse beyond the period 
 usually assigned for payment, and he indulges in wild fancies of a Statute 
 of Limitations. In his more rational moments he talks of nothing but 
 Old Parr. He burns his will, marries his housemaid, hectors his son and 
 heir who is seventy, and canes his grandchild, a lad of fifty, for keeping 
 late hours ! n 
 
 LIII. WILLIAM GODWIN. 
 
 *' Yonder walks William Godwin ! The marks of age press heavily upon 
 him ; but there gleams out of that strange face and above that stranger figure 
 the eye of fire which lighted up with the conceptions of Caleb Williams 
 and St. Leon. Wonderful books ! Once read, not only ever remembered 
 but ever graven on the mind of those who know how to read. We can 
 enter into the feeling of Lord Byron's exclamation, when, after asking 
 Godwin why he did not write a new novel, his lordship received from the 
 old man the answer, that it would kill him. 'And what matter,' said 
 the poet ; ' we should have another St. Leon! " 
 
 " Godwin," said Northcote to Hazlitt, in one of their famous colloquies, 
 u is a profligate in theory, and a bigot in conduct. He does not seem at 
 all to practice what he preaches, though this does not appear to avail him 
 anything." " Yes," replied Hazlitt, "he writes against himself. He has 
 
AUTHOR F^TMOUGMTS OH MAN* 
 
WILLIAM GODWIN. 271 
 
 written against matrimony, and has been twice married. He has scouted 
 all the commonplace duties, and yet he is a good husband and a kind 
 father. He is a strange composition of contrary qualities. He is a cold 
 formalist, and full of ardour and enthusiasm of mind ; dealing in magni- 
 ficent projects and petty cavils ; naturally dull, and brilliant by dint of 
 study ; pedantic and playful ; a dry logician, and a writer of romances." * 
 Talfourd, in like strain, depicts the two-fold character of the old philo- 
 sopher : " He was a man of two beings, which held little discourse with 
 each other, the daring inventor of theories contrasted with air-drawn, 
 diagrams, and the simple gentleman, who suffered nothing to disturb or 
 excite him, beyond his study." S. C. Hall, in his Book of Memories, says, 
 " Few who saw this man of calm exterior, quiet manners, and inexpressive 
 features, seeming generally half asleep when he walked, and even when 
 he talked, could have believed him to have originated three romances, 
 Falkland, Caleb Williams, and St. Leon, not yet forgotten because of 
 their terrible excitements, and the work, Political Justice, which, for a 
 time, created a sensation that was a fear in every state of Europe." This 
 same incongruity seemed to attach to Godwin in everything. His stature 
 was short, yet his massive head might have befitted a giant. His voice 
 was thin and small, and the topics of his conversation usually trivial ; yet 
 he had, in the solitude of his study, promulgated theories which had con- 
 vulsed nations and shaken thrones. His demeanour, we learn from 
 Lamb's biographer, was drowsy and spiritless, nor could the most interest- 
 ing society keep him awake after dinner ; yet his imagination had kindled 
 works which will never die, and he had achieved a reputation " which 
 once filled the civilized world with Its echoes." 
 
 Godwin was born at Wisbeach, in Cambridgeshire, March 3rd, 1756. 
 His father was a Nonconformist minister, as had been his grandfather 
 also. Godwin naturally took to the pulpit himself ; but, the story goes, 
 that his congregation would listen to his father's old sermons, but not his 
 own ; and that consequently, when the former were exhausted, there was 
 nothing left for the son but a resignation of his charge. He then betook 
 himself to London and Literature. 
 
 It was in 1793 that he blazed forth upon society, the " Comet of his 
 Season," with his Political Justice. This was a book born of the ferment 
 which agitated men's minds, and added to the perturbation of which it 
 was the offspring. No book was ever so much read at one time, to be so 
 completely forgotten at another. It did its work ; aided in the formation 
 of the opinion of the age ; and, like the scaffolding about a building, may 
 now be consigned to the fire, or the lumber-heap. Shelley, writing from 
 Dublin in 1812, says of it : " Nearly twenty years have elapsed since the 
 .general diffusion of its doctrines. What has followed ? Have men ceased 
 to fight? Have vice and misery vanished from the earth? Have the 
 fireside communications, which it recommends, taken place ? Out of the 
 many who read that inestimable book, how many have been blinded by 
 prejudice? How many, in short, have taken it up to gratify an 
 ephemeral vanity, and when the hour of its novelty had passed, threw it 
 aside, and yielded with fashion to the arguments of Mr. Malthus ? " On 
 the other hand, Maginn, in 1834, expresses the opinion that the principles 
 of the Political Justice, " derived, as was pretended, from the Bible, would 
 if they could have been acted upon, have subverted all the honourable 
 * Conversations with Northcote, 1830, 8vo, p. 122. 
 
272 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 relations of society, and destroyed all the ennobling or redeeming 
 feelings of the heart." 
 
 In 1797, he published The E?iquirer, a series of essays, in which he 
 still further illustrated his original theories. Five and twenty years later 
 he was called upon to edit a new edition (1823, 8vo), to which he prefixed 
 an " Advertisement," in which he says that, on reading over the Essays, 
 he u scarcely finds a thought that is his present thought," or which, at 
 least, he should not express otherwise, if then called to write upon their 
 subjects for the first time ; adding, in gloomy tone, " Alas ! to what does 
 it all amount ? The toys of childhood, the toys of manhood, and the toys 
 of old age, are still toys ; and if it were hereafter possible for me to look 
 down upon them from a future state, I should find them to be all alike 
 laborious trifles." 
 
 It was, I think, in 1794, that Caleb Williams burst upon the world 
 a book which has been proclaimed, with that exaggerated eulogy which 
 defeats its object, "the most powerful novel in the language." Gilfillan gives 
 a graphic account of his first perusal in the dead of night, and in a 
 lonely room. " There is about it," says he, " a stronger suction and swell 
 < interest than in any novel we know, with the exception of one or two 
 of Sir Walter's. You are in it ere you are aware. You put your hand 
 playfully into a child's, and are surprised to find it held in the grasp of a 
 giant. It becomes a fascination. Struggle you may, and kick ; but he 
 holds you by his glittering eye." Hazlitt used to observe of the two- 
 principal characters, that " the manner they are played into each other 
 was equal to anything of the kind in the drama." I admire Caleb Williams 
 myself, but must confess that I have always thought it somewhat over- 
 rated, though I will not go so far as Joseph Ritson, who proclaimed it 
 " a very indifferent, or, rather, a despicable performance."* It is upon 
 this novel that the reputation of Godwin must rest, and I believe that it is 
 one which the world will not let die. 
 
 In 1799, Godwin published St. Leon, the most pathetic and imaginative 
 of his novels. The object of this work is to show that it is beneficial to 
 the individual to conform to the manners and usages of the society of 
 which he is a unit, and that immunity from the sorrows and cares of 
 humanity is a calamity instead of a blessing. For the general idea of the 
 plot, Godwin was probably indebted to a passage in the very curious 
 Hermippus Redivivusj or, the Sage's Triumph over Old Age and the 
 Grave, by Dr. Campbell, from the German of Cohausen (London, 3rd ed. r 
 177 1, 8vo) ; and in like manner, it was from Caleb Williams that George 
 Colman got the materials for his Iron Chest. There is a satire on 
 St. Leon, entitled, St. Godwin : a Tale of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, 
 and Eighteenth Century. By Count Reginald de St. Leon (London, 
 1800, 8vo). This curious book I am inclined to attribute to Edward 
 Dubois. 
 
 A charming little book of Godwin's is his Essay on Sepulchres; or, a 
 Proposal for Erecting some Memorial of the Illustrious Dead in all Ages y 
 on the Spot where their Remains have been i?iterred (London, 1809, small 
 8vo, pp. 116). This was the favourite of Charles Lamb, who affronted 
 the author by telling him that it was " better than Hervey, but inferior to- 
 Sir Thomas Browne." Lamb calls it "a pretty, absurd book"; and 
 Talfourd says of the scheme, that it is " quite chimerical in itself, but 
 * Life of Ritson, by Sir N. Harris Nicolas. 
 
WILLIAM GODWIN. 273 
 
 accompanied with solemn and touching musings on life and death, and 
 fame, embodied in a style of singular refinement and beauty." 
 
 In 1797, Godwin, in conformity with those of the world, though in oppo- 
 sition to his own principles and those of the lady, obtained a legal sanction 
 to his union with the celebrated and unfortunate Mary Wollstonecraft. 
 This writer, in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and the pieces 
 preserved in her Posthumous Works, has ventured to expound theories, 
 and discuss subjects, usually thought to be beyond the province of her 
 sex ; and thus, like Harriet Martineau in an after day, incurred at the 
 hands of Maginn that ridicule and obloquy which is the modern form of 
 the ostracism and lapidation of former times. Yet Mary Wollstonecraft 
 was, if not perfect, a " woman nobly planned." Her principles may have 
 been dangerous and her practice incorrect ; but the emotions of her heart 
 were ardent and sincere. She has left one book, at least, which ought to 
 give her a permanent place in literature. This is her Letters written 
 during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and De?imark (1796, 8vo), 
 of which it may safely be said that they contain more soul and feeling 
 than any epistolary work in the language, and, more irresistibly make 
 the reader in love with the writer. Dr. Thomas Brown, the Scotch meta- 
 physician, held this book in the highest estimation, and accompanied 
 a copy which he gave to a friend with some verses which were published 
 in his poems, and subsequently expanded into the volume known as The 
 Wanderer in Norway j and Mrs. Siddons wrote to Godwin, of the same 
 work, that it was read by no one possessing " more reciprocity of feeling 
 than herself, or more deeply impressed with admiration of the writer's 
 extraordinary powers." I have before me a charming portrait of her, 
 from the painting by Opie, which hung in the study of Southey, who 
 wrote of the original as one, 
 
 "Who, among women, left no equal mind 
 When from this world she passed ." 
 
 At the time of her marriage with Godwin she was pregnant ; and she 
 brought with her a natural daughter, about three years of age, the result 
 of a former connection. A few months after, she died, having given birth 
 some days previously, to a daughter, who received her mother's name. 
 This child, who thus inherited genius from both her parents, was destined 
 to become the young wife of the poet, Shelley, himself a widower ; and 
 give to the world that portentous conception, Frankenstein, which Charles 
 Lamb pronounced " the most extraordinary realization of the idea of a 
 being out of nature which had ever been offered," and which, as the pro- 
 duction of a young girl of nineteen, is probably without a parallel in 
 literature.* 
 
 Godwin was plunged into grief at the loss of his wife, and wrote her 
 life f : 
 
 * The curious reader may like to be referred to a paper entitled "The New 
 Frankenstein," in Fraser's Magazine, January, 1838 ; and a serial story, " Promethea," 
 by Ellis J. Davis, in St. James's Magazine, 1877, where the subject is a sort of female 
 Frankenstein. 
 
 f Memoirs of the Author of the " Vindication of the Rights of Woman." By 
 William Godwin (London, 1798, i2mo). There is also a Defence of the Character and 
 Conduct of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, founded on Principles of Nature and Reason, 
 as applied to the Peculiar Circumstances of her Case (London, 1803, i2mo.) 
 
 T 
 
274 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT- GALLERY, 
 
 " William hath penn'd a waggon load of stuff, 
 And Mary's life at last he needs must write, 
 
 Thinking her were not known enough, 
 
 Till fairly printed off in black and white," etc. * 
 
 This' Life cost Godwin the friendship of Dr. Parr. He had beer 
 accustomed to visit at Hatton ; and wrote to the Doctor for an explana- 
 tion of the causes which had led to the evident disruption of friendship 
 between them. " In 1794," replied the Doctor, " I had not been shocked 
 in common with all wise and good men, by a work which you entitle 
 Memoirs, etc." He alludes, moreover, to sceptical expressions in Tht 
 Enquirer, to the dreadful effects of his correspondent's principles upor 
 the conduct and happiness of certain of his young friends, promises tc 
 return the books which had been sent to him, and desires a cessation o: 
 visits and correspondence, f All this is impudent and arrogant enough 
 though I do not forget that this unfortunate tribute to the memory of his 
 wife evidently displeased the liberal Roscoe, whose quatrain, written b) 
 him on the fly-leaf of a copy, was transcribed from memory by Dr 
 Shepherd, of Liverpool, the biographer of Poggio Braeciolini : 
 
 " Hard was thy fate in all the scenes of life, 
 As daughter, sister, mother, friend and wife ; 
 But harder still thy fate in death we own, 
 Thus mourn'd by Godwin, with a heart of stone." 
 
 However all this may be, I record my own opinion that Mar) 
 Wollstonecraft was a woman of passion, heart and genius ; and that he] 
 husband's little tribute to her memory is a slight but interesting memoria 
 of an ill-directed and unhappy career. I have read a curious stor) 
 somewhere of Miss Benger, the novelist, making a pilgrimage of som< 
 miles to the graveyard of St. Pancras, and there throwing herself on th( 
 tomb of the ill-starred woman, pouring forth, as she did so, a rapturou: 
 eulogy on the departed. 
 
 That those who are born to be hanged will never be drowned i< 
 one of those universal affirmatives, which, like the 5th Propositior 
 of Euclid's first book, admits of a simple converse. There seems 1 
 hydropathic fatality, if I may so call it, in the awful series of calamities 
 in which this unfortunate woman and her immediate connections wen 
 involved. She, herself, when neglected or abandoned by her first lover 
 Gilbert Imlay, attempted suicide by drowning from Putney Bridge ; he: 
 daughter, Fanny, by this same Imlay, actually destroyed herself by the 
 same method of death ; Harriet (Westbrook), the deserted wife o: 
 Shelley, who married her daughter by Godwin, also accomplished hei 
 death by drowning ; and finally Shelley himself, as by a stroke o: 
 retributive justice, was drowned, as we have seen, in the Bay of Spezia ! 
 
 In 1801, the widower remarried. His new wife was a Mrs. Clairmont 
 who had two children, Clara and Charles, by her former husband, B) 
 this wife, he had one son, who died in 1832 of Asiatic cholera, leaving 
 behind him an unfinished novel, entitled Transfusion, the publication o: 
 which was superintended by the distressed father. 
 
 * The Spirit of Anti-Jacolinijm for 1802 (London, 8vo, p. 360). 
 
 f Godwin subsequently defended himself in his Thoughts occasioned by the Perusa, 
 of Dr. Parr's Spitat Sermon, being a reply to the Attacks of Dr. Parr, Mr. Mackintosh 
 and others (1801, 8vo). 
 
WILLIAM GODWIN. 275 
 
 In early life, Godwin was a bookseller on Snow Hill ; and at this 
 time was an industrious compiler of school histories of very meagre and 
 unsatisfactory character, under the pseudony?n of Edward Baldwin. One 
 of these is a Pantheon, or Ancie7tt History of the Gods of Greece a?ia 
 Rome, etc. For the Use of Schools and Young Persons of both Sexes 
 (London, 1806, 8vo). The book is remarkable : (1) as containing plates 
 by William Blake, and not recorded by Gilchrist ; and (2) as being 
 spoken of in a State Paper, preserved in the Record Office, as "an 
 insidious and dangerous- publication," which "professes to exalt the 
 purity and show the superiority of Christianity over Heathen morality, 
 . . . and then through the whole work improperly excites the curiosity of 
 young persons to read the grossest stories on the subject, and artfully 
 hints the wisdom of the morality of the heathen world." * 
 
 From the same officina also emanated a little tome, once only worth 
 a few pence, but now of considerable curiosity and value. It is entitled 
 The Looki?ig Glass: a True History of the Early Days of an Artist. 
 Calculated to awaken the Emulation of Young Persons of both Sexes in 
 the Pursuit of every laudable Attainment j particularly in the Cultiva- 
 tion of the Fine Arts. By Theophilus MarclifTe. London : Printed for 
 Thomas Hodgkins, at the Juvenile Library, Hanway Street (Opposite 
 Soho Square), Oxford Street, and to be had of all Booksellers (1805, 181110, 
 pp. 118). I have been thus minute in my description of the lilliputian 
 volume, because it was written by William Godwin, because the artist 
 whose " early days " it portrays is William Mulready, R.A. because the 
 illustrations are from youthful drawings by that artist, engraved by 
 Blake, and because, whereas it was published at one shilling and six- 
 pence, it would now be cheap at a guinea ! 
 
 The following, from the Horace in London of the " Adelphi " Smiths, 
 is a happy adaptation of the Ode, " Parcius junctas quatiunt fenestras" : 
 
 " Our Temple youth, a lawless train, 
 Blockading Johnson's window-pane, 
 No longer laud thy solemn strain, 
 
 My Godwin ! 
 Chaucer's a mighty tedious elf, 
 Fleetwood lives only for himself, 
 And Caleb Williams loves the shelf, 
 
 My Godwin ! 
 
 " No longer cry the sprites unblest, 
 * Awake ! Arise ! stand forth confess'd i 
 For fallen, fallen is thy crest, 
 
 My Godwin ! 
 Thy muse for meretricious feats, 
 Does quarto penance now in sheets, 
 Or cloathing parcels roams the streets, 
 
 My Godwin ! 
 
 " Thy flame at Luna's lamp thou light'st, 
 Blank is the verse that thou indit'st, 
 Thy play is damn'd, yet still thou writ'st, 
 My Godwin ! 
 
 * Early Life of Shelley, by Florence McCarthy, p. 161. 
 
Zfi THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 And still to wield the grey goose quill, 
 When Phoebus sinks, to feel no chill, 
 ' With me is to be lovely still,' 
 My Godwin ! 
 
 " Thy winged steed (a bit of blood) 
 Bore thee like Trunnion through the flood, 
 To leave thee sprawling in the mud, 
 
 My Godwin ! 
 But carries now, with martial trot, 
 In glittering armour, Walter Scott, 
 A poet he which thou art not, 
 
 My Godwin ! 
 
 " Nay, nay, forbear these jealous wails, 
 Tho' he's upborne on fashion's gales, 
 Thy heavy bark attendant sails, 
 
 My Godwin ! 
 Fate each by different streams conveys, 
 His skiff in Aganippe plays, 
 And thine in Lethe's whirlpool strays, 
 
 My Godwin ! " 
 
 The latter years of William Godwin were rendered easy by an 
 appointment which he received during the administration of Earl Grey, 
 to the quasi sinecure office of Yeoman Usher of the Exchequer. " The 
 last time I saw him/' records Sergeant Talfourd, "he was heaving an 
 immense key to unlock the musty treasures of which he was guardian, 
 how unlike those he had unlocked, with finer talisman, for the astonish- 
 ment and alarm of one generation, and the delight of all others ! " I 
 think Maginn who contrasts Godwin's modest stipend with the ; 10,000 
 given by the Whigs to Thomas " Babbletongue " Macaulay, and S. C. 
 Hall, undervalue the emoluments of this appointment, which I fancy were 
 nearer ^200 than 100 per annum. There was a residence attached to 
 the office, adjoining the Speaker's Gateway, in New Palace Yard, West- 
 minster ; and here Godwin died, in the eighty-first year of his age, on 
 April 7th, 1836, and was buried in Cripplegate Churchyard. 
 
 For his most elaborate work, the Enquiry into Political Justice, he 
 received from Johnson, the publisher, ^700 ; for Caleb Williams only 
 ^84 ; and for St. Leon no less than ^400 guineas. He was painted by 
 Northcote, R.A., in 1800 ; and at a later period by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 
 who also made a spirited sketch of Godwin and Holcroft, sitting together, 
 side by side, after the trial of the latter for High Treason. 
 
 There is an interesting biography, William Godwin, his Friends and 
 Contemporaries. By ,C. Kegan Paul (1876, 2 vols. 8vo), of which a 
 review will be found in the Temple Bar Magazine for March in the same 
 year. 
 
0^"E OS^vKE AUTHORS >F tBLEJOECTEjf ADBBESSES' 
 
JAMES SMITH. 
 
 LIV. JAMES SMITH. 
 
 " There sits James Smith," says Fraser, " with his foot pressing a 
 short cushion, his elbows propped by the arm of an easy-chair, his hand 
 resting on a crutch, his hair departed from his head, his nose tinged with 
 the colour of the dawn, and his whole man in a state of that repose which 
 indicates that he has had much work in his way while sojourning in this 
 world, and that, like FalstafF, he is taking his ease in his own inn, the 
 Garrick, a club of gentlemen which in a great measure would answer the 
 description given by that worthy knight of his companions in arms, as 
 being principally composed of ' gentlemen of companies, slaves as ragged 
 as Lazarus, discarded unjust serving-men, younger sons of younger 
 brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers trade-fallen.' " 
 
 It was said by Lady Blessington, that if James Smith had not 
 been a witty man, he would have been a great one. I think this is 
 probable enough, so often does the deep tide of genius run beneath the 
 rippling surface of a joyous and humorsome spirit. There is a strong 
 alliance between the humorous and the pathetic, though the former; 
 element in a man's nature more necessarily and frequently includes the 
 latter, than the latter the former. Witty, facetious people have always & 
 strong capacity for pathos, witness Sterne, Balzac, Hood, Dickens, ancb 
 a host of others ; witness the French, at once the gayest and most 
 melancholy of nations ; witness the Clown, generally the saddest of 
 men, and the Comic actor, as Liston, who invariably believes that his- 
 real forte is Tragedy. On the other hand, the grave and serious writer- 
 does not necessarily possess the element of wit, the faculty of ap- 
 preciating humour, and giving it elegant and appropriate expression.. 
 Yet it is in the union of the two elements that the highest order of genius : 
 consists, wit and wisdom in due alternation ; the exhibition, turn by 
 turn, of the comic side of tragedy and the tragic phrase of comedy. So it 
 was with Homer, Aristophanes and Lucian ; with Ariosto, Rabelais,. 
 Calderon, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Swift and Goethe ; and so it will be 
 Dante, indeed, excepted to the end of time. But this is no place for 
 such a disquisition ; and filling space warns me, as the emptying Clep- 
 sydra did the Roman orator, ne in immensum evager. 
 
 James Smith was the eldest son of Robert Smith, an eminent legal 
 practitioner of London, who held for many years the office of solicitor 
 to the Ordnance. He was born February ioth, 1775 ; was, in due time, 
 articled to his father ; taken into partnership ; and succeeded to the 
 appointment held by the latter. So early as 1802, James Smith and his 
 brother Horace became associated with Cumberland, Croker, Sir J. B. 
 Burgess, Hemes, the notorious " Dr. Syntax " Combe, and others, as 
 contributors to the Pic-Nic newspaper, founded by Colonel Greville. 
 The existence of this was very short, as was also that of The Cabinet, 
 into which it merged, which died in 1803 ; and in 1809, at the request of 
 Cumberland, James Smith became a contributor to the London Review y 
 one feature of which was the principle, that the name of the writer should 
 be appended to every paper. He also wrote some of the prefaces ta 
 Bell's British Theatre, of which Cumberland had the responsibility ; and 
 
2: 8 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 about the same time wrote largely for the Monthly Mirror, then the 
 property of " Paul Pry " Hill, of whose liberal and genial hospitality at 
 Sydenham, the brothers Smith were constant partakers. Here (1807-17), 
 appeared originally the poetical imitations, entitled Horace in London, 
 which were subsequently published by Miller, in a slender volume. 
 
 But it was in 181 2, the year of the re-opening of Drury Lane Theatre, 
 that the little book made its appearance, which, bandied about among the 
 (t trade," offered in vain to the most eminent publishers for nothing, and 
 "rejected " as worthless, proved one of the most successful hits in literature. 
 Its origin was as follows : The Managers of the Theatre were anxious 
 to inaugurate their new building by an opening address which should be 
 worthy of the occasion. They accordingly advertised in the newspapers 
 for such a composition, and received upwards of one hundred poems in 
 answer, many doubtless of sufficient merit, and all, I believe, possessing 
 one feature in common, the use of the Phoenix as a metaphor to 
 symbolize the rise of the new edifice from the ashes of the old one. 
 Among the competitors were Edmund Bellchambers, George Daniel, 
 W. T. Fitzgerald (the " Small Beer Poet ") *, J. Gorton, Joseph Hume, 
 R. P. Jodrell, W. Linley, Miss Mitford, J. Pytchers, Charles Brinsley 
 Sheridan, J. Taylor, C. Vignolles, F. C. Waldron, Miss W. Worgman, 
 and many others. There was one by Dr. Busby, entitled "A Monologue," 
 which Lord Byron has happily parodied ; and one by Whitbread him- 
 self, under whose auspices the reconstruction of the theatre had been 
 effected, in which, as Sheridan said, he had described the inevitable 
 Phoenix, " like a poulterer, green and red and yellow and blue ; he did 
 not let us off a single feather." f The Committee were fairly bewildered 
 by the contemplation of the mass of MSS. before them ; and in their 
 utter inability to sufficiently consider, or satisfactorily judge, the several 
 effusions, they determined, with scant justice, it must be admitted, to the 
 candidates who had expended so much labour and talent in responding 
 to their advertisement to cut the Gordian knot by " rejecting " them all, 
 probably unread. In their dilemma they were relieved by the intervention 
 of Lord Holland, who undertook the task of prevailing upon Lord Byron 
 to supply them with an " Opening Address." This, under some pressure, 
 his lordship at length consented to do, " at the risk," as he justly said, 
 " of offending a hundred scribblers, and a discerning public." He 
 accordingly set to work, managed, as he has stated, with some difficulty, 
 to " keep out the Phcenix," and his " Address," minus some lines 
 u rejected " by the Committee, was spoken at the opening of the theatre on 
 Saturday, October 10th, 1812. Well, this singular concurrence of circum- 
 stances suggested to the brothers Smith that a little collection of 
 imaginary " Addresses," in which the style and manner of certain of the 
 leading poets of the day, should be parodied or caricatured, could not 
 fail to be received with favour. It was essential that the book should be 
 written, printed and published by the day of opening ; and they had a 
 
 * "Poeta nascitur non Fitz," was the witty remark of Canning, when the merits 
 of this poetaster, of " Literary Fund" celebrity, were under discussion. 
 
 f It is worthy of record that the Original Manuscript Addresses, forwarded to the 
 Committee, in accordance with the advertisement of August 8th, 1812, "comprising 
 upwards of ioo Poems, Letters and Interesting Documents, arranged and bound in 
 2 vols. 4to," were offered for the sum of 8 10s., in the catalogue of Messrs. Wills & 
 Sotheran, for August, 1861. 
 
JAMES SMITH. 279 
 
 space of just six weeks for the task. They set to work as well as their 
 avocations permitted them, made their selection of poets to be imitated 
 a matter of some difficulty, and apportioned the task between them. 
 James wrote Nos. 2, 5, 7, 13, 14, 16, 17, and the Travesties Nos. 18, 19 
 and 20. He supplied also the first stanza to No. 4. For the remainder 
 of the volume, his brother Horace, was responsible. Of the 18th edition, 
 James wrot2 the Notes and Horace the Preface. It is worthy, too, of 
 note that Horace actually wrote a genuine "Address "for the occasion, 
 which was duly sent to the Committee, and, as the author candidly says, 
 "shared the fate it merited, in being rejected." This is added, by way 
 of " packing " to the imitations, with the initials " S. T. P.," and succeeded 
 in mystifying the Edinburgh Reviewer, who pronounced (November, 181 2), 
 that it " exhibited no very prominent trait of absurdity." The book was 
 entitled Rejected Addresses j or the New Theatrmn Poetarumj and being 
 completed all in due time "for our opening day," it became necessary 
 to find a publisher. But here the brothers were destined to find that 
 their "Addresses" were in another sense, "Rejected." Murray was 
 offered the copyright for the modest sum of 10, at least Walter Thorn- 
 bury says so in his Haunted London (p. 147), but declined ; and it was 
 finally John Miller, of Bow Street, Covent Garden, upon whom devolved 
 the honour of ushering the witty booklet before the world. To him the 
 authors repaired as a last resort ; and he at once expressed his willingness 
 to take upon himself the risk of publication, and give the authors half the 
 profits, if there should be any. The fame of the witty tome spread like 
 wildfire ; edition after edition was exhausted ; the brothers found their 
 names lifted into sudden notoriety ; the Imitations of Horace were 
 collected and published on the same terms ; and by and by, the gratified 
 authors were enabled to sell their half copyright in the two books to 
 Miller for no less than one thousand pounds ! Seven years later, in 
 1 8 19, after sixteen editions had been sold, Murray himself was glad to 
 get the copyright for ^131. It is curious that this same Miller, who was 
 the only publisher in London who had sagacity enough to see the merit 
 of the Rejected Addresses, also became the publisher of The S ketch- 
 Book of Washington Irving, after it had been rejected, again by the same 
 Murray, for the sole reason that it was "written by an American." The 
 causes of the bibliopole's refusal of the former are given by John Timbs, 
 in his Lives of Wits and Humorists (vol. ii. p. 360) ; and correctly, as 
 is asserted in an article on Washington Irving, in the New Monthly 
 Magazine, February, 1863, probably by Cyrus Redding, who received the 
 information from Murray himself. The best of the thing was that there 
 was no gall in the ink of which the happy parodists made use ; their 
 satire was of such genial character that it " procured for the authors," 
 as they boasted, "the acquaintance, and conciliated the good-will of 
 those whom they had the most audaciously burlesqued." Sir Walter 
 Scott said to one of them that he certainly must have written himself the 
 piece that bears his initials, " though he forgot on what occasion " ; 
 William Spencer, when warned by Lydia White, a notorious feeder of 
 London lions, that he would meet at her table " one of those men who 
 made that shameful attack," replied that this "was the very man upon 
 earth he should like to know " 5 and Lord Byron wrote to Murray from 
 Italy, "Tell him we forgive him, were he twenty times our satirist," 
 adding that the Imitations were "the best things after the Rolliad" 
 
280 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Indeed, the only people offended or discontented were, as Mr. Hay ward 
 says, those who were left out ! 
 
 Few books are better known, even at the present day, than this of 
 which I have been speaking ; and I should not have felt it necessary 
 to say so much about it, if I had not learnt by experience that, in re 
 literarid at least, it is more satisfactory to assume the ignorance than 
 the knowledge of one's readers. The book, indeed, has more than one 
 point of attraction. Collectors prize it for the exquisite woodcut illus- 
 trations by George Cruikshank which are to be found in the later 
 editions ; lovers of wit and humour for the truly attic salt wherewith it 
 is savoured ; while all that know it will readily endorse the opinion of 
 Jeffrey, who says, " I take the Rejected Addresses to be the very best 
 imitations, and often of difficult originals, that ever were made." One 
 effect of the popularity of the book, besides filling the authors' pockets, 
 and giving them fame, was to restrain the elder coadjutor from risking 
 the reputation he had gained as a wit by any literary undertaking, beyond 
 short and anonymous pieces. He was aware that to retain a reputation, 
 a writer, in subsequent productions, was expected by the public not only 
 to transcend others but himself as well. He therefore laid down the 
 principle, and acted upon it, that when a man had played a good game, 
 he should retire from the tables, and leave off a winner. Such a course, 
 he would say, was sanctioned by the authority of Bishop Warburton, 
 who, when Anstey, author of the once equally popular Bath Guide, was 
 presented to him, said, " Young man, I will give you a piece of advice : 
 you have written a highly successful work, never put pen to paper 
 again." The prelate's counsel was doubtless sage, and especially so in 
 the case of him to whom it was offered. But it is certainly not universally 
 applicable, for just as there are pastures, which, after the first crop, yield 
 a rich aftermath, so there are brains which, as Ben Jonson puts it, bear 
 more than one skimming. 
 
 James Smith was, according to Mathews, "the only man that could 
 write clever nonsense ; " and it was he accordingly who was employed to 
 concoct The Country Cousins (1820), the Trip to France, the Trip to 
 America, and other monologues in which that inimitable actor achieved 
 such wonderful success, about 1820. For this assistance he received 
 from the generous comedian a sum of ^1000, "all for nonsense," he was 
 wont to say, contrasting it with the miserable fifteen pounds which Milton 
 got for his Paradise Lost. But this was not the only occasion in which 
 he found nonsense pay; for having transmitted the following epigram to 
 Mr. Strahan, the king's printer, who was suffering from gout and old 
 age, while his mental faculties were unimpaired, the gratified old gentle- 
 man made a codicil to his will, bequeathing to the writer three hundred 
 pounds : 
 
 " Your lower limbs seemed far from stout, 
 
 When last I saw you walk ; 
 The cause I presently found out, 
 
 When you began to talk. 
 The power that props the body's length 
 
 In due proportion spread, 
 In you mounts upwards, and the strength 
 
 All settles in the head." 
 
 This was at the rate of exactly yj 10s. per line, "according to 
 
JAMES SMITH. 281 
 
 Cocker," and is probably better pay than poet has received for his verses, 
 since Sannazarius was awarded four hundred gold pieces by the Venetian 
 Senate, for his celebrated epigram, " De Mirabili Urbe Venetiis." James 
 Smith never married. Another epigram, written in his niece's album, 
 remains to attest his bachelorship : 
 
 "Should I seek Hymen's tie, 
 As a poet I die, 
 
 Ye Benedicts mourn my distresses ! 
 For what little fame 
 Is attach'd to my name, 
 
 Is derived from Rejected Addresses." 
 
 James Smith was not very good-naturedly or justly described (1834) 
 by his contemporary Maginn, as " a pleasant, twaddling, pun-making, 
 epigram-manufacturing, extempore-grinding, and painstaking elderly- 
 joker. He made one hit, and that was a good one ; on the strength 
 of which he has lived ever since, as indeed he deserved to live. We 
 cannot recollect that he wrote anything in the book line except his con- 
 tributions to the Rejected Addresses, unless he had a hand in such stuff as 
 Jokeby, or Horace in London. His magazine papers in the New Monthly 
 were rather monotonous ; and his continually quoting of them for years 
 afterwards has contributed in a great measure towards getting him, so 
 generally as he is, considered to be a bore. But let him have his praise. 
 His single talent was a good talent, and there is no reason why he should 
 wrap it up in a napkin. We have already alluded to the universal 
 diffusion of his name among us English folk, and its trite and ordinary 
 sound in our ears. It is perhaps more congruous on that account with the 
 station which he has chosen to hold in our literature. His place there is 
 of the Smiths, Smithish." The " Doctor" makes, too, an unkindly cut at 
 Smith's Garrick Club jokes, when he says that " if they are not quite as 
 good as those of Falstaff, they have the merit of being at least as old." 
 
 Leigh Hunt, in his Autobiography, describes him as "a fair, stout, 
 fresh-coloured man, with round features, . . . who used to read us trim 
 verses, with rhymes as pat as butter. The best of his verses were in the 
 Rejected Addresses, and they were excellent, Isaac Hawkins Browne, 
 with his Pipe of Tobacco, and all the rhyming Jeux d 'Esprit, in all the 
 Tracts, are extinguished in the comparison, not excepting the Proba- 
 tionary Odes. William Roscoe, of Liverpool, met him in London, at 
 Cadell's, and records that he was " highly entertained by his conviviality, 
 wit and excellent singing." The external features of the par nobile 
 fratrimi are well preserved in the capital fac-simile of the chalk drawing 
 by Harlowe, in the possession of Murray, which serves as frontispiece to 
 the later editions of the Rejected Addresses, to which the admirable wood- 
 cuts after George Cruikshank give'a yet additional value, but still do not 
 pull it up to the commercial value of the slenderer and shabbier, but 
 "very rare," editio princeps of 181 2, which now " rules" at a couple of 
 guineas ! 
 
 A glance at the daily life of this genial and witty man will not be 
 devoid of interest. Writing to a friend, he says : " Let me enlighten 
 you as to the general disposal of my time. I breakfast at nine, with a 
 mind undisturbed by matters of business ; I then write to you or to some 
 editor, and then read till three o'clock. I then walk to the Union Club, 
 read the Journals, hear Lord John Russell deified or diablerized (that 
 
282 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 word is not a bad coinage), do the same with Sir Robert Peel or the 
 Duke of Wellington, and then join a knot of conversationists by the fire 
 till six o'clock, consisting of lawyers, merchants, members of Parliament, 
 and gentlemen at large. We then and there discuss the Three per Cent. 
 Consols (some of us preferring Dutch Two-and-a-half per Cent.), and 
 speculate upon the probable rise, shape, and cost of the New Exchange. 
 If Lady Harrington happen to drive past our window in her landau, we 
 compare her equipage to the Algerine Ambassador's ; and when politics 
 happen to be discussed, rally Whigs, Radicals, and Conservatives alter- 
 nately, but neyer seriously, such subjects having a tendency to create 
 acrimony. At six the room begins to be deserted ; wherefore I adjourn 
 to the dining-room, and gravely looking over the bill of fare, exclaim to 
 the waiter, ' Haunch of mutton and apple tart.' These viands despatched, 
 with the accompanying liquids and water, I mount upward to the library, 
 take a book, and my seat in the arm-chair, and read till nine. Then call 
 for a cup of coffee and a biscuit, resuming my book till eleven ; afterwards 
 return home to bed. If I have any book here which particularly excites 
 my attention, I place my lamp on a table by my bedside, and read in bed 
 until twelve. No danger of ignition, my lamp being quite safe, and my 
 curtains moreen. Thus ends this strange eventful history " (Mems. and 
 Com. Miscellanies, i. 67). 
 
 James Smith thought, with Southey, that a sudden death was the 
 most desirable mode of exit from the world. He wrote : 
 
 " I fear not, Fate, thy pendant shears, 
 There are who pray for length of years ; 
 
 To them, not me, allot 'em ; 
 Life's cup is nectar at the brink, 
 Midway, a palatable drink, 
 
 But wormwood at the bottom." 
 
 His wish was but in part granted. Although, in the midst of 
 temptations to be otherwise, he had always been a strictly temperate 
 man,. he became in middle life a martyr to the gout. By this disease he 
 was at length reduced to utter and helpless decrepitude, though he con- 
 tinued to enjoy life, and bore his sufferings with unruffled temper. S. C. 
 Hall used to meet him at the u evenings " of Lady Blessington, in Sea- 
 more Place, where he was wont to wheel himself about the room in a sort 
 of invalid chair, having " something pleasant and often something witty 
 to say to each of the guests, usually full of pain which was " often showr 
 by that expression of countenance which accompanies physical suffering, 
 and his round good-humoured face, although it was seldom without a 
 smile, generally contracted, and at times convulsed from internal agony." 
 His last illness was short and not attended with pain. He died at his 
 house, No. 27, Craven Street, Strand, " with all the calmness of a 
 philosopher," as his brother Horace remarks, on December 24th, 1839, 
 in the sixty-fifth year of his age. In the following year was published by 
 his brother, Memoirs and Comic Miscellanies, in Prose and Verse, oj 
 James Smith (2 vols. 8vo). "Smith," said Charles Mathews, "is the 
 only man that can write clever nonsense " ; but here we have some clever 
 sense, all alive with what S. C. Hall calls the " champagne sparkle " of 
 the author. It was said by a contemporary that it was " difficult to pass an 
 evening in his company without feeling in better humour with the world * \ 
 and the same may be said of his witty and humorsome writings. 
 
JAMES SMITH. 283 
 
 James Smith was a man of social disposition, and loved to exchange 
 the solitude of his own house for his club, and the cheerful homes of 
 congenial friends. The houses which he most affected were those of 
 Lord Mulgrave, J. W. Croker, Lord Abinger, the Countess of Blessington, 
 Lord Harrington, and Charles Mathews, the elder. It was when dining 
 with this last, and observing that Young, the actor, was among the 
 guests, that he remarked that it was odd that the great satirist of Rome 
 was Juvenal, and of England Young; to which Theodore Hook 
 replied that it was odder still that there was a Young present who was 
 not Juvenile. Smith was of London, Londony, cared nothing for the 
 country, and when visiting, would, as was said, exaggerate his gout to 
 avoid being shown over the u improvements." For the society of painters 
 he did not care. " I know nothing in their way," he said, " and they 
 know nothing out of it." This was before the days of universal diffusion of 
 " love of art," in other words, before it was recognized that money was to 
 be made out of pictures, as objects of investment and speculation. Of an 
 old lady, who, as was said, had separate book-cases for male and female 
 authors, he said he supposed she did not wish to increase her library. 
 
 Horace Smith was a man of a different and a higher nature. 
 Shelley wrote that in him were combined 
 
 -Wit and sense, 
 
 Virtue and human knowledge, all that might 
 Make this dull world a business of delight." 
 
 Lady Morgan described him as "gay, tender, hospitable and intel- 
 lectual" ; and S. C. Hall says that he was "emphatically a good man, 
 of large sympathy and charity, generous in giving even beyond his 
 means, eminent for rectitude in all the affairs and relations of life." 
 He was not contented, like his brother James, to repose on his laurels 
 in inglorious ease ; but, without any financial pressure from without, 
 became a laborious man of letters. His historical novels, Brambletye 
 House, Walter Colyton, Reuben Afisley, The Tor Hill, and some fifteen 
 others have been unmercifully abused, but may be read even now after 
 those of Scott. Criticism in this country, like kissing, " goes by favour " ; 
 and few literary works are judged of according to their abstract qualities. 
 Neglecting to ask to dinner, refusing to lend money, asking for it back 
 when lent, employing a rival publisher, being of obnoxious politics, or 
 holding religious opinions which do not happen to be the reviewer's 
 41 doxy," any one of these peculiarities is sufficient to excite the dull 
 malignity of the Superfine, or the old-world imbecility of the Turncoat; 
 and a critical fiat goes forth which effectually overawes the ninety-nine 
 hundredths of the reading public who are unable to form an opinion of 
 their own. It was said by the Quarterly that the Whitehall, or the Days 
 of George IV., of Dr. Maginn was indited "to write down the Brambletye 
 House species of novel," and its careful perusal was recommended to 
 41 those well-meaning youths who imagine that a few scraps of blundered 
 antiquarianism, a prophetical beldame, a bore and a rebellion, are enough 
 to make a Waverley novel." Be this as it may, let my reader take up 
 Maginn's ponderous joke, wire-drawn to nearly 400 pages, it is really 
 a very dull affair, and the novel supposed to be ridiculed, and decide 
 for himself which is the more readable. But it is quite beyond my 
 province to defend the literary character of Horace Smith, but have 
 
284 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY, 
 
 simply to record that he died at Tunbridge Wells, July 12th, 1849, * n n ^ s 
 seventieth year, and was buried in the cemetery of Trinity Church. 
 
 To the New Monthly Magazine, when under the management of 
 S. C. Hall, Horace Smith had been a frequent contributor. So far back 
 as 1826, a collection of his pieces in prose and verse, many of which had 
 previously appeared in that serial, was published by Colburn, in 3 vols. 
 8vo, under the title of Gaieties arid Gravities; a series of Essays, Comic 
 Tales and Fugitive Vagaries. Now first collected. By one of the 
 Authors of " Rejected Addresses." The volumes are now scarce ; but 
 they contain some capital light reading, and are well worth the trouble 
 of a search. Later in life, he contributed anonymously to the same 
 magazine, through several volumes, a most interesting series of papers 
 entitled " A Greybeard's Gossip about his Literary Acquaintance," which, 
 it is a matter of extreme surprise to me, no one, in this age of reprints, 
 has yet thought it worth his while to republish. In 1831, he compiled 
 for Colburn and Bentley, a readable volume on Festivals, Games and 
 Amusements, Ancient and Modern. Here he has given us a long 
 chapter to show that the ancient Jews had no sports at all, a full 
 account of the "Olympia" of the Greeks, the " Circenses " ot the 
 Romans, the "Bull-fights" of the Spanish, and the "Danse" of the 
 French but has carefully omitted all mention of that truly distinctive 
 pastime of his own nation, " Pugilism," out of which we have suffered 
 ourselves to be laughed by maudlin sentimentalists at home, and 
 foreigners abroad, to whom British pluck and endurance was a reproach, 
 and the " Rules of the Prize Ring " a stumbling-block and an offence. 
 Shortly after his death (1851), was published The Poetical Works, 
 Comic and Miscellaneous, now first collected, of Horace Smith, one of 
 the Authors of " Rejected Addresses" (London, Colburn, 2 vols. 8vo) y 
 with portrait by Finden, after Maskerrier. In these volumes will be 
 found the verses which had previously appeared in Gaieties and Gravities. 
 
 Finally, I just mention, as a curiosity, Quadrilling; a Favourite 
 Song, by the authors of Rejected Addresses, with Grotesque and 
 Humorous Sketches, by W. H. Smith (folio, Birmingham, 1820). 
 "Very scarce." 
 
 LV.~ COMTE D'ORSAY. 
 
 " Self-love," says Spurzheim, " draws the head and whole body upwards 
 and backwards, and keeps them stiff." If this dictum of the renowned 
 phrenologist is true, one would think that the quality under discussion was 
 largely possessed by the original of the portraiture before us, as he delighted 
 the Parks in the "thirties," and "with his whiskers and his cabriolet 
 horse," as poor Whyte Melville had it, " fairly took the town by storm." 
 
 Twelve years or more had elapsed since Byron had made his acquaint- 
 ance, and described him in his letters as a Ciipidon dechdi?ie, and the very 
 ide'alofa. Frenchman before the Revolution, "that is to say," adds Maginn, 
 " as a French gentleman, the breed of whom gradually diminishing fof 
 many years, has been at last pretty well extinguished by Louis Philippe, 
 who certainly did not make any absurd pretensions to figure in that 
 character." This dozen years was termed by Tacitus " inge?is spatium 
 

COMTE D'ORSAY. 285 
 
 humanoz vita? and though they seem to have left the graceful form of the 
 Count unbowed and his ambrosial curls unshorn, they doubtless would be 
 found, on closer examination, to justify the neat epigram which the 
 " Doctor" turns off on the occasion : 
 
 " Believe me, dear Comte, that twelve years do not pass, 
 And leave not some signs as they go ; 
 They may fly with the wings of the hawh, but, alas I 
 They are mark'd by the feet of the crow ! " 
 
 The Count D'Orsay was born in Paris in 1798, and was the son of that 
 General of the same name, of whom the first Napoleon, grateful for his 
 distinguished services in war, was wont to say that he was " aussi brave 
 que beau." He was, moreover, a scion of that ancient family which 
 shares with Voltaire the honour of giving a name to one of the quays that 
 border the Seine. It was in the week after the Coronation of George IV. 
 when the French Ambassador, the Due de Grammont, gave an entertain- 
 ment to the King and the Royal family, that D'Orsay, a relative of the 
 Due, made his first appearance in London. He came in the party of his 
 beautiful sister, and her husband the Due de Guiche, brother-in-law of 
 Viscount Ossulston, son of the Earl of Tankerville. He at once took 
 society captive, and was constituted by general acclaim the king of fashion. 
 Captain Gronow well describes him " whisking along in his tilbury," he 
 was " the last dandy," says Sidney, " who drove a curricle in the Park, 
 and sent the costly, neck-breaking, magnificent carriage out of fashion," 
 looking, adds Gronow, " like some gorgeous dragon-fly, skimming through 
 the air, and though all was dazzling and showy, yet there was a kind of 
 harmony which precluded every idea or accusation of bad taste." 
 
 Mr. S. Sidney, in his admirable Book of the Horse, from which I have 
 quoted, calls him the " Alcibiades of that age," and brings him before us 
 as the first of a remarkable triad of dandies who " caught the eye and dwelt 
 in the memory of every young man from the country who saw them for 
 the first time." The second was his " copy," the Earl of Chesterfield, with 
 his golden locks, bestriding a flea-bitten grey, and raising his hat with a 
 grace which his great ancestor, of epistolary fame, might well have envied. 
 The third was the Earl of Sefton, the Ulysses of the Whig party and the 
 world of fashion, celebrated for his wit, his dinners Ude was his chef 
 and his profuse extravagance as master of the Quorn. We find also in 
 Mr. Sidney's book (p. 290), a woodcut of the Count, curvetting on his 
 sensational park hack, engraved from an oil-sketch by Sir Francis Grant 
 (about 1830), in the collection of Sir Richard Wallace. There are sketches 
 of him also by A. E. Chalon, R.A., from which, says Walter Thornbury, 
 it may be judged that he was " a man six feet high, with a broad chest, 
 narrow waist, and finely formed feet. His chestnut hair fell in long wavy 
 masses, his eyes were hazel, his forehead was high and broad, his 
 features regular ; he was a good swordsman, a fine horseman, and a fair 
 shot."* It was the talk of the day that he was in the habit of taking 
 perfumed baths, and that his gold dressing-case was of such enormous 
 dimensions that it required two men to carry it. 
 
 Nor was it simply as a man of tasteful dress and elegant manners that 
 the Count held sway. His opinions in matters of art were listened to 
 
 * " London Parks," Belgravia, January, 1868. 
 
286 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 with profound respect, even by such a man as the unfortunate painter, 
 B. R. Haydon, certainly one not prone to be influenced by the advice of 
 others. " He was much improved," recorded the artist, who had received 
 a visit from him, " and looked the glass of fashion and the mould of form, 
 really a complete Adonis, not made up at all ; he made some capital 
 remarks, all of which must be attended to ; they were sound, impressive 
 and grand ; he bounded into his cab, and drove off like a young Apollo 
 with a fiery Pegasus." * 
 
 Mrs. Mathews records that her husband " loved Count d'Orsay as 
 much as he admired him. His amiable disposition, and extraordinary 
 conversational talent made him always happy in his society, while his wit 
 delighted him the more because it was untinged with bitterness. It was 
 my husband's observation that he could enjoy Count d'Orsay's bons mots 
 without any qualifying regret, for his witticisms possessed the rare charm 
 of pungency united to good nature, while his pleasing accent (which, as 
 he understands our language perfectly, is all that proclaims him a native 
 of another country) added effect to his words." t 
 
 Finally, for I must not occupy further space in the citation of con- 
 temporary opinion, Charles Dickens writes : " At No. 5 (Kensington 
 Gore) lived Count D'Orsay, whose name is synonymous with elegant and 
 graceful accomplishments ; and who, by those who knew him well, is 
 affectionately remembered and regretted, as a man whose great abilities 
 might have raised him to any distinction, and whose gentle heart even a 
 world of fashion left unspoiled." % 
 
 The Sunday-school lad who did not remember the name of a certain 
 letter, thought to mitigate the wrath of his examiner by stating that he 
 " knowed it by sight." This is all that I can boast of Count d'Orsay ; 
 and doubtless it is on account of this that I have heart to say that if I 
 professed to wield the virgula of the moralist, which I do not, a 
 review of his career, in its more ethical aspects, could hardly fail to bring 
 it into active operation. To marry a school-girl for the sake of her 
 property, and abandon her almost at the church-door ; to carry on for 
 years an intimacy, which appeared at least disgraceful, with her step- 
 mother ; to acquire notoriety for other bonnes fortunes ; to waste talents 
 in dilletanteism while his debts were running up to some ; 120,000, 
 constitute elements in a life which are hardly calculated to ensure the 
 respect or tolerance of those who are no longer influenced by the charm 
 of language, the blandishment of manner, the graces of person, and the 
 seduction of genius. But this is a vein in which I am not desirous to 
 continue. 
 
 As Grantley Berkeley remarks, " D'Orsay was anything but a mere 
 fop, nor was he a mere adventurer. He was a gallant gentleman of 
 refined taste and aristocratic birth." But on these points I have already 
 sufficiently spoken. It was in 1823, that Lord Byron made his acquaint- 
 ance at Genoa, where he was acting as travelling companion to " Milor 
 Blessington and eftouse? Byron was greatly struck with the figure and 
 manners of the young Frenchman, who allowed him an opportunity of 
 perusing that marvellous MS. journal of which we have heard so much. 
 Byron styled it a " very extraordinary production," and proclaimed that 
 
 * Memoirs of B. R. Haydon, vol. iii. p. 86. 
 
 f Memoirs of Charles Mathews (the elder), vol. i. p. 237. 
 
 % Household Words, No. 176, p. 536. 
 
COMTE D'ORSAY. 287 
 
 the youthful traveller, surely the prototype of "Count Smorltork" in 
 Pickwick, who thought a fortnight " a ver long time " to bestow on the 
 study of a country like England, had penetrated " the mystery of English 
 emiui," at two and twenty, and done sundry other very wonderful things. 
 I am inclined to fancy that the secret of Byron's admiration was to be 
 found in the depreciatory tone of this mysterious "journal." This har- 
 monized with his own absurd and morbid dislike of everything English ; 
 and together with a certain affectation of philosophy, and flippant grace 
 of expression, natural to the French, sufficed to render it, in his judgment, 
 a production of marvellous perspicuity and acuteness. " Our business 
 with him is'as an author," properly said Fraser, who asked, " Where is the 
 ' Journal/ the extraordinary production, which gave a ' most melancholy, 
 but true description of all that regards high life in England ' ? " Echo 
 answers, "Where?" for its juvenilian if not Juvenalian writer did not 
 respond to Fraser's flattering proposition to become " un de nos collabora- 
 teurs," and communicate the "Journal," and its continuation, to the 
 columns of Regina. As for Byron, he continued to manifest his regard 
 for his young friend ; wrote him a friendly epistle ; alluded to him in 
 laudatory language in his letters to Lady Blessington ; and enclosed to his 
 fair correspondent a ring for " Alfred," which he wished him to keep as 
 "formed of lava, and so far adapted to the fire of his years and character." 
 In 1827, D'Orsay was married at Genoa, to Lady Harriet Anne 
 Gardiner, the only daughter of Lord Blessington, by his first wife. This 
 marriage was in fulfilment of a contract, made in 1823, when the lady 
 was only twelve years of age, and on the death of her brother, Lord 
 Mountjoy, son and heir of the Earl of Blessington, between the latter 
 and the Count, to the effect that the Earl should execute a will, settling 
 his estates in Dublin on Alfred, Count D'Orsay, provided that he married 
 Emily, known as Lady Harriet Gardiner, the testator's daughter by Mrs. 
 Browne. In 1829, the infatuated Earl made a sudden exit from the 
 world, in which he had kept up the game in such glorious fashion, that 
 he had left his splendid estates burdened with mortgages, debts, annuities 
 and judgments, to the extent of seme ^200,000 Then came the removal 
 of Lady Blessington to London, the separation of the Countess D'Orsay,* 
 a modern Iphigenia, from her gallant husband ; and the installation of 
 the latter at Gore House, Kensington, formerly the tranquil home of 
 Wilberforce, with his career of sportsman, dandy, wit, artist and 
 general arbiter elega?iiiarum of London society. Here it was that he 
 developed those " admirable " graces of mind and person which enabled 
 him to pose to Ain b, worth for the portraiture of that earlier Crichton of 
 the sixteenth century, the hero of his best novel. Look at this " tailor's 
 Adonis," the "fiashy man about town," as we have him before us in 
 Maclise's admirable sketch, and exclaim with the Athenaum, " what a 
 volume of humour there is in the slight exaggeration of his swagger ! " 
 Mark well this "sublime Avatar of the eighteen-thirties," in the words 
 of D. G. Rosetti, " a portrait no doubt as intensely true to impression, 
 as impossible in fact." As we here have him in the Park, so was he 
 constantly to be seen in the splendid Gore House reunioits of which 
 
 * This lady like Julia Alpinula of old, "infelicis matris infelix proles, " possessed 
 considerable talents. She was a frequent contributor to the earlier volumes of Ains- 
 worth's Magazine, where inter alia (vol. i. p. 251), will be found some pathetic lines- 
 " To my Mother's Picture." 
 
sS8 THE MACL1SE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 I have already spoken, where he vas a constant attendant, delighting 
 the motley crowd by high spirits, charming presence, humorous banter, 
 witty talk, and a rare talent for " trotting out," that vulgarest of all 
 amusements, an eccentric habitue or chance visitor. Among those who 
 held him in the highest esteem was the witty James Smith, of Rejected 
 Addresses celebrity, who was wont to adduce him as a specimen of a 
 perfect gentleman, and pronounced that, in the delightful union of gaiety 
 and good sense he was absolutely unequalled. An admirable record of 
 these bygone festivities is preserved in the series of profile sketches, one 
 hundred and twenty-five, I think, in number, executed by the facile 
 pencil of D'Orsay, and published by Mitchell, of Bond Street. These 
 display powers which, with due cultivation, might have led to important 
 results ; but, as they are, remain specimens of amateur talent, and are 
 sometimes feeble. In sculpture, also, D'Orsay was qualified to excel. 
 His statuettes take that of her Majesty on horseback as an example 
 are often graceful, and display originality of conception ; they are, more- 
 over, invariably refined, and somehow are invested with a lofty and 
 aristocratic character, which was perchance wanting in the original. It 
 should not be forgotten, too, that besides his general amiability, D'Orsay 
 was liberal with his purse. A countryman in distress rarely preferred his 
 claims in vain, and he was one of the most liberal supporters of the 
 Societe de Bienfaisa?ice. 
 
 Presently came the long-expected crash at Gore House, as I have 
 elsewhere related, and the Count and the Lady fled to Paris to escape 
 incarceration. In 1849, Lady Blessington was carried off by apoplexy, 
 and D'Orsay was left to work out his destiny alone. Afflicted to agony 
 by the loss of his friend, D'Orsay undertook the preparation of a fitting 
 monument for her whom he had loved well, if not wisely. In the village 
 of Chambourcy, beyond the woodland precincts of St. Germain-en-Laye, 
 where the rustic cemetery joins the domains of the family of De Gram- 
 mont, is to be seen a monumental pyramid. The sepulchral chamber 
 contains two massive sarcophagi, surmounted by tablets of white marble. 
 In that on the left were deposited the remains of Marguerite, Countess 
 of Blessington ; while that on the right has now received those of Alfred, 
 Count D'Orsay. It was currently reported that the Count never recovered 
 the shock of Lady Blessington's death, and that his previously healthy 
 frame became at once the subject of a complication of disorders, under 
 which he sank. The fact, however, is that he survived the death of his 
 old companion nearly four years, and died of an internal and far less 
 sentimental disease than a broken heart. This was not, at first, con- 
 sidered dangerous ; more latterly he was ordered by his physician to 
 Dieppe, but here his health further declined. He returned to Paris, 
 where all hope of his recovery was speedily abandoned, as it appeared 
 that disease of the lungs had been added to the original malady. He 
 died in that city, at the house of his sister, the Duchesse de Grammont, 
 August 4th, 1852, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. 
 
 The funeral took place on the 7th of August, and was attended by 
 the Emperor of the French, Alexandre Dumas Jits, Emile de Girardin 
 (the journalist), Count de la Tour du Pin, M. Bixio, Clesinger (the 
 sculptor), Count de Montauban, and others. The Due de Grammont, 
 his brother-in-law, was confined to a sick-bed, but the Duchesse, his 
 sister, who had nursed her brother in his illness, was present at the sad 
 
COMTE D'ORSAY. 289 
 
 scene. Many Englishmen, who had known the Count in his palmy days, 
 were also in attendance ; among whom was to be observed an old man, 
 one of the last relics of the Brummellian school of dandies. This was 
 the celebrated Hughes Ball, commonly called, from his great wealth, the 
 " Golden Ball," who, after trying in vain to make a noble alliance,* had 
 created a nine days' wonder in the " circles of fashion " some thirty years 
 before, by marrying MercandottL, the Andalusian Venus, the most 
 charming of all the daughters of Terpsichore, reported, in the scandal 
 of the day, to be a natural daughter of the Right Honourable the Earl 
 of Fife. The "Golden Ball" lived for a time at his residence, the 
 11 Oatlands," till after losing a mint of money at the gaming table, and 
 squandering three-fourths of his enormous fortune, he withdrew to Paris, 
 where he ended his days, but a few years ago, in comparative obscurity. 
 I have a charming volume before me, The Prism of Imaginatio?i 
 (London, Longmans, 1844, 8vo), with illustrations to the tales by Henry 
 Warren, and borders (to every page) and titles in colours and gold, by 
 the late Owen Jones, architect, which is dedicated " To E. H. Ball 
 Hughes, Esq., by his much-attached and affectionate sister, (the 
 Baroness) E. C. De Calabrella." I crave indulgence for this brief 
 excursus. 
 
 A good deal has been said of the ingratitude of the ex-Emperor of the 
 French, as shown in his reception of Count D'Orsay and Lady Blessing- 
 ton. When an exile in London, and in narrow circumstances, he had 
 been a frequent visitor at Gore House, and was always received with 
 friendship and hospitality. That he should return this, when the revolu- 
 tion of Time's teetotum had placed him on a throne, and brought his 
 former entertainers as ruined exiles to the capital where he held sway, 
 was only to be supposed. But the expectations of the latter were 
 probably extravagant, and the position of the former was one of some 
 difficulty and embarrassment. But it must be remembered that D'Orsay 
 was at once received by the President, and became one of his chief and 
 most' valued advisers. He was greatly opposed to the policy of the 
 latter, and on the occurrence of the coup d'etat of December 2nd, 185 1, 
 which he pronounced " the greatest political swindle that had ever been 
 played on a nation," he exerted himself almost beyond the limits of 
 prudence to soften the stroke of proscription. All this threw difficulties 
 in the way, which were probably not lessened by the conduct of Lady 
 Blessington, whose well-known mot, " Et vous ? " when asked, on a casual 
 rencontre, by the head of the Republic how long she purposed to remain 
 in France, may probably be taken as a type of similar impertinences. 
 However this may be, those who put their trust in " Princes" know,on 
 high authority, what they have to expect ; though this we hardly think 
 is illustrated in the present case, where the President, as soon as the 
 urgent necessity of D'Orsay was represented to him, at once attached 
 
 * Thus commemorated in a verse of the day : 
 
 " Now, by my faith, it gives me pain 
 
 To see thee, cruel Lady J 
 
 Regret the golden Ball. 
 'Tis useless now : ' the fox and grapes ' 
 Remember, and avoid the apes, 
 Which wait an old maid's fall." 
 
 The English Spy, i. 194. 
 
2 9 o THE MACLISE F0RTRA1T-GALLERY. 
 
 him to his person by the title and functions of Superintendent of the 
 Fine Arts, and exclaimed, when informed of his death, that he had "lost 
 his best friend." 
 
 I have now only to refer those " whom it may concern " to a curious 
 and now scarce volume, entitled D^Horsayj or, the Follies of the Day. 
 By a Man of Fashion (London : Strange, 1844, 8vo), with admirable 
 etchings by George Standfast, and a general uplifting of the curtain upon 
 the faults and foibles of the man and the day, by one who had evidently 
 been behind the scenes. I have seen it attributed I do not know with 
 truth, to the late John Mills, and believe that a copy has sold as high 
 as 6. The personages introduced figure under flimsy disguises, and 
 the reader will hardly need a " key " to indicate the originals of the Earl 
 of Chesterlane, Mr. Pelham, General Reel, Lord George Bedtick, Mr. 
 George Bobbins ("the Prince of Auctioneers "), the Marquis of River- 
 ford, Lord Huntingcastle, Mister Slonghman, Joe Banks (the "Stunner"), 
 the Earl of Byworden, the Countess of Rivington, the Earl of Raspberry- 
 Hill, "the circumcised driver of the cabriolet" (Benjamin D'Israeli), and 
 the Marquis of Hereford, "the greatest debauchee the world has ever 
 seen, a man without one redeeming quality in the multitude of his glaring 
 damnable vices," the fearful scene of whose closing life is depicted in a 
 chapter (the XlVth), which is sometimes wanting in the volume. 
 
 LVL CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 " Oh, thou whom old Homer would call, were he living, 
 Home-lover, thought-feeder, abundant-joke-giving ; 
 Whose charity springs from deep knowledge, nor swerves 
 
 ' Into mere self-reflections, or scornful reserves ; 
 In short, who wert made for two centuries ago,* 
 When Shakespeare knew men, and to write was to know." f 
 
 The etching before us, which looks woundily as if the head, at least, 
 had been taken from the full-length, " scratched on copper from life, in 
 1825, by his friend, Brook Pulham," gives the outward form of that 
 delightful being, to whom the fine lines above were indited by one of 
 nis oldest and best-loved friends, of a writer who has excited a warmer 
 personal feeling, and been more frequently brought before us by 
 "biographies," "reminiscences," "letters" and "essays," than any other 
 man since the days of Johnson. Dear Charles Lamb ! Who is not 
 familiar with thy outward form? those gaiter-clad legs, which Hood 
 
 * " Charles Lamb was a living anachronism a seventeenth century man, mislaid 
 and brought to life, two hundred years too late. Never did author less belong to what 
 was, nominally, his own time ; he could neither sympathize with it, nor comprehend 
 it ; his quaintness of style and antiqrarianism of taste were no affectation. He belonged 
 to the school of his contemporaries ; but they were contemporaries that never met him 
 in the streets, but were mostly to be found in Poet's Corner, or under gravestones of 
 the long ago. He was happy in this, however, that though shut out from his day and 
 generation, his day and generation understood and appreciated him, for, with the 
 exception of Goldsmith, no man of letters has ever been more sincerely loved, or 
 tenderly regretted." Notes and Queries, September 22nd, 1866. 
 
 f Leigh Hunt. 
 
ft*" t^Uvr-^t u~,e^ 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF ^BLIA 1 . 
 
CHARLES LAMB. 291 
 
 called " immaterial " ; that noble head, which Leigh Hunt said was 
 " worthy of Aristotle, with as fine a heart as ever beat in human bosom, 
 and limbs very fragile to sustain it " ; that " slim, middle-aged man, in 
 quaint uncontemporary habiliments," as Mr. Westwood, a neighbour, 
 described him ; those mobile and sensitive features, whence beamed 
 forth, as he himself said of the glorious singer, Braham, " a compound 
 of the Jew, the Gentleman and the Angel." What is there yet unknown 
 about Charles Lamb ? Talfourd has given us his Life a?id Letters, and 
 then, when the British Quarterly had opened the cupboard-door, in 
 his Final Memorials, disclosed the skeleton within, in all its ghastly 
 hideousness, and gave the world that life's lesson of affection, devotion 
 and self-sacrifice. De Quincey then came with his reminiscences ; 
 " Barry Cornwall " with his loving record ; Percy Fitzgerald, who tells 
 of "his homes, his haunts and his books"; the Halls, with their ever 
 pleasant and genial " Memories " ; Barron Field, with his short but 
 excellent memoir in the Annual Biography and Obituary, 1836 ; Percy 
 Fitzgerald's Life, Letters and Writings (6 vols., 1876, 8vo) ; Mr. Alfred 
 Ainger's essay, English Men of Letters (1882, 8vo) ; not to forget 
 Carlyle's " unhappy tattle " ; together with a host of articles in Reviews 
 and Magazines, Mr. Procter in the Athenceum, Mr. Forster in the New 
 Monthly, Mr. Patmore in the Court Magazine, Mr. Moxon in Leigh 
 Hunt's Londo?i Journal, and the Rev. J. Fuller Russell in Notes and 
 Queries (April 1st, 1882). 
 
 quo fit ut omnis 
 
 Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella, 
 Vita senis." 
 
 What, then, can be said that has not been said before? what dish 
 concocted that shall not prove a crambe repetita ? 
 
 A word more about the outward man, let me finish with the shell 
 before I attempt to penetrate to the kernel. 
 
 One of his best pen-portraits is that given by Mrs. Mathews, in the 
 Life and Correspondence of her husband, the celebrated monologuist 
 (i860, p. 245). "Mr. Lamb's first appearance," the lady writes, "was 
 not prepossessing. His figure was small and mean ; and no man 
 certainly was ever less beholden to his tailor. His 'bran' new suit of 
 black cloth (in which he affected several times during the day to take 
 great pride, and to cherish as a novelty that he had looked for and 
 wanted), was drolly contrasted with his very rusty silk stockings, shown 
 from his knees, and his much too large thick shoes without polish. His 
 shirt rejoiced in a wide ill-plaited frill, and his very small tight, white 
 neck-cloth was hemmed to a fine point at the ends that formed part of a 
 little bow. His hair was black and sleek, but not formal, and his face 
 the gravest I ever saw, but indicating great intellect, and resembling very 
 much the portraits of King Charles I." " His was no common face," said 
 Thomas Hood ; " none of those willow-pattern ones which Nature turns 
 out by thousands at her potteries ; but more like a chance specimen of 
 the Chinese ware, one to the set, unique, antique, quaint. You might 
 have sworn to it piecemeal, a separate affidavit to each feature." 
 
 Lamb hated " facts," * and proclaimed himself " a matter-of-lie man " 
 
 * "All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'facts.'" 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes {Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, p. 2). 
 
292 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 to some egotistical bore who was boasting, we may suppose, of his 
 contempt for the imaginative. He elsewhere confesses that he is " ill at 
 dates " ; but I hope not to offend his peaceful shade by adducing a few 
 both facts and dates, from a little autobiographical sketch, in his own 
 handwriting, once in the manuscript collection of the late William Upcott, 
 for whom it was written. It is as follows : 
 
 " Charles Lamb, born in the Inner Temple, ioth February, 1775 ; 
 educated at Christ's Hospital ; afterwards a clerk in the Accountants v 
 Office, East India House ; pensioned off from that service, 1825, after 
 thirty-three years' service ; is now a gentleman-at-large ; can remember 
 but few specialities in his life worth noting, except that he once caught a 
 swallow flying {teste sua manu) ; below the middle stature ; cast of face 
 slightly Jewish, with no Judaic tinge in his complexional religion ; 
 stammers abominably, and is therefore more apt to discharge his- 
 occasional conversation in a quaint aphorism, or a poor quibble, than 
 in set and edifying speeches ; has consequently been libelled as a person 
 always aiming at wit, which, as he told a dull fellow that charged him 
 with it, is at least as good as aiming at dullness. A small eater, but not 
 drinker ; confesses a partiality for the production of the juniper berry \ 
 was a fierce smoker of tobacco, but may be resembled to a volcano burnt 
 out, emitting only now and then a casual puff. Has been guilty of 
 obtruding upon the public a tale in prose, called Rosamund Gray j a 
 dramatic sketch, called John Woodvilj a Farewell Ode to Tobacco ; with, 
 sundry other poems, and light prose matter, collected in two slight crown 
 octavos, and pompously christened his works, though in fact they were 
 his recreations, and his true works may be found on the shelves of 
 Leadenhall Street, filling some hundred folios. He is also the true Elia, 
 whose essays are extant in a little volume, published a year or two since, 
 and rather better known from that name without a meaning, than from 
 anything he has done, or can hope to do, in his own. He also was the 
 first to draw public attention to the old English Dramatists, in a work 
 called Specimens of English Dra?naiic Writers, who lived about the time 
 of Shakespeare, published about fifteen years since. In short, all his 
 merits and demerits to set forth, would take to the end of Mr. Upcott's 
 book, and then not be told truly." 
 
 Was he, by the way, of Hebrew extraction ? Maginn expresses his 
 belief that his family was Jewish, and that his real name was " Lomb." 
 But this could hardly be the case. Read his fine paper on " Im- 
 perfect Sympathies," where he classes Jews with Scotchmen, Negroes 
 and Quakers. He was, he said, " a bundle of prejudices, made up of 
 likings and dislikings, the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, 
 antipathies." He had not the nerve, he said, to enter a Jewish synagogue, 
 he did not care to be in habits of familiar intercourse with any of that 
 nation, and he confessed that he did not " relish the approximation of 
 Jew and Christian which had become so fashionable." He thought of 
 his favourite, Braham, that he would have been " more in keeping if he 
 had abided by the faith of his forefathers," and saw " the Hebrew spirit 
 strong in him in spite of his proselytism ! " No, Charles Lamb was not r 
 consciously at least, of Jewish origin, he did not belong to that wonder- 
 ful, hardly used, and greatly misunderstood people, except, indeed, in 
 60 far as we may all form part of the missing Tribes. 
 
 We get a good glimpse of him from the description of " Barry Corn- 
 
CHARLES LAMB. 293 
 
 wall," who, referring to the year 181 7, writes : " Persons who had been 
 in the habit of traversing Covent Garden at that time might, by ex- 
 tending their walk a few yards into Russell Street, have noticed a small, 
 spare man, clothed in black, who went out every morning, and returned 
 every afternoon as the hands of the clock moved towards certain hours. 
 You could not mistake him. He was somewhat stiff in his manner, and 
 almost clerical in dress ; which indicated much wear. He had a long, 
 melancholy face, with keen, penetrating eyes ; and he walked with a 
 short, resolute step city-wards. He looked no one in the face for more 
 than a moment, yet contrived to see everything as he went on. No one 
 who ever studied the human features could pass him by without recollecting 
 his countenance : it was full of sensibility, and it came upon you like 
 new thought, which you could not help dwelling upon afterwards ; it 
 gave rise to meditation, and did you good. This small, half-clerical man, 
 was Charles Lamb." 
 
 Was he, by the way, quite as regular in his hours as Maginn and 
 Procter assert? There is a tale of an interview with his "Directors," 
 and a gentle reprimand for his late arrival at the desk, with Lamb's 
 stuttered reply, " But if I do come late, gentlemen, you should take into 
 consideration how soon I go away ! " But here, probably, we may say 
 of him what he said of Coleridge, when Leigh Hunt was complaining of 
 his religious fervour : " N-n-never mind what he says, he's full of 
 f-f-fun." Any way, the alleged rejoinder is full of ovine humour, and has 
 so much of the bovine in it that it might well find a place among the 
 stories in Miss Edgeworth's bucolic essay on Irish Bulls. 
 
 As an Essayist, Lamb was already known to a small circle by his 
 anagazine contributions ; but it was not till these were issued in a 
 collected form, in 181 8, that their merits became generally appreciated, 
 and they then took the world by surprise. This might well be the case, 
 for the Essays of Elia are productions perfectly sui generis, unique in 
 literature. They are unlike those of Montaigne, Addison, Cowley or 
 Goldsmith, and yet possess points of resemblance to each. Many of 
 them are worked up from letters written to his friends ; are eminently 
 "non-sequaceous," as Coleridge would say, exhibit very little con- 
 structive power, and are of extremely narrow grasp. But they have 
 compensating merits peculiar to themselves, and these of the highest 
 order. If critical, they have a marvellous faculty of at once hitting the 
 central point, as it were, of their subject with unerring accuracy ; and 
 shedding a light upon the meaning which it never received before. Take, 
 for instance, the essays on " Shakespeare," and the " Dramatic Writers," 
 where more is said in fewer words than is to be found in any other 
 commentator, and positions laid down, not one of which has ever been 
 gainsaid. The same may be predicated of the Essay on Hogarth, which 
 must henceforth be a constant accompaniment of every edition of that 
 unequalled humorist, such a necessary help is if to the direction and 
 methodisation of our own feelings and judgment upon the subject. Mr. 
 Swinburne, in the hyper-eulogistic style of one all of whose geese are 
 swans, says of Lamb that he was " the most supremely competent judge, 
 and exquisite critic of lyrical and dramatic art that we have ever had." * 
 Without going quite to this length, one may safely say that he manifested 
 
 * William Blake : a Critical Essay, by Algernon Charles Swinburne (London, 
 1868, 8vo, p. 8). 
 
294 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 a most subtle and penetrative insight into the recondite beauties of the 
 narrow range of the authors in whom he especially delighted, and that, 
 with rare discrimination, he has, in his admirable Sftecime7is, and his 
 Garrick Plays (subsequently contributed to the Table Book of his friend 
 Hone), garnered up for us many a precious gem from the dramatic dust- 
 heap of time. As Coleridge said of him, " he now and then irradiates ; 
 and the beam, though single, and fine as a hair, is yet rich with 
 colours, and I both see and feel it." What need be said of his more 
 discursive essays, " unlicked, incondite things, villanously pranked in 
 an affected array of antique words and phrases," as he himself called them 
 tricksome and joyous in guise, intense in pathos, delicious in paradox ? 
 Wilful, errant, playful disquisitions they are, where the humorist takes 
 his stand upon some punctum indifferens, a tertium quid, midway 
 between fact and fiction, truth and falsity, and makes no search for any 
 eternal principles to which he may refer discrepant thought and feeling. 
 Hence he who reads to "improve his mind" will hold them of little 
 value ; though, strangely enough, they have come now to be classed among 
 the very books which their author so hated, those " which no gentle- 
 man's library can be without." Truth, he held, was precious ; not to be 
 wasted on anybody. " Here comes a fool," said he, " let us be grave ; 9 
 and wanted to examine phrenologically the head of the man who asked 
 him if he did not think Milton was a clever fellow. It was Lamb, I believe, 
 pray excuse the interpolation as an obiter dictum, who exclaimed to 
 the grimy fisted whist-player, " My dear sir, if dirt were trumps, what 
 hands you would hold ! " 
 
 Of these essays, it is remarked by "A. K. H. B.," that "they would 
 have wanted a great part of their indefinable charm, if their writer had 
 not been trembling on the verge of insanity." This is probably true. 
 We all know the story of the awful calamity which fell upon the house of 
 Charles Lamb, and the shadow which it threw over his life : the murder 
 of his mother by his insane sister,* the recurring insanity of the latter,, 
 and the periodical visits of the brother and sister, strait-waistcoat in 
 hand, to the asylum at Hoxton. We know that Charles himself was 
 once deprived of his reason, and placed, for a time, under control ; and 
 that the preservation of his recovered intellect was, as we would fondly 
 believe, the reward of his life of self-abnegation and fraternal devotion. 
 In some minds, moreover, the partition between wit and madness is very 
 
 * A writer in the Graphic (February 27th, 1875) says : "With the curious incon- 
 sistency of that age, which sent scores of men and women to the gibbet for what we 
 deem trivial offences, no judicial inquiry into the matter took place. Nowadays, the 
 perpetrator of such a deed would have been tried for murder, and would, if found not 
 guilty* on the ground of insanity, have been shut up for life." Here, however, the 
 writer is in some little error. An inquest was held the next day, at which the jury, 
 without hesitation, brought in a verdict of Lunacy. The unfortunate and irresponsible 
 matricide was confined in a mad house, where, although she speedily recovered her 
 reason, she remained, till the death of the father, a year or two after, seemed to justify 
 the brother in obtaining her release, which he did, on entering upon a solemn engage- 
 ment to take her under his care for life. The affair seems to have been suppressed with 
 some care. In the account of the inquest, in the Annual Register, for 1796, no name 
 is mentioned but that of Dr. Pitcairn ; the simple statement being that " the Coroner's 
 jury sat on the body of an old lady, in the neighbourhood of Holborn " ; but, strangely 
 enough, in the " Index," to that work, compiled so long after as 1826, may be found 
 the item: "Murder of Mrs. Lamb by her insane daughter." See also the Times, 
 September 26th, 1796. 
 
CHARLES LAMB. 295 
 
 slender. Genius, it has been remarked, is, like the pearl in the oyster, a 
 disease of the animal by which it is produced ; but Lamb himself, who 
 wrote a paper on the Sanity of True Genius, would have denied the 
 analogy and contested the point. It was in 1795, that the sad occurrence 
 to which I have alluded took place, and he, too, like his sister, was con- 
 fined in Hoxton. Writing in the following year to Coleridge, he said : 
 " The six weeks that finished last year, and began this, your humble 
 servant passed very agreeably in a madhouse. I am somewhat rational 
 now, and don't bite any one ; but mad I was." 
 
 As a Poet, Charles Lamb is once again original. He has produced 
 but little, it is true ; but that little is perfect in its own way, and ensures 
 for its author a niche all to himself in the temple of Parnassus. What 
 more pathetic than his lines on his mother, first printed in the Fi?ial 
 Memorials (p. 77) ; his " Old Familiar Faces " ; " The Three Friends " ; 
 and " The Sabbath Bells " ? Then there is the fierce energy of the 
 "Farewell to Tobacco," and "The Gipsy's Malison," with its almost 
 demoniacal force of expression. These are all pieces of perfect finish, 
 and are marked by a wondrously refined artifice of rhyme, rhythm, phrase, 
 and condensation of thought. One little bit of Lamb's poetry, by the 
 way, has escaped the industry of the editor of Eliana, the song of 
 Thekla, in the " Piccolomini " of Coleridge (act ii., scene vii.), which that 
 poet gives, as having been contributed by the author of Rosamund Gray, 
 and appearing to him " to have caught the happiest manner of the old 
 poets." Another piece, too, may be mentioned, and this, as I hold it, one 
 of the happiest and most characteristic pieces that Lamb ever wrote. I 
 allude to the little poem, " scarcely worth recollecting," says Talfourd, 
 alluded to by Lamb in a letter to Moxon, October 24th, 1831, when 
 hinting at a certain sum accruing to him for " Devil's money." The title 
 of this is Satan in Search of a Wife, with the whole Process of his Court- 
 ship and Marriage, and who Daticed at the Weddmgj by an Eye-witness 
 (Moxon, 1 83 1, i2mo, pp. 36). This little book has somehow become 
 exceedingly rare. I never saw but my own copy, which was first pointed 
 out to me by the brother of the publisher ; and the editor of Eliana, 
 who consoles himself, fox and grape fashion, with the supposition that 
 it was probably "the poorest thing the author ever printed" was not 
 able to recover one, and had to content himself with a few stanzas, which 
 chanced to be quoted in an old number of the AthencEU?n. (Appendix E.) 
 The literary associations of Charles Lamb with his friends Southey, 
 Coleridge, and Lloyd, naturally involved him in the charge of political, 
 religious, and even moral heresy, which, with somewhat greater show of 
 justice, had been brought against them. Thus, in the first number of The 
 Anti-Jacobin Magazine and Review, was an etching by Gillray, in which 
 Coleridge and Southey are represented with asses' heads ; and Lloyd and 
 Lamb as " Toad" and " Frog." In the number for July, these associated 
 poets were introduced as paying homage to Lepaux, a French charlatan 
 of the day : 
 
 'And ye five other wandering bards, that move 
 In sweet accord of harmony and love ; 
 
 C dge and S th y, L d, and L b and Co., 
 
 Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux." 
 
 Even Byron, later on, caught up the cry, and wrote in English Bards 
 and Scotch Reviewers : 
 
2^5 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 "Yet, let them not to vulgar Wordsworth stoop, 
 The meanest object of the lowly group, 
 Whose verse, of all but childish prattle void, 
 Seems blessed harmony to Lambe and Lloyd." 
 
 This Charles Lloyd was the son of a well-known banker at Birmingham, 
 belonging to the Society of Friends. He became a student at the 
 University of Cambridge, and was introduced by Coleridge to Lamb, 
 who conceived a great friendship for him. He was an easy writer of 
 verse, and manifested considerable analytical power in his London, and 
 later pieces. He was author of a novel, entitled Edmund Oliver, long 
 consigned to Ogygian limbo, of which the earlier career of Coleridge, 
 and his military adventure, form the chief points of interest. 
 
 Touching Lamb's poetry, another curious bibliographical fact may be 
 recorded. In 1809, at " Godwin's Juvenile Library," appeared two small 
 volumes, entitled Poetry for Children. By Charles and Mary Lamb. 
 The entire edition was speedily sold off, and the work became absolutely 
 lost. In 1877, however, a copy was discovered in South Australia, in the 
 possession of the Hon. Mr. Sandover, of Adelaide. The poems are 
 eighty-four in number ; and of these only twenty-nine were previously 
 known. The circumstance altogether may be regarded as one of the 
 most extraordinary in literature.* 
 
 Willingly would I linger with Charles Lamb in his haunts ; the little 
 pot-house, the " Salutation and Cat," near Smithfield, in whose sanded 
 parlour he and Coleridge, full of bright hopes and glorious schemes, drank 
 " egg-hot," and puffed " Oronoko," long after the chimes at midnight, 
 while the Platonist built up his Pantisocracy in lofty talk ; or his various 
 homes, especially that high, dark chamber, " No. 4, Inner Temple Lane," 
 where, surrounded by old books and black-framed Hogarths, he and his 
 sister regaled "with cold roast lamb or boiled beef, heaps of smoking 
 roasted potatoes, and the vast jug of porter, often replenished by Becky, 
 from the best tap in Fleet Street," such guests as Hazlitt, Rickman, Cary, 
 Allan Cunningham, "Christopher North," Coleridge, Godwin, f Words- 
 worth, " Barry Cornwall," Hood, Kenney, George Dyer, Talfourd, Charles 
 Lloyd, Leigh Hunt,J Liston (the actor), Miss Kelly, Basil Montague, 
 
 * A full account of the "discovery" of these volumes, and an analysis of their 
 contents, will be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1877. 
 
 f Godwin, on his first interview with Lamb, asked him if he was "Toad," or 
 " Frog," alluding to Gillray's offensive caricature. 
 
 X See Leigh Hunt's charming Poetical Epistle to Charles Lamb. 
 
 Of all these loving friends of Charles Lamb, and frequenters of his simple home, 
 " eheu fugaces, Posthume, labunter annif" one only now remains upon earth to 
 cherish, in venerated age, the memory of the feast of reason and flow of soul of long 
 past years. This is Frances Maria Kelly, " the most unprofessional of actresses 
 and unspoiled of women," now in the ninety-third year of her age. It was in December, 
 1799, that she made her first appearance on the boards of Drury Lane, in the operatic 
 spectacle Bluebeard, by her uncle, Michael Kelly, whose entertaining Reminiscences, as 
 edited by Theodore Hook (London, 1826, 2 vols. 8vo), are before the public. It is 
 worthy of note that, on the very same evening, the great Edmund Kean, then a mere 
 lad, the senior of Miss Kelly by three years only, first braved a London audience. It 
 is, of course, not within my province, to trace, however cursorily, the dramatic career 
 of this eminent actress, who, in her day, was the worthy associate of Sarah Siddons, 
 John Kemble, Liston, Farren, Edmund Kean, Munden, Dorothy Jordan, and Mac- 
 ready ; but she claims a record here as one of the most intimate and beloved friends 
 of Lamb, the subject of one (and as I suspect another) of his Sonnets, and the 
 " Barbara S." of the Essays of Elia. It is pleasing to learn that in November, 1852, 
 not all too soon, it may be thought, this venerable and respected actress, became the 
 
CHARLES LAMB. 297 
 
 Charles Kemble, Barnes of the Times, B. R. Haydon (the unfortunate 
 painter), Thelwall (the orator), Jem White, Ma ining, and " the gentlemanly 
 murderer," Thomas Griffiths Wainwright,* and others. Here was to be 
 found neither the lurid splendour of Kensington Gore, nor the courtly 
 learning and politics of Holland House ; but furniture, that you were 
 not afraid to spoil, a welcome, hearty and homely, talk, "farsed with 
 pleasaunce," and books which were not to be referred to without a 
 grace before and after, whose ragged coats the owner would piously kiss, 
 and which, like those wherewith Pliny lined his Laurentian villa (Ep. ii. 
 17), were " non legendi, sed lectitandi." 
 
 According to Cowper, " man made the town," and man is naturally 
 fond of his own creation. Dr. Johnson said, " Sir, the man that is tired 
 of London is tired of existence." Dr. Moseley complained of " the 
 maddening noise of nothing which haunted you in the country." The 
 Duke of Queensbury when told that London was "empty," replied with 
 truth, " Yes, but it's fuller than the country ! * And Jekyll, or some one 
 else, it doesn't matter who, on being left an estate on the condition that 
 he resided upon it, had the approach to the house paved like the streets 
 of London, and hired a cab to drive up and down it all day. So, Lamb 
 also was a dear lover of the town, with its never ceasing suggestiveness 
 and haunting memories. We cannot conceive existence possible for him 
 elsewhere. " I would live in London," said he, " shirtless, bookless. 
 I love the sweet security of streets, and would set up my tabernacle 
 there." We can well believe what he states of himself, " My household 
 gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not to be rooted up without blood, 
 a new state of things staggers me." Nevertheless, in 1822 he managed 
 to get as far as Paris. There was a certain family which he refused to 
 visit, because, as he said, " he could not take Mary, and there seemed a 
 kind of dishonesty in any pleasure he took without her." The much- 
 loved sister therefore accompanied the brother on his trip ; neither of the 
 pair speaking a single word of the language. He thought Paris "a 
 glorious, picturesque old city," to which London looked "mean and 
 new." But he somewhat consoled himself with the reflection that the 
 former had no St. Paul's, or Westminster Abbey. With the Quaker sect, 
 with its supposed simplicity and artlessness, he confessed to " imperfect 
 sympathy," and strove to account for it. " I am all over sophisticated," 
 he said, " with humours, fancies craving hourly sympathy. I must have 
 books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a 
 thousand whimwhams, which their simpler tastes could do without ; I 
 should starve at their simple banquet." With what a puzzled expression, 
 
 recipient, through the Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone, of a grant from the Crown of 
 150 per annum. 
 
 Leaving this note as it stands, just one month later on, I record.with regret that 
 the "grim archer," who had made sundry futile vicarious attempts upon the life of the 
 actress ; once in 1816, when, as she was performing the part of " Nanny " in Modern 
 Antiques, at Drury Lane Theatre, a despairing admirer discharged a pistol at her j 
 again subsequently, in Dublin, when a similar attempt was made upon her by another 
 victim to her charms ; and a third time, when she narrowly escaped shipwreck, as she was 
 crossing to Ireland ; at length thought it time to take more direct aim, and brought 
 to a close her career of nearly a century. She was born December 15th, 1790, and 
 died December 9th, 1882 ; and was consequently in her ninety-third year. 
 
 * The "Janus Weathercock" of the London Magazine; the prototype of 
 " Varney," in Bulwer's Lucretia ; and the subject of Dickens's curious, and now scarce 
 little monograph. 
 
298 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 as of one who strives to decipher a hieroglyph, would he read that stanza 
 of Shelley 
 
 ' ' Hell is a city much like London 
 
 A populous and a smoky city ; 
 There are all sorts of people undone, 
 And there is little, or no fun done, 
 
 Small justice shown, and still less pity." * 
 
 One who knew him less well (a right good scholar, too), the late 
 Walter Savage Landor, has left some fine lines to commemorate his 
 solitary interview : 
 
 " Once, and once only have I seen thy face, 
 Elia ! Once only has thy tripping tongue 
 Run o'er my heart, yet never has been left 
 Impression on it stronger or more sweet. 
 Cordial old man ! What youth was in thy years, 
 What wisdom in thy levity, what soul 
 In every utterance of thy purest breast ! 
 Of all that ever wore man's form, 'tis thee 
 I first would spring to at the gate of heaven ! " 
 
 and goes on to say, " The world will never see again two such delightful 
 volumes as the Essays of Elia; no man living is capable of writing the 
 worst twenty pages of them. The Continent has Zadig, and Gil Bias; 
 we have Elia, and Sir Roger de CoverleyP 
 
 In looking over my edition of the poetical works of Lamb (London, 
 1840), I fail to find the fine Latin verses which he wrote on the exhibition 
 of his friend Haydon's grand picture of " Christ's Entry into Jerusalem." 
 It was in 1820 that this artist, who terminated his unfortunate and im- 
 prudent career by suicide, June 22nd, 1846, completed, and exhibited, 
 but failed to sell, in Bond Street, the picture referred to ; and the lines 
 of which I speak were communicated to the Champion f of May 7th, 
 1820. They have possibly not escaped the industry of later editors ; but 
 possessors of the earlier editions of the poems may perhaps now see 
 them for the first time, and thank me for exhibiting their author in the 
 new character of Latin epigrammatist. They are as follows : 
 
 "In Tabulam eximii pictoris, B. R. Haydoni, in qua Solymcei, advenientc 
 Domino, palmas in via prosternentes, mird arte depinguntur. 
 
 " Quid vult iste equitans? et quid velit ista virorum 
 Palmifera ingens turba, et vox tremebunda Hosanna ! 
 Hosanna Christo semper semperque canamus. 
 
 " Palma fuit Senior pictor celeberrimus olim ; 
 Sed palmau cedat, modo si foret ille superstes, 
 Palma, Haydone, tibi : tu palmas omnibus aufers. 
 
 " Palma negata macrum, donataque reddit opimum, 
 Si simul incipiat cum fama increscere corpus, 
 Tu cit6 pinguesces, fies et, amicule, obesus. 
 
 " Affectant lauros pictores atque poe'tae, 
 Sin laurum invideant (sed quis tibi ?) laurigerentes, 
 Pro lauro palma viridanti tempora cingas. 
 
 " Carlagnulus." 
 
 * Peter Bell the Third, part iii. 
 
 t Then under the management of his friend, John Scott, a critic of distinguishci 
 ability, who subsequently became the editor of the London Magazine, and fell in a 
 duel. 
 
CHARLES LAMB. 299- 
 
 Translation. 
 "What rider's that? and who those myriads bringing 
 Him on his way with palms, Hosannas singing? 
 Hosanna to the Christ, Heav'n Earth should still be ringing. 
 
 "In days of old, old Palma won renown : 
 
 But Palma's self must yield the painter's crown, 
 
 Haydon, to thee. Thy palms put every other down. 
 " If Flaccus' sentence with the truth agree, 
 
 That " Palms awarded make men plump to be," 
 
 Friend Horace, Haydon soon in bulk shall match with thee. 
 
 " Painters with poets for the laurel vie : 
 But should the laureate band thy claims deny, 
 Wear thou thy own green palm, Haydon, triumphantly. 
 
 "C. L." 
 
 The love between Lamb and Coleridge was a touching and beautiful' 
 thing. " The gentle creature," said the latter of his old friend, " who 
 looked upon the degraded men and things around him like moonshine 
 on a dunghill, which shines and takes no pollution." Coleridge died in 
 1834; and the event was a shock to Lamb which he never rightly 
 overgot. To lose his sister was a calamity to the possibility of which 
 he could not look forward. " I wish that I could throw into a heap," 
 said he, " a sort of hotch-pot, the remainder of our several existences, 
 and so share them in equal divisions." But this fond desire was not to- 
 be realized. In 1833, cough and cramp had attacked him ; "We sleep 
 three in a bed," he wrote. In this year he moved to his last abode, 
 Church Street, Edmonton ; and here he continued to enjoy, as he might, 
 the otiosa tzternitas of these later years, until, as Mr. Procter expresses 
 it, "this lapsed into the great deep beyond," on December 27th, 1834. 
 The sister, whom he had loved so purely, and for whom he had sacrificed 
 so much, survived her brother thirteen years, her calamity hiding from 
 her the magnitude of her loss, and her comforts watched over by their 
 remaining friends. Landor has left some charming stanzas 
 
 " TO THE SISTER OF ELIA. 
 
 "Comfort thee, O thou mourner, yet awhile ! 
 Again shall Elia's smile 
 Refresh thy heart, where heart can ache no more. 
 What is it we deplore ? 
 
 " He leaves behind him, freed from griefs and years, 
 Far worthier things than tears, 
 The love of friends, without a single foe : 
 Unequalled lot below ! 
 
 " His gentle soul, his genius, these are thine : 
 For these dost thou repine? 
 He may have left the lowly walks of men ; 
 Left them he has ; what then? 
 
 "Are not his footsteps followed by the eyes 
 Of all the good and wise ? 
 Tho' the warm day is over, yet they seek 
 Upon the lofty peak 
 
 " Of his pure mind the roseate light that glews 
 O'er deaths perennial snows, 
 Behold him ! from the region of the blest 
 He speaks, he bids thee rest " 
 
300 THE MACL1SE PORTRAIT- GALLERY. 
 
 In the parish burial-ground of Edmonton there is a turfed grave, on 
 the head and foot-stone of which are inscriptions which record the birth 
 and death-dates of the loving pair, who slumber beneath in " dual loneli- 
 ness." Wordsworth wrote some exquisite lines for the epitaph of his 
 friend, but these do not appear. A writer in Notes and Queries (Septem- 
 ber 22nd, 1866), communicates the actual inscription, saying, perhaps 
 somewhat too severely : " How the above doggrel, as ungrammatical as 
 nonsensical, came to be substituted ... is a question I am unable to 
 determine. As it is, the grave, etc., bespeak neither good taste nor charity 
 on the part of his executors." This is surely not as it should be. 
 
 There are spots on the sun, and they say that the character of Charles 
 Lamb was not altogether free from infirmity. Walter Thornbury tells 
 that he " sotted over his nightly grog " ; * Talfourd himself seeks not to 
 deny that the excellencies of his friend, moral and intellectual, "were 
 blended with a single frailty " ; Kenealy speaks of " the only stigma " on 
 liis memory ; and we know that "The Confessions of a Drunkard," and 
 " The Farewell to Tobacco," he staggered Parr, even, with his ten pipes 
 a night, were the tear-blurred records of a self-accusing spirit. Be it so. 
 Summi enim sunt homines tantum is an axiom as full of truth now as in 
 the days of Quintilian, and needs no further illustration. Indeed, we 
 love Lamb the better for the revelation ; the better, that, not seeking to 
 conceal his follies, as men love to do, so as to " present no mark to the 
 foeman," or to palliate, or shuffle with, them, he admitted them in a 
 touching and manly spirit : and frankly appealed for compassion to 
 those, who yet standing, have to take heed lest they themselves fall. 
 But enough ; this is a subject on which I would fain have been silent, and 
 should have said nothing, had not all been told already. Apelles painted 
 Antigonus in profile that the loss of one of his eyes might not be visible ; t 
 and Fuller speaks of such a " handsome folding up of discourse," that 
 " virtues are shown outside, and vices wrapped up in silence." Thus 
 would I treat the memory of dear Charles Lamb, and all the sons of 
 genius, inheritors in common of the frailties of lesser mortals. Farewell, 
 then, to thee for a time, thou gentle spirit, in thy own words 
 
 " Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, 
 We have not met a whiter soul than thine ! " % 
 
 LVII. PIERRE-JEAN DE BERANGER. 
 
 ""How like him," ejaculates Maginn, "in attitude, mien, figure, look! 
 He is depicted just as he is. There he sits in the apartment of the 
 prison to which the absurd policy of the Ministers of the restored 
 Bourbons consigned him, while they overlooked the real traitors who 
 were undermining their throne ; and he is shown in his usual simple, 
 
 * See " Barry Cornwall's" eloquent defence of his friend from the charge {Charles 
 Lamb : a Memoir, 1st ed. 1866, pp. 122, 123). 
 
 f ' ' Habet in pictura speciem tota facies : Apelles tamen imaginem Antigoni latere 
 tantum altero ostendit, ut amissi oculi deformitas lateret." Quintil, Inst. Orator. , 
 Lib. ii. Cap. xiii. 
 
 % "Epistle to Martin Charles Burney, Esq.," prefixed to Rosamund Gray. 
 
7/-J tVu/ to ^^ J^ /-taSt^y fa 
 
 ^v 
 
 AUTHOK OF JLiES SOUViEFJIIRS IMT PjETTPI.E'! 
 
 
PIERRE-JEAN DE BER ANGER. 30* 
 
 unostentatious garb, divested equally of the ostentation of extreme plain- 
 ness as of dandyism. He looks to be what he is a man." 
 
 "Under the simple name of Chansonnier? wrote a great French 
 author, " a man has arisen, who is one of the greatest poets that France 
 has produced. With genius which assumes the manner of La Fontaine 
 and Flaccus, he has sung, where he has chosen, as Tacitus has written." * 
 The poet thus alluded to is P. J. De Beranger, the great national 
 song-writer of France, that most perfect master of the modern lyre, 
 who, in these latter days, in the bright city of the Seine, has invested tha 
 simple chanson with a dignity and grace unsurpassed by Horace, in his 
 finest ode, on the banks of the Tiber, two thousand years ago. 
 
 This illustrious man, whose father was a poor improvident tailor of 
 the Rue Montorgueil, Paris, negligent of his family, and lost in vain 
 dreams of an illustrious ancestry, was born in that city, August 17th,. 
 1780. At the age of nine or ten he became tavern-boy to his aunt, who 
 kept a small cabaret in the suburbs of PeYonne. Here the lad's vanity 
 was hurt by having to wait on the guests, and his feeble constitutioa 
 unfitted him for the labours of the stable ; so he cast about for some 
 more suitable employment. He tried the workshop of a jeweller, but 
 did not learn much ; and next found a place as clerk to a notary. By 
 and by he succeeded in getting occupation in the printing-office of the 
 well-known Laisnez, who had just established himself at Pe'ronne. Here: 
 it was, while setting up the type for an edition of the works of Andre 
 Chenier, one of the most original of the poets of France, and author of 
 that exquisite elegiac, La jeune Captive, written within the walls of the 
 Conciergerie, and inspired by one of his fellow-prisoners, Mdlle. de 
 Coigny, that the youthful compositor conceived the idea of becoming 
 a poet himself. He remained in the printing-office two years only, and 
 accompanied his father to Paris. Here he spent three years in the 
 endeavour to find employment, writing songs, pawning his watch, and 
 wearing out his clothes. At last, pushed a bout by his necessities, he 
 determined to solicit the protection of Lucien Buonaparte, brother to the 
 First Consul, who had the reputation of being the patron of men of 
 letters. To him he accordingly wrote, enclosing two dithyrambic poems 
 (Le Re'tablissement du Culie, and Le Deluge) for his approbation. From 
 this illustrious and kind-hearted man, who became afterwards Prince de 
 Canino, and is known as the author of an epic poem, Charlemagne; oik 
 UEglise Delivree, not without merit, our young bard received a speedy 
 answer, inviting him to an interview. At this he was treated with a 
 liberality and benevolence which he never forgot, and was assured by 
 the Prince that he would assume the responsibility of watching over his 
 destiny. Lucien himself had to quit Paris shortly, and proceeded to 
 Rome. But he did not forget his promise, and sent to his protege, from, 
 that city, a. procuration, authorizing him to receive, and apply to his own 
 uses, the honorarium to which he was entitled as a member of the 
 Institute. Of this, arrears for three years were due, which were paid at 
 once. Beranger handed over the greater part of the sum to his father, 
 and was enabled thenceforth to provide pretty well for his own wants with* 
 the annual thousand francs which the traitement of an Academician was 
 worth to him. The protection of his patron, although in exile, was 
 useful to him in other ways. At the age of twenty-five, he managed tc 
 * Etudes Historiques, par Chateaubriand (" Preface"). 
 
3 02 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 get employment in the bureaux of the painter, C. P. Landon, for whom 
 he prepared and arranged the text of his magnificent work, Les Annates 
 du Musie (1805-6). For this he got eighteen hundred francs a year, 
 and was enabled to assist his grandmother and sister. He made an 
 attempt to write for the stage, but in after days considered himself 
 fortunate that he never even obtained the honour of a reading. In 1807, 
 he lost his situation with Landon ; and inspired by gratitude, attempted 
 to find a publisher for a volume of pastorals, which he had dedicated to 
 Prince Lucien, who was living forgotten at Rome. Here the dedicace 
 caused the condemnation of the book at first sight, and it was not till 
 twenty-five years later, in 1833, tnat ne was a ble by some lines of prose, 
 to express publicly, in a suitable manner, his gratitude to the illustrious 
 proscrit whom he had then only seen twice since 18 15. On the forma- 
 tion of the Imperial University, Be'ranger obtained, through Arnault, a 
 place in one of the bureaux. This gave him leisure to study the best 
 authors, and perfect his manner. Boileau had written, in his Art 
 Poetique, " II faut, meme en chansons, du bon sens et de l'art," and 
 Be'ranger thought that this humble and hasty species of composition was 
 susceptible of an elevation and perfection of style of which it had not 
 hitherto been thought worthy. He wrote and re-wrote. " Nothing," 
 says he, " so enlightens as the flame of a manuscript which is committed 
 to the fire. In that case I ought to see very clearly. I have known 
 authors who never destroyed any of the verses that they composed. I 
 have not preserved more than a quarter of mine ; and I am conscious 
 to-day that I have kept too many of them." * 
 
 From the year 1813 he dates his reputation, and this chiefly from the 
 circulation in MS. of such songs as the " Se'nateur," " Le petit Homme 
 gris," " Les Gueux," and, above all, by " Le Roi d'Yvetot." There existed 
 at this period a society of chansonniers and litterateurs, called the Caveau, 
 in commemoration of the cellar rendered illustrious by the reunions of 
 Piron, Colld, Panard, Gallet, and the Crdbillons, fiere et fits. Originally 
 founded in 1755, it had subsequently admitted Duclos, La Bruyere, 
 Bernard, Moncrif, Boucher (the painter), Helve'tius, and Rameau (the 
 musician). The younger Cre'billon visited England, and on his return 
 introduced Garrick, Sterne and- Wilkes. The revolution of 1789 dis- 
 persed the convives, who, in 1793, after the reign of terror had passed 
 away, founded the Diners de Vaudeville.^ The Caveau was presently 
 resuscitated; and in 181 5, when presided over by Desaugiers, Be'ranger, 
 introduced by Arnault, was induced, somewhat reluctantly, to become 
 a member. In this year he published his first volume of songs {Chansons 
 Morales et Autres,ftarP.J. Be'ranger, Convive du Caveau i7iodernej avec 
 Gravures et Musique, 181 5, 8vo, chez Eymery). His connection with 
 the society of the Caveau, thus commemorated, did not last long. The 
 " Hundred Days" occurred ; and a diversity of opinion among the body 
 caused the secession of Be'ranger. This early volume contains many 
 songs which, though contributing to gain for their author a popular 
 reputation, are marked by the cynical license of a former day, and would 
 have been removed by him from later editions, had they not become the 
 property of the booksellers and the public. Beranger was now the song- 
 
 * Memoirs of Be'ranger, writte?i by Ht7nself. London, 1858, 8vo, p. 124. 
 f For a list of the members of this, its duration, and other details of the resumption 
 of the Caveau, see Paris Chantant (Paris, 8vo, 1845, p. 99). 
 
PIERRE-JEAN DE BERANGER. 303 
 
 writer of the Opposition. During the " Hundred Days," the place of censeur 
 of a newspaper, worth some 6ooof. per annum, had been pressingly 
 offered to him ; but he proved the sincerity and disinterestedness of his 
 convictions by refusing the appointment, although he was literally in 
 want of necessaries at the time, having regularly handed over to the 
 father of Madame Lucien Bonaparte, who was in distress, the sum which, 
 till 1 8 14, when the Prince was struck out of the Academy by a royal 
 ordonnance, he was legally entitled to receive. But his poverty sat 
 lightly on the honest bard, and was no embarrassment to him in the 
 company of the wealthy friends which his character and talents had now 
 procured him. It cost him no effort, as he tells us, to say " I am poor" ; 
 and he regards the phrase as "almost equal to a fortune." But the 
 courage of the poet was put to another test. Louis XVIII. was fond 
 of songs, and had said, "we must pardon many things in the author 
 of the 'Roi d'Yvetot'"; so Be'ranger had retained his modest appoint- 
 ment, in spite of his verses. But he received a warning from the 
 Instruction Publique that further publication would be considered a 
 resignation of his place. Nothing daunted, he accepted the alternative, 
 and in 1821 succeeded in inducing Firmin Didot to publish by sub- 
 scription a collection of songs, both old and new, in two duodecimo 
 volumes. Of this edition, the publication of which was facilitated by the 
 support of the great bankers Lafitte and Be'rard, 10,500 copies were 
 printed. In good time it filled the pockets of the author, and earned him 
 the title of "poet," which was first given to him by the Edinburgh Review j 
 but it cost him his place ; and a prosecution, which, in spite of the 
 eloquent defence of Dupin Paine', resulted in a detention of three months 
 in Sainte-Pdlagie, and a fine of five hundred francs. But the former 
 part of the sentence had small terrors for one who could say with 
 Richard Lovelace 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 
 Nor iron bars a cage ; 
 Minds innocent and quiet take 
 
 That for a hermitage ; " 
 
 and occupying the chamber which had just been left by P. L. Courier, 
 he found this a paradise compared with the tireless garret which had 
 been his dwelling. In 1825 he entrusted to Ladvocat the publication 
 of a third volume, which, with certain retrenchments insisted on by the 
 authorities, was allowed to pass. In 1827, his friend Manuel died, and 
 left an annuity of iooof. to. the poet, who renounced the legacy because 
 he thought the testator had not duly considered the burdens he left 
 behind him. In 1828 he published a fourth volume of songs ; and 
 feeling certain of a prosecution, hurried off to Havre, to enjoy a few days 
 at the seaside, before his liberty should be infringed. On this occasion 
 he was ably defended by Barthe, but was sentenced to nine months at 
 La Force, and a fine of io,ooof. This sum was collected and paid by 
 his admirers, and the prisoner received in his cell the visits of Victor 
 Hugo,* Sainte-Beuve, Alexandre Dumas, and the most eminent men of 
 
 * It is fifty years since this renowned writer, still happily amongst us an octo- 
 genarian, followed up, by his play Le Roi S' Amuse, that revolt against the laws of 
 classical unity, enunciated by Aristotle and observed by Racine, which he had in- 
 augurated in his Cromwell, Ernani, and Marion de Lorme. Fierce had been the 
 outcry from the old-school critics, and ardent the enthusiasm of the new party, who 
 saw a renaissance for the fettered drama of their country. The opposing cliques might 
 
304 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 the day. Meantime, the poet kept up, from behind the walls of his 
 dungeon, so deadly a fire against the Government, that he contributed 
 more effectually to promote its downfall than the more material weapons of 
 the heroes of the " Three Days." When the revolution of July had taken 
 place, it was proposed to make him an annual allowance of 6ooof. by 
 way of indemnification ; but here again he refused, for, said he, " there 
 are other victims whose necessities are far more pressing than mine." 
 Beranger was now growing old ; honourable proposals were renewed 
 to him by the Government, but he rejected them, from an honest abhor- 
 rence of sinecures. Chateaubriand sought his acquaintance, and this 
 seemed a recompense beyond anything that money could bestow. In 
 1833 he offered the last volume of what he called his " Memoires 
 Chantants " to the public, and tried hard , as he says, to fall into oblivion. 
 He quitted Paris, and courted retreat and silence at Passy, Fontainebleau, 
 and Tours. At the revolution of February he was elected member of the 
 Constituent Assembly, but soon gave in his resignation, and retired once 
 more to Passy. In this village he continued to live, till illness forced 
 him to return to the capital for medical advice. He took up his abode 
 in the Rue Vendome, and became an object of solicitude and interest 
 to the rank and intellect . of the city. " La lampe qui s'e'teint ne souffre 
 pas," says Chateaubriand ; and the last days of Bdranger were a gradual 
 declension, unaccompanied by mental disturbance or physical pain. 
 " Jamais souverain," says Louise Colet, the " chere muse " of so many 
 of his letters, "n'a e*te entoure", aux approches de la mort, des soins. 
 empresses, de la sympathie tendre, et des hommages douloureux qui ont 
 rempli les trois dernieres semaines de cette honnete et noble vieillesse." 
 A vast crowd of all classes of society came daily to make inquiries, and 
 inscribe their names in the registers deposited for that purpose upon 
 tables placed in the courtyard of his modest hotel. His death-bed was, 
 solaced by the presence of his best-loved friends. There was Perrotin, 
 his fits d adoption j Antier, the companion of his youth ; Lebrun, a 
 member of the Academy, whose love and veneration for the dying poet 
 was boundless. There also, to seat themselves around the fauteuil where 
 their friend was easier than in his bed, came daily Arnould, Mignet r 
 Thiers, Victor Cousin, Prosper Me'rimee, Legouvd, Boulay-Paty, Champ- 
 fleury, Lanfrey and many others ; besides several friends of that gentler 
 sex which is ever to be found " last at the cross, and first at the tomb.' 5 
 At .length the end came ; and on July 16th, 1857, in his seventy-sixth year r 
 this great poet breathed his last. His funeral took place twenty-four 
 hours after death, by order of Government ; and it is not too much to. 
 say that the entire population of Paris, of wont so self-absorbed, so 
 busy, so preoccupied, but now of one heart and one thought, in spirit 
 or in person, assisted at the obsequies. 
 
 have fought out their battle, and the Acadimie, who could not induce Charles X. to> 
 interpose, undergone gradual conversion ; but, in the new play, the dramatist a 
 pensioned Royalist, exhibited so strong an anti-monarchical feeling, that the King 
 trembled in his shoes, and Le Roi S 'Amuse, which appeared at the Theatre Francais, 
 on January, 1832, was next day formally interdicted by Government. Half a century 
 has passed away, and carried off Kings and Emperors from the scene. Le Roi S'AmusL 
 once more sees the light, its half centenary and second performance take place on 
 the same day, and the illustrious author, his head whitened by eighty winters, and. 
 back from years of exile, sits side by side with a Republican President, to witness, 
 the jubilee representation of his long proscribed play ! 
 
PIERRE-JEAN DE BERANGER. 305 
 
 I have sufficiently indicated the character of Be'ranger. He was an 
 honest, independent man, indebted to no one, and seeking no advance- 
 ment but that which resulted from his own energy and talents. It was 
 his simple pride to live on the fruit of his own labours ; and when 
 extraneous assistance came, he always saw some one in greater stress 
 than himself to receive its benefits. He promoted the success of the 
 popular party, but refused to share in the rewards which it had to bestow. 
 He owed no honours or emoluments to Government ; he was not even a 
 member of the Legion of Honour. The honours of the Academy he 
 might probably have had by mere application ; but this he constantly 
 refused to make. An unsolicited election was hinted at by his friend 
 Lebrun ; but the modest 'poet deprecated the idea, believing that the 
 peculiarities of his character and habits were incompatible with the 
 usages of the body, that he was a " poor ignorant fellow," unworthy 
 of the honour, and preferring to die, as he had lived, a simple writer 
 of songs. At a subsequent period, he reiterated his refusal, when pressed 
 by Mignet, the historian of the French Revolution, to accept the fanteuil 
 made vacant by the death of Casimir Delavigne. Later in his life, it 
 was reserved for the Empress of the French to solicit in the most grace- 
 ful and delicate manner the honour and privilege of soothing the 
 poet's declining years ; but here, too, the simple chansonnier gratefully re- 
 fused, alleging that the annuity which he received from Perrotin, the 
 possessor of the copyright of his songs, was amply sufficient for his 
 humble wants. 
 
 The poetry of Be'ranger needs no criticism. Benjamin Constant 
 spoke of him as one " qui fait des odes sublimes en ne croyant faire que 
 des chansons " ; while another elegant critic, M. Jouy, has alluded to 
 him in language which I willingly adopt as the exponent of my own ideas : 
 " Un poete doue* de la grace et de la finesse d'Horace, d'un esprit a 
 la fois philosophique et satirique, d'une ame vive et tendre, d'un caractere 
 qui sympathise avec toutes les gloires, avec tous les maux de son pays, 
 s'assied, la lyre en main, sur le tombeau des braves, et fait re'pe'ter a la 
 France en deuil les plaintes harmonieuses qu'il exhale dans les chants 
 sans rivaux et sans modeles. J'ai nomme Be'ranger. Poete national, il 
 a cx6 parmi nous ce genre de chansons, et s'est fait une gloire a part 
 dans toutes les autres. Par un talent, ou plutot par un charme qu'il a 
 seul posse'de', il a su rassembler dans ses poemes lyriques de la plus 
 petite proportion la grace antique et la saillie moderne, la poe'sie philo- 
 sophique et le trait de l'e'pigramrne, la gaiete" la plus vive, et la sensibility 
 la plus profonde ; en un mot, tout ce que l'art a de plus raffine', et tout ce 
 que la nature a de plus aimable." * We have two criticisms on Be'ranger 
 from the pen of Ste. Beuve, one in 1835, i n the Portraits Contemporai?is^ 
 and the other in 1856. The critic considers him as one of the greatest, 
 hut not the greatest, of the poets of our age ; and places him in the 
 second group with Burns, Horace, and La Fontaine. I am here re- 
 minded of a paper in the Cornhill Magazine^ of February, 1868, entitled 
 " The Three Lyrists, Horace, Burns and Beranger." 
 
 I have spoken of the aristocratic pretensions of the grandfather and 
 
 father of our poet. To these the latter was indebted for the feudal 
 
 particle which appears before his name, and which was conferred upon 
 
 him in the register of his birth. At this he was the first himself to laugh : 
 
 * Essai sur la Poisie ItgZre. 
 
 X 
 
3o6 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 " H6 quoi ! j'apprends que Ton critique 
 
 Le de qui precede mon nom ! 
 Etes-vous de noblesse antique? 
 
 Moi, noble? Oh! vraiment, messieurs, non, 
 Non, d'aucune chevalerie 
 
 Je n'ai le brevet sur velin. 
 Je ne sais qu'aimer ma patrie 
 
 Je suis vilain, et tres-vilain." 
 
 When Lamartine was dining with Rogers, the latter asked him what 
 sort of man Bdranger was, and what he was about just then. "Je ne 
 le connais pas," replied the French poet ; " Je vous plains," retorted the 
 English one. 
 
 I have several editions of the Chansons of Beranger, including one 
 published ten years after his death, but I do not find in any of these 
 an octave of verses which he wrote on Delille, which forms the epigraph 
 to a " Notice " of that facile versificator, prefixed to an edition of his 
 works published by Gosselin : 
 
 ' Notre siecle, penseur brutal, 
 
 Contre Delille s'eVertue ; 
 Tel vecut sur un pedestal, 
 
 Qui n'aura jamais de statue I 
 Artiste, poete, savant, 
 
 A la gloire en vain on s'attache ; 
 C'est un linceul que bien souvent 
 
 La postente" nous arrache . . ." 
 
 In one of the happiest songs of Thomas Love Peacock, in the 
 opinion of Thackeray, among the best of their age, the one entitled 
 " Three Times Three," in Headlong Hall, contains the lines 
 
 " He never made a brow look dark, 
 
 Nor caused a tear but when he died," 
 
 embodying, as Mr. Sheehan has pointed out, an exquisitely pathetic 
 sentiment in the " Roi d'Yvetot " of Bdranger, the song which gave him 
 his first fame : 
 
 " Ce n'est que lorsqu'il expira, 
 
 Que le peuple qui l'enterra, 
 
 Pleura ; " 
 
 but I do not wish to imply that Mr. Peacock, at that early day, had 
 ever read the French song, which had not long been published. 
 
 " The portrait of Beranger, the great song-writer of the French," says 
 a well-informed writer in All the Year Round, "is absolutely perfect. 
 The good old Pagan, for Pagan he was as much as Anacreon or Socrates, 
 is represented to the life, as he sat in the prison to which he was 
 condemned for a song that hit the Bourbons rather hard in the days 
 of Charles the Tenth, surrounded by all the good things of this life, with 
 which his friends took care to supply him ; calm, severe, and utterly 
 unambitious either of fame or fortune, as happy in singing as a lark 
 in the morning sky, and as utterly careless of the future. He had, in 
 his later days, but an income of twelve hundred and fifty francs (fifty 
 pounds) per annum ; but he made it suffice for his modest wants, though 
 he confessed that it was supplemented by presents from known and 
 unknown friends and admirers ; and that he often received a case of 
 Pommard, his favourite wine, from an anonymous benefactor, whom he 
 
PIERRE-JEAN BE BERANGER. 307 
 
 could never discover, but whose health he religiously drank every day 
 that the wine lasted." 
 
 There is fitness and "concatenation accordingly" in Shakespeare's 
 picture of the 
 
 ' ' oak whose boughs were mossed with age, 
 
 And high top bald with dry antiquity," 
 
 which was not to be found in BeYanger's external man. Physically, as 
 Swift intellectually, he began to " die at top." He was bald at twenty- 
 three ; the aspect of his forehead, which made him look like forty-five 
 when he was only thirty, enabling him to elude the vigilance of the police 
 who made eager search for refractory conscripts. Few of the portraits 
 which profess to represent him, possess any historical value. One of the 
 best is the drawing by Charlet, an etching from which is prefixed to his 
 Autobiography, whether in French or in English.* I well remember that 
 bourgeois figure, that every attitude, that " skull of St. Chrysostom with a 
 face of Bacchus," as one of his friends described it ; f and can thus 
 speak from personal knowledge as to the fidelity of the sketch of Maclise 
 before us, which is eminently truthful and characteristic. I made the 
 acquaintance of the chansonnier in the atelier of my friend, the late J.-J. 
 Grandville, an artist who has succeeded in investing animals, ,birds, 
 insects, flowers and stars with human passions and attributes better than 
 any other man, except, perhaps, the German, Kaulbach, whose designs 
 for the Reneke Fucks of Goethe are absolutely unrivalled in this line of 
 art. Grandville illustrated a host of books, including Robinson Crusoe, 
 Gulliver's Travels, and the Fables of La Fontaine. His Cents Proverbes is 
 well known ; and his Fleurs Animees (Paris, 1847, 2 torn. 8vo), and his 
 Etoiles, Derniere Feerie, posthumously published about the same time, 
 which exhibit a most refined and poetic fancy. His illustrations of the 
 song- writer are issued under the title of Album Beranger (Paris, 1858, 
 8vo). His fancy, rather, as it seemed to me, Teutonic than Gallic in 
 character, became at length morbid in its exaggeration. He saw the 
 animal beneath theman, till the one and the other became indistinguishable. 
 Human beings seemed animated flowers, and the stars of heaven were 
 angels with flowing garments and gleaming coronals. He was finally 
 removed to the niaison de sante 1 of Vanves, where, after a terrible agony 
 of three days and three nights, on March 17th, 1847, the arts sustained 
 an irreparable loss by the death of this illustrious designer, at the early 
 age of forty-two. 
 
 In 1856, the death took place in Paris of the well-known republican 
 David d' Angers. His funeral was attended by a great concourse, with the 
 whole Parisian world of students and artists. Quiet was preserved till the 
 corpse had been consigned to its narrow resting-place. It was then that 
 the old Beranger was espied, and the fervida juventus burst forth into an 
 irrepressible shout for the poet and liberty. The attendant sergens made 
 
 * Ma Biographie, Ouvrage Posthume de P.-J. de Bdranger. Avec un Appendice, 
 Orni d'un Portrait en Pied dessine" par Charlet (Paris, 1857, 8vo). The English 
 translation, inferior of course in point of taste, is entitled Memoirs of Bdranger, Written 
 by Himself . Second Edition. With Numerous Additional Anecdotes and Notes hitherto 
 unpublished (London, 1858, 8vo). The additional notes occupy some lixty pages at 
 the end of the volume, and render the translation of importance to the reader, even if 
 he possesses the original. 
 
 j Bdranger et Lamennais (Paris, 1861). 
 
3 o8 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 a charge, and several of the jeunes imprudefits were captured, lodged 5n 
 gaol, and subsequently sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. 
 Hearing of this, Be'ranger indited the following exquisite verses, which, 
 despite all the repression of authority, flew like wildfire from mouth to 
 mouth. They have all the fire and polish of his former productions, 
 although probably the last that flowed from his pen. I transcribed them, 
 in Paris, at the time, and give them here, as certainly not contained in the 
 earlier editions of his Chansons^ even if they have been preserved in more 
 recent collections : 
 
 "Pauvres enfans, quo! ! vous croyiez encore 
 
 Qu'on peut crier ' Vive la liberte" ! ' 
 Et sous les plis du drapeau tricolore 
 
 Feter celui qui l'a toujours chanted ! 
 Mes me'chans vers dont vous gardez mdmoire, 
 
 Oubliez-les ! Je viens les renier ; 
 Si j'y croyais, je maudirais ma gloire ! 
 
 Ah ! pardonnez au pauvre chansonnier 1 
 
 " Par quel c6te ce temps qu'on fait revivre 
 
 Ressemble-t-il aux jours re"vs par moi ? 
 Moi, qui jamais n'ai cesse" de poursuivre 
 
 Laquais, flatteur, empereur, pretre, et roi ! 
 Si j'ai chante" pour le grand capitaine, 
 
 C'est quand il fut sans sceptre et prisonnier ; 
 Brumaire dtait puni par Sainte-Helene ! 
 
 Ah ! pardonnez au pauvre chansonnier 1 
 
 ' Nisard pour moi serait-il l'eloquence, 
 
 Et Leverrier un second Arago? 
 Suis-je l'ami de la nuit, de la silence, 
 
 Et Belmontet me tient-il lieu d'Hugo? 
 Enfin, mon Dieu, si clement, si bonhomme, 
 
 Est-ce le Dieu des sbires, des geoliers ? 
 Est-ce le Dieu que Ton protege a Rome? 
 
 Ah ! pardonnez au pauvre chansonnier ! 
 
 " Si j'ai chante cette epoque heroique 
 
 Des habits bleus par la victoire uses, 
 C'dtait les fills de notre Republique 
 
 Battant vingt ans les rois coalises, 
 Mais ce soldat bien brosse qui nous guette, 
 
 Qui nous tuerait pour passer d'officier, 
 N'est pas le mien trinquant a la guinguette 
 
 Ah ! pardonnez au pauvre chansonnier ! " 
 
 B^RANGER is essentially the poet of the French people, the best 
 representative, in modern times, of the esprit Gaulois. Versatile in his 
 mood as the fabled son of Thetys, glowing with love, scathing with 
 satire, melting with pathos, firing with liberty, sparkling with wit, he has 
 touched every chord in the gamut of sentiment and passion, sive risus 
 essent movendi (as Johnson said of Goldsmith), sive lacrymce, affectuum 
 -potens at lenis dominator. Profoundly original in genius, he has invested 
 the simple ballad with a dignity which it did not previously possess, and 
 which future lyrists will seek in vain to bestow. He has concealed his 
 exquisite art with an art so perfect as often to lull the very suspicion of its 
 existence. He had not, as he confesses in one of his charming letters, 
 "the happiness of knowing Greek," and Horace was to him as the 
 " unknown God ; " yet he has divined and reproduced the finish of classic 
 
PIERRE-JEAN DE BERANGER. 309 
 
 times. He is the rival of Anacreon, Tyrtseus, and Horace ; and has added 
 to the lyric poetry of a nation which already boasted of a Ronsard, a 
 Malherbe, a Rousseau, and a Chdnier. He has handled the expressive 
 idiom of his country with a skill which seemed lost since the days of 
 Moliere and La Fontaine. He has expressed familiar thoughts with an 
 epigrammatic terseness, an urban refinement, a curious felicity, in which 
 the fastidious severity of a Vida or a Desprdaux finds no ground for 
 reclamation. Some of him may perish ; but his maxima pars will 
 assuredly live with his language, and his glory be gratefully cherished by 
 the great people with whose joys, and griefs, and hopes, he so profoundly 
 sympathized, so long as it retains a taste for elegant letters.* 
 
 I have far exceeded my proportional limits, and must bid farewell to 
 the great French national poet, in the stanzas addressed to him by his 
 friend, Antier, in 1821, "au moment ou il va entrer en prison" ; 
 
 " Honneur a toi ! La chanson libre et fiere, 
 Sur la Parnasse a droit de se ranger ; 
 La France encore ne compte qu'un Moliere ; 
 La France aussi n'aura qu'un Beranger. 
 
 'Tous deux, bravant une crainte servile, 
 
 Sans nul egard des couleurs ni des rangg, 
 Chit, a la cour, fletri, comme a la ville, 
 Le ridicule et les intolerants. 
 
 " Trernblez, cafards ! Son vers ridiculise 
 L'hypocrisie et ses pieux exces. 
 Trernblez, ingrats ! Son vers immortalise 
 Les detracteurs du courage Francais. 
 
 ** Soit qu'il proclame, ou qu'il chante, ou qu'il peigne 
 Un Dieu de paix, nos plaisirs, nos travers ; 
 C'est tour a tour Colle, Rousseau, Montaigne ; 
 C'est la nature : elle inspire ses vers. 
 
 " D'un gout exquis, d'un commerce modeste, 
 Toujours prodigue et du zele et des soins, 
 Quoique bien pauvre, il trouve encore du reste 
 Pour obliger ses amis au besoin." 
 
 * Bdranger, notre grand poete populaire, est mort, et c'est dans Paris un deuil ou 
 plut6t un culte pour sa memoire, qui se manifeste sous toutes les formes. Sa m^daille, 
 son buste, son portrait lithographie, ou grave, remplissent les etalages et se vendent 
 dans les rues. Depuis l'effigie artistique jusqu' a la grossiere image qui vaut quelques 
 centimes, tous ces portraits sont ressemblants ; ils rendent bien la tete puissante et 
 pensive du poete, et son air d'ineffable bonte. Mais ce n'est pas assez pour le peuple 
 de ressaissir ces traits ; il veut encore entendre, et garder quelque chose de cet esprit, 
 qui est comme la glorification du sien. Les musiciens ambulants de Paris ont par- 
 faitement compris ce sentiment ; il n'est pas une maison d'ouvriers ou ne se fasse entendre 
 tous les jours quelque chanson de Beranger. La vielle, l'accordeon, et la harpe jouent 
 les airs bien connus, tandis que des chanteurs, jeunes et vieux, hommes ou femmes, 
 entonnent avec precision ces chants qui sont la gaiete et la gloire du peuple." Quarante- 
 Cinq Lettres de Stranger, et Ditails sur sa Vie publiis par Madame Louise Colet 
 (Paris, 1857, 8vo). 
 
3 io THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 LVIIL MISS JANE PORTER. 
 
 The gallantry of a Frenchman will never, it is said, allow him to admit 
 that one of the beau sexe can possibly be " old ; and we, coarser-minded 
 Britons, holding that age with man is a matter of feeling, and with women 
 of looking, must .stoutly contend against the applicability of such an 
 epithet to the dignified and ladylike personage before us, albeit, for 
 literce scriptoz tell sad tales, she must have been, when Maclise sketched 
 her, at " the Falstaman age of some seven and fifty, or, by'r Lady ! inclining 
 to three-score." 
 
 She was born at Durham in 1776, her father being surgeon to the 
 Enniskillen Dragoons. He came of a right good stock, numbering among 
 his ancestors Sir William Porter, who distinguished himself on the field of 
 Agincourt ; Endymion Porter, of classic and loyal memory ; and Lord 
 Chief Justice Porter, who transplanted his branch of the tree to Ireland. 
 On her mother's side, her genealogical pretensions were no less respectable ; 
 and among her family connections she numbered John Tweddell, the 
 celebrated scholar and traveller in Greece, who, cut off by a premature 
 death, now reposes at Athens, beneath the congenial shade of the temple 
 of Theseus. 
 
 I know nothing of her earliest book, The Spirit of the Elbe, which 
 dates from the last century, as it appeared in 1800. Her most famous 
 novel, Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803, 4 vols. i2mo), gave her name, fame 
 and wealth ; and is of no small literary importance as having, in all 
 likelihood, suggested to the author o f Waverley that commixture of truth 
 with fiction which is the characteristic of the modern historical romance. 
 It had the honour of being proscribed by the first Napoleon, made its 
 way by translations into nearly every country in Europe, and gained for 
 its authoress, her election, at the instance of the Grand Duke of Wurtem- 
 burg, as lady-canoness of the Teutonic Order of St. Joachim. A relative, 
 moreover, of the eminent Polish patriot, Kosciusko, sent her a gold ring, 
 containing a miniature of the hero ; and General Gardiner, who was then 
 British ambassador at the court of Stanislaus, could hardly be brought to 
 believe that the scenes and events in the earlier chapters could have been 
 described by one who had not been an eye-witness. In 18 10, appeared 
 The Scottish Chiefs, which, perhaps in a greater degree even than Thaddeus, 
 as admitted by Sir Walter Scott himself to George IV., at Carlton 
 House, was the veritable begetter of the " Waverley Novels." This was 
 followed by The Pastor's Fireside; Duke Christian of Luiieburgh, the 
 subject of which was suggested by the king himself; some of the Tales 
 Round a Winter's Hearth (1826, 2 vols. 8vo) ; and the Field of Forty 
 Footsteps. Miss Porter was also a contributor to the Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine, and wrote the life of her old friend, the Rev. Percival Stockdale, At 
 a much later period of her life she appeared as editress of a Robinson 
 Crusoeish kind of book, entitled Sir Edward Seaward 's Narrative of his 
 Shipwreck, etc., 1735-49 (1832, 3 vols. 8vo ; 2nd ed. 1841, 2 vols. 8vo), 
 of which there is a more recent edition, without date, with a preface by 
 the late W. H. G. Kingston, as well as an " abridgment " in Longman's 
 Travellers* Library. I believe that this was actually written by Dr, W. 
 
Jb^j^fl4a^&? 
 
 THE AUTHORESS OF THADJDEUS GF WARSAW. 
 
MISS JANE PORTER. 311 
 
 Ogilvie Porter, the physician, her elder brother. The " Lady Seaward " 
 of the narrative was a certain Eliza Clark, to whom some verses addressed 
 * ( To Eliza," and signed " B.," will be found at page 329 of The Casket : a 
 Miscellany of Unpublished Poems (1829, 8vo). These, as attested by a 
 MS. note by Mrs. Booth, a friend of both, were written by Dr. Porter. 
 The manuscript " Remains of Eliza Clark, relating to the Costume of the 
 Ancients, with Remarks on the Temple of yEgina," was announced for 
 sale in the catalogue of Kerslake, of Bristol, 1852, together with a portrait 
 of the same lady lying on her death-bed, engraved by Lewis, with the 
 inscriptions, " Lady Seaward," and " Eliza," and an interesting notice of 
 the last days of her life at the back, in the handwriting of Dr. Porter. 
 There was a good deal of verisimilitude about the "narrative;" and 
 one of the leading reviews thought it worthy of an elaborate disproval. 
 Miss Porter was often pressed as to the real origin of the work, and was 
 wont to reply, " Sir Walter Scott had his great secret ; I must be allowed 
 to keep my little one." The reader may now possess some slight clue to 
 the mystery ; but if his curiosity be further excited, I may refer him to 
 the Quarterly Review, vol. xlviii. p. 480, and Notes and Queries, first 
 series, vol. v. pp. 10, 185, 352. 
 
 Towards the close of the year 1844, Jane Porter became the recipient 
 of a somewhat extraordinary compliment. A large deal case from the 
 United States was delivered at the Mansion House, consigned to the care 
 of the then Lord Mayor, by the Hon. John Harper, Mayor of New York. 
 This was accompanied by a letter which stated that the said case 
 contained " an arm-chair, made in New York, by order of its literary 
 inhabitants, to be presented to Miss Jane Porter, the English authoress, 
 in testimony of the high and respectful consideration they entertain for 
 one to whose pen their country holds itself indebted for some of the 
 purest, noblest, and most delightfully imaginative productions in the wide 
 range of British literature ; her name having spread over the length and 
 breadth of the land, and her works, found everywhere, gracing alike the 
 abodes of the wealthy, and the humble dwellings of the poor." His 
 lordship, it may be supposed, lost no time in putting the distinguished 
 lady in possession of his trust. It need not be said that the chair was 
 of fine workmanship ; the frame was of carved rosewood, the cushion of 
 crimson velvet, and the outside covered with richly fluted silk to match. 
 It was further accompanied by an address, beautifully engrossed on white 
 vellum, and signed by some of the most eminent personages in the city, 
 the name of the Hon. John Harper, the Mayor, heading the list. It was 
 commented on, as a singular coincidence, that at the very moment 
 of the arrival of this appropriate present, the venerable authoress was 
 engaged in the revision, for an illustrated republication, of the very works 
 commemorated in the gift. 
 
 The younger sister, Anna Maria, who also obtained celebrity though 
 in inferior degree, as a novelist, was born in 178 1. Her Artless Tales 
 (1793, 2 vols. i2mo) appeared when she was but in her thirteenth year, 
 and was followed by several other publications in prose and fiction, now 
 forgotten. Her charming portrait, engraved by Woolnoth from a drawing 
 by Harlowe, is before me ; and there is a similar one of Jane, in her 
 Canoness-habit, in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap-Book, where we 
 recognize, as also in the sketch of Maclise, the "stately figure and 
 graceful manners," which Crabb Robinson had noted more than twenty 
 
3 i2 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 years before. The contrast offered by the two sisters is admirabl] 
 described by the late Mrs. S. C. Hall, who enjoyed their intimacy: "N( 
 two sisters of the same parents could have been more opposite in appear 
 ance : Anna Maria was a delicate blonde, with a riant face and ai 
 animated manner : I had almost written she was peculiarly Irish, rushin< 
 at conclusions where Jane would have paused to consider and calculate 
 The beauty of Jane was statuesque, her deportment serious thougl 
 cheerful, a seriousness quite as natural as her sister's gaiety. They botl 
 laboured diligently, but the labour of the one seemed sport when com 
 pared with the careful toil of the other. The mind of Jane was of a loft] 
 order ; she was intense, ponderous perhaps, and obviously felt more thai 
 she said ; while Anna Maria said more than she felt. They were i 
 pleasant contrast, yet the harmony between them was complete. Indeed 
 an artist might have selected them as apt subjects for portraits of L'Allegn 
 and II Penseroso ; certainly of Thalia and Melpomene." 
 
 So far back as 1832, Miss Porter had lost this younger sister, anc 
 literary associate. Her favourite brother, however, was still alive. Thi: 
 was Sir Robert Ker Porter, the well-known artist and traveller. In earl] 
 life he had studied under Benjamin West, and attaining high and earl] 
 success in art, had been appointed historical painter to the Emperor o 
 Russia. While exercising his art in that country, he gained the affection! 
 of the Princess Marie, daughter of Prince Theodore von Scherbatoft 
 whom he eventually married. In 1813 he was knighted by the Princi 
 Regent; and in 1826 was appointed Consul at Venezuela. There h< 
 remained till 1841, when he left his mission on leave of absence, and 
 accompanied by his sister, proceeded to St. Petersburg, to visit hi; 
 daughter. In this city, on May 4th, 1842, when on the point of starting 
 on his return to England, he was seized in his carriage by an apoplectic 
 fit, which proved fatal.* This must have been a terrible shock to hi: 
 sister, who returned alone to England. She took up her abode with hei 
 brother, Dr. Porter, at Bristol, and there passed her remaining days 
 retaining her intellectual faculties to the last, and that serenity of dispositior 
 which during her long life had won the admiration of all who knew her. 
 
 Maginn, with high admiration for the good looks and stately bearing 
 of the lady, speaks of the novels of the authoress with no great enthusiasm 
 He evidently thinks Thaddens, which beguiled him of his tears in youth 
 the best and most enduring. In The Scottish Chiefs, one of the delight! 
 of my own boyhood, he says " Wallace " is drawn as " a sort of sentimenta 
 dandy, who faints upon occasion, is revived by lavender-water, anc 
 throughout the book is tenderly in love." To the Pastor's Fireside, whicl 
 met with less success, he is willing to concede some good passages. H< 
 further commemorates Miss Porter " as a philosophical or ethical writer,' 
 in respect of her collection of the aphorisms of Sir Philip Sydney, anc 
 her contributions to Fraser. "In private," he concludes, " she is a quie 
 and good-humoured lady, rather pious, and fond of going to evening 
 parties, where she generally contrives to be seen patronizing some sucking 
 lion or lioness, in which occupation may she long continue, devoting 
 her mornings to the Prayer-book, and her evenings to the co7iversazione 
 And may no ill event cut shorter 
 The easy course of Miss Jane Porter." 
 
 * For some interesting remarks upon Sir Robert Ker Porter as an art-student 
 reference maybe made to the Somerset House Gazette, 1824, vol. i. p. 304. 
 
AUTHOIR OF " O* B020TE ! 
 
LADY MORGAN. 313, 
 
 The "Doctor's" obsecration, in this concluding distich, was not un- 
 heard ; but still, nee fiietas moram, wrinkles and old age came on at 
 last, in spite of all. S. C. Hall records a visit to her at Bristol, in her 
 brother's house, when " she was but the shadow of her former self, and 
 could not rise from her couch without assistance." Yet she had still, 
 he says, " the grace and dignity that appertain to honoured old age, and 
 was still beautiful, still the same gentle, holy-minded woman she had 
 ever been, bending with Christian faith to the will of the Almighty 
 biding her time." The time presently came ; she continued to reside 
 to the end with her brother ; and at his house, Portland Square, Bristol, 
 she died May 24th, 1850, in the seventh-fifth year of her age. Dr. Porter,, 
 himself, the last survivor, unless the daughter of Sir. R. K. Porter, who 
 was married in Russia, is still alive, or has left issue, of this clever and 
 distinguished family, followed his sister to the grave within three months. 
 
 The following remarks, which appeared at the time of her death in 
 the Athenceum, appear to afford a happy description of this distinguished 
 lady : 
 
 " In society, Miss Jane Porter was amiable rather than brilliant. 
 There was a touch of old-world and sentimental eloquence in her manner,, 
 which we shall hardly see reproduced. She conversed like an accom- 
 plished woman, who had kept much ' worshipful company ' in her time, 
 without, however, the slightest parade or pretension. On the contrary, 
 her cordiality to, and admiration of, the authors of a younger generation 
 can never be forgotten by those who have either witnessed or enjoyed it. 
 She was actively kind in deed, as well as indulgent in word." 
 
 Her library, pictures, and miscellaneous effects, with much that had 
 belonged to her brother, were sold by Christie and Manson, July 24th 
 and 25th, 1850. 
 
 LIX. LADY MORGAN. 
 
 " And dear Lady Morgan ! Look, look, how she comes. 
 With her pulses all beating for freedom like drums ; 
 So Irish, so modish, so mixtish, so wild, 
 So committing herself, as she talks, like a child ; 
 So trim, yet so easy ; petite, yet big-hearted, 
 That truth and she, try all she can, won't be parted. 
 
 She'll put on your fashions, your latest new air, 
 And then talk so frankly, she'll make you all stare ; 
 Mrs. Hall may say " Oh,' and Miss Edgeworth say ' Fie,' 
 I But my lady will know all the what and the why. 
 Her books, a like mixture, are so very clever, 
 The god himself swore he could read them for ever ; 
 Plot, character, freakishness, all are so good ; 
 And the heroine's herself playing tricks in a hood. 
 So he kiss'd her, and called her ' eternal good wench ' ; 
 But asked, why the devil she spoke so much French ? " 
 
 Ecce iterum Crispinus ! Once more I claim the services of the author 
 of Ultra Crepidarius, to introduce " MlLADl," as she sits before a cheval 
 glass, in her " baby-house " in William Street, trying on the last sweet 
 
314 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 thing in bonnets, at that happy epoch when the female head-gear was 
 modelled upon the coal-scuttle rather than the pork-pie. 
 
 It was a well-known fact that no subtlety of inquiry could entrap 
 Lady Morgan into any admission about her age. She hated dates, and 
 carefully obliterated them from all her old letters. " I enter my protest 
 against DATES," she wrote, " cold, false, erroneous, chronological dates ! 
 I mean to have none of them." There is some truth and sound philosophy 
 in this, for we all know that anything may be proved by figures, which 
 are cited every day in support of theories and statements which melt 
 away on the morrow into the limbo of detected fallacies. When the 
 countryman in Joe Miller was informed that the unfortunate he saw 
 swinging at Tyburn was hanged for forgery, he exclaimed, " Ay, that 
 comes of knowing how to read and write ! and when, in spite of evasion 
 and denial, we are often able to fix approximately the birth of a blue- 
 stocking, it is because literce scriftttz 7nanent, and a dated book leaves 
 a foot-print on the sands of time. I have before me The Wild Irish Girl 
 (1801, 3 vols. i2mo) * ; The Novice of St. Dominick (1806, 4 vols. i2mo) ; 
 The Lay of an Irish Harp, or Metrical Fragments (1807, 8vo) ; St. Clair, 
 or the Heiress of Desmond (2nd ed. 1811, 2 vols. i2mo) ; Patriotic Sketches 
 of Ireland (1807, 2 vols. 121110), etc. These literary productions, the work 
 of her spinster days, render it probable that the date assigned by S. C. 
 Hall to her birth, 1777, may be correct, but do not disprove the asser- 
 tion elsewhere made that the important event took place six years later, f 
 Anyway, it was in Dublin that she first saw the light ; her father being 
 a song-writer, composer, actor, and theatre-manager of some merit and 
 note, named Robert Owenson, the Anglicised form of Macowen, the 
 name which Maginn says he bore, in his pre-dramatic days, when he 
 acted the humbler part on life's stage of a gentleman's gatekeeper. 
 " Great was he," adds the Doctor, "in ' Pan' in Midas j and there never was 
 an Irishman yet who, when he sang the "Cruiskeen Lawn," in the contest 
 against Apollo, would not have coincided in the judgment of Midas." He 
 also boasted of being a relative of Oliver Goldsmith, and was the first 
 friend and patron of the unfortunate Irish poet, Thomas Dermody. 
 
 It was in 181 2, that his daughter, Miss Sydney Owenson, married 
 Sir Charles Morgan, M.D. "an apothecary," Maginn irreverently says, 
 * who suffered the penalty of knighthood from some facetious lord lieute- 
 nant, which accounts for her ladyship." I believe that the fact is that 
 this gentleman was physician to the household of the Marquis of Abercorn, 
 by whom he was greatly esteemed ; and that it was at the special instance 
 of the latter that the dignity was conferred upon him, a few hours only 
 before his marriage, by the Duke of Richmond. He was a man of high 
 standing in his profession, liked by his Irish patients, modest, well- 
 informed, kind-hearted, and accomplished. He was an Englishman by 
 birth ; the friend and correspondent of Jenner ; and a widower, though 
 five or six years younger than the fascinating " Glorvina." The marriage 
 proved a happy one ; though he was the very opposite of his wife, who 
 was as busy, restless, energetic and pushing, as he was modest, retiring, 
 
 * There is also The Wild Irish Boy, by Charles Robert Maturin (1808, 
 3 vols. 8vo). 
 
 f Mr. Hall states that her first book was published in Dublin in 1801, and after- 
 wards in London, 1806, by Sir Richard Philips. He says that he once bought one of 
 her books, with the tell-tale date 1803, and showed it to her. Her ladyship " lifted 
 her hands, and looked unutterable things." 
 
LADY MORGAN. 315 
 
 artless and unaffected. He became, on the removal of the couple to 
 London, physician to the Marshalsea Prison ; but his chances of practice 
 among the higher classes in London were somewhat impaired by the 
 publication of his book, Sketches of the Philosophy of Life (18 18, 8vo),* 
 which gave offence to the orthodox, as being supposed to favour the 
 materialistic views advocated by Bichat, and the late eminent surgeon 
 Sir William Lawrence, in his celebrated Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, 
 mid the Natural History of Man, delivered before the Royal College of 
 Surgeons in 18 16-18. These bold speculations on the nature of life and 
 organization, introduced with some unwisdom into scientific lectures, had 
 excited a perfect storm of opposition and reprobation ; a whole library of 
 pamphlets pro and con appeared ; and in the end the rash lecturer was 
 induced to withdraw his publication, and subsequently, in order to obtain 
 a coveted appointment at Bridewell and Bethlem, openly recanted and 
 expressed his deep regret that he had sent forth such injurious opinions 
 to the world. Thus it was that Sir Charles Morgan found leisure for 
 literary labour ; and the better part of some of his wife's books, especially 
 those on France and Italy, were contributed by him in the form of 
 chapters on the more serious subjects of law, medicine, the press, etc. In 
 stability of character and soundness of judgment he was greatly superior 
 to his vivacious helpmate ; and, unlike her, is said to have possessed a 
 critical knowledge of the French language. He was, moreover, a man of 
 high accomplishments and culture, with a nature upright, simple and 
 noble. He is described by Mr. Hall as " in all senses of the word, a 
 gentljman, a man of great erudition, speculative power, and singular 
 observation." He died in August, 1844, greatly regretted by the wife who 
 loved, respected, and confided in him. 
 
 To revert to the immediate ^subject of this memoir. In 181 1, Lady 
 Morgan published The Missionary j an Lndian Tale (3 vols. i8mo). 
 This, with The Wild Irish Girl, etc., is pronounced by Maginn " sheer 
 stuff, sans phrase "y but I do not forget that it was extravagantly admired 
 by Lord Castlereagh, who was, says Lady Morgan's literary executor, in 
 her Memoirs, " perhaps the greatest admirer The Missio?iary ever found." 
 This may not go for much ; but then, again, The Missionary was eulogized 
 in terms of equal warmth by Shelley, who makes several allusions to the 
 book in his letters. In one of these he writes, " It is really a divine thing ; 
 1 Luxima,' the Indian, is an Angel. What a pity that we cannot incorporate 
 these creations of fancy ; the very thoughts of them thrill the soul ! Since 
 I have read this book I have read no other." f 
 
 Maginn says of her work on France, that it was " dedicated to prove 
 that Napoleon Bonaparte was a most distinguished friend to liberty, and 
 that his sole object in reigning was to propagate free opinions." However 
 this may be, it was pretty well demolished by John Wilson Croker in the 
 Quarterly, in a review which even Maginn admits was "far too harsh," 
 and in which the authoress was charged with "licentiousness, profligacy, 
 irreverence, blasphemy, libertinism, disloyalty, and atheism." But 
 ** Miladi " had her revenge ; and though the term " female Methuselah," 
 which her adversary hurled at her in the midst of the contest, was as a 
 
 * See the British Review, August, 1819 ; the Quarterly Review, July, 1819, etc. 
 It was followed by a supplemental volume, The Philosophy of Morals. 
 
 f Shelley s Early Life, etc., by Denis Florence MacCarthy (London, Hotten, 1872, 
 Svo),p. 352. 
 
3 i6 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 barbed arrow in her vitals, her bitter portraiture of the critic as the son of 
 Crawley the gauger, in her Florence Macarthy, must have pierced the 
 as triplex of her foe, and inflicted a wound immedicable by herbs or 
 time. Besides this, the popularity of the book was enhanced by the 
 indiscriminate abuse : and as she was not allowed to revisit France on 
 account of it, she almost fancied herself another De Stael. As Maginn 
 says, " The lady certainly did talk bad politics, and sport chambermaid 
 French, and describe chambermaid manners ; but the petticoat should be 
 a protection against the hard things which it pleased the then Secretary 
 of State to utter." 
 
 Her subsequent work, Paris i?i 1829-30, was reviewed by Theodore 
 Hook, who quotes the lines, as having been somewhere seen with satis- 
 faction by her ladyship : 
 
 " Stendhall, MORGAN, Schlegel, ne vous effrayez pas 
 Muses ! ce sont des noms, fameux dans nos climats." 
 
 By her work on Italy (182 1), in which, as was said, she elaborated a six 
 weeks' tour into two immense quartos, she offended the Italians as much 
 as she had the French by her books on France. It gave rise to numerous 
 pamphlets and criticisms in which her ladyship's alleged inaccuracies and 
 prejudicies are commented upon with no superfluous gallantry or courtesy. 
 One of these, from its pungency and terseness of style, is worthy of 
 commemoration. It is entitled, La Morganiche : ossia Lettere Scritte 
 da un Italiano a Miledi Morgan, sofire varii articoli relativi a Milano 
 ed al Regno d ) Italia che si trovano nel tomo ftrimo delta sua Italia 
 (Edinburgh, W. and C. Tait, 1824, 8vo). The most interesting part 
 of this pamphlet, which is evidently the production of a writer well 
 acquainted with the then condition of politics and society in his country, 
 is that which relates to the history of Milan and the character and conduct 
 of the Viceroy, Eugene Beauharnois. The following vituperative address 
 to the English is ridiculous enough. After a glowing expression of his 
 love for Milan, the author says : " You have indeed visited our country, 
 and found no shadow of that mighty kingdom, and that brilliant capital, 
 which, even in the depth of its desolation, the infamous product of the 
 vileness and perfidy of your own ministers, has served as a refuge to 
 you when fugitives from the dark and fearful agitations of your own 
 country." Surely the lady against whom this pamphlet is directed, never 
 committed herself to such utter rubbish as this ! 
 
 In 1822 was published by Colburn a volume, entitled The Mohawks : 
 a Satirical Poem, with Notes, now of considerable rarity, and affording 
 some curious glimpses of men and manners. This has been attributed to 
 Sir T. C. and Lady Morgan ; but the author of The Press, or Literary Chit- 
 chat: a Satire (1822, 121110), is unwilling to believe that "even Lady M. 
 could write some parts of it of a most unladylike nature," and judge 
 " from the frequent employment of similes culled from the ' Pharmacopoeia 
 Londinensis,' that it originated from the pericranium of her spouse." 
 
 Lady Morgan's Book of the Boudoir (1829, 2 vols. 8vo), savagely 
 reviewed by Blackwood (vol. xxvi.), is, say what you will about it, a very 
 amusing and readable miscellany. The manner of its publication, as 
 given by the fair authoress in her address " To the Reader," affords us a 
 humorous picture. We see her ladyship just setting off "the horses 
 literally putting to," ; the arrival of Colburn, furious with excitement at 
 
LADY MORGAN. 317 
 
 the success of The O'Briens; " future engagements," " flattering proposi- 
 tions," obduracy of authoress ; finally, "a scrubby MS. volume, which 
 the servant was about to thrust into the pocket of the carriage," catches 
 the eye of despairing publisher. "What is that?" Reply, "One of 
 many volumes of odds and ends." A glance is enough. " This is the 
 very thing," says " the European publisher," who pockets the book, and 
 departs in triumph, and leaves " Miladi" to pursue her journey. What a 
 thing it is to be a fashionable authoress ! 
 
 Gueret has written La Guerre des Autheurs; Hogarth drawn the 
 Battle of the Pictures; Parny chronicled La Guerre des Dieux; and the 
 witty Dean of St. Patrick's added a bright leaf to his chaplet of immor- 
 telles by his Battle of the Books. It was yet reserved for the clever 
 countrywoman of the latter to strike the first blow in the " Battle of the 
 Chairs." The erudite reader probably needs not to be told that at Rome 
 is said to be religiously preserved the very chair upon which St. Peter is 
 stated to have sat and taught in that city. Lady Morgan, in her book on 
 Italy, which Lord Byron pronounced " an excellent and fearless work," 
 proclaimed this " relic " to be of spurious manufacture, and stated, 
 upon the authority of two eye-witnesses, Denon and Champollion, tra- 
 vellers and Oriental scholars of the highest character and learning, that 
 the bassi-rilievi with which it is ornamented represent the feats of 
 Mohammed, and that it bears the inscription, in Cufic characters, " There 
 is but one God, and Mahomet is His Prophet." The book containing this 
 blasphemous allegation was relegated to the Index, and the champions 
 for the chair buckled on their harness. In 1833 was publ'shed at Rome, 
 Remarks on Lady Morgan's Statements regarding St. Peter's Chair, pre- 
 served in the Vatican Basilic. By N. Wiseman, D.D., etc., Rector of the 
 English College, and Professor of Oriental Languages in the Roman 
 University, 8vo. In this pamphlet the learned author endeavours to 
 prove, in defiance of all archaeology, that the slandered chair is a verit- 
 able Roman sella curulis; that the sculpture represents the exploits of 
 the monster-killing Hercules ; and that the Mohammedan inscription 
 had no existence at all. It must suffice here to state, with regard to this 
 dissertation, that it is a tissue of solecisms in archaeology, history and 
 art, and wholly plagiarized, without acknowledgment, from the chapter 
 " De Cathedra lignea S. Petri," in the Annates SS. Apostolorum Petri et 
 Pauli of V. Alex. Constantius, printed in Latin, in 1770. This was 
 answered to good effect, although she was fast losing her sight when 
 she went forth to battle against his Eminence, by a Letter to Cardinal 
 Wiseman, by Sydney Lady Morgan. The question was next taken up by 
 a competent classical scholar, who communicated anonymously his argu- 
 ments, in support of her ladyship's original statement, to the Daily News, 
 where they attracted considerable notice by their force and learning. 
 The author, having obtained further proofs of the absurd delusion which 
 had so long existed, and a " professed portrait " of the chair itself, ampli- 
 fied his matter into a pamphlet of thirty-two pages, which he published in 
 185 1, under the title of The Legend of Saint Peter's Chair. By Anthony 
 Rich, Jim., B.A. To this was prefixed a woodcut of " the Relic 1 ailed St. 
 Peter's Chair, which, according to the legend, formerly belonged to a 
 Roman Senator, named Pudens, who presented it {circa A.D. 45) to St. 
 Peter, from whom it descended as an heirloom to the Vatican Basilica, 
 Avhere it is supposed to be now preserved " ; together with another en- 
 
3 i8 THE MACLISE P0RTRA17-GALLERY. 
 
 graving of a second chair, alleged to be the one in which St. Peter sat at 
 Antioch, and now preserved for the edification of the faithful in the Patri- 
 archal Church at Venice. After all, we know nothing about this marvel- 
 lous chair, or even whether it is still in existence. According to Severanus, 
 it refused to burn, and like the Lituiis of Romulus,* was saved by a miracle, 
 when a conflagration in the Basilica consumed everything else in its 
 vicinage. But if destroyed, as sceptics will be too ready to assert, what 
 more easy than to supply its place by one from some Jew broker in the 
 Ghetto, and so by a pious fraud avoid the loss of such a potent aid to 
 faith ? This may have been the article described by Champollion and 
 Denon, and hence the difference between this and the chair of which an 
 engraving is given, from the old authorities, by Mr. Rich. Whatever it 
 may actually be, this triste lignum is pronounced by Gavazzi " a bit of 
 rotten upholstery, which modern imposture exalts to a pinnacle of shame- 
 less fraud," and is a fit associate for that statue of Jupiter, " Jew Peter" 
 as some one has it, which, consecrated by a Pope, with bronze toe and 
 door-key instead of thunderbolt, receives the osculations and daily adora- 
 tions of crowds of" Christians."t 
 
 Lady Morgan continued to reside in William Street after the death of 
 her husband. Here, on her well-known evenings of reception, she loved 
 to see congregated in her miniature but dainty rooms, all the lions of the 
 hour, artistic, scientific and literary. Queen regnant of the motley crowd 
 was the vivacious hostess, omnipresent among the heterogeneous con- 
 glomerate ; with a smile for one, a tap with her memorable green fan for 
 another, and an arch compliment for a third ; blending into an har- 
 monious whole, and reconciling, with unerring tact, the most incongruous 
 elements, Russian and Pole, Orangeman and Papist, Author and Critic, 
 Royalist and Rebel, Bohemian and Banker, the thread-bare journalist 
 and the sprig of aristocracy, when she could catch him. Nay, it is even 
 said that when an indignant Milesian presented himself with the expressed 
 intention of reproaching her with her absenteeism, and desertion of the 
 " Liberator," she sent him away with the conviction that she was a.femme 
 incomfirise, that her heart was in "dear old Dublin," and that she 
 only lived in England to benefit the Irish, and prevent them from being 
 imposed on by the Sassenach ! She was a woman who wore well, and 
 to her was still applicable the description of one who had known her long 
 ago at " the Castle," as " hardly more than four feet high, with a slightly 
 curved spine, uneven shoulders and eyes, gliding about in a close cropped 
 wig, bound by a fillet, or solid band of gold, her face all animation, and 
 with a witty word for everybody " ; Prince Piickler Muskau, who made a 
 tour in Ireland in 1828, was struck by her as "a little frivolous, lively 
 woman, neither pretty nor ugly, and with really fine and expressive eyes." 
 
 * Valerius Maximus, lib. i. cap. viii. " De Miraculis," ii. 
 
 f This momentous question is far from being yet settled. The subject is exhaus- 
 tively handled in a series of papers on " The Festival of the Pope's Chair," in Notes and 
 Queries, sixth Series, vol. vii. pp. 47, 72, 90, no, 151, and in the numbers for March, 
 1883. The history and character of the " Chair" has been discussed by Febeo, De 
 Rossi, Padre Garrucci, Brownlow, Northcote, Cardinal Newman, Godfrey Higgins, 
 Ashpitel, Nesbitt and others. It is the Pope's Chair, it isn't the Pope's Chair, it is 
 the Pope's Chair in one sense, but not in another ; it is a Curule Chair, it is a Cathedra, 
 it is a Throne ; there are half a dozen such chairs ; it has a Mohammedan inscription, 
 and it has no such thing ; and, finally, Lady Morgan made " an amusing blunder," foi 
 when she was examining it at Venice, she somehow thought she was in Rome ! 
 
THE EDITOR OF 'THE LITERARY SOUVENIR' 
 
MR. ALARIC ATT1LA WATTS. 319- 
 
 Another admirable pen-portrait of her at a later period, in the midst of 
 her London glories, was contributed by her friend, Mrs. S. C. Hall, to the 
 charming Me??iories of the husband of the latter, where her marvellous tact 
 as one of the queens of society is pointed out, her brilliant talents, her 
 expressive features, and the singularly pleasant intonations of her voice. 
 Of course there are plenty of portraits of so celebrated and charming 
 a personage. David d'Angers modelled her in France, Sir Thomas 
 Lawrence painted her in England, and Samuel Lover in Ireland. There 
 is a portrait in La Belle Assembled for August, 1824, engraved by H. Meyer 
 from a drawing by W. Behnes, which cleverly preserves her archness of 
 expression ; and we get a good profile view from the medallion by Wyon, 
 engraved in relief by the Collas process, and published by Tilt, in the 
 Authors of England, 1838, 4to. 
 
 In the early part of 1837, she became the recipient, through Lord 
 Melbourne, of a pension from the Civil List of. ^300, " in acknowledg- 
 ment of the services rendered by her to the world of letters ; and it 
 might be added, of the sacrifices she had made, and the odium she had 
 incurred, in the promotion of advanced and liberal opinions. This income, 
 added to that brought to her by her writings, and the property left by 
 her husband, placed her in easy circumstances, and enabled her to live 
 her own life in London on a scale of liberality and elegance. It only 
 remains for me to say that she reached a good length of days, happy and 
 cheerful, in spite of the loss of her sight, kind, loquacious, shrewd and 
 respected by all who knew her, and that she died at her last residence 
 in Lowndes Square, April 13th, 1859, in the seventy-seventh year of her 
 age. She was buried in the cemetery at Brompton, where a tomb, the 
 production of Sherrard Westmacott, has been placed to her memory by 
 one of her nieces, Mrs. Inwood Jones. 
 
 In 1850 she had published Passages from My Autobiography (Bentley,. 
 8vo) ; and after her death the " Fata Morgana " were further exposed to< 
 view by The Career, Literary and Personal, of Lady Morgan. By W. J. 
 Fitzpatrick (i860, -8vo); and her Me?noirs, Autobiography and Corres- 
 pondence (1862, 2 vols. 8vo), by her literary executors, Hepworth Dixon 
 and her niece, Geraldine Jewsbury. She is also included by Julia 
 Kavanagh among her English Woi7un of Letters. 
 
 LX. MR. ALARIC ATTILA WATTS. 
 
 " I don't like that Alaric Attila Watts ! 
 Whose verses are just like the pans and the pots, 
 Shining on shelves in a cottager's kitchen, 
 Polish'd and prim. Now a greyhound bitch in 
 The corner, a cat, and some empty bottles, 
 A chubby fac'd boy, and the Lord knows "what else ; 
 All taken together's a picture, which in 
 My humble opinion is just as rich in 
 Domestic detail, without the ' what-nots," 
 That smooth down the verses of Alaric Watts." 
 
 There humorous lines, which I am not desirous of being supposed 
 necessarily to endorse, are supposed to be sung by Mr. Jesse Morgan, 
 
3 2o THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 author of the Reproof of Brutus, at one of the Symposia, in Fraser's 
 memorable " back-room," No. 215, Regent Street. There was an old feud, 
 probably some newspaper quarrel, between Watts and Maginn. The 
 latter had assisted Watts in the Literary Souvenir, contributing his 
 beautiful story, "The City of the Demons," to the volume for 1828, and 
 liis " Vision of Purgatory " to that for 1829. Nothing from the " Doctor's " 
 pen appears in the volumes for 1830 and 1831. In the preface to that of 
 1832, we find a sort of apology from the editor for the unusual introduc- 
 tion into such a work, of a "satirical squib." He adds, " If the general 
 reader be amused, and the culprit amended, the leading aim of the author 
 will have been achieved. The only persons who are likely to take offence 
 at any strictures, are those who, from the indifference they are accustomed 
 to exhibit to the feelings of others, will have but little right to complain." 
 The satire in question will be found at page 222 ; it is entitled " The Con- 
 versazione : a Fragment," and extends to some five hundred and fifty lines 
 It touches upon the mutual puffery of Allan Cunningham and the Ettrick 
 Shepherd ; the lampoons of the " mock-Montgomery ; " the novels of 
 Patmore, the " Count Tims " of Blackwood j the boozing-matches of 
 Crofton Croker and Maginn, at the " Pig and Whistle " ; Hugh Fraser, and 
 his connection with the Foreign Quarterly ; Bulwer's satire, The Siamese 
 Twins; the " Literary Union " ; Churchill (a Fraserian), " one of the 
 second-hand wits of the mock-Blackwood " ; cum multis aliis, and 
 concludes with the wish that his worst enemies could only see his " rural 
 Tusculum," with its pictures, its books, and its busts, embowered amid 
 apple-blossoms and jasmine-tendrils. The lines on Maginn, which imme- 
 diately follow those on Crofton Croker, may be cited : 
 
 " And, cheek-by-jowl, his brother twin, 
 In all but dulness, Pat Maginn ; 
 Who though he write the LL.D. 
 After his name, will never be 
 A whit the graver than he is, 
 Less fond of drunken ' deevilries ; ' 
 Less ready for a vulgar hoax ; 
 Addicted less to pot-house jokes ; 
 And all the rough plebeian horse-play, 
 He will so oft without remorse play ! 
 Give him a glass or two of whiskey, 
 And in a trice he grows so frisky, 
 So full of frolic, fun, and satire, 
 So ready dirt around to scatter, 
 And so impartial in his blows, 
 They fall alike on friends and foes ; 
 Nay, rather than his humour balk, 
 His mother's son he'd tomahawk ! 
 And so he can but set once more 
 His boon companions in a roar, 
 Will scruple not, good-natured elf, 
 To libel his illustrious self ! 
 A task so difficult, I own, 
 It can be done by him alone ! 
 And yet, to give the devil his du?. 
 He'd neither slander me nor yoij, 
 From any abstract love of malice, 
 But only in his humorous sallies ; 
 For, of his friends he'd lose the best, 
 Much rather than his vilest jest 1 " 
 
MR. ALARIC ATTILA WATTS. 3211 
 
 There are no bones broken here, it is true, but the sword was fairly 
 drawn. The Literary Souvenir was commenced in 1824; Mr. Watts, 
 then engaged at Leeds in the conduct of the Intelligencer, having been 
 invited by Hurst, Robinson & Co., of London, to co-operate with them in 
 the publication of an annual volume, as already introduced into this country 
 by old Rudolph Ackermann, of the Strand, on the plan of the well-known 
 German Literary Almanacks or Pocket-books. The editor certainly 
 manifested great judgment in the selection of pictures by the first artists 
 for the engravings, and the accompanying sketches, in prose and poetry, 
 from the most popular writers of the day. The enterprise was eminently 
 successful, the sale of some of the volumes amounting to 14,000 or 15,000 
 copies. Ten volumes of the Literary Souvenir were published between 
 1824 and 1834. In 1835 tne Annual appeared in a slightly modified form,, 
 under the title of the Cabinet of Modem Art, of which three volumes only 
 were published. If the illustrations and text of these and similar volumes 
 were not, according to modern notions, of the most elevated character, they 
 had at least a tendency to refine and instruct ; and if Mr. Watts is correct 
 in estimating the amount expended by him in bringing them out, during 
 these fourteen years, at ^50,000, it must be admitted that he has rendered 
 important services to art and literature. It would appear that, in the 
 latter part of its career, the sale of this annual had fallen off. Mr. Watts 
 chose to attribute this to a quiz upon it in Lraser's Magazine, which 
 purported to be written by an exiled Pole, who rejoiced in the name of 
 " Quaffy-punchovics." He was, moreover, irate at the metamorphosis of 
 his second Christian name from " Alexander" to " Attila" ; but this was 
 an old joke of Lockhart, who, perceiving that he always signed himself 
 " Alaric A. Watts," thought that the second name should match the first, 
 and supplied the picturesque agnomen, by which he was thenceforth 
 always known. It appears that some years before this, some kind of con- 
 troversy had arisen between "Alaric " Watts, and " Satan " Montgomery, 
 in which, according to a veridical statement in Fraser, one of the: 
 objects of discussion " concerned the names of the distinguished dispu- 
 tants." Watts maintained that the author of the Omnipresence was the 
 son of a clown at Bath named " Gomery " ; in return, Montgomery, who,, 
 allowing that as Watts was the lawfully begotten son of a respectable 
 nightman of the name of Joseph Watts, on the New Road, he had a fair 
 title to the patronymic, denied that he had any claim to the Gothic 
 appellation of " Alaric." " The man's name," said Montgomery, "is- 
 Andrew." In addition to all this, the irate poetaster chose to construe his 
 portrait in the " Gallery," into an attempt to imply that he had been guilty 
 of the felonious abstraction of pictures ; and the hints of a " mystification " 
 in his matrimonial relations as an insinuation that his union with " Zillah 
 Madonna " was not of a moral character. All this will not be very 
 apparent to the reader, who may think, too, that Watts had provoked 
 attack. But Jeremy Bentham defined a "libel" to be "anything which 
 any man may think may, in any way, annoy him" ; and so Mr. Watts 
 thought he had grounds for an action. The case accordingly came on, 
 December 5th, 1835, m tne King's Bench, Westminster, before Lord 
 Denman and a special jury. Fraser was ably defended by Mr. Erie, K.C., 
 whose speech will be found in extenso in Eraser's Magazine for January, 
 1836, the result being a verdict for the defendants on the first count, for 
 the plaintiff on the second count : Damages, one hundred and fifty 
 
 Y 
 
322 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 I he defendants, upon this, applied for a new trial, and obtained 
 ;, i ule nisi; bu1 upon the case being heard in banco, some five or six terms 
 afterward!, the Dial was refused on a technical point. 
 
 A. A. Watts was born in London, March 19th, 1797. Before he 
 adopted literature as a profession, I believe that he was employed as a 
 private tutor. In 1823 he published an elegant little volume of poetry, 
 entitled Tactical Sketches, of which a private impression had been in cir- 
 , 11!, in., 11 during the preceding year. This volume became vny popular, 
 and five editions, at least, were sold. In Leeds he lived for three years, as 
 editor of the Intelligencer; proceeding thence to Manchester to establish 
 the Manchester Courier. In 1827 he was invited to co-operate with Mr. 
 Cli.iiles u.ildwin and Dr. Clifford in the establishment of the Standard; 
 and in 1833 set on foot the United Service Gazette. Quarrels with his 
 partner in this led to Chancery suits, with ruinous results to both parties. 
 He then resumed his relations with the Standard, and in 1847 gave ll P 
 all connection with the newspaper press. I believe that it was with 
 Mr. Watts that the system originated of printing parts of newspapers in 
 the metropolis, and forwarding them to various parts of the country, 
 according to order, to be filled up with local advertisements and news. 
 
 He is thus described in Fraser at the epoch (January, 1835) of the 
 taking of his portrait : u He has some talent in writing verses on children 
 dying of colic, and a skill in putting together fiddle-faddle fooleries which 
 Im.I. pretty in print. In other respects, he is forty-one years old, of 
 .m unwashed ;ippc;iranee, no particular principles, with well-bitten nails, 
 it genius for backbiting. There is not a man to whom he has 
 been under an obligation, from Jerdan to Lockhart, from Theodore 
 Hook to Wcstmacott, from Andrews to Whittaker, from Crofton Croker 
 |<> C 'art ci Hall, horn Wordsworth to Ryron, from Scott to Soul hey, from 
 Landseer to Wilkie from the man who has fed him from charity to the 
 in. in who has, from equal charity, supported his literary repute, whom he 
 has not, m his pom way, libelled. We are sorry for it for his own sake ; 
 siu h a course redounds to a man's mischief." 
 
 We gel .1 glimpse ol Watts in the home of which I have spoken from 
 .1 letter written by Gerald Griffin to his sister, dated London, June 27th, 
 1829. "1 have also," wrote the Irish Novelist, "seen Mr. Alaric Wi 
 reposing amid all the glorious litter of a literary lion-monger, sofas, silk 
 cushion, paintings, portfolios, etc. lie is .1 little fellow, very smart and 
 hustling, with about as much of sentiment as you have of bravery, 
 I mean bloody field of battle bravery." * 
 
 In 1851 he published a very charming volume, worthy of a place by 
 the side <^\ the lia!v and the Vocms o\ Rogers. This was entitled 
 Lyrics of the Hearty and ot/ter Poems. It contained forty-one line 
 ! awrence, Stothard, Leslie, etc., and was issued with 
 plain" and "proof 1 impressions, to suit the taste or pocket of OUT- 
 h i crs. In this arc reprinted the earlier poems, two of which c< The 
 1 Vath of the Firstborn/ and " My Own Fireside," had excited the warm 
 i ommendation of Sir Robert Reel, who wrote to the author that "to have 
 written these would be an honourable distinction to any one." Eighteen 
 years later, the recollection ol these poems induced the great statesman 
 to place at the disposal ol the poet a Treasury appointment for his son, 
 
 * Lift of Gerald Griffin, by his brother, Daniel GritVtn, M.D. (London, 1843, 
 xamo). 
 

 
 
 
 
TRANSLATOR OF GOIETHE'S FAUST! 
 
LORD FRANCIS EGERTON. 323 
 
 and to continue his interest till his lamented death. In 1853 a pension 
 of 100 per annum was conferred upon Mr. Watts by her Majesty, "in 
 jonsideration of services rendered by him to literature and the fine arts." 
 This, together with an appointment in the Income-tax Department of 
 Somerset House, rendered easy the latter years of his life. He died at 
 Kensington, April 5th, 1864, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. 
 
 As I have mentioned Mrs. Zillah Madonna Watts, herself a poetess, 
 it maybe well to record that she was the youngest sister of J. H. Wiffen, 
 the well-known translator of Tasso, and Garcillasso de la Vega, and for 
 many years private secretary and librarian to the Duke of Bedford. 
 
 LXI. LORD FRANCIS EGERTON. 
 
 As the Peerage of the British Empire, whether compiled by Burke, 
 Debrett or Dod, is the " Englishman's Bible," and to be found, where 
 the Bible should be, on every table, there is no need of genealogical 
 prolixity when treating of one of those whose family pedigrees are so 
 minutely detailed in its heraldic pages. It is therefore supererogatory, 
 except for uniformity, or to save my reader the trouble of turning to 
 another book, to state here that the subject of this notice was born 
 in January, 1800 ; that he was the second son of the first Duke ot 
 Sutherland ; that he was raised to the peerage as Earl of Ellesmere ; 
 that, through his grandmother, he succeeded to the great Bridgwater 
 estates, and thence assumed the surname and arms of Egerton ; and that 
 he died February 18th, 1857. 
 
 At the period at which the limning of his lordship before us was pro- 
 duced (July, 1835) he is described in the accompanying pen-portraiture as 
 " an indefatigable M.P., and, in spite of the bad example of his brother, 
 the Duke, a sturdy tory ; a good fellow, fully alive to all the delights of 
 society, from wine and women, up to sermons and soda-water, a general 
 favourite with all classes whose favour is most to be coveted, with 
 Theodore Hook and the wits, with A, B, C, X, Y, Z, and the beauties, and 
 with Howley, Philpotts, Carr, and all the other ornaments of the Episco- 
 pal benches ; witty, good-humoured, a tall man of his inches, as hand- 
 some a fellow as you can pick out in the round town, in the very flower 
 and vigour of his days, and a most staunch and pious disciple of Mother 
 Church." To all this may be added that he was famed for having the best 
 cook in London after Ude ; "a small competency of about 90,000 per 
 annum, with Bridgwater House for a pied a terre in town, Oaklands, 
 hallowed by recollections of Mary Ann Clarke and black-eyed Mercandotti, 
 for a box, and we know not how many cool old chateaux, for autumnal 
 recreation, in the provinces besides." 
 
 His lordship early worshipped the Aonian nymphs, though the offer- 
 ings which bespoke his devotion have gravitated below the surface of the 
 stream of time. I shall not attempt to give a minute account of the 
 various productions, which have, at one time or another, " fallen under my 
 eye." Many are beyond the reach of legitimate criticism, as only printed 
 
3 2 4 THE MACLISE rORTRAlT-GALLERY. 
 
 for private circulation. Among these are the volume known as Mediter- 
 ranean Sketches j a poem of considerable merit, The Pilgrimage; several 
 dramatic pieces, parodies, monodies ; and lastly, " The Mill? a volume 
 which I have never taken the trouble to hunt up, because I fancied that it 
 dealt with the picturesque rather than the pugilistic. 
 
 It is, however, by his metrical translation of the Faust of Goethe that 
 this noble author is best known. Maginn says of him and it : " In fact, 
 laying Byron and Mahon aside, we look upon the youth opposite as the 
 most decent lord-author of his generation. His Faust, notwithstanding 
 all that has been done in prose by Hayward, and in verse by Anster, to 
 say nothing of such brainless and tuneless ragamuffins as Blackie, Syme, 
 etc., etc., his Faust holds its place. We are inclined to the opinion lately 
 expressed by Heraud, or Wordsworth, or Taylor, or some other first-rate 
 poet, that from no other one translation, could a stranger to the German 
 tongue form so high a notion of old Goethe's merits. The lyrics are 
 really beautiful ; and the whole story of poor Margaret is brought out so 
 as to fill the heart, if you have one, and the eyes, if you be under 
 seventeen." 
 
 To this inconsiderate eulogy it may be added that if Lord Leveson 
 Gower's translation "held its place" in the year of our Lord 1835, it 
 certainly does not in 1883. It perchance did some service in its day as 
 a pioneer, when German was but little cultivated, and Faust regarded as 
 obscure as the Cassandra of Lycophron, or the Sordello of Browning. It 
 was lauded to the skies in the Quarterly Review; and Blackwood (July, 
 1823) bedaubed it with extravagant praise, and quoted the worst passages 
 to justify its admiration. I am not unaware, too, that it received a certain 
 amount of approbation, qualified, however, if one comes to analyse it, 
 from so eminent a critic as A. W. von Schlegel ; and that Allan 
 Cunningham gave credit to the taste which " sobered down " the original 
 when too " startling and grotesque." On the other hand, we have the 
 opinion of Goethe himself conveyed viva voce to Dr. Granville, that it 
 was only as author of Faustus travesti that the noble translator would be 
 held to have succeeded, so completely had he "overset" the tragedy itself; 
 and Mr. A. Hayward, in the preface to his most excellent prose translation 
 has, once for all, demolished any pretensions to accuracy of this preceding 
 metrical version. Of its author, this competent critic says, " a combina- 
 tion of circumstances has enabled him to cast a blot on the fame of the 
 original, which nothing but the most unsparing exposure can efface " ; 
 and adds that, " considered as a whole, Lord F. Gower's translation is 
 about as unfaithful as a translation can be ; and that, far from bringing 
 to his task a thorough knowledge of the language of his original, he has 
 hardly construed any two consecutive passages aright." There is no 
 doubt that this allegation is true. Passages are wholly omitted, by 
 which an immoral, or irreligious tendency is given to the poem, which 
 it does not possess ; other parts are mutilated, and their meaning mis- 
 construed ; and innumerable words are erroneously translated.* There 
 is no doubt that individual passages may be found exhibiting great beauty 
 of expression, and which none but a mind of high poetic order could 
 have produced ; but still, it cannot but be regarded as unfortunate that 
 Lord Egerton was first in the field. His rank and wealth, his reputation 
 for taste and talent, and the belief which was entertained of the pro- 
 * See Mrs. Austin's Characteristics of Goethe, vol. i. pp. 265-73. 
 
J&?n<K - ^%2^w 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE ROUFID) TOWERS OF IREILANID, 
 
HENRY O'BRIEN. 325 
 
 fundity of his German acquirements, all tended to give his translation a 
 fictitious currency, and keep men out of the field, who might have dis- 
 charged the task with greater ability. Among such was Shelley, whose 
 fragmental " Prologue in Heaven," and the " May-Day Night Scene," 
 full of misconceptions as they are, show what he might have done with a 
 twelve month's study of German ; and Coleridge, whose version of 
 Wallenstem^ made from a M S. copy before the poem was printed, while 
 it does not contain lines subsequently added, possesses original additions 
 and improvements of his own, which Schiller actually has translated 
 and adopted from his English translator in the after editions of the 
 Piccolomini. 
 
 LXII. HENRY O'BRIEN. 
 
 il In the village churchyard of Hanwell (ad viii. ab Urbe lapideitf) sleeps 
 the original of yonder sketch, and the rude forefathers of the Saxon 
 hamlet have consented to receive among them the clay of a Milesian 
 scholar. That ' original ' was no stranger to us. Some time back we 
 had our misgivings that the oil in his flickering lamp of life would soon 
 dry up ; still we were not prepared to hear of his light being thus 
 abruptly extinguished. ' One morn we missed him ' from the accustomed 
 table at the library of the British Museum, where the page of antiquity 
 awaited his perusal : l another came nor yet ' was he to be seen behind 
 the pile of ' Asiatic Researches,' pouring over his favourite Herodotus, or 
 deep in the Zendevesta. ' The next ' brought tidings of his death, 
 
 *Au banquet de la vie infortune convive, 
 J'apparus un jour, et je meurs ; 
 
 Je meurs, et sur la tombe ou jeune encore j 'arrive, 
 Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs.' 
 
 His book on the ' Round Towers ' has thrown more light on the early 
 history of Ireland, and on the Freemasonry of these gigantic puzzles than 
 will ever shine from the cracked pictures of the ' Royal Irish Academy ' 
 or the farthing candle of Tommy Moore. And it was quite natural that, 
 he should have received from them, during his life-time, such tokens of 
 malignant hostility as might sufficiently ' tell how they hated his beams.' 
 The ' Royal Irish ' twaddlers must surely feel some compunction now, 
 when they look back on their paltry transactions in the matter of the 
 * prize essay ' ; and though we do not expect much from such an 
 emasculate specimen of humanity, still it would not surprise us if ' Tom 
 Brown the younger,' or ' Tom Little,' the author of sundry Tomfudgeries 
 and Tomfooleries, were to atone for his individual misconduct in a white 
 sheet, or a " blue and yellow " blanket, when next he walks abroad in that 
 rickety go-cart of drivelling dotage, the Edinburgh Review. 
 
 " While Cicero was quaestor in Sicily, he discovered in the suburbs of 
 Syracuse the neglected grave of Archimedes, from the circumstance of a 
 symbolical cylinder indicating the pursuits and favourite theories of the 
 illustrious dead. Great was his joy at the recognition. No emblem will 
 
326 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 mark the sequestered spot where lies the (Edipus of the Round Tower 
 riddle no hieroglyphic, 
 
 1 Save daisies on the mould 
 Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate, 
 His name and life's brief date. ' 
 
 But if you wish for monuments to his memory, go to his native land, and 
 shore, circumspice / Glendalough, Devenish, Clondalkin, Innisscattevy, 
 rear their architectural cylinders ; and each, through those mystic 
 apertures that face the cardinal points, proclaims to the four winds of 
 heaven, trumpet-tongued, the name of him who solved the problem of 
 3000 years, and who first disclosed the drift of these erections. 
 
 " Fame, in the Latin poet's celebrated personification, is described as 
 perched 
 
 ' Sublimi culmine tecti 
 Turribus aut altis. ' * 
 
 That of O.'B. is pre-eminently so circumstanced. From these proud 
 pinnacles nothing can dislodge his renown. Moore, in the recent pitiful 
 compilation meant for 'a history,' talks of these monuments as being so 
 many ' astronomical indexes.' He might as well have said they were 
 tubes for the purposes of gastronomy. ' 'Tis plain he knew as little about 
 their origin as he may be supposed to know of the * hanging tower of 
 Pisa,' or the ' torre degli asinelli,' or how the nose of the beloved 
 resembled the tower of Damascus. 
 
 " Concerning the subject of this memoir, suffice it to add that he was 
 born in the Kingdom of Iveragh, graduated in T. C. D. (having been 
 classically brought up at the feet of the Rev. Charles Boyton) ; and fell 
 a victim here to the intense ardour with which he pursued the antiquarian 
 researches that he loved. 
 
 ' Kerria me genuit ; studia, heu ! rapuere ; tenet nunc 
 Anglia : sed patriam turrigenam cecini. ' 
 Regent Street, August 1st, 1835." 
 
 The foregoing beautiful tribute to the memory of the young Irish 
 antiquary, with which I cannot forbear from gracing my pages, is 
 reprinted among the Reliques of Father Prout (Bohn's ed. p. 162), as 
 the production of the "functionary who exhibits the 'literary characters'"; 
 and this I believe to have been for the nonce the incumbent of Water- 
 grasshill himself. 
 
 Henry O'Brien was, as stated, more Virgtlzano, in the distich above, 
 a native of the county of Kerry, and was educated at Trinity College, 
 Dublin, where he graduated B.A. in 1831. Having proceeded to 
 London, he applied himself to the preparation for the press of the Essay 
 by which he is best known. This was written in competition for a prize, 
 offered by the Royal Irish Academy, for the best dissertation on the 
 subject. He was not successful in obtaining the prize, but his essay was 
 considered so learned and ingenious, that the Society awarded a 
 pecuniary recompense to the author. With this the latter was not 
 content, and an angry correspondence ensued. 
 
 In 1833, the "Essay" greatly enlarged, and with illustrative em- 
 bellishments, made its appearance. It was entitled The IZoimd Towers 
 
 * ALneid iv. 
 
HENRY O'BRIEN. 327 
 
 of Ireland; or, the History of the Tauth-de-Danaans (being the Mysteries 
 of Freemasonry, of Sabaism, and of Buddhism), for the first time unveiled 
 (2nd ed., 1834, 8vo). 
 
 Now the various theories as to the origin and object of these 
 mysterious Towers * are about as numerous as the Towers themselves, 
 and far more discrepant with one another. John Lynch,f Peter Walsh, 
 Ledwick,$ Dr. Molineux and others contend that they are of Danish 
 origin, and were erected as Watch Towers ; but that the Christian Irish 
 changed them into Clock or Bell Towers. General Vallancey argues that 
 they are of Phoenician, or Indo-Scythic origin, exhibiting the results of an 
 intimate connection between Ireland and the East ; and that they were 
 erected as Fire-Temples, Stations from which Druidical festivals were 
 announced, Sun-dials (Gnomons), and Astronomical Observatories, 
 Buddhist or Phallic Temples. Beauford considers that they were built 
 by the Persian Magi who overran the world at the time of Constantine 
 the Great, in place of the Vestal mounds, and who combined their fire- 
 worship with Irish Druidism ; and that the Irish Round Towers were built 
 in imitation of their Magian Towers. Dr. Charles O'Conner, of Stowe, 
 supports the Astronomical theory, and considers that they were erected 
 as " Celestial Indexes," an opinion in which he is supported by Lanigan 
 and Moore. Windele, and the South Munster Antiquarian Society, 
 together with Sir William Betham and others, started the theory that 
 they were " Hero Monuments," and took, as proofs of the truth of this, 
 bones which happened to have been thrown into the Towers, or the 
 casual underlying of ancient cemeteries. Dean Richardson, followed by 
 Walter Harris, Dr. King, Dr. Milner, and others, suggested that they 
 were erected for the use of Anchorites or Hermits, because St. Simon 
 Stylites is recorded to have lived on a pillar sixty feet high, and other 
 enthusiasts have chosen to adopt a similar miserable and ridiculous 
 manner of existence, for the purpose of gaining a reputation for sanctity, 
 Dr. Smith, discovering that the Irish word for a penitential round or 
 journey is turas, jumps, in his History of Cork, to the conclusion that the 
 Round Towers were simply places for penal incarceration. Finally, 
 George Petrie, one of the most profound of Irish antiquaries, has 
 attempted to show that all the foregoing theories are either erroneous 
 or unproved, and assigning the erection of the Towers to Christians of 
 the sixth or seventh century, contends that they were intended and used 
 as Belfries, as Depositories for Reliques, church valuables and records, 
 as Sanctuaries, as Watch Towers and Beacons, and as places of retreat 
 from fire, or the sudden attack of an enemy. But after all, as will be 
 seen from a cursory glance at the various volumes which have been 
 written on the subject, the modern writers on these Round Towers have 
 been more successful in their attempts to show that preceding theorists 
 were wrong, than in supporting their own hypotheses ; and we are 
 forced to the conclusion that we have little hope of ascertaining definitely 
 what these mysterious structures were, and must rest satisfied with 
 knowing what they are not. Thus, it seems evident that they were ?iot 
 
 * Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xx. (Dublin, Hodges and Smith). 
 f Cambrejisis Eversus. 
 t Antiquities of Ireland. 
 
 Vallancey's Essay on the Antiqzdty of the Irish La?iguage, 1772, and his 
 Collectanea de Rebus Hibemicis. 
 
32 8 THE MACL1SE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Watch Towers, for many of them are on low-lying ground, and they are 
 too close to each other, not places of retreat, for they are too narrow, 
 not Fire Towers, devoted to the worship of Baal, or the Sun, for their 
 construction is not suitable for the perpetual burning of a light on the 
 summit, not built by the Danes, for they were long anterior to the 
 settlement of that people in the country, not penitentiary towers, after 
 the fashion of those of the Stylite and others, not Belfries, for they were 
 erected before the use of Bells was known, and many of the churches in 
 their vicinity had belfries of their own. The most feasible conjecture, 
 and this does not go very far, is that they were erected before the 
 introduction of Christianity into Ireland, and had some connection with 
 the ancient superstition ; and that the early missionaries sought to avail 
 themselves of existing prejudices, by erecting the places of worship for 
 the new faith in the vicinity of the religious monuments which were 
 consecrated to the old one. 
 
 Coming now to the "Phallic Theory," which Thomas Davis says, 
 " never had any support but poor Henry O'Brien's enthusiastic ignorance, 
 ;and the caricaturing pen of his illustrator," I will briefly say that it is 
 this which is expounded in the volume so highly eulogized by Father 
 Prout. This hypothesis is, that the Round Towers of Ireland were 
 Temples constructed by the early Indian colonists of the country in 
 'honour of the fructifying principle of Nature, emanating, as was supposed, 
 from the sun, under the denominations of Sol, Phcebus, Apollo, Abad, or 
 Budh, etc. ; and from the Moon, under the epithets of Luna, Diana, Juno, 
 Astarte, Venus, Babia, or Batsee, etc. This it was that excited the 
 religious worship of the Egyptians and Greeks, as symbolized by the 
 obscene Phallos ; and by the Indians, under the form of the not less 
 indecent Lingam. This was the object of that singular form of Priapic 
 worship discovered by Sir William Hamilton to be existing within the last 
 hundred years at Isernia, in the Kingdom of Naples, and so learnedly 
 commented on by Richard Payne Knight, in his privately printed volume.* 
 This also was the origin and design of the most ancient Pagodas of the 
 East ; of the Phallic tower, of extraordinary height, of which Lucian 
 speaks, as existing in Syria t ; of the crux ansata of the ancients ; of the 
 two pillars of molten brass, which Hiram, King of Tyre, set up in the 
 porch of the Temple of Solomon ; % of the May-poles of our own village 
 greens, of the grey Monolith of the plain, and even of the village 
 spire, which towering amid the gentle landscape, directs the worshipper 
 to the house of the Christian's God, and points to the promised heaven. 
 
 There was a controversy between O'Brien and Thomas Moore, the 
 latter of whom, according to " Prout," who said he had the correspondence 
 before him, " negotiated by letter with O'Brien," to extract his brains, and 
 make use of him for his meditated History of Ireland. I am not able to 
 say what was the upshot of the matter. O'Brien charged Moore with 
 adopting his ideas without acknowledgment ; and Moore accused O'Brien 
 of plagiarism from the Nimrod of the Hon. Reginald Herbert (London, 
 1826), whose leading idea is that the Round Towers were erected as 
 Fire-Altars, an altogether different theory. 
 
 * Account of the Worship of Priapus, etc. , to which is added a Discourse on the 
 Worship of Priapus, and its Connection with the Mystic Theology of tlie Ancients 
 (London, 1786, folio). 
 
 f De Ded Syrid. % J Kings vii. 
 
AUTHOR OiF"THE LAW F POPULATION 
 
MICHAEL THOMAS SADLER. 329 
 
 Some remarks on the " Pillar-Towers," will be found in the Gentleman's 
 Magazines and a letter, in defence of the view there taken, was addressed 
 by him to " Mr. Urban," in the same serial, vol. ii. p. 365. 
 
 On June 28th, 1835, at the early age of 35, Mfr O'Brien was found 
 dead in his bed, at the Hermitage, Han well, the house of a friend, where 
 he had spent the preceding day ; and he lies buried in the churchyard of 
 that village. He had for some time held the situation of tutor in the 
 family of the Master of the Rolls ; had been presented at Court ; and 
 received as a guest at Lansdowne House. 
 
 Maclise has commemorated the early death of the young Irish scholar 
 by a fine etching in the Reliques of Father Prout, reminding us in its 
 sentiment of Mr. Wallis's celebrated picture of the " Death of Chatterton." 
 
 LXIII. MICHAEL THOMAS SADLER. 
 
 u There is a sadness," writes Fraser, commenting upon the death of this 
 now forgotten political economist, which had just then (July 29th, 1835), 
 taken place, " not unmitigated, indeed, but not the less deep and lasting, 
 connected with our personal memorial for the present month. 
 
 " Sadler is dead Michael Thomas Sadler ! He who truly earned, 
 and without the least descent into cant or affectation, the title of the poor 
 man's friend. 
 
 " His career as a public man has been short, but it has been long 
 enough to leave a name that will not soon be forgotten. Many men have, 
 in a period equally short, gained more distinction, and far better served 
 themselves, Macaulay, to wit, but few have realized or deserved equal 
 honour. 
 
 " The secret of his Parliamentary career was briefly this : instead of 
 coming there, like many others, with an empty head but a voluble tongue, 
 with wit, and repartee, and smartness, and party audacity, Sadler 
 came there with his mind and heart overcharged with schemes and plans 
 for the good of the working classes. During the whole time of his 
 attendance on the House of Commons, politics, properly so called, did 
 not occupy the tithe of his time or his thoughts. He was ever brooding 
 over some scheme for the relief of the Irish poor, or the bettering the 
 state of our own agriculturists, or the emancipation of the infant slaves of 
 our factories. His range of topics was entirely his own ; and as they 
 were ever crossing and thwarting the common current of daily politics, it 
 was no wonder that he became reckoned, by the dandies of the House, 
 as an odd and impracticable sort of a fellow. 
 
 " His manner, too, of dealing with these topics, had the fault of Burke 
 and of Mackintosh, it was the style and manner of a student, of one who 
 had gone to the bottom of his subject, and who insisted on taking with 
 him even those careless or reluctant hearers who had hardly patience to 
 skim the surface for a few moments. 
 
 " Yet, with all these disadvantages against him, he was appreciated by 
 the excellent among the people. Scarcely during his absence from 
 Parliament could a vacancy occur, in any place having a respectable con- 
 
33 o THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 stituency, without his being the first name mentioned. The applications 
 he was perpetually receiving, and from such places as Bath and Maryle- 
 bone, were not to be reckoned by units, but by scores. 
 
 " His fame, however, is of higher class than that of a Parliamentarian. 
 His was the hand which, after a hundred fruitless attempts, and those by 
 men of no mean rank his was the hand that threw down, and broke to 
 pieces, and stamped into powder, that Moloch principle, long worshipped 
 as an idol by many, of the superfecundity of the human species. The 
 Malthusian theory was by him, at once and for ever, put an end to. It 
 is true that the numerous disciples of that heresy will still adhere to it 
 ' for the term of their natural lives.' But it is now a detected imposture, 
 and its fate is sealed. 
 
 " The public life of Mr. Sadler may be reckoned to have fallen within 
 the last eight years. His great work, on the Evils of Ireland, and their 
 Remedies, a book which has been publicly declared by political opponents 
 to be 'the best ever written on that subject,' was published in 1827. He 
 entered Parliament in 1829, and retired from it at the dissolution in 
 December, 1832. His labours had then so far aided a constitutional 
 malady, as to have excited the anxious apprehensions of his friends ; but 
 within the last year the symptoms of its advance became unquestionable. 
 His age was, we believe, about fifty-four or fifty-five. 
 
 "He was a man of rare natural endowments, and of extraordinary 
 accomplishments ; but these qualities could only be known, in their 
 variety, to his private circle and friends. His enthusiastic devotion to the 
 welfare of the poor was the leading feature of his character ; and in this 
 point his value was felt and appreciated by the people generally. We 
 perceive that the men of Leeds are claiming the honour of rearing and 
 possessing his monument. But there must be a record of his labours and 
 his doings, of a more extensive and durable character than a local column, 
 or tablet, or statue. Seldom has a nobler subject for the pen of the 
 biographer been afforded, and we are glad to hear that it will not be 
 allowed to pass unnoticed." 
 
 The career of Michael Thomas Sadler was so entirely political, 
 that I shall not find it necessary to add much to the fine tribute to his 
 memory and character which accompanies his portrait. He was born at 
 Snelston, a village in the south of Derbyshire, in January, 1780. He was 
 educated principally at Rome, and made great proficiency in the mathe- 
 matical sciences at a very early age. He died at New Lodge, near 
 Belfast, July 29th, 1835, m tne fifty-sixth year of his age. 
 
 Bulwer, in his now forgotten satire, The Siamese Twins (London, 
 Colburn, 1831, 8vo), has an allusion to Sadler : 
 
 " So far, so good ! the Siam nation 
 Is somewhat thin of population ; 
 And (there, as here, two sects are clamorous, 
 The Economic and the Amorous) , 
 It must have charmed the Siam Saddlers, 
 This doubling on the Mai thus Twaddlers ! " * 
 
 adding, in a note : 
 
 " Mr. Sadler, on whom his Godfathers bestowed the most just of all 
 epithets by the most prophetic of all initials Mr. M. T. (commonly pro- 
 
 * Page 11. 
 
AUTH'OSOP YE AN 
 
EARL OF MULGRAVE. 33* 
 
 noimced Empty) Sadler, has lately published a book in opposition to the 
 followers of Malthus ; the size of it is very remarkable." 
 
 Sterne, working upon the idea of the charming old Gascon essayist, 
 Montaigne, discusses the effect which the name given to a man may 
 have upon the development of his character. Such appellations as 
 Caesar and Pompey, he suggests, may, by their " mere inspiration," have 
 rendered the bearers worthy of them ; while many individuals " might," 
 as he says, "have done exceedingly well in the world, had not their 
 characters and spirits been totally depressed, and Nicodemus'd into 
 nothing." * Nay, some among the learned have gone so far as to assert that 
 good or bad fortune is so indissolubly and inexplicably associated with 
 names, that, when these are changed, the issues of life are turned in another 
 direction. t Be this as it may, and this is not the place to pursue the 
 subject, it would appear that, with regard to the giving of names, 
 another responsibility, undreamt of in the philosophy of Sterne, attaches 
 to sponsors, viz. to take heed that the initials of the names bestowed 
 upon a child do not form a word which may influence the character of, 
 bring ridicule upon, or suggest a nick-name for, the unfortunate and 
 unconscious nominee, in his after life. u Empty " Sadler is a case in 
 point ; and I could adduce another in which one of the Christian names 
 has been elided in order to get rid of the initial which was a co-efficient 
 in the formation of an objectionable word. A little foresight may prevent 
 an accident like this ; but such contingencies as are involved in " Namby- 
 Pamby " Willis, " Babbletongue " Macaulay, " Harassing " Ainsworth, 
 "Attila" Watts, "Juggle-us Jeer-all," "Monkey" Milnes, Walter Savage 
 "Gander," "Mrs. Jollop," "Bath Bunn, Esq.," "Sir Pelham Little" 
 Bulwer, Bart, W. M. " Thwackaway," Thomas " Snarlyle," Gilbert Abbot 
 a "Briefless," and the rest, are too remote for prevention, and must be 
 left to chance. 
 
 There is Memoirs of the Life and Writings of M. T. Sadier, Esg. y 
 M.P., F.R.S. (London, Seeleys, 1848, 8vo, pp. 664), with Portrait. 
 
 LXIV. EARL OF MULGRAVE. 
 
 Here we have the aristocratic lineaments and courtly form of the 
 nobleman who is better known to the present generation, if, indeed, 
 known at all, as the Marquis of Normanby. 
 
 " Among literary men," says Eraser, who introduces him as the then 
 ex-Governor General of Jamaica, the president of the Garrick, and the 
 Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, " he is known or heard of, as the author of 
 several novels which have not materially contributed to swell his repute ; 
 
 * Sterne's Tristram Shandy, chap. xix. 
 
 f "Sunt qui e nominibus et literarum numeris ita vaticinantur, ut raro fallant. 
 Notarunt nonnulli infaustorum nominum impositione fortunam hominum labefactari, 
 eorum immutatione quoque immutari. Quiclam e tetricis nominibus, quos reos criminis- 
 suspicati sunt, tales quaestione instituta deprehenck-runt." Morhofi, Polyhislor, ed. 
 1708, torn. i. p. 124. 
 
332 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 among fashionable people he is distinguished as an amateur actor, who 
 is equally meritorious in the performance of Hamlet and the Cock" and 
 so on to similar purport. 
 
 With regard to the portrait, the same contemporary commentator 
 adds : " Our artist is rather too favourable to Mulgrave. Thanks to 
 Delcroix, or some other artist of that profession, the locks look 
 exuberant still ; but woe worth the day ! crows feet tell about the 
 temples, and deep wrinkles beseam the well-rouged face. But still, when 
 duly curled, oiled, painted, and lighted up, he does look passably well, 
 and might be trusted in a third-rate walking gentleman cast. He is at 
 present showing off in a part for which he is just as much fitted as he is 
 for enacting Romeo j but one in which he can do more mischief than 
 could attend the most vigorously hissed performance that ever disgraced 
 a theatre." 
 
 The career of Mulgrave was political and diplomatic, rather than 
 literary ; and need find no minute record here. As a. politician, from the 
 time he entered the House as member for the borough of Scarborough, he 
 assumed a course of action, as a somewhat advanced Reformer, which was 
 entirely opposed to the traditions of his family, his father had been the 
 friend of Pitt, and of course prevented him receiving anything but hard 
 measure from the tory Fraserians. As a diplomatist, he was certainly 
 one of the most popular Viceroys who have held court at the Castle j^and 
 was pronounced by O'Connell to be "the best Englishman Ireland has 
 ever seen." 
 
 Of his post-Fraserian doings I have not to say much. In 1838, he 
 was created Marquis of Normanby, by letters patent ; in 1839, ne 
 resigned the Irish Lieutenancy, and was appointed Secretary for the 
 Colonies ; and at the end of that year he became Home Secretary, an 
 office which he held till September, 1841. In 1846, he was appointed 
 Ambassador for France, and remained there till the coup d'etat, when he 
 was superseded by Lord Cowley. In 1854, he accepted from the 
 government of Lord Aberdeen, the post of Minister at the Court of 
 Tuscany, which he resigned in 1858, and returned to England. He died 
 at his residence, Hamilton Lodge, South Kensington, July 28th, 1863, in 
 the sixty-seventh year of his age. 
 
 Of his lordship's literary achievements I have nothing to say which 
 can interest the readers of these desultory sketches. After contemplating 
 the seedy black of Charles Lamb, the bourgeois simplicity of 
 Ber anger, and the homespun attire of William Cobbett, the eye of 
 the modern Teufelsdrockh cannot but dwell with peculiar satisfaction on 
 the purple and fine linen of this representative of the " silver-forkers," 
 as Regi?ta has it. But this feeling ends with the gratification produced 
 by the external aspect of the Dandiacal body ; in other respects, the 
 comparison is in favour of the plebeians. Where are his lordship's 
 " works " ? Who ever read Yes and No, Matilda, The Contrast, The 
 Prophet of St. PauPs, or Clari?ida f While we regard the slightest 
 fragment of Charles Lamb with almost religious veneration, a quatrain 
 from a girl's album, or a pair of volumes of juvenile poetry " discovered" 
 in Australia ; while the carelessest couplet of Beranger shakes the idol 
 in the temple, or the King on the throne ; while the hasty pamphlet of 
 Cobbett drives home a truth or a lie, with all the force of the sledge- 
 hammer of Thor ; the prolusions of the Earl of Mulgrave now only 
 
AUTHOR OF THE FOILETHCAIL K.]EG2?>TEK g 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 333 
 
 exist as the lining of circumforaneous trunks, if, indeed, they have 
 escaped the speedier doom afforded by transmission. 
 
 " in vicum vendentem thus, et odores, 
 
 Et piper, et quicquid chartis amicitur ineptis." 
 
 In the way of prose, in 1856, we have from the pen of his lordship, a 
 narrative of the stirring events of 1848, under the title of A Year of 
 Revolutions. 
 
 The widow of the Earl, the late Dowager Marchioness of Normanby, 
 died so recently as October 20th, 1882, in the eighty-fourth year of her 
 age, at Mulgrave Castle, Lythe, near Whitby. She was the eldest 
 daughter of the first Lord Ravensworth ; resided with her husband at 
 Paris, when he was British Ambassador there ; and also in Jamaica^ 
 when he was Lieutenant-Governor of that island. She had also been 
 Mistress of the Robes to the Queen, by whom she was much beloveds 
 Her only son, the present Marquis, is Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria. 
 
 LXV. WILLIAM COBBETT 
 
 In the career of this extraordinary man is implied the whole political 
 history of this country during the earlier third of the present century. In 
 taking a brief survey of its main incidents, I must be careful to hug the 
 shore closely, not to drift unconsciously seaward on that illimitable ocean.. 
 
 Although, from his own statement, William Cobbett was born in 
 1766, it would appear from the fact of his christening having taken place, 
 according to the register at Farnham, on April 1st, 1763, that the event 
 should be assigned to a date at least four years earlier. The best account 
 of his early years is to be gleaned from an autobiographical sketch 
 published when he was in America.* From this, which has been 
 reprinted in various forms in this country, it may be gathered that his 
 first occupation was frightening birds from the early seed, hoeing pease, 
 weeding wheat, and holding the plough. He remembered no period at 
 which he did not earn his own living ; and had little or no schooling 
 beside what his father gave him in winter evenings. In 1782 he went to 
 visit a relation near Portsmouth ; here he first beheld the sea, and felt 
 that sudden impulse to become a sailor, which he believes to be as 
 natural to an English boy as the desire of taking the water is to a duck. 
 He tried to get his name enrolled as a sailor on board a man-of-war ; 
 was refused, and returned to the plough, but was for ever spoilt for a 
 farmer. 
 
 In 1783, when preparing to go to Guildford Fair, another impulse led 
 him to mount a London coach, which dropped him at Ludgate Hill, with 
 half a crown in his pocket. Here he got a situation as copying clerk ta 
 
 * The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine, with a Ftcll and Faithful Account 
 of all his Authoring Transactions ; being a stire and infallible Guide for all enter- 
 prising Yotmg Men who wish to make a Fortune by Writing Pamphlets. By Peter 
 Porcupine himself (Philadelphia, 1797, 8vo, pp. 58). 
 
334 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 a lawyer in Gray's Inn, where he remained nine months, the only period 
 of his life, says he, which was wholly unattended with pleasure. Leaving 
 his desk in disgust, he proceeded to Chatham, where, believing that he 
 was entering the Marines, he enlisted in a marching regiment, the service 
 companies of which were in Nova Scotia. He remained at Chatham a 
 year, improving his education as well as he was able, and learning the 
 structure of his own language from Lowth's Grammar. He was soon 
 raised to the rank of corporal, and at length sailed from Gravesend for 
 Halifax, N.S. His regiment proceeded to New Brunswick, where it 
 remained till September, 1791. It was then relieved and sent home ; 
 and Cobbett, then a sergeant-major, received his discharge, on "earnest 
 application," together with a certificate of " honest and faithful service." 
 Shortly after his arrival in England, he married. "Werther" fell in love 
 with " Charlotte " when she was cutting bread-and-butter ; Cobbett was 
 smitten by the charms of a young girl of thirteen, who was scrubbing out 
 a wash-tub on a cold winter's morning. " That's the girl for me," said he, 
 when he had got out of hearing ; and he looked at the matter as being 
 " settled as firmly as if it had been written in the book of fate." I 
 will not spoil the narrative, one of the most beautiful stories of love, 
 courtship and married life that has ever been told, but refer to the 
 words of Cobbett himself.* Shortly after his arrival in England, he 
 brought certain charges of corruption and misconduct against some of 
 the officers of his regiment, and demanded a court-martial. " If my 
 accusation," says he, in a letter to the Judge-Advocate General, "is 
 without a foundation, the authors of cruelty have not yet devised the 
 tortures I ought to endure. Hell itself, as painted by the most fiery bigot, 
 is too mild a punishment for me." The trial was granted (March, 1792) ; 
 but on the appointed day no Cobbett appeared ; an adjournment took 
 place, but he was again absent. On further inquiry, he was found to 
 have absconded. The articles of charge were read over before his fifty- 
 two witnesses, who had not a word to say ; and the defendants were 
 consequently acquitted. The conclusion of the authorities was that the 
 charge was wholly " destitute of foundation, and wilfully and maliciously 
 set on foot for the purpose of calumniating the characters of the three 
 officers in question, and of putting them to expense, the accuser not 
 hesitating, in order to obtain this end, to deceive the Crown, and make 
 a mockery of public justice." f No further explanation was ever given, 
 so far as I know, of this extraordinary business. 
 
 In 1792 he went to France, where he spent the " six happiest months 
 of his life." Here he intended to stay a while to study the language ; but, 
 hearing at Abbeville of the king's dethronement, and the murder of his 
 guards, he turned off towards Havre, and embarked thence for America. 
 He landed at New York in 1792, and proceeded to Philadelphia. Here 
 he opened a bookseller's shop, and commenced a periodical paper, or 
 rather a succession of pamphlets, under the signature of " Peter Porcu- 
 pine," which was marked by the simple force of style and expression 
 which continued to be the distinguishing characteristic of the author 
 during his long literary career. As the French or Democratic party in 
 America was then in the ascendant, England was liberally abused by 
 
 * Advice to Young Men, and {incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and 
 Higher Ranks of Life, by William Cobbett (1837, 8vo, Letter III. p. 97). 
 
 t Proceedings of a General Court-Martial, etc. (London, 1809, 8vo, pp. 32). 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 335 
 
 political writers. Of course Cobbett, if only from the spirit of contradic- 
 tion, did battle as the champion of his native land. Some of his blows 
 happened to reach a certain Dr. Rush, who brought an action against 
 him for libel, and recovered damages to the tune of 5000 dollars. This 
 finally disgusted Cobbett with the new country, and he left for England 
 in 1800.* 
 
 In 1 801 he settled in London, opening a bookseller's shop in Pall Mall, 
 under the sign of " The Bible, the Crown, and the Mitre" ! Here he 
 established a morning paper, under the title of The Porcupine, in which 
 he supported the principles of Pitt. Upon the cessation of this, he started 
 The Register, a serial which he continued to produce with almost unde- 
 viating regularity for thirty-three years, till his death ; and which contains, 
 both as regards quantity and quality, the most remarkable mass of politi- 
 cal writing which any one man has ever produced. In 1805, from a Church 
 and King man, Cobbett became a violent radical, and was for years a 
 grievous thorn in the side of the ministry. A political prosecution is found 
 sometimes a convenient gag for a troublesome opponent, and Cobbett laid 
 himself open to this by strictures upon a case of military flogging at Ely, 
 when five hundred lashes each upon insubordinate English militiamen, were 
 inflicted by our German mercenaries. He received a sentence of two 
 years' imprisonment in Newgate, and a fine of ,1000. He underwent 
 the former, and the latter was paid by a subscription, with the result, ol 
 course, of exacerbating Cobbett's feelings against the government. By 
 this time the sale of the Register had risen to the unprecedented number 
 of 100,000 per week, and Cobbett had been enabled to purchase a valu- 
 able estate at Botley, in Hampshire. 
 
 Among my Cobbettiana I find a record of a trial which has escaped the 
 notice of biographers. The title, which I give below,f sufficiently indicates 
 its nature. The verdict was for the plaintiff, with ten pounds damages. 
 
 In 1 818 Cobbett, whose affairs were not, from various causes, so pros- 
 perous as they had been, set sail once more for America, as Henry Hunt 
 alleges, to avoid the importunity of his creditors. % However this may be, 
 he returned to England in the following year. Upon passing his effects 
 through the Custom-house at Liverpool, the contents of one of his boxes 
 is said to have excited the " silent horror " of the spectators. " There, 
 gentlemen," said Cobbett to the horrified officers, " there are the mortal 
 remains of the immortal Thomas Paine." Cobbett had formerly written, 
 " There is nothing too absurd for the people of England to swallow ; they 
 are, in this way, the grossest feeders the world ever saw." He was now 
 to test these powers of " swallow." What his former opinion of Thomas 
 
 * For all the gossip and scandal relating to Cobbett's residence in America, with 
 notice of literary and political squabbles in which he was engaged, see The Porcupiniad; 
 a Hudibrastic Poem, in Three Cantos. Addressed to William Cobbett by Matthew 
 Carey " (Philadelphia, 1790, 8vo, pp. 80). 
 
 f Cobbett's Oppression ! I Proceedings on the Trial of an Action between William 
 Burgess, a poor labouring Man ! and William Cobbett, the Patriot and Reformer / / 
 for employing William Aslett and John Dubber to assault and falsely imprison the 
 Plaintiff, etc. (London, 1809, pp. 28). 
 
 X The Preston Cock's Reply to the Kensington Dunghill: a Twopenny Exposure of 
 Cobbett's Fourteen-pennyworth of Falsehoods. By Henry Hunt, Esq., M.P. Addressed 
 to the Electors of Preston (London, 1831, 8vo, pp. 16). Reference may also be made 
 to another pamphlet of the same period, full of ready wit and smart repartee, The 
 Address of Charles Wilkins, Esq., to the People of Manchester, on the Incompetency of 
 Mr. William Cobbett to represent them in Parliament (8vo, pp. 24). 
 
336 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Paine had been,* maybe ascertained from the pamphlet entitled CobbetPs 
 Ten Cardinal Virtues, f where his contradictory sentiments at various 
 periods are neatly tabulated for reference ; or a similar publication called 
 The Beauties of Cobbett, in three parts, where much curious matter is to be 
 found. Now, Tom Paine was everything that was glorious and noble, 
 and Cobbett thought that it would be a profitable speculation to exhume 
 his bones from the field where they lay, the Quaker sect to which he 
 belonged having refused him burial ; bring them over to England ; ex- 
 hibit the skeleton at so much a head ; and afterwards make up the hair, 
 the " ugly, uncombed locks " of a former day, into gold rings, and 
 " sell them at a guinea apiece beyond the cost of the gold and the work- 
 manship." These superfluous guineas were to be employed in the erec- 
 tion of a monument to the memory of Paine. The affair caused a great 
 sensation. In the House of Lords it was asked by Earl Grosvenor "whether 
 any subject had ever been treated with more laughter, contempt, and deri- 
 sion than the introduction of those miserable bones ; " and in the House 
 of Commons it was stated, by Mr. Wilmot, that " the man who had dug 
 up the unhallowed remains had brought them to this country for the 
 purpose of stirring up impiety, by the exhibition of this wretched mum- 
 mery." % Well, to make a long story short, the necessary guineas were 
 never collected, and the twenty waggon-loads of flowers not required, 
 which were to strew the road before the great man's hearse. The "bones "' 
 remained in the possession of Cobbett till his death. Shortly after this 
 event the eldest son, who was executor of his father's will, was arrested for 
 debt ; and a receiver was appointed to the estate, into whose care was com- 
 mitted the box of bones. The effects of Mr. Cobbett were sold by auction, 
 in 1836 ; and the bones brought forward to be offered for competition. 
 The auctioneer, however, refused to put them up ; and they were with- 
 drawn, and remained in the possession of the receiver. This gentleman,, 
 desiring to be relieved, awaited the orders of the Lord Chancellor ; but 
 the latter, upon the matter being mentioned to him in court, refused to 
 recognize them as part of the estate, or make any order respecting them.. 
 The receiver thus continued to hold them ; but finding that none of the 
 creditors would relieve him of them, or, indeed, made inquiry about them, 
 he transferred them, in 1844, to a Mr. Tilley, who retained them in 
 his possession until a public funeral could be arranged. I have never 
 heard that this has been done, and know nothing more of these Thomce 
 venerabilis ossa.% 
 
 I had arrived at the year 18 19. Cobbett, once more in England, 
 
 * " How Tom gets a living now ... I know not, nor does it much signify. He 
 has done all the mischief he can in the world ; and whether his carcase is at last to be 
 suffered to rot on the earth, or to be dried in the air, is of very little consequence. When- 
 ever or wherever he breathes his last, he will excite neither sorrow nor compassion ; no- 
 friendly hand will close his eyes, not a groan will be uttered, not a tear will be shed. 
 Like Judas, he will be remembered by posterity ; men will learn to express all that is 
 base, malignant, treacherous, unnatural, and blasphe?nous, by the single monosyllable 
 Paine ! " Life of Thomas Paine, by William Cobbett. 
 
 f Manchester (Ambery), 1832, 8vo, pp. 34. 
 
 % Cobbett 's Gridiron (1822, 8vo, p. 21). 
 
 Ode to the Bones of the Im-mortal Thomas Paine, newly transported from America 
 to England, by the no less Im-mortal William Cobbett, Esq., by Thomas Rodd, Senr. , 
 the Bookseller (London, 1819, 4to). A Brief History of the Remains of the laic 
 Thomas Paine, from the time of their disinterment, in 1819, by the late William 
 Cobbett, M.P., down to the year 1846 (London, Watson, 1847) ; and Notes and 
 Queries, Fourth Series. 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 237 
 
 threw himself into the political life of the time ; took an active part in the 
 cause of Queen Caroline ; and made unsuccessful attempts to get into 
 Parliament as member for Coventry, and for Westminster. 
 
 During his absence he had sold his estate at Botley ; he now took a 
 farm at Barnes Elms, in Surrey, where he attempted to grow sundry trees 
 and plants which he had brought from America, and also to introduce 
 Indian corn as a substitute for the " infamous potato," as he called it. * 
 He printed his Register on paper made from the husks of this corn, and 
 established depots for the sale of its flour and bread ; but the project was 
 not ultimately successful. He left Barnes, and entered upon the occupa- 
 tion of the farm of Normandy, about seven miles from Farnham, his 
 native place. 
 
 In 1 83 1 he was indicted for the publication of a libel, in the Weekly 
 Political Register of December 1 ith, 1830, " with intent to raise discontent 
 in the minds of the labourers in husbandry, and to incite them to acts of 
 violence, and to destroy corn-stacks, machinery, and other property." 
 The defendant pleaded " Not Guilty," and defended himself in person. 
 The jury could not agree, six being of one opinion and six of another, and 
 prayed for their discharge, which was granted, f 
 
 In 1832, after the passing of the Reform Act, Cobbett was returned to 
 Parliament for the newly made borough of Oldham. In the House of 
 Commons every man finds his level, and it would have been doubtless 
 better for his reputation if he had been unsuccessful in obtaining a seat in 
 the representative assembly. He possessed neither the temper nor the 
 tact necessary to constitute a ready and effective debater ; he scarcely 
 made an important speech ; and his Parliamentary career was thus a 
 disappointment to his friends and admirers, who, perhaps, hardly made 
 sufficient allowance for age and failing health. Moreover, there is but 
 little doubt that his fatal illness was, in a great measure, attributable to 
 the fatigue and labour of his Parliamentary duties. Without entering 
 upon further details, which will be found in a letter from his son in the 
 Register of June 19th, 1835, it must suffice to state that the extraordinary 
 man who had founded that serial, and guided its course for thirty-three 
 years, died on the preceding day, at Normandy Farm, in the seventy-fourth 
 year of his age. 
 
 In the course of the same year the will of the deceased was proved. 
 The effects were sworn to be under the value of ^1500 ; there were no 
 specific legacies, but the testator bequeathed the copyright of his works, 
 and all his other property, to his eldest son William. 
 
 Of his personal appearance, Hazlitt has left us a graphic record : 
 u The only time I ever saw him, he seemed to me a very pleasant man, 
 easy of access, affable, clear-headed, simple and mild in his manner, 
 deliberate and unruffled in his speech, though some of his expressions 
 were not very qualified. His figure is tall and portly. He has a good, 
 sensible face rather full, with little grey eyes, a hard square forehead, a 
 ruddy complexion, with hair grey or powdered, and had on a scarlet 
 broadcloth waistcoat, with the flaps of the pockets hanging down, as was 
 the custom for gentlemen farmers in the last century, or as we see it in 
 
 * A Treatise on Cobbett's Corn ; or, Cobbett 's Corn-book (8vo). 
 
 f Full and Accurate Report of the Trial of William Cobbett, Esq., before Lord 
 Tenterden and a Special Jury, on Thursday, Jtdy jln, 1831, in the Court of King's 
 Bench, Guildhall (1831, 8vo, pp. 48). 
 
 Z 
 
33 S THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 the pictures of members of Parliament in the reign of George I. I cer- 
 tainly did not think less favourably of him for seeing him." * 
 
 As a political writer, he was at once the most able, the most ready, 
 and the most prolific of the age. In simplicity, correctness, clearness 
 and strength of style, he had no equal since the day of Defoe and Swift. 
 In advocating his views, he seized upon favouring circumstances with 
 marvellous tact ; detected and exposed the shifts of his opponents with 
 profound skill ; was a master of irony and innuendo ; was apt in illustra- 
 tion, and powerful in description. He addressed himself to all, to be 
 understood by all ; and we may search in vain through his hundred 
 volumes to find a sentence which is ambiguous or unintelligible. He 
 was a bitter hater, a remorseless enemy, and befouled those who incurred 
 his ire with the coarsest terms of invective and abuse. In sarcasm, and 
 especially the art of giving nicknames that " stuck," he was pre-eminent, 
 the greatest master since the days of Aristophanes. Burdett was " (Did 
 Sir Glory"; Hunt, "the great liar of the South"; Baines, "the great 
 liar of the North " ; Brougham, " a mixture of laudanum and brandy, 
 with a double allowance of jaw." The clergy of the Established Church 
 were "Black Slugs"; Printing-house Square was " Puddledock" ; the 
 Morning Herald, " Grandmother " ; and the Morning Advertiser, " Sap 
 Tub." Then there is "Sancho" Hobhouse ; "Mons. de Snip" Place 
 (the Benthamite tailor-political-economist of Charing Cross); "Little 
 Shilling" Attwood; "Pis-aller" Parkes ; "Bott" Smith (Egerton Smith, 
 of the Liverpool Mercury)-, "Roaring" Rushton; "Gaffer" Gooch; "Slate- 
 face " Cropper ; " Prosperity " Fred ; and a host of other epithets which will 
 occur to the memory of those who are familiar with the political writings 
 of the period. Besides this, Cobbett has shown better than any one besides 
 the translators of the Bible, and Shakespeare, how powerful an exponent 
 of thought our simple, home-spun Anglo-Saxon may be made. The voca- 
 bulary which he had at command was all-sufficient for his purpose. He 
 dealt in no subtle refinements, or nice discriminations of thought and 
 feeling ; and had no thesaurus of classic or composite phrase at com- 
 mand, like that with which Shakespeare, when he chose, could incarnadine 
 his multitudinous verse. 
 
 From an incident in his early life it is evident that the style of Swift 
 had a great charm for him, and it was upon this probably that he uncon- 
 sciously modelled his own. " When a poor boy at eleven years of age," 
 says he, "with 3d. in my pocket for my whole fortune, I was trudging 
 through Richmond in my blue smock-frock, and with red garters tied 
 outside my knees, when I perceived in a bookseller's window a little book 
 labelled ' Tale of a Tub, price 3d.' If I spent my 3d. on it I could 
 have no supper : still, in I went, and bought the little book, which I was 
 so impatient to examine, that I got over into a field, at the upper corner 
 of Kew Gardens, and sat down to read on the shady side of a haystack. 
 The book was so different from anything I had read before ; it was some- 
 thing so new to my mind, that though I could not at all understand some 
 of it, it delighted me beyond measure, and it produced what I always 
 considered a sort of birth of intellect. I read on till it was dark, without 
 any thought of supper or bed. When I could see no longer, I put it into 
 my pocket, and fell asleep by the side of the stack, till the birds in Kew 
 Gardens awaked me in the morning, and then I started off, still reading 
 * Spirit of the Age, by W. Hazlitt (1825, 8vo). 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 339 
 
 my little book. The gardener at Kew, where I got employment, lent me 
 some books on gardening, but I could not relish them after the Tale of a 
 Tub, which I carried about with me wherever I went, till about twenty 
 years old I lost it in a box that fell overboard in the Bay of Fundy." 
 
 Gilfillan, seeking for a single epithet whereby to epitomize Cobbett, 
 pronounces him " the genius of common sense." Robert Hall styles him, 
 " a firebrand, not a luminary the Polyphemus of the mob, the one-eyed 
 monarch of the blind." Wyndham declared, in the House of Commons, 
 that he deserved that a " statue of gold " should be erected to him. 
 Hazlitt, in his fine portraiture, says : " He is a kind of fourth estate in the 
 politics of the country. He is not only the most powerful political writer 
 of the present day, but one of the best writers in the language. He speaks 
 and thinks plain, broad, downright English. He might be said to have the 
 clearness of Swift, the naturalness of Defoe, and the picturesque satirical 
 description of Mandeville ; if all such comparisons were not impertinent." 
 
 A few words about his principal literary works. He said, himself, oi 
 what he termed " The Cobbett Library,"" When I am asked what books 
 a young man or young woman ought to read, I always answer, let him or 
 her read all the books that I have written. This does, it will doubtless 
 be said, smell of the shop. No matter. It is what 1 recommend ; and 
 experience has taught me that it is my duty to give the recommendation." 
 He then goes on to enumerate thirty-?iine distinct books other than the 
 " Register." Of these I can only glance at one or two. 
 
 "Advice to Young Men." This is just the kind of book which 
 would have been termed on its title-page, " opus aureum " by the old 
 publishers. It is in six letters; addressed to the "Youth," "Bachelor," 
 " Lover," " Husband," " Father," and " Citizen." In each of these 
 relations of life, the author, with the most perfect sincerity, and the most 
 amusing simplicity, holds up himself as the model for imitation. To the 
 Rev. R. Polwhele he elsewhere wrote (July 14th, 1834), " Good God ! what 
 I have seen, what I have done, since I had the pleasure of seeing you ! 
 I am the completest instance that ever was known of the effects of 
 diligence, sobriety, and fortitude." * With him, as with the Greek sage, 
 the avros *<po. is confirmation strong as Holy Writ, and cannot possibly 
 admit of demur. Here (Letter II. p. 75) is the capital account of Ireland's 
 Shakespeare forgeries, and his ridicule of the exaggerated worship of the 
 bard ; for Cobbett hated humbugs as heartily as Carlyle, and never lost 
 a chance of exposing a sham sentiment. In a word, this book is the most 
 extraordinary specimen of common-sense, egotism, manliness, iconoclasm, 
 prejudice, and Englishism^ expressed in the tersest, simplest, naturallest 
 style, that the world has ever yet seen ; and should be in the possession 
 of every one than can read. It is reprinted, and can be got for a florin. 
 
 "History of the Protestant Reformation." This book (2 
 vols, royal 8vo, 1829), for vigour of composition, hardihood of paradox, and 
 crassitude of ignorance, is without a parallel in the language. It is a true 
 curiosity of literature, and one of the most amusing of books, if only from 
 the courageousness of its prejudice, and absence of all the qualities that go 
 to make up a philosophical history. It must be read, as some critic has 
 directed, sentence by sentence, by the rule of contrary. Of course, the 
 author was said to be a Romanist at heart ; but the fact seems to be that 
 
 * Polwhele's Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 88. 
 
 + A word coined bv Charles Reece Pemberton. 
 
340 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 he was desirous of showing what could be said on the Romish side of the 
 question, and of doing this better than it had ever been done before.* 
 He did not get many thanks for his pains from the sect he had so 
 effectually served, and is reported to have said with an oath, that, if 
 he had taken the other and stronger side, he could have roused all 
 England against the Romanists, and put off their emancipation till the 
 eve of St. Tibb.f Of course, "answers" appeared by the dozen, among 
 which may be noticed the counter History of the Protesta?it Reforma- 
 tion, by McGavin ; J Strictures, by Philanthropos ; and a volume by an 
 anonymous author, entitled The Great Apostacy. || 
 
 "English Grammar." This appeared in 1819, and was "intended 
 for the use of Schools, and of young persons in general, but more 
 especially for the use of Soldiers, Sailors, Apprentices, and Ploughboys." 
 It was, however, in the form of a series of letters addressed to his son 
 James, when he was fourteen years old. " I made him copy the whole 
 of it," says the author, " before it went to press, and that made him a 
 grammarian at once." He elsewhere speaks of his "famous grammar 
 for teaching French people English, which has been for thirty years, and 
 is still, the great work of this kind throughout all America, and in every 
 nation in Europe." He has a good reason for his self- laudation and 
 egotism : " For me not to say that I deem my English Grammar the 
 best book for teaching this science, would be affectation, and neglect of 
 duty besides ; because I kno lb : !f is the best ; because I wrote it for 
 the purpose ; and because hundreds and hundreds of men and women 
 have told me, some verbally, and some by letter, that though (many of 
 them) at grammar schools for years, they really never knew anything of 
 grammar till they studied my book. I, who know well all the difficulties 
 I experienced when I read books upon this subject, can easily believe this, 
 and especially when I think of the numerous instances in which I have 
 seen imiversity scholars unable to write English with any tolerable 
 degree of correctness." IF Apart from this, the book is as interesting as 
 a romance ; perspicuous in arrangement, and amusing in illustration. 
 The author finds faults in Blair and Johnson ; but it must be remembered 
 that no writer in a language like ours, certainly not Cobbett himself, 
 can bear such a minute criticism as is here applied. The microscope 
 will detect faults where the naked eye, which is the natural instrument, 
 can only perceive beauties. Besides this, Cobbett's Grammar must be 
 read cum grano j and not with implicit faith as a scientific treatise. Of 
 the two hundred and eighty-five paragraphs, within which his rudiments 
 are comprised, no less than sixty-six are animadverted on, and corrected, 
 in a pamphlet, published by Wright, 46, Fleet Street, entitled, A Critical 
 Examination of Cobbetfs English Grammars and a subsequent writer, 
 
 * Cobbett, if his reading had permitted, might have, referred to a chapter in Ant. 
 Gallonius De SS. Martyrum Cruciatibus (Parisiis, mdclix., 4to), " De Catholicis, ac 
 praecipue Religiosis, et Sacerdotibus, quorum ventres ab Haereticis, nostro sseculo, dis- 
 secti sunt," p. 207. 
 
 f See a paper on "Editors and Newspaper Writers of the last Generation," in 
 Frasers Magazme, February, 1862. 
 
 % Glasgow, 8vo, several editions. Glasgow, 1825, 8vo. 
 
 || London, 1839, 8vo. 
 
 jt A forcible and amusing illustration of this may occur to the reader, as afforded 
 by the letters of a certain " Head-Master," in relation to a scholastic dispute, published 
 in the Times some ten years ago. 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT, 341 
 
 whose able treatise has fallen into unmerited neglect, speaks of it as " a 
 mischievous book," and cautions "the juvenile reader, in the earliest 
 stage of his grammatical progress, to avoid with all possible care, .the 
 very sight of a certain publication, professing to be grammatical, but 
 being in reality the exact reverse/' adding that "the whole work does 
 not contain ten paragraphs that can be tolerated in any book ; much less 
 can they be sanctioned by an impartial grammarian.' 5 * 
 
 A few words might be said on some of Cobbett's other works. There 
 are his letters on the Treaty of Amiens, which Miiller, the Swiss historian, 
 said were more eloquent than anything which had appeared since the 
 days of Demosthenes ; his Manchester Lectures, full of shrewd common- 
 sense and political information ; the Sermons, some beautiful, all good 
 (except the thirteenth, on " Good Friday, or God's Judgment on the 
 Jews"t), of which the author says "more of these sermons have 
 been sold than of the sermons of all the church parsons put together 
 since mine were published, there are some parsons who have the good 
 sense and virtue to preach them from the pulpit " ; the Legacy to 
 Parsons, to Labourers, and to Sir Robert Peel, in three pocket 
 i2mos ; the Rural Rides, with its beautiful descriptions and hearty love 
 of country, which will find it admirers as long as a taste for pure English 
 survives among us ; The History of the Rege?icy and Reign of George IV. 
 (London, 1830, 2 vols. 8vo), Twopenny Trash, the various Porcupine 
 Tracts, all of which are worthy of some notice beyond the mere reference 
 with which I must here content myself. 
 
 Fraser exactly hits the mark in his estimate of Cobbett. He describes 
 three classes of characters as especially conspicuous in the political 
 hemisphere of that day. The prominent characteristics of these were 
 I. Enthusiasm; II. Political Trading; III. Self will. 
 
 Of the first of these classes, Michael Thomas Sadler is selected as 
 the type, a man whose whole heart and soul, mind and strength were 
 so preoccupied, that he could not fully enter into the politics of the hour, 
 and render that service to his party which his undisputed power might 
 have enabled him to effect. 
 
 In the second class, were the Broughams, the Grants, the Macaulays, 
 and the Palmerstons. They all talked volubly of philanthropy. Brougham 
 first defended slavery, and then became an Abolitionist. Grant and 
 Macaulay wrote against Reform in the Edinburgh Review, only to refute 
 their own articles, when it became politic to do so, on the floor of the 
 House of Commons. Their game was open and obvious. They had a 
 certain amount of talent to sell, and they watched the market to get the 
 best price they could for it. Macaulay, adds Fraser, sold his article for 
 10,000 a year, and no one could doubt his talent as a huckster ; Grant 
 and Brougham for 5000 each, and so on. 
 
 Now, William Cobbett, Fraser goes on to say, illustrates the third 
 class, which is perfectly distinct from the other two. " His mind was 
 
 * A Philological Grammar of the English Language, etc., by Thomas Martin 
 (London, Rivington ; Birmingham, Beilby and Knott, 1824, 8vo, pp. 402). 1 knew the 
 author well ; and remember him, a tall, attenuated old man, glad to earn a few coppers 
 from the inferior keepers of book-stalls in Birmingham, by printing paper lettering- 
 labels, for the backs of old books. He died in such poverty that the local newspapers, 
 so fulsome over the demise of a Geach or a Mason, did not think it worth their while 
 to make any note of the "when " and the "how " of his exit. 
 
 f This was added subsequently, and is not to be found in all editions. 
 
342 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 not full of zeal for the good of others, like Sadler's ; nor could he stoop 
 to the marketing plan of the ' young men of talent.' He rather aimed to 
 force his way by dint of muscular power, and to a certain extent he 
 succeeded. His sympathies were with the people ; and had he but 
 possessed some moral and religious principle, he would probably have 
 wrought out great things for them. But though not of such a sordid soul 
 as the regular place-hunters of the third class, he was yet a self-seeker. 
 The first idea in his mind was ever, William Cobbett. It was this 
 that effectually prevented his usefulness. Whatever whim he took up, 
 right or wrong, it became his rule, for the exaltation of himself, to force 
 down the throats of his followers. But these hobbies of his were often 
 mere senseless vagaries, and men could not submit to be rough-ridden 
 by one of themselves. . . . The one thing that he wanted was sound 
 moral principle, flowing, as it ever must, from correct religious knowledge. 
 In the absence of these essentials, his career was that of a barque .on a 
 trackless ocean, without a compass, and beneath a cloudy sky. Often on a 
 right tack, but ever so by accident, we see in him a striking example of the 
 waste and inutility of the most stupendous talents, when, unchecked and un- 
 directed by correct principles, they become the senseless agents of self-will? 
 
 Leigh Hunt, writing from Hammersmith, in January, 1853, says: 
 " Carlisle and Hetherington were both, I believe, honest, sincere men, as 
 well as Mr. Watson ; and honesty and sincerity are always good public 
 company. The only associate I should object to is Cobbett ; because, 
 though he suffered, he assuredly did not know 'how to suffer'; and 
 though he ' fought,' he assuredly did know how to run away ; and though 
 he beat me hollow as a political journalist, and I believe also did good 
 to the cause of reform, it is to be doubted whether he was ever earnest in 
 anything but selling his journal and finding fault." He goes on to suggest 
 that there are two men who will refine and exalt the list "in spite of 
 Cobbett," and those are Gilbert Wakefield, the scholar, who was two 
 years in Dorchester gaol, for writing a "libel" against the war with 
 France ; and James Montgomery, the venerable poet, who suffered in 
 like manner for the cause of reform, while editor of the Sheffield Iris. 
 
 In February, 1861, a lecture was delivered in Birmingham, by that 
 admirable speaker, the late George Dawson, M.A., on "William Cobbett: 
 Ploughboy, Soldier, Author and Member of Parliament." Mr. Dawson 
 possessed that rare, but essential, faculty in a lecturer, of throwing him- 
 self heart and soul into the life of his subject, and entirely sympathizing, 
 not necessarily agreeing, with his thoughts, feelings, pursuits, and 
 actions. In this way, whether he is discoursing on Horace Walpole, 
 Charles Lamb, Bunyan or Swift, he seems for the moment to adopt 
 or express the ideas of the man, and speak the very words which he 
 himself would have used. Thus, in this lecture on Cobbett, we come 
 across a passage which might have been written by the demagogue him- 
 self. " Cobbett," says he, " who hated revolutions, left France and went 
 to America, where he came in contact with Dr. Priestley who had been 
 driven from this town (Birmingham), by the fanaticism of a brutal mob, 
 hounded on by a miscreant magistracy, and an ignorant and brutal gentry. 
 Dr. Priestley was, of course, not over well-disposed to England, and when 
 Cobbett heard of some of his statements, his back was up, for he was then 
 a downright good Tory, with an instinctive belief that England was the 
 best country in the world. He thought her grass the greenest, her 
 
WILLIAM COBBETT. 343 
 
 daughters the fairest, her sons the most beautiful ; he thought her Consti- 
 tution came next to the Bible and Prayer-book. He thought the Kings, 
 Lords and Commons came next to the Trinity, and were almost as sacred, 
 and without knowing the least about it, he swallowed the whole thing. 
 And here (the lecturer went on) I must discharge my conscience of one 
 little matter before I go further. My soul doth loathe that species of 
 modern Liberal with whom it is a matter of instinct, when this country 
 and any other country go to quarrel, to take it for granted that all other 
 nations are right, and that England is wrong. Before I know a question, 
 I go for old England ; after I know it, I try to go for the truth. But 
 there are men, who, if there is a war between England and nasty, dirty 
 Yehs and Chinamen, before they know anything of the matter, say the 
 enemy is right. Before I know, I am sure England, my own country, my 
 Jerusalem, my people, are right, until I prove them wrong. It must be 
 proved to me before I go with the new-fangled Liberals of to-day in 
 supposing that England is always wrong, while Chinese, Hindoos, Zulus, 
 Caffres, Niggers, and all other such nastinesses, are always right." 
 
 In February, 1877, died, at his residence, South Kensington, John 
 Morgan Cobbett, M.P. for Oldham, the second son of William Cobbett. 
 He was born in 1800, and called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1830. He 
 was the author of Letters fro?n France, containi?ig Observations on that 
 Country during a Journey from Calais to the South as far as Limoges, etc., 
 commencing in Aprils and ending in December, 1824. From 1852 to 1865 
 he sat for Oldham, the same constituency which his father had represented 
 from 1832 to 1835 ; having twice before contested the borough unsuccess- 
 fully, and also been defeated at Chichester. In 1872, he was re-elected for 
 Oldham, and again in February, 1874. He was a Conservative in politics ; 
 but upon a few questions his views were somewhat in advance of those 
 held by his party. Thus he was a warm supporter of the Ballot Bill, and 
 one of the most remarkable of his speeches was delivered on the second 
 reading of this. He was J. P. for Sussex, and chairman of the Quarter 
 Sessions for the western division of that county. 
 
 In 1870, the Rev. John Selby Watson, the author of the Life of Richard 
 Porson (186 1, 8vo), to the terrible termination of whose career I have 
 already made allusion, produced Biographies of John Wilkes afid 
 William Cobbett (Blackwood and Sons, 8vo). A hundred years ago, 
 Horace Walpole said that Wilkes was a Phoenix who was always rising 
 from his own embers. The words seem just as applicable now ; for, in 
 the words of the Athenceum, who reviewed Mr. Watson's book (May 7th, 
 1870), " Mr. Thorold Rogers has hardly roasted this bird, and scattered 
 its ashes to the four winds of heaven/ 5 when a new biographer lights the 
 fires anew. 
 
 Enough. I have been thus diffuse in my notice of William Cobbett 
 for three reasons. The first was the sheer necessity of the case ; the 
 second, because I anticipate that his successor in the "Gallery" will hardly 
 afford me a " Place," for illustration, or a peg of interest on which to hang 
 a note ; and the third, because it is my belief that this extraordinary 
 man, in his egotism, his prejudice, his one-sidedness, his humour, his 
 shrewdness, his sagacity, his obstinacy, his pluck, his pugnacity, his 
 inability to accept defeat, and perchance a dozen other qualities, was 
 a marvellously typical specimen of that bundle of heterogeneous attributes 
 which have come to be associated with the term " Englishman," as Eliza 
 Cook has sung, and Ralph Waldo Emerson described him. 
 
314 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 LXVI. FRANCIS PLACE. 
 
 The late Augustus de Morgan, in his entertaining volume, A Budget or 
 Paradoxes (Longmans, 8vo, 1872, pp. 119, 120), says, "I once had a 
 conversation with a very remarkable man, who was generally called, 
 " Place the Tailor ; " but who was politician, political economist, etc., etc. 
 He sat in the room above his shop, he was then a thriving master-tailor 
 of Charing Cross, surrounded by books enough for nine, to shame a 
 proverb. The 'blue-books' alone, cut up into strips, would have measured 
 Great Britain, for 'oh-no-we-never-mention-'ems,' the Highlands included. 
 I cannot find a biography of this worthy and able man. I happened to 
 mention William Frend, and he said, ' Ah ! my old master as I always 
 call him. Many and many a time, and year after year, did he come in 
 every now and then, to give me instruction, while I was sitting on the 
 board, working for my living, you know.' Place, who really was a sound 
 economist, is joined with Cobbett, because they were together at one 
 time, and because he was in 1800, etc., a great Radical. But for Cobbett 
 he had a great contempt, etc." 
 
 The following account of the genesis of PLACE, a personage whose 
 raison d^etre in Regina's " Gallery of the Illustrious," I am not able 
 satisfactorily to show forth, is given, I know not with what truth, by 
 the responsible exhibitor. " This hero," he says, "was found, we believe, 
 in a dust-pan, upon the steps of a house in St. James's Place, about sixty 
 years back, by an honest Charlie, who forthwith conveyed him to the next 
 workhouse, where (for these were unenlightened times) the little stranger 
 was kindly taken care of. He was christened Francis^ that being the 
 surname of his wet-nurse ; while, in lieu of patronymic, they gave him 
 Place, as a memorial of the locality where he had been discovered. Such 
 were the bulrushes out of which Westminster drew the future Moses oi 
 the Preventive Check, a philosophical decalogue well worthy to super- 
 sede the first, which it so boldly contradicts, particularly in the absurd 
 article about 7nurderP 
 
 Further on, I find him termed " the sagest of snips," and the story 
 told how " he soon learned to take a just measure of the fundamental 
 features of the old system, and declared war, to the scissors' point, against 
 those grievous humbugs, the Boroughs, the Peers and the Church ; how, 
 "not finding it convenient to withdraw his attention wholly from the shop,, 
 he delegated the task of parliamentary warfare to various subservient 
 journeymen in succession, such as Burdett, Hobhouse and Evans " ; 
 and how he may look with confidence to see himself in the House, being 
 as well entitled to sit there as any philosopher of the era, not excepting 
 Buckingham, Wakley, Bowring and Roebuck. " Like him," says my 
 authority, "they all are, we believe, Westminster Reviewers, but it is 
 well known that Place's articles were always more prime than any oi 
 theirs. He had a wider range, too ; being, in fact, in its palmier days v 
 at once the Jeffrey, the Playfair, and the Sidney Smith, the critic-poetical, 
 the critic-mathematical, and the critic-theological, of the grand organ of 
 Benthamism." 
 
AUTFOK. Or^TBX PBIXCUUB Of IWULATIOX'? 
 
FRANCIS PLACE. 345, 
 
 Fraser goes on in the hard-hitting style, characteristic of the day, and 
 for which, inasmuch as it breaks no bones, and is not dealt behind the 
 back, I must confess to a liking, at all events, for present reading : 
 " We desire to see such men in Parliament, nay, in office : it is our 
 fervent wish to see Place himself in Downing Street, where he would 
 certainly look the thing a good deal better than Spring Rice, whom, we 
 are confident, he would pronounce a disgrace to any reputable shop- 
 board. We are weary of seeing the loaves and fishes abandoned, by 
 those who have the real power in this land, to such miserable mendicant 
 imbeciles, the very dregs and sweepings of the doomed and fated aris- 
 tocracy, as Johnny Russell, Morpeth, Mulgrave, and Duncannon, together 
 with such a handful of time-serving scamps, traitors to the plebs that 
 spawned them, as Hobhouse, Rice, Ellice, Wood and Tallow Tomson. 
 Away with these paltry mimes ! the time is come when the real actors 
 ought to be bounding on the stage ; while such despicable tools should 
 shrink behind the scenes, there to perform the obscure, as well as dirty 
 work, for which alone nature and art have qualified them. Away with, 
 these dwarf monsters ! despised, far below the mark of that rather respect- 
 able sentiment called hatred, by every Tory, loathed in his soul by every 
 Liberal, who does not happen either to have been begotten by ' some 
 tenth transmitter of a foolish face,' or to have first fawned upon, and then 
 spurned, the crawling nastiness of his native mud. Away with all such,, 
 we say. Give us men to whose proceedings we can apply some rational 
 standard of calculation, honest, outspoken fractions of men even ; any- 
 thing but this base convention of hypocrisy and cowardice, whose God is 
 their belly." 
 
 Although referred to in the foregoing paragraph (being a Tailor) in 
 his fractional capacity, Place seems, to judge from his portraiture, fully 
 competent to give a sneering world " assurance of a man." I could 
 fancy, however, that he sits somewhat uneasily on his chair, as one 
 might do who is more accustomed to the oriental fashion of the shop- 
 board ; or who, perchance, has not totally escaped all of those physical 
 inconveniences, to which Ramazzini informs us his craft is obnoxious, 
 " Sarcinatores aute7n dum vestimenta consuunt, cu?n fere ex necessitate 
 crurum alterum super femur inflexum cogantur detinere, crurum stupore,, 
 claudicatione, ischiade, non raro tentari solentj et ob vitam sedentariam y 
 et inflexam corporis figurant, dum totd die sedentes in opificinis suis 
 incumbimt) curvi sunt, gibbosi, obstipo capiteT * 
 
 Few characters about Town were better known in their day than the 
 personage of whom I am discoursing ; but I do not suppose that his 
 career as a politician, a tailor, or a man, is capable of exciting much interest 
 at the present moment. He began his public life as early as 1793, when 
 only twenty-one years of age, by becoming Secretary to the Constitutional 
 Association ; and participated, later, in the active operations of the Anti- 
 Corn Law League, and the agitation which obtained for us the Penny 
 Postage. He lived and carried on business, at No. 16, Charing Cross, and 
 is described in the London Directory for 1808, as a " Tailor and Mercer." 
 He was, as I have already noted, a great political economist, and became 
 the friend of Jeremy Bentham and the elder Mill. He gathered together 
 a large number of books ; such of which as he had bound, collections 
 of pamphlets, for instance, may be known by their drab sides, vellum 
 * De Morbis Artificum (1718, 4to, p. 384). 
 
346 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 backs, and the Porson-like caligraphy of the lettering thereupon. A vast 
 number of these fell into the possession of a late Taxing Master in 
 Chancery, Joseph Parkes ; and a " heap " of them was possessed, as he 
 informed me, by the late John Camden Hotten, who wrote, "both the 
 man and his books gave me the idea of an intense Quaker." He acquired 
 a widely extended influence, especially among the lower classes of West- 
 minster ; and perhaps it is to this, as well as the exhaustion of " cha- 
 racters" more truly "illustrious" in a literary sense, that we are to ascribe 
 his admission into the " Gallery." He amassed a fortune, and died at 
 his residence, Foxley Terrace, Kensington, on January 2nd, 1854, in the 
 eighty-third year of his age. 
 
 The reader may hunt up, if he think it worth his trouble, the old 
 volumes of Eraser's Magazi?te, where (1832, p. 247) he will find the witty 
 "Epistles to the Literati," No. II. (I.) Place to Wilson; (II.) Wilson 
 to Place. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, who boasted that she had a cavalry regiment, 
 whereof neither man nor horse could be injured, her regiment, namely, 
 of Tailors on Mares, is said to have addressed a deputation of eighteen 
 Tailors, with a " Good morning gentlemen, both / " There is a story, 
 moreover, of a duellist, who, having accepted a challenge from a Tailor, 
 and not putting himself into attitude, when on the ground and in face of 
 his opponent, replied to a question as to the cause of his delay, by the 
 statement, that he was " waiting for the other eight ! " I believe his 
 exasperated adversary shot him dead without further ado. 
 
 In Charles Lamb's fanciful essay, " On the Melancholy of Tailors," he 
 says, " I have known some few among them arrive at the dignity of 
 speculative politicians." It is just possible that the renowned Tailor 
 of Charing Cross was in his mind when he indited the remark ; and 
 though Political Economy or Benthamite Utilitarianism was not much 
 in his way, he may have, perchance, listened there to discussions, as 
 profitable, if less agreeable, than those which he records as being held at 
 the shop of his tonsorial friend, in Flower de Luce Court, Fleet Street. 
 
 The Tailor, why I do not know, holds the same position of obloquy 
 with us as the Epicier does in France ; and from the earliest time of our 
 literature has been considered a fair mark for the shafts of derision and 
 satire. So Shakespeare, in the Taming of the Shrew, makes " Petruchio " 
 exclaim, when he would have none of the "paltry cap," and gown "curved 
 like an apple-tart," which the nameless tailor had fashioned for " Katha- 
 rine," 
 
 -Thou liest, thou thread, 
 
 Thou thimble, 
 
 Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, 
 
 Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket thou : 
 
 Brav'd in mine own house with a skein of thread ! 
 
 Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant ; 
 
 Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard, 
 
 As thou shalt think on prating while thou liv'st !" 
 
 ' Massinger, in his New Way to Pay Old Debts, introduces a Tailor, 
 whom the profligacy of " Master Wellborn " has reduced to a " mere 
 botcher," but even his sad plight evokes no pity from the dramatist, who 
 adds injury to insult by inveighing on the absurdity of paying for clothes 
 with punctuality, inasmuch, as "Master Wellborn" remarks, "if a Tailor 
 
FRANCIS PLACE. 347 
 
 is paid but once in twenty years, he seldom is a loser." Douglas Jerrold, 
 in more recent days, has improved upon this, and in his historical drama 
 of Nell Gwynne, makes the merry Monarch lay down the rule that 
 you should " Never pay a Tailor, because sin was the occasion of their 
 trade." 
 
 I am here reminded of that fine piece of dramatic humour, The Tailors 
 {or " Quadrupeds "), a Tragedy for Warm Weather, in three acts, with its 
 clever Prologue by David Garrick. This piece was first performed at the 
 Haymarket in 1767, under the management of Foote, and has conse- 
 quently been, though as I think erroneously, attributed to the pen of our 
 " English Aristophanes." Just at the time of its appearance there had 
 been serious differences concerning wages between the master-tailors and 
 their journeymen, and this circumstance was thought by the author to 
 afford a favourable groundwork for a mock tragedy, in which imitations 
 of dramatic authors, and parodies of passages in the most popular plays 
 of the day, should be introduced with ludicrous gravity, in blank verse. 
 The piece met with approbation ; and afterwards, as abridged and 
 slightly altered by Colnian, occasionally formed part of the summer 
 entertainments at the Haymarket. Subsequently to this, the piece, 
 which naturally requires considerable familiarity with the dramatic 
 productions of the period for its due appreciation, had fallen into some 
 neglect ; when Dowton conceived, from the great success which had 
 attended the revival of Fielding's Torn Thumb, as " altered " by Kane 
 O'Hara, that the Tailors also might be advantageously resuscitated, and 
 consequently announced it for his benefit, on August 15th, 1805. The 
 tailors, however, considered that their "craft was in danger" of ridicule ; 
 and threatened the management that, if the piece was brought forward, 
 they would proceed in a body to the house, and take vengeance. These 
 threats, and the anonymous letters which showered in upon manager and 
 actor, were disregarded ; and on the appointed evening nearly a thousand 
 tailors were waiting for admittance at the doors of the theatre. The first 
 piece was the BirtJiday, and when Dowton made his appearance in the 
 character of " Captain Bertram," a pair of tailor's scissors and a thimble 
 were hurled at his head from the shilling gallery. By and by the uproar 
 grew so furious, that a magistrate was sent for. Special constables from 
 the theatrical body were sworn in ; Bow Street officers were summoned, 
 and the commanding officer at the Horse Guards was invited to the 
 Theatre, with a full body of men to assist him in keeping the peace. In 
 the end, thirty-two of the ringleaders having been apprehended, the 
 Birthday was performed in tolerable quietude. The second piece was 
 Katharine and Petruchio, during the performance of which the audience 
 often crying eagerly for the Tailors, the manager announced that if no 
 disturbance was created by the act in which the memorable Tailor 
 figures, their wish should be gratified. Shakespeare's play was brought 
 to an end without opposition ; but when the third piece came on, and the 
 curtain drawing up, three Tailors were discovered, seated on a board, 
 tumult again uprose, and the words of the actors were drowned by 
 angry vociferation. Fresh arrests were made, and the piece went on ; 
 but, in consequence of the interruptions, it was not concluded till a late 
 hour, a party of the Horse Guards patrolling the Haymarket till the 
 angry crowd had dispersed. In due time the prisoners appeared before 
 the magistrates, when, on the charge of "riotously and tumultously 
 
34 8 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 assembling, with divers others, in the Theatre Royal, Hay market, to 
 the disturbance of the public peace, violently opposing the performance 
 of the night, and throwing a pair of scissors at Mr. Dowton, Comedian, 
 and endangering his life therewith," sixteen were admitted to bail, and the 
 rest, except four who were remanded, were discharged. All were Tailors, 
 but one. 
 
 After this affair The Tailors slumbered, till it was revived at the 
 Lyceum to afford Mr. Lovegrove an opportunity of displaying his rich 
 humour in the part of " Abrahamides." He was admirably supported by 
 Oxberry, and the success of the piece was great. At a subsequent period, 
 the same part was most admirably represented by that inimitable master 
 of the burlesque, the late John Reeve. 
 
 In the once threepenny, now priceless, Gallery of Comicalities, No. I, 
 is a capital woodcut after Robert Cruikshank, representing a pair of 
 tailors, at mortal fence with their yard sticks, and superscribed " Measure 
 for Measure." One of the combatants, " goose " in hand, as he runs the 
 other through the body with his inglorious weapon, exclaims, " Through 
 thy gizzard thou Dung / " while the victim responds with his last 
 breath, " Flinty monster ! thou hast cabbaged my very existence ! " Here 
 a reference to Hotten's Slang Dictio?iary will inform the reader that, by 
 the opprobrium term " Dung "is signified "an operative who works for an 
 employer who does not give full, or ' society ' wages ; " and by " cabbage " 
 we are to understand "pieces of cloth purloined by tailors." 
 
 When the retired tobacconist set up his carriage, and applied to a 
 more learned friend for an appropriate motto for his " arms," he was 
 supplied with the words "Quid rides," and did not see the joke : so ? 
 it was suggested by some way to Nihil, the celebrated London tailor, that 
 he could not find anything more suitable in this way than the well-known 
 axiom, " Ex Nihilo mhWflt." 
 
 It is rather a favourite trick just now of writers of fiction, to make their 
 heroines discard an aristocratic suitor, and bestow themselves and their 
 affections on " Knights of low degree." Thus Mr. Anthony Trollope, 
 that admirable novelist whose death the reading world at the present 
 moment (December, 1882) deplores, makes, " Lady Anna," in his novel 
 of that name, reject a lord of wealth and accomplishments, and persist in 
 having none other than a journeyman tailor, whose sphere of operation 
 is a shop-board in the establishment of a West-End firm ! The mother, 
 who has made vast sacrifices for her daughter, is so outraged at the 
 persistence of the journalist, journeyman I mean, but it's all the same, 
 who will not give her daughter up, that she discharges a pistol at him. 
 The ball takes effect ; but not sufficiently, I am sorry to say, to definitively 
 prevent the misalliance. Mr. Trollope was fond of Tailors. In Ralph the 
 Heir he introduces another London breeches-maker, a " Mr. Neefit," 
 who, in language and manners, bears about the same relation to an 
 actual West-End tradesman, as one of Rowlandson's or Gillray's spindle- 
 shanked Frenchmen does to a Vaxxsx&n. flaneur of the present day. We 
 recognize, and profess to be outraged by, caricature and exaggeration in 
 graphic art, but fail to be moved by a much stronger dose in the prose 
 fiction of our most eminent writers. 
 
 Let us not forget that one of the most celebrated characters of history, 
 " Peeping Tom of Coventry," was a Tailor. 
 
 So far jest; let me conclude in earnest. Tailor-jokes, and tailor- 
 
FRANCIS PLACE. 349 
 
 literature would fill a volume ; but instead of commemorating the 
 members of the gentle craft who have gained an immortality of ridicule, 
 I prefer to think of those who have dignified the " board " by learning, 
 wisdom or virtue. I love to call to mind that learned tailor of Bucking- 
 ham, whom Mr. Spence, aforetime "Poetry Professor" at Oxford, has 
 ventured to compare with Magliabechi ; * that erudite Tailor of Norwich, 
 who was sent by Prideaux to Oxford, where he became a celebrated 
 Hebraist, was employed to transcribe Oriental MSS. in the Bodleian, and 
 translated the Al-Mesra, or "Mahomet's Journey to Heaven" into 
 English ; f that generous Tailor of Paris (O, si sic omnes /) who lent 
 Thackeray a thousand francs when the author was hard up, and to whom 
 the latter, in gratitude, dedicated his Paris Sketch-book j % the political 
 Tailor of London, Francis Place, of whom I have been just now speaking ; 
 that gentle and simple Tailor of Dalkeith, Mansie Wauch, whose story, 
 as imagined by "Delta" Moir, has never been surpassed in beauty and 
 pathos ; and finally that " Scottish Tailor," Tammas Bodkih\ whose 
 " humours " are clothed in the " hodden grey " of his native land, that 
 homely but expressive Doric of the north, which under the combined 
 influence of education and intercourse, is gradually being supplanted by 
 the " Queen's English," to survive alone in the works of Ramsay, 
 Ferguson and Burns. 
 
 But such citations as these in which I have been indulging, are, I am 
 afraid, caviare for the general, in whom exists an inherent prejudice 
 which progressive[civilization seem impotent to uproot. Hear " Professor 
 Teufelsdrockh " : 
 
 " If aught in the history of the world's blindness could surprise us, 
 here might we indeed pause and wonder. An idea has gone abroad, and 
 fixed itself down into a wide-spreading rooted error, that Tailors are a 
 distinct species in physiology, not men, but fractional parts of men. 
 Call any one a Schneider (cutter, tailor) is it not, in our dislocated, hood- 
 winked and indeed delirious condition of society, equivalent to defying 
 his perpetual, fellest enmity ? The epithet Schneidermassig (tailor-like) 
 betokens an otherwise unapproachable degree of pusillanimity. We 
 introduce a ' Tailor's Melancholy,' more opprobrious than any leprosy, 
 into our books of medicine ; and fable, I know not what of his gene- 
 rating it by living on cabbage." IT 
 
 All this is sadly true ; and so also, I fear, in his prophecy : " Upwards 
 of a century must elapse, and still the bleeding fight of freedom be fought, 
 whoso is noblest perishing in the van, and thrones be hurled on altars, 
 like Pelion on Ossa, and the Moloch of iniquity have his victims, and 
 the Michael of justice his martyrs, before Tailors can be admitted to 
 their true prerogatives of manhood, and this last wound of suffering 
 humanity be closed." 
 
 * A Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch, between a most celebrated Man of Florence 
 and one scarce ever heard of in England, by the Rev. Mr. Spence (Strawberry-Hill, 
 
 L757> 8v )- 
 
 f Selections of Curious Articles from the " Gentleman's Magazine" vol. iii. p. 266. 
 
 % Thackeray, the Humorist and the Man of Letters, by Theodore Taylor (J. C. 
 Hotten), p. 84. 
 
 Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith, by D. M. Moir (Blackwood, 
 1828, 8vo). 
 
 \Tammas Bodkin : or The Humours of a Scottish Tailor (Edinburgh, etc., 1864, 8vo). 
 
 \ Sartor Resartus, by Thomas Carlyle, chap. xi. 
 
350 7JJE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY, 
 
 Well : I have done herein what little I could to speed this happy 
 day ; and so bid adieu to Francis Place, Tailor and Politician, with the 
 humble aspiration from Garrick's Prologue : 
 
 "May he who writes ' a skilful tailor ' seem, 
 ' And like a well-made coat ', his present theme ; 
 ' Tho' close, yet easy ; decent, but not dull ; 
 Short, but not scanty ; without buckram, full ! ' " * 
 
 LXVIL ROBERT MACNISH] 
 
 As a " favourite contributor " t to the pages of Regina, it was but fitting 
 that ROBERT Macnish should have a special place and notice in her 
 " Gallery " of worthies. He did not survive the honour long. Another 
 month brought another number of Eraser y a brief fortnight more, and 
 the grave closed over all that was mortal of the Modern Pythagorean I 
 
 Robert Macnish belonged to that noble profession, which Virgil calls 
 ars muta; whose members, as I believe, have done more for literature than 
 those of any other calling ; and who, according to Cicero, approach 
 more nearly to the Divine nature in the accomplishment of their health- 
 giving mission. He was born February 15th, 1802, at Glasgow, where 
 his father was a surgeon in respectable practice. At school he was 
 chiefly noticeable for extreme dullness. He has recorded that he 
 abhorred his teachers as insufferable tyrants ; that no boy was ever more 
 flogged than he ; and that he looked back to the wranglings, fightings 
 and heart-burnings of his schoolboy days with the greatest loathing. At 
 the age of thirteen he left school, and shortly afterwards commenced the 
 study of physic. Here, again, we may accept his own testimony. 
 " I never was good at anything," he wrote in the Phrenological Journal,. 
 in reference to a cast of his head, which he had forwarded to Mr. Cox, 
 the phrenologist, M until I attained the age of sixteen, when I became a 
 tremendously hard-working student in medicine and general literature ; 
 two subjects which I liked, and which I pursued with an intensity which 
 I may safely say was never surpassed." 
 
 It is a customary thing nowadays to be invited to an evening seance,. 
 there to meet the shade of one of the illustrious departed, who will take 
 up one of his familiar subjects, and discourse to us thereupon in a style 
 of grammar and manner, which will force his audience to the conviction 
 that he must have been corrupted by confoundedly evil communication, 
 in the supposed higher " sphere " to which he has been translated. Well,, 
 I will assume the office of " medium" myself for the nonce ; and if I invite 
 the shade of Maginn to revisit the glimpses of the Moon, it shall be, at 
 least, to repeat none other than his own nervous language : 
 
 " Robert Macnish, who with learned pen has anatomized Sleep and 
 Drunkenness, and, with something more searching than pen, cut up those, 
 bodies which, while alive, we subject to the genial or drowsy influence 
 of drunkenness and sleep, is the hero of our present month's " Gallery."' 
 
 * prologue to the Tailors, a Tragedy for Warm Weather (1767, 8vo). 
 + Eraser's Magazine (" Preface to our Second Decade"), vol. xxi. p. 23. 
 
Q. 'Uc 
 
 ArTHOl OF THE ANATOMY F BR1TNKENNE S S ' 
 
ROBERT MACNISIL 35 
 
 It would be needless to recommend to the favourable notice of the 
 readers of this Magazine the friendly countenance of the Modern 
 Pythagorean. His history is brief enough to be squeezed without any 
 effort of condensation on our part into the customary page. Glasgow, 
 city of St. Mungo and rum-punch, saw his birth some thirty years ago. 
 He was initiated into the preliminary miseries of mankind, i.e. education,, 
 in the ducal city of Hamilton, not far from the residence of the first and 
 shabbiest Duke of Scotland. Here he pursued his infantile studies with 
 such success as to be looked upon as the greatest blockhead of his time, 
 the lowest seat in the class being his by such prescriptive title that if chance 
 dethroned him from it by the substitution of another, the day of so- 
 marvellous an event was considered to be one of such wonder and 
 rejoicing as to demand a holiday. Emancipated from this tutelage, he 
 was doomed to be what, in Scottish language, is called a writer a 
 personage who in more southern latitudes is designated an attorney ; but 
 Macnish showed symptoms of conscientiousness, and resolutely determin- 
 ing not to lower his character by becoming a lawyer, commenced a most 
 successful career as a body-snatcher : 
 
 ' 'Tis better from the grave the dead to draw, 
 Than clasp the living in the tomb of law,' 
 
 as some poet, 'whose name has never yet been divulged to the public,, 
 remarks in a poem which still remains in MS. penes nos. 
 
 "Acting on the principles laid down in this distich, Macnish set about 
 his medical studies with the zeal of a philosopher and the muscle of a 
 resurrectionist. We sincerely believe that there is no ground for accusing: 
 him of being involved, to any considerable extent, in the scientific 
 practices, carried, soon after the commencement of his professional 
 career, to their perfection by Messrs. Burke and Hare ; at least, it never 
 was brought home to him, or anything which appeared to us to be of 
 sufficient testimony. That he was sent on a mission of medicine to slay 
 the Caithnessians, close by the neighbourhood of the far-famed house of 
 John O'Groats, cannot be denied. Equally certain is it, that while 
 ravaging the whole of that hospitable though, according to works on 
 geography, inhospitable coast, he laid up ample materials for arranging- 
 the phenomena afterwards dissertated upon in his Essay on Drunken- 
 ness. Thence, qualified by the civilization of the North, he proceeded 
 to Paris ; and there he was bitten with an ambition for authorship. He 
 began with Drunkenness, and naturally proceeded to Sleep. Both are 
 good books ; the author, of course, thinks that that which the public least 
 regarded, Sleep, is superior to that which met with the larger degree of 
 popular favour. Blackwood's Magazine received his first monthly 
 effusion, it was something about a metempsychosis ; to which he 
 affixed what was, of course, the most appropriate signature, " A Modern 
 Pythagorean." The sobriquet has stuck to him, and a Modern Pythago- 
 rean he will be to the end of the chapter ; though he should eat as much 
 venison as an alderman, and outlive his modernness as much as George 
 Colman the Younger has outlived his youth. The Book of Aphorisms, 
 the greater part of which originally appeared in our pages, is one of his 
 most popular works, being composed on the model of the most celebrated 
 authors ; such as Solomon, Confucius, Aristotle, O'Doherty, Cato the 
 Censor, Theognis, the golden verses of the ancient Pythagoras, Rochefou- 
 
352 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 cauld, and other eminent personages, whose writings aie, or should have 
 been, engraved in letters of gold, on pillars of alabaster. 
 
 " He is now in the prime of life and full vigour of increasing practice. 
 During the prevalence of cholera in Scotland, his unwearied services 
 were of eminent advantage in quelling or averting the plague ; and 
 though we do not wish for its return to afford him a new opportunity of 
 displaying his zeal and ability, we hope that the ordinary fate of mankind 
 will keep him amply at work as an M.D., while more hilarious influences 
 will constantly bring him before the public as the M. P." 
 
 At seventeen he began to contribute to a local periodical. At 
 eighteen he received the degree of Magister Chirurgice j and became 
 assistant to Dr. Henderson, of Clyth, Caithness, corresponding, in the 
 midst of his labours, with the Inverness Courier, and beginning to lay up 
 materials for his Anatomy of Drunkenness. After some eighteen months 
 of professional and literary work, his health began to fail ; and he 
 returned to Glasgow. After a short stay in his native city, he proceeded 
 to Paris, in order to complete his medical studies. He attended the 
 lectures of Broussais, and other eminent physiologists ; and also heard a 
 course by Gall, whose name is associated with that of Spurzheim, as one 
 of the founders of the so-called science of Phrenology. It was while 
 listening to one of the lectures of the latter, that he was pointed out to 
 his fellow-students by the lecturer as an instance of the remarkable 
 development of the organ of comparison, which happened then to be the 
 subject of illustration. In Paris he remained about six months, taking 
 small part in the gaieties of the city, and caring little for French literature. 
 In 1825 he returned to Glasgow, where he received his diploma from the 
 Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons, presenting to this body his A?iatomy 
 of Drunkenness as his inaugural thesis. This essay, mere sketch as it 
 was, was well received. It was published by McPh'un, of Glasgow, and 
 lias since passed through many editions. The last before his death 
 appeared in 1834; this was the fftk, and had again received the correc- 
 tions and additions of the author, rendering it probably as perfect and 
 complete as he could make it. It must now be regarded as a classic ; 
 and in perspicuity of method, elegance of style, and felicity of illustration, 
 has no rival since the elegant essay of Dr. Trotter on the same subject. 
 It was reviewed by Professor Wilson, in Blackwood, who wrote : " This 
 little book is evidently the production of a man of genius. The style is 
 singularly neat, terse, and vigorous, far beyond the reach of an ordinary 
 mind ; the strain of sentiment is such as does infinite honour to the 
 author's heart ; and the observation of human life, by which every page 
 is characterized, speaks a bold, active, and philosophical intellect As a 
 medical treatise it is excellent ; but its merit is as a moral dissertation on 
 the nature, causes, and effects of one of the most deplorable and pernicious 
 vices that can degrade and afflict the ongoings of social life. ... To 
 those who stand in need of advice and warning, this treatise is worth a 
 -hundred sermons. ,, 
 
 Macnish had hitherto confined his more literary lucubrations to the 
 minor periodicals of Glasgow and Edinburgh. In 1826 he essayed a 
 higher flight by the contribution to Blhckicood's Magazine, then in the 
 height of its early glory, of his extraordinary tale, " The Metempsychosis," 
 which was made the " leading article " in the number for May. This at 
 once gave its author a place among the brilliant band of men of genius 
 
ROBERT MAC X IS 11, 353 
 
 who rallied round Ebony, and suggested the pen-name which he thence- 
 forth adopted, of the " Modern Pythagorean." 
 
 An able critic in Eraser's Magazine * thus speaks of this celebrated 
 story : " It appears to us to be the best fiction of its kind in our language. 
 The humour is exquisite, rich, easy, flowing and unforced. There is 
 nothing like antithesis or point in the sentences : and so much the better, 
 for such sparkles and tricks of wit take away very much from the general 
 effect of the whole piece ; and, to repeat the old maxim, the perfection of 
 style is de ne pas en avoir. There is a fine faith, too, about the narrative, 
 which, strange and wild as it is, from the earnest manner in which it is 
 related, has a convincing air, and bears the character of a truth. Hoff- 
 man's Diableries have this merit in a high degree ; and perhaps Macnish 
 was a little indebted to him for his fantastical notions, and his manner of 
 treating the subje'ct." 
 
 For some time after the publication of this story, Macnish continued 
 to be a regular contributor to Blackwood. He became intimate with 
 Wilson, Moir, De Quincey, Thomas Aird, Hogg and others ; passed 
 occasionally the jug round at "Awmrose's," and occasionally is men- 
 tioned in the Nodes, but does not appear, so far as I remember, as 
 an interlocutor. 
 
 Besides contributing to Blackwood, Macnish occasionally wrote for 
 some of the "Annuals." In the Forget-me-Not and Friendship s Offeri?ig 
 are to be found articles in prose and poetry from his racy pen. Among 
 these may be mentioned " The Vision of Robert the Bruce," and " The 
 Covenanters," which latter was dramatized a few years later, and had a 
 " run of some length at the English Opera House. 
 
 In 1830 he published his next more important work, The Philosophy 
 of Sleep, which he dedicated to his father, then president of the Faculty 
 of Physicians and Surgeons at Glasgow." Certain redundancies and 
 inaccuracies were removed and corrected, and important illustrative 
 matter added, in the later editions. In the advertisement to the third 
 which appeared in 1836, he stated that, in its improved form, the work 
 contained as good an account of Sleep as he was capable of producing, 
 and that it was not probable that any further change would be made. He 
 had previously removed some obscurities which existed in the first impres- 
 sion, by openly embracing the doctrines of Phrenology, which he believed 
 alone capable of affording a satisfactory explanation of the various pheno- 
 mena of Sleep. The second edition of this treatise was translated into 
 German, and in that language published at Leipzig. 
 
 He now became a contributor to Eraser, where the curious story 
 appeared, " Singular Passage in My Own Life," and his burlesque essay, 
 " The Philosophy of Burking," which may have been, in some measure, 
 suggested by De Quincey 's humorous dissertation, On Murder co?isidered 
 as One of the Fine Arts. 
 
 Among his fugitive pieces, many of which are poems both humorous 
 and serious, may be mentioned a tale entitled The Psychological Curiosity. 
 This is not included among his collected works, and first appeared as 
 the production of James Hogg, in the Scottish Annual. It was after- 
 wards published in Eraser's Magazine for June, 1839, where it is pointed 
 out as a hoax played off by Macnish on the simple " Shepherd." 
 
 In 1834 he managed to escape from his professional labours, and made 
 * June, 1839, p. 686. 
 
 2 A 
 
354 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 a trip to the Continent, his notes on which he shortly after published in 
 Eraser. In this same year, too, appeared his Book of Aphorisms j 
 " twelve dozen " of which had previously seen the light in Fraser, with a 
 running commentary by " Sir Morgan O'Doherty," of whose own worldly 
 wise Maxims I have already made mention. They were all written, the 
 author tells us, "in the evenings of September, 1832, for the purpose of 
 whiling away a few idle hours." 
 
 In 1836 he published an elementary treatise on Phrenology, in the 
 form of question and answer, of which two thousand copies were sold in 
 a few months. This is one of the clearest and most convincing bo.oks 
 that has yet appeared, and was translated into French, by H. Lebeau, 
 under the title of Introductio?i a V Etude de la Phrenologie par Dema7ides 
 et Riponses (1838, i8mo). He also edited Dr. Brigham's very interesting 
 little work, On the Influence of Me?ttal Cultivation, and Mental Excite- 
 ment upon Health, of which two editions appeared. Neither of these 
 have I seen ; my own copy (seventh edition, 1844) appears to be edited 
 by " James Simpson, Esq., Advocate," whose preface is dated December, 
 
 1835. 
 
 In America, the various works of Macnish have gained a high reputa- 
 tion, and passed through many editions. In 1836, he received the 
 information that the degree LL.D. had been conferred upon him, in 
 recognition of his merits, by Hamilton College, United States. 
 
 In December, 1836, Dr. Macnish was attacked by a "cold," that 
 disorder which the author of A Diary of a late Physician warned us to 
 consider as "a chill, caught by sudden contact with the grave." On 
 January 3rd, 1837, he took to his bed ; typhoid symptoms manifested them- 
 selves ; he sank into a state of extreme debility ; became comatose ; and 
 so remained to his death, on January 16th, 1837, in the thirty-fifth year of 
 his age. 
 
 At the time of his decease, which cut short a career which seemed 
 destined for high intellectual distinction, hejhad been engaged on a second 
 edition of his Treatise on Phrenology. This appeared at a later day, 
 when praise and blame were alike to the gifted author. 
 
 Shortly after his death, The Metempsychosis, and a number of other 
 tales and fugitive pieces of the same author were collected and published 
 in two volumes under the title of The Modern Pythagorean, [(1838, 
 Blackwoods, small 8vo), prefaced by an interesting and copious biography 
 by Dr. Moir, who says of his early lost friend : " I loved him as David 
 loved Jonathan with almost more than a brother's love." 
 
 The two companion works, The Anatomy of Drunkenness, and The 
 Philosophy of Sleep, together with The Book of Aphorisms, and two 
 anonymous pieces, " The Confessions of an Unexecuted Femicide," and 
 " The Angel and the Spirit : a Mystery," a duologue in blank verse, 
 were published in cheap form, in one volume, by W. R. McPhun, of 
 Glasgow and London (1859, small 8vo), with a preliminary "Biogra- 
 phical Sketch." 
 
 
> ' 
 
 > } > 1 5 J 
 
XEGIXA'S MAIDS OF HONOUR. 355 
 
 LXVIII. REGINA'S MAIDS OF HONOUR. 
 
 * It is just a year ago, since we gave a jolly row of our friends whose sex 
 is male, seated at a table round ; where, o'er claret, punch, or ale, or 
 what liquor could be found, they, with song, or chant, or tale, made the 
 iocund night resound. Now, as William Wordsworth says, now another 
 day has come (you'll find the line among his lays), of purer thought and 
 fairer doom ; and behold a company, every one a lovely she, very busy 
 taking tea, or coffee, as the chance may be. 
 
 " He who from the imperial lord of Rome derives his haughty name, 
 or else the foe of Julius' fame may the title high afford, Caesar or Pompey, 
 careful black, one of Afric's injured line, standing behind a lady's back, 
 offers, not the cups of wine, but the cups, as Cowper sings, which cheer 
 and not inebriate, and don't leave behind the stings, which gentlemen who 
 sit up late, often find the morning brings, to parched tongue and aching 
 pate. 
 
 "What are they doing? What they should ; with volant tongue and 
 chatty cheer, welcoming in, by prattle good, or witty phrase, or comment 
 shrewd, the opening of the gay new year. Mrs. Hall, so fair and fine, 
 bids her brilliant eyes to glow, eyes the brightest of the nine, would be 
 but too proud to show. Outlaw he, and Buccaneer* who'd refuse to 
 worship here. And next the mistress of the shell (not of lobster but the 
 lyre), see the lovely L. E. L., talks with tongue that will not tire. True, 
 she turns away her face, out of pity to us men ; but the swan-like neck we 
 trace, and the figure full of grace, and the ?nignon hand whose pen wrote 
 the Golden Violet, and the Literary Gazette, and Francesca's mournful 
 story (isn't she painted con amore ?) Who is next ? Miladi dear. Glad 
 are we to see you here. Naughty fellows, we must plead, that with voice 
 of angry organ, once or twice we did indeed, speak not civilly of Morgan ; 
 but we must retract, repent, promise better to behave. She, we are 
 certain, will consent all our former feuds to wave ; and as we know she 
 hates O'Connell, who calls her now a blockhead old, we shall say that in 
 G'Donnell, and in other tales she told, there is many a page of fun, 
 many a bit for hearty laughing, some to shed a tear upon, some to 
 relish while we're quaffing ; and that she can use the mawleys, she has 
 shown upon the " Crawleys." Prate away, then, good Miladi, gossip, 
 gossip, bore and bore, all for him, who to the shady grove has gone for 
 years a score, for the sake of old Macowen, and his song of " Modereen 
 Roo," for your father's sake we are going never more to bother you. 
 
 " Full the face that flashes near her ; can we draw away our gaze ? 
 Vision nobler, brighter, dearer, did ne'er on human eyeball blaze. Front 
 sublime and orb oi: splendour, glance that every thought can speak ; 
 feeling proud, or pathos tender, the lid to wet, to burn the cheek ; or, 
 my halting rhyme to shorten, can't I say 'tis Mrs. Norton ? Heiress of a 
 race to whom genius his constant boon has given, through long descended 
 lines to bloom in wit of earth or strains of Heaven ! . Oh ! if thy Wander- 
 ing Jew had seen those sunny eyes, those locks of jet, how vain, how 
 
 * In allusion to two of Mrs. S. C. Hall's novgls. 
 
356 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 le's 
 
 trifling would have been the agony of fond regret which in thy strains he 
 made to feel for the creations of thy brain, those wounds thou say'st 
 he lived to heal, thee lost, he ne'er had loved again ! Oh, gorgeous 
 COUNTESS ! gayer notes for all that's charming, sweet, and smiling, for her 
 whose pleasant tales our throats are ever of fresh laughs beguiling. Say, 
 shall we call thee bright and fair, enchanting, winning ? but, no ! far 
 hence such praise as ours ; what need she care for aught beyond Sir 
 Thomas Lawrence ? Go, try to read, although his quill is too mean and 
 dull, what she inspired even in so great a sumph as Willis ; and if that 
 Yankee boy admired, who can a Christian person blame, if he, all 
 Countess-smit, pretends that, if she lets him near the flame of her warm 
 glance he'd think it shame that, like her book, she and he should look as 
 nothing nearer than Two friends ? 
 
 " Our Muse then, in a hurry, passes the pretty ladies by the glasses, 
 and comes to where Miss Porter (Jane) is her sweet cup of coffee stirring, 
 and in a soft and easy strain of Mrs. Skinner's parties purring. Miss 
 Martineau, with serious brow, beside the author fair of Thaddeus, is 
 meditating, grimly, how she can prevent the very bad use that people 
 have in this sad earth of putting things into confusion, by giving certain 
 matters birth, in spite of theories Malthusian. And last, the jolliest of 
 them all, soft-seated on a well-filled bustle, her coffee sips, by Mrs. Hall 
 dear, darling Mitford (Mary Russell). Long may she live with graphic 
 touch (though Croquis paint her here left-handed) our English scenes ia 
 pencillings Dutch, as neat as ever Douw commanded, in all their easy, 
 quiet beauty their modest forms, or grave, or gay, their homely cares,, 
 their honest duty, with heart all English to display. 
 
 " And now that all around the table we thus have taken our full career, 
 we drink the Ladies (while we are able) in the first bumper of the year. 
 Long may they flourish ere they fix, at last, their final home in Heaven ! 
 We wish them joy through thirty-six we'll do the same in thirty- 
 seven ! 
 
 Moliere, in his inimitable comedy, Le Bourgeois Gentilho?nme, makes 
 Monsieur Jourdain exclaim, "II y a plus de quarante ans, que je dis de 
 la prose, sans que j'en susse rien ! " And here we have our Mystagogue^ 
 his Pegasus afire with his subject, covering, in equal ignorance of the 
 fact, a whole page of introductory matter with very decent poetry. Some,, 
 indeed, may dispute this, and with Moliere's "Maitre de Philosophic," assert- 
 that " tout ce qui n'est point vers est prose ; " but, as I take it, it is much 
 more like poetry than the balder-dash so-called of the present day, foisted 
 upon the public by the members of a " Mutual Admiration Clique," and 
 be-pushed and be-praised into some degree of ephemeral and " market- 
 gilded popularity." 
 
 From Actaeon who played the spy on bathing Diana, to Clodius who 
 profaned the mysteries of Bona Deaj from Clodius to Peeping Tom of 
 Coventry, who dared gaze on the nude charms of Godiva ; from the last 
 hero to that modern lordling who venturing to pollute the sacred floor of 
 the harem with his masculine foot, was qualified on the very spot, for his 
 pains, to sing treble in the papal choir, dire pains and penalties have 
 been deservedly incurred by those rash individuals of the inferior sex who 
 have dared to intrude upon the sacred rites and mysteries of the ladies ia 
 secret conclave assembled. True, there are here none of the symbols of 
 secrecy. The rose is on the cheek instead of the ceiling, and a coffee-cup 
 
t n . r 
 
 tfe 
 
 ,\\y K H 
 
 tL^^c 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'tMEMICAL MANIPULATION* 
 
MICHAEL FARADAY. 357 
 
 interposed between finger and lip. But still we shall not pry farther ; 
 for what, more do we want to know ? Each member of the graceful 
 sisterhood, except one, has already received a notice at my hands ; 
 T.nd the one who yet awaits her turn has her own niche, last, it may be, 
 in the "Gallery," but not least in my own or general estimation. Some- 
 thing might doubtless be said on the subject of millinery. But here 
 Leigh Hunt himself refuses to be explicit : 
 
 " I tell not the dresses. Suffice it that Titian 
 Had own'd himself conquer'd at this exhibition ; 
 So rich were the colours ! such Autumn ! such May ! 
 For spirits and years made them more or less gay ; 
 And the elder in orange and russet came, queenly ; 
 The younger, in lily and rose, sprinkled greenly ; 
 The buxom, uniting both tastes, fill'd the doors 
 With their shoulders and frills, d la Louis Quatorze ; 
 Or, with robes a V antique, and with crowns from their graperies : 
 Blest were the eyes that beheld their broad draperies." * 
 
 Though, by and by, when the god has fairly revealed himself in person 
 to these, his favourite daughters, how finely does the poet describe the 
 saltatory revels of the active deity with these fair daughters of men : 
 
 Now with one, now with t'other he danced, now with ten ! 
 For your god in his dancing is several men. 
 Fanny Butler he waltz'd with ; he jigg'd it with MORGAN ; 
 With Hall he developed the rigadoon organ ; 
 To Pardoe he show'd Spain's impassion'd velocity ; 
 Norton, the minuet's high reciprocity. 
 Then he took Landon, ere she was aware, 
 Like a dove in a whirlwind, and whisk'd her in air : 
 Or, a Zephyr might catch up some rose-haunting fay, 
 Or as Mercury once netted Flora, they say ; 
 And then, again, stately, like any Sultaun 
 With his Queen, he and Blessington trod apavdun, f 
 Which meaneth a 'peacock-dance.' Truly, 'twas grand to see 
 How they came spreading it, pavoneggiandosi / " J 
 
 Referring the reader who may wish to know more of the sesqui- 
 pedalian and dentifrangibulous word at the end of these clever lines to a 
 paper on " The Poetry of Motion," in the New Monthly Magazine for 
 May, 1836, p. 24, I make my bow to Regina's Maids of Honour. 
 
 LXIX. -MICHAEL FARADAY. 
 
 Sir Humphry Davy being once asked to give an account of some of 
 his great discoveries in science, he mentioned one after another, con- 
 cluding with the words : " But the greatest of all was Michael 
 Faraday." The chemist was right ; for the man who discerns a great 
 
 * Feast of the Violets. 
 
 f The "Pavon " is a dance of considerable antiquity, and is said to have been a 
 favourite saltatory exercise of Queen Elizabeth. 
 \ Feast of the Violets. 
 
358 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 mind or a good heart beneath the debasements of poverty, and the 
 incrustations of vice, and brings it to light, is a discoverer in the best 
 sense of the word, though possibly with less personal advantage than 
 if he had picked up a nugget in the Australian gold-fields, or a bit of 
 crystallized carbon in a South African washing-trough. 
 
 Michael Faraday was born in 1791, in the parish of Newington 
 Butts, near London, and commenced business-life as a newspaper boy, 
 as soon as he could toddle about. His father, a poor blacksmith, 
 managed by-and-by to apprentice him to an obscure bookbinder, named 
 Ribeau, in Blandford Street, where the lad pursued his humble calling 
 till he was twenty-two years of age. It chanced at that epoch, that 
 " Ned Magrath," afterwards secretary to the Athenaeum club, entered 
 the shop of Ribeau, and observed " one of the bucks of the paper bonnet 
 zealously studying a book he ought to have been binding." The book 
 was a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and it was open at 
 " Electricity." A conversation with the " greasy journeyman " ensued, 
 from which it appeared that he was " a self-taught chemist of no slender 
 dimensions." Among the books which he had had an opportunity of 
 reading was Mrs. Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry, by which he was 
 deeply interested ; and in after-life he availed himself of every opportunity 
 of expressing his obligations to the writer. Magrath presented him with 
 a ticket of admission to the chemical lectures oi Sir Humphry Davy at 
 that same Royal Institution which was destined to become the scene of 
 his own discoveries, and the place where he was to announce them, when 
 he succeeded Sir Humphry in Albemarle Street. I need not say that 
 he sedulously availed himself of the opportunity thus afforded him, took 
 full notes of the lectures, and eager to escape from the mechanical 
 drudgery of trade, which he thought " vicious and selfish," while science, 
 he fondly imagined, " made its pursuers amiable and liberal," * ventured 
 to send these to the great lecturer, with some expression of his desire to 
 enlist himself in the service of science. Shortly after, an interview took 
 place ; at which, the aspirant records, Sir Humphry " smiled at the 
 notion of the superior moral feelings of philosophic men, and said he 
 would leave me to the experience of a few years to set me right on the 
 matter." The result of all this was that, in 1813, he was appointed 
 Assistant in the Laboratory of the Royal Institution ; and soon became 
 the favourite pupil and friend of his master. In the same year, he 
 accompanied him to the Continent, giving aid in experiments, and 
 assisting as secretary ; and in 181 5, returned to his place in the Institu- 
 tion. Here he continued to work, steadily promoting the advance of 
 chemical science, till 1821, a year which was specially signalized by 
 that discovery of the reciprocal relations of Electricity and Magnetism, 
 which was the starting-point of those continued researches which are 
 identified with his name, and contributed most largely to his scientific 
 reputation. 
 
 In 1823, he was elected one of the eight foreign Associates, or 
 corresponding Members of the Academy of Sciences of Paris. In 1824, 
 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and received its gold 
 
 * Letter of Faraday to Dr. Paris, see the Life of Sir Htimphry Davy, thai 
 "great and good man," says Maginn (whose account of Faraday's introduction to 
 him I have adopted, as not inconsistent with Faraday's own statement), "so abominably 
 caricatured by the ass Paris." 
 
MICHAEL FARADAY, 359 
 
 medal, as also the Rumford medal. In 1829, he was appointed to de- 
 liver the Bakerian lecture " On the Manufacture of Glass for Optical 
 Purposes," a subject to which he had previously given considerable 
 attention. 
 
 The various scientific discoveries of Faraday had been announced, from 
 time to time, in a series of papers, with consecutively numbered paragraphs, 
 commencing in the Philosophical Transactions for 1831 ; and these, as 
 subsequently collected and republished in three volumes (1839, ^44 and 
 1855), under the title of Experimental Researches in Electricity, have been 
 said to constitute the most perfect examples of pure and well-regulated 
 induction to be found in this or any other language. It is difficult to men- 
 tion any department of experimental philosophy or scientific manufacture 
 which is not indebted to the sagacity and research of this illustrious man. 
 The Electric Telegraph, and medical Electricity, are the outcome of his 
 chosen pursuit ; while a host of useful inventions, the condensation of 
 gases, the whole series of aniline dyes, various manipulatory processes, 
 etc., have resulted from his collateral labours, and enriched others in a 
 commercial sense, without producing that pecuniary emolument to himself 
 which he so much disregarded. 
 
 Title, Faraday might have had ; but he always declined it in any 
 form. He, however, did not disdain the honorary degree of D.C.L., from 
 the University of Oxford, which he received in 1832. In the year 
 following, the Chair of Chemistry in the Royal Institution was founded 
 by Mr. Fuller ; and at his express desire, Dr. Faraday was nominated 
 the first Fullerian Professor. For many years he lectured also in the 
 Military School at Woolwich ; and he acted as scientific adviser, in the 
 department of Lighthouses, to the Trinity Board. 
 
 In 1835, the government of Lord Melbourne marked its appreciation 
 of the value of Dr. Faraday's scientific discoveries by the grant of a 
 pension of ^300 per annum. But this, it appears, was not obtained 
 without some little difficulty and delay. Sir Robert Peel had conferred 
 an annuity of this amount upon Mr. Airy, the Astronomer Royal ; and 
 had promised a similar favour to our philosopher. After some con- 
 siderable interval, the latter received an intimation from " Tom Young " 
 that Lord Melbourne desired to see him ; and accordingly proceeded to 
 Downing Street. Arrived there, no allusion was made to the intentions 
 of Sir Robert Peel, or the scientific claims and reputation of the visitor ; 
 but, instead of this, inquiries on the part of Young as to his religious 
 opinions,* and whether, holding such, he would feel justified in accepting 
 a pension. Faraday was not disposed to stand much of this, and at last 
 was ushered by the subordinate into the presence of the great man. 
 Here he did not fare much better. Lord Melbourne soon grew excited, 
 declared that he " hated the name of a pension, and looked upon the 
 whole system of giving pensions to literary and scientific people as a 
 piece of gross humbug, which was not done for any good purpose, and 
 never ought to have been done, it was gross humbug from beginning to 
 end ! " Faraday at this point rose, and with the observation that he 
 "perceived that his business with his lordship was ended," made his 
 salutations and retired from the presence. Young got Broderip to 
 write a defence of his master, which some one persuaded Hook to 
 print in the 'John Bull; but there was a strong current of public feeling 
 * Faraday was, I believe, a " Sandemanian." 
 
3 6o THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY, 
 
 the other \\zy, Regina spoke out, Rex himself interfered, " Rat 
 Lamb " apologized, and " Michael's pension " became an accomplished 
 fact.* 
 
 Faraday was held in the highest respect and admiration by the late 
 Prince Consort. In 1858, a residence at Hampton Court Palace, 
 " Hamptincurta," as Grotius, when eulogizing its beauties, Latinized it,t 
 was granted to him by the considerate kindness of the Queen. Here, he 
 more latterly spent his summers, occupying his apartments at the Royal 
 Institution during a portion only of the year. 
 
 About twenty years ago occurred one of those epidemic hallucinations 
 to which the human mind is subject ; and men and women, of all classes 
 of society went mad on the subject of Table-Turning. The phenomena 
 were actual ; and were variously referred to electricity, galvanism, odylic 
 force, attraction, the rotation of the earth, some unrecognized physical 
 power, supernatural agency, and the machination of the Devil.J All 
 these causes can be investigated by the natural philosopher, except the 
 last ; and that is beneath his notice, as the suggestion of an effete 
 credulity and superstition. The philosophical mind of Faraday was 
 startled by the revelation of the mental condition of educated people in 
 the nineteenth century, afforded by their reception of a purely physical 
 phenomenon. He was thus led to devote his attention to the subject, 
 and to devise an instrument which should conclusively show that the true 
 and only cause of these movements of inanimate bodies was a quasi 
 involuntary muscular action on the part of those whose hands were 
 superposed. To detect this, whether, in other words, the hands moved 
 the table or the table the hands, Faraday constructed an ingenious little 
 instrument, consisting of a lever which had its fulcrum on the table, 
 while its short arm was attached to a pin fixed on a piece of cardboard, 
 which could slip on the surface of the table, and its long arm projected 
 as an index of motion. The result of this was, that if the table moved 
 before the hands of the operator, which were placed on the cardboard, 
 the index moved in the same direction, the fulcrum, of course, going with 
 the table. If, on the other hand, the hands moved before the table, the 
 index went in the opposite direction. Lastly, if neither table nor hands 
 moved, the index itself remained immoveable. The especial value of this 
 apparatus was the corrective power which it possessed over the mind of 
 
 * Memoirs of Lord Melbourne, by McCullagh Torrens (1878, 8vo). 
 f The epigram may be read with interest at a moment when this historical palace, 
 the Versailles of London, has so narrowly escaped destruction in the epidemic of 
 fires : 
 
 " Si quis opes nescit (sed quis tamen ille?) Britannas, 
 Hamptincurta tuos consulat ille Lares, 
 Contulerit toto cum sparsa palatia mundo, 
 Dicet, ibi reges, hie habitare Deos." 
 
 Hugonis Grotii, Poemata (Lugd. Bat. 1617, 8vo), p. 370. 
 Here the conceit in the last line was evidently suggested by the celebrated epigram of 
 Sannazarius, "DeMirabili Urbe Venetiis," where, comparing Rome with Venice, he 
 says, 
 
 " Mam homines dices, hanc posuisse Deos." 
 
 % Table-Turning, the Devils Modern Master-Piece ; being the result of a Course of 
 Experiments, by the Rev. N. S. Godfrey, S.C.L. (1853). Table-Turning Tested, and 
 Proved to be the Result of Satanic Agency, by the Same (London, Seeleys, 1853). 
 Des Tables Tournantes, du Sumaturel en Giniral, et des Esprits, par Le Cte. Agenor 
 de Gasparin (Paris, 1854, 2 vo ^ s> 8vo). 
 
MICHAEL FARADAY. 361 
 
 the operator. The consciousness of the latter that the direction of 
 impulse was made visible by the index, invariably resulted in the 
 motionlessness of the table. All power was gone ; for the index made 
 apparent involuntary or mechanical pressure, and the table-turner was no 
 longer able to deceive himself. The little instrument was afterwards 
 improved, so as to act independently of the table, and was to be seen 
 at the shop of a well-known philosophical instrument maker, Newman, 
 122, Regent Street. One question, however, still remains, which being 
 psychological rather than physical, seems to have been ignored by 
 Faraday, as not coming within his own domain. How is it that people 
 can and do unconsciously exercise the vast amount of muscular action 
 necessary to set in motion, by the mere pressure of the tips of their 
 fingers, ponderous tables, and other articles of furniture? It has also 
 been asked how it is that vertical pressure can produce lateral or 
 horizontal movement ; but this seems answered by a statement made 
 somewhere by Lord Bacon,* to the effect, that if force is applied to a 
 body in a direction (say downward), in which it cannot move, the force 
 is not lost, but will produce motion in some other direction (say the 
 lateral), in the way of which no obstruction exists. Possibly, however, 
 the actuality of the alleged phenomena requires confirmation ; at all 
 events, I have never succeeded in gaining evidence of them myself. 
 
 Faraday was by no means an austere and apathetic man of science. 
 " The future Baronet," says Maginn, " is a very good little fellow ; . . . 
 playing a fair fork over a leg of mutton, and devoid of any reluctance to 
 partake an old friend's third bottle. We know few things more agreeable 
 than a cigar and a bowl of punch (which he mixes admirably) in the 
 society of the unpretending ex-bookbinder." This somewhat unexpected 
 quality of good-fellowship was doubtless enhanced by his keen perception 
 of the ridiculous, a faculty which the perfect kindliness of his disposition 
 prevented finding vent in satire ; and an under current of original humour 
 which blended and contrasted admirably with his graver moods and 
 preoccupations. But besides these less important characteristics, Faraday 
 was distinguished by those higher virtues that complete the adornment of 
 the Christian philosopher. His love of truth, his tenderness of heart, and 
 the energy of his mind, were, according to his biographer, Dr. Bence 
 Jones, the leading characteristics of his character ; while his conscientious 
 adherence to the high standard of duty which he had set before himself, 
 as the expressed will of God in His written word, his childlike simplicity 
 and humbleness, flowed naturally from the deep religious principles which, 
 like a thread of gold, ran through the skein of his daily life and practice. 
 
 I have never been sufficiently fortunate to hear Faraday lecture ; but 
 I have reason to believe that as an oral teacher of science he was un- 
 rivalled. His methods of experimentation were elegant, simple, accurate 
 and dexterous ; and his book on Chemical Manipulation, published in 
 1827, will give an idea of the variety of his resources, and the delicacy 
 of his management. His language was simple and earnest, and his 
 manner exhibited an equal ardour to gain and to impart knowledge. His 
 talent, moreover, was only exceeded by his humility. 
 
 * I suppose the appellation " Lord Bacon " is defensible on the Horatian principle, 
 "si volet usus"; but it is otherwise as erroneous as would be that of "Lord 
 Disraeli," applied to the Earl of Beaconsfield. Yet we laugh at Frenchmen, who speak 
 of " Sir Peel," and such like ! 
 
362 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 It is sad to know that the mental faculties of this great and good man 
 became unsettled a short time before his death. He was obliged to with- 
 draw from his public labours, and did not long survive his retirement. 
 He died at Hampton Court, August 25th, 1867, in the seventy-sixth year 
 of his age.* 
 
 I began with the name of Sir Humphry Davy. How applicable is 
 the epithet engraved upon his tomb in the burying-ground without the 
 walls of distant Geneva, " Summus Arcanorum Naturae Indagator," to 
 his no less illustrious pupil, friend and successor ; and how appropriate to 
 the latter, too, the lines suggested by the recent death of Davy to his 
 friend, Sotheby, at the third meeting of the British Association for the 
 Advancement of Science, held at Cambridge in June, 1833 : 
 
 " High aims were thine all nature to explore, 
 Make each new truth developed gender more, 
 And upward traced through universal laws, 
 Ascend in spirit to the Eternal Cause." 
 
 LXX. REV. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES. 
 
 "I will play at Bowls with the Sun and Moon," was the^epigraph chosen 
 by Lord Byron, as from an " old song," for the title-page of a pamphlet 
 in controversy with the original of the portrait before us ; the veteran poet 
 replied by his two letters to the noble lord, bearing on their fore-front the 
 significant motto, " He that plays Bowls must expect RUBBERS." 
 
 "The portrait in Fraser," says a namesake and a contemporary,! 
 "represents Bowles in the act of composing a Sonnet on the subject of a 
 Hat's obligation to an Umbrella, in cases of excessive heat, not less than 
 rain. It is one of the best likenesses of the long series of Literary 
 Characters immortalized by Croquis. The page of memoir contains a 
 capital joke of the midnight STAR that guided Bowles from the playhouse 
 to the pleasaunce of sepulchral Sam." Moreover, when the poet died, 
 his obituary in the Illustrated News was accompanied by a portrait on 
 wood, * from a clever characteristic sketch which appeared some years 
 since in Eraser's Magazine? 
 
 Bowles, it seems, had left the tranquil retirement of Bremhill to attend 
 the musical festival in Westminster Abbey. He was domiciled under the 
 hospitable roof of his brother bard, Samuel Rogers ; from which he 
 " amused himself now and then during his stay, as old Crabbe had done 
 in like circumstances before him, with an evening stroll to the theatres, 
 where, in the sweet security of incog., he might either laugh his sides sore 
 at Liston, or strain his optics dim at Taglioni." It was on one of these 
 occasions that the adventure occurred, which constitutes him, in his 
 happy verdancy, " the Parson Adams of Poetry." _ If the reader cares to 
 
 * A notice of Faraday will be found in Autobiographical Recollections of the Medical 
 Profession, by T. F. Clarke (1874, 8vo, p. 399), and there is The Life and Letters oj 
 Faraday, by Dr. Bence Jones, Secretary to the Royal Institution (Longmans, 
 2 vols. 8vo). 
 
 t Fraser's Literary Chronicle, 4to, p. 215. 
 
ArT2I0I*'OV 'JWBTEEW SONNETS. V/Hi>\ 
 
REV. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES. . 363 
 
 learn further particulars of this " capital joke," let him turn to Frasefs 
 Magazine for March, 1836. There is another good story told to illustrate 
 the characteristic absence of mind of this " fair specimen of your old 
 shovel-hat," to the effect that, when once presenting a Bible to a friend, 
 he testified blandly on the blank-leaf that it was " Presented by the 
 Author." 
 
 William Lisle Bowles must be regarded as one of those poets who 
 are indebted, in a degree, to certain adventitious circumstances which 
 surrounded their advent, for a reputation to which the abstract merit of 
 their poetry might hardly have entitled them. The old formal school 
 of classicism had become utterly effete and soulless, with no claim to 
 attention beyond mechanical facility ; the new school on the other hand, 
 by the mere force of reaction, was characterized by a puerility, affec- 
 tation and ruggedness which had a tendency to repel the readers of 
 poetry. A juste-viilieu seemed to be offered by the Sonnets of Bowles, 
 where was manifest a polish of construction, a grace of rhythm, and 
 a naturalness of sentiment, which, in spite of occasional feebleness and 
 affectation, created an admiration, at the time of their appearance, unin- 
 telligible on other grounds ; and still maintain for their author a position 
 or some importance in the history of poetical literature. It was to his 
 poetry that Wordsworth, a far greater poet, was indebted for his first 
 impetus. It was from his Sonnets \n particular that the fire of genius was 
 lighted in the soul of Coleridge, again a higher genius. He learnt them 
 by heart, made forty autograph copies for his most valued friends, and 
 declared himself "enthusiastically delighted and inspired by them."* To 
 Bowles, he dedicated his own poetry, and Charles Lamb loved his friend 
 for the grateful deed. Southey, again, whom as a poet, too, I should 
 place in a higher rank than Bowles, writes to him, " There are three con- 
 temporaries, the influence of whose poetry on my own I can distinctly 
 trace, Sayers,f yourself, and Savage Landor. I owe you something, 
 therefore, on the score of gratitude." Now, it may be laid down as an 
 axiom that the sacred flame of genius was never enkindled in the human 
 soul but by genius itself, however feebly the primal spark may have 
 burnt. Thus we must pronounce Bowles a man of some genius, though 
 not of the highest order or foremost rank. His poetry so far belongs to 
 the old school, that it is characterized by polish rather than by strength, 
 and is intellectual rather than imaginative. It is conversant with the 
 softer emotions of our nature, but seldom rises into passion. The enthu- 
 siasm of the lyrist seems subdued by the taste of the scholar ; and 
 " thoughts that breathe, and words that burn," find no place in the tender 
 unimpassioned strain. Still, if the poet fails to stir the deeper waters in 
 the well of soul, he warms the surface with sunshine ; if he plays not with 
 the thunderbolt, nor rides upon the storm, he leads us on a tranquil and 
 flowery path, beneath placid skies, and with measured step. 
 
 Bowles was born at King's Sutton, in Northamptonshire, September 
 25th, 1762, of a family of some note ; his father and grandfather had both 
 
 * Biographia Literaria, chap. i. 
 
 t Frank Sayers, M.D., Born 1763, Died 1817. An early friend of Southey and 
 William Taylor of Norwich, by the latter of whom we have The Collective Works of 
 the late Dr. Sayers; to which have been prefixed some biographical particulars 
 (Norwich, 1823, 2 vols. 8vo), reviewed by Southey, in the Quarterly Review, No. 6^ 
 pp. 175-220. 
 
364 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 been clergymen, and he boasted of Sir Isaac Newton as one of his nearest 
 relatives. He was educated on the Wykeham foundation at Winchester, 
 under Joseph Warton, D.D., and in 1781 was elected a scholar of Trinity 
 College, Oxford, which he chose because Thomas Warton (whom he 
 resembles in a higher degree, probably, than any other poet) was then 
 resident there. In 1783 he gained the Chancellor's prize for Latin verse, 
 by his lines, " Calpe Obsessa," the Siege of Gibraltar, which find a 
 place in his collected poems. He left the University before a Fellowship 
 had fallen to his lot, and did not proceed to his M.A. degree till 1792. A 
 disappointment in love at this period led him to travel. He wandered 
 over his native country, and along the borders of the Rhine. Of these 
 solitary rambles his So?mets, published in 1789, in the fashionable 4to, 
 were the fruits. These were followed by his Verses to John Howard, 
 and the Grave of Howard, in 1790. These, and other subsequent poems, 
 were well received, and went through many editions ; the impression of 
 1792 being illustrated by that elegant draughtsman Thomas Kirk, whom 
 Leigh Hunt calls " the best artist, except Stothard, that ever designed for 
 periodical works ; and the best artist Scotland ever produced, except 
 Wilkie."* 
 
 Bowles now entered holy orders, and became a Wiltshire curate. 
 This he remained till 1804, when, as an act of gratitude for services 
 received from his maternal grandfather, Archbishop Moore presented him 
 with the valuable vicarage of Bremhill, in Wiltshire, in his gift, as an 
 option pro hdc vice. This beautiful and romantic spot, on which he has 
 conferred celebrity by his verse, is near to Devizes, not far from Bowood, 
 the seat of the Marquis of Lansdowne, and Sloperton Cottage, the 
 memorable home of the poet, Moore. In the same year he was collated 
 by Bishop Douglas to the prebend of Stratford, in the Cathedral Church 
 of Salisbury. In 1818 we find him styling himself Chaplain to H.R.H. 
 the Prince Regent ; and in 1828 he was elected a canon-residentiary of 
 Salisbury. 
 
 Besides the longer poems of Bowles, which were published at various 
 periods during his incumbency of Bremhill, his various labours as an 
 antiquary, a theologian, a critic, and a controversialist, demand some 
 notice at my hands. In 1798, appeared Coo?nbe Elle?i, and St. MichaePs 
 Mount; in 1799, The Battle of the Nile; in 1801, The Sorrows of Switzer- 
 land; in 1805, The Spirit of Discovery by Sea, by many thought his 
 best work ; in 181 5, The Missionary of the Andes ; in 1822, The Grave of 
 the Last Saxon j in 1828, Days Departed, or Banwell Hill; in 1832, St. 
 John in Patmos; etc. As an archaeologist, his Parochial History of 
 Bremhill (1828, 8vo), and his History of Lacock Abbey, deserve mention ; 
 as well as his Hermes Britannicus j or a Dissertation on the Celtic Deity 
 Teutates, the Mercury of Ccesar, in Further Proof and Corroboration of the 
 Origin and Designation of the Great Temple of Avebury, in Wiltshire. As 
 a. dissertation upon an historical subject, though not without a certain 
 charm of its own, I do not know that this volume has ever been held in 
 any great esteem ; the speculative and imaginative character of the poet 
 rather appearing than the calm and cautious character of the antiquary. 
 The same remark may be held also to apply to his Life of Tho7nas 
 Ke?i, D.D., the deprived Bishop of Bath and Wells (1 830-1, 8vo), which 
 Is, nevertheless, a book of considerable interest and merit 
 
 * The Indicator, by Leigh Hunt (lxiii. " My Books"). 
 
REV. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES. 365. 
 
 Of the various works which proceeded from the pen of Mr. Bowles in 
 more immediate connection with his professional functions, it is not within 
 my province here to speak. 
 
 I believe that the duties of parish priest were, notwithstanding his 
 literary avocations, discharged by Mr. Bowles in the most exemplary 
 manner. He took great interest in the education of the poorer members 
 of his parish, and endeavoured zealously to promote the welfare of the 
 rural population. According to the reprehensible English custom, he 
 united the duties of the magistrate to those of the parson. Clerical 
 members of the bench are usually distinguished by the severity of their 
 decisions ; but it is to be recorded to the credit of Mr. Bowles, that while 
 he was unremitting in attention to the duties of his office, he was lenient 
 to an extent that, on more than one occasion, incurred the censure of his 
 brother magistrates. One instance of this was his energetic and success- 
 ful remonstrance against a sentence of unparalleled severity pronounced 
 by a fellow-magistrate on an unfortunate woman for some trifling theft. 
 His conduct in this affair came under the notice of Lord Lansdowne, then 
 Secretary of State for the Home Department, and received his appro- 
 bation, as well as that of every feeling and honourable mind. 
 
 " Farewell, dear old bard ! " affectionately ejaculates Maginn. " Long, 
 may you continue to enjoy your morning fiddle and your evening pipe, 
 the affectionate respect of your parishioners, and the worshipful admiration 
 of your brethren of the clerisy. And whenever you revisit the great city, 
 even Babylon the mistress of abominations, be sure to remember not to 
 forget that Oliver has a rump and dozen at your service, and that our 
 niece, Miss Fitzyorke, will see you safe home to No. 22." 
 
 Whether the simple-minded poet revisited town, stretched his old- 
 world Hessians under Fraser's hospitable "mahogany," or accepted 
 that gentle escort, which, as slily insinuated, might prevent the dangers 
 of promiscuous hospitality, I know not. Some few years before his 
 death, the poet resigned his living of Bremhill, and quitted, after a 
 residence of nearly a quarter of a century, his vine-mantled rectory in 
 the sequestered English valley, the home which his geniality of character 
 and charm of conversation had made a centre of attraction to a host of 
 friendly admirers distinguished alike by rank and talent. He removed 
 to the neighbouring Salisbury, where he passed the remainder of his 
 days in perfect retirement, necessitated by increasing bodily and mental 
 debility. He died at his residence in the Close, in that city, April 7th,. 
 1850, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. 
 
 I have purposely omitted to the last all mention of one of the most 
 important incidents in the literary career of Bowles, the celebrated- 
 controversy in which he was engaged with the poets Campbell and 
 Byron, the critics McDermott, Octavius Gilchrist, and others, on what 
 they termed "The Invariable Principles of Poetry." This was commenced 
 by Bowles, through a critical proposition in an essay on the poetical 
 character of Pope, which occurred in the last volume of an edition of 
 that poet, which he edited, in 1807, in ten volumes, 8vo, and for which 
 he had received a sum of ^300. The proposition was to the following 
 effect : That all images drawn from what is beautiful or sublime in the 
 works of nature, are more beautiful and sublime than images drawn from 
 art, and are therefore more poetical. In like manner, those passions of 
 the human heart which belong to nature in general, are, per se % more 
 
366 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 adapted to the higher species of poetry than those which are derived 
 from incidental and transient manners." As an illustration, the critic 
 goes on to say, " A description of a forest is more poetical than that of a 
 cultivated garden ; and the passions which are portrayed in The Epistle 
 of Eloisa, render such a poem more poetical than one founded on the 
 characters, incidents, and modes of artificial life ; for instance, The 
 Rape of the Lock." This position was attacked, with some amount of 
 misrepresentation, in an article by Jeffrey, who said that Bowles will 
 only be remembered by this controversy, in the Edinburgh Review j 
 and by Campbell, in the New Monthly Magazine, and the very elegant 
 and able "Essay on English Poetry" (part iii.), which accompanied his 
 Specimens of the English Poets. Bowles, of course, replied ; and Lord 
 Byron took up the cudgel for Pope, whom he always eulogized, but 
 certainly did not gain his fame, as a poet, by imitating. Maginn says 
 that Bowles was "wrong in the dispute"; but, as I think, he had 
 decidedly the best of the argument, except, perhaps, as regarded the 
 incidental question of the moral character of Pope, on which he had been 
 unduly severe, and might reasonably have modified his strictures. It 
 was the misfortune of Campbell and Byron to be not only weak in their 
 logic, but to afford, in their own most esteemed poems, an illustration of 
 the truth of their opponent's principles. In fact, they would have been 
 silenced at once if Bowles, by omitting to lay sufficient stress upon what 
 may be termed the mechanics of poetry, the perfection and co-ordination 
 of materials, had not allowed his -antagonists to back out from their 
 main position, and carry on the battle on this merely subsidiary issue, 
 however important it may be in itself, of the original argument. The 
 sound of the blows dealt by these doughty champions summoned several 
 minor critics from their obscurity, who took up one or the other side ; 
 and whose lucubrations, contained in nearly twenty pamphlets before me, 
 illustrate this controversy, which must be considered a very interesting 
 and importnnt one in the annals of poetical criticism. Appendix F. 
 
 LXXI. MRS. S. C. HALL. 
 
 That she was "fonttte zbauz f)tx tyc" was recorded upon stone of a 
 " Good Mistris Hall " of a former day,* and well might it be so, for she 
 was the daughter of Shakespeare ! No such rich heritage of genius 
 can belong to the graceful and accomplished writer to whom we devote 
 these few notes, though the same sentiment would not be thought in- 
 appropriate to her, by any who knew her, personally or through her 
 writings. 
 
 Mrs. S. C. Hall, whose maiden name was Anna Maria Fielding, was 
 born in Dublin, about 1802, of Huguenot descent; but was removed in 
 infancy to Bannow, in the county of Wexford, where she was brought 
 up in the home of her grandfather. At the age of sixteen she came to 
 
 * " Wittie aboue her sexe, but that's not all, 
 Wise to Salvation was good Mistris Hall. 
 
 Epitaph in Stratford Church. 
 
^S^^2^__-_ /^Z^f^Zt 
 
 AUTHOR f''THE BUCCANKER 
 
MRS. S. C. HALL. 367 
 
 reside in London ; and there becoming acquainted with Mr. Samuel Carter 
 Hall, a member of a Devonshire family, and a barrister-at-law, but not 
 following his profession, she was married to him on September 20th, 1824. 
 
 The path of Mrs. Hall has lain in the quiet ways of life. The career, 
 indeed, of a married lady, the ruler of her household ; the adviser and 
 assistant of her husband in his literary undertakings ; the writer, gaining 
 fame by independent genius ; the friend, of ever-ready love and sympathy ; 
 the earnest and zealous promoter of charitable schemes, and all this 
 may be said of Mrs. Hali, presents, fortunately for herself, few points 
 of salient interest to a biographer. There remains, then, to be noticed 
 little besides the main incidents of her literary career ; on which I am 
 not inclined to be diffuse, as these will be found fairly recorded in Men 
 {and Wojnen) of the Time, and such like publications. 
 
 Her first work, I think, was entitled Sketches of Irish Character, and 
 appeared so far back as 1829. Mrs. Hall is by birth an Irishwoman 
 herself, and though she came to this country at an early age, and has 
 become, by long residence and social ties, naturalized, as it were, here, 
 she is one of the most skilful delineators of the manners and character of 
 the people among whom her earliest and most impressionable days were 
 passed. I fancy that there are few who have not read her Lights and 
 Shadows of Irish Character, one of the stories of which ("The Groves of 
 Blarney," vol. i.) was dramatized by her, and brought out at the Adelphi 
 with success in 1838. Then came Marian j or, a Young Maids Fortunes, 
 published in 1839, which has passed through several editions, and been 
 translated into German and Dutch, as well as, if I mistake not, French. 
 This, which is perhaps the most popular of her tales, was the predecessor 
 of the well-known Stories of the Irish Peasantry, which appeared origin- 
 ally in Chambers's Journal (a magazine which contains some of the best 
 stories, and the most useful writing in the language), and were sub- 
 sequently collected and published (1840) in a substantive form. One of Mrs. 
 Hall's last publications, if not the last, relates to the same country. 
 The title of this is The Fight of Faith : a Story of Ireland (1868-9). l 
 always sit down with an anticipation of pleasure to one of Mrs. Hall's 
 Irish tales, and am never disappointed. They are simple, natural, 
 graceful and pathetic. I do not, however, possess a sufficient knowledge 
 of Ireland to enable me to speak positively as to the local truth of these 
 stories ; or to define the relative position of their authoress in regard to 
 the other great writers who have sought by fiction to illustrate the national 
 character, Edgeworth, Carleton, Lover, Banim, Lever and Griffin, 
 though I should certainly give her a high place on the list. Her impor- 
 tant topographical work, Ireland, its Scenery, Character, etc. (1840), pro- 
 duced in conjunction with her husband, is a standard work of beauty 
 and permanent value, and is said to give " a better and more truthful 
 picture of Ireland and the Irish than any other book in the language." 
 
 It was Mrs. Hall who estabfished, and originally edited, the well- 
 known monthly, the St. James's Magazine. 
 
 As a novel-writer, it was with The Buccaneers that Mrs. Hall made her 
 debut, in 1832, the scene of which is laid in England, during the Protec- 
 torate of Cromwell. Then we have Tales of Wo?nen y s Trials (1834) 5 anc i 
 The Outlaw, a novel of the reign of James II., published in 1835. There 
 is also Uncle Horace, which I have never seen ; The White Boy, published 
 in 1845 \ Can Wrong be Right? in 1852 ; an J A Woman's Story, in 1857. 
 
368 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 In 1859, in conjunction with her husband, she published The Book oj 
 the Thames, an elegant work which has gone through many editions, and 
 still holds its place as one of our choicest illustrated books. The Book oj 
 South Wales is another important contribution to topographical literature 
 by herself and her husband ; and to this may be added her Pilgrimages 
 to English Shrines, an interesting and beautifully illustrated work of 
 which the title sufficiently indicates the subject. I ought not to omit at 
 least to mention that most fascinating and graceful story of Irish fairy dom ? 
 Midsummer Eve, which, originally appearing in the Art Journal so far 
 back as 1847, with nearly two hundred exquisite cuts, from drawings 
 made directly on the wood-blocks by Maclise, Clarkson Stanfield, 
 Creswick, Ward, Goodall, Elmore, Frost, Noel Paton, Hulme, Sir E. 
 Landseer, Topham, Kenny Meadows, etc., was tastefully republished in 
 1870 by J. C. Hotten. The motive of the story is the popular belief, 
 common to all parts of Ireland, that a child whose father has died before 
 its birth is placed by Nature under the peculiar guardianship of the 
 fairies ; and that, if born on Midsummer Eve, it becomes their rightful 
 property. As I reach down my copy of this charming book to refresh 
 my memory, I am sadly reminded of the gifted authoress to whom I am 
 indebted for its possession, and whose autograph inscription it bears. 
 
 As a dramatist besides The Groves of Blarney, already mentioned, 
 Mrs. Hall has given evidence of no small ability by her play, The French 
 Refugee (1836), which had a run of ninety nights at the St. James's 
 Theatre, when under the management of Braham. 
 
 Mrs. Hall is also author of some very graceful stories for children,, 
 among which I may mention Chronicles of a Schoolroom (1830). The 
 attempt to write for the young is an evidence of a tender and loving dispo- 
 sition ; but to write for them with success, to amuse without affectation^ 
 and teach without tiring, is a faculty granted to very few. William Jerdan, 
 whose friendship for Mrs. Hall dated from a very early day, speaks in 
 the highest terms of this lady's compositions for juvenile readers, which 
 he pronounces absolutely free from the general error of marring really 
 good lessons by bad illustrations, and values "even as much as the. 
 most popular of those, she has produced for mature age." 
 
 Besides the larger works I have mentioned, Mrs. Hall is the author 
 of many essays and tracts, chiefly relating to women's duties, or in 
 eloquent advocacy and illustration of the benefit of temperance, of all 
 secular teaching the most important, and that of which, as a nation, we 
 stand most in need. I can only allude to her Boons and Blessings, in 
 which, as her husband by his Trial of Sir Jasper, and An Old Story \ 
 she has vigorously advocated the cause. All these various books, in 
 which our foremost artists, Tenniel, G. Cruikshank, Millais, Birket 
 Foster, Gustave Dore', Alma Tadema, E. M. Ward and his wife, Elmore,. 
 Dobson, Noel Paton, Faed, and others, have given help, have already 
 passed through many editions, and have been largely useful in platform 
 readings, and lectures illustrated by illuminated transparencies. Besides 
 her labours in the cause of temperance, Mrs. Hall, with her husband, has 
 been foremost in the promotion of many philanthropic movements. Thus- 
 the Hospital for Consumption at Brampton is greatly indebted to her. 
 She was the originator of the " Nightingale Fund" ; and in her drawing- 
 room the first subscription^ was made, her husband, in conjunction with 
 the Hon. Sidney Herbert, acting as secretary. When in 1857, the. 
 
MRS S, C. HALL. 369 
 
 subscription list was closed, the sum collected amounted to 45,000, and 
 Ihe Institution for the Training of Hospital Nurses and Attendants was 
 established on a firm basis. I can only further allude to the Governesses' 
 Institution, and the Pensioners' Employment Society, as being, in 
 a great measure, indebted to Mrs. Hall for their origin and success. 
 When, besides all this, it is considered that the books, large and small, 
 which proceeded from her industrious pen number many more than a 
 hundred, we are assured, indeed, that the literary works, either written 
 or edited by herself and her husband, amount to upwards of three hundred 
 and forty,* and that her object had uniformly been to combine with 
 amusement the purest moral teaching, it will not be thought that the 
 Crown pension of 100 per annum which she enjoyed was bestowed 
 either prematurely or unworthily. 
 
 I have already mentioned that the husband of this accomplished lady 
 was Mr. Samuel Carter Hall, F.S.A., the founder (1839) and for forty-two 
 years conductor of that well-known and elegant magazine, the Art Journal. 
 The fine arts are greatly indebted to Mr. Hall for his conduct of this publi- 
 cation, which, after one or two changes of form, has long obtained a firm 
 hold on public favour. Mr. Hall has often exposed, with cost and courage, 
 the attempted impositions of picture-dealers ; and by this, and his 
 judicious criticisms in the Journal, has done much to foster a taste for 
 the genuine, truthful works of the modern school, more especially the 
 English, in place of the " Raphaels, Correggios and stuff," of Wardour 
 Street manufacture, which were' at that period almost the only things that 
 excited the cupidity of the collector. He himself states, that he has been 
 present more than once at a private view of the Royal Academy, when, 
 during the whole day, not a single picture has been sold ! He once 
 commissioned six young artists, among whom were Frith, Ward and 
 Elmore, to paint six fancy portraits at ten guineas each. This was in 
 1840 ; and when Finden, who had engraved them, exhibited them in the 
 Strand with a view to sell them at cost price, he could not find a single 
 buyer ! They would now be estimated at over two hundred guineas each ! 
 The interests of art manufacture, in our great centres of production, have 
 received equal benefit from Mr. Hall, by the beautifully illustrated papers 
 which have also appeared in his Journal. He succeeded Campbell, and 
 preceded Hook, in the conduct of the New Monthly Magazine ; and was 
 editor of that charming "annual," the Amulet, commenced in 1824, of 
 which eleven volumes in all appeared. He was one of the founders of 
 the Crystal Palace Art Union, which, with other institutions of similar 
 nature, derived great benefit from his counsel and aid ; and to him we 
 are indebted for an illustration and permanent record of the varied 
 industrial and artistic treasures of the International Exhibitions, from 
 the parent one of London, of 1851, to that of Philadelphia in 1876. 
 Without entering into further details of his useful labours, it is pleasing 
 to record that, on his retirement from the Journal which he had conducted 
 so long and so faithfully, a pension of 300 per annum was conferred 
 upon him by the proprietors. Some " words of farewell " were given in 
 its columns by the venerable editor, who, after an interesting account of 
 the state of art when he began his work, and the success of his labours, 
 adds the words : " I do not think the history of literature supplies a 
 parallel case : that of an editor commencing a publication, and continuing 
 * Men of the Time, 1872, p. 459, 
 
 2 B 
 
370 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 to edit it during forty-two years, and retiring from it when it had attained 
 vigorous age, its value augmented and not deteriorated by time." The 
 Art Journal still exists, under new management, and in altered form; 
 but is no exception, at least in my opinion, to the law of deterioration 
 under change, although now adorned by the inevitable " etchings " of the 
 day, which all look as if they were turned out by a Joint Stock Company. 
 In the preface to the second edition of his charming Book of Memories, 
 about which I may presently have a word to say Mr. Hall states that 
 he is occupied in preparing for the press Recollections of a Long Life. 
 Bearing in mind that he was intimately acquainted with Ireland so far 
 back as 1816, that he published a book in 1820, that he became a parlia- 
 mentary reporter in 1823, that he commenced the Art Journal in 1839, 
 and has been an editor for nearly sixty years, we may surely anticipate that 
 these promised " Recollections " will afford a " feast of fat things," of 
 which we may say in truth, " hsec olim meminisse juvabit." But it is time 
 to bid adieu to my friend S. C. Hall, with whom, it is true, I have only 
 incidentally to do. But I make no apology, for in this " marriage of true 
 minds," the husband is truly identified with the wife, and the one and the 
 other so strictly formed what has been called a " dual unit," that a single 
 narrative must perforce contain a record of both. 
 
 In 1 87 1 appeared, with the name of S. C. Hall on the title-page as 
 author, a very interesting and truly beautiful book, of which the title 
 sufficiently explains the nature : A Book of Memories of Great Men and 
 Women of the Age, fro?n Personal Acquaintance (Virtue and Co, 4to, 
 pp. 488). I scarcely know a'volume more difficult to lay down when once 
 taken up. It is charming throughout ; but especially so are the brief 
 "Memories of Artists," at the end of the volume, which are models 'of 
 what such notices should be, terse, genial, appreciative, and wholly free 
 from that " cant of criticism," which is the most odious of all the " cants 
 that are canted in this canting age." The following passage occurs in 
 the preface : " These memories will derive much of their value from the 
 aid I receive from my wife. We have worked together for more than 
 forty years ; with only few exceptions my acquaintances were hers. I 
 have had no hesitation in availing myself of her co-operation in this 
 undertaking, have freely quoted her views of the characters I depict, and 
 occasionally called upon her for her ' Memories ' to add to mine." I am 
 very proud of my own copy of this delightful book, with the autograph 
 inscriptions of author and authoress, and their signed photograph portraits 
 to boot ; and preserve it among my choicest Keimelia. 
 
 The graceful acknowledgment to his wife's assistance which I have 
 just transcribed, is before the world ; but I have under my eyes another 
 tribute of affection in the shape of a copy of beautiful and touching 
 verses, which, as printed^for distribution among private friends only, I 
 may venture to place on record here : 
 
 " AFTER FORTY YEARS. 
 
 (January 6th, 1864.) 
 
 " Yes ! forty years of troubles, come and gone, 
 I count, since first I gave thee band and heart ! 
 But none have come from thee, dear Wife not one I 
 In griefs that sadden'd me thou hadst no part, 
 Save when, accepting more than woman's share 
 Of pain and toil, despondency and care, 
 
MRS. S. C. HALL. 371 
 
 My comforter thou wert, my hope, my trust : 
 Ever suggesting holy thoughts and deeds ; 
 Guiding my steps on earth through blinding dust, 
 Into the Heaven-lit path that Heaven-ward leads. 
 
 " So has it been, from manhood unto age, 
 In every shifting 'scene of life's sad stage, 
 Since forty years ago, a humble name 
 I gave to thee, which thou hast given to fame : 
 Rejoicing in the wife and friend, to find 
 The woman's lesser duties all combined 
 With holiest efforts of creative mind. 
 
 " And if the world has found some good in me, 
 The prompting and the teaching came from thee ! 
 
 1 ' God so guide both that so it ever be ! 
 
 " So may the full fount of affection flow : 
 Each loving each as forty years ago ! 
 
 " We are going down the rugged hill of life, 
 Into the tranquil valley at its base ; 
 But, hand in hand, and heart in heart, dear Wife : 
 
 " With less of outer care and inner strife, 
 I look into thy mind and in thy face, 
 And only see the Angel coming nearer, 
 To make thee still more beautiful and dearer, 
 When from the thrall and soil of earth made free, 
 Thy prayer is heard for me, and mine for thee ! 
 
 "S. C. Hall." 
 
 This was as it should be : the husband indebted to the wife, and 
 glorying in the avowal of the indebtedness ; while both looked back, 
 hand-in-hand, upon nearly half a century of honest, earnest, united work. 
 Ten years more brought the united pair to their " Goldene Hochzeitf 
 the fiftieth anniversary of their wedding day. It was then thought by 
 many of their friends that the occasion was a fitting one " to organize 
 the presentation to them of some suitable testimonial of personal regard 
 and consideration for their long and valuable services to literature and to 
 art ; " and accordingly a committee was formed, presided over by the 
 Earl of Shaftesbury, to collect subscriptions. It was on September 20th, 
 1874, that Mr. and Mrs. Hall completed their half century of married life; 
 and on that day their " golden wedding " was duly celebrated. The day 
 was Sunday ; and the venerable pair attended Divine worship at Ken- 
 sington, and received together the Holy Sacrament. The congratulations 
 of assembled friends followed, and the lines which I have cited above 
 were distributed, with the heading altered to "After Fifty Years." Mean- 
 time, the exertions of the Testimonial Committee had resulted in the 
 collection of a sum of more than fifteen hundred pounds, obtained without 
 any difficulty. Nine hundred pounds of this were absorbed in the pur- 
 chase of an annuity of one hundred pounds per annum on the joint lives 
 of the beneficiaries ; and the remainder, some six hundred pounds, was 
 presented to them in cash, together with an album containing five hundred 
 congratulatory letters, received from people of every station in life, and 
 the various civilized countries of the world. The presentation was made 
 at the house of Frederick Griffin, Esq., the treasurer to the fund, by Lord 
 Shaftesbury, who made a suitable complimentary speech on the occasion, 
 
37 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY, 
 
 ;in the course of which he appropriately said that " Domestic life, by the 
 ill-merciful providence of God, is the refuge and stronghold of morality ; 
 the honour, dignity and mainstay of nations." Besides this, the occasion 
 tvas rendered still more memorable by the presentation to Mrs. Hall 
 of the copy of a bust of her husband, modelled from life, and issued in 
 Parian, the execution of which was mainly effected by the exertions 
 of the friend of both, Mr. Llewellyn Jewitt. 
 
 Subsequently to this event, Mrs. Hall when in declining health, had 
 the gratification of receiving from the Queen a pleasing evidence of her 
 Majesty's thoughtful kindness. This was a large-size and exquisitely 
 finished portrait of the Queen, and earlier lithograph likenesses of herself 
 and the Prince Consort. These gifts were rendered yet more acceptable 
 by the autograph letter which accompanied them, in the course of which 
 Jier Majesty said, " she had the greatest pleasure in presenting them." 
 
 A year or two more passed away, and a " Diamantische Hochzeit," 
 a " Diamond Wedding," seemed possible. But this was not to be ; 
 and in 1881, it was announced in the Christian Worlds that, " On the 
 'Sabbath evening, January 30th, Mrs. S. C. Hall left earth life, at Devon 
 JLodge, East Moulsey." Thus the husband sO completely identified with 
 the wife, in actual life and work, as in the preceding sketch, is left, with 
 that support and guidance which he knows where to seek, to finish his 
 Journey alone; cherishing among his dearest " Memories" that realization 
 imperfect though it may seem to him, of the fond wish so natural to 
 form, but not granted to him whose sorrows were commemorated by the 
 JRoman poet : 
 
 " sperabat longos, heu ! ducere soles, 
 
 Et fido acclinis consenuisse sinu." 
 
 LXXII. SIR JOHN C. HOBHOUSE. 
 
 " MY BOY HOBBY: 
 
 " WHAT made you in Lob's pound to go, 
 My boy Hobby ? 
 Because I bade the people throw 
 The House into the Lobby. 
 
 " You hate the House : why canvass, then, 
 My boy Hobby? 
 Because I would reform the den, 
 As member for the mobby. 
 
 " And who are now the people's men, 
 My boy Hobby? 
 There's I and Burdett, gentlemen, 
 
 And blackguards Hunt and Cobby. 
 
 *' And when amidst your friends you speak, 
 My boy Hobby, 
 How is't that you contrive to keep 
 Your watch within your fobby ? 
 
 " Now, tell me why you hate the Whigs, 
 My boy Hobby ? 
 Because they want to run their rigs 
 As under Walpole Bobby." 
 
J 7 C- <^~4%.~^^ 
 
 ATUTMOK OT" ""THUS MIS CKIXJUTTT 
 
SIR JOHN C. HOB HO USE. 373 
 
 Whether or not the foregoing verses are by Byron I cannot possibly 
 say ; I transcribe them from a private quarto print, of eight pages, from: 
 the collection of the late Thomas Rodd, sen., which contains a number 
 of pieces, such as the satirical verses on Rogers, all which are by or 
 attributed to that poet, so that it is very probable that these are also from 
 his pen. 
 
 Perhaps there is some little truth in Frasefs hint that Hobhouse wasv 
 in early life, somewhat of a " butt " to his noble college friend, just as 
 Ben Jonson, in the memorable wit-combats with Shakespeare at the 
 " Falcon," felt the effects of his adversary's light artillery before he could 
 bring his own heavy metal to bear upon him. Hobhouse, of heavy aspect 
 and ponderous conformation, gave little earnest of the ability which he 
 really possessed, though he was fluent and communicative in conversation 
 and occasionally warmed into force and energy of expression. The real 
 opinion which Byron entertained of his friend may be gathered from the 
 frequent reference to him in his letters, and especially the preliminary 
 letter to the fourth canto of Childe Harold, where he reverts in 
 thought to his old fellow-traveller : " To one," says he, " whom I have 
 known long and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my- 
 sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my 
 adversity, true in counsel and trusty in peril, to a friend often tried anal 
 never found wanting." Elsewhere, too, he speaks of the same trusty friend; 
 as "the most interesting of companions, and a fine fellow to boot/*' 
 Medwin, on the other hand, speaks of him as u a cold calculating and! 
 original mathematical mind," and contrasts him as a companion with* 
 Shelley.* 
 
 John Cam Hobhouse was the eldest son of Sir Benjamin Hobhouse^ 
 Bart.,f and was born at Redland, near Bristol, June 27th, 1786. He was. 
 educated at Winchester School, from which he proceeded to Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1 808. At the University he had' 
 made the acquaintance of Lord Byron, and, upon the latter taking up his- 
 abode at Newstead Abbey, aided him, in conjunction with some half-dozen 
 other choice spirits, to emulate the doings of John Wilkes, the profligate 
 Lord Sandwich, and others, who, at Medmenham Abbey, on the banks of 
 the Thames, had, a few years before, established a brotherhood, with all the 
 mummery of hood and corded gown, for the combined worship of Bacchus^ 
 and Venus. I do not mean, however, to imply that the orgies of the 
 younger confraternity were characterized by the grossness of those of 
 Medmenham ; or that the members were guilty of acts more reprehensible 
 than keeping bad hours and quaffing Burgundy from a human skull,. 
 Grantley Berkeley gives a humorous account of a pedestrian march to 
 London, projected by Hobhouse and C. S. Mathews, who was one of the 
 brotherhood. The friends started merrily enough ; but, quarrelling on 
 the road, arrived at their destination in mutual silence and dudgeon. 
 
 All about Hobhouse's travels to Greece is well known. In 1812 he 
 published a record of these in his Journey through Albania and other 
 
 * Shelley Papers, 1833, i2mo, p. 32. 
 
 f The elder Hobhouse was, too, a traveller, and printed for private circulation art 
 interesting and elegant volume, entitled Remarks on several Parts of France, Italy, etc.* 
 in the Years 1783, 1784, and 1785, by Benjamin Hobhouse, Barrister-at-Law (Bath : 
 Printed by R. Cruttwell, mdccxcvi., 8vo). In my copy is a MS. statement to the effect 
 that, at the sale of the library of the Marquis of Lansdowne, the volume was sold for 
 six guineas. See Public Characters for 1807, p. 113. 
 
374 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Provinces of Turkey with Lord Byron. If the slightest spark of the love 
 of freedom exists in the soul of a traveller, one cannot conceive that a 
 visit to the shores of Hellas could fail to kindle it into a flame. He was 
 in France, too, during the Hundred Days, and on his return, wrote, after 
 the Battle of Waterloo, his Letters of an Englishman (1816), in which he 
 avowed himself a supporter of Napoleon. The dangerous tendency of his 
 opinions led to an imprisonment of four years in Newgate ; 'but gained him 
 an influence among the people which insured his return when, in 1820, he 
 became a candidate for the representation of Westminster in the Liberal 
 interest. His friend Byron had happily described him somewhere as one 
 of those who " foamed into patriots to subside into Newgate;" and he 
 became of course a mark for the writers whose war-cry was " King and 
 Constitution." Among these was Theodore Hook, who had just then, 
 with the assistance of his friend Daniel Terry, and the occasional collabo- 
 ration of James Smith, started the now excessively rare periodical, 
 The Arcadian, which opened with a kind of poetical address to Hobhouse, 
 which is worth preservation here as a specimen of the poetical squib of 
 that day. It is entitled : 
 
 " CARMEN ^ESTUALE. 
 
 " A So7igfor the Summer, to he sung by J. C. H , Esq. Now a prisoner in 
 
 his Majesty's Gaol of Newgate. 
 
 u Where have ye been a' the spring, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 Where have ye been a' the spring, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 I have been in Newgate keep, 
 Doomed to dine, to drink, and sleep, 
 Side by side with rogue and sweep, 
 
 In dungeon dark and clammy. 
 
 *' What took you to Newgate keep, 
 
 My boy Cammy? 
 What took you to Newgate keep, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 I did once my goose-quill take, 
 To show a Whig a small mistake, 
 Did you do't for freedom's sake ? 
 
 Freedom's my eye and Tammy ! 
 
 " What, then, did you do it for, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 What, then, did you do it for, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 Because I thought if I were sent 
 To jail, for libelling Parliament, 
 I might chance to circumvent 
 
 Next election, Lamby. 
 
 *' How would that throw out George Lamb, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 How would that throw out George Lamb, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 Because with tag, rag, and bobtail, 
 Nothing does but going to jail ; 
 We have seldom found it fail, 
 
 Voyez-vous, mon ami! 
 
SIX JOHN C. HOB HO USE. 375 
 
 " How do you make that out, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 How do you make that out, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 See what all the rest have done- 
 Abbott, Burdett, Waddington, 
 Blandford, Hunt, and Wat son, 
 
 And now, like them, here am I ! 
 
 *' Did the Speaker talk to you, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 Did the Speaker talk to you, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 No ; my visit to papa, 
 Wrecked my prospects oitclat ; 
 I was never at the bar, 
 
 Where I thought they'd ha' me. 
 
 "Why, then, 'tis a stupid job, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 Why, then, 'tis a stupid job, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 No ; because when I come out 
 They'll have a car, without a doubt, 
 And, in triumph, all about, 
 
 The biped beast will draw me. 
 
 *' You've mistaken quite your game, 
 
 My boy Cammy ? 
 You've mistaken quite your game, 
 
 My boy Cammy? 
 Of fulsome stuff, like that, we're sick ; 
 Besides, we all see through the trick ; 
 Before we drag, we'll see you ' kick ' 
 
 Before your prison, d-mme ! " 
 
 Cobbett, whose felicity in giving nicknames I have already alluded 
 to, christened Hobhouse "Sancho" from his obsequious servility to Sir 
 Francis Burdett, to whom, says Fraser, " he bore the same relation as 
 the greasy clown did to his mistaken, but chivalrous master," the Knight 
 of the Rueful Countenance. This is alluded to in the following doggrel 
 lines which were contributed to an early number of the John Bull by an 
 anonymous writer, supposed to have been Lord Palmerston, who 
 received a touching hint when they were republished in 1832, to the 
 following effect : " When the author of these lines re-reads them to-day, 
 and recollects that he really wrote them, we should think that he must have 
 some compunctious visitings. As far as we are concerned, he is safe ; 
 but surely he cannot hide them from himself/" Hook kept his word, 
 and the name of the actual writer was never permitted to transpire. The 
 lines are as follows : 
 
 "THE PROPHECY. 
 
 "I don't care a 1 Or may follow the Queen, 
 
 For I C H e ; Like a Jack on the Green ; 
 
 He may fume and may fret, But, do what he will, 
 
 And may toady Burdett, He's a little man still ! 
 
 He may think himself witty, He'll be laughed at and scouted, 
 
 Cut a dash in the city. Be pump'd, and be flouted ; 
 
 Vent vulgar abuse, Ignoble his fate, 
 
 Or hiss like a goose ; Be it early or late, 
 
 To St. Paul's he may ride, He will live in a splutter, 
 
 With a sword by his side ! And die in a gutter." 
 
376 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Turning for a moment to the spirited pen-sketch * which I am now 
 attempting to illustrate, I am reminded by the aquiline colour of the 
 face of the orator as he is gesticulatorily haranguing a Westminster mob, 
 of another allusion to him, in a scarce contemporary print : 
 
 "Yon hook-nos'd loud Macaw has been abroad, 
 A linguist bird of odd unequal powers ; 
 His Greek or Tuscan tone you would applaud, 
 
 Though oft he swears seditious oaths for hours, 
 Betraying in a real or feigned rage, 
 The manners of his Covent Garden cage." + 
 
 Hobhouse, on his election for Westminster, had associated himself 
 with other members of the Radical party, in setting on foot the West 
 minster Review, in which he vigorously attacked the Tory section under 
 Canning. But his political opinions toning down with time, he received, 
 in 1 83 1, the appointment of Secretary of State for War in the cabinet of 
 Earl Grey ; and, in 1833, became Secretary of State for Ireland. "The 
 usual change," wrote Maginn in 1836, "has taken place; the brawling 
 patriot has been transformed into the lick-spittle placeman." In 1833, an 
 inconsistent vote, I fancy on the question of army-flogging, cost him 
 his seat ; but in 1834, wfien Sir Robert Peel came into office, he was 
 returned for Nottingham, which he represented till 1847. As an orator,, 
 his strength lay chiefly in attack ; and now, as an opponent to the 
 Premier, he had every opportunity of turning his forensic ability to 
 account. He was the Marcellus of the day, and brought every oratorical 
 weapon, ridicule, irony, sarcasm, to bear upon his antagonist. Still,, 
 when he himself was the subject of attack, his power was gone, and Sir 
 Robert was then more than his equal. The warfare never ceased till the 
 resignation of the Minister. From 1847 Hobhouse had sat for Harwich, 
 and this he continued to do till he was raised to the Peerage in 185 1, 
 under the title of Lord Broughton of Gyford. After his elevation to the 
 Upper House, he took little or no part in politics. He held the offices of 
 Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests, and President of the India 
 Board of Control under Lord Melbourne, and again held the latter office 
 during the Administration of Lord John Russell, 1846-52. He was made 
 a G.C.B. ; and after a short career as a member of the Coalition ministry 
 of 1853, he retired finally into private life. Maginn, afiud "Fraser" 
 (1836), briefly and contemptuously summed up his political career. " Its 
 records," said he, " are short ; the man has done nothing because nothing 
 was in him. Ex nihilo nil Jit, there's no getting blood from a turnip - y 
 and it is one of our misfortunes that we should be compelled to write 
 about such people at all. But the amber of office embalms them for 
 their day. Shrined for a while in that, we are allowed to observe the forms 
 of creeping things, our wonder at which, a small one under existing 
 circumstances, secures the tribute of a page even to ' my boy Hobbio.' " 
 
 Lord Broughton died June 3rd, 1869, in the eighty-third year of his 
 age. He married the daughter of the Marquis of Tweeddale, but left no 
 male issue. Part of his income was derived from Whitbread's Brewery, 
 in which he was a sleeping partner ; but he was not, I believe, in any 
 
 * The features of Hobhouse are well preserved, albeit the position of the figure 
 is somewhat constrained, in a stipple portrait before me, engraved by I. Hopwood 
 from a drawing by A. Wivell. 
 jf Slop's Shave at a Broken Hone, 1820, 8vo, p. 32. 
 
SIR JOHN C. HOBHOUSE. 377 
 
 sense of the word a rich man, which may account in some measure for 
 the noiselessness of his exit from the world. Lord Broughton left a vast 
 mass of papers behind him, much of which relates to political matters 
 and the offices of public trust which he had filled in the course of his 
 octogenarian life. As publication might compromise men yet living, or 
 complicate matters of controversy still open, he provided by his will that 
 these papers should not be divulged, nor even read, till the present 
 century shall have closed, and not then published without the consent of 
 the Sovereign who should then occupy the throne. It was a rule with Lord 
 Palmerston that official correspondence should never be produced while 
 the negotiations to which it referred were still pending ; and it is one of 
 the axioms attributed to Talleyrand that if letters were only left long 
 enough they would answer themselves. The conclusion is obvious. It 
 is useless to produce documents when affairs are settled ; and no ontf 
 will care about reading letters that refer to the doings of an official board, 
 or the character and ability of its members, when they have all been in 
 their graves for half a century. 
 
 The chief publications of Lord Broughton were, Imitations and 
 Translations from the Classics ', with Original Poe?ns (London, 1809, 8vo); 
 Journey through Albania and other Provinces of Turkey with Lord 
 Byron* (18 12, 4.T.0 ; 2nd ed. 181 8) ; Substance of some Letters written by 
 an Englishman resident at Paris during the last Reign of Napoleon: 
 With an Appendix of Original Documents (1816, 2 vols. 8vo) ; Historical 
 Ilhistrations of the Fourth Canto of u Childe Harold? containing Disserta- 
 tions on the Ruins of Rome, and an Essay on Italian Literature (London, 
 1 81 8, 8vo) ; etc. He was, moreover, a contributor to the Westminster 
 Review, and Blackwood s and Eraser's Magazine, ,f His Recollections of 
 a Long Life (privately printed), was reviewed in the Edinburgh Review y 
 No. cclxxii., April, 1871. 
 
 Of all the literary works of Lord Broughton, I should regard the 
 Historical Illustrations of il Childe Harold" as the most interesting ; and 
 this chiefly from its more discursive character, and its relation to the 
 career and poetry of Byron. The author possessed little imaginative 
 power, but described what came under his personal observation truth- 
 fully and well. In his remarks upon the monuments of Italy he has not 
 added materially to our stock of knowledge, or risen above the average 
 of ordinary books of travel. His " Essay on the Present Literature of 
 Italy " is, however, an interesting dissertation. His taste was sound, he 
 was fond of the subject, and had given it considerable attention. His 
 remarks upon the living or recently deceased. Italian writers, especially 
 the poets, are the result of intelligent study, and are still worthy of note. 
 Cesarotti, who had ably translated Homer and Ossian into his native 
 language, died in 1808 (p. 353); but Mazza, his school-fellow and friend, 
 was still alive (p. 362), and Hippolito Pindemonte (p. 413), to whom Ugo 
 Foscolo dedicated his Sepolcri. Hobhouse does not appear to have 
 
 * Ably criticized in the Quarterly Review, vol. x. pp. 175-298. 
 
 f I perceive that Lowndes also attributes to Hobhouse two volumes of clever 
 satirical poetry, entitled Sketches from St. Georges Fields, by Giorgione di Caste! 
 Chiuso (Series I. 1820 ; Series II. 1821, small 8vo). I think the bibliographer must be in 
 error ; and that the authorship should rather be ascribed to Peter Bay ley, editor of the 
 Museum, who died March 25th, 1823, in a carriage, as he was on his way to the Opera 
 House. Series II. is dedicated to J. C. Hobhouse, though this, of course, implies 
 nothing. G * * 
 
378 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 enjoyed a personal acquaintance with these celebrated men, though he 
 had evidently read them with attention. Of Alfieri, who died in 1804, 
 he gives a very interesting account (p. 395), as well as of Vincenzo 
 Monti, who wrote in the Terza Rima. Neither did he know the great 
 moral poet Joseph Parini, who died in extreme pove^.y, and sleeps 
 without a stone to mark the resting-place of one who exercised so 
 extraordinary an influence upon his age : 
 
 E senza tomba giace il tuo 
 
 Sacerdote, o Talio, che a te cantando 
 
 Nel suo povero tetto educd un lauro 
 
 Con lungo amore, e t'appendea corone." * 
 
 Of Ugo Foscolo, the writer of these lines, that greatest of modern 
 Italian poets, who died in London, September, 1827, and whose bones 
 were exhumed, within the last ten years, from their exile's grave at 
 Chiswick, to be transported with all the honours of an acknowledged 
 patriot to Santa Croce, Hobhouse has given a succinct and pleasing 
 account (p. 452) ; with some interesting, if not very profound, remarks 
 upon that remarkable book Ultime Letter e di Jacofto Ortis,a. work 
 which has exercised an influence over the rising intellect of Italy not 
 inferior to that which the Werther's Leiden of Goethe has had over the 
 mind of Young Germany. 
 
 LXXIII. MR. SERJEANT TALFOURD. 
 
 " Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, 
 And burned is Apollo's laurel bough 
 That sometime grew within this learned man ; 
 Faustus is gone." f 
 
 As an early contributor to the London Magazine,- -as the friend 
 of Lamb, Coleridge, Carey, Godwin, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Bulwer and 
 Dickens, and as the author of Ion, the name of Talfourd will ever 
 find honourable mention in the annals of his country's literature. 
 
 He was born, May 26th, 1795, at Reading, where his father "won his 
 bread by supplying other people with beer," in other words, was a 
 brewer, and after a preliminary education of two years at the Protestant 
 Dissenters' Grammar School at Mill Hill, was sent to complete his 
 training, to that of his native town, then under the celebrated Dr. Valpy, 
 a pedagogue for whom ever after he felt an almost filial reverence. I 
 have an imperfect recollection of a poem in the Statesman newspaper, 
 addressed to Sir Francis Burdett, on his liberation from imprisonment in 
 the Tower of London, which I believe was Talfourd's earliest venture in 
 print. While still at Reading School he published a slender volume of 
 verse, entitled Poems on Various Subjects, the subject of the first being 
 " On the Education of the Poor," suggested to him, while at Mill Hill, by a 
 visit thereto of the celebrated Joseph Lancaster. The little volume con- 
 tained other pieces of merit, but it was this poem on education in particular 
 which gained him influential friends, by whose advice and assistance, on 
 
 * Dei Sepolcri. t Marlow's Doctor Faustus. 
 

 
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 TEEOIR OF "IOK.' 
 
 
MR. SERJEANT TALFOURD. 379 
 
 proceeding to London to study for the bar in 181 3, he became a pupil of 
 the eminent pleader, Chitty, whom, during his four years' pupilage, he 
 largely assisted in the preparation of his standard work on " Criminal 
 Law." In the same year, he wrote for the Pamphleteer a long essay, 
 entitled " An Appeal to the Protestant Dissenters of Great Britain on 
 Behalf of Roman Catholics." 
 
 Mary Russell Mitford, who had known him at an earlier period, 
 expressed, in a letter to a friend, her high opinion of his abilities, and 
 prognosticated his success. " You should know," she proceeds, " that he 
 has the very great advantage of having nothing to depend upon but his 
 own talents, and industry ; and those talents are, I assure you, of the 
 very highest order. I know nothing so eloquent as his conversation, so 
 powerful, so full ; passing with equal ease from the plainest detail to the 
 loftiest and most sustained flights of imagination ; heaping, with un- 
 rivalled fluency of words and ideas, image upon image, and illustration 
 upon illustration. Never was conversation so dazzling, so brilliant." 
 
 There is an old alliance between Law and Poetry ; was not Themis 
 styled the Parnassian by the ancients ? Yet Goddess and Muse are so 
 jealous alike, that the presumptuous mortal who ventures to sacrifice in 
 their temples alternately, will ten to one get his offerings spurned by both 
 for his pains. In sermo pedester, a Jack at all trades is master of none ; 
 and inasmuch as very unusual abilities are required to succeed either as 
 orator, poet, or lawyer, instances are by no means common of one and 
 the same person rising to distinction in all three. But this is what Tal- 
 fourd did in verification of the prophecy of the authoress of Our Village. 
 Thus he was amusingly described by Maginn as " a gentleman who woos 
 at once the Nine Muses and Five Justices of the Common Pleas, and 
 cultivates with equal assiduity the graces of Clio and his Clients ; who 
 has studied Blackstone, and has not deemed it necessary to imitate him 
 in bidding a farewell to the Muse ; but who furnishes briefs to Macready 
 to plead the cause of ' Ion' before the judges of Covent Garden, as readily 
 as he receives those which send himself to plead the causes of the ever- 
 lasting Does and Roes of Westminster Hall." 
 
 It is of course this last-named tragedy that now brings him into the 
 court of Reginaj and it would be out of place to say much about his 
 legal essays, many of which, published about this time, although of an 
 ephemeral character as discussing questions of the day, are still worth 
 reading for their elegant style, argumentative skill, and striking illustration. 
 Among these may be mentioned a reply to certain objections taken by 
 Cobbett to the Unitarian Relief Bill ; a pamphlet of great ability, entitled 
 Strictures on Capital PunisJunents, with Observations on the True Nature 
 oj Justice^ and the Legitimate Design of Penal Institutions ; another, Obser- 
 vations on the Punish?nent of the Pillory j and An Appeal against tfye Act 
 for Regulating Royal Marriages. For several years he reported circuit 
 cases for the Ti??ies newspaper, and was a large contributor to the Law 
 Magazine. 
 
 Turning to his labours in elegant literature, it is important to mention 
 that so early as 181 5, he had published, as an original contribution to the 
 Pamphleteer (No. x. vol. v.), an elaborate essay, entitled "An Attempt to 
 estimate the Poetical Talent of the Present Age, including a Sketch of 
 the History of Poetry," a paper which is remarkable as exhibiting a full 
 appreciation of the genius of Wordsworth, which had not then obtained a 
 
3 8o THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY, 
 
 due recognition among poetical critics. In 1817, when enfranchised 
 from the routine labours of Mr. Chitty's office, he became a large con- 
 tributor to the Retrospective Review, in association with Henry Southern, 
 Sir Harris Nicolas and others ; and to the Encyclopedia Metropolitans, 
 for which he wrote the articles on Homer, the Greek Tragedians, the 
 Greek Lyric Poets, etc. Between 1820 and 1832, he was a pretty con- 
 stant writer in the New Monthly Magazine, the Edinburgh Review and 
 the London Magazine. 
 
 In 1 82 1, Talfourd was called to the Bar by the society of the Middle 
 Temple after four years' successful practice as a special pleader ; he joined 
 the Oxford Circuit and Berkshire Sessions, and soon succeeded in obtain- 
 ing a large and lucrative practice. In 1826, he nevertheless found time 
 to prepare a memoir on the life and writings of the celebrated writer of 
 romance, Mrs. Radcliffe, which is prefixed to her posthumous works. 
 Nor were his legal studies neglected among more literary employment, 
 and he superintended a new edition of Dickenson's useful Guide to the 
 Quarter Sessions. In 1833, he was called to the degree of Serjeant at 
 Law, with a patent of precedence ; and also became Recorder of Banbury. 
 
 In 1835 ne was returned to Parliament at the general election for his 
 native town. In his legislative capacity he introduced a useful measure, 
 the " Custody of Infants Act," and another, the " Copyright Act " of 1841. 
 For his exertions in this question he is entitled to the lasting gratitude of 
 literary men. One memorable expression of this is enshrined in the 
 graceful dedication to him of the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick 
 Club (1837), by Charles Dickens, who says to his [friend : " Many a 
 fevered head and palsied hand will gather new vigour in the hour of 
 sickness and distress from your excellent exertions ; many a widowed 
 mother and orphan child, who would otherwise reap nothing from the 
 fame of departed genius but its too frequent legacy of poverty and suffer- 
 ing, will bear, in their altered condition, higher testimony to the value of 
 your labours than the most lavish encomiums from lip or pen could ever 
 afford." Three years later were published, by Moxon, Three Speeches 
 delivered in the House of Commons in favour of a Measure for an Exten- 
 sion of Copyright, by T. N. Talfourd, etc.; to which are added the Petitio?t 
 in favour of the Bill, and Remarks on the Present State of the Copyright 
 Question (1840, i2mo). 
 
 In 1848, Talfourd received the honour of knighthood, and was made a 
 judge of the Common Pleas. He had the reputation of discharging his 
 judicial functions with ability, discretion, and conscientiousness. 
 
 The reputation of Talfourd chiefly depends upon his beautiful tragedy 
 Ion. This was printed for private circulation towards the close of 1834 ; 
 and two editions were thus disposed of. A notice of it appeared in the 
 Quarterly Review j * and at length the author consented to its production 
 at Covent Garden Theatre, for Macready's benefit, May 26th, 1836, when 
 it achieved a decided success. I need not remind the reader that the 
 title of this play is borrowed from a tragedy of Euripides, where will also 
 be found the primal idea of the " situation," that of a foundling youth, 
 educated in a temple, and ministering in its services. To involve such a 
 character in circumstances which would naturally excite the passions of the 
 mind, recourse was had to the old Greek notion of Destiny, to the accom- 
 plishment of a prophecy, and "to the idea of fascination, as an engine 
 * September, 1835, vol. liv. p. 505. 
 
MR. SERJEANT TALFOURD. 381 
 
 by which Fate might work its purposes on the innocent mind, and force 
 it into terrible action most uncongenial to itself, but necessary to the issue." 
 Whether " groups surrounded with the associations of the Greek Mytho- 
 logy, and subjected to the capricious laws of Greek superstition, could be 
 endowed by genius itself with such present life as to awaken the sympa- 
 thies of an English audience," the author himself considered a subject of 
 doubt. He felt that he was asking too much for a spectator to grant, but 
 hoped that yet he might engage the reader. " This drama," says he, " may 
 be described as the phantasm of a tragedy, not a thing of substance mor- 
 tised into the living rock^of humanity, and therefore incapable of exciting 
 that interest which grows out of hnman feeling, or of holding that perma- 
 nent place in the memory which truth only can retain." So much as to the 
 genesis of the tragedy, of whose merits and destination its author forms, a 
 a correct idea. Ion is not a work of genius, but of exquisite refinement, 
 learning and taste. It is classical and graceful in conception ; instinct 
 with subtle pathos and sentiment. These are its merits. Its defects are 
 chiefly those of execution ; the idea is hardly worked out with consistency, 
 the style not sufficiently dramatic and the poetry, although refined, 
 deficient in imagination. With a deep sense of classical grace awakened 
 in his mind by the early teachings of Dr. Valpy, and the representations 
 of Greek tragedy superintended by that able scholar, Talfourd had been 
 debarred by the conscientious scruples of friends from an early acquaint- 
 ance with English dramatic literature. It was from the " Sacred Dramas " 
 of Hannah More that he derived his first sense of the enjoyment produced 
 by the idea of dramatic action. His mind, as yet incapable of appre- 
 ciating "the deep humanities" of Shakespeare, took delight in the "bro- 
 caded grandeurs " of Dry den, Rowe and Addison. Hence grew up the 
 " idle wish " to write a tragedy, and hence were derived those materials 
 which, treasured up by memory and co-ordinated by the imagination, 
 form the basis of the tragedy of Ion. Maginn hits the mark when he 
 says, " Much may be said in its praise ; but it will never succeed on the 
 stage. It is to be applauded and forgotten. Nekher can we, with fear 
 of Homer and Co. before our eyes, pronounce it to be Greek in spirit . . . 
 1 Ion ' himself is a puling creature. There is, however, good stuff in the 
 tragedy, and Talfourd will do better things." As an acting play, Ion has 
 not retained its place ; but it will never be without charm for the tasteful 
 reader. A similar remark is also applicable to Talfourd's two later dramas, 
 The Athenian Captive, and Glencoej or, the Fate of the Macdonalds. 
 
 It was to the author of Ian that Bulwer dedicated his charming Lady 
 of Lyons, as one " whose genius and example have alike contributed 
 towards the regeneration of the national drama ; " and Leigh Hunt, who 
 appears to have been prevented by illness from witnessing the first repre- 
 sentation of the tragedy, addressed a set of pleasing verses to his friend, 
 the author.* 
 
 In April, 1840, an indictment was preferred against Henry Hether- 
 
 * See Leigh Hunt's fine lines "To the Author of Ion" 
 
 "A great, good age ! greatest and best in this, 
 
 That it struck dumb th' old anti-creeds, which parted 
 Man from the child, prosperity from the bliss 
 
 Of faith in good, and toil of wealth outhwarted 
 From leisure crown'd with bay, such as thine is, 
 TALFOURD ! a lawyer prosperous and young-hearted," etc* 
 
382 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 ington, a bookseller in the Strand, for selling Haslam's Letters to the Clergy 
 of all Denomi?iations, in penny numbers^ charging them as libels on the 
 Old Testament. The cause was tried before Lord Denman, in the Court 
 of Queen's Bench, December 8th, 1840, when the defence was conducted 
 by the defendant himself, mainly on the ground of right to publish all 
 matters of opinion, and that the work in question fairly came within the 
 operation of that principle. He was, however, convicted, and underwent 
 an imprisonment of four months in the prison of Queen's Bench. While 
 this prosecution was pending, Mr. Hetherington, who was a man of 
 considerable ability, conceived the design of prosecuting, in his turn, 
 several booksellers for the sale of the complete edition of the Poetical 
 Works of^ Shelley which had recently been published by Moxon 
 (1840, 8vo), to range with the Collected works of Crabbe, Byron, Charles 
 Lamb and others. Indictments were preferred against various vendors ; 
 but Moxon, as the publisher, caused his own name to be entered the 
 first of the series to be tried. The cause eventually came on in the Court 
 of Queen's Bench, June 23rd, 1841, before Lord Denman and a special 
 jury. Mr. Thomas appeared for the prosecution, and Mr. Serjeant 
 Talfourd for the defence. Lord Denman concluded his observations 
 by the expression of his opinion that "the most effectual method of 
 dealing with obnoxious doctrines is to refute them by argument, rather 
 than by persecuting their authors." The jury retired for a quarter of an 
 hour, and returned a verdict of Guilty, unaccompanied by any obser- 
 vation. If any task could awaken the soul of poetry in an advocate, it 
 would surely be the defence of such a man as Moxon for publishing such 
 a poet as Shelley. What, then, would be its effect on Talfourd? His 
 speech for the defendant was, as we should expect it to be, an eloquent 
 " Defence of Poetry," a noble burst of enthusiasm. He argued that 
 there was a radical difference between the cases of Hetherington and 
 Moxon ; that whereas in the former, the offensive matter formed the 
 staple of the publication, was issued with a view to bring God and 
 religion into contempt, and was thrown, by the lowness of its price, 
 in the way of those whom it was "most likely to injure ; in the latter y 
 the passages indicted as being profanely libellous were not the three- 
 hundredth part of the whole volume, should not be judged apart from 
 their context, were not the mature opinions of the author, and were 
 only given to the world as necessary elements in the consideration of his 
 intellectual development. He pointed out the price of the book, twelve 
 shillings, as likely to confine it to educated readers ; showed that, if the 
 prosecution was successful, true bills of indictment might be obtained 
 against any one who had sold a copy of Horace, Virgil, Lucretius, Ovid 
 or Juvenal ; of Shakespeare and our own dramatists ; of Milton, even ; of 
 Byron ; of " the vast productions of the German mind ; " of " that stupen- 
 dous work * Faust ; and that, as to this last, a jury might be asked " to 
 take it in their hand, and at an hour's glance to decide whether it fs a 
 libel on God, Or a hymn by Genius to His praise," He pleaded the 
 respectability of the publisher, the whole tenor of his life, and his 
 association and friendship with Rogers, Lamb, Coleridge and Southey, 
 and concluded by committing the cause of the defendant, as that of 
 Genius, Learning, History and Thought, into the hands of the jury. 
 This fine speech he revised and published in the following year (Moxon^ 
 1841, 8vo, pp. 58). 
 
MR. SERJEANT TALFOURD. 383 
 
 The death of this able and amiable man was awfully sudden. In 
 association with Mr. Justice Wightman, he opened the Commission at 
 Oxford, March 6th, 1854, and that at Stafford on the nth of the same 
 month. On the following day he attended Divine service, and on Monday 
 morning, after an early walk, entered the court at the usual hour, and 
 commenced his address to the Grand Jury. While commenting moon the 
 state of the calendar, which contained a list of more than one hundred 
 prisoners, a great proportion of whom were charged with atrocious offences, 
 he observed that many of these might be traced to the vice of intem- 
 perance, and took occasion to deplore the want of sympathy between 
 the higher and lower classes, and urged upon the former the duty of their 
 taking a more lively interest in the welfare of the latter. At these words 
 he was observed to become excited and flushed, and to manifest a thick- 
 ness and hesitancy of utterance. Suddenly he fell forward with his face 
 on his book, and was immediately caught in the arms of his senior clerk 
 and his second son, who acted as his marshal. Dr. Holland and Dr. 
 Knight, two magistrates, who were on the bench, rushed to his assistance. 
 He was carried at once to the judges' lodgings, in the proximity of the 
 court, when it was found that life was extinct. He was in the fifty-ninth 
 year of his age. 
 
 In his charge to the grand jury at the Derby Assizes, the following 
 feeling tribute was paid by Mr. Justice Coleridge to his departed friend 
 and brother judge : " His literary performances you can scarcely be 
 ignorant of ; but, indeed, he was much more than a distinguished leader, 
 an eminent judge, or a great Ornament of our literature. He had but one 
 ruling purpose of his life the doing good to his fellow-creatures in his 
 generation. He was eminently courteous and kind, generous, simple- 
 hearted, of great modesty, of the strictest honour, and of spotless integrity." 
 
 The younger brother of the judge, Mr. Field Talfourd, born in 181 5,. 
 was well known as a portrait and landscape painter, in oil, 4 water and 
 crayons. He died in March, 1874. 
 
 In 1855, a bust of Talfourd by Lough was placed in the Crown Court 
 at Stafford. It is considered an excellent likeness, and bears, on a tablet 
 beneath, the inscription : 
 
 " On the Judgment Seat of this Court, 
 
 While addressing the Grand Jury, 
 
 On March XIII. , MDCCCLIV., 
 
 died 
 
 SIR THOMAS NOON TALFOURD, Knt., D.C.L., 
 
 One of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, 
 
 An accomplished Orator, Lawyer, and Poet. 
 
 The Members of the Oxford Circuit 
 Erected this Memorial 
 Of their Regard and Admiratioh, 
 For their former Leader, Companion and Friend." * 
 
 * There is an article on the " Life and Writings of the late Mr. Justice Talfourd, 
 in the North British Review, No. xlix., May, 1836. 
 
384 THE MAC USE TOR TRAIT- GALLERY, 
 
 LXXIV. SIR JOHN SOANE. 
 
 " Whilom by silver Thames's gentle stream, 
 In London town there dwelt a subtle wight ; 
 A wight of mickle wealth and mickle fame, 
 j Book-learn'd and quaint, a virtuoso hight : 
 Uncommon things and rare were his delight ; 
 From musings deep his brain ne'er gotten ease, 
 Nor ceasen he from study day nor night ; 
 Until (advancing onward by degrees) 
 He knew whatever treads on earth, or air, or seas." 
 
 * His rich museum, of dimensions fair, 
 
 With goods that spoke the owner's mind was fraught ; 
 
 Things curious, ancient, value-worth and rare, 
 
 From sea and land, from Greece and Rome were brought, 
 
 Which he with mighty sums of gold had bought. 
 
 On these all tydes with joyous eyes he pored, 
 
 And, sooth to say, himself he greater thought, 
 
 When he beheld his cabinets thus stored, 
 
 Than if he'd been of Albion's wealthy cities lord." * 
 
 The smart French adage, Qui s 1 excuse s'accuse, seems, In some sor 1 
 exemplified by the original exhibitor of the " Gallery," who protests 
 against any one being " so besotted as to fancy, from the appearance of 
 yonder venerable effigy, that decrepitude and dotage are the best recom- 
 mendations to a niche " ; and asking if he has not already hung up in the 
 pinacotheca of " Regina," " Cephalus " Ainsworth, " Narcissus " Bulwer, 
 and " Parisian " D'Orsay, diverts the attention of observers to " Old Soane, 
 of the Antiquarian Society, ex-architect to the old lady in Threadneedle 
 .Street, an. at. LXXXII., delineated at full length, 
 
 * Veluti votiv& picta tabella forma senis,' 
 
 as a set-off to the fascinations of that distinguished trio." 
 
 However this may be, if Sir John Soane had possessed the com- 
 bined talent of Vitruvius and Palladio, it may shrewdly be suspected 
 that, in his character of mere architect, he would possess little interest, for 
 the readers of these Notices. Let us, then, cast about in search of such 
 other elements in his career as may seem to have given him locus standi 
 among our " Illustrious." 
 
 It is astonishing how many persons there are, ay, and Londoners, 
 too, whose philosophy has never dreamt that there is such an institution 
 as " Sir John Soane's Museum," or who, aware of its existence, have 
 never thought it worth their while to inspect its contents. Yet here they 
 may pass, as I have often done, a right pleasant hour or two, wander 
 at will, from room to room, just as the old architect lived and worked in 
 them, gaze upon the fine ceilings painted by his friend and frequent 
 visitor, Henry Howard, R.A., and revel at leisure among the treasures 
 of art which his liberality has placed at the service of the public. Here 
 may be seen " The Rake's Progress," by Hogarth, eight paintings in 
 
 * Akenside, Tlie Virtuoso. 
 
AUTHOR. OIF "E SIGNS OF BUIUDINGS'. 
 
S/fi JOHN $OANE. 385, 
 
 oil, purchased for 570 guineas, with the four " Election p pictures by the 
 same great master, which cost the collector 1650 guineas; paintings by 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, Danby, Hilton, Calcott, Eastlake, Howard, Fuseli 
 and Canaletti ; drawings by Stothard, Turner, Barrett, Hamilton and 
 Cosway ; models by Flaxman, Gibson and Banks ; antiques, busts,. 
 Flemish carvings, ancient capitals and friezes, terra-cottas, miniatures, 
 bronzes, medals, and a vast assemblage of artistic and antiquarian 
 curiosities. Here is the original copy of the Gerusalemme Liberata in the 
 handwriting of Tasso ; Sir Christopher Wren's watch ; the pistol pre- 
 sented by Alexander of Russia to the first Napoleon, at the treaty of Tilsit 
 in 1807 ; the ivory chairs and table of Tippoo Saib ; Fauntleroy's illus- 
 trated copy of Pennant's London, which cost Soane 650 guineas ; a 
 Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, illuminated by Giovio Clovio for 
 Cardinal Grimani ;* a fine collection of ancient gems ; a set of the famed 
 Napoleon medals, selected by the Baron Denon for the Empress 
 Josephine ; the first four folio editions of Shakespeare, once owned by 
 John Philip Kemble ; sixteen original sketches and models by J. Flaxman, 
 R.A., including one of the few plaster casts of the Shield of Achilles ; 
 several sketches and models by T. Banks, R.A., including the Boothby 
 monument, considered one of his best works ; cum multis aliis. Here, too, 
 is the magnificent Egyptian Sarcophagus, discovered by Belzoni in 1816, 
 in a tomb in the valley of Beban-el-Malook, near Gournon ; and purchased 
 by Sir John Soane, in 1824, from Mr. Salt, for ^2000. It is constructed 
 of one single block of alabaster or arragonite ; translucent, as shown 
 by a light placed within it, though nearly three inches in thickness, and 
 covered within and without by hieroglyphics, with, on the inner bottom, 
 a full length figure of the Egyptian I sis, the guardian of the dead. 
 Although I have spoken of it as a sarcophagus, I do not forget that Sir 
 Gardner Wilkinson rather considers this curious relic a cenotaph; and 
 holds that the name inscribed is that of Osirei, father of Rameses the- 
 Great. The whole collection is distributed over twenty-four roorn^ ; and 
 every nook, corner and passage of the house is, in some way, turned to 
 account. Besides this, there is an ingenious arrangement of moveable- 
 shutters for the display of the pictures, by which the wall-space is extended 
 to the dimensions of a gallery. Altogether, the museum, which was 
 formed with strict reference to the illustration of the arts, will be found 
 to contain a great number of valuable and interesting objects ; while even 
 the less important part is not without its attractions, and hardly exhibits 
 that farrago of " curious " rubbish which the antiquary of Burns had 
 brought together 
 
 * Julio Clovio, born in 1498, was one of the most admired of the Italian 
 miniaturists of the 16th century. His productions are very rare in this country, his 
 talents as an illuminator having been chiefly employed in the decoration of manuscripts 
 for the Papal Library. The magnificent MS. in the Soane collection measures i8i by 
 13 inches, and is written by Cardinal Grimani on 148 leaves of the finest vellum. A 
 selection from the ornamental and illuminated borders, together with a portrait of the 
 Cardinal, and various Arabesques and Medallions, were accurately copied, arranged 
 and grouped, in illuminated and coloured lithography, by John Brandard, as illustrations 
 of the Musical Bijou of 1847. The brothers Brandard, Robert and John, were 
 natives of Birmingham. Robert was eminent as an engraver, and his water-colour 
 drawings, of which there are specimens in the South Kensington collection, are quite 
 Coxy in character. John was extensively and profitably employed by the London 
 Music Publishers, in the production of illustrative designs, in plain and coloured litho- 
 graphy, but he fatally marred his career by dissipation, and died early. 
 
 2 C 
 
3 S6 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERy. 
 
 " Of Eve's first fire he has a cinder ; 
 Auld Tubal-Cain's fire-shovel and fender ; 
 A broom-stick o' the Witch of Endor, 
 
 Weel shod wi' brass," 
 
 and which almost inevitably accumulates as the caput mortuimi of a 
 multifarious gathering. 
 
 The whole collection was valued at some ^50,000, and was "settled 
 and preserved * by its possessor for the benefit of the public, in perpetuity, 
 by an Act of Parliament obtained in the year 1833, which came into 
 operation at his death, four years later. Previously to this, an elaborate 
 description was given to the world under the somewhat pompous title of 
 The Union of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting, exemplified in the 
 House and Galleries of John Soane, etc., edited by John Britton, F.S.A. 
 ( 1 827, 4to, 29 plates).* In 1 832 appeared another Description of the House 
 a?id Museum, also in 4to, with 17 plates, chiefly lithographs. In 1835, 
 while a new and enlarged edition was in preparation, the owner of the col- 
 lection anticipated a portion of it by his Description of Three Designs for 
 the Two Houses of Parliament, made in 1779, 1794 and 1796, and of other 
 Works of Art in the House and Museum of the Professor of Architecttire 
 of the Royal Academy, in a Letter to a Friend j and shortly after appeared 
 the Description of the House and Museitm on the North Side of Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields, the Resideiice of Sir fohn Soane, etc. With graphic 
 Illustrations and incidental Details. With this volume, which contains 
 38 plates and vignettes, was given a copy of the Act, passed in 1833 f r 
 settling and endowing the Museum. It was not, however, printed for sale, 
 1 50 copies only being struck off for presentation to "illustrious personages 
 in this and in foreign countries, to public literary and scientific institutions 
 and to private friends."f A French translation was also printed ; and an 
 abridgment drawn up, in 1840, by Mr. G. Bailey, the old pupil of Sir John 
 and curator of the Museum, where only it was to be obtained. To this 
 little volume is prefixed an engraving of the splendid medal which the 
 architects of Great Britain caused to be struck in March, 1835, and pre- 
 sented to Sir John Soane, in token of their approbation of his conduct and 
 talents.J "A cote" de ce bel exemple de devouement civique vient se 
 placer un acte non moins honorable, et qui honore autant les Architectes 
 Britanniques que leur ve'ne'rable doyen. Je veux parler de la me'daille 
 qu'ils firent frapper en son honneur. L'antiquit^, et les temps modernes 
 du plus vif enthousiasme pour les Arts, n'offrent rien de plus glorieux. 
 Fdlicitons-nous-en notre siecle, et puissiez-vous, Messieurs, ajouter un 
 nouveau prix aux te'moignages d'estime et de veneration dont M. Soane a 
 6t6 l'objet ; puissiez-vous exprimer votre sympathie pour la louable 
 demarche des Architectes Britanniques par une autre non moins honorable 
 pour la Grande-Bretagne que pour la France, en addressant a l'auteur de 
 la Banque dAngleterre, et aux memes titres qui lui valurent la glorieuse 
 distinction, le Diplome de Membre Honoraire de notre SocieteV' 
 
 The celebrated mutilation of Sir John Soane's portrait, by William 
 
 * See the Gentleman 's Magazine, August, 1827, p. 129. 
 
 f This volume is noticed in an article headed "A Batch of Architects, " in Fraser's 
 Magazine, March, 1837. 
 
 % See the Gentleman' s Magazine, vol. iii. p. 524. 
 
 From a " Report on the House and Museum of Sir John Soane," by Mr. J. J. 
 Hittorff, Architect, read before the " Societe Libre des Beaux Arts," at Paris, November 
 2ojh, 1836. 
 
SIX JOHN SOANE. iZf 
 
 Jerdan, was an episode in the history of the Literary Fund, with which it 
 would be hardly worth while to enter at length but for the want of a better 
 subject. Sir John had been a large subscriber, and a wish having been 
 manifested to have his portrait in the committee-room, it was liberally 
 offered by Maclise to paint and present it to the Society. Sir John accord- 
 ingly " sat," and the portrait was achieved. At first it was considered a, 
 marvellous resemblance, and there is little doubt that it was so. But just- 
 as Queen Elizabeth, in her latter days, was wrath with the too-conscien- 
 tious Master of the Mint who dared to represent the wrinkles of his 
 Royal mistress on that unfortunate shilling, of which onry one mutilated 
 impression now remains to perpetuate the story, so was the octogenarian 
 knight led to believe that the artist had dug " deeper trenches in his 
 beauty's field " than Time himself in his eighty years' siege. Officious 
 parasites at the great man's table fostered the idea ; he became furious 
 with wounded vanity, and ended with demanding, as the condition of the 
 continuance of his subscription, that the too-truthful portrait should be 
 handed to him, and replaced by a copy, which he offered to provide, of his 
 likeness by Sir Thomas Lawrence. No objection was made to this, and 
 matters might have been made pleasant had not Maclise demanded back 
 his portrait, to which he certainly had a right. Sir John, on the other hand, 
 insisted that it should be given up to himself, and the Committee was thus 
 placed in a dilemma. If the portrait was handed over to Sir John, a 
 gross injustice was inflicted on the artist ; while, if Maclise received back 
 his picture, there was an end to the foolish old knight's subscriptions. 
 Hugely perplexed, the committee was gravely deliberating which course it 
 should adopt, when " a poor half-witted fellow, very well known in the 
 town, and who had by some means heard of the controversy, put an end 
 to the dispute in the simplest manner possible." * Having surreptitiously 
 obtained admission into the committee-room late in the evening, he 
 deliberately cut the portrait into shreds, and took his departure, leaving 
 behind him a note to the effect that he had "destroyed the bone of 
 contention." The affair created, of course, a tremendous sensation, and 
 it was even proposed to indict the offender for felony. Maclise, however, 
 was generous, and the storm blew over, leaving little trace of its occurrence, 
 but in a century or so of epigrams, all now forgotten, and of which the 
 following is by no means the worst : 
 
 "A PICTORIAL DESTRUCTIVE'S DEFENCE. 
 " To the Literary Fund Committee. 
 
 "'Tis past all question that Maclise 
 Has fail'd your friend, Sir John, to please ; 
 
 Then never look at me askance ; 
 For this, believe me, is the case, 
 If I had not destroy' d his face, 
 You must have lost his countenance** 
 
 As I have hinted above, the "poor half-witted fellow " was no other 
 than William Jerdan. Mr. C. P. Roney had not long been elected to the 
 office of secretary, and was, no doubt, horror-stricken at the sacrilege. 
 Jerdan says f : " I fancy the greatest shock he received in the discharge 
 of his duties was when I cut Soane's portrait into ribands, and carried 
 the slip of canvas with the eyes on it to show him at the opera, where 
 
 * Dublin University Magazine (Notice of Maclise), May, 1847, p. 605. 
 f Autobiography of William Jerdan, vol. iv. p. 402. 
 
3 88 1HE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 I knew he was, and which drove him in dismay from a ballet that no- 
 young Irishman could dream of leaving except under very violent pressure 
 indeed. I was menaced with Heaven knows what vengeance for com- 
 mitting this atrocious "(and I confess half-crazy) deed, but the impulse was 
 defensible." The following epigram, or squib, which appeared at the time,, 
 may serve to further elucidate the matter, and set it in its true light : 
 
 " The feud between Sir John Soane and the Literary Fund has at 
 length i in hollow murmurs died away ' ; the talented but too zealous 
 perpetrator of the mutilation has been gently rebuked, and there the 
 matter ends unless, indeed, the suggestion given below be acted upon, 
 which we scarcely anticipate : 
 
 " (Dr. T. loquitur. 
 [" Ochone ! Ochone ! 
 
 For the portrait of SOANE ! 
 JERDAN, you ought to have let it alone ; 
 Don't you see that instead of ' removing the bone 
 Of contention,' the apple of discord you've thrown ? 
 One general moan, 
 Like a tragedy groan, 
 Burst forth when the picturecide deed became known. 
 When the story got blown, 
 From the Thames to the Rhone, 
 Folks were calling for ether and Eau de Cologne, 
 All shock'd at the want of discretion you've shown. 
 If your heart's not a stone, 
 You will forthwith atone : 
 The best way to do that is to ask Mr. Rone 
 y to sew up the slits ; the Committee, you'll own, 
 When it's once stitch'd together, must see that it's Soane !" * 
 
 The muse of poor Laman Blanchard somehow came within the 
 sphere of infection, and in due time exhibited the following eruption : 
 
 "ON THE DESTRUCTION OF SIR JOHN SOANE'S PORTRAIT, 
 BELONGING TO THE LITERARY FUND SOCIETY. 
 
 " ' Dear Friend,' says Mr. J , with truth's own grace, 
 
 ' Your knight I've slaughter'd with my penknife's lance ; 
 But then, if I had not destroy d his face, 
 
 You would have surely lost his countenance.' 
 
 " A logical defence ! Let none deride, 
 
 Or doubt that this each graver charge rebuts ; 
 Our friend may boast he has not multiplied 
 A single picture into several cuts ! 
 
 " But is the face destroy'd? Is hope, then, vain ? 
 No ! Caesar stabb'd by Brutus doubtless ceases, 
 But what was Soane may yet be sewn again 
 Although to give us peace, 'tis cut in pieces ! " f 
 
 Maginn comments in eloquent strain upon the unhappy results of 
 what Jerdan facetiously called " a bo?ie of contention," and the offence 
 given by the too faithful portrait. "We now learn," says he, "with 
 sincere regret, that Sir John has allowed himself to be ear-wigged, by 
 certain interested parties, into a withdrawal of his name and countenance 
 from an unoffending charity on grounds so ridiculous. When those wh<* 
 
 * Qy. Sewn?, Print. Dev. 
 
 f Poetical Works of Laman Blanchard, edited by his son-in-law, and godson, 
 Blanehard Jerrold (1876, 8v^>, p. 262). 
 
SIX JOHN SQANE. 3S9 
 
 are born to rank and influence open their purse to the distressed sons of 
 literature they at best but discharge a debt ; but has Sir John Soane for- 
 gotten the year 1777, when a poor mason's son, on a pittance of sixty 
 pounds, drawn from . an institution like this, was enabled to lay the 
 foundations of professional knowledge on which he has since had the 
 good fortune to raise so gorgeous a superstructure of wealth, crowned 
 with honourable distinction ? In what has Charity offended ? Is it 
 HER fault that wrinkles will attend on good old age, that gums will 
 become toothless, and cheeks collapsed? While Intellect survives, 
 it is yet a noble ruin ; but when symptoms of decay, such as we would 
 fain not have thus to record, make themselves there perceptible, we must 
 only sigh out our sorrowful conviction, 'fs anus / ' 
 
 " Literature can do more for his fame than stone and mortar will ever 
 achieve, and, if he be wise, he will make the Muses the caryatides of his 
 renown. Ever since the art of printing arose, Glory has been in its gift, 
 and Immortality at its disposal ; in the dark ages, says Victor Hugo, 
 * Les Iliades firefiaient la forme de cathedrales? The contemporary mind 
 painfully and laboriously sought to eternize itself in huge masses ; 
 Masonry was the expression, Architecture the language of society. Now- 
 adays, human thought becomes a myriad of birds, and wafts its 
 simultaneous flight to the four corners of the earth. You can demolish 
 a monument, but you cannot grapple with ubiquity; a MS. may be 
 destroyed, but EDITIONS defy torch and Turk ; a picture is cut in shreds, 
 "but Regina's Gallery is flung open to the eye of ages yet unborn." 
 
 Ohe, jam satis! Enough of this pictorial squabble. Every one 
 " has heard," says Maginn presuming on a knowledge which if it existed 
 in his day, certainly does not now, " of the fracas at the Literary 
 Fund, of Maclise the painter, and of Jerdan the iconoclast. The 
 removal of a shattered old hitrin furnished Boileau with materials for 
 an epic ; the disappearance of a rotten old bucket fired the muse of 
 Tassoni ; but the demolition of Soane's portrait is yet unsung. The 
 grave objection taken to its excessive likeness must apply, we fear, 
 equally to our sketch ; and it will be seen that the features of the case 
 have not been improved by the penknife of the Gazetteer. Indeed, that 
 exploit had not even the merit of originality : the experiment of 
 rejuvenating a tough old subject, by the process of cutting up, was long 
 go tried on Pelias, king of Colchis, at the suggestion of Medea the 
 witch, and was not found to answer." 
 
 The best existing portrait of Soane is that by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 
 which remains at the Museum, and hangs in the Dining-room ; this was 
 painted in 1829, and was almost the last work of the artist.* There is 
 an earlier portrait (1804) by W. Owen, R.A. ; a third by Sam. Drummond, 
 <\..R.A.f ; and a fourth, in Masonic costume, by John Jackson, R.A. This 
 painter, at the time of his death in 1831, was engaged on a portrait of 
 Lady Soane, which in its unfinished state, is preserved in the Museum ; 
 where is also a sketch in chalk by John Flaxman, R.A. A marble bust 
 of Sir John, by Sir Francis Chantrey, R.A., will be found in the Gallery, 
 under the Dome. 
 
 The professional career of Sir John Soane was not free from the 
 machinations of that envy which pursues successful merit as its shade. 
 
 * This portrait has been engraved by C. Turner, A. R.A. 
 f Engraved by T. Blood, 1813. 
 
390 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 In 1788, the year in which he published his Plans, Elevations and Sections 
 of Buildings, etc., folio, dedicated by permission to the King, he was 
 appointed, after a sharp competition with thirteen competing rivals to 
 succeed Sir Robert Taylor, as Architect to the Bank of England. This 
 success of course procured him numerous enemies ; " a corps collectif" he 
 states in an unpublished autobiography, " was organized, which has since 
 pursued me incessantly, on every opportunity, in every stage of my life, up 
 to the present moment." A malignant attack upon his professional 
 character was made in the Observer newspaper, in which he was styled 
 " The Modern Goth," for having pulled down the Rotunda ; and when James 
 Wyatt gave a dinner, to celebrate the opening of the Globe Tavern, in 
 Fleet Street, of which he was the architect, the obnoxious article was 
 reprinted, and a copy placed on the plate of every guest. He also gave 
 considerable offence to his professional brethren by his evidence on the 
 occasion of an action brought against the county of Nottingham by Mr, 
 Stoddart, to recover a charge of two per cent., for measuring the 
 buildings of a newly erected gaol, in addition to the usual allowance of 
 five per cent, to the architect or surveyor. Here Sir John Soane, who 
 was the only professional witness called by the county, stood alone in 
 combating the practice, which he thought extortionate ; and the verdict 
 was in favour of the plaintiff. 
 
 In an able article on the architecture of Wilkins's Nelson Column at 
 Yarmouth (Annals of the Fine Arts, vol. iv. p. 511), it is suggested that 
 the name of the architect should be inscribed on every building of 
 importance, as, in many instances, it had become impossible to ascertain 
 by whom an edifice had been designed. A competent critic, but a bad 
 writer, James Elmes, in commenting upon this, says : '* Of all living 
 architects,_ Mr. Soane is the least likely to suffer from this cause, for 
 every design that he ever made, from his machicolated porches at 
 Norwich Castle to his superb Council Chamber at Whitehall, the most 
 tasteful, elegant, and splendid room of the day, is stamped with his seal 
 and impress, and marked on every moulding with his name. He has the 
 merit of having introduced an elegant, ornamental, and chaste style into 
 England, as florid as the richest of the Roman, and as chaste as the fane 
 of the virgin goddess of the Athenian. With him, purity is not poverty ; 
 breadth, baldness ; nor chasteness of style, coldness. Rich, ornamental 
 and florid, wanting perhaps a little boldness in the larger parts, Mr. 
 Spane has succeeded in founding a style, extremely original and entirely 
 his own. He has enlarged the bounds of the art, not by the invention of 
 a new order, but by the introduction of new species of the legitimate 
 genius into England." * 
 
 A sixth order is the philosophers' stone of architects. Italy pursued 
 the ignis fatuus in the 15th and 16th centuries ; France was attacked by 
 the mania in the reign of Louis XIV., when Pierre de la Roche 
 announced, that, by adorning his capital with the nodding ostrich plumes 
 of the Princes of Wales, he imparted to it a dignity and grace that far 
 surpassed the Corinthian, and must ultimately supersede it. Sebastian 
 Le Clerc gave 4:wo new orders ; and our countryman, Sir William 
 Chambers, who translated him in 1732, introduced and described no fewer 
 than six, in his own treatise on Civil Architecture. Then came John 
 Emlyn, architect to George III., who designed the modern Gothic screen 
 
 * Metropolitan Improvements, or London in the Nineteenth Century, 8vo, p. 126. 
 
SIR JOHN SOANE. 391 
 
 in St. George's Chapel ; and Batty Langley, who, implying his own vast 
 superiority to the correct Palladio, has expanded the Gothic style into 
 five separate " orders." It is to Sir John Soane that we are indebted for 
 the development of the capabilities of the Corinthian, and an acquaintance 
 with its more splendid and striking varieties. Our knowledge of it, before 
 his time, was limited to the example of the Pantheon ; but he introduced 
 to British architecture that variety of the order which is shown in the 
 circular Temple at Tivoli, the Temple of Jupiter Stator in the Roman 
 Forum, the Portico of Agrippa at Rome, and the modifications of the 
 same order in Greece, particularly the gorgeous example of the Choragic 
 monument of Lysicrates at Athens. In the Ionic order, which, however, 
 he used successfully in the interior of the Bank of England, as in the 
 Doric, he has not evinced a similar daring of originality. The severity 
 and chastity of these orders were at variance with his love of richness, 
 and did not afford scope for that profusion of ornamentation which was 
 the besetting sin of his style. I have already alluded to professional 
 rivalry, and lay animadversion. The varieties which he introduced of 
 an original order brought upon him the charge of inventing a new one. 
 Early in his career, the scored walls and anttz of the Bank were satirized 
 and abused in the doggrel verse of a poetaster whose name has escaped 
 me. The angry architect brought an action against the scribbler, but 
 got nothing but a long lawyer's bill for his pains. Bonomi the architect, 
 gazing upon the insulated Ionic colonnade of Carlton House, once 
 fronting Pall Mall, asked and answered in an epigrammatic distich 
 worth preserving : 
 
 * Care colonne, che fatti qua ? 
 Non sapiamo, in verita ! " 
 
 of which I remember I know not whose version : 
 
 "Just venture to ask them, ' Pray what brings you there? 
 They'll answer, ' Ton honour, can't say, we declare.' " 
 
 A similar question has been often put by captious critics to the side 
 porticoes of the fine row of dwelling houses, on the east side of Regent 
 Street, designed by Soane. This, which can hardly be said to belong to 
 any particular order, but, in ornamentation, is rather an example of the 
 Etruscan School, was considered, at the period of its erection, one of the 
 most striking and elegant specimens of street architecture in the whole 
 metropolis. But he who judges shall be judged himself; and the 
 strictures which had been passed by Sir John Soane upon the work of his 
 contemporaries were, fairly enough, turned upon himself by a witty critic. 
 In Knight's Quarterly Magazine, No. iv. 1824, appeared an article, 
 which I should attribute to the editor, smartly satirizing the general style 
 of the buildings of Professor Soane, with especial reference to this Regent 
 Street row. The writer began by bewailing the loss by the moderns of a 
 sixth order of architecture, which, from its original employment at Thebes, 
 was called tear e|oxV, The Bceotian. It is described, he said, in the 
 celebrated treatise of Pancirollus, De Rebus Memorabilibns sive Deperditis; 
 and further developed in the ponderous lucubrations of a supposititious 
 Dutchman, the learned Vander von Bluggen, "Amstel. 15 torn, folio," 
 whence a great architectural genius of our own days had brought it to 
 light, and given it a new habitation, if not name, in the British metropolis. 
 
392 THE MACULE PQRTRBMT-QALLERY. 
 
 According to the veridical asseverations of Von Bluggen, the most perfect 
 specimen of the order, to be found in ancient times, was exhibited by the 
 Temple of Hermaphroditus at Thebes ; but as this was unfortunately 
 involved in the entire demolition of the Cadmean city by Alexander, 
 when nothing but the house of Pindar was spared, we can only judge of 
 its merits by " the columns of the central portico of the pile of building 
 in Regent Street, a part of which is distinguished as the emporium of 
 Messrs. Robins & Co., Auctioneers and Land Agents." The critic next 
 sportively touches upon Dulwich College, which he says, " is a very fine 
 specimen of Mr. Soane's" own original and best style," and indites a 
 capital parody of Gray's " Ode to Eton College," as an address to it : 
 
 "Ye vases five, ye antic towers, 
 That crown the turnpike glade, 
 Where art, in dingy light adores 
 Her Bourgeois' ochrey shade ; " 
 
 and then goes on to apostrophize the superior of the College, who, by the 
 will of its founder, Allen, the celebrated comedian, must always bear the 
 same name as himself, 
 
 "Say, Master Allen, hast thou seen 
 
 The connoisseuring race, 
 Breathless, amazed, on Dulwich-green, 
 
 My lines of beauty trace ? 
 Who foremost now delights to stop 
 To look at ' God's gift '* picture shop ; 
 
 Is't Nash, or Smirke, or Gwilt ? 
 Do not the knowing loungers cry, 
 ' My eye ! ' at my sarcophagi, 
 
 And guess by whom 'twas built ! " 
 
 But enough of this ; here again the ire of the architect, who could not 
 bear adverse criticism on his own works, was enkindled, and he sought 
 to tongue-tie the satirist by the law. He brought an action for damages 
 against the publisher, and put Nash, Smirke, Gwilt, and Elmes into the 
 witness-box. But, once more, the verdict was for the Defendant, and Sir 
 John had to pay the piper. 
 
 Now, by way of concluding this already too lengthy notice, a few facts 
 in brief summary of the more important land-marks in the professional 
 career of Sir John Soane. He was a native of Reading, of patronymic, 
 as some have it, originally Soan or Swan,\ where he was born September 
 loth, 1753. He became a pupil of Dance, and later, of Holland. He 
 gained in 1772 the silver medal at the Royal Academy for the best draw- 
 ing of the Banqueting House, Whitehall ; and in 1776, the gold one for 
 the best design for a triumphal bridge. He was brought by Sir William 
 Chambers under the notice of the King, through whom he was sent to 
 Italy, with the Academy's allowance of ^60 per annum for three years, 
 and as much more for travelling expenses ; and remained abroad till 
 1780. In 1788, as I have already said, came his appointment as 
 architect to the Bank of England, on the death of Sir Robert Taylor ; a 
 circumstance which mainly led to his reputation and fortune. In 1795, 
 he was appointed architect to the Woods and Forests ; and elected a 
 
 * The name given by the founder to the College. 
 f Fine Arts Almanack, 1850, p. 38. 
 
$/ JOHN SOANE. 393 
 
 Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and an Associate of the Royal 
 Academy. He was also made grand superintendent of work in the 
 United Fraternity of Freemasons, of whose Hall he was the architect; 
 In 1802, he obtained the full honours of the Academy; and in 1806 
 on the retirement of his old master, George Dance, R.A., from the office, 
 was appointed Professor of Architecture to that body, when he thought 
 fit to revive the practice, long fallen into abeyance, of delivering lectures 
 to the students. It happened, however, in the course of these that he 
 felt it his duty to pass certain strictures upon the works of a brother 
 Academician, under the belief that it was part of his Professorial function 
 to comment upon the designs of a living artist, if he considered his 
 example to be pernicious. This led to a resolution of the Council of 
 the Academy, to the effect *hat the Professor should not review or 
 criticize the works of contemporary architects of his own country; and 
 the course was suspended at the fourth Lecture, January 29th, 18 10, and 
 not vesumed till an interval of two years had elapsed. In 1824, he 
 became architect to the Royal College of Surgeons ; and in September, 
 1 83 1, received the honour of Knighthood. In 1833, ne completed the 
 new State Paper Office in St. James's Park, which was the last of his 
 professional works. 
 
 On October 16th of the same year, with impaired sight, borne down 
 by domestic calamities, and already an octogenarian, he retired from 
 the profession in which he had been engaged for more than sixty years, 
 for forty-five of which he had been in the service of the Bank of England, 
 the governor and directors of which, when he tendered his resignation, 
 expressed their high recognition of the value of his labours. 
 
 He died at his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, without the slightest 
 pain, and imperceptibly to his attendents, on January 20th, 1837, in the 
 eighty-fifth year of his age. His remains lie in the burying-ground 
 appertaining to the parish of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, where two large 
 cypress-trees denote his grave. Here are also buried a brother 
 Academician, John Flaxman, his wife and sister. 
 
 Sir John Soane was not happy in his domestic relations ; but perhaps 
 it is as well that I have no space to dwell upon these, especially his 
 lamentable disagreement with his son George, which is at the end of my 
 pen. He had been liberal enough in his support of public charities, 
 notably the Artists' and the Literary Fund ; he bequeathed, as we have 
 seen, his house and his collections to the nation ; and he gave a thousand 
 pounds towards the Duke of York's monument. It was this latter 
 jdonation, especially, which subjected him to the charge of allowing his 
 nearest relatives to live in a state of pauperism, while he was lavishing 
 his money for the gratification of a selfish and absurd vanity. He alludes 
 to this charge in the MS. autobiography to which I have referred ; and 
 states, in refutation, that he had set apart a sum of ,20,000, in the names 
 of Francis Chantrey, R.A., and others, as trustees for a grandson and 
 three grand-daughters who are specially interested. 
 
 To the very last, his Museum engaged his attention ; he made 
 important alterations in the disposition of its contents, and a few months 
 only before his death, purchased, for a sum of 500, the valuable col- 
 lection of drawings, by his old master, the eminent architect, George 
 Dance, R.A. 
 
 Not to mention in detail various literary essays connected with his 
 
394 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 profession, and dating from the last century, in 1828 he published an 
 important volume, entitled Works : consisting of Designs of Public and 
 Private Buildings. London, royal folio, 56 plates. 
 
 There are Memoirs of Sir fohn Soane, by John Britton, F.S.A. 
 (London, 1834, royal 8vo) ; and a Review of the Professional Life of Sir 
 John Soane, Architect, R.A., M.I.B.A., F.R.S., and Member of Various 
 Foreign Academies; Deceased January 2.0th, 1837. With some Remarks 
 on his Genius and Productio?is. Read at the First subsequent Ordinary 
 Meetitig of the I?istitute of British Architects, held Monday, 6 th February, 
 1837. By Thomas Leverson Donaldson, Fellow and Honorary Secretary, 
 Corresponding Member of the Institute of France, etc. (London, John 
 Williams, _ etc., 1837, 8vo, pp. 32). At the end of this volume is a 
 chronological account of the events in his career, drawn up by George 
 Bailey, M.I.B.A., followed by a list of the more important designs and 
 compositions made by him. 
 
 LXXV. LORD LYNDHURST. 
 
 " It is hardly possible to conceive a prouder situation than that which is 
 now occupied by Lord Lyndhurst. He is the recognized leader of the 
 most honourable party in what, considered on public grounds as a whole, 
 and without reference to the factious fraction which he opposes, is the 
 noblest body in the world ; and he owes this lofty station to his own over- 
 whelming talents. In an assembly which comprises men who have filled 
 the greatest offices, governed vast provinces, led victorious armies, 
 conducted important missions, presided over courts of justice, represented 
 large constituencies, who have, in short, fulfilled with distinction the 
 highest functions of public life, in every department ; in an assembly 
 where we find princes and marshals, viceroys and ambassadors, 
 chancellors and judges, orators and statesmen, knights and nobles, the 
 presence of any one of whom, with a few disgraceful exceptions, would 
 be considered to be an ornament in any company in the world ; in this 
 assembly, illustrious as it is by high birth, ancient descent, polished 
 breeding, and not more so than by great talent, knowledge and eloquence, 
 its most illustrious portion has, without a dissenting voice, chosen Lord 
 Lyndhurst as its organ and its chief. It is a distinction of which any man 
 might justly be proud ; and that just pride must be enhanced by the 
 consciousness that he executes the duty intrusted to him so as to excite 
 the admiration of his noble allies, and, what is a tribute no less decisive,. 
 the bitter fury of his ignoble antagonists. 
 
 " It is quite unnecessary that we should attempt the slightest sketch of 
 the life of a man so long before the public. The bawling demagogue of 
 the day has threatened to expose his private history, and he may indulge 
 his slanderous propensities with impunity, for all people duly appreciate 
 the reason which dictates the lies he may publish in some obscure 
 journals. They feel that in his sinking estate, for sinking he is, in spite 
 of his swagger and bluster, he attributes his fall to the eloquence of that 
 eminent orator whom we have enrolled in our Gallery. The celebrated 
 
ADTMBB. <2EF "SKJWMAMY E THE SESSION' 
 
LORD LYNDIIURST. 395 
 
 speech which closed the last session demolished the reputation of the 
 unfortunate Government, or rather shadow of a Government, stridden 
 over by O'Connell. All parties agree that it had the most withering effect. 
 The Whigs were silent, in breathless rage or fear ; the Tories, entranced 
 in admiration and mute wonder, as the eloquent periods flowed from the 
 lips of the stately speaker. It is generally reported that O'Connell was 
 present under the gallery while Lord Lyndhurst addressed to him, in one 
 of his speeches, the passage directed by Cicero against Catiline, and 
 that the triple-bronzed beggar-man shrank away in abashment. Yet that 
 passage pleased us not. It was not fair to Catiline to compare him who> 
 as Sallust tells, was ' nobili loco natus] who never shrank from danger of 
 any kind in the midst of the stirring period of human history, whose 
 hands are free from the stain of money, and who died gallantly fighting, 
 at last, amid his brave companions, 
 
 ' Each stepping where his comrade stood 
 The instant that he fell,' 
 
 with one whose name is unconnected with any honourable action, whose 
 whole life has been one scene of skulking from dangers into which he 
 had drawn others, and who is occupied from one end of the year to the 
 other in devising plans of drawing enormous fortunes from squalid 
 beggary. 
 
 " What Lord Lyndhurst is as a politician and lawyer is known to all. 
 In both characters he is pre-eminent. We shall invade his private life 
 no further than to say that the orator of the Senate is the wit of the 
 dinner-table, the profound lawyer of the bench or woolsack, the gayest 
 of the gay in drawing-room and boudoir. Our artist has been happy in 
 catching his likeness at a moment when, the robes of office or nobility 
 being thrown aside, he aims at no other character than one in which he- 
 is so well qualified to shine a gentleman. A pleasanter fellow does not 
 exist ; and in his case, at least, the fair author was mistaken when she 
 said that ' the judge and the peer is a world-weary man.' 
 
 " It is rarely that a man of genius leaves behind him a son, also a 
 man of genius. It has been so, however, in the present case. But little 
 could Copley have contemplated, when he was painting his celebrated 
 picture of the death of Chatham, that his own son was destined to equal 
 the fame of Chatham in such an assembly as that on which he was 
 employing his pencil." 
 
 So far Maginn apud Fraser (October, 1836) a fine notice, charac- 
 teristic of the writer, and as applicable now as it was half-a-century ago ; 
 it leaves me to add but a few lines by way of supplement. 
 
 " Studiis vigilare severis was the motto chosen by this eminent 
 statesman for the gift-rings, when, in 1813, he assumed the coif. The 
 sentence is appropriate, for Lord Lyndhurst afforded, in his own 
 splendid career, an illustration of the power of mental labour, of that 
 " capacity for taking trouble," which, if not genius, simulates genius in 
 its manifestations and results. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst was born at Boston, in New England, May 21st, 
 1772, and was the only surviving son of John Singleton Copley, the Royal 
 Academician, whose paintings, "The Death of Chatham" and the 
 " Death of Major Pierson," are so familiar to us, the former from being 
 in the national collection at South Kensington, and both from the 
 
^6 )Tff MACLISE PORTRAiT-GALLERY* 
 
 engravings respectively of Bartolozzi and Heath.* The son was destined 
 for the profession of the father, and attended the lectures of Reynolds and 
 Barry. He probably saw that he did not possess the elements of success 
 in art, for he shortly turned his attention to the Church. Having read 
 for some time with the Rev. Mr. Home, a private tutor, he entered 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1790, where he graduated B.A. in 1794, 
 .as second Wrangler, and Smith's Junior Mathematical Prizeman. It is 
 worthy of record that he was, while at Cambridge, a private pupil of the 
 celebrated William Frend, who was tried in 1792 for sedition and 
 opposition to the Liturgy, and banished not expelled, as is generally 
 said, the University. This once celebrated scholar, pray excuse the 
 obiter dictum, died in 1841, leaving a daughter, Sophia Elizabeth, the 
 accomplished wife of another renowned mathematician, the late Augustus 
 de Morgan, whose life she has lately (October, 1882) written. Lyndhurst 
 was elected Fellow of his College in 1797, and soon decided upon the 
 law as a profession, entering himself as a student at Lincoln's Inn. 
 Before he left Cambridge he had been appointed one of the " Travelling 
 Bachelors" of the University, in which capacity he visited the United 
 States, with the celebrated Volney, author of Les Ruines, as a companion. 
 He was called to the Bar in 1804, and became eventually the acknow- 
 ledged leader of his circuit. In 1813 he was made a Serjeant ; and 
 about this time, in a well-known trial respecting a lace-patent, had an 
 opportunity of showing, by his practical acquaintance with chemistry 
 and mechanics, how conducive to success in one profession may be made 
 collateral knowledge, at first sight remote and distinct from it. Perhaps, 
 however, it was on the occasion of the celebrated trial of Watson and 
 Thistlewood for high treason, in 1 817, when he aided Sir Charles Wetherell 
 in the successful defence of the prisoners, that Copley found his first 
 important opportunity of displaying forensic ability on an occasion or 
 great public interest. From this period his rise was rapid ; he became 
 Solicitor-General, and was knighted in 18 19 ; his first official employment 
 of importance being that of counsel, with Sir Robert GifTord, for the 
 Crown, in the conduct of the notorious proceedings against Queen 
 Caroline. On the unsuccessful termination of these, GifTord having been 
 removed from the post, he became Attorney- General in 1823 ; and Master 
 of the Rolls in 1826. 
 
 When Canning became Premier in 1827, he offered the Chancellorship 
 to Sir John Copley, who was then created Lord Lyndhurst. He held the 
 office through the ministries of Goderich and Wellington ; but was 
 displaced by Lord Grey, when he accepted the office of Lord Chief Baron 
 of the Exchequer. 
 
 On the resignation of Lord Melbourne, in 1834, Lord Lyndhurst 
 again became Chancellor. The Wellington ministry lasted only a few 
 months, but was signalized by the passing of several important measures. 
 In 1840 Lord Lyndhurst was elected Lord High Steward of the University 
 of Cambridge ; and in the following year, on the downfall of the 
 Melbourne administration, was, for the third time, appointed Chancellor. 
 He held office through the ministry of Sir Robert Peel ; supported the 
 grant to Maynooth, and the repeal of the Corn Laws ; and finally retired 
 from the Chancellorship in 1846. 
 
 * Copley died in 1815, aged 78, having lived to witness the early forensic triumphs 
 of his son, whose portrait he painted the year before his death. 
 
AUTHOR f''TH1E ELUWCHBACK* 
 
SHERIDAN KNOWLES. 39T 
 
 Although now approaching towards the completion of his eighth 
 decade, the talents and influence of this illustrious man had suffered no 
 diminution. He was prominent in the great " Bridgwater case " ; he 
 pleaded for the removal of Jewish disabilities ; he foresaw, and warned 
 the peers against, the aggressive tendencies of the Roman Church ; and, 
 at the age of eighty-five, put himself at the head of the opposition to the 
 scheme of the Wensleydale Peerage, which involved the question ot 
 " Life Peers." Towards the last, it must have been a noble and touching 
 sight, that of this " old man eloquent," on the very verge of ninety, with 
 tottering gait and shrunken limbs, grasping the hand-rail purposely 
 attached to the bench below, holding the House entranced by the verba 
 ardentza, the forcible and polished rhetoric of an earlier day, as if to show 
 how independent of time and matter is the immortal principle of which 
 these are but the accidents. To him, as " the serenest and most accom- 
 plished master (of oratory)," Lord Lytton, in March, i860, dedicated his 
 fine poem, St. Stephen^. 
 
 He died at his house, George Street, Hanover Square, October 12th, 
 1863, in the ninety-second year of his age. 
 
 There is a fine portrait of Lord Lyndhurst, in his Chancellor's robes, 
 engraved by J. Brown from a drawing by F. Roffe ; and a severely 
 realistic likeness, in greater age, engraved by D. J. Pond from a 
 photograph by May all. 
 
 LXX. SHERIDAN KNOWLES. 
 
 ' Now finish my song with one visitor more ; 
 The good old boy's face how it bloom'd at the door ! 
 Hazlitt, painting it during its childhood, turn'd grim, 
 
 Saying, ' D n your fat cheeks ! ' Then, out louder, ' Frown, Jim l* 
 
 Those cheeks still adorn'd the most natural of souls, 
 Whose style yet was not so, James Sheridan Knowles. 
 His style had been taught him in those, his green days, 
 His soul was his own, and brought crowds to his plays." * 
 
 I think I have already recorded that this well-known author and 
 actor was, like Maginn and Maclise, a Corcagian. He was born in the 
 "beautiful city," in 1784, and was the only son of James Knowles, distin- 
 guished as a lexicographer, and a man of considerable talent and learning. 
 Before he had entered his teens, his mind showed its natural bent by the 
 composition of a drama, in which his school-fellows took part. At 
 fourteen, he wrote the ballad, and, it is thought, composed the music, of 
 The Welsh Harper, which was his first publication. He early became 
 acquainted with William Hazlitt, who seems, from the lines above, to 
 have tried his " prentice hand " on the lineaments of the chubby lad. By 
 him he was introduced to the Lambs, and acquired their love and esteem ;. 
 and by-and-by, when he produced his Vzrginius, the following lines were 
 indited to him by gentle Charles : 
 
 * Leigh Hunt, Feast of the Poets. 
 
393 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 " Twelve years ago I knew thee, Knowles, and then 
 Esteemed you a perfect specimen 
 Of those fine spirits warm-soul'd Ireland sends, 
 To teach us colder English how a friend's 
 Quick pulse should beat. I knew you brave and plain, 
 Strong-sensed, rough-witted, above fear or gain ; 
 But nothing further had the gift to espy. 
 Sudden, you reappear. With wonder I 
 Hear my old friend (turn'd Shakespeare) read a scene 
 Only to his inferior in the clean 
 Passes of pathos : with such fence-like art 
 Ere we can see the steel 'tis in our heart. 
 Almost without the aid language affords, 
 Your piece seems wrought. That huffling medium, words, 
 (Which in the modern Tamburlaines quite sway 
 Our shamed souls from their bias) in your play 
 We scarce attend to. Hastier passion draws 
 Our tears on credit : and we find the cause 
 Some two hours after, spelling o'er again 
 Those strange few words at ease, that wrought the pain. 
 Proceed, old friend : and, as the year returns, 
 Still match some new old story from the urns 
 Of long-dead virtue. We, that knew before 
 Your worth, may admire, we cannot love you more." 
 
 At the age of seventeen, a commission was procured for the young 
 dramatist, and he commenced the business of life as a soldier ; but this 
 was not to his taste, and he soon retired from the army. He became an 
 actor in Cherry's company, and appeared with some success in Dublin 
 and elsewhere ; but having proceeded to Belfast in search of an engage- 
 ment, he was somehow induced to abandon the stage, and turned school- 
 master. On the establishment of the Belfast Academical Institution, he 
 was offered the appointment of head-master of the English department. 
 Through his wish, his father was actually appointed to the post, his son 
 becoming his principal assistant. Knowles now devoted himself to 
 dramatic composition, and achieved at once a large measure of success. 
 His first piece was Brian Boroihme, rather an adaptation of another 
 author's work than an original composition. His next was, Cains 
 Gracchus, which was first performed in Belfast, February 13th, i8i5,with 
 a success which it excited in a lower degree when brought out in London, 
 several years later, although the part of the hero was powerfully acted by 
 Macready. 
 
 His third piece had for its plot, 
 
 " No story, piled with dark and cumbrous fate, 
 And words that stagger under their own weight ; 
 But one of silent grandeur simply said, 
 As though it were awaken'd from the dead I 
 It is a tale made beautiful by years, 
 Of pure old Roman sorrow old in tears ! 
 And those you shed o'er it in childhood may 
 Still fall, and fall for sweet Virginia : " 
 
 a plot that has inspired the muse of Jean Mairet (1628), Le Clerc (1645), 
 and Campistron (1683), in France ; of our own Webster, in his Afipius 
 and Virginia (1654, 4to) ; John Dennis, in his tragedy bearing the same 
 title (1709, 4to) ; Henry Crisp, in his Virginia (1754) ; Frances Brooke, 
 in her tragedy, Virginia (17 56); Mrs. Gunning, in a poem in six parts, 
 
SHERIDAN KNOWLES. 399 
 
 entitled Virginias and Virginia (1792) ; and Bidlake, in his Virginia, or 
 the Fall of the Decemvirs (1800). To all of these pieces, with the single 
 exception of that of Webster, the tragedy of Knowles is superior. Original 
 in conception and treatment, it is built on the eternal foundation of human 
 interest and feeling, rather than on the accidents of time and place. 
 Hence " Virginius " excites our interest, more by the exhibition of paternal 
 emotion than that which belongs to his character as a Roman and a 
 patriot. It is a play, simple in construction, and so, intelligible at once 
 to an audience. It possesses, moreover, that force of dramatic situation 
 which is essential to the success of an acting drama, and which the 
 practical experience of its author enabled him to impart. It is said that 
 it was written for, and at the request of, Kean ; but if so, that great 
 actor did not appear in it, and the principal part was taken by Macready, 
 who, by his admirable acting, raised both himself and the author to the 
 highest rank in their respective professions. It appeared for the first 
 time at Covent Garden, May 17th, 1820. 
 
 I think that William Tell came next. This piece is not without high 
 merit of its own ; though it unfortunately provokes comparison with the 
 admirable play of Schiller, founded on the same incidents, and pronounced 
 by A. W. von Schlegel, the best of all the dramatic works of that great 
 poet. The Beggar's Daughter of Bethnal Green was uproariously con- 
 demned on the first night of its appearance, and failed, on second 
 representation, to obtain a reversal of judgment. To this want of success, 
 however, we are indebted for The Hunchback, which " recommenced," as 
 the author tells us, " in the pleasant walks about Birmingham, and com- 
 pleted on the sands of Newhaven," came out at Covent Garden, April 5th, 
 1832. Here the author is in his proper element, the social and romantic 
 drama, as distinct from the tragic. This was followed by the Mantuan 
 tale, The Wife, which appeared at Covent Garden in 1833, and, like its 
 predecessor, acquired and still retains an amount of popular favour which 
 renders criticism supererogatory. In quick succession after these 
 appeared a number of other dramatic pieces, of which I cannot do more 
 here than record the titles : The Daughter appeared at Drury Lane in 
 1836; The Love Chase, at the Haymarket, in 1837; The Maid of 
 Mariendorpt, at Covent Garden, in 1838 ; Woman's Wit, or Love's 
 Disguises, in 1838* John of Procida, at the same house, in 1840; as 
 also, Old Maids, in 1841 ; The Rose of Arragon, in 1840 ; and The 
 Secretary, in 1843. Of these pieces it may be said generally that the 
 poetry which they possess is that of thought rather than superficial 
 expression. They are moral in sentiment, legitimate in construction, and 
 elevated in feeling ; but they are inharmonious in rhythm, trivial in 
 -dialogue, and often turgid in passion. They have made their way in spite 
 of the absence of the adventitious aids of rhetoric and imagery, and will 
 long keep their place upon the stage from their more purely dramatic 
 qualities, and the hold which they have by their frequent appeals to those 
 feelings which make all mankind kin. Above all, the female sex 
 should be grateful to Sheridan Knowles, for it is to him, of all modern 
 dramatic writers, that women are indebted for their restoration to their 
 due position in the drama, and upon the stage. From the time of Shake- 
 speare, in whose plays woman occupies a legitimate place, down through 
 Congreve, Shadwell, Wycherly, Southerne, Colman and Sheridan, she 
 had suffered dethronement ; and it was first in the plays of Sheridan 
 
4oo THE MACL1SE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Knowles that she was reinstated in the position of dignity and grace 
 which she holds in nature, society and the other branches of fiction. 
 
 In many of the plays of which I have thus spoken, the author 
 appeared himself, sustaining in some the leading characters. He also 
 delivered lectures at various places, on rhetoric, dramatic poetry, and 
 other cognate subjects. These were pronounced by Christopher North, 
 " admirable, full of matter, elegantly written, and eloquently delivered. 
 Knowles is a delightful fellow, and a man of true genius." * 
 
 His Dramatic Works, collected, were published in 1847, 3 vols., 8vo, 
 and there have been subsequent issues of these by Routledge in 2 vols., 
 and in 1 vol. 
 
 It is not pleasant to know that the earnest and strenuous efforts of this 
 able and amiable man to reconstitute and uphold our national drama 
 were hardly productive to him of adequate results. "How partial," 
 remarks a clever and now veteran author, "and rasping has been the 
 reward of Mr. Knowles for setting his shoulder to the wheel to restore 
 the manly style of the old comedy. Francis the First did not c draw ' 
 half so much as The Hunchback; yet Miss Kemble, besides the amount 
 gained by the sale of many editions, received about ^800 from the 
 theatre, the greater part of which was paid out of the receipts for The- 
 Hunchback, whose author did not receive more than half that sum. 
 Everything that ought to be is reversed." t 
 
 Sheridan Knowles was also author of several stories, some of which 
 were collected into a volume, and published by Moxon in 1832, under 
 the title of The Magdalen, and other Tales. I also remember two novels, 
 George Lovell, and Fortescue, which latter was originally contributed to> 
 the Sunday Ti?nes, and republished in 1847, (3 vols., 8vo), with a dedica- 
 tion to his relative, the Honourable Mrs Norton. 
 
 Knowles paid more than one visit to America, where he was well 
 received. He also travelled on the Continent, and made many friends 
 there. Under the ministry of Sir Robert Peel, a pension of ,200 per 
 annum was bestowed upon him by the Crown, as an acknowledgment 
 of his services in the cause of literature. 
 
 Maginn is angry with Knowles on the score of politics. " He thinks 
 proper to be a Whig," says he, " and he makes speeches on that side of 
 the question sufficiently absurd. Now this, in all men, or imitations of 
 men, wrong, is in Sheridan Knowles peculiarly culpable: All actors and 
 dramatists worth a fig's end have been, in all ages, essentially Tory. 
 They were Cavaliers, and fought like the best of Cavaliers, in the days of 
 Charles ; and such should ever be their characteristic politics. ... In 
 the name of Melpomene and all her sisters, we put it to him, who can write 
 a play, to say honestly and truly what is his opinion of a party which is 
 led by the author of Don Carlos j in which the author of the Siege oj 
 Constanfaiople, or something of the same kind, holds a conspicuous- 
 place ; and which sends Mulgrave, whom Knowles would not employ as 
 cad to a call-boy in any theatre, to govern his native country in the badly 
 filled cast of first gentleman ? " 
 
 Maginn was a famous hater ; a gallant, if reckless, partisan. With 
 him a political opponent was a miscreant, upon whom the Almighty had. 
 
 * Nodes Ambrosiancz, No. xlviii. 
 
 \ Exposition of the False Medium and Barriers excluding Men of Genius from tht 
 Public, by R. Hengist Home (London, 1833, 8vo), p. 260. 
 
SHERIDAN KNOWLES. 401 
 
 set the seal alike of physical deformity, moral hideousness, and intellec- 
 tual poverty. It thus speaks volumes for the geniality of Knowles that, 
 in spite of his Whiggism, his critic is compelled to say that " it would be 
 awfully wrong to conclude his page without saying that the gentleman 
 opposite is one of the best of good fellows." 
 
 His talents, moreover, as actor and dramatist, meet with fair, indeed 
 adequate appreciation at the hands of the often ruthless critic. If he 
 performed in his own plays he would find the precedents of Aristophanes 
 and Shakespeare, while he had too much good sense to expect it to be 
 proclaimed that his plays would " cut as great a figure in the world " as 
 the innElS or hamlet. But, adds Maginn, "there is good stuff in them, 
 nevertheless. Knowles is to Beaumont and Fletcher what those literary 
 brothers are to Shakespeare " a sum in the " Rule of Three " which I 
 leave my readers to work out in their own way, " let him not think that 
 this is a niggard allowance of praise." 
 
 During the last fifteen years of his life Knowles abandoned dramatic 
 literature, and employed his pen chiefly in theological polemics. His 
 great object was to expose the errors of Romanism, which he combated 
 with no mean ability as a controversial essayist in his Rock of Rome -, 
 cr The Arch- Heresy (1849, 8vo), and The Idol demolished by its own 
 Priest (185 1, 8vo), in answer to Cardinal Wiseman. He also became a 
 Baptist preacher, and acquired considerable reputation by the earnestness 
 of his convictions, and the eloquence of his language. To one who 
 "interviewed" him at Torquay, and published an interesting record of 
 the conversation, he said, in answer to the question if he ever wrote 
 poetry then, " No, I don't want to look back after putting my hand to 
 the plough ; not that the writing of a play would necessarily be wrong, 
 but my thoughts are now occupied with other and better things, and I 
 wish them to continue so to the end." He still, however, retained an 
 interest in the dramatic profession, and had no need to forget the labours 
 of his earlier life, for he had never written a single line, as an author for 
 the stage, which he could wish expunged, as a minister of the gospel. 
 
 Sheridan Knowles was genial, loveable, and generous in disposition. 
 He possessed great information, and had so good a memory that he could 
 repeat the entire gospel of St. John in the original Greek. He was the 
 second cousin of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and a descendant, on his 
 mother's side, of the great judge Sir Matthew Hale. He became in his 
 latter years a martyr to rheumatism, which almost deprived him of the 
 use of his limbs. He died at Torquay, November 30th, 1862, in the 
 seventy-ninth year of his age. He was survived by his second wife, 
 who, under her maiden name of Elphinstone, had been well known as 
 an actress. Although an Irishman by birth, he looked upon Scotland 
 as the land of his adoption ; and it was understood that his remains were 
 to be interred in Glasgow, where he enjoyed the affection and respect of 
 all who knew him. 
 
 In Brydges Street, Covent Garden, opposite to tlae principal entrance 
 to Drury Lane Theatre, as London night-birds know, is a snug tavern 
 which takes its name from this distinguished dramatist. Here met, 
 years ago, the worshipful society of " The Owls," some two hundred 
 strong, with such men as Leman Rede and Pierce Egan for members ; 
 Augustine Wade as president ; and James Sheridan Knowles as patron 
 and chancellor. I have known nothing of the proceedings of this society 
 
 2 D J 
 
4 02 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 in late years since my lines have fallen into other waters. The old birds 
 have all departed to final roost, and I know not if their places have been 
 filled by a younger brood. 
 
 A few words, as I conclude, to the memory of an estimable man of 
 letters who has but recently departed from among us. On January 28th, 
 1882, died somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly, Richard Brinsley 
 Knowles, the only surviving son of the dramatist. Born at Glasgow in 
 1820, he inherited something at least of the dramatic faculty of his father, 
 as evinced by his play, The Maiden Aunt, the only production of his 
 in this way that I remember, which met with fair success at the 
 Haymarket Theatre, where it was produced, with Farren and Mrs. Glover 
 in the chief parts. Early in life he gave up an appointment which he 
 held in the office of the Registrar General, Somerset House, to study for 
 the Bar. He entered at the Middle Temple, and was " called" in 1843. 
 But he gradually became absorbed in literature, was one of the earliest 
 editors of the Weekly Register, and conducted for some time the 
 Illustrated London Magazine. In 1 849, he was perverted to Romanism, 
 and susceptibilities were awakened which led him to take offence at some 
 action on the part of the then proprietors of the Standard, on which in 
 1857, he was one of the chief writers ; and his engagement was abruptly 
 terminated. It is a strong evidence that he was not well treated in the 
 matter, that the late Prof. Brewer, who then conducted that journal, took 
 the part of his colleague, and relinquished his post. Mr. Knowles then 
 edited for a time the London Reviews and was engaged on the staff 
 of the Morning Post, till failing health compelled him, it was hoped 
 temporarily only, to cease from literary work. To historical literature 
 he contributed an edition of the Chronicle of John de Oxenedes, a MS. 
 copy of which was found in the collection of the Duke of Newcastle ; it 
 was included with another edition of that work (based upon the Cottonian 
 MS. copy) by the late Sir Henry Ellis, and published in 1859, in the Rolls 
 Series of Chronicles and Memorials. Since 1871, he was occasionally 
 engaged as inspector under the Royal Commission on Historical Manu- 
 scripts ; and contributed to some of the Commissioners' Reports interest- 
 ing and instructive accounts of the important family documents entrusted 
 to him for examination, among which may be mentioned those of the 
 Marquis of Bath, Lord Denbigh, Lord Ashburnham, Colonel Towneley, 
 and other Catholic families. 
 
 LXXVIL EDMUND LODGE. 
 
 EDMUND LODGE was a true antiquary of the old school, industrious in 
 research, minute in trifles, laborious in composition, suave in manners, 
 and a Tory in politics. He was the son of the Rev. Edmund Lodge, 
 Rector of Carshalton, in Surrey, and was born in Poland Street, London, 
 on the 13th of June, 1756. His first choice of a profession was the army, 
 and in 1772 he became a Cornet in the King's Own regiment of Dragoons. 
 His military ardour, however, waxed cool before a growing taste for 
 literature and antiquities ; and in 1782 he resigned his commission for the 
 more congenial appointment of Blue Mantle Pursuivant-at-Arms. In 1787 
 
. * , 
 
 AUTHOR F^ffiMOIKS OF J1LMJSTRIOTJS PERSONAGES' 
 
EDMUND LODGE. 403 
 
 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries ; in 1793 he was 
 promoted to be Lancaster Herald, and in 1822 Norroy King of Arms. In 
 1832 he was nominated Knight of the Order of the Guelphs of Hanover, 
 and on the 30th of July, 1838, became Clarencieux King of Arms. 
 
 His talents as an elegant and conscientious editor were first evinced 
 by the publication of the Talbot, Howard, and Cecil papers in the College 
 of Arms, which appeared in 1791, under the title of Illustrations of 
 British History, Biography and 'Maimers i?i the Reigns of Henry VIII., 
 Edward VI, Alary, Elizabeth and fames I (3 vols. 4to).* He was also 
 author of the " Memoirs " attached to Chamberlaine's Imitations of 
 Original Drawings by Hans Holbei?i, which were published in parts 
 between 1795 and 1800. In 1810 he published, anonymously, The Life of 
 Sir Julius Ctzsarj with Memoirs of his Family and his Descendants, 
 a handsome quarto volume, with numerous portraits.! He was, more- 
 over, an occasional contributor to the Quarterly Review, where he wrote 
 the notice of the " Sadler Papers," of the " History of London," and of the 
 "Works of Swift," as edited by Sir Walter Scott. To his pen are also to 
 be ascribed the " Preface " to the second edition of the Antiquarian Reper- 
 tory, and that to the collected poems of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams.! 
 I believe that I have now enumerated, so far as they are known, the 
 literary labours of Mr. Lodge, with the exception of those connected 
 with the valuable publication with which his name is chiefly associated, 
 and which demands a somewhat more extended notice at my hands. 
 
 I allude to that celebrated and important work, originally published 
 in 1821-34, 4 vols, folio, containing 240 plates, and entitled Portraits of 
 Illustrious Personages of Great Britaiii. Of this splendid performance, 
 which Lockhart justly terms " a magnificent book," it is hardly too 
 much to say that, whether we regard the authenticity of the portraits, 
 the technical excellence of the engraving, or the admirable style of the 
 accompanying text, no more important or valuable illustrated work of 
 biography has ever appeared. Sir Walter Scott, who received a copy, 
 " ex dono auctoris? acknowledged the gift in a beautiful letter of eulogy, 
 
 * Subsequently re-issued by Chidley ; and later on, by H. G. Bohn. 
 
 f To this is added Numerus Infaustus, an historical essay, by Charles Caesar. 
 
 X The first edition of the ' ' Odes " of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams appeared in 1763, 
 i2mo ; the second in 1780, and was edited by Joseph Ritson, whose labours, according 
 to Joseph Hazlewood, his biographer, did not extend beyond collating the proof sheets. 
 This edition has the reputation of having been suppressed, I know not with what 
 reason ; any way, it is scarce, as is also its successor, the third, "improved," in 1784. 
 The best edition is certainly that of 1822, 3 vols, crown 8vo, with notes by Horace 
 Walpole, the preface by Lodge, and a dedication (afterwards withdrawn) to Lord John 
 Russell. Dr. Johnson spoke contemptuously of "our lively and elegant, though too 
 licentious lyric bard, Hanbury Williams," and said he has "no fame but from boys 
 who drank with him" (Boswell's Johnson). Madden says of him : "Sir Hanbury 
 Williams, the celebrated sayer of bons mots, and composer of pointed epigrams, a man 
 of astounding audacity in turning sacred subjects into ridicule, and treating the most 
 solemn subjects with flippant jocularity and revolting levity, sat in the House of 
 Commons, a silent member, wrapt in gloom, which terminated in insanity and suicide " 
 {Life of Lady Blessington, i. 364). The last edition of this licentious poet produced a 
 severe criticism from the Quarterly Review, vol. xxviii. pp. 46-59, where it is stated that 
 "specimens of obscenity and blasphemy more horrible than we have before seen 
 collected into one publication," are to be found in the volumes, and that they are a 
 ' ' stigma to good manners, good morals and literature, which no man of sense or 
 woman of delicacy can allow to be seen on their table." I presume that Lodge did 
 write the preface to this work, for which we have the authority of the Gentleman 's 
 Magazine. I should otherwise have attributed it to Jeffery, the publisher. 
 
^C4 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 which is printed in the preface to Harding's re-issue of the work in 1835. 
 He speaks of it as " A collection which at once satisfies the imagination 
 and the understanding, showing us by the pencil how the most dis- 
 tinguished of our ancestors looked, moved and dressed ; and informing 
 us by the pen how they thought, acted, lived and died." He adds, more- 
 over, referring to the earlier Illustrations of British History ', that the 
 text exhibits "the same patient powers of collecting information from 
 the most obscure and hidden sources, and the same talent for selecting 
 the facts which are the rarest and most interesting, and presenting 
 them to the general reader in a luminous and concise manner." 
 
 The national predilection for Portraiture is an old subject of satiric 
 notice. Dr. Johnson remarks: "That the painters find no encourage- 
 ment among the English for many other works than portraits has been 
 imputed to national selfishness. 'Tis vain, says the satirist, to set before 
 any Englishman the scenes of landscapes or the heroes of history ; nature 
 and antiquity are nothing in his eye ; he has no value but for himself, nor 
 desires any copy but of his own form." * There is much truth in this. 
 Among a people with whom art is an exotic, and even at this day has 
 small part in the national feeling, and ministers to no universal appetence, 
 jt is natural that, when fashion and example direct the patronage of 
 painting, the special branch should find most favour that flatters senti- 
 jments so general as self-love and personal vanity, Hence the ejaculation 
 of Dryden : 
 
 " Good heaven ! that sots and knaves should be so vain, 
 
 To wish their vile resemblance to remain ; 
 
 And stand recorded, at their own request, 
 
 To future times a libel or a jest ! " f 
 
 Here the allusion of the satirist is to the " obscurorum virorum icones? 
 which, if bad, only serve as palimpsests, and, if good, may retain a place 
 ^from the merit of the artist, while the very name of the archetype is for- 
 gotten. But of the truly illustrious, the Conscript Fathers of learning, 
 valour and piety, it must ever be held that the portraits, no less than 
 'the biographies, are the most valuable incentives to rivalry and imitation. 
 That such was the effect in his day is asserted by the philosophic Roman 
 historian : " Nam scepe audivi, Q. Maximum, P. Scipionem, prceterea 
 >civitatis nostrce prczclaros viros, solitos ita dicer e, cum 7najorum imagines 
 dntuerentur, vehementissime sibi animum advirtutem accendi. Scilicet non 
 -ceram it lam, neque Jiguram, tantam vim in sese habere; sed ?nemoria 
 rerum gestarum earn flammam egregiis viris in pectore crescerej neque 
 prius sedari y quam virtus eorum famam atque gloriam adcequaverit? % 
 -Horace, though here he is rather speaking of the lessons conveyed by 
 ^dramatic representations, points out the advantage over oral teaching 
 possessed by those images, 
 
 " quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quge 
 
 Ipse sibi tradit spectator." 
 
 So also Jonathan Richardson, who says : " Let a man read a character 
 in Lord Clarendon (and certainly, never was a better painter in that kind), 
 he will find it improved, by seeing a picture of the same person by 
 Vandyck." And Horace Walpole says that " a portrait of real authen- 
 
 * The Idler, No. 45. t Epistle to Sir Godfrey Knelter. 
 
 X Sallust., Bellum Jugurthinum. 
 
 The Works of Jonathan Richardson ("The Theory of Painting "), 1792, 4U5, p. 9. 
 
EDMUND LODGE. 
 
 t 
 
 ticity calls up so many collateral ideas as to fill an intelligent mind mori 
 than any other species of painting." 
 
 Besides this, -it is a desire common to humanity to save some part of 
 ourselves from Libitina, and continue to live, if only ad simulacrum,, 
 amongst that ever renewed minority which we have quitted. One of our 
 obscurer poets (Thomas Flatman, 1674) has a couplet in allusion to a 
 famous old English engraver of portraits : 
 
 " A ' Faithorne sculpsit ' is a charm to save 
 From dull oblivion and an early grave," 
 
 and Hayley, in one of his poetical epistles to George Romney, the rival 
 of Reynolds, ejaculates : 
 
 " Blest be the pencil which from death can save," 
 
 illustrating, in a note, " the sweet illusion of this enchanting art," as. 
 prettily expressed in a letter of Raphael to his friend, Francesco Raifolini,, 
 a Bolognese painter. The two artists had, it appears, agreed to exchange 
 portraits of themselves, as memorials of friendship ; and Raphael, on. 
 receiving the likeness of his friend, thus speaks of it, in a letter which he. 
 addressed to him : " Messer Francesco mio caro ricevo in questo puntc 
 il vostro ritratto ; egli e bellissimo, e tanto vivo, che m'inganno talora^. 
 credendomi di essere con esso voi, e sentire le vostre parole." * 
 
 The charm of portraiture, and the illusive power of a good portrait to 
 bring the absent and beloved original before us, is beautifully described, 
 in Latin elegiacs by a friend of Raphael, the accomplished Count Balthasac 
 Castiglione, in a poetical epistle, written in the name of his Countess.. 
 Hyppolyte, to her husband : 
 
 1 ' Sola tuos Vultus referens Raphaelis imago 
 Picta manu, curas allevat usque meas ; 
 Huic ego delicias facio, arrisuque jocoque 
 
 Alloquor, et tanquam reddere verba queat. 
 
 " Assensu, nutuque mihi saspe ilia videtur 
 
 Dicere velle aliquid, et tua verba loqui, 
 Agnoscit, balboque Patrem puer ore salutat, 
 Hoc solor, longos decipioque dies."f 
 
 So Cowper, in those most touching lines, " On the Receipt of his Mother's 
 Picture out of Norfolk," found that he " liv'd his childhood o'er again," as- 
 he looked into 
 
 ' ' The meek intelligence of those dear eyes," 
 
 and exclaiming : 
 
 " Blest be the art that can immortalize, 
 The art that baffles Time's tyrannic claim 
 To quench it I " 
 
 concluded, with exulting boast, 
 
 "And, while the wings of Fancy still are free, 
 And I can view this mimic show of thee, 
 Time has but half succeeded in his theft 
 Thyself remov'd, thy pow'rs to soothe me left. 
 
 * Raccolte di Lett ere szilla Piitura, etc. , torn. i. p. 82. 
 f Po'emata Italorum (ed. Alex. Pope), torn. ii. p. 248. 
 
4 c6 7 HE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Query. Might not an interesting collection be made of the epigrammatic 
 lines so frequently found beneath old engraved portraits ? Take those 
 by Ben Jonson, exempli gratia which accompany the Droeshout 
 frontispiece to the first folio Shakespeare of 1623, as a specimen : 
 
 "This figure, that thou here see'st put, 
 It was for gentle Shakespeare cut, 
 Wherein the graver had a strife 
 With nature, to outdoo the life. 
 O, could he but have drawn his wit 
 As well in brasse, as he hath hit 
 His face, the print would then surpasse 
 All that was ever writ in brasse, 
 But, since he cannot, reader, looke 
 Not on his picture, but his booke." 
 
 So much for the value of portraits. As for our own alleged preference 
 for them, I need not say that Continental collections date at least a 
 century earlier than any in this country. A splendid gallery of this 
 kind was formed by the munificent Peyresc, who was wont to request 
 from the eminent men he had obliged, Grotius, De Thou, Scaliger, 
 Salmasius, Casaubon, etc., a portrait, as the sole acknowledgment of 
 his favours* Pacheco, the father-in-law of Velasquez, formed a curious 
 gallery, by sketching down the likenesses of all the men of merit who 
 were in the habit of visiting his atelier. In the long career of this artist, 
 the number amounted to upwards of three hundred, among whom were 
 Cervantes, Quevedo, Herrera, etc. Then there are the portraits of the 
 Doges in the ancient hall of the Great Council at Venice, painted by 
 Tintoretto, Bassano, and the younger Palma, with the lugubrious frame, 
 containing a black tablet in place of a portrait, with the inscription, 
 " Hie est locus Marini Falethri, decapitati pro criminibus." In the gallery 
 degV Uffizj\ at Florence, is a unique collection of portraits of painters, 
 taken by themselves, Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Paolo Veronese, Michael 
 Angelo, Guido, Vasari, Angelica KaufTman, Sir Joshua Reynolds, etc., 
 with many of our own immediate contemporaries. A splendid collection 
 of engraved portraits was formed by Charles Theodore, Elector of 
 Bavaria, and Fiancis I., Emperor of Austria. In number it amounted 
 to about eighty thousand, which were arranged in eight hundred portfolios. 
 Nearly equal to this, in later times, was the famous collection of M. 
 Debure, comprising sixty-five thousand portraits, arranged in alphabetical 
 order, in one hundred and ninety-two portfolios. A word, finally, should 
 be bestowed on the magnificent collections of portraits formed by our 
 countryman, M. Crauford, an Englishman by birth, but a Frenchman by 
 adoption. One of these was seized during the Reign of Terror : and the 
 second, equal to the former in extent, was sold after his death, in 18 19. 
 From this sale came the fine portrait of Bossust, by Rigaud, in the 
 Louvre, concerning which some curious details will be found in the 
 notice appended, by M. Barriere, to the Memoires de Madame de 
 Hausset," of which M. Crauford was the original editor. 
 
 A hundred years before anything of the kind appeared in this country, 
 
 the Continent had produced important and beautiful works of engraved 
 
 portraits and illustrative text, in prose or verse. There is the Pro7tiptvaire 
 
 of Roville (1553), with its exquisitely executed heads, on wood, from 
 
 * (Euvres de Lemoniey (" Ebge de Peiresc"), torn. iii. p. 116. 
 
EDMUND LODGE. 407 
 
 Adam to Jeanne d'Albret ; the Icones of Theodore Beza (1580), with a 
 portrait of James VI., to whom the book is dedicated ; and the Icones 
 Virorum Illustrium, of Boissardus, engraved by Theodore de Bry ( 4 vols. 
 4to, 1597-9). The curious reader may be referred for description of, and 
 fac similes from, these works, we have made no progress in art since, 
 to the Bibliographical Decameron of T. F. Dibdin (vol. i. p. 276). Here, 
 too, will be found the most copious account of Henry Holland's work, 
 Heroologia Anglica, hoc est clarissimorwn aliquot et doctissimorum 
 Angloricm qui floruerunt ab anno Christ o M.D., usque ad prasentem 
 anmim MDCXX., verce Effigies, Vitce, et Elogia, published at Arnheim, 
 and containing sixty-six portraits. But the erudite doctor has overlooked 
 here (though he mentions it in a note in his Library Companion) a very 
 important biographical work, of the same class as the collections 
 mentioned above, with dozens of heads grouped on a page, and finely 
 engraved by Kilian. This is entitled Theatrum Virorum eruditione 
 singulari clarorumjn quo Vita* et Script a Theologorum, Jurisconsultorum, 
 Medicorum, et Philosophorum, a seculis aliquot ad hcec usque tempora 
 flore?itium repro?se?itantur. The author is Freherus, and the work was 
 published at Nuremburg, 1688, 2 vols, folio. Neither does he mention 
 a still earlier and rarer tome : Atrium Heroicum Ccesarum, Regum, 
 aliorumque Summatum ac Procerwn (Augsburg, 1600), containing por- 
 traits of our own Elizabeth, her brother, her successor and the Earl of 
 Leicester. Who has not heard of the Fugger family of Augsburg? 
 those merchant princes of the sixteenth century, whose vast wealth led 
 to the belief that they possessed the philosopher's stone, and who, 
 entertaining Charles V, as he passed through their city, on his expedition 
 against Tunis, piled the grate of their guest with billets of cinnamon, and 
 lighted them with his own promissory note for a large sum which he had 
 borrowed from them ! Their story is told, and their lineaments preserved 
 in the fine volume, Fuggerorum et Fuggerarum, etc., Imagines, published 
 by Dominic Custos, at Antwerp, 1593 (2nd ed. 1618, 3rd_ed. 1620), with 
 one hundred and twenty-seven portraits, engraved on copper. After this, 
 we have the Vrais Pourtraits et Vies des Hommes Illustres of Thevet, of 
 whose text Morhof writes in praise, a splendid folio, of not infrequent 
 appearance, published in 1648. Next came the fine work of Perrault, Les 
 Homines Illustres (Paris, 1 696-1 700, 2 vols, folio) ; the Bibliotheca Belgica, 
 of Foppens (Amst. 1739, 2 vols. 4to) ; and the Portraits des Hommes 
 Illustres de Dannejnark, of Tycho Hoffmann (Copenhagen, 1746, 4to), 
 a rare and beautiful book, of which the reprint in 1773 (3 vols. 4to) is 
 very inferior as regards the impressions of the plates. 
 
 During all this time we had been lagging behind. In 1713, Edward 
 Ward had published his History of the Grand Rebellion, in three octavo 
 volumes, with its rude prints and doggrel rhymes. For anything decent 
 in art we had to have recourse to the Continent, and the portraits for the 
 Heroologia were from the burin of Simon Passe. So in the splendid 
 work of Dr. Birch, Heads of the most Illustrious Persons in Great Britain, 
 with their Lives and Characters (London, 1747, folio), it was by a Dutch 
 engraver, Houbraken, that the portraits were, for the most part, executed, 
 aided, at least, in the earlier part of the work, in this country, by the 
 faithful and elegant Vertue. In point of art, this is truly a magnificent 
 production, and rivals the most splendid works of other countries. But 
 while the biographer, Dr. Birch, has done his task well, so far as the 
 
4 o8 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 recital of fact is concerned, it must be admitted that he has neglected the 
 graces of style and language. Houbraken, on the other hand, has- 
 sacrificed truth to the elegances of his art ; and working in a foreign 
 country, ignorant of our history, and careless as to the authenticity of the 
 drawings provided for him, he has been so far imposed upon, that the 
 statement made by an anonymous but well-informed writer in the Gentle- 
 man's Magazine for 1788, cited by Mr. Lodge, is probably not much 
 exaggerated, that, with regard to these portraits, " Thurloe's, and about 
 thirty of the others, are copied from heads painted for no one knows 
 whom." From this, with all its faults, magnificent and important 
 volume, I must pass in my hurried retrospect, to the Portraits of the 
 Illustrious Persons of the Court of Henry VIII., designed by Holbeiiv 
 and engraved by Bartolozzi, of which, as I have already stated, the 
 biographical notices were from the pen of Mr c Lodge. This was published' 
 by Chamberlaine, in fourteen parts, 1792, folio. The engravings were 
 made from original drawings in the royal collection ; they are eighty-two 
 in number, and are delicately engraved in stipple. The volume was 
 republished in a smaller folio size in 181 2, like its predecessor, under the 
 auspices of Nicol. The notices in this book are admirably written ; but it 
 is well to note that, with regard to the portraits, Dr. Dibdin has pointed out 
 one instance, that of Margaret Roper, the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas 
 Moore, of flagrant infidelity, and has, moreover, thrown grave suspicions 
 on the general trustworthiness of Bartolozzi, as a copier, especially as 
 contrasted with the truth and delicacy of the reproductions of Frederick 
 Lewis* In 1795 was published the first volume of S. Harding's 
 Biographical Mirrour, comprisi?ig a Series of Ancient and Modern 
 English Portraits of Eminent and Distinguished Persons, from original 
 Pictures and Drawings. A second volume of this interesting work 
 appeared in 1798; and a third in 1802, With it should be associated 
 the Scottish Gallery of John Pinkerton, engraved by the Hardings and 
 others, royal 8vo, 1799. With one word to an elegant volume of more 
 local interest, The Lives of Eminent and Remarkable Characters born 
 or long resident in the Counties of Essex, Stcffolk a?id Norfolk, 68 portraits 
 (London, 1820, 8vo), I arrive at a handsome folio, Me?noirs of the 
 Celebrated Persons comprising the Kit-Cat Club; with a Prefatory 
 Account of the Origin of the Associations illustrated with Forty -eight 
 Portraits, from the original Paifttings by Sir Godfrey Kneller (London, 
 1821). Here, if space permitted, I might enlarge upon the history of the 
 Club,t and discuss the origin of its quaint appellation. Kneller was a 
 painter of considerable merit, and had enjoyed in his artistic career, the 
 singular good fortune of numbering no less than ten monarchs among his 
 sitters.J The portraits of the members of this celebrated society are 
 still in existence, in the possession of Mr. R. W. Baker, the representative 
 of the Tonson family at Bayfordbury, in Hertfordshire. Engravings, 
 from them were made by Faber, and published without letterpress in 
 
 * Library Coinpanion, 1st ed. , p. 502, 7iote ; Tuer's Bartolozzi and his Works 
 vol. i. p. 33. 
 
 t See Ned Ward's Secret History of Clubs; and Charles Knight's Shadows of ths- 
 Old Booksellers, p. 62. 
 
 % These were Charles II., James II., his Queen, William and Mary, Ann, George I.,. 
 Louis XIV., Peter the Great, and the Emperor Charles VI. Kneller has also left us 
 portraits of Dryden, Pope, Newton, Locke, Addison, Congreve, and Wortley 
 Montague. Seven of the heads in the Gallery of "Admirals " are also from his brush- 
 
EDMUND LODGE. 409 
 
 1725, the year before the death of Jacob Tonson. They were re-engraved 
 for the edition of which I speak, and accompanied by "Memoirs," 
 attributed by Lowndes to James Caulfield, but which I believe to have 
 been written by A. A. Watts. By whomsoever they may be, they are 
 pronounced by Croker,* " one of the most blundering pieces of patch- 
 work that the scissors of a hackney editor ever produced " ; while Charles 
 Knight styles the volume, " one of the dullest of books, manufactured out 
 of the commonest materials." The portraits are also said to be " deficient 
 in characteristic resemblance," and to exhibit that kind of family likeness 
 which is to be found in all Kneller's faces. 
 
 By this artist, too, were depicted for William of Orange, the celebrated 
 " Beauties " at Hampton Court. But as works of art these are inferior to the 
 Windsor "Beauties" of Sir Peter Lely, him, who, in the words of Pope, 
 
 *' on animated canvas stole 
 
 The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul." 
 
 It is well remarked by Mrs. Jameson, in her " Introduction " to the 
 beautiful book, Memoirs of the Beauties of the Court of Charles the Second? 
 with their Portraits after Sir Peter Lely and other Eminent Painters 
 (1833, 4to ; 3rd ed. "enlarged," H. G. Bohn, 1 851, royal 8vo), that 
 Kneller's portraits, " with due deference to the virtues of the ladies they 
 represent, are, as subjects, not to be compared in interest and beauty, to 
 their naughty mammas and grandmammas of Charles the Second's 
 time. There is a chalkiness in the flesh, and a general rawness in the 
 tints, which will not bear a comparison with the delicacy of Lely's 
 carnations, and the splendour of colouring in his landscapes and 
 draperies ; and they all have a look of studied stiffness and propriety, 
 which, as it is obviously affected, is almost as bad as the voluptuous 
 negligence of Lely's females." 
 
 I must bestow a word on that fine work, The British Gallery of Co?i- 
 temporary Portraits (published by Cadell, in 1822, 2 vols.), the large 
 paper copy of which, in folio, form an appropriate companion to the folio 
 edition of Lodge ; and I hardly like to pass without notice the very 
 elegant Physiognomical Portraits of Distinguished Characters, from Un- 
 doubted Originals, with Biographical Memoirs by Thomson (1824, 2 vols. 
 4to), with plain or India paper plates, and twenty-five copies in folio, with 
 proof impressions on French paper. This beautiful work was projected 
 and published by the late Edward Walmsley, to whom we are indebted 
 for the sumptuous reprint of Dibdin's Biblioma?iia (1842). Finer 
 specimens of the engraver's art can scarcely be found than these 
 portraits, though perhaps they are a little deficient in novelty. 
 
 There is a couple of very elegant volumes, Portraits of the British 
 Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper and Beat tie (1824, 8vo). These portraits,, 
 one hundred and forty in number, are drawn with minute fidelity by 
 Thurston, Clint, Uwins, Green, Whittock, John Jackson, etc., from the 
 originals in various collections, exquisitely engraved, and preceded by 
 a charming vignette title-page from a drawing by Stothard. The series 
 is worthy of record on its own merits : but I should give it notice here, if 
 only to mention that, in 1824, was published by J. Carpenter and Son,, 
 a volume designed to illustrate it. This, which bears the title, Effigies. 
 Poeticce: or the Portraits of the British Poets, Illustrated by Notes 
 
 Quarterly Review, vol. xxvi. p. 425. 
 
4 io THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Biographical, Critical and Poetical, was, I believe, written by Bryan W. 
 Procter (" Barry Cornwall ' J ) ; and forms, especially in the " large paper " 
 copies, a capital book for Grangerization. 
 
 After my rapid retrospect of this department of literature and art, 
 which I do not, of course, profess to be exhaustive, or free from the 
 charge of noticing works of comparative insignificance to the exclusion 
 of those of greater value, I come to a pause at the point at which I took 
 my departure, the publication, in 1821-34, of the Illustrated Biography 
 of Mr. Lodge. My own shelves would, indeed, enable me to supply the 
 title of many books which I have not thought of sufficient importance to 
 mention in chronological sequence. Among such are the Pontificorum 
 Maximorum Elogia et Imagines of Onuphrius Panvinus (Venet. 1575, 
 folio) ; [the Elogia of Paulus Jovius (1575, folio); the Bibliotheca, sive 
 Thesaurus Virtutis et Gloria of Boissardus, engraved by Theodore de 
 Bry (1628-32) ; the Effigies et Vitce Professorum Academice Groningce et 
 Omlandice, by Nicolai (1654, folio) ; the Illustrium Imagines 0/" Theodore 
 Galle (1606, 4to) ; the Lyceum Patavini of C. Patinus, with the fine 
 portraits by T. Galle (1632, 4to) ; the Illustrium Virorum Elogia Iconibus 
 Ilhcstrata of Tomasinus (1630, 4to) ; the Tempi urn Honoris of Spizelio and 
 Haffner (1673, 4 t0 ) '> tne Iconografia of Giovanni Canini, engraved by 
 Picart (Romas, 1669, folio ; Amsterdam, 1731, 4to) ; the Virorum 
 Illicstrium ex Or dine Eremitarum D. Angus tint Elogia et I cones of 
 Curtius, with the fine heads by Theodore Galle (Antwerpise, 1636, 4to)'; the 
 Favissos of H. Spoor (1707, 4to) ; the Ritratti del Alcuni celebri Pittori 
 del Secolo XVII. (Romse, 1781, 4to) ; the Acade'mie des Sciences et des 
 Arts of Bullart, with 274 portraits (Bruxelles, 1682, 2 vols, folio) ; the 
 Champions of our own Ricraft (1647, 8vo) ; and the Worthies of Vicars 
 (1647, 8vo) ; with a host of others, but I have rather contented myself 
 with the indication of those which seemed to me most significant as 
 enabling the reader to estimate the value of Mr. Lodge's labours, by 
 affording some information as to what had been previously achieved 
 by a similar co-operation of art and biography, in commemorating the 
 lives of illustrious men and women of all ages. 
 
 Having descanted at such length upon Portraits in general, it is meet 
 to say a word upon the one before us. It is a free-handed and vigorous 
 sketch ; and I have no doubt, though I cannot affirm it from actual 
 knowledge, that it affords a faithful presentment of the renowned 
 poursuivant. " There he stands," writes Maginn, " in the regal robes of 
 Norroy, in all the glory and grandeur of heraldic costume. He looks, 
 indeed, every inch a king ; and long may he continue to reign. We 
 should be excessively sorry, if, in these innovating days, the hand of the 
 Destructive should be laid upon Benet's Hill. The minute philosopher, 
 or the grovelling utilitarian, may sneer at heraldry, and think the con- 
 tinuance of the Heraldic College a piece of idle folly ; but for the 
 opinions of these gentlemen* we have little respect. They connect the 
 present time with times past, and make us feel that we belong to a 
 country which is not of yesterday, and that those who went before us did 
 deeds worthy of being marked with honour and distinction. Who that 
 enters the Heralds' College, as his eye glances on the portcullis of the 
 Plantagenets, the three legs of the Isle of Man, the eaglets claw of the 
 Stanleys, but must feel that he is of a race renowned in ages past all 
 over the world, and think himself called upon to take care that it suffers 
 
JOHN BALD WIN B UCKSTONE. 4 1 1 
 
 no disgrace from him. The arms of a man's family ought to remind him 
 that he has other people to think of besides himself, and that no blot is 
 to be cast by him on the escutcheon of his fathers. And albeit we confess 
 ourselves but little skilled in the science of blazon, we know enough of 
 it to be sure that it requires no small quantity of multifarious information, 
 and a great share of acuteness and ability. Of one thing we are certain 
 that those who would depose the heraldic kings from their thrones, 
 would be ready to pay the same compliment to another king whose 
 empire is more substantial." 
 
 It now only remains to state that Mr. Lodge died on January 16th, 
 1839, at his residence in Bloomsbury Square, in the eighty-third year of 
 his age. A portrait of him, after a drawing by Maclise, engraved by 
 Smith, is prefixed to the edition of the Illustrations of British History ', 
 published in 1838. 
 
 The " boast of heraldry " awaits now as ever " the inevitable hour." 
 Farewell, Lodge ! Thy embroidered Tabard has fallen upon other 
 shoulders ; thy coronet of gold, with its sixteen strawberry leaves, adorns 
 the brow of a successor in office ; and unclasped for ever for thee is 
 thy gilt collar of " esses." But the King never dies ; and thus we may 
 still cry, " with lungs as stentorian as we can command," 
 
 Wibt laxtntitxi}: I 
 
 LXXVIII. JOHN BALDWIN BUCKSTONE. 
 
 Maginn, half a century ago, 
 
 -assiduo labuntur tempora raotu, 
 
 Non secus ac flumen," 
 
 called the attention of his readers, as I do now that of mine, to " our queer 
 looking little friend, with his usual 'aids to reflection ' before him" ; and 
 added that he was so well known to the play-going world of London that 
 it was scarcely necessary to describe him. " His odd countenance," said 
 he, rt his quaint manner his whimsical gesture his indescribably droll 
 voice, have made so deep an impression on theatrical London, that we 
 may safely hold ourselves excused from further dilating upon the merits 
 or peculiarities of Buckstone, the actor." 
 
 But Buckstone, the author, he seemed to think required introduction ; 
 calling him the Scribe of England, and pronouncing him almost as 
 indefatigable as his French contemporary, and, in the handling of his 
 characters, quite as original. As to the former quality, his dramatic 
 output consists of some hundred and fifty pieces ; and as to the latter, 
 if he adapted, plagiarized, borrowed, and nationalized the histrionic 
 productions of our more fertile neighbours, the great Scribe himself 
 is known to have organized a dramatic workshop, where the journey- 
 men of Thalia rough-hewed the work, to be afterwards shaped and 
 signed by the master-hand. These works of Buckstone I shall neither 
 attempt to denominate, or criticize, individually. His drama was con- 
 ventional in treatment ; and is now somewhat obsolete, as belonging to 
 a bygone age. But it was national in character \ marked by a healthy 
 
4 i2 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 humour, albeit a little coarse for these mealy-mouthed days ; and per- 
 vaded by human interest and simple pathos. Many, indeed, of his pieces, 
 -such as the Husband at Sight, Green Bushes, Our Mary Amie, The 
 Irish Lion, A Lesson for Ladies, Luke the Labourer, Popping the Question^ 
 Box and Cox, The Wreck Ashore, Good for Nothing, Last Year, Victorine, 
 Married Life, Single Life, The May-Queen, with others more or less 
 dimly seen through the vista of memory as I write, possessed con- 
 siderable merit, and may probably yet hold possession of the stage for a 
 time. The Flowers of the Forest, written for Madame Celeste, Ellen 
 Wareham, for Mrs. Yates, and The Dream of Life, performed at the 
 Haymarket, were pieces of somewhat higher order. Miss Braddon, in 
 one of her fine novels, shows that a once popular piece was still fresh in 
 her memory. "Just," she says, seeking for a simile, "as in Mr. Buck- 
 stone's most poetic drama, we are bewitched by the wild huntress sitting 
 at the feet of her love, and admire her chiefly, because we know that one 
 man upon all the earth could have had power to tame her." * 
 
 Moreover, in addition to his talent as dramatic author, Buckstone 
 possessed that, hardly less essential to an impresario, of enlisting good 
 writers in his service. Among these may be mentioned the late Tom 
 Taylor, Leicester Buckingham, Planche, John Oxenford, Dr. Westland 
 Marston, Stirling Coyne, Falconer, T. W. Robertson, Byron and Gilbert. 
 Thus his programme included pieces of the celebrity of Pygmalion and 
 GalatcBa, The Favourite of Fortune, Everybody 's Friend, The Unequal 
 Match, David Gar rick, New Men and Old Acres, The Overland Route, 
 A Dangerous Friend, and Our American Cousin; while his company 
 consisted, at various epochs, of such efficient actors as Howe, Chippen- 
 dale, Compton, Sothern, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mathews, I. S. Clarke, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Kendal, and Miss Sedgwick. 
 
 As an actor, Buckstone must, of course, be judged by the standard 
 and requirements of his day. The poet tells us that 
 
 " He who lives to please must please to live," 
 
 and if it is the function of the player to hold a mirror up to nature, the 
 surface of this must reflect the image presented to it. Still, admitting that 
 much of his success depended upon that trick of facial contortion which 
 is growing more and more obsolete every day, and an unctuous exag- 
 geration of humour which would now be pronounced vulgar in comic 
 impersonation, it is no less true that Buckstone was one of the first 
 comic actors of the time, perhaps the first, if merit is to be measured by 
 the amount of cachinnation which he evoked. " He has chosen," says 
 Maginn, writing of him as a contemporary, " his peculiar department in 
 his profession, and that department he fills in a manner not to be sur- 
 passed. Long practice in dramatic composition enables him, on the spur 
 of the moment, to improvise a scene when actually on the stage, when the 
 influence of the jolly god renders Reeve reckless of what is set down for him, 
 and Jack commences composing, ad libitum, according to the dictates of his 
 flowing fancies ; if, as we have been assured, Buckstone is so deaf that he 
 cannot distinctly hear what is said on the stage, this faculty of divining the 
 vagaries of Reeve, and playing up to them, without pause or hesitation, 
 is very remarkable." The parts which he has most completely identified 
 with his name are " Sir Andrew Aguecheek," " Bob Acres," and " Tony 
 * John Mcuxhmont 's Legacy, 1863, vol. iii. p. 55. 
 
JOHN BALDWIN BUCKSTONE. 413 
 
 Lumpkin," in the older comedy; and in the more modern, "Squire 
 Chevy" in David Garrick, " Major Wellington de Boots" in Everybody's 
 Friend, " Mr. Lovibond " in The Overland Route, " Asa Trenchard " in 
 Our American Cousin, " Bunter" in New Men and Old Acres, " Chrysos " 
 in Pygmalion and Galalcea, " Dr. Botcherby" in An Unequal Match, 
 " Aminadab Sleek" in A Serious Fai7iily, and "Bobby Trot," in his own 
 comedy of Luke the Labourer. How he came to be pitch-forked into the 
 serious drama, I do not know ; but certain it is that when Mr. and Mrs. 
 Charles Kean commenced their magnificent Shakespearian revivals at 
 the Haymarket, by the performance (A Macbeth, Master "Bucky"got cast 
 for the " First Witch ! " It is said that John Philip Kemble, who never 
 believed in the authenticity of Ireland's Shakespearian forgeries, when he 
 came to act in Vortigern a?id Rowena, so maliciously intoned the line : 
 
 ' ' And when this solemn mockery is o'er," 
 
 as to materially promote the condemnation of that fictitious piece. 
 Buckstone, of course, had no such " little game " to play, and doubtless 
 tried to look his gravest. But the familiar, fun-provoking mug, as its 
 owner appeared before the curtain, was the signal for roars of laughter ; 
 while his question, " When shall we three meet again ? " gave the 
 finishing touch, and, in the exquisite fun of the situation, put a final stop 
 to tragedy for the night. In domestic comedy, however, he was an 
 important member of the Haymarket company, under the management 
 of the Keans, till this was assumed by himself in 1853. 
 
 John Baldwin Buckstone, though of an old Derbyshire family, was 
 a Londoner born and bred, having first seen the light at Hoxton, in 1802. 
 He received his education at the Grammar School, Walworth ; whence 
 he was transferred, in the capacity of midshipman, to the deck of a man- 
 of-war. Maritime life not suiting his taste, he tried the land, and had a 
 brief spell, as articled clerk, in the office of an attorney. But this, too, 
 did not hit his fancy ; so, at the age of nineteen, he quitted the lawyer's 
 desk, and joined a company of strolling players, making his first 
 appearance at Wokingham, Berkshire, in the character of " Gabriel," in 
 The Children in the Wood. After a novitiate in the provinces of some 
 four years, he attracted the notice of Edmund Kean, and in 1824, 
 obtained an engagement at the Surrey Theatre, where he first appeared 
 in the character of " Peter Smirk," in The Armistice. He remained at 
 the Surrey about four years ; leaving, in 1828, for the Adelphi, and 
 subsequently, the Haymarket. In 1840, he made a trip to the United 
 States, where he hardly met with the reception he was entitled to expect. 
 On his return to England, he joined, as I have already noted, the company 
 of the Keans ; and continued to form part of this, till, in 1853, their 
 theatre, the Haymarket, was transferred to himself. This he continued 
 to conduct till 1877 ; his management having been characterized through- 
 out by energy, sagacity, liberality, and good taste. But all this notwith- 
 standing, misfortune and embarrassment were creeping on apace. It is 
 well for the " poor player," above all men, when the call-boy rings the bell 
 for an early exit. Buckstone lived too long ; and surviving the generation 
 which had known him in his genial prime, exhibited to a younger one 
 which had no subduing memories, the painful spectacle of a palsied 
 veteran lagging " superfluous on the stage." There were possibly other, 
 and reprehensible circumstances ; but I care not to " point a moral " with 
 
4 1 4 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 further disclosure of the manager's career. It is sufficient, then, to record 
 that, in March, 1878, an adjudication of bankruptcy was made against 
 him, as " of the Haymarket Theatre ; " and that in the following July he 
 made application to pass the Court, upon a statement of affairs which 
 showed unsecured debts to the amount of nearly 7000, secured, 2600, 
 partly secured, ^4054, and assets, nil. The bankrupt appeared in a very 
 weak state of health ; and in consideration of the unsatisfactory character 
 of his balance-sheet, was not then allowed to pass his examination. 
 
 The next I heard of him was in August 21st, 1879, when the follow- 
 ing painful letter called attention to his case : 
 
 " To the Editor of the 'Times.' 
 
 "Sir, You may be able at this season to spare a corner, and enable me to ca.l 
 attention to the miserable state of one who has delighted the public for more than 
 fifty years. 
 
 " Buckstone, the exquisite actor, successful author, generous manager and true 
 English gentleman, lies on that, I fear, is his death-bed, in absolute want. He had 
 a second paralytic stroke a few days ago, and with his six children dependent upon 
 him, is destitute. The Bank of England (Western Branch), Burlington Gardens, W. , 
 will receive subscriptions to the ' Buckstone Fund,' to which cheques and post-office 
 orders should be made payable ; and to be of use, I fear that what is done, should be 
 done quickly. 
 
 " Your obedient Servant, 
 
 "William Fraser." 
 
 In a subsequent communication to the Times, Sir William Fraser 
 states that he had received a letter requesting him to "assure Mr. 
 Buckstone of the Queen's sympathy with him in his affliction, and to tell 
 him that her Majesty had inquired after him ; " that the royal lady had 
 been graciously l! eased to send $0 as a donation to the " Buckstone 
 Fund ; " and that he had had an intimation, in reply to his application 
 to the Prime Minister, that Lord Beaconsfield would recommend a sum 
 of ^100 to be granted to the distressed actor from the Queen's Royal 
 Bounty. The writer adds, " Were your readers to see Mr. Buckstone, as 
 I have seen him to-day, poor and paralyzed, they would, I feel sure, 
 do much to relieve his absolute want." 
 
 I have no information as to the amount collected, but do not suppose 
 it to have been large. The physician's maxim is " accipe dum dolet ; n 
 and the comic actor's should be, " Get what you can while your power of 
 pleasing lasts, and take care of it." Gratitude, which has been defined 
 as a lively sense of future favours, is apt to be inert when none are to be 
 looked for. Moreover, it is too much to expect that one generation will 
 pay over again for the amusement which has been afforded to another. 
 Any way, poor Buckstone did not require assistance long after application 
 was made for it, dying in the early morning of Friday, October 31st, 1879, 
 at his residence, Bell Green Lodge, Lower Sydenham. Here in February, 
 1880, his effects were brought to the hammer. His library comprised 
 some 450 volumes ; there was a portrait of Buckstone himself by Maclise, 
 and paintings by Reynolds, Landseer, Calcott, Greuze and others, 
 together with some fine proof engravings, ielics of his palmy days, after 
 Sir Edwin Landseer. 
 
 Another "Buckstone Fund" was organized in 1880, on behalf of 
 Frederick, the son of the celebrated comedian. In the appeal, dated 
 January 29th, we are informed that this gentleman was " laid up suffering 
 
JOHN BALDWIN BUCKSTONE. 415 
 
 from consumption ; that the disease was brought on chiefly through 
 privation and anxiety during the last two years ; that he was 42 years 
 old, and had, for the last twenty years, been struggling for a living as a 
 landscape-painter, but through want of means had been obliged to sell 
 his pictures to dealers and others at ruinously low prices, living from 
 hand to mouth, and being consequently unable to give his time to more 
 important works with a view to public exhibition, so as to gain a fair 
 start in his profession ; and that he was then quite unable to work, 
 and entirely without the means of subsistence." 
 
 Of Buckstone's daughters, many will remember Lucy, as one of the 
 attractions of her father's old theatre, the Haymarket, under the 
 management of Sothern. She married ; and in accordance with 
 the wish of her husband, retired from the stage. She lived for a time 
 in America ; but it was understood, in December, 1882, that she was on 
 her way back to England, with the intention of returning to the boards, 
 where the re-appearance of such a bright and clever actress would be 
 warmly welcomed by the public. 
 
 It is perhaps just worthy of mention that the original of the picture by 
 Millais, "Cinderella," reproduced in December, 1882, as the Christmas- 
 supplement to the Illustrated London News, was Miss Trissie Buckstone,. 
 the youngest daughter of the subject of this notice. 
 
 Buckstone, in his busy life, had other labours than those of manager, 
 actor and author. He was one of the most active promoters of the 
 General Theatrical Fund, of which he acted as Master and Treasurer ; 
 he was also one of the honorary Treasurers of the fund for the establish- 
 ment of the Dramatic College near Woking for the benefit of aged 
 actors. He had been for nearly five and twenty years a member of the: 
 Garrick Club. 
 
 Some years before his death it was rumoured that he was engaged 
 in the preparation of an autobiography in which would be embodied 
 the events of his own life, and the vast amount of anecdotal informa- 
 tion, relating to his dramatic and literary contemporaries, which he had 
 collected in the course of his long public career. What has become of 
 these materials? The world anticipated much from the performance 
 of a task which Mr. Buckstone was so peculiarly qualified to execute ;. 
 and possessed in anticipation a record no less valuable than the Apology 
 of Colley Cibber, and the Re?nmiscenees of O'Keefe, Michael Kelly, and 
 Dibdin. By the way, I am rather astonished that the idea has occurred 
 to no enterprising bibliopole of collecting and publishing Buckstone's 
 admirable speeches at the Dramatic Fund dinners, and other occasions. 
 They would form a most amusing volume ! Verb. sap. 
 
 I have felt it sad to record that one who had been so considerate and 
 liberal himself in his dealings with others, should have fallen, in his 
 latter days, into poverty and apparent neglect. But fiat justitiaj poor 
 Buckstone had himself to blame. When he piped for us in the 
 Haymarket, did we not dance ? He amused his generation, and his 
 generation liberally paid him ; he sowed no seed for posterity, and his 
 abundant harvest was in his own day. There is no charge of public 
 ingratitude ; he and the world might well cry "quits." But it is well to 
 be generous as well as just ; and it is pleasing to know that the man 
 who had entertained a bygone generation wasj not altogether without 
 sympathy and aid from the present one. His aims, like those of his, 
 
<i6 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 . 
 
 class, may not have been the most elevated, his theory of life the mos 
 serious, or his example the most dignified ; but his function, as mere 
 laugh-compeller, was neither unimportant nor unworthy. Homer said 
 that man was the most miserable animal in creation ; and Addison 
 pronounced him the merriest. Both are right ; for if he is subjected to a 
 host of evils from which other beings are exempt, he has sources of 
 pleasures, and, inter alia, those which arise from that peculiar con- 
 catenation of ideas which constitutes the ludicrous, which, to some 
 extent at least, counterbalance these. The risible faculty and appetence, 
 peculiar to man, 
 
 " Smiles from reason flow, 
 
 To brutes denied," 
 
 as Milton has it, require a judicious pabulum for their gratification and 
 sustenance. We may be thankful that, when the gods kicked Momus 
 from Olympus, the merry dog chanced to tumble among ourselves. We 
 were wise enough to give him a hearty welcome ; and relish his satire 
 hugely when it is not directed against our own individual foibles. Let 
 us still entreat the rogue kindly ; for we cannot, in faith, do without him. 
 Man, like Venus of old, is ^OjU/tetS^y ; and, in a world whose hard 
 grip extorts from so many eyes the tears of Heraclitus, we may well 
 be thankful to him whose lighter touch can, even for a brief while, bid 
 -diese give place to the laughter of Democritus. 
 
 
 LXXIX. SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH. 
 
 As the Cornish baronet was not, is not, perhaps I should rather say, 
 one of those characters, want of knowledge of whom, quoad literature, 
 at least, implies that one is not known oneself, I will confess to some 
 ignorance as to the minute details of hie career ; and, exclaiming with 
 Canning's knife-grinder, 
 
 " Story ! God bless you, I have none to tell, Sir," 
 
 proceed to indite the baldest and most perfunctory of notices. 
 
 If my readers have ever wondered for a moment, how, when, and where 
 the " sittings " were given for the series of portraits which I have had the 
 honour of exhibiting to them, the natural emotion may perchance be satis- 
 fied by a sentence in which, so far, at least, as regards the drawing before 
 us, we are let into the secret. " By an ingenious stratagem," says Fraser, 
 " our artist penetrated into the baronet's sanctuary in Belgrave Square, 
 attired like a ticket-porter. He produced a note, as from ah Irish 
 -member, requesting a loan of three- and-sixpence, to pay a score at the 
 Reform Club. While Sir William Molesworth was meditating whether he 
 should produce the money, while he wrote a line signifying that the 
 request was granted, and kindly enclosed the mopuses in an envelope, 
 young Croquis watched, marked, surveyed him, and made the admirable 
 portrait opposite, unobserved, on his thumb-nail. 
 
 " Sir William lies on a luxurious sofa ; his limbs are enveloped in a 
 
SIX WILLIAM MQLESWORTH. 417 
 
 damask robe ; a Grecian cap, marvellously embroidered, ornaments his 
 sconce ; his legs are crossed in an attitude of profound meditation. It is 
 thus our great statesman appears in his closet, and meditates upon cos- 
 mogony, or the state of human affairs. Not political alone engage his 
 mind : he is a profound metaphysician ; as a linguist, stupendous ; as a 
 mathematician, he has attained a depth which is more easily imagined 
 than described. Sir Isaac Newton once said, in our hearing, when Sir 
 William, as a lad, came up to Trinity, ' Dash my wig, Mr. Yorke ! that 
 young man beats me all to shivers. 5 We speak within compass when we 
 say, that Sir William Molesworth reads you off a page of Chinese with 
 great ease, and the true Pekin accent ; that Professor Whewell is a ninny 
 compared to him in mathematics ; and we have even heard that he not 
 only admires, but understands, Jeremy Bentham. Our artist remarked 
 nothing further in the chamber, except that, on his entrance, Sir Williant 
 was occupied reading an enormous folio of French mathematics, and that 
 by the honourable baronet's side lay the ashes of four and twenty cigars. 
 Trifling particulars ; but interesting to those who love to penetrate into 
 human character, and are eager to know the smallest circumstances 
 relating to good or great men. 
 
 " He lives in a fine house in Belgrave Square, which is remarkable, 
 as being also the residence of the hon. member for Westminster. 
 These two great statesmen (to use a polite phrase) pig together, and have 
 their mansion in common. We do not mean to say that Orestes wears 
 the pantaloons of Pylades, or vice versdj but that, convinced that their 
 party will dissolve, unless rallied round one particular standard, they 
 have set up this liberty-flag in Belgrave Square. They keep a French 
 cook, and feed their less fortunate political brethren, a generosity noble 
 on their part, but, indeed, necessary ; for the wholesome quality of the 
 victuals serves to keep these Radicals from starving, and likewise greatly 
 elevates the morale of the men. With a few more such dinners at 
 Pimlico, we expect to hear Mr. Wakley talking English, and Mr. Harvey 
 looking like a gentleman." 
 
 As for myself, so far from endorsing the epithet " admirable," as to the 
 portrait before us, I should pronounce it one of the least satisfactory of 
 the entire series ; and but for the statement above about " young Croquis," 
 a phrase which possibly was used generically or without due thought, 
 should have been more inclined to attribute it to "Alfred Crowquill " 
 (pseudonym of A. H. Forrester), or even to the pencil in aid of " Michael 
 Angelo Titmarsh " (the pen-name of Thackeray). 
 
 But to return to the "honourable baronet," Sir William Moles- 
 worth,, who was, as Fraser informs us, "of ancient family, of Cornwall 
 breed, and possessed many fat acres in that and the neighbouring county." 
 He was born in London, on the 23rd of May, 18 10 ; and succeeded to the 
 title on the death of his father, the seventh baronet, at the age of thirteen. 
 He was entered in due course at the University of Cambridge, where he 
 underwent a sentence of rustication for challenging his tutor to fight a 
 duel. He next studied classics, mathematics, and metaphysics at the 
 University of Edinburgh ; completing his education in a German Uni- 
 versity where he bestowed especial attention upon philology and history. 
 He then made the usual tour of Europe ; and was still in his minority 
 when he returned home in 1831. His first appearance in public was at a 
 Cornish county meeting, on the agitation for Parliamentary reform, in that 
 
 2 E 
 
4I 8 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 year, and his juvenile speech was remarked for its earnest advocacy oi 
 that measure. 
 
 In 1832, he was returned, with Mr. W. L. Trelaway, unopposed, as 
 member of Parliament for the Eastern division of Cornwall, in which 
 county, at Pencarrow, his ancestors had settled in the time of Queen 
 Elizabeth, and where is still the seat of the family. He subsequently sat 
 for Leeds, having been returned for that borough in 1837, as colleague oi 
 E. Baines, the well-known proprietor of the Leeds Mercury ,* and in 1845 
 was elected, in the Liberal interest, for Southwark, which he continued tc 
 represent till his death, in Eaton Place, London, on October 22nd, 1855, 
 in the 46th year of his age. In 1842, he served the office of High Sherifi 
 of Cornwall, for which county he was also Deputy Lieutenant and Magis- 
 trate ; in 1853, he accepted the office of First Commissioner of Public 
 Works ; and subsequently became her Majesty's principal Secretary oi 
 State for the Colonies, a post which he had well earned, but did not live 
 long to enjoy. 
 
 Although it is not as a public man and a politician that Sir William 
 Molesworth is entitled to a niche in our Pinacotheca, I cannot refrain 
 from a passing word on a career which extorted respect and admiration 
 from men of all shades of opinion. As a debater, he could hardly be 
 ranked among the first ; nor were his speeches numerous, though the) 
 were always valuable. He advocated the ballot ; and this not only tc 
 further the interests of democracy, but to protect the people at large 
 against demagogic ascendancy. He did good public service by his fear- 
 less inquiry into the Orange Lodges. He laid bare the system of penal 
 transportation ; and was the zealous promoter of systematic colonization 
 He was an advocate of free trade ; of electoral and administrative reform, 
 and of a more philosophical and rational system of international law ; and 
 was in all respects, a large-minded and enlightened pioneer of liberal 
 opinion. " The best monument," said the Times, " that could be raisec 
 to him would be a complete collection of his Parliamentary speeches ; 
 the noblest epitaph that could be inscribed on his tomb would be the title 
 of ' the Liberator and Regenerator of the Colonial Empire of Greal 
 Britain.' " 
 
 In his literary capacity, much does not remain for me to say of the 
 subject of this notice. He was a large contributor to the Westminster 
 Review, of which he was, for some period, both proprietor and editor 
 It is, however, as the editor of Hobbes that he is best known in litera 
 ture. He had always been a great admirer of the illustrious and sceptica 
 "philosopher of Malmesbury," and had devoted the leisure of his busy anc 
 useful life to the collection of materials for the life of his favourite author 
 In 1839, h e commenced a reprint, in handsome style, of the writings o 
 this unpopular and little understood man. The Latin and Philosophica 
 Works, including the " obsolete mathematics," occupy five octavo volumes 
 and the " English Works," illustrated with expensive engravings, were 
 comprised in eleven more. The whole entailed a cost for publicatior 
 of many thousand pounds ; the intended biography was said to be fai 
 advanced at the time of the author's death, and I presume still remains 
 in manuscript uncompleted. 
 
 Sir William Molesworth has often been spoken of as a friend of Ben- 
 tham ; but this could hardly have been, as the great utilitarian died in 1832 
 at the very commencement of the career of the wealthy young baronet, 
 
AUTHOR OF "PL;I,EY'g LSTTXR8 Q*J THE CATHOLICS'' 
 
SIX WILLIAM MOLES WORTH: 419 
 
 With James Mill he was, however, intimate ; and it was in the company 
 of Grote that he pursued his travels. His studies were by no means con- 
 fined to politics and metaphysics. He had read extensively in English 
 and foreign literature ; had studied deeply architecture and engineering ; 
 and was minutely versed in the science of botany. 
 
 Further, as was remarked at the time of his death, by the Athenaum 
 " In private life, his kindliness of heart, and the child-like simplicity 
 with which he accepted everything meant to give him pleasure, were 
 remarkable and endearing ; and great is the number of those who will 
 join us in feeling their bereavement in the withdrawal from the world 
 of one of those able and true men in whom public worth is borne out and 
 adorned by private amiability." 
 
 One sister survived him, the wife of Richard Ford, Esq., F.S.A., 
 author of Murray's admirable Handbook of Spain, and other esteemed 
 works. The title devolved on a cousin, the Rev. Hugh Henry Moles- 
 worth, Rector of Little Petherick, Cornwall. 
 
 LXXX. REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 
 
 I HAVE often, in the course of these u Memoirs," longed for some such 
 mastery over space and quantity as that symbolized by the magic tent of 
 which we read in the Oriental tale, which, though it could be contained in 
 the closed hand, was capable, when unfolded, of sheltering a mighty army 
 within its periphery. Pascal apologized for the length of his letter on the 
 ground of the shortness of the time in which he was compelled to write 
 it ; but what would he have done if he had had to contend against exiguity 
 of paper, par dessus le marche"? 
 
 Sydney Smith, " the wisest of witty men, and the wittiest of wise 
 men," as the Hon. Mrs. Norton called him, was born at Woodford, in 
 Essex, in 1771 ; and was sprung from ancestors of whom he has himself 
 said that " they never had any arms, and invariably sealed their letters 
 with their thumbs." He was educated at Winchester College, where he 
 became " Captain " of the school, his school-fellows signing a round-robin 
 declining to try for prizes, if he, or his brother Courtnay, should enter 
 in competition. After a few months passed in France to acquire the 
 language, he was, by virtue of his position at Winchester, elected to 
 a scholarship in New College, Oxford. " I was at school and college," 
 wrote he in his Letters to Archdeaco7i Singleton* "with the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury ; fifty-three years ago, he knocked me down with the chess- 
 board for checkmating him, and now he's attempting to take away my 
 patronage ! " At Oxford, in due course, he graduated with honour, and, 
 at the age of twenty-two, obtained a fellowship ; not, however, proceeding 
 M.A. till 1796. His own inclination was towards the bar as a profession, 
 but in compliance with the strong desire of his father, he entered holy 
 orders. His first curacy was at Netheravon, in the midst of Salisbury 
 Plain, where he fully realized his own description of a country curate 
 
 * First Letter. 
 
4 2o THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 "the poor working man of God a learned man in a hovel, good and 
 patient the first and poorest pauper of the hamlet, yet showing in the 
 midst of worldly misery he has the heart of a gentleman, the spirit of a 
 Christian, and the kindness of a pastor." Here he did not remain long. 
 The squire of the place, Mr. Hicks-Beach, M.P. for Cirencester, took a 
 fancy to him, and engaged him to accompany his eldest son to the Uni- 
 versity of Weimar. Before he got there, however, with his young charge, 
 Germany became the seat of war, and the travellers were forced, " by 
 stress of politics," to put into Edinburgh, " that garret of the earth that 
 knuckle-end of England that land of Calvin, oatcakes and sulphur," as 
 he put it, where he spent five years in " discussing metaphysics and 
 medicine." Here he became preacher in a small Episcopalian chapel, in 
 the Canongate, where his senior colleague was the Rev, Archibald Alison, 
 Prebendary of Salisbury, author of Essays on the Nature and Principles 
 of Taste (1790, 4to ; 181 1, 2 vols. 8vo), "author and treatise," teste 
 Maginn, " long since alike dead and buried," and father of that better 
 known Sir Archibald Alison, who, as was said, wrote an elaborate work 
 in ten volumes to prove that God was a Tory. Here, too, it was that he 
 made the acquaintance of Jeffrey, Horner, Playfair, Walter Scott, Dugald 
 Stewart, Brougham, and other men of mark in the modern Athens ; and 
 here, enacting the part of "the emollient potato in this hyperborean 
 salad," he lived, as he describes it, " amid odious smells, barbarous sounds, 
 bad suppers, excellent hearts and most enlightened understandings." 
 Towards the close of his residence in that " energetic and infragrant city," 
 where philosophers 
 
 -think unknown, 
 
 And waste no sweetness on the desert air ; " 
 
 and amongst a people who, as he said, required a surgical operation to 
 get a joke well into their understandings, he proposed to Jeffrey to start a 
 " Review." The idea was received with acclamation, and the " Blue and 
 Yellow " was the result. A motto was thought a matter of some import- 
 ance, and Smith suggested part of a line from Virgil, 
 
 " Tenui Musam meditamur a vena," 
 
 in the vernacular, " We cultivate the Muse on a little oatmeal." But 
 objections were made to this ; and finally the sentence from Publius 
 Syrus 
 
 "Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur," 
 
 an author whom the junto confessed never to have read, but whose 
 truculent apophthegm lay ready to their hand in some Florilegium^ was 
 adopted, and still stands, in terrorem, on the fore-front of the book. He 
 himself acted as editor till he left Edinburgh, and then transferred it to 
 Jeffrey and Brougham, to attain an unprecedented popularity and success, 
 contributing from England those articles which now form an important 
 part of his collected writings. Meantime, in 1799, he had married Miss 
 Pybus, an English lady to whom he had been long engaged, tossing 
 into his bride's lap six battered tea-spoons, with the cheery exclamation, 
 " There, Kate, you lucky girl, I give you all my fortune ! " and at his 
 wife's suggestion, removed to London in 1804. There he soon became a 
 popular preacher. He had obtained the appointment of evening preacher 
 at the Foundling Hospital through Sir Thomas Barnard, preaching 
 
REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 421 
 
 alternately there and at Fitzroy Chapel, and he was also morning preacher 
 at Beverley Chapel, where his sermons attracted vast crowds of the 
 wealthy, curious, dignified and learned. He also delivered a course of 
 lectures on Moral Philosophy and the belles lettres at the Royal Institu- 
 tion. These, too, attracted overflowing audiences, for every one could 
 enjoy and understand the wit, sense and manly vigour by which they 
 were characterized. He was the right man in the right place. " No one 
 else," says Horner, " could have executed such an undertaking with the 
 least chance of success ; for who could have made such a mixture of odd 
 paradox, quaint fun, manly sense, liberal opinions and striking language ?" 
 These admirable lectures were privately printed at the time ; but it was 
 not till after the death of their author that, at the instance of Lord Jeffrey, 
 they were presented to the public. Then it was that Lord Byron made 
 the acquaintance of the witty preacher, of whom he spoke, in Don 
 Juan, as 
 
 " The very powerful parson, Peter Pith, 
 The loudest wit I e'er was deafen'd with," 
 
 giving us, in the same poem, his portrait, in these 
 -his livelier London days, 
 
 A brilliant diner-out, though but a curate, 
 And not a joke he cut but earn'd its praise, 
 
 Until preferment, coming at a sure rate, 
 (O Providence ! how wondrous are thy ways ! 
 
 Who could suppose thy gifts sometimes obdurate ?) 
 Gave him, to lay the devil who looks o'er Lincoln, 
 A fat fen vicarage, and nought to think on. 
 
 " His jokes were sermons, and his sermons jokes, 
 
 But both were thrown away amongst the fens ; 
 For wit hath no great friend in aguish folks : 
 
 No longer ready ears and shorthand pens 
 Imbibed the gay bon-mot, or happy hoax ; 
 
 The poor priest was reduced to common sense, 
 Or to coarse efforts very loud and long, 
 To hammer a hoarse laugh from the thick throng." * 
 
 With regard to " preferment," the reverend subject of these stanzas 
 "himself informs us that, till he was thirty, he never received a farthing 
 from the Church ; that then he had 50 per annum for two years ; then 
 nothing for ten years ; then ,500 per annum, increased for two or three 
 years, to ^800 ; till, in his grand climacteric, he was made Canon of St. 
 Paul's. Further than this, that he had built a parsonage-house, with 
 farm offices on a large scale, at a cost of 4000, and had reclaimed 
 another from ruin at an expense of ^200. This, however, is anticipatory ; 
 the allusion in Byron's lines is to the promotion of Smith to the living 
 of Foston-le-Clay, in Yorkshire, valued at ^500 per annum, which he 
 received from Lord Erskine, under the " Talents " administration, in 
 1806. In his own words : "A diner-out, a wit, and a popular preacher, 
 I was suddenly caught up by the Archbishop of York, and transported 
 to my living in Yorkshire, where there had not been a resident clergyman 
 for a hundred and fifty years. Fresh from London, not knowing a turnip 
 from a carrot, I was compelled to farm 300 acres, and, without capital, 
 to build a parsonage-house." All this, however, did not occur till 1808, 
 * Canto xvi. st. lxxxii. 
 
422 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 on the passing of Mr. Perceval's " Residence Bill," previously to which 
 he had lived in London, and appointed a substitute, who lived, I suppose, 
 where and how he could, to do the duty. 
 
 But the new rector was not of a nature to be daunted by obstacles. He 
 managed to build a house, truly a tabernacle in a wilderness, partly 
 furnished it, and removed to it with his wife and children. There was 
 no time, and as little disposition, for grumbling ; deficiencies were supplied 
 by ingenuity, and difficulties met with good humour, so that before long, 
 as his daughter records, they were " the happiest, merriest, and busiest 
 family in Christendom." The parson soon became a magistrate, and 
 had to study " Blackstone," to qualify himself for the duties of the office ; 
 he turned schoolmaster to educate his son, because he could not afford 
 to send him to school ; he made himself a farmer, because he could not 
 let his land ; he was clerk of the works and caterer for his household ; 
 and, in odd times, he wrote for the Edinburgh, and indited his ever 
 memorable Letters of Peter Plyinley, which appeared in 1807. In every* 
 thing he was healthy, cheerful, manly and energetic. " Faber mece 
 fortuntz? he says, was his adopted motto, and false shame existed not 
 in his household. Another important office he was also able to fill with 
 more or less success. In early life he had studied medicine and anatomy 
 with much assiduity, with a view of adopting the profession of physic 
 The knowledge thus obtained now stood him in good stead, and he was 
 enabled to enact the part of village ^sculapius, without the disastrous 
 results which generally attend the amiable labours of clergymen who 
 undertake the role. From his own account, his practice was simple. 
 Let us visit his consulting-room : " ' Where is Annie Kay ? Ring the 
 bell for Annie Kay.' Kay appeared. 'Bring me my medicine-book, 
 Annie Kay. Kay is my apothecary's boy, and makes up my medicines.' 
 Kay appears with the book. ' I am a great doctor ; would you like to 
 hear some of my medicines ? ' ' Oh yes, Mr. Sydney.' There is the 
 Gentlejog, a pleasure to take it ; the Bulldog, for more serious cases - t 
 Peter's puke j Heart's delight, the comfort of all the old women in the 
 village ; Rub-a-dub, a capital embrocation ; Dead-stop settles the matter 
 at once ; Up-with-it needs no explanation ; and so on. Now, Annie 
 Kay, give Mrs. Spratt a bottle of Rub-a-dub ; and to Mr. Coles a dose 
 of Dead-stop, and twenty drops of laudanum.' " 
 
 Still, with all his care, the amateur doctor met with some misadven- 
 tures. On one occasion, his horse " Peter the cruel," swallowed two boxes 
 of opium pills, instead of a ball, in his bran-mash, boxes and all ; but did 
 not sustain any damage from the bolus. Another time, his pigs all got 
 tipsy on fermented grains, administered by himself, and tumbled about 
 the stye, grunting " God save the King ! " And once his footman, who 
 had a passion for dough, surreptitiously ate some prepared with arsenic 
 for the vermin, which had been left on the dresser. " He swallowed," 
 said his master, " as much arsenic as would have poisoned all the rats in 
 the House of Lords ; but I pumped lime-water into him night and day 
 for many hours at a time, and there he is ! " 
 
 Many of his inventions at this happy period, forced upon him by 
 mother Necessity, seem humorous enough on specification. One was 
 his is patent Tantalus," devised to overcome the sluggishness of his horse 
 "Calamity." It consisted of a small sieve of corn suspended on a semi- 
 circular bar attached to the end of the shafts, just beyond reach of the 
 
REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 423 
 
 horse's nose. The rattling of the corn, and the hope of overtaking the 
 receptacle, stimulated the animal to greater exertions that any quantity 
 of the cereal actually put down his throat, could possibly have got out of 
 him. Another was suggested by his love of "cheap luxuries, even for 
 animals." This was a sharp-edged pole, resting on a high and low post, 
 and thus constituting an " universal scratcher." He had observed that 
 all animals have a passion for " scratching their backbones ; n and his 
 happy device, being adapted to every height, from a horse to a lamb," 
 even, as he said, " the Edinburgh Reviewer can take his turn." At this 
 time, he was, too, a Justice of the Peace, in which office, in striking 
 contradistinction to the generality of clerical magistrates, his judgments 
 were tempered with mercy and consideration. He was especially averse 
 from committing juvenile offenders ; and found, that when a lad proved 
 refractory under his admonition, a call to his man, " John, bring me my 
 private gallows," never failed to bring the culprit to his knees. 
 
 At Foston he was visited by many of his most valued friends, who 
 loved to rusticate awhile in his secluded parsonage. Among others 
 came Thackeray and Jeffrey, whom he found, on his return home, 
 bestriding his donkey, Bitty, and saluted with the impromptu : 
 
 " Witty as Horatius Flaccus, 
 As great a Jacobin as Gracchus ; 
 Short, though not as fat, as Bacchus, 
 Riding on a little Jackass ! " 
 
 Of the renowned Jeffrey, by the way, an interesting glimpse, on one 
 of his London visits, is afforded us by the wife of Carlyle : " Lord 
 Jeffrey," says she, " came unexpectedly while the Count (D'Orsay) was 
 here. What a difference ! The prince of critics, and the prince of dandies. 
 How washed out the beautiful dandiacal face looked beside that little 
 clever old man's. The large blue dandiacal eyes, you would have said, 
 had never contemplated anything more than the reflection of the hand- 
 some personage they pertained to, in a looking-glass ; while the dark 
 penetrating eyes of the other had been taking note of most things in 
 God's universe, even seeing a good way into mill-stones." * 
 
 Preferment, for which Sydney Smith had long so patiently waited, 
 was now at hand. In 1828, the year in which he lost his eldest son, 
 he was presented with a stall at Bristol by Lord Lyndhurst, who forgot 
 the politician in the friend ; and in the following year he exchanged 
 Foston for the living of Combe-Florey, in Somersetshire. In 1831, he 
 was appointed by Lord Grey, Canon Residentiary of St. Paul's ; and by- 
 and-by became comparatively a rich man by succeeding to a third of 
 some^ioopoo, on the death of his brother Courtnay, intestate. 
 
 In the autumn of 1843, he was visited by Tom Moore, who made a 
 stay of a few days at his hospitable parsonage. In reply to a letter 
 written to him after his departure by his host, referring to sundry imagi- 
 nary articles left behind by the careless poet, including " a right-hand 
 glove and odd stocking," Moore dispatched some verses, balancing the 
 account complimentarily with what 
 
 -he took slily away, 
 
 Rich treasures to last him for many a day : 
 
 * Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, by J. A. Froudfc (1883, 8vo). 
 
q24 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Recollections unnumbered of sunny Combe-Florey ; 
 
 Its cradle of hills, where it slumbers in glory ; 
 
 Its Sydney himself, and the countless bright things 
 
 Which his tongue or his pen, from the deep shining springs 
 
 Of wisdom and wit, ever flowingly brings. 
 
 Such being, on both sides, the ' tottle ' amount, 
 
 We shall leave to your Reverence to settle th' account." 
 
 From this period no change took place in his ecclesiastical condition. 
 Five and twenty years before, the King had read his reviews, and pro- 
 phetically said that " he was a very clever fellow, but would never be a 
 bishop." And so it turned out. Nolo episcoftari was not his motto ; but 
 his political friends lacked the courage to try the experiment, and Sydney 
 saw mitre after mitre descend upon other brows, while his own remained 
 unadorned. Lord Melbourne had at least the grace to repent of this. 
 Not that the Canon himself complained ; for this he was at once too 
 proud and too contented in disposition. So he continued to make, as he 
 always had done, the best of his lot ; employed his pen occasionally, but 
 Jio longer anonymously ; discharged with strict attention his capitular 
 duties, and was a wise steward of the revenues ; was an admirable 
 preacher, and a striking exemplar of clerical decorum and Christian 
 conduct. To a Frenchman, M. Eugene Robin, who, in the year before 
 :his death, had asked for some details of his life for an able article on 
 his writings which appeared in the Revue de Deux Mondes for October, 
 1844, he thus wrote : " I am seventy-four years of age ; and being Canon 
 .of St. Paul's, in London, and rector of a parish in the country, my time is 
 equally divided between town and country. I am living among the best 
 society in the metropolis ; am at ease in my circumstances ; in tolerable 
 health ; a mild Whig ; a tolerating Churchman ; and much given to 
 talking, laughing and noise. I dine with the rich in London, and physic 
 the poor in the country ; passing from the sauce of Dives to the sores of 
 Lazarus. I am, upon the whole, a happy man ; have found the world an 
 entertaining world, and am heartily thankful to Providence for the part 
 allotted to me in it." And this, despite the gout (mark, in our portrait, 
 the portly form, the double chin, the 
 
 M Magister artis, ingenique largitor 
 Venter" 
 
 of the professed diner-out), which made him feel, as he said, "as if he 
 was walking on his eye-balls ! " 
 
 But the grim sergeant was now hanging about the snug rectory, and 
 only waiting his opportunity to lay his hand upon the shoulder of the 
 genial incumbent. The soft, relaxing air of Combe-Florey seems to have 
 had a prejudicial effect on his health, and his periodical attacks of gout 
 became more and more severe. A gradual declension in his bodily 
 health, as indeed might have been expected at his age, showed itself ; 
 and an illness, which proved to be his last, set in towards the close of the 
 year 1844. He does not seem to have feared death, though, to use a 
 just distinction made by himself, the process of dying was not without 
 terror for him. His mind, however, remained in full vigour ; and his 
 unfinished pamphlet {A Fragment o?i the Irish Roman Catholic Church, 
 London, Longmans, 1845, 8vo, PP- 32) was pronounced by Jeffrey to be 
 
REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 425 
 
 his most powerful production. In despite of occasional fits of depression, 
 his temper retained its habitual gaiety, and very shortly before his death, 
 when describing to a friend his attenuated condition, he said that he 
 looked " as if a curate had been taken out of him." 
 
 He died at his residence, in Green Street, Hyde Park, February 21st, 
 1845, m tne seventy-seventh year of his age, and was buried in the 
 cemetery at Kensal Green. 
 
 " It is a pleasant task," says S. C. Hall, in his interesting " Memories " 
 of this good and accomplished man, " to write of one whose history is as 
 a sound of trumpets, mingled with the music of joy-bells." This history 
 is an important one. It has taught that a man may be an exemplary 
 parson, and a cheery, jovial, witty companion ; that a man of genius and 
 imagination is not necessarily devoid of prudence, common-sense, and 
 business habits ; that there is no generic connection between orthodoxy 
 and dulness, or, as he himself puts it, "between piety and paralysis" ;* 
 that merry nights need not always be followed by sorrowful days ; that the 
 laughing philosopher may yet be a feeling man ; that wit and humour 
 may be exercised without malice and ill-nature ; and that a man may 
 possess a power of satire, ridicule and sarcasm equal to that of Swift, 
 without one drop of the sceva indignatio which ate into the heart of the 
 renowned Dean of St. Patrick's. 
 
 As remarked by some contemporary, I forget whom, a remarkable 
 degree of success seems to have attended everything which was under- 
 taken by Sydney Smith. At college, as I have already recorded, he 
 graduated with honour, and obtained a fellowship at an early age, when 
 the aid it afforded was most important to him. He projected, contributed 
 to, and edited, a Review, which has enjoyed the highest reputation and 
 prosperity ; he attempted an ambitious style of preaching with a vigour 
 of talent which distanced all rivalry ; he became a public lecturer with 
 such acceptation that all Mayfair thronged to Albemarle Street, to enjoy 
 his wit and be instructed by his learning ; he published political pam- 
 phlets which have gone through editions so numerous, that as many as 
 20,000 copies of some of them have been sold, he enjoyed every comfort 
 in life which affluence, good constitution and exuberant animal spirits 
 could give him ; he was happy in his domestic relations ; and he lived 
 long enough to enjoy his reputation, and reach a greater age than falls to 
 the lot of average humanity, and yet those who can appreciate wit, and 
 admire learning, and are disposed to honour the man who ever employed 
 both kindly and judiciously will be inclined to say that, old as he might 
 have been, he died too soon. 
 
 Macaulay styled Sydney Smith " a great reasoner." But this he hardly 
 was, if by the epithet we understand a man possessing a penetrative 
 insight into the laws and conditions of mind, and successful in analyzing 
 the principles of thought. But his intellect was clear, logical and per- 
 spicient. It was said of him by Everett, that, " if he had not been known 
 as the wittiest man of his day, he would have been accounted one of the 
 wisest" ; and if he did not originate and discover, he had a marvellous 
 skill of converting theory into practice, the abstract into the concrete, and 
 making the ideas of loftier minds intelligible and popular, by simple 
 language and felicitous illustration. 
 
 * Preface to his Sermons, 2 vols. ismo. 
 
42 6 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 A writer of genius, in a poem the brilliancy and vigour of which should 
 have made it better known, asks 
 
 " Where shall we find thy rival, sportive Sydney? 
 
 Tory in heart, and Whig alone in name, 
 (Their solemn spleen was never of thy kidney) 
 
 Yet making of them both thy lawful game, 
 Swift' s living portrait, in a Canon's frame ! 
 
 Now kicking Peachum, and now trouncing Lockit ; 
 Time only giving brightness to thy fame, 
 Thy humour burning broadest, in its socket, 
 Thou'rt gone with all thy blaze, thou reverend Congreve-rocket ! " * 
 
 In the spontaneous and felicitous exercise of the lighter and more 
 brilliant faculties of the intellect he was pre-eminently great, a wit 
 emunctce naris, a humorist of most superlative excellence. There was 
 this, too, about his wit, that while it was manly, original, graceful, and 
 genial, it rarely lacked a substratum of earnest purpose. His jokes were 
 intended to make you think and feel, and thus had no resemblance to 
 those of Hook and others, which are only designed to make one laugh. 
 His humour was like the rough staff of Brutus, which contained a rod of 
 gold within it. It is never an idle play upon words, or a purposeless sport 
 of the brain ; it is always logical, sensible, good-natured, and decorous ; 
 and never transcends the limits of that "allowable pleasantry" which 
 even Barrow pronounces to be " expedient." And the marvel of all was, 
 that the possessor of this extraordinary quality conducted his affairs, 
 saved money, and preserved his health, like the dullest among us ; 
 rendering applicable to himself his own description of some similar 
 prodigy : " He has as much wit as if he had no sense, and as much sense 
 as if he had no wit ; his conduct is as judicious as if he were the dullest 
 of human beings, and his imagination as brilliant as if he were irretrievably 
 ruined." Yet this is the man of whom George Daniel could find nothing 
 better to say, in 1814, than that he had "too much lead" ; f and of whom 
 he could learn nothing in the twenty years following to make him see that 
 the modified phrase, " leaden Sydney," J was most absurdly inapplicable ! 
 
 Grantley Berkeley describes him somewhat disparagingly as " a clergy- 
 man of the facetious school, midway between the extreme liberality of 
 Rabelais, Walter de Mapes, Dean Swift and Laurence Sterne, and the 
 jocose absurdity of Rowland Hill and John Spurgeon. . . . He seemed 
 ever anxious to hide his gown under a suit of motley. Wherever he went, 
 his ambition was, apparently, not merely to set the table in a roar, but 
 the chairs, the sideboard, and the family portraits. He was as successful 
 a hoaxer as Theodore Hook, sparing neither age nor sex." 
 
 His colloquial witticisms, indeed, authentic and putative, would fill a 
 jest-book ; no account of him is complete without, at least, a specimen or 
 two. His compliments to the fair sex were peculiarly graceful. Of a 
 group of ladies he said, " they were all so beautiful, that Paris could not 
 have decided between them, but would have cut his apple into slices " ; 
 and of Lady Murray's mother, " Her smile is so radiant, that I believe it 
 would force even a gooseberry-bush into flower." To a charming girl 
 who, walking through his garden, told him that she feared a certain pea 
 
 * The Modern Orlando, by the Rev. George Croly (1848, 8vo), p. 164. 
 t The Modern Dunciad, 1814, p. 71. % Ibid., 1835, p. 47. 
 
 Life and Reminiscences, vol. iii. pp. 159, 160. 
 
REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 427 
 
 would never come to perfection, he gallantly said, as he conducted her to 
 the plant, " Permit me, then, to lead perfection to the pea." But to 
 another, who asked for a motto for her dog, " Spot," he was not so polite ; 
 " Out, damned Spot," was his reply to her request ; while he struck 
 horror to the soul of a matter-of-fact old lady, by his sudden proposition, 
 in the heat of the summer, " Let's take off our flesh, and sit in our 
 bones ! " How admirably he describes, at too great length, alas ! to 
 allow repetition, an obese lady, a sort of female Daniel Lambert, 
 whom a friend was about to marry.* 
 
 But men of his own cloth, especially the superior clergy, were 
 the chosen mark of his harmless pleasantries. "A Bishop," said he, 
 " should be a grave, elderly man, full of Greek, with sound views of the 
 middle voice, and the preter-pluperfect tense." Archbishops, he thought, 
 should be tall, " they ought not to take them under six feet, without 
 their shoes and wigs." He heard that Lord Liverpool meant to elevate 
 Kaye, the Bishop of London, if the see of Canterbury had become vacant 
 in his time : " The Church could not last twenty years with such a little 
 man," quoth he ; for, as he once remarked, he had " but one illusion left, 
 and that was the Archbishop of Canterbury." To a young lady who sat 
 next him at table he whispered," You are afraid of me, you are crumb- 
 ling your bread. I do it when I sit by the Bishop of London, and with 
 both hands when I sit by the Archbishop." The "upper parsons," he 
 would complain, " live vindictively, and evince their aversion to a Whig 
 
 ministry by an improved health. The Bishop of has had the rancour 
 
 to recover after three paralytic strokes, and the Dean of to be vigor- 
 ous at eighty-two ; and yet these are men who are called Christians ! M 
 He it was who suggested the combustion of a Bishop, " even if it was 
 only Sodor and Man," to prevent the locking up on railways ; while of 
 some unfortunate Dean he said, that he " deserved to be preached to 
 death by wild curates." 
 
 In his letters there is much that is witty and amusing ; especially his 
 occasional habit of throwing his ideas into Latin. Thus, dilating on the 
 alarming state of the country, he expresses to one of his correspondents 
 the opinion, that, " we are all going 
 
 -ad veteris Nicholai tristia regna, 
 
 Pitt ubi combustum DuNDAsque videbimus omnes." 
 
 There is plenty of nonsense, it must be admitted, in these genial 
 letters ; but then it is the perfection of nonsense, and it must be remem- 
 bered that they were written ad Familiares^ and not under the impulse 
 of that feeling which led another witty man to exclaim, " Stop ! let's talk 
 seriously ; here's a fool coming ! " 
 
 All this may seem very terrible to matter-of-fact people, and betray a 
 sad amount of levity and irreverence. To me, it seems but the " buoy- 
 ancy of a great heart," the exuberance of a rich and noble nature. As 
 we read in his " Memoirs," " He was sometimes mad with spirits, and 
 must talk, laugh, or burst." It was well said to him by an old college 
 friend, " Your sense, wit and clumsiness, Sydney, always give me the 
 idea of an Athenian carter." 
 
 We have, all of us, probably heard of the " Tractarians," however 
 
 * Eminent Men and Popular Books from the " Times" (1859, 8vo), p. 103. 
 
4 28 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 vague may be our knowledge of their peculiarities ; but it may be news 
 to many that the sect once bore another, and equally appropriate, appel- 
 lation. Newman (the present Cardinal, of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, 
 Birmingham) and Pusey-- (late Regius Professor of Hebrew in Oxford), 
 being at the head of the Oxford Tract-Schism, Sydney Smith bestowed 
 upon it the title " Newmania." The public, however, thinking Dr. Pusey 
 <he most ostensible personage, called it " Puseyism " ; while the schisma- 
 tics themselves, from the Ninety Tracts, have been sometimes styled 
 " Nonagenarians," thus : 
 
 ' Newmania / name from Reverend Sydney heard 
 To him be thanks for giving us the word 
 The pun to Europe's lost, but not the schism ; 
 To all but Britain 'tis plain Puseyism ; 
 Nonagenarians ye ! whose words and acts 
 Are mystified by ninety Oxford Tracts." * 
 
 It seems an odd matter that folks who pique themselves on doing 
 -everything else 'well, take no shame to themselves for writing badly. 
 Sydney Smith wrote an execrable hand, and, indeed, declined to decipher 
 his own manuscript when it was twenty-four hours old. He described it 
 himself " as if a swarm of ants, escaping from an ink-bottle, had walked 
 over a sheet of paper without wiping their legs." One would think that 
 -chirography was a matter of no importance, an art in which it was either 
 not worth while, or beyond one's power, to obtain skill. I hold a different 
 opinion ; regard caligraphy as a branch of the fine arts ; and love to gloat 
 over the flourished copy-books of Bland, Cocker, Snell, Gething, Vaux, 
 and the host of fine writers who contributed to the grand Universal Pen- 
 man of Master Bickham. This, however, is now one of the lost arts. 
 
 But while garnering a few of the stray witticisms of this genial and 
 large-hearted humorist, we must not forget the more serious and 
 important achievements of his public life. I adopt the record of a 
 contemporary biographer : 
 
 " When his ' quips and cranks ' are lost and forgotten, it will be remem- 
 bered that he supported the Roman Catholic claims, and that they were 
 conceded ; that he strenuously assailed the game-laws, and that they 
 underwent great modification ; that he compelled a large portion of the 
 public to acknowledge the mischief of our penal settlements ; that he 
 became the advocate of the wretched chimney-sweepers, and their miseries 
 were alleviated ; that he contended against many of the unjust provisions 
 of the Church Reform Bill, and they were amended ; that whereas, before 
 his time, a man accused at the bar of a criminal court might be hanged 
 before he had been half heard, now every prisoner has the benefit of a 
 defence by counsel. It will further be freely acknowledged, that no public 
 writer was more successful than he in denouncing a political humbug, or 
 demolishing a literary pretender ; that he was, on the whole, an upright, 
 and benevelent man ; and, as the world goes, a disinterested politician ; 
 that he had opportunities of improving his fortune, which he nobly re- 
 jected ; and that having lived with unostentatious respectability, he died 
 without accumulating wealth. His generous presentation of the Rectory 
 of Edmonton, after declining it for himself, to the Rev. Mr. Taite, when it 
 
 * The Newmania, or Puseyism, 2nd cd. (London, C. A. Bartlett, Paternoster 
 Row, etc., 1847, 8vo, pp. 36). 
 
REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 
 
 420, 
 
 fell to his gift by the death of that gentleman's father, will be fresh in 
 the reader's recollection." * 
 
 It was then, bt K may not be so now ; we must refer the reader to 
 Lady Holland's memoirs of her father, or to the charming Memories 
 (p. 406) of Mr. S. C. Hall, who tells the story, and rightly adds that it is- 
 "one of the best monuments ever placed by child over a father's grave." 
 The reverend joker was practical in his charity. He was not only bene- 
 volent, but beneficent ; and had contempt for those good-natured folks 
 who like to play the good Samaritan, " without," as he put it, " the oil 
 and the twopence." His advice was, to form a resolution, on rising ia 
 the morning, to make some one person happy during the day. " Look at 
 the result," said he ; "that is 365 in the course of the year. Suppose you 
 live forty years after you commence, that is 14,600 human beings made 
 happy by you." That must have been a fine-natured man who gave 
 utterance to the sentiment, setting aside the carrying it out in practice. 
 
 I am not acquainted with many portraits of Sydney Smith, and fancy, 
 that the one before us is just a little caricatured, but it must be remem- 
 bered that he was a diner-out and a septuagenarian. Mr. " Theodore 
 Taylor " (the late John Camden Hotten ?), in his interesting monograph 
 on Thackeray, says : " He had certainly seen Sydney Smith. A quaint, 
 half-caricature, outline sketch of the latter was contributed by 'Titmarsh' 
 to Eraser's Magazine, at an early period of his connection with that 
 journal." Is it possible that the sketch before us is from the hand of the 
 great humorist? There is certainly something like his manner to be 
 seen, and both it and that of Sir W. Molesworth appear wanting in the 
 delicacy and refinement of their predecessors. Landseer, it is apo- 
 cryphally said, once expressed a wish, at the table of Miss Berry, to take 
 his likeness ; but the proposition was wittily met by the question of King 
 Hazael to Elisha, " Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?" 
 
 The eldest daughter of Sydney Smith became the wife of the eminent 
 physician, Sir Henry Holland, to whom she was married in 1834. She 
 wrote the life of her father, which was accompanied by a selection from 
 his letters, edited by the elegant writer, Mrs. Austin, and published in 
 1855, in two volumes, Svo.f Lady Holland died in Italy, towards the end 
 of the year 1866. 
 
 On March 10th, 1845, three weeks after the death of his brother, 
 died, at his residence in London, in his seventy-sixth year, the almost 
 equally eminent and accomplished Robert Percy Smith, familiarly known 
 as "Bobus" Smith, formerly Advocate General of Bengal, and M.P. for 
 Lincoln. Of him I can only here record that he indeed must have been 
 a remarkable man, whose language, according to Canning, was " the 
 essence of English "whose " wonderful powers of argument and exquisite 
 French/' were the delight of Madame de Stael ; of whom an eminent 
 author wrote to Sir Henry Holland, "I.never knew a man with so 
 gigantic a grasp"; of whose influence in India it is recorded by Sir 
 James Mackintosh, that "his name among the natives is greater than 
 that of any pundit since the days of Menu " ; and, finally, of whose death, 
 
 * Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxiii. p. 439. 
 
 t Reviewed in the Times of August 10th and 14th, 1855 ; and the Gentleman' s 
 Magazine, vol. xliv. p. 255. 
 
430 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 his niece, Lady Holland, wrote, " of the genius, learning, and virtue, that 
 were lost to the world in that grave, I dare not attempt to speak. . . . 
 To me my uncle's death was as the death of a second father, the extinc- 
 tion of all I have ever known, or conceived, that was brightest and best in 
 the world ! " The following touching and characteristic hexameters were 
 found in his desk after his death ; they were supposed to be of recent 
 composition, and may not inappropriately close a record of these two 
 brothers who, by their virtues and talents shed such lustre on the gens 
 Smithica, the great clan Smith, and exerted in their day an influence 
 so great and for so long a period : 
 
 " Hie jacet ! O humanorum meta ultima rerum ! 
 Ultra quam labor, et luctus, curaeque quiescunt, 
 Ultra quam penduntur opes et gloria flocci ; 
 Et redit ad nihilum vana haec et turbida vita : 
 Ut te respicerent homines ! Quas bella per orbem, 
 Qui motus animorum, et quanta pericula nostra 
 Acciperent facilem, sine caede et sanguine, finem ! 
 Tu mihi versare ante oculos, non tristis imago, 
 Sed rnonitrix, ut me ipse regam, domus hasc mihi cum sit 
 Vestibulum tumuli, et senii penultima sedes." 
 
 LXXXI. HENRY HALLAM. 
 
 The portrait of Henry Hallam, with which I have now the gratification 
 of enriching our " Gallery," does not form one of the published series ; as, 
 however, it was found with the others, it is concluded that it properly 
 belongs to them, and it is, therefore, restored to the place, of which, from 
 some cause unexplained, it has been so long deprived. 
 
 Passed chiefly in the retirement of domestic life, and in the preparation 
 of works which required rather the study of books than of cities and men, 
 the long life of Henry Hallam was singularly obscure and uneventful. He 
 was born at Windsor in 1777 ; his father was Dean of Bristol ; and among 
 his ancestors was that Bishop of Salisbury who, in the year 1414, repre- 
 sented the English clergy in the Council of Constance. He was educated 
 at Eton, where he attained eminence among his fellow students, and gained 
 for the early productions of his muse a place in the Mtisce Etonenses. 
 From Eton he proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated 
 in 1799 ; and on leaving the University, took up his residence in London. 
 Here he took an active part with Wilberforce, in the great movement for 
 the abolition of the Slave Trade, and was one of the earliest contributors 
 to the Edi?iburgh Review, where, inter alia, may be mentioned an article 
 from his pen, on Sir Walter Scott's edition of Dryden, remarkable for its 
 candid tone and critical ability.* It was thus, as a regular contributor 
 to the Blue and Yellow, and as an ally of the great Whig families, that 
 he came, later, to be associated by Byron with those truculent condottieri 
 of the pen who stand pilloried for ever in English Bards and Scotch 
 Reviewers. We all know the distich : 
 
 "Smug Sydney, too, thy bitter page shall seek, 
 And classic Hallam, much renown'd for Greek ; " 
 
 * Edinburgh Review, October, 1808. 
 

 UNPUBLISHED AND NOT IDENTIF1 ED) 
 
HENRY HALL AM. 431 
 
 which the Annual Register* takes as a genuine compliment, extorted 
 from the angry bard by the critic's admitted acquaintance with the 
 niceties of classical literature. That the epithet was ironical will, how- 
 ever, be learnt from a note to Byron's satire, to the effect that Hallam, 
 reviewing the Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste, of Richard 
 Payne Knight, was "exceedingly severe on some Greek verses therein ;" 
 and that " not discovering till too late that the lines were Pindar's, the 
 critique stands an everlasting monument of Hallam's ingenuity." So also 
 the author of a powerful satire, lashing the would-be Longinuses and 
 Scaligers of modern times : 
 
 " But while they may, in short-lived monthly page, 
 They fret and fume their hour upon the stage ; 
 Through thick and thin they slash and criticize, 
 E'en from the Theban bard they tear the prize ; 
 More nice than wise, their blind resentment wreak 
 On Fox's English, or on Pindar s Greek, 
 Their insect-eye each trifling blemish sees, 
 But grasps not Demosthenic Deinotes/'f 
 
 Here it may not be uninteresting to recall and investigate the precise 
 facts, especially as every reference to them, as, for instance, the note 
 to Byron, manifests some error and ambiguity. R. P. Knight, who was 
 a good Greek scholar, had, in the work I have alluded to, animadverted 
 upon the " flippant confidence " of certain monthly critics, which led them 
 "to pronounce the most peremptory decisions upon the most abstruse 
 points of learning, without understanding even its first elements." % He 
 evidently had in view the writers of the British Critic (a review better 
 known since as " My Grandmother's," from Byron's contemptuous designa- 
 tion), who had proclaimed themselves to be " among the first critics and 
 scholars of the age." These gentlemen had passed judgment with much 
 solemnity on the various Greek translations of Gray's Elegy; and 
 concluded by offering a version of The Bard, as a specimen of " what 
 the splendid imagery and genuine grandeur of diction exhibited in this 
 immortal poem might be in the language best adapted to do them justice." 
 This was examined with nice severity by Mr. Knight, who, citing the 
 lines representing the fine passage beginning, " On a rock whose haughty 
 brow," attempted himself to express in Greek monostrophics the sublime 
 image which his predecessors had " so bunglingly mangled and debased." 
 Mr. Knight's book received in the Edi7iburgh Review a notice in which, 
 on the whole, justice was done to the extensive learning and philosophical 
 spirit which it exhibited ; but, when the reviewer found his craft assailed, 
 he felt bound to take sides against the author. He admitted it was 
 presumptuous for Scotchmen to contend about Greek at all, and hints, 
 too, at the possibility of a critic-trap. But he was caught nevertheless. 
 Taking up Mr. Knight's version line by line, he remarks on the phrase, 
 " 6 fieKayx^aivos avrip," that it can mean nothing else than a parson. Mr. 
 Knight, in a note to the fourth essay (1808), is jocular upon this, and 
 says that, if this is so, the neteyx^cuvoi Upirjitoi at Bion's funeral must be 
 
 * Annual Register, 1859, p. 428. 
 
 \ Hypocrisy : a Satire in Three Books, by the Rev. C. Colton, A.M., Cantab. 
 ^Tiverton, 1812, 8vo, p. 22). 
 
 t Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste (1805, 8vo, p. 249). 
 No. xiv. vol. vii. 
 
43 2 THE MACLISE FORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 the vicar and curate, or, perhaps, the dean and chapter officiating on 
 the occasion, as a reverend gentleman appears officiating in the funeral 
 scene of Hogarth's " Harlot's Progress." That such critics, he indignantly 
 adds, " should know anything of the distinct use of the article in Homeric, 
 Pindaric, and Attic composition, it would be absurd to expect." 
 
 By-and-by, the reviewer comes to the twelfth line of Mr. Knight's 
 version, and pronounces it, briefly, " nonsense." Now this line, 
 " epfxa 5e reyyoou daKpva ffTovaxais" 
 
 is, as the classical reader need not be reminded, a verbatim interpolation 
 from the tenth Nemean of Pindar (v. 141) ; and, as Mr. Knight added, 
 in a subsequent edition of his book, had been "until a Synod of North 
 British critics peremptorily pronounced it to be nonsense," "universally 
 thought to express with peculiar force and delicacy the mixture of indig- 
 nation and tenderness so appropriate to the grief of the hero of the 
 modern as well as of the ancient ode." So it may have done with its 
 own Pindaric context, "opBiov (pwmcre, which I think it would have been 
 better to have supplied ; but when dislocated from this, and interpolated into 
 another sentence, it is just possible that, with all the skill of Mr. Knight, its 
 significance may have been impaired. But the plain truth is, it is non- 
 sense, either as it stands in Pindar or Payne Knight, unless we give to 
 reVycoj/ the signification of " shedding," or " pouring forth," for which I do 
 not know that there is any authority in Greek literature. However, as the 
 critic does not descend to particulars, we do not know what it is that he 
 finds fault with. The line might have been written, reyyccu ras arovaxas 
 (avu) daicpvois; but without mending the matter much. Damra, in his 
 Lexicon Pindarictwi, suggest " miscens lucrymas suspiriis : quod poetice 
 dictum " ; with which slight straining of the word from its general purport 
 of " moistening," or " wetting," we must be content, as there is no ground 
 to suspect a corruption of the text. 
 
 The next question to be considered is, who was the Reviewer who 
 actually committed the alleged " blunder " ? The late Professor de 
 Morgan, in a very curious and interesting miscellany,* the publication of 
 which by his widow was posthumous, though the greater part of the 
 volume had already appeared in the Athenceum, says that "Byron's 
 mistake about Hallam, in the Pindar story, may be worth placing among 
 absurdities;' 5 but offers no hint towards an elucidation of the matter. 
 Hallam, himself, was wroth at the imputation, and remonstrated with 
 the satirist. Byron, notwithstanding, in subsequent editions of his poem., 
 left the lines as they were ; but made an addition to his note to the effect 
 that, if Mr. Hallam would tell him who did review Payne Knight's book, 
 the real name should find a place in the text, provided nevertheless the 
 said name were of two oxthodox musical syllables, and would come into 
 the verse ; but that, till then, " Hallam " must stand for the want of a 
 better. Now, the desiderated information was not far to seek, and I 
 wonder that the noble bard was never supplied with it. I wonder, too, 
 that De Morgan, who was on the threshold of the truth, did not discover 
 it. He remarks that Byron carelessly represented Hallam as criticizing 
 the Greek of all the lines of Payne Knight, and not discovering that the 
 "lines," (it is only o?ie that is in question) were Pindar's till after pub- 
 lication. Giving credit to Byron for too much scholarship to have made 
 
 * A Budget of Paradoxes, by Augustus de Morgan (London, 1872, 8vo, p. 434). 
 
HENRY HALL AM. 433 
 
 such a blunder, he infers that he either accepted the statement from 
 report, or else took satirical license. The former was the fact, as I can 
 conclusively show. When Crabb Robinson was at Corunna, he was 
 invited to dine at the house of a certain lion-feeder of his acquaintance,. 
 a Madame Moschera. Here he met Lord and Lady Holland, an honour 
 which appears to have nearly overwhelmed him. In the train of these 
 mighty ones came the " domestic physician " of the noble household, a 
 certain " Mr. Allen," who was popularly spoken of as " Lady Holland's 
 Atheist" ; but "better known," adds the Diarist, as "an elegant scholar, 
 and Edinburgh Reviewer, who, in that character, fell into a scrape, by 
 abusing some Greek that was by Pindar."* Here, then, is an easy ex- 
 planation of the whole matter. Either Byron, or some one through whose 
 ears the story had passed, had been misled by the similarity of sound 
 between " Allen " and " Hallam." Down went the latter name as the 
 most familiar, and down it will remain, with its unjust aspersion on the 
 critical sagacity of the historian, as long as English Bards and Scotch 
 Reviewers remains extant ! But enough about a trifle, the historical 
 character of which may serve as my apology for thus having seemed to 
 wander in immensum. 
 
 It was in the year 181 8 that Hallam gave to the world the fruits of his 
 severer labours in his View of the State of Europe during the Middle 
 Ages, an elaborate work which to adequately criticize is a task at once 
 beyond my powers and my space. Maginn, in a satirical book, pur- 
 porting to be written some three centuries and a half hence, in the year 
 of our Lord 2227, alludes to the " illustrious Hallam " as being the only 
 man of his day who approached Sam Rogers as a wit ; and as being author, 
 as he learns from some of the principal critical works of the age, of a 
 "jocular treatise on the Middle Ages which has not come down to 
 posterity, but which, in his own generation, appears to have excited a 
 universal laugh wherever it was mentioned." f Well, this is funny 
 enough ; but it is with Maginn that I can laugh and not with Hallam ; 
 and I must confess that often as I may have referred to the volumes of 
 the latter, I have never experienced the slightest twitch of my risorius 
 Santorini. But even were it so, better the loudest and most prolonged 
 cachinnation, than the slumber-compelling effect attributed in a smart 
 French epigram, to a learned tractate on the same subject, by a brother 
 historian on the other side the channel : 
 
 *' Michelet, dont ou voit l'image 
 Offre un contraste assez plaisant ; 
 II a reveille* le moyen age, 
 
 Et fait dormir l'age present ! " 
 
 During the ensuing nine years, Hallam was engaged in the prepara- 
 tion of his second great historical work, which saw the light at the 
 conclusion of that period. This was his Constitutional History of 
 E?tglandj of which I will only say here that it was savagely attacked in 
 the Quarterly Review, in an article attributed to Southey, who seized 
 the opportunity of assailing, through the historian, the Whig principles 
 of his old associates. 
 
 Having thus illustrated the national and political history of Europe, 
 Mr. Hallam had begun to exercise his powers in the investigation of the 
 
 * Diary of Crabb Robinson, vol. i. p. 277. 
 
 f Whitehall: or the Days of King George IV. (1827, 8vo, p. 85). 
 
 2 F 
 
434 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 literature of the same period, when his life became darkened by a dire 
 domestic calamity. He had married, earlier in life, a daughter of Sir 
 Abraham Elton, of Clevedon, in Somersetshire, and had had by her two 
 sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Arthur Henry, had, by his 
 rare qualities of mind and disposition, excited the highest hopes of his 
 parents and friends. His precocity of intellect was such that, at the age 
 of seven, he had learnt to read Latin fluently in a year. He had earned 
 distinction at Oxford ; was engaged in the study of the law ; and had 
 already taken honours in literature. In the summer of 1829, he had 
 accompanied his father on a visit to Sir Walter Scott, at Abbotsford ; 
 of which, and an excursion to Melrose Abbey, a pleasing memorial is 
 preserved in his privately printed Remains, and transferred by Lockhart 
 to his Life of Sir Walter. This son, so justly endeared to all, was 
 snatched away by death in 1833, in the very flower of age and intellect. 
 He was buried at Clevedon ; his sorrowing father recording his virtues 
 and talents in a memoir for private circulation, than which affection has 
 made no more graceful and touching offering to unfulfilled promise ; 
 while Tennyson, whose sister was his affianced bride, in the exquisite 
 series of verses, entitled In Memoriam, has embalmed the memory 
 of his friend in tears more precious than those which were shed by 
 Moschus over the tomb of Bion. 
 
 This Clevedon, thus associated with one of the finest poems of the 
 century, has now became a fashionable watering-place on "the broad 
 waters of the west," as the Bristol Channel is styled by the Laureate. 
 It was to a "pretty cot" in the primitive village on the old headland, 
 that S. T. Coleridge brought his young wife on his marriage. This 
 humble, but much-loved home, to which he bade farewell in some tender 
 lines, is now divided into two labourers' cottages. Near to this is 
 Clevedon Court, the seat of Sir Arthur Hallam Elton, of the same family 
 as Charles Abraham Elton, the well-known translator of Hesiod. Thus 
 Clevedon, with the touching group of monuments in its church to the 
 Hallam family, its memories of the happiest days of Coleridge, and 
 its associations with Tennyson, who tells how the letters on his friend 
 Arthur's monument " slowly glimmer in the moonlight " as they shadow 
 forth the touching inscription, is already a haunted spot to the pilgrim 
 of memory. 
 
 The poet tells us : 
 
 " Nature hath assign'd 
 Two sovereign remedies for human grief: 
 Religion surest, firmest, first and best ; 
 And strenuous action next."* 
 
 Neither influence was wanting to Hallam ; and, bowing in resignation, 
 he sought a further balm for sorrow in the resumption of his interrupted 
 labours. The third of his great works, the Introduction to the Literature 
 of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, now far 
 advanced, in due time was completed and given to the world. The his- 
 torian was now declining in years. In the battle of life, if we do not fall 
 early ourselves, we see those we love stricken at our side ; it is a sad 
 but almost inevitable dilemma. It falls to the lot of few of the married 
 to record of themselves : 
 
 * Roderick: the last of the Goths, by Southey, cant. xiv. 
 
HENRY HALLAM. 435 
 
 Unus hymen, mens una ; duos mors una, diesque, 
 Junxit ; ut una caro, sic cinis tmus erit ; " * 
 
 and Hallam was not among the number. He first lost a daughter ; and 
 then, in the death of his wife, experienced that calamity which rendered 
 dark and purposeless the life of JefTrey,t robbed the labours of Southey 
 of their best incentive,! and which James Hannay, speaking of its dire 
 effect on Aytoun, describes as "the most dreadful pain inflicted on 
 mortals by any weapon in the armoury of doom. : ' One son only now 
 remained ; and in him the father's hopes centred, as giving promise of 
 a future no less bright than that of which the death of his elder brother 
 had forbidden the attainment. But here again a terrible blow fell upon 
 the old man. This son likewise, when travelling on the Continent, was 
 suddenly and mysteriously removed by death, in 1850, at the age of 
 twenty-six, just after his call to the bar ; and the grave at Clevedon was 
 once more opened that his remains might be deposited by the side of his 
 brother, his sister, and his mother. One daughter was yet left to the 
 bereaved father. She was married to Colonel Cator ; and in her home, 
 arid attended by her solicitous care, the philosopher passed his last days. 
 In his seventieth year he had published a thick volume of "Supple- 
 mentary Notes " to his great work on the Mediaeval History of Europe, 
 correcting errors of fact, and doing justice to the labours of those who 
 had detected and investigated them. His other works were revised, 
 annotated and completed by him with most curious and conscientious 
 care, so that each edition was an improvement on the one which preceded 
 it. He retained much of the clearness and vigour of his intellect till his 
 death, which took place, in his eighty-third year, on January 21st, 1859, 
 a year especially sad for Clio, who, besides Hallam, had, in it, to mourn 
 the loss of Macaulay, Washington Irving, Prescott, and Mountstuart 
 Elphinstone, who has been termed the Tacitus of Indian historians. 
 There are a few lines to his memory in Clevedon Church ; but his real 
 epitaph from the pen of Dean Milman, or possibly Lord Macaulay, 
 must be read in St. Paul's Cathedral. ; 
 
 To myself, the work I have last mentioned, the Introduction to the 
 Literature of Europe, is the most interesting of Hallam's productions, 
 and the most frequently in my hands for reference. Dealing, however, 
 as it does, with so extended a period, the 15th, 16th, and 17th century, 
 it cannot be expected that the treatment should be other than^ some- 
 what general and superficial in character ; and that in the investigation 
 
 * Epitaph on Sir Richard Maitland and his wife. 
 
 \, " 1 took no interest in anything which had not some reference to her. ... All 
 the exertions I ever made in the world were for her sake entirely. You know how 
 indolent I was by nature, and how regardless of reputation and fortune. But it was a 
 delight to me to lay these things atthe feet of my darling. . . . Now I have no 
 interest in anything, and no object or motive for being in the world." Life of Lo?d 
 Jeffrey, vol. i. p. 165. 
 
 J ' ' Such consummation of my work will now 
 
 Be but a mournful close, the one being gone, 
 Whom to have satisfied was still to me 
 A pure reward, outweighing far all breath 
 Of public praise." 
 
 Southey, Inscriptions, xlv 
 North British Review, vol. xlv. p. 85. 
 
43 6 THE MACLISE FORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 of special departments, our own rich and varied literature for instance, 
 more detailed information must be sought from other sources. Such are 
 the able Sketches of the History of Literature a?id Learning in Englafid 
 (Charles Knight, 1844-5, 6 vols - 121110) of the late Geo. L. Craik, LL.D., 
 Professor of History and English Literature in Queen's College, Belfast, 
 a work, which, appearing in humble form and with small pretensions, 
 never obtained the reputation it deserved. A revised edition appeared in 
 1 861, under the title of A Competitions History of English Literature, 
 and of the English Language, from the Norman Cofiquestj with numerous 
 specimens (London, 2 vols. 8vo) ; and this has been again reprinted in 
 1866. This is a work which affords an adequate and comprehensive 
 survey of its subject, and, f< without pretending to any deep philosoplw, 
 or original criticism, maps out the whole period of English literature with 
 creditable scholarship and patient learning." * This able writer was 
 followed by Professor Morley, who, in 1864, gave us the first instalment 
 of a work of so far higher pretension, as it professed to narrate in more 
 philosophical spirit " the story of the English mind." Before the com- 
 pletion of this work, the writer was anticipated to a great extent, in the 
 performance of his task, by a French writer, who, in dealing with the 
 history of our literature, from its very birth to the present day, has 
 exhibited a freedom from prejudice, a liberality of criticism, and an 
 extent of knowledge, not generally possessed by those of his nation who 
 have dealt with our letters, our history, or our manners. t 
 
 In 1830, I may just mention, Hallam received one of the two 
 fifty-guinea gold medals, instituted by George IV., for eminence in 
 historical composition ; the other being awarded to Washington Irving. 
 
 It is obvious that in dealing in a few lines with such works as those 
 which have made the name of Hallam illustrious, I have been confined 
 to the merest generalities of expression. Nor is there need for more : 
 they are already classics, and find their place in every historical library 
 with any pretensions to completeness. They are written for the earnest 
 student, rather than the more idle reader ; and may not by some be 
 thought rich in those ad capta?idum tricks of style which are employed 
 by writers who court popular favour. But they contain the results of a 
 vast reading, of the most careful industry and research, and are every- 
 where marked by that reference to principles which marks the philo- 
 sophic writer. Their grand characteristic is stern judicial impartiality. 
 Erudition as profound, elegance more captivating, logic not less 
 cogent, acuteness equally sagacious, and discrimination as subtle, may 
 be exhibited by other historians ; but I question if Hallam has 
 ever been surpassed in stern integrity, honest singleness of purpose, and 
 subjugation of personal prejudice. He has left us in his works a 
 storehouse of historical fact, political wisdom and original opinion, ren- 
 dering applicable to himself, in a large degree, the judgment of the 
 learned Lipsius on the historian of Alexander : " Historicus, me judice, 
 probus, legitimusque, si quisquam fuit. Mir a in sermone ejus felicitas, 
 in narrationibtcs lepos. A strict us idem et profluens, subtilis et clarusj 
 ve)-us in judiciiS) argutus in sententiis^in orationibus supra quam dixeri?n 
 facundus." 
 
 * Edinburgh Review, No 248, p 290. 
 
 + Histoire de la Littiratwe Anglaise, par H. Taine (Paris, 1863, 3 torn. 8vo) | 
 Complimentaire, Les Contemporains (Paris, 1864, 1 torn. 8vo). 
 
 

 
 mm 
 
 AUTHOR OF "VANITY FAIR'.' 
 
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, 437 
 
 LXXXJL WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
 
 " And there came up a Lion out of Judah ! " was the exclamation of 
 Charlotte Bronte, after she had long gazed in silence at Lawrence's 
 portrait of the great humoristic novelist. Thackeray, like Francis 
 Mahony, although a prominent member of the staff of " Regina," and 
 having place in the grand cartoon of the " Fraserians," did not attain the 
 honour of separate portraitship in the " Gallery." This honour he now, 
 albeit posthumously, enjoys ; we felt that the series was incomplete with- 
 out his massive and leonine front ; and knowing that the Garrick Club 
 possessed a fine portrait in oils, "drawn and presented by Sir John 
 Gilbert," which had never been engraved, caused special application 
 to be made to the committee for permission to reproduce it. This was 
 kindly accorded ; a photograph was taken ; and from this was produced 
 the admirable lithographic copy, with which I have the satisfaction to 
 enrich our Pinacotheka. 
 
 I think that it was Kohl, the flippant Austrian traveller, who passed 
 some silly comments upon a statue of Lord Nelson at Birmingham, in 
 which the sculptor, Westmacott, had shown the hero forth with armless 
 sleeve to his coat. The idea of the German was that great men should 
 be handed down to posterity, in statuary or painting, rather in the restored 
 and glorified form which they may be supposed to assume after death r 
 than with the mutilations and disfigurements which were the accidents of 
 their mortal passage. Possibly some such idea was in the mind of the 
 artist, for on studying this portrait of Thackeray we find that he has 
 given to the nasal organ of his subject the acquiline contour which 
 characterized it before it received the indentation which those who knew 
 him personally so well remember. " What a misfortune it is," wrote a 
 sprightly authoress, " to have a broken nose, like poor dear Thackeray ! 
 He would have been positively handsome, and is positively ugly in con- 
 sequence of it. John (Kemble), and his friend, Venables, broke the bridge 
 of Thackeray's nose when they were schoolboys playing together. What 
 a mishap to befall a young lad just beginning life." * A similar accident, 
 it may be remembered, had befallen the great Florentine sculptor ; and it 
 is not impossible that his defaced lineaments, as seen in portraits and 
 medals, may have suggested to the mind of Thackeray the incongruous 
 pen-name of " Michael Angelo Titmarsh," which he has more completely 
 identified with himself than any other. 
 
 Of portraits of Thackeray there is no lack. The Garrick Club also 
 possesses one, in pen or pencil, by Maclise, which was probably intended 
 at one time to enter into our series. I have before me a not altogether 
 pleasing, but probably faithful, copy from a photograph by Herbert 
 Watkins ; and a very admirable woodcut by Butterworth and Heath, in 
 which Thackeray is represented in his arm-chair, seated in his library. 
 He is conspicuous in our grand Fraserian cartoon, glass in eye, the fourth 
 on the right hand of Maginn ; and John Leech f has depicted him, in 
 
 * Records of a Girlhood, by Frances Anne Kemble (London, 1879), vol. iii. p. 162. 
 f Pictures of Life and Character, by John Leech, 3rd Series, No. 66. 
 
438 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 " Mr. Punch's Fancy Ball," where, in the orchestra, among the men who 
 at that time composed the Punch staff, "mooning over all is Thackeray,* 
 big, vague, childlike, playing on the piccolo." * 
 
 William Makepeace Thackeray was born at Calcutta in 1811 ;f hin 
 father being a member of the Bengal Civil Service, his uncle a physician 
 at Chester, and his great-grandfather, Dr. Thomas Thackeray, the pre- 
 decessor of Sumner as head-master of Harrow School, where he had the 
 honour of educating Sir William Jones, and Samuel Parr, who wrote of his 
 early preceptor, " I have reason to love and revere him as a father as well 
 as a master." In 1817, the young Anglo-Indian was sent to England to be 
 educated, and on his voyage home saw Napoleon in his island prison, who 
 was pointed out to him by his black servant as eating " three sheep every- 
 day, and all the children he could lay his hands on ! " When about twelve 
 years of age, he was sent to the Charterhouse School, then under the 
 head-mastership of Dr. Russell, whose death occurred in the same year 
 as that of his celebrated pupil. At this institution he made satistactory 
 progress ; and proceeded in due course (about 1828) to Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, where he had for fellow-students the late J. M. Kemble, the 
 distinguished Anglo-Saxon scholar, and Alfred Tennyson, the laureate- 
 poet. Here he made his earliest literary effort by the publication of The 
 Snob: a Literary and Scientific Journal, the first number of which 
 appeared on April 6th, 1829, and which enjoyed an existence of eleven 
 weeks. At the University he kept seven or eight terms, but left without 
 taking a degree. In 1831, he betook himself to Weimar, where he visited 
 Goethe, saw Schroder Devrient in " Fidelio," drew caricatures in the 
 Frauleins' albums, and had the good fortune to possess himself of the 
 court sword of Schiller, the poet, which hung in his study to the day 
 of his death, as a memorial of the happy Wanderjahre of his youthful 
 life. Years after, he wrote to his friend, G. H. Lewes, a charming letter 
 relating to his Weimar experiences and his visits to Goethe, which is 
 inserted in the life of the great German, and where we read : " With a 
 five and twenty years' experience, and an acquaintance with an immense 
 variety of human kind, I think I have never seen a society more simple, 
 charitable, courteous, gentlemanlike, than that of the dear little Saxon 
 city where the good Schiller and the great Goethe lived and lie buried." 
 
 We next hear of Thackeray at Rome ; and by-and-by find him in 
 Paris, where he busied himself day after day in copying pictures at the 
 Louvre, in pursuance of the determination which he had now formed to 
 devote himself to art as a profession. In literature, as we have seen, he 
 had already made essay ; and he continued to cultivate his talent for 
 writing by occasional contributions, chiefly on art-criticism, to the English 
 periodicals. Whether his taste for literature gained the ascendancy over 
 that for art, or whether he acquired the conviction that he hardly possessed 
 the talent calculated to insure high distinction as a painter, cannot now 
 be ascertained with certainty. In 1834, when he was hardly three-and- 
 twenty, he seems to have begun in earnest a more exclusively literary 
 career, and became a contributor to Eraser's Magazine, where, under the 
 pseudonyms of " Michael Angelo Titmarsh," " George Fitzboodle," 
 
 * North British Review, vol. xlii., March, 1865, p. 239. 
 
 t Thackeray was probably thinking of his Indian birth when he wrote of Swift : 
 ' ' It seems to me that he is no more an Irishman than a man born of English parents 
 at Calcutta is a Hindoo." 
 
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 439 
 
 " Charles Yellowpl^^" " Lancelot WagstafTe," and " Ikey Solomons," he 
 subsequently raised himself to a prominent place among that brilliant staff 
 which rendered "Regina" famous wherever English Literature was 
 known. This magazine, I quote the words of Mr. "Theodore Taylor," 
 * was at that time under the editorship of the celebrated Maginn, one of the 
 last of those compounds of genius and profound scholarship with reckless 
 extravagance and loose morals, who once flourished under the encourage- 
 ment of a tolerant public opinion. There can be no doubt that the editor 
 and Greek scholar who is always in difficulties, who figures in several of 
 his works, is a faithful picture of this remarkable man as he appeared to 
 his young contributor." All this we know ; but it is pleasing to add the 
 record, on the authority of the late Mr. Hannay, that later on, when 
 Maginn was down and beaten, when, like Burns before him, 
 
 " Thoughtless follies laid him low, 
 And stain'd his name ; " 
 
 and the most brilliant, versatile and universal scholar of the day was a 
 prisoner in the Fleet Thackeray lent, or rather gave, the broken man, 
 for this was one of the cases where lending is giving, ,500 ; one instance, 
 out of many which might be cited, of the constancy of his friendship and 
 the generosity of his nature.* 
 
 But I have anticipated. It was just at the time that art and literature 
 seemed struggling in rivalry for the more exclusive devotion of the 
 worshipper whose offerings might have glorified either, that an unpre- 
 tending work announced the advent of a mighty master in the domain of 
 humoristic fiction. The immortal Sketches by B02 had appeared ; and 
 now Dickens the writer, and Seymour the caricature-artist, were collabo- 
 rating in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, to further exhibit, 
 by pen and pencil, the sayings and doings of Cockneydom. Two or three 
 numbers only of this had appeared, when the unfortunate artist committed 
 suicide in a moment of derangement, f Another graphic hand was 
 wanted ; and Thackeray, who had illustrated his own " Yellowplush Cor- 
 respondence," in Fraser, in a peculiar and characteristic style, probably 
 suggested by the outline portraits of Maclise, and to which he afterwards 
 adhered, bethought himself that he might fill the vacant place. He 
 accordingly took his way, with two or three sketches in his hand, to the 
 chambers of the great novelist in Furnival's Inn, to offer his services as 
 the new illustrator. His drawings, " strange to say," as he himself records, 
 "were not found suitable." In this judgment he later acquiesced, and 
 was wont to allude good-humouredly to his rejection, as " Mr. Pickwick's 
 lucky escape " ; still, in the immediate sense of mortification, it is possible 
 that he may have uttered the exclamation which has been attributed to 
 him : " Well, if you will not let me draw, I will write." 
 
 Write, he accordingly did. But here, unlike Dickens, who became 
 soon his intimate friend, he had a long period of probation to undergo. 
 The growth of his reputation was, indeed, singularly slow and gradual : 
 and, writing for Fraser, for the Comic Almanac of his friend George 
 
 * A newspaper paragraph, which I transcribe here for want of a more appropriate 
 place, affords an equally pleasing record of another act of liberality on the part of one 
 of Maginn's old literary associates : " The widow of Maginn died lately. She had 
 comfortable quarters at Bath, procured for her by the untiring activity of her husband's 
 friend, John Gibson Lockhart." Illustrated News, June nth, 1859. 
 
 f This sad event took place April 20th, 1836. 
 
440 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Cruikshank, for Punch, * for \h&' Westminster,] for the Times, publishing 
 his Paris Sketch-Bock (1840), his Second Fmieral of Napoleon, and The 
 Chronicles of a Dr^m (published together in 1841), and his Irish Sketch- 
 Book (1843), it r ' /as not till Vanity Fair had fairly taken the world by 
 storm (1847), and the Edinburgh Review had given him a generous and 
 appreciative article (January, 1848), that it came at length to be recognized 
 that we had " a new master of fiction among us, destined to make a name 
 second to none in English literature in its own field." ' 
 
 " He kept his show-box, with no mirrors, where 
 You saw Eternity, whose worlds we pass 
 Darkly by daylight, but with many a glass 
 
 Reflecting all the humours of the Fair, 
 
 The thousand shapes of vanity and sin ; 
 Toy-stalls of Satan ; the mad masquerade ; 
 
 The floating pleasures that before them played ; 
 The foolish faces following all a-grin, 
 
 He slily prick'd the bubbles that we blew." % 
 
 Thackeray was now in the full swing of literary activity. In 1844, he 
 had received from a friend a free pass for a voyage in one of the steamers 
 of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, the result of which we have in 
 his Notes of a Journey froin Cornhill to Grand Cairo, published at Christ- 
 mas, 1845. He was still contributing to Eraser, as of old, and in 1846 
 several important articles appeared from his pen. Among these may be 
 mentioned his review of Bulwer's Memoirs ofLaman Blanchard, his paper 
 on " Illustrated Christmas Books," and his proposal to Alexandre Dumas 
 to write a continuation of Iva?ihoe. In January, 1847, appeared his 
 " Grumble about Christmas Books," which, so far as I know, is his last 
 contribution to the Magazine. These illustrated " Christmas Books * were 
 now in great demand, and Thackeray, like Dickens, felt bound to produce 
 his annual novelet. In December, 1847, appeared Mrs. Perkins's Ball; 
 in the following year, Our Street j in 1849, Dr. Birch and his Young- 
 Friends, and Rebecca and Rowena; and in 1850, The Kickleburys on the 
 Rhine. 
 
 Meantime, Thackeray had commenced by monthly numbers the pub- 
 lication of another of his more important works of social fiction. This 
 was the History of Pendennis : his Fortunes a?id Misfortunes, his Frie?ids 
 and his greatest Enemy. With Illustrations by the Atdhor, which was 
 ultimately completed in two volumes. It was a criticism on this work in 
 the Morning Chronicle and the Examiner that gave rise to his letter ol 
 January 8th, 1850, addressed to the editor of the former journal, in which 
 the dignity of literature and the charges against himself of "fostering 
 baneful prejudices " with regard to it, are handled in so manly and able a 
 manner. Shortly after this -little passage of arms, the publication of the 
 Kickleburys as a Christmas Book, had given occasion to a hostile criticism 
 in the Times, which possibly may be attributed to the facile pen of the 
 
 * Punch was started in 1841. Initappeared "Jeames's Diary." the "Snob Papers," 
 the " Fat Contributor," etc. 
 
 f It was in 1840 that, under the signature of the Greek letter 0, Thackeray contri- 
 buted to this review the illustrated and appreciative article on the genius of George 
 Cruikshank. This, which we are told was a labour to which the writer frequently 
 referred as having given him a peculiar pleasure, was republished in a separate form i 
 1840, by Hooper, of Pall Mall. The monograph is now very scarce. 
 
 X Anonymous, in Good Words. 
 
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 44s 
 
 late Samuel Phillips.* Thackeray replied to this in the preface to the 
 second edition of his little book, under the heading of "An Essay on- 
 Thunder and Small Beer," in which the mimic artillery of the critic and 
 the pomposity of his " high falutin' " style, were handed with equal humour 
 and severity. This skirmish between Thackeray and "Jupiter and 
 Jeames" of Printing House Square, is not unworthy of mention, as to it 
 may probably be ascribed the curtness of the Times obituary, and the 
 circumstance that the leading journal, alone among the daily papers, had 
 no article on the genius of this remarkable man, and the loss which 
 literature sustained by his comparatively early death. 
 
 It was in 1851 that Thackeray, quitting awhile the easel and the desk, 
 and ascending the platform, commenced the course, as a lecturer, which 
 was to prove more advantageous to his fortune than pencil, or even pen, 
 had been. This was by the delivery, at Willis's Rooms, of the six lectures 
 on the English Humorists, which, as subsequently published, rank among, 
 the most interesting and instructive of his writings. The subjects were : 
 1. Swift ; 2. Congreve and Addison ; 3. Steele ; 4. Prior, Gay and Pope ; 
 5. Hogarth, Smollett and Fielding ; 6. Sterne and Goldsmith. These 
 lectures were a great success, and attracted the wit, learning and fashion 
 of the metropolis. Among the audience was the authoress of Jane Eyre, 
 who speaks of the " furore" which they occasioned : "They are a sort of 
 essays," says she, "characterized by his own peculiar originality and 
 power, and delivered with a finished taste and ease, which is felt, but 
 cannot be described." They were afterwards delivered in other parts of 
 England ; in Edinburgh ; and finally in America, where the English author 
 received a hearty welcome, promising his audience in gratitude not to 
 write a book about them on his return. More than this, he kept his word. 
 
 In 1852, just before his departure for America, he gave to the press 
 a work of fiction, by many considered the ablest of his writings, and 
 probably suggested to his mind by a course of reading undertaken as a 
 preparation for his lectures. This was The Adventures of Henry Esmond, 
 a book of which the plot is laid in the Augustan days of Queen Anne, the 
 style of writing and cast of thought of which are sought to be reproduced. 
 I must confess my own inability to thoroughly appreciate Esmond. I 
 regard the attempt to write systematically in the idiom and spirit of a. 
 bygone day as a mistake, and the result an anachronism, attended with 
 more or less of unsuccess. Est locus unicuique suus. 
 
 In 1855 appeared The Newcomes, a work in which the author en- 
 deavoured to show that, besides the tendency to cynicism which, it was 
 alleged, was too generally apparent in his writings, he possessed a keen 
 
 * Samuel Phillips was a man of very considerable talent, who, after receiving his edu- 
 cation at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, travelled over the greater part of Europe 
 as private tutor in a certain noble family, and finally settled in London, with the view of 
 adopting literature as a profession. He became connected with the Times, to the columns 
 of which he contributed those admirable pieces of biography and criticism, which were 
 subsequently collected and published by Murray (1851), in two vols. 8vo, under the title 
 of Essays front the " Times"; being a Selection from the Literary Papers which have 
 appeared in that Journal. He is also known as the author of Caleb Stukeley, and other 
 novels ; and a volume of tales, originally published in Blackwood 's Magazine; and sub- 
 sequently (1854) collected by Routledge, under the title of We're All Low People Tkere^ 
 Mr. Phillips had long been the subject of consumption ; and, in 1854, his death took 
 place from the haemorrhage occasioned by the bursting of a blood-vessel. It was in 
 this last year of his life that he produced his excellent Guide to the Crystal Palace and. 
 Park, which was, in subsequent editions, newly arranged and revised by Mr. Shenton, 
 
442 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 appreciation of moral beauty, and an unsuspected quality of tenderness 
 and .pathos. In the following year, he made a second voyage to the 
 United States, where he delivered those charming and discursive lectures 
 on the " Four Georges," which are better known to English readers by 
 their appearance in the Comhill Magazine* and their subsequent publi- 
 cation in a separate form. These discourses, eminently successful in 
 America, were as successfully repeated in England, and even more so in 
 Scotland. From Edinburgh, in November, 1856, he wrote: "I have 
 had three per cent, of the whole population here ; if I could but get three 
 per cent, out of London ! " 
 
 Fired with the ambition of making a figure in Parliament; Thackeray, 
 in 1857, was induced to offer himself as a candidate for the representation 
 of the city of Oxford, in the ultra-Liberal interest. He was unsuccessful 
 in his candidature ; and in the same year solicited the suffrages of a wider 
 and more favourable constituency by the publication of The Virginians, 
 the last of his longer works of fiction. 
 
 We now arrive at the most important event of the later years, at least, 
 of Thackeray's literary life. This was the establishment of the Comhill' 
 Magazine, the first number of which bears the date of January, i860. 
 This proved a great success. There was novelty and boldness in the 
 design ; and although the price was a shilling instead of [the traditional 
 half-crown, it was not found that the quality or quantity of the matter had 
 suffered by the depreciation. Here appeared the " Roundabout Papers," 
 the most subjective, and on this account not the least interesting of the 
 author's writings, M Lovel the Widower," and the story of " Philip on his 
 Way through the World," both of which are of somewhat inferior merit. 
 Thackeray soon derived a good income from his editorship, and felt 
 justified in removing from the house, 36, Onslow Square, where he had 
 long resided, to a tumble-down mansion on the west side of Kensington 
 Palace Gardens, which he purchased with the intention of restoring, but 
 finished by taking down, and building a handsome brick mansion, faced 
 with stone, from a design of his own, in its place 
 
 But Thackeray was not destined to a long enjoyment of the house 
 which he had built, the position in literature which he had so well earned, 
 or the affluence which was its legitimate result. It seems appropriate to 
 conclude this narrative with an abruptness like to that which marked the 
 close of the career of which it is the record. The Christmas festival of 
 1863 was near at hand. No paper from the pen of the editor had 
 appeared in the last two numbers of the Comhill, but he was to commence 
 another serial story with the new year, and of this, four numbers, it 
 appears, were already written. He was known to have been ailing for a 
 day or two ; but he made light of his illness, from which he had often 
 suffered before. On December 23rd, he was somewhat worse ; in the 
 evening he was in much suffering ; and on the following day, December 
 24th, 1863, when his valet brought in coffee, at nine in the morning, he 
 discovered that his master, lying in bed in tranquil attitude, with his arms, 
 according to wont, stretched over the coverlet, had already ceased to live. 
 An autopsy was made by his medical attendants, who pronounced effusion 
 on the brain to have been the immediate cause of death, f 
 
 * They were commenced in the number for July, i860. 
 
 f The brain of Thackeray was found to be very large, weighing no less than 58I oz. 
 The average weight is rather less than 50 oz. Cuvier's brain weighed over 64 oz. 
 
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, 445 
 
 The funeral took place on December 30th, when a vast concourse, 
 amounting, it was said, to nearly two thousand in number, assembled at 
 Kensal Green Cemetery, where the body was to be interred, to show 
 respect to the memory of the great writer thus suddenly removed from 
 among us. Among the crowd might be seen Dickens, the brother 
 humorist ; Mark Lemon, the editor of Punch; Millais and Creswick, 
 the Academician painters ; George Cruikshank, the greatest caricaturist 
 of the day ; Leech, the comic artist ; Russell, the Times correspondent 
 in the Crimea ; Robert Bell, the critic ; Anthony Trollope, the novelist ; 
 Bradbury, the publisher ; G. H. Lewes, the biographer of Goethe ; 
 Theodore Martin, the translator of Horace ; Browning, the poet ; Shirley 
 Brooks and Tom Taylor, the dramatists ; Louis Blanc, the historian and 
 lecturer ; Charles Mathews, the actor ; Miss Braddon, one of the most 
 genial and natural, yet withal the best abused, among modern novelists ; 
 together with a host of others from every class of society and representing 
 every variety of life and thought, including, assuredly, not a few whose 
 bond of sympathy was known only to themselves, all assembled to 
 mourn over one " whose mind and heart were a hundred-gated city," and 
 to make evident that they regarded the untimeous quenching of this great 
 intellectual light as no less than a national calamity. 
 
 With the death of Thackeray came a general attempt, through the 
 voice of the press, to estimate the value of the great mind we had lost. 
 Charlotte Bronte, who had preceded her illustrious master to the tomb 
 by nearly ten years, had written of him : " Thackeray is a Titan of 
 mind. . . . He likes to show us human nature at home as he himself 
 daily sees it ; his wonderful observant faculty likes to be in action. . . . 
 Some people have been in the habit of terming him the second writer of 
 the day ; it just depends on himself whether or not these critics should 
 be justified in their award. He need not be the second. God made him 
 second to no man."* John Sterling wrote to his mother : " I got hold 
 of the two first numbers of the ( History of Samuel Titmarsh and the 
 Great Hoggarty Diamond,' f and read them with extreme delight. What 
 is there better in Fielding or Goldsmith? The man is a true genius, and 
 with quiet and comfort might produce masterpieces that would last as 
 long as any we have, and delight millions of unborn readers. There is 
 
 more truth and nature in one of these papers than in all 's novels 
 
 put together." But these were opinions of a bygone day. Among those 
 which the death of Thackeray drew forth, it is especially pleasing to cite 
 the generous testimony of Edmund Yates, as this gentleman was the 
 accredited writer of the inconsiderate sketch of the great humorist in 
 Town Talk of June 12th, 1858, which had led to the unhappy dissensions 
 in the Garrick Club, and the long-existing coolness between Thackeray 
 and Dickens. He now wrote: "Thackeray is dead; and the purest 
 English prose-writer of the nineteenth century, and the novelist with a 
 greater knowledge of the human heart as it really is than any one, with 
 the exception, perhaps, of Shakespeare and Balzac,$ is suddenly struck 
 down in the midst of us." 
 
 * Life of Charlotte Bronfe, by E. C. Gaskell, pp. 316, 386. 
 
 f Commenced in Fraser's Magazine, September, 1841. 
 
 % The reader not arrived at appreciation of Balzac may wonder to find him thus 
 bracketed with Shakespeare. He may be reminded of the Eastern saying, that there are 
 only two creatures who can surmount the Pyramids, the eagle and the snail ! 
 
444 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 u Thackeray," said, at a subsequent period, the Athenceicm, "was the 
 master of one of the finest prose styles in literature. It is the perfection 
 of conversational writing. Graceful, yet vigorous ; adorably artificial, yet 
 incomparably sound ; touched with modishness, yet informed with dis- 
 tinction ; easily and happily rhythmical, yet full of colour, and full of 
 malice and intention ; instinct with urbanity, and instinct with charm ; 
 Thackeray's style is a type of a certain order of high-bred English, a 
 climax in a certain order of literary art. He may have been a little man, 
 but assuredly he was a great writer ; he may have been a faulty novelist, 
 but assuredly he was a fine artist in words. The style he wrote, considered 
 merely as style, is probably less open to criticism than that of any 
 other modern Englishman. He was neither super-eloquent, like Mr. 
 Ruskin, nor a Germanized Jeremy, like Carlyle ; he was not marvellously 
 emphatic, as Landor was, nor was he slovenly and inexpressive, as was 
 Sir Walter Scott ; he neither dallied with antithesis, as did Macaulay, nor 
 rioted in verbal vulgarisms, as Dickens did ; he abstained from technology 
 and sapience as carefully as George Eliot indulged in them ; and he 
 avoided conceits as sedulously as Mr. Meredith goes out of his way to 
 find them. He is in some sort a better writer than any one of these, in 
 that he is always a master of speech and of himself, and that he is always 
 careful, yet natural and choice, yet seemingly spontaneous. It was his 
 to write as a very prince among talkers, and in words to interfuse and 
 interpenetrate the elegant and cultured fashion of the men of Queen Anne 
 with the warmth, the glow, the personal and romantic ambition peculiar 
 to the century of the second Renaissance, the century of Byron and 
 Wordsworth, of Landor and Dickens, of Ruskin and Tennyson and 
 Carlyle." 
 
 How finely another great novelist (Anthony Trollope, ob, December, 
 1882), whose removal from amongst us we are all just now lamenting, 
 speaks of his lost friend : " The fine grey head, the dear face with its 
 gentle smile, the sweet manly voice which we knew so well, with its few 
 words of kindest greeting ; the gait and manner, and personal presence of 
 him whom it so delighted us to encounter in our casual comings and 
 goings about the town, it is of these things, and these things lost for 
 ever that we are thinking. We think of these as treasures which are 
 not only lost, but which can never be replaced. He who knew Thackeray 
 will have a vacancy in his heart's inmost casket, which must remain 
 vacant till he dies. One loved him almost as one loves a woman, 
 tenderly and with thoughtfulness thinking of him when away from him 
 as a source of joy that cannot be analyzed, but is full of comfort." 
 
 Thackeray, the satirist of Snobs, was, according to Miss Martineau, 
 himself a Snob. Well, this was as it should h^furem fur agnoscit, et 
 lupum lupus. Any way, Thackeray exhibited in perfection the three 
 most salient criteria of snobbery : viz. (1) a sensitiveness about the letter 
 " H " ; (2) a habit of using French phrases when English ones would do 
 just as well ; and (3) an inability to get over a page without somehow 
 dragging a man of " title" into it. 
 
 Among the foolish, imitative, catch-pcimd fashions of the day are 
 editions de luxe, a term devised to lay hold of those who think the value 
 of a thing mightily enhanced if it only chance to bear a continental 
 appellation. Thackeray's " Works " have appropriately appeared, he, 
 himself, would have rejoiced in the designation, under this character, 
 
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 445 
 
 at a cost which seems fabulous. The edition consisted of 1000 copies ; 
 the cost of the production of which, amounting to between ,15,000 and 
 ,20,000, would have been increased by at least another ,10,000, if the 
 steel-plates and woodcuts had not been already in existence. The 
 substance known in modern days as " China paper " was used for the 
 illustrations ; and the waste in striking off these was so great that 80,000 
 pieces had to be cancelled as unfit for use. Messrs. McQueen, the eminent 
 copper-plate printers, undertook the management of the plates ; and it is 
 stated by this firm that each part of the work passed through seventeen 
 distinct stages, and that no similar one had ever been printed before. 
 The greatest difficulty was experienced by the printers of the woodcuts 
 interspersed about the text, which are all upon India paper, in so mount- 
 ing them as to prevent the " cockling," or warping of the sheets of letter- 
 press. The publishers adopted the plan of dealing with booksellers only, 
 and refused to receive private subscriptions. The booksellers were left 
 free to fix the price to their customers, and the publishers reserved to 
 themselves the right of raising this at any time. As a matter of fact, the 
 price has already been subjected to this process four times, and is now 
 some fifty per cent, higher than it was originally. 
 
 It was always understood that Thackeray did not wish any biography 
 of himself to be published. It was rumoured, however, in the summer of 
 1882, that a Mr. Richard Heme Shepherd had in preparation, to be 
 published in two handsome volumes uniform with this so-called edition 
 de luxe, the Life, Letters and Uncollected Writings in Prose and Verse of 
 the great author. The announcement of this led to legal proceedings. 
 In November, 1882, in the High Court of Justice (Chancery Division), 
 before Vice-Chancellor Sir. J. Bacon, in the action Smith v. Shepherd, 
 Mr. Hemming, Q.C., moved for an injunction to restrain the defendant 
 from printing, publishing or editing the aforesaid book, or publishing 
 any drawings, sketches, pictures, caricatures, designs, etchings or other 
 works of art. 
 
 It appeared that Thackeray died intestate, December 24th, 1863, and 
 that letters of administration were taken out by his two daughters. They, 
 in the following August, assigned and leased to Smith, Elder and Co., all 
 their father's works, published and unpublished. In 1865, Bradbury and 
 Evans assigned all their interest to the plaintiff, who was then the sole 
 representative of his firm. A solicitor who appeared for the defendant 
 asked his lordship to allow the motion to stand over for a week to enable 
 the defendant to answer the plaintiff's affidavits. The Vice-Chancellor 
 assented, and an interim injunction was granted. 
 
 Copyright difficulties of a similar nature also occurred on the publica- 
 tion, by the late John Camden Hotten, of the amusing and valuable 
 volume, entitled, Thackerayana This consisted of certain biographical 
 and other matter, illustrating and illustrated by some six hundred roughly 
 executed woodcut designs, facsimiled from the original caricature sketches 
 in pen or pencil, with which the great humorist, even from his school- 
 boy days, had been wont to adorn the margins and fly-leaves of the books 
 which he read. The volumes so illustrated had been dispersed at the 
 sale of his library in March, 1864 ; but a sufficient number had been then 
 secured, or had subsequently been brought together, to afford materials 
 for the volume of which I am speaking. The publication, however, of 
 this was looked upon with disfavour by the daughters of the artist who 
 
4.0 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 u regretted that it should be thought to give a fair example of his feeling 
 for art." Some modifications were accordingly made in a "second 
 edition," and certain extracts from Thackeray's published works replaced 
 by anecdotal matter. It was then thought by the daughters "that it 
 might be well to publish some of the later drawings, which more 
 adequately represent his gift, and are more genuinely himself than the 
 slight caricatures and imitations of his early school and college days." 
 Accordingly appeared in 1876 the handsome quarto volume, The Orphan 
 of Pimlico, a Moral Tale of Belgraviaji Life. By Miss M. T. Wiggles- 
 ivorth, many years Governess in the Nobility's Families, and Authoress 0/ 
 " Posies of Poesy/' " Thoughts on the Use of the Globes? and other 
 Sketches, Fragments and Drawings, by William Makepeace Thackeray. 
 With some Notes by Anne Isabella Thackeray (London : Smith, Elder 
 and Co.). Prefixed is a portrait of the novelist, " copied by Mr. Thackeray, 
 from a drawing by D. Maclise about 1840." The illustrations, which 
 were produced in strict facsimile by Maclure and Macdonald, are from 
 originals in pencil, pen and ink, colour and Indian ink wash. The 
 world, which is loth to admit high excellence in more than one direction, 
 has never fitly recognized Thackeray's great gift as a comic draughtsman. 
 Here he will be found advantageously represented ; inferior, it is true, to 
 the unjustly neglected Hablot Browne ("Phiz"), but often equalling, ii 
 not sometimes surpassing, the greatly overrated John Leech. In further 
 illustration of this remarkable talent there is a paper in the Cornhill 
 Magazine, for January, 1865, entitled, "A Memorial of Thackeray's 
 School Days," with some characteristic woodcuts. 
 
 I conclude with the critical remarks of the late Mr. Hannay, which 
 appear to me to be among the justest and best considered of any which 
 have appeared : 
 
 " The position of Mr. Thackeray as a novelist is easily defined. He 
 represented the English novel as the direct representative of Fielding. 
 Other men wrote more popular stories. But he excelled all men in an 
 intellectual representation of intellectual English life, in reflecting the 
 thought, sentiment, taste, of the classes whose character determines the 
 opinion of posterity about each generation. He was even more a 
 philosopher than a painter, and more a thinker than a humorist, although 
 he was an admirable painter and an admirable humorist. His culture 
 supplied an adequate basis to his observation. He probably knew no- 
 English writers better than he knew Horace and Montaigne, and he was 
 always grateful to Charterhouse for the discipline which enabled him, 
 though his life was not properly a studious one, to interpenetrate his 
 thoroughly modern dissertation with the essential spirit of the purest 
 classical subtlety. 
 
 " Those who were honoured with the friendship of this memorable 
 man, who saw him at home, who knew the real truth about his dis- 
 position and private conduct, are alone able to do him justice in these 
 respects. He was one of the kindest men living of his time hospitable, 
 generous, charitable, tolerant, in a degree which would have been a dis- 
 tinction of itself to a man distinguished for nothing else. His principles, 
 too, were conspicuously sound. He honoured above all men those writers 
 who had devoted their lives to the service of virtue ; and, shrinking as hi 
 did from everything like cant, he never lost an opportunity of paying his 
 personal homage to the religious institutions and sentiments of the country." 
 
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 447 
 
 The article from which the preceding extract was taken originally 
 appeared in the Edinburgh Eveni?ig Courant (January 5th, 1864), and 
 has since been reprinted in a separate form, by Oliver and Boyd, of that 
 city, and by Routledge, of London, under the title of Studies on Thackeray, 
 by James Hannay. There is also a well-written monograph, Thackeray, 
 the Humorist and the Ma?i of Letters j the Story of his Life, etc., written 
 by the late able and enterprising John Camden Hotten, under the 
 assumed name of " Theodore Taylor," published originally in January, 
 1864, 8vo, and subsequently reissued in cheaper form. I should also 
 mention a study on Thackeray by the late Anthony Trollope, in the 
 '' English Men of Letters " series. 
 
 Thackeray married, somewhere about 1836, Miss Shaw, an Irish lady 
 of good family, and sister of Captain Shaw, an Indian officer, who was 
 one of the mourners at his funeral. His matrimonial felicity was not,, 
 however, of long duration, as two or three years after marriage, his wife 
 exhibited decided symptoms of mental alienation. By this lady he had 
 two daughters, who both survived him, and by the elder of whom was 
 written the remarkable " Story of Elizabeth," which was published in her 
 father's magazine. 
 
 In wit and wisdom there is a correlation, no less of quality than of 
 phrase ; the bells on the jester's hood can discourse most eloquent music \ 
 the motley coat has a lining, when occasion calls for display, of sober 
 colour and most precious texture. How touchingly and tenderly Punch 
 commemorated the death of this most valued member of his staff : 
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
 
 "(December 24TH, 1863.) 
 
 " He was a cynic : by his life all wrought 
 
 Of generous acts, mild words and gentle ways : 
 His heart wide open to all kindly thought, 
 His hand so quick to give, his tongue to praise. 
 
 " He was a cynic : you might read it writ 
 
 In that broad brow, crowned with its silver hair ; 
 In those blue eyes with childlike candour lit, 
 In the sweet smile his lips were wont to wear. 
 
 " He was a cynic : by the love that clung 
 
 About him from his children, friends and kin : 
 By the sharp pain, light pen and gossip tongue 
 Wrought in him, chafing the soft heart within* 
 
 " He was a cynic : let his books confess 
 
 His Dobbin's silent love ; or yet more rare, 
 His Newcome's chivalry and simpleness ; 
 His Little Sister's life of loving care. 
 
 "And if his acts, affections, works and ways 
 Stamp not upon the man the cynic's sneer 
 From life to death, oh, public, turn your gaze 
 The last scene of a cynical career ! 
 
 ' These uninvited crowds, this hush that lies, 
 Unbroken, till the solemn words of prayer 
 From many hundred reverent voices rise 
 Into the sunny stillness of the air. 
 
4+ 8 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 These tears, in eyes but little used to tears, 
 
 These sobs, from manly lips, hard set and grim, 
 Of friends, to whom his life lay bare for years, 
 Of strangers, who but knew his books, not him. 
 
 " A cynic? Yes if 'tis the cynic's part 
 
 To track the serpent's trail, with saddened eye. 
 To mark how good and ill divide the heart, 
 
 How lives in chequered shade and sunshine lie : 
 
 * How e'en the best unto the worst is knit 
 
 By brotherhood of weakness, sin and care ; 
 How, even in the worst, sparks may be lit 
 To show all is not utter darkness there. 
 
 Through Vanity's bright-flaunting fair he walked, 
 Marking how puppets dance, and jugglers play ; 
 Saw Virtue tripping, honest effort baulked, 
 
 And sharpened wit on roguery's downward way ; 
 
 " And told us what he saw : and if he smiled, 
 
 His smile had more of sadness than of mirth 
 But more of love than either. Undefiled, 
 Gentle, alike by accident of birth, 
 
 " And gift of courtesy, and grace of love, 
 
 When shall his friends find such another friend ? 
 For them, and for his children God above 
 Has comfort : let us bow : God knows the end." 
 
 \APPENDIX G.) 
 
 LXXXIIL DANIEL MACLISE, R.A. 
 
 Ki Can we part from our Gallery," asked Maginn, when, at the com- 
 pletion of the first score of volumes, he adverted to this special feature of 
 his Magazine, "without saying a word or two about him to whose pencil 
 we are indebted for it, our old and much-honoured friend, Croquis ? " I, 
 at the conclusion of my own labours, have asked myself the same question, 
 and the answer being once again negative, rejoice to be able to give com- 
 pletion to our Collection by a portrait of the distinguished artist indicated 
 by this pseudonym, and accompany this by a few biographical " Memoirs." 
 Daniel Maclise, or McClise, as earlier in life he wrote his name, 
 was, like Barry, that great artist whose vigour of mind and originality 
 of conception did so much to awaken taste and classic feeling in art, a 
 native of Cork, where he was born January 25th, 181 1. His father was 
 a respectable tradesman of that city, and his grandfather a Scotch High- 
 lander, of the clan MacDonald, some of whose members, from having 
 taken too active a part in the rebellion of the Old Pretender against the 
 house of Brunswick, had lost their estates by confiscation, and returning 
 to their homes, after the establishment of peace, thought it prudent to 
 assume the name of MacLeish. This grandfather early in life entered a 
 Volunteer regiment, " The Highland Watch ;" served in the Netherlands 
 under William, Duke of Cumberland ; was present at the battles of Fon- 
 tenoy, Bergen-op-Zoom, Maestricht, and Dettingen ; was sent to Ireland ; 
 
DANIEL MACLISE, R.A. 443*. 
 
 married into the family of the Hills ; retired from the army, with pensions 
 and half-pay ; and settled finally in Dublin, in 1750. Here he was blessed 
 with a family of seventeen children, all of whom died young, with the 
 exception of Alexander, the father of the painter. He obtained an ensign's 
 commission in the Elgin Fencibles, stationed at Cork ; and here he- 
 married Miss Rebecca Bohanan, of a respectable Bandon family ; left 
 the army when his regiment was disbanded ; and became, with ill-success^ 
 the proprietor of a tan-yard at Cork, where he undertook, during the war r 
 several Government contracts for the troops embarking at Cove. He- 
 had ten children, the eldest of whom was Daniel ; and when his accounts, 
 with the world came to be closed, was found hardly better off than ha 
 was when he entered it. The artist had thus, on the paternal side> a.. 
 strong admixture of Scotch blood in his veins. 
 
 An Academy for the study of the fine arts had been opened in the- 
 city of Cork in 1822. Here it was, in the study of the models of. 
 classical antiquity, that Hogan, the sculptor, attained that mingled purity: 
 and grandeur of conception which characterizes his works ; and Forde, the 
 early lost, felt the first awakenings of the genius so soon to be extinguished 
 in death. Here, too, came young Maclise to enrol himself as a student 
 in art, when the conviction that in that direction lay his inevitable destiny,, 
 led him to abandon for ever cash-book and ledger, desk and counters 
 The youth soon gained a patroness, in the person of Miss Spratt, an old 
 maiden-lady, whose portrait he painted. By her he was introduced to- 
 the family of Mr. Newenham, of Summerhill, a banker and a sculptor, in 
 whose gallery he had every opportunity of improving his taste, and even 
 gaining practical skill, for both Mr. Newenham and his daughter were, 
 proficients in art. Meantime, he worked at the Academy with unceasing 
 ardour, and made certain and rapid progress. He became acquainted 
 also with that learned art-lover and profound antiquary, Mr. Sainthill, in 
 whose library he had an opportunity of storing his mind with that lore o 
 antiquity without which the historical artist, whatever his genius 
 talents, can never reach permanent fame. The celebrated phrenologist^ 
 Dr. Spurzheim, happened to be at this time in Cork, and to him the^ 
 young artist was taken by his old lady-patroness. The Doctor mani- 
 pulated with unusual care, and pronounced the oracular dictum, "A. 
 painter indeed ! " which might have had some effect, if need were, tct 
 strengthen the predilections of the patient, and fulfil its own prediction* 
 Maclise also dissected with assiduity at the Anatomical School of Div 
 Woodroffe, and attended the lectures of that eminent surgeon. He> 
 sketched and copied everything that came in his way ; and so worked 
 out his destiny, till a fortuitous circumstance occurred, such as often*, 
 offers, but of which it is reserved to genius alone to take full advantage, 
 to give a new impulse to his efforts, and determine the course of his 
 future career. 
 
 It was in the autumn of 1825 that Sir Walter Scott, accompanied by 
 Miss Edgeworth and Mr. and Mrs. J. G. Lockhart, made a hurried tour 
 in Ireland. Among the places visited was Cork ; and while there the 
 illustrious traveller made a call at the shop of Mr. Bolster, a respectable? 
 bookseller. Among the crowd of literary persons attracted to this spot 
 was the young artist, who had chosen a favourable position for making 
 some outline sketches of the great author. Selecting the best of these,,, 
 he worked upon it all night, and produced by morning an elaborate pen- 
 
 2 G 
 
450 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 and-ink drawing, which he brought to his friend, the bookseller, who 
 placed it in a conspicuous position in his shop. It did not fail to attract 
 the attention of Sir Walter, who, expressing admiration of its power and 
 truth, inquired the name of the artist. Maclise, who was at hand, was 
 brought forward, and introduced to the great man, who shook him by the 
 hand, wrote his name at the bottom of the drawing, and predicted that he 
 would attain a high position. The drawing was lithographed, and 500 
 copies struck off, which were sold as soon as printed.* The artist was 
 induced by the reputation which this little sketch gained for him, to open 
 a studio in Patrick Street, which was soon crowded with sitters ; com- 
 missions for portraits and book-illustrations flowed in upon him ; till, in 
 the spring of 1827, in accordance with the advice of Sir Thomas Deane 
 and Mr. Sainthill, he determined to leave Cork and proceed to London, 
 to prosecute his art-studies in the schools of the Royal Academy. A 
 drawing which he had previously forwarded to Somerset House had 
 secured his admission, and he at once took apartments in Newman Street, 
 and sedulously devoted himself to the study of his profession. Crofton 
 Croker, to whom he had letters of introduction from Sainthill, invited him 
 to his house, which was the centre of a large literary circle ; and the 
 refined hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, whose influence in the 
 world of literature and art was equally important, was generously extended 
 to the young artist. Years before, in 1820, Mr. Hall had seen him, copy- 
 ing from the antique, in the Academy of Cork, and had said, "My 
 little friend, if you work hard and think, you will be a great man one of 
 these days." Half a century after this first meeting, it was the lot of the 
 same accomplished gentleman to pay a last affectionate tribute to the 
 genius and character of the friend whose race was then run, and register 
 the fulfilment of his prophecy made a whole lifetime before ! 
 
 There is an incident in the early life of James Barry, R.A., a 
 Corcagian too, of which one is reminded when telling of the kindly 
 encouragement given by Sir Walter to his youthful delineator. Barry, 
 when quite a young man, had walked from Cork to Dubiin, with his first 
 picture, " The Conversion of the Pagan Prince of Cashel by St. Patrick," 
 and managed to get it hung in the Exhibition of the Society for the 
 Encouragement of the Arts, etc. It was in an out-of-the-way corner, but 
 chanced to catch the attention of Edmund Burke, as he strolled through 
 the rooms. He was struck by the merit of the picture, and applied to the 
 attendant for the name of the artist. " I don't know," was the reply ; 
 " but it was brought by that young man." Burke then asked the latter, 
 who stood bashfully close by, where he got it from ; and on being told 
 that it was his own production, exclaimed that this was impossible. The 
 youth burst into tears and rushed from the room ; but was followed 
 
 * My greatly regretted friend and correspondent, the late J. Milner Barry, M.D., 
 of Tunbridge Wells, a Corcagian, a gentleman and a scholar, wrote to me, a year 
 or two ago, a long account of a visit he had paid to the South Kensington Museum, to 
 examine the Forster bequest of Maclise drawings, etc., then recently acquired. Of this 
 juvenile sketch he said : ' ' The portrait of Sir W. Scott, taken in Cork, when Maclise 
 was only fourteen, is a wonderfully executed drawing, and, if not afterwards retouched, 
 displays the extraordinary talent of the boy-artist. It is a profile, head and shoulde; 
 The shape of the head, indicative of the massive brain, and the shrewd pawky expressio: 
 of the features, are more fully apparent than in any other of the portraits of Sir Walte 
 Scott I have seen. The portrait by Newton, also in the Forster collection, looks taim 
 and bucolic when contrasted with the pencil-portrait of the juvenile Corcagian." 
 
 to 
 
 his 
 ise 
 
 t 
 
 on 
 ter 
 
DANIEL MACLISE, R.A. 451 
 
 quickly by the kind-hearted statesman, who soothed him, and promised 
 that friendship and protection which he continued to afford through the 
 anhappy career of the wayward artist. 
 
 To return. In the very year of Maclise's arrival in London, another 
 event occurred, which, like the visit of Sir Walter Scott to Cork, had the 
 effect of bringing the name and talents of Maclise prominently before the 
 public. This was the first appearance on the stage of Charles Kean (who, 
 by the way, was born in the same year), October 1st, 1827, in the character 
 of " Young Norval " in Home's tragedy of Douglas. Maclise secured a 
 place in the pit, as near as possible to the stage, with the intention of 
 making a sketch of the aspirant. This he accomplished ; executed a 
 finished drawing from it on his return ; had it, through his friend Croker, 
 lithographed and published next day ; and managed, from its extensive 
 sale at ten shillings a copy, to pocket a handsome sum when all expenses 
 were paid.* Hence he became known as a rising artist, and got profitable 
 employment for portraits in pencil and water-colours. He still, nevertheless, 
 studied hard at the Academy, where he gained, at the competitive exhibi- 
 tions of the students, every honour which it had to award. Among these 
 was the medal for the best drawing from the antique the last one given 
 by Sir Thomas Lawrence ; the medal for the best copy of a picture from 
 Guido, the " Fortune," I believe ; and, in 1829, the highest prize within 
 reach of a student, the gold medal for the best historical composition, on 
 a subject selected by the Academy, " The Choice of Hercules." This 
 was the height of his ambition ; he was eulogized by his countryman, Sir 
 Martin Archer Shee, the new President ; noticed by all the papers ; and 
 received a note from L. E. L., telling him that his well-merited success 
 had given her " every pleasure but surprise." This distinction, moreover, 
 placed at his command the travelling studentship of the Academy, tenable 
 for three years ; but he refused, from native independence of character, to 
 avail himself of the bounty, and thus, like that great self-formed genius, 
 Correggio, the glory of the Venetian school, attained his distinction without 
 visiting the galleries of Italy. 
 
 Having dwelt somewhat at length upon the early life of Maclise, my 
 retrospect of his art-career in London must be necessarily brief. In 1829, 
 he became for the first time an exhibitor at the Royal Academy, the 
 subject of his picture being taken from the Twelfth Night of Shake- 
 speare. In 1830, he exhibited no less than seven pictures, among which 
 was a portrait of Campbell, of Mrs. S. C. Hall and of Miss Landon. In 
 1 83 1, he exhibited six pictures ; and in 1832, a beautiful composition from 
 A Midsinmner Nights Dream, " Puck disenchanting Bottom." In this 
 year he revisited his native city, where he met Hogan, the sculptor, who 
 chanced to return at the time to the scene of his early studies. An 
 enthusiastic reception was given to both artists ; and a public meeting 
 convened in the rooms of the Society of Arts, where a gold medal was 
 voted to each, that of Maclise bearing the inscription, " Alumno suo 
 Danieli Maclise egregie in Picturd merenti Societas Artium Corcagiensis. 
 Sep. 26, 1832." In this year he had also painted a scene from 
 Moore's Lalla Rookh, " Mokanna the Prophet revealing his Features to 
 Zelica," and to this was awarded by the Liverpool Academy the prize of 
 ^50 for the best painting in oil. This picture, together with the one 
 mentioned above from Shakespeare, was exhibited at the British Institu- 
 * This sketch is now in the possession of the artist's niece, Miss Banks. 
 
452 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 tion in 1833. In this year he produced, from sketches which he had 
 made in Ireland, his extraordinary picture of " All Hallow Eve, or Snap- 
 apple Night," which appeared in the Exhibition of 1833, and contains 
 portraits of Sir Walter Scott, Crofton Croker, the artist's sisters (whom he 
 was fond of introducing into his pictures), Perceval Banks (his brother-in- 
 law), and the old Priest, who was host at this annual gathering. This 
 picture created a great sensation, and is well known from the engraving ; 
 a better description of it can hardly be found than is afforded by a poem 
 in Eraser's Magazine, for May, 1833, p. 628, from the pen of " O'Doherty " 
 (Dr. Maginn). 
 
 I am here reminded of Maclise's connection with u Regina," so often, 
 alluded to before, and about which much does not remain to be said. On 
 his arrival in London he found his townsman, Maginn, who in consequence 
 of some differences with Blackwood, had quitted the modern Athens, 
 installed in the metropolis, and already wielding a censoral virgula of no- 
 light weight. The month of February, 1830, saw the birth of Frasefs 
 Magazine; and in the fifth number, that for June, appeared the outline 
 portrait of William Jerdan, and the inauguration of that redoubtable critic 
 as Coryphaeus of the " Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters." 
 The novel feature pleased ; and thenceforward each succeeding month 
 produced its portrait, till some four-score had appeared, and the Magazine 
 had reached its fifteenth volume. Here occurs a breach of continuity. 
 The editor expressed his fear that the readers of the Magazine would miss 
 "Our old familiar Faces, the peculiar feature of the Magazine, our 
 monthly Gallery." He adds that he cannot avoid seeing that the original 
 compact of giving sketches of illustrious literary characters can hardly be 
 kept up ; and that complaints have reached him that some occasionally 
 presented do not fulfil the condition. Thus he proposes to let the 
 " Gallery " department lie fallow for a time, in the hope that a " new crop 
 will turn up fit for the industry of the labourers." Accordingly we find 
 no portraits in vols. xv. and xvi., and only two in vol. xvii., which were 
 duly garnered with the others, the harvest-men never troubling them- 
 selves to look for an aftermath. From the satirical character of some of 
 the portraits, and especially the accompanying notices, it was desirable 
 that the identity of both artist and writer should be invested with some 
 degree of mystery. The earlier portraits have no signature ; and it is not 
 till February, 1832, that the pseudonym "Alfred Croquis " appears, at the 
 foot of the portrait of the Ettrick Shepherd. But it was pretty well known 
 who was meant, and half revelations were often designedly made. At 
 the great Fraserian banquet, commemorated by the inimitable cartoon 
 which forms the frontispiece of this volume, Crofton Croker gets up to- 
 make a speech, and " orates " as follows 
 
 " Mr, Fraser and Gentlemen, What I want to say is, if not confined 
 in a nut-shell, at least walled in by a wine-glass. While we were all. 
 chattering and gabbling about the affairs of all kinds of writing people, we 
 were forgetting that there was sitting among us a decent fellow, who has 
 the art of making faces in a manner never beaten yet. I do not like 
 mentioning names, for it is dangerous in these cross times ; but there he 
 is, Dan, I beg pardon, for I was uncommonly near making a slip of the 
 tongue, there he is, Mr. Alfred Croquis, sitting cheek by jowl to Mr. 
 Barry Cornwall ; and a neat article he is, I mean Croquis, equally as 
 well as I mean Cornwall. There he is, as prim and demure as a young 
 
DANIEL MAC USE, R.A. 453 
 
 lady at a christening, and good luck to him ; only he is caricaturing us all 
 the whole time he is sitting there as quiet as if he were a mouse in a 
 cheese. Nevertheless I give his health, and long may he live to sketch 
 and etch. Here's your health, Dan, my boy! Alfred, I mean, only it's 
 the same thing." * 
 
 Here, however, it seems right to remark that there appears to be some 
 want of accord between the artist of " The Fraserians," and the writer of 
 the article. Although thus alluded to as being present at the banquet, 
 the features of Maclise will be in vain sought for round the circular table. 
 We are led to suppose that the guest seated between Barry Cornwall and 
 Perceval Banks, to the right of Maginn, is intended for Maclise ; but 
 there can be little doubt that the portrait is that of Southey. His name, 
 it is true, is not mentioned in the article, but the aquiline contour of the 
 face undoubtedly belongs to the Laureate, and the identification is 
 corroborated by Mahony in his reproduction of the plate for Bohn's edition 
 of the Reliques of Father Prout. 
 
 Later, when the time came to bid farewell to the " Gallery,'? our artist 
 is named with eulogy as its originator, and the identity of " Croquis " and 
 Maclise broadly asserted : " But can we part from our Gallery without 
 saying a word or two about him to whose pencil we are indebted for it, 
 our old and much-honoured friend, Croquis ? Watts, in the enlightened 
 and impartial style of censorship which distinguishes that amiable gentle- 
 man, described the sketches as contemptible daubs, the work of some 
 mean artist, got up for some shabby purpose ; at the which Croquis only 
 laughed, and drew a flattering likeness of the critic, which instantly 
 attracted Watts's patronage in a most peculiar manner. Other judges 
 took a far different view of the case, agreeing that for fidelity of likeness 
 and strict excellence of drawing and design, often for shrewd and 
 humorous conception, and frequently for their execution as etchings or 
 engravings, there are few artists who could produce ; fewer, if any, who - 
 could surpass them. People, indeed, are generally so good as to allow 
 that he does know something of art ; and yet, so great is his natural and 
 national modesty, that the name of Alfred Croquis never appears in the 
 catalogues of the Exhibition. The name of a friend of his, or at least of 
 one who ought to be so, is to be found there pretty often ; and we believe 
 that his pictures are not to be sneezed at, even by the most Gothic of 
 barbarians. He is rising every year to higher honours and renown, and 
 displaying fresh proofs of unwearied genius ; and though the pictures 
 which he exhibits are of greater splendour and loftier aspiration, yet, in 
 their own way, we maintain that the sketches of Croquis display as much 
 talent as any production of the best R.A. or A. R.A. of the lot, ay, even 
 if you named Maclise himself." f 
 
 I have already recorded my own opinion and that of others as to the 
 transcendant merit of these sketches, and made allusion to the article in 
 Notes a?id Queries, which led to their republication. This latter was imme- 
 diately followed by an admirable paper from the pen of Mr D. G. Rossetti, 
 in the Academy, of April 15th, 187 1, p. 217, from which I extract the follow- 
 ing remarks : " I suppose no such series of the portraits of the celebrated 
 of any epoch, produced by an eye and hand of so much insight and power, 
 and realized with such a view to the actual impression of the sitter, exists 
 
 * Fraser's Magazine, January, 1835, p. 17. 
 t Ibid, vol. xxi. p. 26. 
 
454 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 anywhere ; and the period illustrated possessed abundant claims to a 
 worthy personal record. . . . Each produces the impression of absolute 
 trustworthiness as in a photograph. . . . Both in rendering of character, 
 whether in its first aspect or subtler shades, and in the unfailing knowledge 
 of form, which seizes at once on the movement of the body beneath the 
 clothes, and on the lines of the clothes themselves, these drawings are on 
 an incalculably higher level than the works of even the best professional 
 sketchers. Indeed, no happier instance could well be found of the unity 
 for literary purposes of what maybe justly termed ' style,' with an incisive 
 and relishing realism." 
 
 It may be interesting to record that the original sketches, drawn on 
 any odd scraps of paper, and sometimes on both sides, requiring a glass 
 both at back and front for their exhibition, were sold at the sale of the 
 artist's effects, and secured, in great part, by the late John Forster. On the 
 death of this gentleman, the South Kensington Museum in 1876 acquired 
 by his bequest a valuable collection of drawings, among which are 
 twenty-four of these original sketches by Maclise, either in pencil or 
 water-colour. These are now framed, and displayed on the walls and 
 revolving stand ; some exhibiting important variations, and some not 
 having appeared in the " Gallery." Of that of Sir Walter Scott, which is 
 extremely interesting, I have already spoken. The cartoon-drawing of 
 " The Fraserians," the frontispiece of this volume, will be regarded 
 with interest ; as also a smaller drawing, containing a smaller number of 
 compotators. There is a coloured drawing of Eyre Evans Crowe, seated 
 at breakfast, which reminds one somewhat of the one of Hallam. We 
 find a front-faced portrait of " Father Prout," not unlike that which is 
 given in this volume. There are several sketches of Crofton Croker ; 
 a drawing representing the debut of Paganini ; a portrait of Thackeray ; 
 one of Charles James Apperley, better known as " Nimrod " ; * a portrait 
 of Lytton Bulwer (dated 1 832), seated in an easy-chair, with his legs fully 
 stretched out, smoking a pipe, the straight stem of which reaches down to 
 his slippers ; a pencil sketch of J. M. W. Turner, as it is supposed, on a 
 high stool, in front of a large easel : the pencil sketch from which the 
 effigy of Goethe was engraved, and which has very much the appearance 
 of having been copied from a lithograph ; and lastly, to omit others, 
 the original sketch for the Earl of Munster, which Mr. W. B. Scott 
 (Academy, January 3rd, 1874) specially singled out, as being "artistically 
 inferior to all the others," and decidedly not the production of Maclise ! 
 
 But the contributions of Maclise to the Magazine were not confined to 
 these graphic productions. The man who is nothing but an artist, is most 
 assuredly not even that. Maclise was much more ; he was a musician, a 
 
 * Author of The Chase, the Road and the Turf (contributed originally to the 
 Quarterly Review, and republished by Murray in a handsome octavo volume, with the 
 unsurpassable illustrations by Aiken) ; The Life of John Mytton, Esq., of Halston; etc. 
 " Nimrod " stands alone as the most accomplished writer on sporting subjects which the 
 world has ever seen. His letters on Hunting, and the Condition of Hunters, are classical 
 compositions, which will take their place in future'ages with Arrian's Treatise on Coursing, 
 and the Cynegeticus of the younger Xenophon. Of his contributions to the Sporting 
 Magazine, in its palmy days, the late Capel Lofft said that they were ' ' admirable com- 
 positions in their way, written with the ease of a gentleman ; the spirit, zest and 
 thorough knowledge of a true sportsman ; the elegance of a classical scholar ; and the 
 tact, keenness and discrimination of an accomplished man of the world" {Self-Forma- 
 tion, i. 172). "Nimrod" died May 19th, 1843, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. 
 
DANIEL MACLLSE, R.A. 455 
 
 writer, a poet, an antiquarian, in every sense of the word, an accom- 
 plished gentleman. On his own peculiar subject, the Fine Arts, he was 
 an able and elegant writer ; and an evidence of his poetical abilities may 
 be found in a long poem from his pen, entitled " Christmas Revels : an 
 Epic Rhapsody, in Twelve Duans," in Eraser's Magazine, May, 1838, 
 pp. 635-644. With Maginn he was on intimate terms to the last, and the 
 following reminiscence, contributed to a biographical notice of that re- 
 markable man, is a striking testimony alike to his genius and character: 
 " With every desire to do what you request, I find myself embarrassed in 
 contributing the slightest memorandum of my acquaintance with the late 
 Dr. Maginn. Does he not strike you to have been precisely the person 
 of whom it would be most difficult to convey (to one who had not known 
 him) a true impression ? I cannot boast of having seen as much of the 
 Doctor as I was ambitious of seeing ; for, although known to him from 
 my first arrival in London, yet, whether from his own, and perhaps my 
 active occupation, the usual separating tendencies and distractions of 
 town, differences of pursuit, etc., our interviews were not after all so 
 frequent as I could have wished ; and when we consider over how many 
 years they were spread, anything I could say of him must of necessity 
 assume the tone of the highest panegyric, and I find it difficult to satisfy 
 myself in the choice of any expression sufficiently powerful to convey my 
 idea of his great abilities as a writer and conversationalist, and of his 
 excellent nature as a man. He comes upon my general recollection 
 always crowded round by the most pleasant associations, and I can 
 conjure him up in particular situations, the morning walk of my early 
 acquaintance, and more. recently the morning visit, when I had but to 
 listen and be delighted. Indeed, his various gifts and brilliant qualities 
 ever met with prompt acknowledgment, and where wit and wits abounded 
 one always had the satisfaction of seeing him commanding attention." * 
 
 A later episode in the life of Maclise was his intimate friendship with 
 Charles Dickens. In 1847, the latter having gone to Paris, the artist 
 had arranged to join him there with their common friend, John Forster ; 
 but his heavy engagements forbade the execution of this pleasant project, 
 and he wrote to the latter a metrical farewell, which happily illustrates 
 his gay and sportive humour : 
 
 ' ' Go where pleasure waits thee, 
 But while it elates thee, 
 Oh ! remember me. 
 
 " When by the Seine thou rovest, 
 With the friend thou lovest, 
 Oh ! still remember me. 
 
 " When through the Louvre gazing 
 On those works amazing, 
 
 (Especially) then remember me. 
 
 " When Dumas thou meetest, 
 And Jules Janin thou greetest, 
 Even then remember me. 
 
 M If Sue or Victor Hugo, 
 George Sand, or Kock, to you go, 
 Still, still remember me. 
 
 * Dublin University Magazine, January, 1844, p. 88. 
 
^56 THE MAC USE P0RTRAI7-GALLERY. 
 
 " If Horace Paul or Ary 
 You meet, oh ! still be wary ; 
 Forget not Mac and me. 
 
 " In Pere la Chaise while walking, 
 O'er Montmartre while stalking, 
 Be sure remember me. 
 
 ' While you hear the Peers debating, 
 While you hear the Commons prating, 
 Even then remember me. 
 
 "On top of Vendome column, 
 On July's pillar solemn, 
 Even then remember me. 
 
 On Notre-Dame's high towers, 
 Versailles and Saint Cloud's bowers, 
 Still, still remember me. 
 
 " When with Dickens thou art dining, 
 Think of him at 14 pining, 
 Oh ! do then think of me. 
 
 When with him Lafitte drinking, 
 Let not your spirits sinking, 
 On Lincoln's Inn then thinking, 
 A tear bedew your e'e. 
 
 ** Be not such foolish asses, 
 But while the bottle passes, 
 Fill, fill your sparkling glasses, 
 And then remember me." 
 
 In reverting to the more public career of Maclise, I find that the 
 -apace at my command now forbids anything but a cursory notice of its 
 leading incidents. In 1834, he exhibited "The Installation of Captain 
 Rock," which, passing through the collection of John Miller, of Liverpool, 
 came into that of Joseph Gillott, of Birmingham; and in 1835, that 
 gorgeous picture, "The Chivalrous Vow to the Ladies and the Peacock," 
 the subject of which was suggested to the artist by a note of Sir Walter 
 -Scott to his Lay of the Last Minstrel, and, in its turn, inspired the muse 
 of Miss Landon, who published her beautiful poem, The Vow of the 
 Peacock, in the course of the same year. In 1836, at an unusually early 
 age for such an honour, he was elected an Associate of the Royal 
 Academy. This was the last exhibition at Somerset House before 
 removal to Trafalgar Square, and Maclise, in 1836, exhibited a picture of 
 Xi Macbeth and the Witches," the figure of the Scottish thane being taken 
 from his friend, Macready ; and another, representing " The Interview of 
 Charles I. with Cromwell." At the first opening of the Academy in the 
 new rooms, he exhibited seven pictures, among which may be mentioned 
 ""The Bohemian Gipsies," a very fine performance, which also formed 
 cpart of the renowned Gillott collection; and, in 1838, five pictures, one 
 -of which was a representation of "Merry Christmas in the Baron's Hall," 
 -of which the " Epic Rhapsody," in Eraser's Magazine, of which I have 
 spoken, is a poetical description. In 1839, he exhibited four pictures, 
 among which was the well-known " Robin Hood " ; and on February 2nd, 
 3:840, he was advanced to the full honours of the Academy, in company 
 *vith his friend, Solomon A. Hart, who had been elected Associate also 
 <n the same night with himself. His "diploma picture" was entitled 
 
DANIEL MACLISE, R.A. 457 
 
 " The Wild Huntsman " ; and he exhibited four pictures besides, " The 
 Banquet Scene in Macbeth," a "Scene from Gil Bias," another from 
 Twelfth Night, and a portrait of his friend, Charles Dickens. In 1841, 
 we have four pictures, one of which was " The Sleeping Beauty," and 
 another " Hunt the Slipper at Farmer Flamborough's," from The Vicar 
 of Wakefield. In 1842, were exhibited "The Return of the Knight," 
 " The Origin of the Harp," and the " Play Scene in Hamlet," the last, 
 the best known and most popular, if not the greatest of all his works. 
 In 1843, came that fine picture, "The Actors' Reception of the Author," 
 from Gil Bias (which was purchased at 750 guineas, and formed part of 
 the great Gillott collection, Birmingham, sold 1872), together with "A 
 Waterfall in Cornwall"; and in 1844, a portrait of W. H. Ains worth, the 
 novelist. He also painted the Hon. Mrs. Norton, as "The Muse of 
 Poetry," a picture that turned up in one of the sales of the late Charles 
 Birch, of Birmingham, of whom more anon. In 1844, we have also "A 
 Scene from Comus," and some others of minor importance. In 1845, ne 
 did not exhibit ; but in the next year contributed to the competitive exhibi- 
 tion of the works of artists desirous of executing mural paintings for the 
 Palace at Westminster, his beautiful design of "Alfred in the Danish 
 Camp," which was selected by the Commissioners, who requested him to 
 prepare a design for one of the subjects proposed to be executed. In 
 accordance with this, he produced his fresco-painting, "The Spirit of 
 Chivalry," which he was ordered to reproduce on the walls of the House 
 of Lords. This work he achieved in 1847, having found time, moreover, 
 to prepare in the interval, for the Exhibition of 1846, the very interesting 
 picture known as " The Ordeal by Touch." 
 
 A year or two later he executed in oil another piece of symbolical 
 character, as a companion to " The Spirit of Chivalry." This was " The 
 Spirit of Justice" ; and here it maybe interesting to record that the Hon. 
 Mrs. Norton posed for Astrasa, while portraits of Macready and other 
 celebrities are preserved in the accompanying group. For this fine 
 composition, Government awarded a premium of 250 guineas to the 
 artist, and, as in the case of its companion, ordered him to reproduce it 
 in fresco for the Palace of Westminster. This commission was carried 
 out, and both designs are now to be seen in the House of Lords over the 
 Strangers' Gallery. The original paintings, one in fresco and the other 
 in oil, for these great national works were purchased direct from the 
 artist by the late Charles Birch, of Metchley Abbey, Harborne, Birming- 
 ham, an art speculator, and private dealer, of great reputed taste and 
 judgment. When this gentleman finally left Harborne, his collection of 
 pictures, oak furniture and other works of art, was sold by auction, in 
 February, 1857, by Messrs. Foster, of London. An elegant sale-catalogue, 
 a copy of which is now before me, was got up for the occasion, 
 containing well-executed woodcuts of the more important pictures and 
 articles of furniture. Among these were "The Spirit of Justice," and 
 " The Spirit of Chivalry " ; the former, an oil painting, sold and " de- 
 livered " in London ; the latter, a fresco, fixed in the dining-room of the 
 Abbey, and " delivered " there. At the sale, " The Spirit of Chivalry," 
 on account of its cumbrous and risky character, was sold for a song ; but 
 "The Spirit of Justice" fared somewhat better, being bought by Mr. 
 W. Holmes, a dealer in high-class pictures in Birmingham, whose 
 judgment in, and knowledge of, modern works of art are equalled by 
 
458 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 few, for the sum of ^350, and resold by him to another Birmingham 
 collector, the late William Sharp, of Endwood Court, Handsworth, who 
 retained it in his collection till his death in 1881. 
 
 Now fashion dictates, and taste varies, in matters of art as well as 
 in other things ; a reputation enjoyed in one age may not be maintained 
 in another ; and the new generation will, likely enough, reverse the 
 judgment of its predecessor. All this is natural, and accounts, to some 
 extent legitimately, for the alterations of value to which works of art are 
 found to be subject. But extremes are not indicative of a healthy state 
 of things anywhere ; and just as teetotalism is correlative with intemper- 
 ance, so in matters of art is extravagant appreciation in one direction 
 with undue neglect and under-estimate in another. It is in a country like 
 this, where art is a thing of comparatively recent birth, and love for it can 
 hardly be said to form part of the national character, that this condition 
 of the picture " market " exists. The productions of artists are valued 
 chiefly for what they will " fetch," and are, with the majority of collectors, 
 mere objects of speculation and investment. Hence, when from any 
 circumstance, fortuitous or otherwise, the works of an artist are " rising," 
 the fact soon gets winded about, and no others will then go down with 
 the public. There is an enormous and increasing demand from that vast 
 majority, the imitatorum servmn f>ecus, which only buys what other 
 people like, and thus the works of the chance favourite of the hour are 
 pushed up to a value absurdly out of relation to their comparative merit ; 
 while the productions of other men, who have had their day, are depre- 
 ciated, as it were, in exact counterpoise. How far these remarks are 
 applicable to the present subject I leave others to determine. Forty 
 years ago, Maclise was in the ascendant. As one of the " forty " he 
 commanded the " line " at the Academy ; and his productions found 
 ready purchasers at handsome, though not outrageous, prices. On the 
 other hand, the works of his contemporary, the short-lived William 
 Muller, were neither quick of sale, nor renumerative in price ; and 
 moreover, when sent to the Academy, were so scandalously " hung," 
 either close to the ceiling or the floor, as to "induce the belief that 
 there existed a conspiracy to ruin him." The death of the outraged 
 artist took place within eighteen months of this diabolical act, and S. C. 
 Hall, commenting on the proceedings of that "hanging" Committee of 
 1845, which surely ought not to be allowed to slumber on "unwhipt 
 of justice," asserts with no reticence of phrase, that "they were as much 
 accessory to his death as if they had plunged a knife into his side." * 
 But Time came with its reversals and reparations. At the death of Mr. 
 Sharp, an octogenarian, in 1881, his long hoarded collection was dis- 
 persed, under the potent hammer of Messrs. Christies. In this fine 
 gallery were included two large pictures by Muller, the history of which 
 is somewhat curious and instructive. One of them, known as "Arab 
 Shepherds" f was originally commissioned from the artist, in 1842, at the 
 price of 28, by the same Charles Birch of whom I have spoken. That 
 gentleman, calling at Muller's studio, saw the picture on the easel, and 
 critically examining it in the absence of the artist, made some disparaging 
 remarks upon it, and hinted that the legs of the sheep were too long. This 
 
 * Book of Memories, p. 472. 
 
 I Described in the Life of Muller, by Neal Solly, p. 141, and photographed as an 
 illustration to that work. 
 
DANIEL MAC USE, R.A. 459. 
 
 was reported to Miiller on his return ; and he consequently thought himself 
 at liberty to accept the larger offer of \o from that first-rate judge of 
 pictures, the late Mr. Rought, of Waterloo Place, Regent Street, who did 
 not find much difficulty in disposing of it for double that amount to Mr. 
 Sharp. The investment, like most of that gentleman's art-transactions, 
 did not prove a bad one ; for at his sale, it fetched no less a sum than 
 ^2730, it being purchased by Agnew, on behalf of a Committee which 
 presides over the formation of an Art-Gallery for the town which had 
 already been its home for so many years. At the same sale the other 
 picture, " Prayers in the Desert," * originally acquired by Mr. Sharp from 
 the late Charles Hawker, a man who did much to foster a love for art in 
 Birmingham, for ^180, was purchased for the Right Hon. Joseph Cham- 
 berlain, for the sum of ,1890, and has been since liberally presented by 
 him to that same town of Birmingham, which he so ably represents ; and 
 where the two masterpieces are again hanging in juxtaposition, though 
 now in a public and permanent gallery, and accessible to everyone. 
 
 At this self-same sale, "The Spirit of Justice" of Maclise, an ex- 
 cellent specimen of a great artist ; of national importance and interest, 
 as the original of a mural fresco in the House of Lords ; and with 
 especial suitability as a gallery picture, measuring 8 feet 6 inches by 
 5 feet, was allowed to slip, I will not presume to hint with what judg- 
 ment, for a paltry 210 guineas ! I was also astonished to find that on 
 the same occasion, an exquisite monumental drawing, " The Doge 
 Marino Faliero condemning his Son," by John Flaxman, R.A. essen- 
 tially the artisan's artist, in a carved oak frame worth the money, was 
 not thought worth acquiring for a paltry five-pound note ! But then, as 
 the leading journal remarks, and this is the moral of the story, " These 
 things are not in fashion ; nobody has written up Flaxman ; no Royal 
 personage has given out that he is collecting him ; he has nothing to 
 support himself upon, but the admirable grace and beauty of his work- 
 manship, and the severe delicacy of his style." t 
 
 Resuming my hurried retrospect of the career of the Fraserian artist, 
 I briefly record that, in 1847, he exhibited three pictures, one of which 
 was that noble work, " Noah's Sacrifice," which, though the subject, at 
 the time, of much adverse criticism, is now considered one of the finest 
 productions of the master. 
 
 In 1848 need be noted only the portrait of his friend, Mr. Forster, in 
 the character of "Kitely" ; a portrait of Mrs. Charles Dickens ; and the 
 outlines for Shakespeare's " Seven Ages." In 1849, he was not an ex- 
 hibitor. In 1850, he produced " The Spirit of Justice," of which I have 
 already spoken, and " The Gross of Green Spectacles " from The Vicar 
 of Wakefield. In 185 1, a portrait of Bulwer ; another of Macready as 
 " Werner " ; and his noble picture of " Caxton Showing his Printing Press 
 to Edward IV., in the Almonry at Westminster." In 1852, "Alfred in 
 the Tent of Guthrum the Dane." In 1853, no picture. In 1854, one 
 only, " The Marriage of Strongbow and Eva," one of the most important 
 of his works. This picture was painted for Lord Northwick for the sum 
 of ^2000. The Fine Arts Commissioners desired the artist to paint a 
 
 * See Life of Miiller, p. 162, where it is described and photographed. It has also 
 been engraved in the Art Journal. 
 
 f The Times, February 28th, 1883, p. 9. The drawing, however, cost Mr. Sharp 
 no more than this amount. 
 
460 TILE MACLISE P0RTRA17 -GALLERY, 
 
 replica in fresco for the Painted Chamber, or Conference Hall, in the 
 Houses of Parliament ; but the remuneration offered, ,1500, was con- 
 sidered inadequate, and the reproduction was not effected. Coming into 
 the market in these later days, the picture was purchased by Sir Richard 
 Wallace for the small sum of ,700, and has been by him presented to 
 the Dublin National Gallery, where it now is deposited. 
 
 In 1855, Maclise exhibited one picture, "Orlando about to engage 
 with the Wrestler " ; and in the same year was appointed one of the Fine 
 Art Jurors for the Paris Exhibition. In 1857, we have "Peter the Great 
 working as a Shipwright in Deptford Dockyard," and the series of forty- 
 two sketches, some of them elaborately finished, illustrative of " The 
 Story of the Norman Conquest." We got nothing, I think, from his easel 
 in 1858; and in 1859 the picture of "The Poet to his Wife" was his 
 only exhibited work. 
 
 A long interval now occurred, during which the name of Maclise was 
 absent from the catalogues of Exhibitions. This was occasioned by his 
 engagements in connection with the frescoes in Westminster Palace, a 
 business which cost him nearly ten years of his life, dire injury to his health, 
 serious loss to his pocket and bitter disappointment to his expectations. 
 The matter is too long and complicated to enter upon here neither are 
 the precise facts ascertained. It was, doubtless, the premature death of 
 Prince Albert, a patron of art as generous as he was enlightened, that led 
 to interference with the fulfilment of the original recommendation of the 
 Commissioners, and the ultimate rescission of the agreement made with 
 Maclise. With the expression of my own conviction that a gross injustice 
 was inflicted upon a sensitive and high-minded man of genius, I must 
 refer to the pages of Mr. O'Driscoll, his biographer, for a resume of the 
 circumstances, so far as they have been made known. 
 
 In July, 1859, was completed the splendid cartoon, forty-two feet in 
 length, representing "The Meeting of Wellington and Blucher on the 
 Field of Waterloo," now the property of the Royal Academy. This 
 picture, which was characterized by the most faithful attention to the 
 minuticB of historical detail, and is possibly the one upon which his fame 
 will chiefly rest, was the subject of general wonder and admiration ; 
 while the brother-artists of Maclise, both in and out of the Academy, 
 paid a graceful tribute to the genius of their friend, in the shape of a 
 massive ftorte-crayon and a " round robin," on vellum, circumscribed by 
 forty-three names. In this year, too, acting on the advice of the Prince 
 Consort, the artist paid a visit to Berlin, with the view of making himself 
 acquainted with the " stereochrome," or " water-glass " method of mural 
 painting in that city. On his return, he drew up an excellent Report, 
 which was printed among the Parliamentary Papers on the subject, 
 recommending " water-glass," as a medium. 
 
 At the completion of the " Wellington and Blucher " fresco, Maclise 
 commenced that of the " Death of Nelson." This he had just finished, 
 when a domestic calamity occurred, to add to the gloom produced by his 
 professional disappointments. He had never married ; but his elder 
 sister, Isabella, whose intense affection for her brother had forbidden her 
 to separate from him, had ever remained the companion of his solitude, 
 and ministered to his comforts with tender solicitude. She died in 1865, 
 and Malise never properly got over the blow. His own health became 
 more impaired ; he accepted no commissions ; and habits of seclusion 
 
DANIEL MACLISE, R.A. 461 
 
 and solitude became farther confirmed. These circumstances, together 
 with the innate modesty of his nature, may have concurred to cause him 
 to refuse the Presidency of the Academy, as Sir Edward Landseer 
 afterwards did when, on the death of Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, in 
 1865, it was in due turn offered to him. For certain obvious reasons he 
 also declined the "honour" of knighthood. "In mind and body," 
 to quote the words of the Athenaum, "one of the most knightly of 
 men, he was about the furthest removed from knights of the modern 
 make," 
 
 With some slight improvement in health, Maclise exhibited in 1866 
 and 1867. In 1868 he produced "The Sleep of Duncan." In 1869, the 
 charming picture of " King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," which was 
 considered one of the gems of the Exhibition. In 1870, was exhibited his 
 important work, " The Earls of Desmond and Ormond," the last picture 
 that proceeded from his easel. He designed the Turner gold medal for 
 the Royal Academy, and that for the International Exhibition of 1862. 
 
 By this time the health of the artist was visibly declining. He had 
 suffered from a cough during the winter, which did not leave him. No 
 danger was, however, apprehended ; but in the early part of April he was 
 seized with pneumonia. The disease ran a rapid course ; he was attended 
 by Drs. Murchison and Stewart, and everything was done that medical 
 science could suggest. But all was in vain ; the silver cord was loosed, 
 and the golden bowl broken ; and the world learnt that the great artist 
 had passed away, without pain or struggle, on the morning of April 25th, 
 1870. The cemetery at Kensal Green received his remains, in the same 
 vault where were already sleeping his father, his mother, his brother and 
 his sister. 
 
 Maclise left behind him two brothers, Alexander and Joseph, the 
 latter a surgeon of considerable eminence in London, and author of valu- 
 able works of Comparative Osteology, and Surgical Anatomy. His sister, 
 Anna, also survived him. Her husband was Perceval Weldon Banks, a 
 member of the English Bar, one of the brilliant staff of " Regina," and a 
 compotator in the Fraserian banquet, where he is seen seated between 
 Southey and Thackeray. He died in 1850. One of his daughters, Miss 
 Rhoda Banks, is an artist herself of considerable ability ; excited the 
 warm affection and interest of her uncle , and sat for the Beggar Maid 
 in the picture of " King Cophetua." 
 
 In my rapid summary of the works of Maclise, I have only spoken 
 of his exhibited pictures. These are but a part of the labours of his life, 
 which include ^ prodigious number of works of every description. Among 
 these are book-illustrations, for The Keepsake, for Prout's Reliques, for 
 Bulwer's Pilgrims of the Rhine, and Leila, or the Siege of Granada, for 
 Moore's Irish Melodies, as published by Longmans, for Crofton Croker's 
 Fairy Legends, etc. ; portraits, of Sir John Soane, Mrs. Norton, Mrs. 
 S. C. Hall, Lord Lytton, Dickens, Forster, Kean, Macready, and a host 
 of others less known to fame ; together with important and well-known 
 pictures too numerous to mention ; and not less than three thousand 
 studies and sketches. 
 
 It is to be inferred from what I have written that I entertain deep 
 reverence for the character of Maclise as an artist. Yet I am not in- 
 sensible to the defects which may be urged against him. It cannot be 
 said that he is a great or harmonious colourist. His tints are often heavy > 
 
462 THE MACL1SE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 opaque, chalky, and meretricious ; his figures too academical ; his faces 
 deficient in nature and variety ; his action theatrical and extravagant ; 
 his movement too uniformly vivid, and unbalanced by the repose which 
 so sweetly charms the wearied eye. Nationality may be for much in some 
 of these points, which involve more than a question of abstract right or 
 wrong in art. Any way, they are but of the limitations of which every genius 
 has its own. On the other hand, he is a consummate master of design, 
 especially of large crowds in vehement action. His composition is 
 picturesque and varied ; his feeling poetic ; his drawing firm and correct ; 
 his conception prodigally inventive ; his technical excellence, even in 
 accessory detail, superlatively great. He had many if not all, of those 
 gifts which go to make up a great painter ; and a distinguished place 
 must assuredly be assigned to him in the future Walhalla of British Art. 
 
 In favour of his character as a man too much cannot be said. Mr. 
 S. C. Hall proclaims that "he was in all respects one of nature's gentle- 
 men " ; and adds that, from a knowledge of fifty years, he could say much 
 of his "genial nature, high mind and generous heart." But Mr. Hall 
 judiciously refrains, feeling that his own sentiments could not possibly 
 find more eloquent and touching expression than that afforded by the 
 graceful allusion to the recent death of his friend in the speech of Charles 
 Dickens, at the annual dinner of the Royal Academy, which took place 
 on the very day appointed for the funeral of its illustrious member : " I 
 cannot forbear, before I resume my seat, adverting to a sad theme to 
 which his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales made allusion, and to 
 which the President referred with the eloquence of genuine feeling. 
 Since I first entered the public lists, a very young man indeed, it has been 
 my constant fortune to number among my nearest and dearest friends 
 members of the Royal Academy who have been its grace and pride. They 
 have so dropped from my side, one by one, that I already begin to feel 
 like the Spanish monk of whom Wilkie tells, who had grown to believe 
 that the only realities around him were the pictures which he loved, and 
 that all the moving life he saw, or ever had seen, was a shadow and a 
 dream. For many years I was one of the two most intimate friends, and 
 most constant companions of the late Mr. Maclise. Of his genius in his 
 chosen art I will venture to say nothing here, but of his prodigious 
 fertility of mind, and wonderful wealth of intellect, I may confidently 
 assert that they would have made him, if he had been so minded, at least 
 as great a writer as he was a painter. The gentlest and most modest of 
 men, the freest as to his generous appreciation of young aspirants, and 
 the frankest and largest hearted as to his peers, incapable of a sordid or 
 ignoble thought, gallantly sustaining the true dignity of his vocation, 
 without one grain of self-assertion, wholesomely natural at the last as at 
 the first, 'in wit a man, in simplicity a child,' no artist, of whatever 
 denomination, I make bold to say, ever went to his rest, leaving a golden 
 memory more pure from dross, or having devoted himself with a truer 
 chivalry to the Art-goddess whom he worshipped." 
 
 Alas ! even while the novelist was yet speaking, the curtain was about 
 to fall on the busy and brilliant drama of his own life, the iron gate of 
 Time opening through which he was so shortly to follow the friend to 
 whose death he had just made so touching an allusion. Six weeks only 
 after the death of Maclise, the eulogy on his character which Dickens 
 had pronounced might have been repeated, with slight variation, on the 
 
PHOUT.^ 
 
REV. FRANCIS MAHONY. 463 
 
 occasion of his own sudden removal from among the living. He died 
 June 9th, 1870. 
 
 The sketches, unfinished pictures and cartoons of the deceased artist 
 were sold in July, 1870, and realised ,3000. 
 
 A Memoir of Daniel Maclise, R.A.,\i2l<=> been written by his old friend, 
 W. Justin O'Driscoll, M.R.I.A., Barrister-at-Law, and published by 
 Longman & Co., 187 1, 8vo. A brief sketch of his life, with a portrait, 
 will also be found in the Dublin University Magazine for May, 1847 \ and 
 there is an excellent likeness of him, engraved by Pound, from a photo- 
 graph by Mayall, among " The Drawing-Room Portrait Gallery of 
 Eminent Personages," presented with the Illustrated News of the World. 
 
 LXXXIV. REV. FRANCIS MAHONY. 
 ("Father Prout/ 5 ) 
 
 ' Pasco libatis dapibus ; Prout cuique libido est." * 
 
 If you had chanced, somewhere among the " sixties," to drop into the 
 well-known reading-room of Galignani at Paris, you might have observed 
 a short and spare, but thick-set figure of an elderly man, buried in a news- 
 paper, or exchanging a few snappish incisive words with some journalistic 
 friend or chance acquaintance of the place. By-and-by, he would start up 
 suddenly, push away his paper with a jerk, waste no valediction on his 
 interlocutor, and start forth briskly into the open air. You watched him 
 as he disappeared, and set him down as an oddity. His hat, unconscious 
 of brush, was set well back on his occiput, displaying a broad intellectual 
 forehead ; his nose was in the air ; his keen blue-grey eyes peered out over 
 the rim of his spectacles; his "roguish Hibernian mouth" was mobile 
 with the mocking humour within ; his hands were thrust into his pockets, 
 or otherwise, his right arm was clasped behind him in his left hand ; his 
 coat, of scholarly black, was loose, threadbare and greasy ; his shirt 
 was buttonless, and not too white ; his face was smooth-shaven ; he 
 stooped in figure and shambled in gait ; and he turned his head from 
 side to side with the quick movement of some " strange old bird." If you 
 had asked an habitual frequenter of the room who this queer personage 
 might be, with the air of a scholar, the cut of a cleric, and the shabby 
 slovenry of a mendicant, you might have been informed that it was no 
 other than the Rev. Francis Mahony, French correspondent, and part 
 proprietor, of the Globe newspaper, and known wherever English letters 
 had found their way as Father Prout, "Incumbent of Watergrass- 
 hill, in the county of Cork." 
 
 Among that remarkable cluster of men who rallied about the 
 " Standard Bearer " in the service of " Regina," none was more remark- 
 able for racy scholarship, learned fun, refined wit, original humour, and 
 varied talent, than this extraordinary character ; whom Mr. Sala well 
 describes in few words as " the wittiest pedant, the most pedantic wit, and 
 
 Horat. Sat. vi. lib. ii. 67. 
 
464 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 the oddest fish " he ever chanced to meet with. A Fraserian of Fraserians, 
 he occupies no niche in the " Gallery" ; though his spectacled face is con- 
 spicuous in our grand frontal cartoon, beaming in post-prandial jollity, 
 on the left hand of Maginn, between Irving and Gleig. It is only, then, 
 in completion of the supposed original intention that his portrait is here 
 supplied, engraved from a photograph by M. Weyler of Paris ; and that I 
 round off these " Memoirs " with some brief notice of the " Padre," last, 
 but assuredly not least, of the four score and odd " ILLUSTRIOUS" men 
 and women with whom they have been conversant. 
 
 An Irishman by birth, an ecclesiastic by profession, a journalist by 
 occupation, and a cosmopolite by habit, the story of the life of Francis 
 Sylvester Mahony is soon told. He was born in Cork, in 1804, of parents 
 strictly belonging to the middle class ; but with traditions, as a matter of 
 course, of descent from a family of aboriginal antiquity. At the age of 
 twelve, he was sent abroad for education to the Jesuit College of St. 
 Acheul, at Amiens ; after a brief stay at which he was transferred by his 
 preceptors to their Parisian seminary in the Rue de Sevres. 
 
 Destined by his friends, as it is said, but with no natural aptitude, for 
 the priesthood, like Erasmus in a former day, he passed the customary 
 two years of novitiate at this establishment ; or, alternately, at it and the 
 maison de camftagne of the Fathers, at Montrouge, near Paris. Here, 
 while passing through the schools of theology, logic and philosophy, he 
 breathed a very atmosphere of Latinity. Latin was the language of every- 
 day life, as well as of thesis and disputation ; and the constant study of 
 the poets of the golden age had formed part of the Humanity course at 
 Amiens, as it does in the great public schools of our own country. Thus, 
 he learned Latin colloquially, as Erasmus, Scaliger, Barclay, Buchanan, 
 Casaubon, and the great peripatetic Latinists of the 15th and 16th cen- 
 tury had done before him ; and thus he had become saturated with the 
 spirit and beauty of classic verse, the urban salt, and the jucundis gratia 
 verbis, of the Augustan lyre. 
 
 In due course, Mahony proceeded to the Jesuit College at Rome j 
 received the tonsure and four minor orders ; and was advanced to the 
 diaconate. At this epoch of his career, it was intimated to him by the 
 Provincial that he was considered by his superiors to have no vocation 
 for the Priesthood, or qualification for admission into the Society. 
 Nevertheless, he obtained permission to continue his probationary efforts ; 
 and having returned, as the state of his health rendered necessary, to his 
 native land, he obtained the position of " Prefect of Studies," and subse- 
 quently, " Master of Rhetoric," at the College of Clongowes Wood, in 
 county Kildare, the Irish sister of our own Stonyhurst. 
 
 This was in 1830 ; and here, it may be well to mention, he found 
 among his pupils John Sheehan, afterwards a barrister in London, and 
 known far and wide, under his quaint pen-name of " The Irish Whiskey 
 Drinker," as author of the "Tipperary Hall" papers in Bentleyj and 
 Frank Stack Murphy, the most brilliant Grecian of them all, who 
 became in due time well known as Serjeant Murphy, Commissioner in 
 Bankruptcy, and collaborated with his qvondam tutor in the concoction 
 of the polyglot version of The Groves of Blarney. 
 
 But Mahony's career as a pedagogue, after a brief couple of months, 
 came to an abrupt termination. A holiday for the whole College having 
 been announced, a select band of the Rhetoricians, under the special 
 
REV. FRANCIS 3IAH0NY. 465 
 
 charge of their young Master, set forth on a hare-hunting expedition, in 
 coursing-line across country, with the intention of dining frugally at 
 Maynooth, and returning to college before nightfall. But Dis aliter 
 visum. The Maynooth dinner had been partaken of moderately in 
 accordance with the programme ; but the " tea and turn out " at Cel- 
 bridge, the hospitable house of John Sheehan's father proved a 
 fatal turning point to the hare-brained hare-hunters. " I don't know 
 how many songs we sang," ingenuously confesses the Irish Whiskey 
 Drinker himself, in recounting the doings of that memorable afternoon, 
 " how many patriotic toasts and personal healths we proposed, how many 
 speeches we made, how many decanters we emptied." There were 
 "huge flagons of mountain dew freshly distilled, capacious bowls of 
 sugar, and ample jugs of screeching water, renewed with proportionate 
 frequency." 
 
 " Then the shindy that rose, and that c ame nigh to blow, 
 
 All description surpasses ! 
 Such angry orations, and Latin quotations, 
 
 And jingling of glasses ! 
 You'd swear, never yet, such an uproarious set 
 
 Of rhetorical ranters, 
 Together all spouting, and cheering, and shouting ; 
 
 Till both those enchanters, 
 To stop the mad din, Kate and Molly stepp'd in, 
 
 And swept off the decanters 1 " * 
 
 Suffice to say, the party, stupefied by potheen within, and drenched 
 by a thunder-shower without, bound with ropes to the top of their peat- 
 loads by some charitable bog-men, managed in most dilapidated condi- 
 tion to reach the college about midnight. Watchers were on the look-out 
 with lanterns, and the whole establishment was in commotion. The 
 Rector was naturally very wroth with every one who had taken part in 
 the disgraceful orgie, and especially with the young Master on whom the 
 chief responsibility had devolved. As a natural result, ensued the resig- 
 nation of his chair, and his return to the continent. 
 
 Passing through Paris, he made a short stay at the College of the 
 Jesuits at Freiburg ; whence he proceeded once more to Rome, where he 
 occupied two years in attendance upon theological lectures. At the end 
 of this period, his strong desire of being ordained to the priesthood, even 
 as a secular, still remaining in full force, although in direct opposition to 
 Jesuit opinion, dimissory letters were obtained from the Bishop of his 
 native city, and he was anointed at Lucca with the sacred chrisom, and 
 made a " priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedek." 
 
 It has been stated that, shortly after his ordination, he was sent by 
 his Bishop, the Right Rev. Dr. Murphy, to join the Cork Mission ; and 
 that he not only did so, but acted for a time as chaplain to one of the 
 hospitals in his native city, during the period of the cholera visitation, in 
 1832. Mr. Kent, his biographer, denies the truth of this, and asserts 
 that, as a matter of fact, he never visited Cork after his confirmation ; 
 but an apparently well-informed writer speaks of his having " zealously 
 faced death for his people," in those terrible days, and terms Mr. Kent's 
 denial of the fact " a painful error." f 
 
 * The Clongownian, a short-lived monthly periodical, published permissu Su- 
 geriorum. 
 
 f Mr, George Noble Plunkett, in Hibernki, February 1st, 1882. 
 
 2 H 
 
466 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Finding himself again in congenial London, where he occasionally 
 said Mass, and preached from the pulpit of the Spanish Ambassador's 
 Chapel, or did occasional duty for that same worthy, Dr. Magee, who 
 was dubbed by O'Connell " the Abbot of Westminster," Father Mahony 
 lost little time in enrolling himself, under the auspices of his townsman, 
 Maginn, the responsible editor of Frasefs Magazine, among that brilliant 
 brotherhood, who had crowned Regina queen of the " monthlies," and 
 made her, in wit, learning, vigour, originality and audacity, the rival in 
 London of the renowned Ebony of Edinburgh, notwithstanding its start 
 of thirteen years. 
 
 It was then, that, under the character of "Father Prout,"* the "lone 
 incumbent of Watergrasshill," a worthy pendant of that immortal priest 
 of a sister communion, the " Vicar of Wakefield," the creation of a country- 
 man of our Padre^ appeared the first of those papers, which, sparkling 
 with wit, humour, scholarship and classical illustration, at once obtained 
 for their author a foremost place among those who were contributing to 
 the lighter and more elegant literature of the time. This was in April, 
 1834, when the "Apology for Lent," recording the death, obsequies and 
 elegy, in rhyming Leonines, of the shrewd and simple priest, whose 
 colloquium mensale the essay professed to embody, burst, as a distinct 
 revelation, upon the reading public ; and thenceforth, month by month, 
 through twenty-four nearly consecutive numbers of Fraser, the "Reliques" 
 continued to appear, and formed a chief and distinctive attraction of the 
 magazine. 
 
 Mahony had just entered upon his fourth decade when he was thus at 
 once admitted to the foremost rank among that remarkable band of wits 
 and scholars that formed the court of REGINA. His contributions were 
 well described by James Hannay as " a piquant mixture of toryism, classi- 
 cism, sarcasm and punch." He showed his love for the classic authors, 
 as the same able writer so admirably puts it, " as a father shows his love 
 for his children, by playing with them " ; and at the same time he proved 
 that his mastery over French and Italian was not less precise and familiar. 
 These acquirements were evinced in the May number, which contained his 
 second article, " A Plea for Pilgrimages," in which appeared, as a triple 
 polyglot, the immortal " Groves of Blarney." The original words of this 
 celebrated ballad, if I may so term it, were written by a well-known 
 wit of his day, Dick Millikin, of Cork, also author of the equally popular 
 song, "Saint Patrick was a Gentleman," and had been introduced by 
 the admirable comic actor, Tyrone Power, into Lord Glengall's farce,. 
 The Irish Tutor. The Greek version, in rhyming Anacreontics, was 
 not the work of Mahony, but was written by Serjeant Murphy, who at 
 Clongowes Wood, and Trinity College, Dublin, was admitted to be facile 
 princeps in his command over the language of the Teian. Mahony, him- 
 self, has the credit of the Latin and French renderings ; to which, at the 
 time, was appended the fragment of a version in Celtic, which purported 
 to have been transcribed from a MS. in the Royal Library at Copenhagen. 
 Five and twenty years later, he produced an Italian translation, which he 
 stated to have been sung by Garibaldi, in May, 1859, when bivouacking 
 
 * There was, it may not be amiss to record, a real Father Andrew Prout, who was 
 many years, say from 1800 to 1834, the year of his death, parish priest of Watergrass- 
 hill, a village about ssven miles from Cork. He was an intimate friend, and frequent 
 visitor, of the Mahony family, and only remarkable for his quiet, simple manners. 
 
REV. FRANCIS MAHONY. 467 
 
 in the woods about Lake Como. This version, " I Boschi di Blarnea," 
 I look for in vain in the collected Reliques, though Mr. Sheehan pro- 
 nounces it one of the best things that Mahony has ever done, and that 
 more than one educated Italian have declared it to be "perfection." It 
 should certainly be given with the others, if only in justice to the poly- 
 lingual translator, who has, by this latest addition, presented us with the 
 quaint Irish song so " disguised in the picked phrases of Catullus and 
 Rndar, of BeVanger and Ariosto, that the Muses of all nations seem 
 dancing a jig in a motley masquerade." 
 
 The next piece, the hilarious report of "Father Prout's Carousal," 
 appeared in the number for June, 1834 ; and for the greater part of this 
 the Padre was also indebted to his old Clongowes pupil, Murphy, writing 
 as "Frank Cresswell, of Furnival's Inn." Three odes, at least, had been 
 contributed by this coadjutor to the earlier " Prout Papers " ; and there can 
 be little doubt that the fine rhyming Latin sapphics * into which Camp- 
 bell's " Battle of Hohenlinden " was upset at the " Carousal," were also 
 the production of the young Irish barrister. Some of the " Prout Papers," 
 like many of the " Bon Gaultier Ballads," were the happy result of joint 
 handiwork ; and it is as difficult in the former case, as in the latter, to 
 apportion the authorship. There were contributions certainly also by 
 Maginn, whose command of Latin, classical and canine, was equal to that 
 of " Prout " ; but as I can offer nothing beyond conjecture, I will not attempt 
 to identify, and leave the " Doctor" and others to echo the plaintive lines 
 of the prince of Latin poets, when Bathyllus bore away the honours that 
 belonged to himself. The method and style, however, of Prout are so 
 marked that it is not difficult to distinguish his versions from those of 
 his collaborators. Voltaire somewhere says, I quote from memory, 
 " Malheur aux traductions litterales, c'est la. vraijnent bu lalettre tue"y\ 
 and Mahony has conformed to the implied rule in its utmost significance, 
 with the result that, rather than a mere translator, he is to be considered a 
 free and diffuse, though brilliant, paraphrast. 
 
 The fourth paper appeared in Fraser for July, 1834, under the title of 
 " Dean Swift's Madness : a Tale of a Churn." Here the Padre points out, 
 without, however, formulating a charge of plagiarism, that the fine image 
 of the Eagle, stricken by a dart feathered from his own wing, to which 
 Byron likens the premature death by over-study of Kirke- White, in his 
 eloquent apostrophe to that poet, in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 
 had been previously employed by " a young French poet, who died in early 
 life, worn out by his own fervour." Mahony might have gone further, and 
 shown how the same impressive figure was used by yEschylus, in his 
 powerful fragment, MTPMIAONE2 ; by Waller ; by Sir Roger L'Estrange ; 
 by Tom Moore, in his poem " Corruption ; " and others, till it has become 
 common property. I enlarge upon the matter here, because Mr. Charles 
 Kent, the editor of the last edition of the Reliques, has fallen into an error 
 in speaking of the " young French poet " as a " purely imaginary " being, 
 and supposing that the French verses were Prout's own composition. The 
 " wolf" sometimes comes, let the shepherd raise a false cry never so often ; 
 
 * The reader may like to be reminded of the version, in classical Latin Alcaics, 
 "Proelium Lindenium," of the Rev. William Fellowes, A.M., in the Sabrince Corolla 
 (1850, 8vo), p. 155. 
 
 f I hold, nevertheless, with Dr. Johnson, that, "the less a translator changes in 
 his original beyond the language, the better." 
 
468 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 and on this occasion the poet cited had an actual existence. Charles 
 Lionet de Chenedolle', the author of the lines in question, 
 
 " Souvent il meurt brule de ces celestes feux . . . 
 Tel quelquefois l'oiseau du souverain des dieux, 
 L'aigle, tombe du haut des plaines immortelles, 
 Brule' du foudre qu'il portait sous ses ailes ! " 
 
 was born at Vire in 1769, was " Inspecteur de FAcadernie de Caen," 
 and in 1830, " Inspecteur General de 1' University," and died in 1833. 
 
 Passing from this paper, I come to that which, in several respects, 
 must be considered the most remarkable of the Reliques. This is the one 
 entitled "The Rogueries of Tom Moore " z.jeu d'esfirit which certainly 
 constitutes one of the most audacious jokes, the wickedest literary impo- 
 sitions, ever conceived or perpetrated by reckless scholiast, or mischief- 
 loving wit. As an able critic says of Prout generally, " he was above all 
 a humorist, all his gifts and acquirements run to humour ; and it is 
 humour thoroughly Irish, in its brilliance, its extravagance, and its way- 
 wardness of fanciful epigram, a kind of practical joking in literature, as 
 if he pulled a curule chair from under you, just when you were going to 
 sit down, or put attic garlic into your omelette when your back was 
 turned." All this is especially applicable to the paper I am speaking of, 
 which, if we read it with implicit credence to the artless " Prout," and no 
 granum salts to qualify the flavour, we should be led to the conclusion 
 that the Irish Melodies had been foreshadowed, either in the French 
 of the unfortunate Marquis de Cinq-Mars, or the Comtesse de Chateau- 
 briand, in the Latin of the Pretaccio himself, or in the Greek of one 
 Stcek/cos MoptyiSris, an " obscure Greek poet, who composed an ode on 
 whiskey or negus, somewhere about the sixteenth Olympiad, from which 
 Moore borrowed his ' Wreathe the bowl, with flowers of soul/ etc." * 
 
 A hundred years before, a daring attempt had been made by the 
 notorious William Lauder to convict Milton himself of the grossest 
 imitation and plagiarism. Selecting passages from certain obscure modern 
 Latin poets, omitting lines which did not suit him, and interpolating 
 others which did, either of his own composition, or taken from Hogg's 
 translation of Paradise Lost, he endeavoured to show that Milton, in 
 many cases, was a mere translator.! Douglas, afterwards Bishop of Salis- 
 bury, took up the defence, and conclusively exposed the malignity and 
 dishonesty of the attempt % (which had received, moreover, such authority 
 as the name of Samuel Johnson could give it), and threw its author into 
 irretrievable discredit and contempt. Thus, if the object and mode of 
 Lauder differed from those of Prout, so did the result of his ingenious 
 machinations 
 
 " tile CRUCEM tulit, Mc DIADEMA " 
 
 The one had to leave his native country in disgrace, and seek a new home 
 in a distant colony, where he lived in poverty and died in misery ; while 
 the other has left a name which will ever gather new fame as it 
 
 * These clever Anacreontics were contributed to _Prout's paper by his literary 
 collaborator, F. Stack Murphy. 
 
 f An Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns in his " Paradise Lost" 
 (London, 1750, 8vo). 
 
 % Milton Vindicated from the Charge of Plagiarism brought against him by Mr. 
 Lauder, and Lauder himself convicted of" several Forgeries and gross Impositions on the 
 Public, by John Douglas, M.A., etc. (London, 1751, 8vo). 
 
 
REV. FRANCIS MAHONY. 46^ 
 
 " along the stream of Time . . . 
 
 Expanded flies." 
 
 But this was not the only occasion on which the originality of " the 
 little lascivious butterfly," as Sheridan termed Moore, has been im- 
 pugned. In a very racy and genial tome, Brallaghan, or the Deipno- 
 sophists, written by the late Edward Kenealy (London, 1845, 8vo), is a 
 paper entitled " The Plagiarisms of Tom Moore," in which the " rogueries " 
 of the small man are further illustrated through some forty pages, and by 
 means of fifty-six very curious instances of what must be considered 
 literary or poetical coincidences. But the writer regards them in a more 
 unfavourable light. " Moore's plagiarisms," says he, " are intolerable. 
 There is not a single original thought, conception, metaphor or image, in 
 the whole range of his works, from the Posthumous Poems of Tom 
 Little to his last dying speech, The Travels of an Irish Gentleman in 
 Search of a Religion. Even the title of this nonsense is stolen from 
 Erasmus's Peregrinatio Religionis ergo. The man is an indefatigable 
 thief. He has laid under contribution every imaginable book, from the 
 biography of his namesake, Tom Thumb, to the portly folios of the fathers 
 of the Church. Perfectly unscrupulous in his marauding expeditions, and 
 impartial in his attacks, he is found at one moment rifling a saint, and in 
 the next pillaging a sinner. Every outpouring from the wells of literature 
 has brought grist to his mill, and now that he has filled his bags, he laughs 
 at the world, clothes himself in sackcloth and ashes for his youthful mis- 
 deeds, and exhibits to the profane another incident for the chapter of 
 literary curiosities ; an incident which perhaps has no parallel namely, 
 that of commencing life with the most disgusting pruriency, and closing 
 it with drivelling polemics." 
 
 In all this, as in the more elaborated attack of " Father Prout," it was 
 the Politician that was aimed at through the Poet. Whigs, Radicals,, 
 Utilitarians, and all similis farincz homines, were regarded by the Conser- 
 vative Fraserians as malignant enemies of Church and State, miscreants 
 devoid of all moral principle, and upon whom, pour surcroit, Providence 
 had set the seal of physical hideousness and deformity. Thus, Tom 
 Moore, who, with Sydney Smith and others, had used similar weapons 
 with infinite grace and skill, now became, in his turn, an appropriate 
 butt, as the pet, the wit, the laureated satirist, of Holland House and the 
 great Whig party. 
 
 The witty little volume to which I have alluded is now scarce ; but it 
 is well worth hunting up as the work of a Corcagian and a Fraserian, and 
 a meet companion for the Reliques. 
 
 But the special paper which has seduced me into the short excursus 
 from which I return, is again remarkable as containing the little poem 
 which is the best known among Mahony's few metrical compositions. 
 This is the beautiful Horatian ode, " The Shandon Bells," a piece in 
 which the author has attempted, as Millikin had previously done in his 
 " Groves of Blarney," to transfer to the English language the constantly 
 recurring assonantal or vowel rhymes of the original Irish songs.* The 
 verses are characterized by that easy and skilled mastery of rhythm which 
 is only acquired by long and careful practice, and informed by a tender- 
 ness of sentiment, and feeling of home-love, the more captivating, because, 
 * Dr. Petrie's Ancient Memoirs qf Ireland, vol. i. p. 2 ; Bourke's College Irish 
 Grammar, p. 243. 
 
470 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 to some extent, unsuspected. But it is well to avoid that exaggeration of 
 eulogy which so surely brings on reactionary judgment, and admit at once 
 that the verses, which have certain structural defects of their own, are 
 quaint, mellifluous and pathetic, but, in no sense grand or sublime. They 
 are included by Crofton Croker in his Popular Songs of Ireland (p. 236) ; 
 and will ever be read with interest from their subjective relation to their 
 author, who now slumbers within shadow of the spire which contains the 
 " Bells " of which he has sung with such loving grace and pathos. The 
 church to which it belongs is built on the ruins of the old castle of 
 Shandon, and has been described as being " for its dimensions probably 
 the most repulsive edifice ever reared by human hands." The spire itself 
 is a prominent object from whatever side the wayfarer approaches Cork, 
 the " beautiful." At its foot repose, as the poet himself informs us, " some 
 generations of his kith and kin ; " and thus we may suppose that it was 
 with tender reminiscence and warm affection that he composed this 
 exquisite lyric, instinct with a mingled power and sweetness hardly to be 
 surpassed in their own way, and which invest with a new and enduring 
 interest the crumbling old tower which contains those 
 
 " Bells of Shandon, 
 
 That sound so grand on 
 The pleasant waters 
 
 Of the river Lee." 
 
 "There is nothing, after all," says Prout, "like the associations which 
 early infancy attaches to the well-known and long-remembered chimes of 
 our own parish steeple ; and no magic can equal the effect on our ear, 
 when returning after long absence in foreign, and perhaps happier, 
 countries." 
 
 I need not attempt to analyse minutely the contents of a book so well 
 known, and so readily procurable, as the Reliqties. Not the least interest- 
 ing of the papers, one of the most genial in tone and richest in illustration, 
 is that in which Mahony so loyally eulogizes the JESUITS, points out 
 the services which they have performed for literature and education, and 
 expresses in the words of Cicero {Pro Archia poet.), his entire indebted- 
 ness to them for his own attainments and reputation ; " Si quid est in 
 meingenii, judices (et sentio quam sit exiguum), si quae exercitatio ab 
 optimarum artium disciplinis profecta, earum rerum fructum, sibi, suo 
 jure, debent repetere." In this paper, too, occurs his excellent " upset- 
 ting" into English Hudibrastics, of the humorous poem, " Vert- Vert ;" 
 the story of the talkative Parrot of the Visitandines of Nevers, from the 
 French of the " friend of his youth, whose sincerity and kindness will 
 ever be embalmed in his memory," the accomplished Jesuit, J. B. Louis 
 Gresset, " the best specimen of graceful harmless humour in the liters 
 ture of France " : 
 
 "Alas ! what evils I discern in 
 Too great an aptitude for learning ! 
 And fain would all the ills unravel 
 That aye ensue from foreign travel ; 
 Far happier is the man who tarries 
 Quiet within his household ' Lares ' ; 
 Read, and you'll find how virtue vanishes, 
 How foreign vice all goodness banishes, 
 And how abroad young heads will grow dizzy, 
 Proved in the underwritten Odyssey." 
 
REV. FRANCIS MAHONY. 471 
 
 We now have "The Songs of France," illustrated in four consecu- 
 tive chapters ; two dissertations on " The Songs of Italy ; and a paper 
 now called " Barry in the Vatican," instead of, as originally, " Notte 
 Romane nel Palazzo Vaticano," from which, it is well to mention, the 
 latest editor, Mr. Kent, has " struck out with the scorn to which they are 
 alone entitled," certain " flippant remarks " in which " the great master of 
 fiction who had but just then created a soul under the ribs of death by 
 repeopling with pagan life the disentombed solitudes of Pompeii, was 
 insolently denounced for what was in reality an achievement in literature, 
 as though he had been guilty, on the contrary, of perpetrating some high 
 crime and misdemeanour." * 
 
 " The Days of Erasmus," illustrating no less happily the life and 
 times of that 
 
 " glory of the priesthood, and the shame," 
 
 than Charles Reade has subsequently done in The Cloister and the 
 Hearth, appeared in the ensuing number of Fraser (May, 1835). Then 
 came an essay on "Victor Hugo's Lyrical Poetry," prefaced by a 
 criticism on the Notre Dame de Paris of that writer; followed by a 
 triad of pleasantly learned dissertations on the " Modern Latin Poets," 
 illustrated by singularly felicitous renderings from the " Bombyx " of 
 Hieronymus Vida, the " Apes Barberinse " of Sarbievius, the " Prse- 
 dium Rusticum " of Vaniere, and the fine ode to Henry II. of France, 
 11 Post Victos Galetes," of George Buchanan. 
 
 In Fraser for March, 1836, appeared "Father Prout's Self Exa- 
 mination," a half serious, half comic, introspective review of the doings 
 and writings of the supposititious " priest of the upland." Then (July, 
 1836) came the first of the five papers on "The Songs of Horace," con- 
 taining the admirable version of the 9th Ode of the 1st Book, "Ad 
 Thaliarchum," 
 
 " Vides ut alta stet nive candidum 
 Soracte," 
 
 in which, as has been happily said, " not only the words, but the thoughts 
 and feelings underlying them, have been caught and echoed back in 
 another tongue to a very miracle." The last instalment of " The Songs 
 of Horace" (Fraser, December, 1836), is also the last of the "Prout 
 Papers." 
 
 Besides these longer Menippean essays, there will be found, either in 
 Fraser or in Bentley, various minor lyrical pieces of great beauty, nearly 
 a score of which have been collected by the last editor of the Reliques, 
 under the heading of " Miscellaneous Pieces." The first number of 
 Bentle/ s Miscellany appeared in January, 1837, under the editorship 
 of Charles Dickens ; and contained no fewer than four contributions 
 by Mahony, "The Bottle of St. Januarius," "The Sabine Farmer's 
 Serenade" (with the delicious Latin version of Hudson's "Barney 
 Brallaghan's Courtship," the only good Irish song, say the Irish, that 
 has ever been written by a Saxon), the " Hot Wells of Clifton " (a triglot 
 ode " in praise of Rum-punch," purporting to have been " picked up " in 
 the Holborn garret where Chatterton died, by an Irish housemaid), 
 
 * The reader, curious to see the passage thus eliminated, which of course relates 
 to Bulwer, is referred to Fraser s Magazine for April, 1835. 
 
472 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 and the so-called "Original of l Not a Drum was heard'" (of which 
 more anon). These pieces are happily characterized in an editorial foot- 
 note by " Boz," himself : " Our Watergrasshill correspondent," says he, 
 " will find scattered throughout our pages the other fragments of the 
 defunct Padre which he has placed at our disposal. Every chip from so 
 brilliant an old block may be said to possess a lustre peculiarly its own ; 
 hence, we may not fear to disperse them up and down our Miscellany. 
 They are gems of the purest whiskey." " In this way," adds Mr. Kent, 
 "the opening leaves of the new periodical refreshingly sparkled with 
 mountain dew." These poetical "fragments" purported to be trans- 
 mitted by " Teddy O'Dryskull, Schoolmaster at Watergrasshill " ; who 
 veraciously states that the Reliques of " the late P. P. of this parish his 
 soul to glory ! " had been sent down from Dublin, for the use of his boys, 
 by order of the National Education Board, " with directions to cram the 
 spalpeens all at once with such a power of knowledge that they may 
 forget the hunger, which plan, between you and me (though I say it 
 that oughtn't) is all bladderwn-skate : for, as Juvenal maintains -jejunus 
 stomachus, etc., etc., an empty bag won't stand ; you must first fill it 
 with praties." Among these pieces may also be mentioned, " Burns and 
 Beranger ; " " Lover and Ovid ; " and " The Redbreast of Aquitania," a 
 touching ballad remonstrance to Harrison Ainsworth, who had " left the 
 the tale of Crichton half-told, and had taken up with ' Blue Skin,' ' Jack 
 Sheppard,' ' Flitches of Bacon,' and ' Lancashire Witches,' and thought 
 such things were 'literature !'" 
 
 But his displeasure against his literary ward, for such Prout con- 
 sidered Ainsworth to be, was not always expressed in so refined tone;, 
 or verses of like melodious tenderness. In 1842 had come the blow-up in 
 " Burlingtown " (Burlington Street), the secession of George Cruikshank, 
 and the " dis-Bentleyfication " of Ainsworth,* all of which necessarily 
 awoke the ire of the Padre and the bibliopole. Hence, " The Redbreast 
 of Aquitania : an humble Ballad," which appeared in the Miscellany 
 (1842, vol. xi. p. 144). But this allegorical apostrophe to the "gentle 
 Sheppard," was as the letting out of water. I hardly see why Prout's 
 " piece of lacrymose ornithology on the subject of * Who killed Cock 
 Robin ? ' " as " Mr. Buller of Brazennose " termed it, should have given 
 much annoyance to Ainsworth or his allies, for the tone of the " Red- 
 breast," is complimentary rather than contemptuous. But the novelist 
 thought some kind of " retort courteous " was necessary ; and accordingly 
 there appeared in his Magazine (vol. i. p. 190), a clever imitation, or 
 parody, of Prout's verses, under the title of " The Magpie of Marwood : 
 an humble Ballade," with the " Spanish proverb," as text, " Dios me 
 guarde de mis amigos ! " At the conclusion of this we get, with the 
 
 * ' ' Within yon sunless cage, through many a year, 
 The imperial bird hath droop'd, . . . 
 
 But thou . . . 
 
 Off from thy eagle spirit hast dash'd aside, 
 Lightly as Samson's withe, the unworthy chain, 
 Ainsworth I joy to see thee now sustain 
 Thy self-borne course ! thou art dis-Bentleyjied / " 
 
 Ainsworth' s Magazine, i. 191* 
 
REV. FRANCIS MAHONY. 4V3- 
 
 initials of Ainsworth, " L'Envoi to Father Prout and Richard Bentley," of 
 which the former, with its marginal commentary, only concerns us ; 
 
 "Father Prout, incited , To the man of r h yme , 
 
 byy< scurvie booksellerre Train'H in far rlimp 
 
 Dickon, abuse ih, in dri- ^ V u, * 
 
 vellinge rhymes, his olde Whose gifts sublime 
 friende, at whose boarde, His soul exalt 
 
 in bygone dayes, he hathe Above the respect, 
 
 often caroused jollilie. Which the Turks (blind sect !), 
 
 A warninge to alle men Axe t to connect 
 
 /Zites." P f m With bread and salt '" 
 
 It takes two, proverbially, to "make a quarrel ,; ; and here we have the 
 needful factor. We get hints farther on in the serial (p. 261), that the 
 Padre was smarting under his recent " castigation," and was " breathing 
 vengeance." This soon took tangible form. In the same volume of 
 Bentley^ in which the " Redbreast " had appeared, came from his pen a 
 comico-satirico burlesque of very different character, and pervaded by 
 a spirit of the most cruel sarcasm, ridicule and contempt. It is entitled 
 " The Cruel Murder of Old Father Prout by a Barber's Apprentice : a 
 Legend of Modern Latherature^ by Mr. Duller, of Pewternose " ; and 
 extends over six magazine pages. The purport of the ribald doggrel is 
 that " a flashy lad from Manchester, called Billy " (Ainsworth), had been 
 articled to a famous court barber (Bentley) ; but that his tonsorial master 
 had to get rid of him, in consequence of his propensity for "tedious 
 yarns all ending in a halter," and "maudlin tales of cut-throats." There- 
 upon, the misguided youth resolved to set up a barber's shop, " however 
 cheap and nasty," on his own account ; and so it was that 
 
 " the Cockneys, with amaze, saw bill-stickers placarding 
 
 The palisades with ' Ainsworth' s easy shave for twopence farden : 
 
 Try the new shaving-shop ! ' was scrawled from Camberwell to Holborn, 
 
 A touch of art beyond the skill of Bentley, Tait or Colburn." 
 
 Now came the time to ask the question 
 
 "Where was old Father Prout? alas ! far off beyond Mount Cenis, 
 Or, on the Danube or the Rhone, at Athens or at Venice ; 
 And, while his boy bad counsel took from Grant, the penny-a-liner, 
 The Pere, who might have guided him, was away in Asia Minor." 
 
 But news of what his pupil was doing reached him when in Gascony ; 
 and 
 
 *' when he heard ... of all his latherary frolics, 
 
 Of his funny Cruikshank georgies, and his Kensal Green bucolics," 
 
 he kindly dispatched to him " A wholesome Warning, from Nostradamus," * 
 entitled, " The Ides of March," in which the quatrain occurs : 
 
 " Keep your temper besides, or beware of the Ides, 
 And of perils periodical ; 
 Keep your fingers aloof from the bellows of ' PUFF,' 
 And of self-praise be less prodigal ! " 
 
 * Nostradamus, celebrated for his True Prophecies and Prognostications (" Trans- 
 lated and Commented by Theophilus de Garencieres, Doctor in Physick, Colleg. Lond.," 
 London, 1674, folio), was Physician to Henry II., Francis II. and Charles IX. of 
 France. A distich upon him, attributed to Stephen Jodelle, would not have been an 
 inappropriate motto for Father Prout himself : 
 
 " Nostra damus cum falsa damus, nam fallere nostrum est ; 
 Et cum falsa damus, nil nisi nostra damus." 
 
*74 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Time went on : 
 
 ' ' From Eastern climes old Prout came home. Our Figaro (the Vandal) 
 Saw not the sacred dust of Greece adhering to his sandal ; 
 All that the barber's boy could see was that his chin was hairy, 
 And that a customer had come for his shave-shop latherary." 
 
 But Prout had misgivings, and in spite of "many a wheedling hint of 
 former days," 
 
 "Calmly deferred doffing his beard, till Bentley came, or Fraser," 
 
 and, in reply to all that was urged, and requested by the renegade 
 barber, 
 
 " ('twas all that passed between 'em), 
 
 The Father, puffing his chibouk, said ' Quaere peregrinum,' " 
 
 while he Angliasss in a footnote, " Look out for a greenhorn!" By all 
 which we are to understand, that Ainsworth wanted to seduce Prout from 
 Bentley, and enlist his services, enriched with the fruits of travel, for his 
 own Magazine. Failing in his attempt, the disappointed barber goes 
 back to his shop, 
 
 " but a dark chasm 
 
 Yawned in his gloomy soul, created by that gentle sarcasm," 
 
 and he lays a plan to murder Prout "by cutting his 'carotid?" In 
 pursuance of this diabolical scheme, he pens the following " smooth 
 cajoling billet-doux" to his old benefactor : 
 
 " Thrice welcome, honoured Father, from the land of Pipe and Turban ! 
 What say you to pot-luck here at my domicile suburban ? 
 Here you will meet one Buller, fresh from Brazennose, a gownsman, 
 And, if you list, I'll ask Maclise, your celebrated townsman." 
 
 The bait took : 
 
 1 ' Old Prout, who from his childhood with delight had met the latter, 
 Would with Maclise take bread and cheese, e'en from a barber's platter." 
 
 and so accepted the invitation, and went in blind confidence to " Ains- 
 worth's tent," where a disappointment awaited him : 
 
 " No painter came that day, an absence Prout thought of the oddest, he 
 Met only him of Brazen Nose, and him of brazen modesty, 
 Yet nothing loth, he sat with both, draining the tankard's fullness, 
 Till lull'd to soft oblivion by their joint-stock powers of dullness, 
 Gladly the gentle ' Sheppard ' seized the wished-for opportunity, 
 To wreak his plan on the old man, and burke him with impunity. 
 On his own hearth his hospitable carving-knife he whetted, 
 While Buller, hight of Brasennose, both aided and abbetted ; 
 To cut my story short, he, with his trencher-man and fugleler, 
 Remorseless cut the old man's throat, the trachea and the jugular /'* 
 
 The whole finishes up with : 
 
 "Latest Particulars. 
 " Non-apprehension of the Criminals! 
 " Up to the latest hour of post we've only time to mention 
 That the two murderers, dull rogues ! are hard of apprehension, 
 Indeed, the whole account itself seems very doubtful, very, 
 For we have seen Prout yesterday, he was alive and merry, 
 And if to tickle such small fry the old man thinks his pains worth , 
 We trust to have another laugh at Brazennose and Ainswouth." 
 
REV. FRANCIS MA HO NY. 475 
 
 Now all this, it may be fairly admitted, is coarse and brutal enough. 
 The thrusts are savage, the blade clumsy, and the edge jagged. With 
 keener weapon, with lighter stroke, but with even more lethal effect, would 
 Voltaire, to whom Prout has been likened, in his satire, have done 
 a similar deed. But Prout, apart from the truculence and malignity of 
 his satire, must have had some strong reason that we cannot get at now, 
 to make him so far forget himself as to reproduce, in footnotes, passages 
 requesting eulogistic notices and literary aid, from Ainsworth's private 
 letters ! He cannot be forgiven for this. It was a detestable act of 
 perfidy and meanness, which no provocation could justify, and which had 
 few examples, even in those days of literary licence and rowdyism, when, 
 if the hitting was hard, it was generally in front, and above the waist-band. 
 Besides the coarseness of the piece, it is obscure, more Proutico; and 
 read it as often as we may, we hardly catch its full bearing and signifi- 
 cance, and sometimes fail to see the fun of the thing. 
 
 Prout did not allow to pass unheeded the hint in Ainsworth's 
 "" L'Envoi," that he was unmindful of the obligations of commensality ; 
 but must have felt hardly put to it when his only defence was a " tu 
 quoque " retort. " This gentleman," says he, in a footnote to the poem 
 under discussion, " who talks so sentimentally of ' bread and salt,' puts 
 into the mouth of Lady Harriett D'Orsay certain significant lines,* which 
 no one believes were ever written by her. Has he forgotten that he was 
 fed at the table of Lady Blessington ? not, surely, for the sake of com- 
 panionship ? for a duller dog never sat at a convivial board." A " duller 
 dog " ! Had, then, the Padre, not to seek to penetrate his innuendo, so 
 soon forgotten the " bright spirit," the " child of air " whose literary 
 fate he had so tenderly bewailed in his " Redbreast ! ? of all his sad 
 thoughts 
 
 ' ' of one 
 
 Whom I well had known 
 In my earlier days, 
 
 Of a gentle mind, 
 
 Of a soul refined, 
 
 Of deserts designed 
 1 For the Palm of Praise ? " 
 
 Of a verity, here we have one of those cases, where, change of feeling 
 leading to change of opinion, is illustrated the advantage of having a 
 good memory ! 
 
 I am not aware that " The Cruel Murder " extorted any reply from 
 Ainsworth ; except, indeed, in an editorial notice to correspondents at 
 the back of page 379, of bis Magazine (November, 1842), where it is 
 pointed out that a poem entitled " The Praise of Porter," which had 
 appeared in the number of Be?itley for the preceding month, had unfor- 
 tunately been previously published in the Monthly Magazine for February. 
 " The only difference," writes the editor, il between the two versions of the 
 poem is, that Bentley's is decidedly inferior to the other, from certain 
 alterations which have been made in it, and which, slight as they are, have 
 affected its spirit ; while the long and stupid notes attached to it, would 
 seem to emanate from the Jesuit scribe who publishes his friend's private 
 letters, and who can perhaps explain how the verses came to be palmed 
 off as original on the stolid bookseller." 
 
 * See "A Sketch," by the Countess Harriette D'Orsay, Ainsworth's Magazine, 
 vol. i. p. 177. 
 
47 6 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 This truculent satire, " The Cruel Murder," finds no place among 
 the collected Reliquesj a fact which I hope will be held to justify the 
 lengthy excursus into which it has seduced me. At the same time, I have 
 no doubt that many will think that the editor has acted with sound taste 
 and judgment in excluding it. " One effusion," says he, " I have as care- 
 fully abstained from reproducing as I would shrink from allowing one of 
 the effigies from the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's to take 
 its place in a gallery of genuine works of art. I allude to a certain 
 revolting gibe entitled 'The Cruel Murder,' hurled, apparently in a 
 moment of aberration,* by Prout, like some chance missile picked up in 
 the kennel, at the comely head of one of his contemporaries who, until 
 then, had as freely and as frankly as any true gentleman could, inter- 
 changed with him the grip of the right hand of friendship. . . . Those were 
 times among literary belligerents for the flinging of vitriol, and the 
 wielding of bludgeons." But I must confess that, for my own part, 1 
 should not have been so reticent. Without such records the future 
 D'Israeli would lack materials for supplementary " Quarrels of Authors"; 
 and republication could do no harm, now, at least, that " Jesuit Prout " 
 and " Gentle Sheppard " have alike gone to their final rest, and the 
 literary acerbities that marred their friendship are allayed for ever in 
 the impervious seclusion of the grave : 
 
 " Hi motus animorum, atque haec certamina tanta, 
 Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt." 
 
 Among the more serious metrical pieces which Mahonyhas left behind 
 him to attest the capacity of his muse for higher flights, should not be 
 forgotten his beautiful and exquisitely finished poem, "The Mistletoe." 
 The burthen of this, the symbolical relation of the mystic parasite to 
 the advent of Christianity, he tells us was suggested by a no'el, or 
 Christmas carol, which he once heard sung in Brittany, where tradition 
 assigned the theory involved therein to a scholastic philosopher, a 
 Breton himself, the renowned and unfortunate Abelard. This appeared 
 in Bentlefs Miscellany for January, 1842, and may fairly be ranked 
 among those pieces which, like Parnell's " Hermit," Pomfret's " Choice," 
 Smollett's " Ode to Independence," Wolfe's " Burial of Sir John Moore," 
 Key's " Star-Spangled Banner," Brydges's sonnet, " Echo and Silence," 
 and some few others, must be held to constitute their authors poets, 
 even if they have written nothing else, or nothing worth remembering. 
 If these fine verses have a fault, it is a certain complexity and obscurity 
 of meaning which we often meet with in the compositions of their author. 
 But if they require some close study to enable us to pluck the heart out 
 of their mystery, they are not of the kind which weary by iteration, 
 decies repetita filacebmit; and, with their condensation of thought and 
 suggestiveness of imagery, are worthy of being read anniversarily, 
 wherever poetry is loved, and Christmas held in honour. 
 
 In December, 1837, Mahony, who, as we have seen, was a contributor 
 
 * I differ here from Mr. Kent, who seems to think that Prout, in this miserable 
 attack, was impar sibi. It was in no " moment of aberration," but in fjialice prepe?ise i 
 that he " hurled the gibe " at the head of his former host ; it was no " chance missile 
 picked up in the kennel," but one that bore a mark, like a backwoodsman's bullet, to 
 indicate whence it came. Nothing could be more characteristic of the man and his 
 temper, Ex ungue, leoneml 
 
 
REV. FRANCIS MAHONY. 477 
 
 to the initial page of the initial number of Bent ley, indited from "Genoa, 
 the Superb," "A Poetical Epistle from Father Prout to Boz," which 
 appeared in the first number of the same serial for the ensuing year ; 
 
 " Write on, young sage 1 
 
 Still o'er the page 
 Pour forth the flood of fancy ; 
 
 Divinely droll ! 
 
 Wave o'er the soul 
 Wit's wand of necromancy. 
 
 Behold ! e'en now 
 
 Around your brow 
 Th' undying laurel thickens I 
 
 For Swift or Sterne 
 
 Might live and learn 
 A thing or two from Dickens ! " 
 
 With similar feelings of personal attachment and admiration, twenty- 
 three years later, when, in January, i860, Thackeray, that well-loved 
 friend and ally of old Fraserian days, started a cheap shilling magazine 
 of his own to rival the old half-crown ones, Mahony contributed "An 
 Inaugural Ode to the author of Vanity Fair," which appeared in the 
 commencing number of the Cornhill Magazine, the allegorical design 
 on the cover of which he is also said to have suggested. But this song 
 of welcome, as we now have it, differs greatly from the " Inaugurative 
 Ode" as originally written by Mahony, the first draft of which is before 
 me. This somehow did not please the fastidious taste of Thackeray, 
 and he accordingly sent it back to Mahony with MS. additions, alterations 
 and the following jocular introductory verse : 
 
 "Friend, hereby I acknowledge, 
 (From my apartment near the Irish college 
 
 In Paris the Imperial) 
 Thy letter of advertisements the oddest ; 
 
 What ? Thou dost not aspire 
 
 To set the Thames on fire ? 
 How modest 1 
 Still, I say welcome to thy Cornhill cereal, 
 
 Of wit there's sad inopia, 
 So prythee empty out thy Coruncopia." 
 
 I give this because, not having been adopted by Mahony, it does not 
 form part of the "Ode," as we now have it in the Cornhill, and the 
 Reliques. Many, however, of Thackeray's suggestions were carried out ; 
 with the result, that the piece, if not exactly in the case of Sir John 
 Cutler's black worsted stockings, in the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblems, 
 which had been darned with silk so often that none of the original fabric 
 remained, smacks as strongly of " Titmarsh " as of " Prout," in the more 
 highly finished, if, somewhat weakened, form in which we now see it. 
 (Appendix H.) 
 
 I have reserved to the last, and for special mention, zjeu d'esftrit, which, 
 as one of Prout's most successful efforts in the way of mystification, has 
 excited a large amount of attention ; and, indeed, is termed his chef 
 dceuvre by the " Irish Whiskey Drinker." This is the piece of which I 
 have already spoken, entitled " The Original of ' Not a Drum was heard' " ; 
 in which the veridical Padre, in an equal number of French quatrains, 
 kindly undertook to "put the public on the right scent," as to the 
 
47 8 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 11 origin " of the well-known poem, " On the Burial of Sir John Moore/ 7 
 This noble ode, which Byron pronounced one of the finest in the 
 language, which Goethe said 'was one of the most impressive he had 
 ever read, and which Prout himself speaks of as " unparallelled in the 
 English language for all the qualities of a true lyric, breathing the purest 
 spirit of the antique, and setting criticism completely at defiance," has 
 had a singular fate. No fact in literature is better ascertained than that 
 it was the production of a native of Dublin, the Rev. Charles Wolfe, A.B., 
 Curate of Donoughmore, in the Diocese of Armagh, who died February 
 2 1 st, 1823, in the thirty-second year of his age ; and in whose Remains* 
 edited by the Rev. John A, Russell, M.A., Archdeacon of Clogher, of 
 which there are many editions, it will be found, with a full detail of the 
 circumstances under which it was composed. Yet notwithstanding this, 
 the authorship of the poem seems always under question ; and the 
 claimants are more numerous than the towns which squabbled about the 
 nativity of Homer. In this manner, it has been claimed for "Doctor" 
 Marshall, a Durham "Vet,"* for a Mr. Macintosh,! an Edinburgh, 
 student, for Lord Byron, himself, for some anonymous German, who 
 wrote it, it is averred, in honour of the Swedish hero, Torstenson, who 
 fell at the siege of Dantzic,t and lastly {teste Father Prout) for a French 
 poet, unknown to fame, who composed it in commemoration of a " Breton 
 officer," Colonel de Beaumanoir, who was shot, in 1749, at the siege of 
 Pondicherry : Fides sit penes lectorem, wishes the Padre / 
 
 It is with the last attribution that I have alone to do. We are told 
 that these French verses, " which bear some resemblance to those 
 attributed to Wolfe," are to be found in the appendix to the Memoirs of 
 Lally Tolendal by his son, and were possibly, it is hinted, communicated 
 to the young Irish clergyman by his relative, Theobald Wolfe Tone, on his 
 return from France, and thereupon translated into English. But this 
 external evidence does not bear examination. Pondicherry was not 
 taken in 1749, the date assigned by Prout to the death of the French 
 colonel, but in 1761 ; and I feel sure that the verses will be sought for 
 in vain in any of the pamphlets published by the Count Lally Tolendal, 
 many of which are before me, on the affair of his unfortunate and ill- 
 used father. 
 
 But the internal evidence is still more conclusive against the 
 originality of the French version. I hold it as an axiom that no oner 
 can possess two languages in equal perfection. One he will know as 
 native, and the other as acquired; a distinction which will still remain, 
 even if practice has reversed the appellations. It may be possible, I 
 do not say that it is, that a man may get to speak an acquired language 
 as perfectly as if it were his mother tongue ; but by the time that he has 
 
 * This was a mere hoax, set on foot by Mr. Crighton, a solicitor of Newcastle-on- 
 Tyne, Mr. J. H. Dixon, and others. See the Courier, November 3rd, 1824, where 
 the claim is made, and the Morning Chronicle, where the imposture is exposed. The 
 line in the Ingoldsby parody, " With his Marshall cloak around him," refers to the 
 North Country "vet," whose habits were convivial rather than literary. Other poetic 
 claims were made for him ; as, for instance, "The Prisoner's Prayer to Sleep," the 
 authorship of which was thereupon avowed by Professor Wilson. See the Borderer's 
 Table-Book, vii. 195-205. 
 
 t See the Athenceum, 1841, No. 700, p. 243. 
 
 % General Torstenson, by the way, died comfortably in his bed, and his monument 
 is to be seen in a Church at Stockholm. 
 
REV. FRANCIS MA HO NY. 47 ^ 
 
 arrived at this, he will have lost just so much of the latter, and speak 
 and write it, as if it were acquired. Hence it is no disparagement to 
 Mahony's linguistic acquirements, seeing that he had lost none of his 
 own vernacular, to say that if he was a Frenchman among Irishmen, he 
 was an Irishman among Frenchmen. Thus his version, with beauties of 
 its own which not one Frenchman out of a hundred could have thrown 
 into it, has faults, faults of prosody, syntax, grammar and idiom, which 
 not one Frenchman out of a hundred would have committed. To quote 
 the comment of a native : " Elle est sans doute tres-incorrecte, par 
 endroits, mais elle a parfois aussi un fier accent." What Frenchman, for 
 instance, would have employed the verb " fixer," in the sense of " re- 
 garder," in the fourth stanza ? And what skilled French versifier, " to 
 the manner born," would have written the line 
 
 " Nommer l'illustre mort d'un ton amer ou fol," 
 
 where the word at the end is a mere expletive to rhyme with " sol ; " 
 and, with other anomalies, indicates, beyond question, the "versio 
 Proutica " ? As a writer says in Ulniermidiaire^ where the vexed 
 question has been pretty closely hunted up, "Mieux vandrait du bas- 
 breton que ce frangais qui a l'air de la traduction a cote* de l'anglais,. 
 lequel a Fair de l'original. . . . Les stances anglaises s'appliquent 
 litteralement au heros dout elles racontent les funeVailles, et sont 
 incomparablement supdrieures aux stances franchises et allemandes ; 
 eufin elles ont seules la male simplicity dantesque qui les fit attribuer 
 a Lord Byron."* But still, in the minds of many, the author- 
 ship is not definitely settled. M. Ame'de'e Pichot f says : " Le dernier 
 mot de l'enigme n'est pas encore dit"; and the subject crops up once 
 again in the Sixfiemiy Magazine (p. 350), where, under the title of "A. 
 Curiosity of Literature," the old charge of plagiarism against Wolfe is 
 revived, and the three versions, English, German and French, given 
 for comparison. The paper concludes : " An attentive consideration of 
 the three poems will show, not only that they are so much like one 
 another that each of them might be considered a translation of the other, 
 but also that both the French and English translations (for the German 
 ode being the oldest one, the other poems are of course translations) 
 were made with consummate ability ; in both of them, despite the 
 difficulties presented by the dissimilarities of the respective languages, 
 the characteristic tone of the original is most happily imitated, and the 
 peculiar rhythm of the German poem, which the French translator 
 must have found extremely difficult, is so faithfully rendered, that the 
 music of the three poems, if we may say so, is equally striking and 
 impressive." 
 
 A second German version, of equal spirit and vigour, was executed 
 by that elegant scholar, the Rev. Edward Craven Hawtrey (ob. January, 
 1862), late Provost of Eton, and will be found in his privately printed 
 volume, // Trifoglio^ ovvero Scherzi metrici d } un' Inglese (London, 1839, 
 8vo), page 59, as a professed translation from Wolfe. 
 
 The curious reader may also find it in Latin Elegiacs by the Rev. 
 James Hildyard, B.D., Rector of Ingoldsby, Lincolnshire, in that "labor 
 ineptiarum," the Arundi?ies Cami (Cantab., 1841, 8vo), p. 207; and. 
 
 * L Inter midiaire des Chercheurs et Curieux, torn. ix. p. 195. 
 f Revue Britannique, F^vrier, 1876. 
 
4 3o THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 there is a Greek translation, "By a Scottish Physician," in the Arun- 
 dines Devce (Edinburgh, 1853, i2mo), p. 41. As for parodies, there are 
 several. The more character and individuality a piece possesses, the 
 more obnoxious it is to this kind of thing ; and the more striking the 
 imitation will be. I need hardly refer to the excellent one by another 
 Bentleian, the Rev. Richard Harris Barham, of "Ingoldsby" fame, 
 which has been attributed to Praed and others ; but that by Mr. J. H. 
 Dixon, which is scarcely less excellent, is not so well known. 
 
 We have had " Reliques " and " Final Reliques " ; but there are still 
 doubtless, in unsuspected corners, the wherewithal to reward the search 
 of future gleaners. Take, for instance, the tender and graceful lines, 
 ftenes me in sermio, as Prout himself would say, written by him in a 
 certain lady's album to illustrate a sketch by Crofton Croker, on the 
 opposite page, of " Sunday's Well," about a mile from Cork : 
 
 '* In yonder well, there lurks a spell, 
 It is a fairy font ; 
 Croker himself, poetic elf, 
 Might fitly write upon't. 
 
 *' The summer day, of childhood gay, 
 
 Was spent beside it often ; 
 
 I lov'd its brink ; so did, I think, 
 
 Maginn, Maclise, and Crofton. V 
 
 " Of early scenes, too oft begins 
 The memory to grow fainter ; 
 Not so with me, Crofton, nor thee, 
 ' The Doctor,' or the Painter. 
 
 " There is a trace, Time can't efface, 
 Nor years of absence dim ; 
 It is the thought of yon sweet spot, 
 Yon fountain's fairy brim." 
 
 This sportive piece has escaped the industry of Prout's several editors, 
 and will hardly be thought out of place in this desultory memoir. 
 
 In those earlier days "calidus juventa, consule Planco," Mahony, 
 a convivial Hibernian, an accomplished literator, a brilliant conver- 
 sationist, an unattached and unemployed priest, a suspected spy for the 
 Order {teste Mr. S. C. Hall) had for a time set up his nomad tent in 
 London. He was nowhere more at home, cosmopolite as he was, 
 than within its murky precincts, and his earliest and best-loved friends 
 were among the Fraserian brotherhood. The Fraserians, like other 
 literary coteries, met not, in those days, in luxurious clubs or palatial 
 hotels, but rather in snug Temple chambers, or the dark cosy bar-parlours 
 of Fleet Street or Covent Garden. Among their favourite haunts were 
 the Museum Club in Northumberland Street ; Offley's in Henrietta 
 Street ; Eastey's Hotel ; the Coal Hole ; the Widow's in St. Martin's 
 Lane ; Anderton's Hotel in Fleet Street ; the Crown Tavern in Vinegar 
 Yard ; together with such societies as " The Eccentrics," which met 
 in May's Buildings ; the " Hooks and Eyes," founded, named and 
 presided over by Douglas Jerrold ; and the "Tumbler" club, near the 
 Piazzas, Covent Garden, of which the ruling spirit was James Hannay. 
 Here Mahony, "a half-pay soldier of the Church " (as the latter puts it), 
 "minus the half-pay," and always clad in black, of fashion more or less 
 
REV. FRANCIS MAHONY. 481 
 
 sacerdotal, was a welcome and familiar figure. Leading a free and 
 easy life, he took his ease in his inn, more Falstaffiano, and mixed his 
 tumbler among the wits of the metropolis with perfect freedom. " The 
 ' Inquisitor of Saragossa,' " adds my authority, there is a good story 
 about this title, if I had space to tell it, " might be seen eating oysters 
 in the Strand ; the son of Loyola blowing a pleasant cloud in the Hay- 
 market." * Otherwise, he would be dining at Gore Lodge, Kensington, 
 next to Lady Blessington's, with his old friend John Sheehan, Barrister- 
 at-Law of the Inner Temple, "The Irish Whiskey Drinker ;"f or, in 
 company with Maclise and others, at Kensal Lodge, the hospitable 
 home of Harrison Ainsworth, the novelist. Nor must be forgotten the 
 memorable symposia of the Regent Street round table ; one of which, 
 the incident was no supposititious or infrequent one, forms the subject 
 of the admirable cartoon which serves appropriately as frontispiece to this 
 volume. Here Mahony was a constant and welcome visitor, delighting 
 with conversation that seemed an unpublished " relique " of Prout, and 
 holding his own against the feathered shafts and needle-gun shots of 
 the practised wits around him. Here, too, came many another whom 
 the artist had not "room and verge enough" to immortalize. Among 
 these, or the other associates of Mahony may be mentioned Sheridan 
 Knowles, Laman Blanchard, T. K. Hervey, Frank Stone, R.A., Joseph 
 Crowe (son of Eyre Evans Crowe, the Irish novelist), James Hannay, 
 W. Burcham (Police Magistrate, and Classical Examiner to the University 
 of London), Douglas Jerrold (and later on, his sons), Moriarty, William 
 Costello (the lithotritist, whom Prout christened " Gulielmus a Lapide "), 
 William Lawrence (of Bartholomew's, Sergeant-Surgeon to the Queen), 
 McDowall (the sculptor), with numerous other brilliant men of letters 
 and wits about town all of whom, nearly, with the Padre himself have 
 now passed away. But I am anticipating. Mahony, though, as I have said, 
 a quintessential Fraserian, and perhaps more at home than elsewhere in 
 the cari luoghi of snug familiar London, had acquired gipsy $ habits in 
 earlier life, and found it impossible to settle down for long in one place. 
 Possibly he felt that mysterious " languishment for skies Italian," of which 
 poor Keats speaks, in one of his fine sonnets ; possibly the increasing sus- 
 ceptibility of his bronchi warned him to exchange for a more genial clime 
 
 " Quod latus mundi nebulae, malusque 
 Jupiter urget," 
 
 in which phrase, as he was wont to say, his favourite Venusian had to 
 the letter described England in winter, " with its leaden sky, pestiferous 
 fogs, and dreary leafless woodlands." 
 
 About 1837, while still a regular contributor to Bentley, Mahony bade 
 adieu to his London haunts and literary associates, and took his way 
 through Paris into Italy. With sufficient means independent of litera- 
 ture, no ecclesiastic duties or domestic ties, he was free to roam where he 
 listed ; and so wandered discursively through Germany, Hungary, Asia 
 
 * North British Review, vol. vi. N.S., p. 103. 
 
 + Editor of the last and best edition of the Bentley Ballads (London, 1869, 8vo). 
 
 % It is the right thing, I am aware, to use the word " Bohemian," instead of that 
 which I have employed. But I prefer the latter to the former, which we have taken, 
 according to custom, servilely from the French, where it means something, as with 
 them a gipsy is styled a Bohemian. But with us, the word has no original significance 
 or applicability whatever. 
 
 2 I 
 
482 THE MAC LIS E PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Minor, Greece and Egypt, till, in 1841, he found himself once more in 
 the south of France. 
 
 By-and-by, he was again in London, where he found that a new gene- 
 ration of literary men had sprung up, sons some of them of his old 
 Fraserian and Bentleian collaborators. With these younger friends he 
 loved to associate, delighting his auditors with the prodigality of his 
 learning, and the lavish profusion of his cosmopolitan anecdote. " He 
 was a remarkable figure in London," writes one who knew him well. " A 
 short spare man, stooping as he went, with the right hand clasped in the 
 left behind him ; a sharp face with piercing grey eyes that looked vacantly 
 upwards, a mocking lip, a close-shaven face and an ecclesiastical garb of 
 slovenly appearance, such was the old Fraserian, who would laugh out- 
 right at times, quite unconscious of bystanders, as he slouched towards 
 Temple Bar, perhaps on his way to the tavern in Fleet Street, where 
 Johnson's chair stood in the chimney-corner." 
 
 But this even tenor of way was destined soon to suffer disturbance. 
 In the winter of 1845, on the establishment of the Daily News as the first 
 cheap diurnal, under the editorship, which was to prove so brief and 
 disappointing, of Charles Dickens, the latter invited Mahony, who 
 regarded the genius of his young friend with the warmest admiration, 
 to take up his abode in Rome, and there assume the office of Italian 
 correspondent for the new paper. Thus it came to pass that : 
 
 "Starting from France across Mont Cenis, 
 Prout visits Mantua and Venice ; 
 Through many a tuneful province strolls, 
 ' Smit with the love ' of Barcarolles, 
 Petrarca's ghost he conjures up, 
 And with old Dante quaffs a cup ; 
 Next, from his jar Etruscan, he 
 Uncorks the muse of Tuscany. ' 
 
 In his new journalistic capacity, it fell to the lot of Mahony to tell the 
 story of the close of the Pontificate of Gregory XVI., " the fag end of a 
 long reign," and the earlier years of the wonderful rule of Pio Nono. 
 He had by this time cast the skin of his Fraserian Conservatism, and 
 wrote in the new paper as an advanced Liberal. Stirring times came on ; 
 and, finally, when the Pope had abandoned the Eternal City, when Gari- 
 baldi had established his bivouac in the grand Piazza of St. Peter's, 
 when the churches of the Inquisition were sacked, and the modern 
 triumvirate, Mazzini, Saffi and Armellini, was first menaced and then 
 overthrown by the French under Oudinot, Mahony became the historian 
 of the patriots, and with Gavazzi as the chaplain, sent home his weekly 
 fardel of news. His letters, in which his love and zeal for the Italian 
 cause break forth, were models of what foreign correspondence should 
 be, terse, simple, factful, showing insight into national character, and 
 sparkling with classic and poetic illustration. They were published, on 
 his return, under the title of Facts and Figures from Italy, by D071 
 Jeremy Savonarola, Benedictine Mo?ik. Addressed to Charles Dickens, 
 Esq., being an Appendix to his "Piciures"* (London, Bentley, 1847, 
 8vo), and are well worth possessing in this compact form. Of Mahony's 
 more social hours in the city of the Cassars we get a pleasant glimpse in 
 
 * It will be remembered that it was in this paper, of large promise and little fruit, 
 that Dickens commenced the publication of his Pictures from Italy. 
 
 
REV. FRANCIS MAHONY. 483 
 
 the records of Anna Jameson, whose delightful Sunday evening parties 
 he was wont to frequent, enjoying pleasant converse with his fair hostess 
 and her guests, with John Gibson, Charles Hemans, Overbeck, Penry 
 Williams, Richard Wyatt and others " wearing an ineradicable air of 
 the Priest and Seminarist, in strange combination with his frank 
 Bohemianism." * 
 
 Settling finally in Paris, in spite of the cold dry winter winds which 
 he found as harmful to his sensitive thorax as the 7iebiilce of London, 
 and where Jupiter was hardly more propitious, he passed there the last 
 eight years of his life as Paris Correspondent for the Globe newspaper, of 
 which he held to the last some shares, which were sold by his representa- 
 tives. His habitat was an entresol in a grand old Hotel in the Rue des 
 Moulins, possibly now " expropriated ; " and calling on him there, S. C. 
 Hall found him toasting a mutton-chop for his dinner, with a not over- 
 clean serviette for a table-cloth, amid books, newspapers, MSS. and 
 letters. " His habits," says the authority I have just referred to, " were 
 indeed those of a recluse ; he saw little or no society, kept no servant, 
 and lived a life the very opposite to that of a gentleman." f His celibacy 
 was enforced by the rule of his Church, and he probably had as little 
 desire as fitness for home-life and domestic ties. Yet he could appreciate 
 the value of such influences ; and we can fancy that it was with some 
 feeling of regret that they were not in his lot, that once, after visiting 
 Newstead Abbey, he wrote : " What a host of memories and thoughts 
 the various spots suggested. From the tomb of Swift to the place of 
 Byron's wild revels, the transition is perhaps not very natural ; but there 
 is one moral deducible from both. Had either clung to and cultivated a 
 real affection, one would not have died mad, and the other a victim of 
 debauchery and recklessness in a far-off land." J 
 
 I have spoken of Mahony in connection with his sacerdotal cha- 
 racter. It is not right to say that he was forced into the priesthood by 
 his family, as his prototype, Erasmus, had been by his guardians. It was 
 rather the obstinacy and pugnacity of his own character, which revolted 
 against opposition, and caused him to persevere in a course which he 
 might otherwise have abandoned. Any way, his sense of want of vocation 
 became in later days utterly painful, and led him, in 1863, to draw up a 
 document in which he sought permission to "retire for ever from the 
 sanctuary," and resort thenceforth to lay communion. His petition, 
 which was prepared at the suggestion of the Abbe' Rogerson, and trans- 
 mitted by him to Rome, was, in regard to its terminology and Latinity, so 
 remarkable a composition, that it excited the wonder and admiration of 
 the Roman ecclesiastical lawyer into whose hands it came ; and, written 
 as it was in a couple of hours and after years of disuse, may challenge the 
 astonishment of ourselves, who know something more of the petitioner's 
 remarkable command over the language in which it was embodied. I 
 may just add that the permission sought for was granted ; with, at the 
 same time, a dispensation, in consideration of failing eye-sight and ad- 
 vancing age, to substitute the Rosary or the penitential psalms for his 
 daily office in the Breviary. But it must be here understood that though 
 a Voltairian scoffer at men and things^ the shafts of his wit were never 
 
 * Life of Anna Jameson, by her Niece, Geraldine Macpherson, p. 239. 
 
 + Book of Memories, p. 238. 
 
 X Final Reliqtces of Father Proiit (Letter in facsimile). 
 
484 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY, 
 
 aimed at his faith, or his Church. No serious charge was ever brought 
 against him by his ecclesiastical superiors ; and once, when the Tablet 
 referred to hi in as a " suspended priest," he promptly challenged its editor 
 to substantiate the allegation in a court of law, and laying his damages at 
 ^2000, extorted an instant apology and unconditional withdrawal of the 
 imputation. 
 
 I now approach the end. Mahony had long been a sufferer from 
 chronic bronchitis, and in his later years this malady had been complicated 
 with the enfeebling and depressing effects of diabetes. In the spring of 
 1866, the state of his health became alarming ; though he was still able to 
 continue the dispatch of his diurnal letters to the Globe, which, in fact, 
 he managed to do till within a fortnight of his decease. Three years pre- 
 viously, his friend and spiritual adviser, Mgr. Rogerson, had restored him, 
 though, to the regret of the latter, only in the degree of lay communion, 
 to that practical life in his Church from which he had lapsed. It now 
 became the duty of the same faithful friend to pronounce to the penitent 
 the words of absolution, and then to raise him up and lay him on his bed, 
 " as he would have treated such a little wanderer of a child." Two days 
 later, at the hands of the same spiritual friend, and in accordance with 
 the words, " Holy Oils," the last pronounced by the dying man, he 
 received the rite of extreme unction ; and, in the evening of the same day, 
 May 1 8th, 1866, tranquilly expired, in the presence of his sister, Mrs: 
 Woodlock, who had come from Ireland to be with him, and his confessor, 
 Mgr. Rogerson. " Probably no man/' wrote James Hannay, on the 
 following day, in the Pall Mall Gazette, " with whom he was brought 
 into contact, friendly or otherwise, but will hear with satisfaction that a 
 sister of his blood and a priest of his faith cheered the death-bed of the 
 lonely old wit and scholar, and helped to make his last hours pass tran- 
 quilly away." To which his last biographer, Mr. Charles Kent, the 
 Barrister, adds : " more tranquilly, as will be evident now upon unques- 
 tionable authority, he could not well have passed the awful boundary line 
 that divides time from eternity." 
 
 His remains were brought from the foreign soil on which he died to 
 his native land, where they found fitting sepulture, with much sacerdotal 
 pomp and circumstance, in the city of his nativity, on the banks of the 
 river Lee, in the vaults of the church of Shandon, among the dust of his 
 ancestral generations, and within sound of those " Bells " which he has 
 consecrated for all time in his lyrical masterpiece. A subscription was 
 set on foot by Mr. Dillon Croker, in 1873, f r the purpose of placing a 
 Memorial Tablet in the Library of Cork. But the present age, like that 
 of Tacitus, is " incuriosa suorum ; ,; and when Mr. Dillon made a " final 
 appeal" in 1882, only ^30 had been collected in ten years, just 3 per 
 annum and, so far as I know, there is yet no record to mark the grave oi 
 Mahony in the city which he has honoured. 
 
 Mahony was not a genial man. He was unobservant of the courtesies 
 that soften life ; was choleric, disputatious and intolerant of opposition ; 
 preferred his own convenience to that of others ; and was involved in his 
 own thoughts and mental occupation. You did not know when to have 
 him ; it was for him, and not you, if you gave in to him, to prolong or 
 shorten an interview ; and however close may have been your converse, 
 in the evening, he might choose hardly to recognize you in the morning. 
 A celibate and solitary life, " of mingled anchorite and sensualist," had 
 
REV. FRANCIS MA HON Y. 485 
 
 developed odd peculiarities of character natural to him, and which became 
 incompatible with social life. " He was terse, sharp and bitter," says 
 S. C. Hall ; who tells how the Padre would pay him a visit after long 
 absence, make some abrupt remark about curtain or carpet, and leave 
 in three minutes, without removing his hands from his pockets. As Mr. 
 Kent observes, there was a caustic irony about his remarks, repellant of 
 friendship, and which reminded you of Sydney Smith's metaphor of the 
 sword-stick, out which, though seemingly innocent and harmless, suddenly 
 leapt forth something keen, glittering and incisive. He was, for all this, 
 a man of warm heart and tender memories. His affection for his friends, 
 and especially his old literary associates, was tender and enduring. He 
 cherished keen resentment for injuries, and had bitter scorn for political 
 opponents. For shallow pretenders in any line, illiterate literates,- and 
 "Latinless lubbers," as pedantic "Lord Vincent" in Bulwer's Pelham 
 styles those who have not drunk at classic founts, he felt and expressed 
 unmitigated contempt. 
 
 " We think," wrote the late James Hannay, in an admirable estimate 
 of the literary character of Mahony, " and we love above all things to fix 
 the historical position of a man preparatory to taking a good look at him, 
 that Father Prout may be most conveniently studied as an Irish humorist. 
 He is almost exactly to the Irish what Professor Wilson was to the 
 Scotch, a representative of their peculiar talents and character in the 
 guise of a humorist, but yet without the narrowness of a too marked 
 nationality. From that vice (which produces in reality only provincial 
 bores) Wilson was saved, not only by largeness of mind, but by an Oxford 
 education and a Cumberland residence ; as Prout has been by his Con- 
 tinental education, by London associations and by foreign travel. The 
 two writers are national in genius and spirit rather than in detail, repre- 
 senting the wines of their nationalities, not the skin and stone of the 
 grape only. Wilson writes about Burns, Mahony sports with Moore. 
 One glorifies the Highlands, the other the Bells of Shandon. One takes 
 a lowly shepherd to speak through, the other an upland country priest." 
 
 For my own part, I do not speak of Mahony as a grand or sublime 
 genius, but as a genuine humorist, an exquisite lyrist, and a man of 
 peculiar and original mental gifts. He has been spoken of as an amalgam 
 of Rabelais and Voltaire ; but I see little of the profound wisdom that 
 underlies the buffoonery, obscenity and triviality of the Cure* of Meudon, 
 if there is somewhat of the mocking spirit of the philosopher of Ferney. 
 As well might we term him a mixture of Horace and Beranger, his prime 
 favourites ; and say that he exhibits the curiosa felicitas of the Venu- 
 sian, with the tenderness, the pathos and the art-concealing art of 
 the Parisian. But all such comparisons are but misleading and unsatis- 
 factory. In his own words, " Prout's chest and its contents are matters 
 apart and unique." We ask with Horace, " Quando ullum invenient 
 parem ? " and wait in vain for a reply. Francis Mahony was, " Father 
 Prout": 
 
 " None but himself can be his parallel," 
 
 and, if like Rousseau, he had written his Confessions ', he might, with 
 equal truth, have commenced them in the words of that erratic genius : 
 " Je ne suis fait comme aucun de ceux que j'ai vus ; j'ose croire n'etre fait 
 comrae aucun de ceux qui existent. Si je ne vaux pas mieux, au moins 
 
486 THE MAC USE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 je suis antre. Si la nature a bien ou mal fait de briser le moule dans 
 lequel elle m'a jete*, c'est ce dont on ne peut juger qu'apres m'avoir lu." 
 
 Essentially Hibernian, the wit and genius of Mahony were racy of the 
 soil which gave him birth ; but acuminated and polished in foreign schools. 
 If the garb was of homely frieze, it sparkled with gems from the mines of 
 Greece and Rome ; and the shamrock of Erin alternated with classic 
 parsley in the button-hole. He invited you to a stroll in the Groves of 
 Blarney, and you found yourself " unbeknownst " in those of the Academy. 
 He mixed his punch with the pure lymph of Hippocrene, and laced the 
 phrase of Horace with rich Corcagian accent. In his own immortal 
 words, and none could describe him better, he was " a rare combination 
 of the Teian lyre and the Irish bagpipe ; of the Ionian dialect blending 
 harmoniously with the Cork brogue ; an Irish potato seasoned with Attic 
 salt." 
 
 The original, and handsomest edition of the Reliques, now a very 
 scarce book, and worth more than its published price of a guinea, is that 
 issued by James Fraser, of Regent Street, 1866, 2 vols. 8vo, with the 
 beautiful etchings of Maclise. These are highly eulogized by the author 
 himself. " Of the luminous effulgence," says he, " flung round all these 
 matters by that brilliant enlightener (Aa/juradotyopos), Alfred Croquis, we 
 know not in what style to speak fittingly, or where to find adequate terms 
 of eulogy. ' Illustrated ' books are, nowadays, common enough ; but we 
 must say that Prout has been singularly fortunate in meeting with such 
 an Apelles as figures here. Posterity will be justly puzzled to decide 
 whether the letterpress was got up to act as handmaid to the engravings, 
 or whether the latter were destined to be ancillary to the book : just as it 
 is a qucEsiio vexata among the learned whether Virgil composed his 
 episode from having previously seen the Laocoon, or the sculptor his 
 group from the outline in the AUneid. Our own opinion is so well 
 expressed by Miguel Cervantes, that we shall content ourselves with 
 quoting the original Spanish : ' Para mio solo nocio (Don Quixote) y yo 
 para el, El supo obrar y yo escrivir, Solos los dos somos para en uno.' 
 The present is the first continuous exploit of Croquis in this particular 
 province of pictorial embellishment ; the work of etching on copper, as 
 well as the designs, being exclusively his handicraft. And, of a verity, 
 since the day when the youthful genius of Hans Holbein decorated with 
 woodcuts the Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus, never has an 
 experimental operation been so successfully performed. Truly hath our 
 Alfred, already distinguished in the very highest departments of profes- 
 sional excellence, revealed himself to the gaze of men in a new and 
 unexpected character ; and while future ages will stand enraptured before 
 the canvas over which he has flung, with that profusion so characteristic 
 of opulent genius, the creation of his exuberant fancy, a voice will add 
 that his was 
 
 . ' The pencil of light 
 That illumined the volume.' " * 
 
 A second edition, in one volume, " revised and largely augmented/ 
 was published by H. G. Bohn, in i860, as part of his "Illustrated 
 Library." It contains the original etchings, not much the worse for wear, 
 with portraits of Miss Landon and Bdranger, together with the folding 
 
 * " Father Prout's Self-Examination," Fraser 's Magazine, March, 1836. 
 
REV. FRANCIS MA HO NY. 487 
 
 plate, " The Fraserians," which had not appeared in the editio princeps. 
 The augmentations consist of the triad of papers on " Modern Latin 
 Poets," which, with sundry minor pieces, swell the volume to pp. 575. 
 There is also an excellent index, which adds no little to the utility of the 
 book. I take no account of intermediate " editions," which I believe to 
 be mere reprints, or, worse, unsold copies with new title-pages, " the 
 staleness of the trick," says Mr. Hannay, adverting to the issue of 1866, 
 " is on a par with its morality," and proceed to the third and last, which 
 was edited for Routledge, in 1881 (8vo, pp. 502), by Mr. Charles Kent, 
 Barrister-at-Law, who has added a biographical introduction and notes. 
 The memoir is interesting and valuable, though with certain errors ; 
 among which may be mentioned the statement, that, in 1881, the only 
 " Fraserians " surviving, were Carlyle and Ainsworth. He has somehow 
 overlooked, in his brief roll-call, the worthy rector of Ivy-church, the Rev. 
 George Robert Gleig, who, ter avo functus, is happily still among us, 
 having exercised spiritual rule over as many generations of men, as Homer 
 assigned to the temporal sovereignty of the Pylian monarch : 
 
 " Tpls yap 8-fj fiev <paa\v avoia<r8ai ytv* avdpwi'" 
 
 Mr. Kent has made important additions of shorter metrical pieces from 
 Eraser and Bentleyj and, on the other hand, has exercised his discretion 
 in excluding several which I think should have been reproduced, 
 
 " To lose no drop of that immortal man." 
 
 His Prolegomena supply us with valuable and interesting information, 
 but, he has cheated us of our Index, and the reader is lucky, if, after 
 hunting for an hour for what he wants, he is able to follow the advice of 
 " Captain Cuttle," and " make a note " of it himself for future use. 
 
 The result of this ingenious procedure is that the lover of " Prout " 
 must have all three editions of the Reliques, for reasons as diverse as 
 those which governed Theodore Beza in the choice of his three wives ! * 
 We have besides The Final Reliques of Father Prout, Collected and 
 edited by Blanchard Jerrold (London, Chatto & Windus, 1876, 8vo), 
 a volume in which a large amount of most interesting and valuable matter 
 is brought together in very confused and immethodic fashion. 
 
 I have already alluded to the admirable paper on " Prout," in the 
 Universal Review, for February, i860, by the late James Hannay, British 
 Consul at Barcelona. The same scholarly critic contributed to the North 
 British Review, of September, 1866, an excellent paper on, "Recent 
 
 DE TRIBUS THEODORI BEZM UXORIBUS. 
 
 * *'Tres mihi disparili sunt junctae setate puellae ; 
 Hasc juveni, ilia viro, tertia deinde seni. 
 Propter opus validis prima est mihi ducta sub annis, 
 Altera propter opes, tertia propter opem." 
 
 Etienne Pasquier. 
 
 Edition first for Beauty's sake you seek ; 
 For Wealth of subject then the next bespeak ; 
 Yet still you'll hanker for a third indeed, 
 So much the Aid of Index you will need. 
 
 Thus Fraser, Bohn and Routledge let not slip 
 A chance their fingers in your purse to dip ! 
 
4 S8 THE MACLISE PORTRAIT-GALLERY. 
 
 Humorists: Aytoun, Peacock, Prout"; which, it may be supposed, 
 suggested to a French writer his article, in the Revue Britannique of 1867, 
 entitled "Trois Ecrivains Anglais," the humorists under notice being 
 Hood, Prout and Thackeray. Finally, there is a paper by Mr. Blanchard 
 Jerrold, in Belgravia, July, i860, " Father Prout in Paris," which has been 
 incorporated in the Final Reliques ; and a short notice by Mr. Sheehan, 
 in the last edition of the Bentley Ballads. 
 
 I might adduce imitations galore of the multilingual manner of Prout, 
 such as the Trifoglio of Hawtrey, and the Brallaghan of Kenealy, of 
 both of which I have already spoken. Then there are such magazine 
 articles as " The Laments of all Nations on the Death of Mr. Simpson, 
 late M.C. of the Royal Gardens, Vauxhall," in Fraser's Literary Chronicle 
 a serial having no connection whatever with Fraser's Magazine, 
 (London, 1836, 4to, No. v., p. 74), where we get occasional verses on that 
 calamitous event in eight or ten different languages ; and the polyglot 
 contributions of " Mr. Buller of Brazennose," to Ai?isworttis Magazine. 
 But all such attempts are, more or less, nugatory. " No man," said 
 Dr. Johnson, "was ever great by imitation" ; and he who follows another 
 must necessarily come after him. Hear the Padre himself, and with his 
 words I conclude my memoir : " To bend the bow of Ulysses, to wield 
 the gridiron of Cobbett, to revive the sacred pigeon of Mahomet, to rein- 
 flate the bagpipe of Ossian, to reproduce the meal-tub of Titus Oates, or 
 (when Dan goes to bis long account) to get up a begging-box, must 
 necessarily be hopeless speculations. Under the management of the 
 original and creative genius these contrivances may work well ; but they 
 invariably fall into the hands of copyists and imitators.' , 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 A. 
 
 (Page 3.) 
 
 The following verses, from the Poetical Works of poor Eliza Cook, afford a 
 touching testimony to the critical mansuetude of Jerdan : 
 
 TO THE LATE WILLIAM JERDAN. 
 
 If my poor Harp has ever poured 
 
 A tone that Truth alone can give ; 
 Thou wert the one who helped that tone 
 
 To win the echo that shall live. 
 
 * or thou didst bid me shun the theme 
 
 Of morbid grief, or feigned delight ; 
 Thou bad'st me think and feet; not dream ; 
 
 And " look into my heart and write." 
 
 And looking in that heart just now ; 
 
 'Mid all the memories there concealed ; 
 I find thy name still dearly claim 
 
 The thanks in these few lines revealed. 
 
 B. 
 
 (Page 42.) 
 
 Jeremiah Daniel Murphy, who, as regards his linguistic attainments and 
 general accomplishments, may be styled a second "Admirable Crichton," died, at 
 the age of 18, of organic disease of the heart, January 5th, 1824. The following 
 lines, elicited by his premature death, are worth preserving : 
 
 ' ' O fios juvenum, Ornate bonis, 
 
 Spes laeta patris, Ostentatus, 
 
 Non certa tuse Raptusque simul, 
 
 Data res patriae Solstitialis 
 
 Non mansuris Velut herba solet." 
 
 " Flower of our youth ! in thee are lost, 
 A father's hopes, a country's boast ; 
 With transient goods adorn'd ; just shown, 
 And wither'd near as soon as blown, 
 Like flowerets of solstitial zone." 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine, February, 1824, p. 250. 
 
 c. 
 
 (Page 43.) 
 
 The following song in English and Latin, by William Maginn, LL.D., is 
 alluded to in my notice of that extraordinary genius. I have already expressed my 
 opinion as to its merits, and am sure that it will be read with interest as a speci- 
 men of the Doctor's skill in humorous versification, whether in English or Latin : 
 
49Q 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THE WINE-BIBBER'S GLORY. A NEW SONG, 
 
 Tune" The Jolly Miller." 
 
 " Quo me, Bacche, rapis tui 
 Plenum ? " HOR. 
 
 i. 
 If Horatius Flaccus made jolly old Bacchus 
 
 So often his favourite theme ; 
 If in him it was classic to praise his old Massic, 
 
 And Falernian to gulp in a stream ; 
 If Falstaff s vagaries 'bout Sack and Canaries 
 
 Have pleased us again and again ; 
 Shall we not make merry, on Port, Claret, or Sherry, 
 Madeira, and sparkling Champagne ? 
 
 2. 
 
 First Port, that potation preferr'd by our nation 
 
 To all the small drink of the French ; 
 'Tis the best standing liquor for layman or vicar, 
 
 The army, the navy, the bench ; 
 'Tis strong and substantial, believe me, no man shall 
 
 Good Port from my dining-room send ; 
 In your soup, after cheese, every way it will please, 
 
 But most tete-a-tete with a friend. 
 
 3- 
 Fair Sherry, Port's sister, for years they dismiss'd her 
 
 To the kitchen to flavour the jellies 
 There long she was banish'd, and well nigh had vanish'd 
 
 To comfort the kitchen-maids' bellies ; 
 Till his Majesty fix'd, he thought Sherry when sixty 
 
 Years old, like himself, quite the thing : 
 So I think it but proper to fill a tip-topper 
 
 Of Sherry, to drink to the king. 
 
 4- 
 Though your delicate Claret, by no means goes far, it 
 
 Is famed for its exquisite flavour ; 
 'Tis a nice provocation to wise conversation, 
 
 Queer blarney, or harmless palaver ; 
 'Tis the bond of society, no inebriety 
 
 Follows a swig of the Blue ; 
 One may drink a whole ocean, but ne'er feel commotion 
 
 Or headache from Chateau Margoux. 
 
 5- 
 But though Claret is pleasant to taste for the present, 
 
 On the stomach it sometimes feels cold ; 
 So to keep it all clever, and comfort your liver, 
 
 Take a glass of Madeira that's old ; 
 When 't has sail'd for the Indies, a cure for all wind tis, 
 
 And colic 'twill put to the rout : 
 All doctors declare a good glass of Madeira 
 
 The best of all things for the gout. 
 6. 
 Then Champagne ! dear Champagne ; ah ! how gladly I drain a 
 
 Whole bottle of CEil de Perdrix ; 
 To the eye of my charmer, to make my love warmer, 
 
 If cool that love ever could be. 
 I would toast her for ever but never, oh ! never, 
 
 Would I her dear name so profane : 
 So if e'er when I'm tipsy, it slips to my lips, I 
 
 Wash it back to my heart with Champagne ! 
 
APPENDIX. 49 j 
 
 TOPORIS GLORIA. -A LATIN MELODY. 
 
 To a Tune for itself, lately discovered in Herculaneum, being an ancient Roman 
 air, or, if not, quite as good. 
 
 Cum jollificatione boisterosa ; i.e. With boisterous jollification. 
 
 I. 
 
 Si Horatio Flacco de hilari Baccho 
 
 Mos carmina esset cantare. 
 Si Massica vina vocaret divina, 
 
 Falernaque sciret potare : 
 Si nos juvat mire Falstaffium audire 
 
 Laudentem Hispanicum merum. 
 Cor nostrum sit lastum, ob Portum Clareturn, 
 
 Xerense, Campanum, Maderum. 
 II. 
 Est Portum potatio quam Anglica natio 
 
 Vinis Galliae praatulit lautis : 
 Sacerdote amatur et laicis potatur 
 
 Consultis, militibus, nautis. 
 Si meum conclave hoc forte et suave 
 
 Vitaverit, essem iniquus, 
 Post caseum in jure placebit secure 
 
 Praesertim cum adsit amicus, 
 in. 
 Huic quamvis cognatum, Xerense damnatum, 
 
 Gelata culina tingebat, 
 Vinum exul ibique dum coquo cuique 
 
 Generosum liquorem praebebat. 
 Sed a rege probatum est valde pergratum 
 
 Cum (ut ipse) sit sexagenarium 
 Large ergo implendum, regique bibendum 
 
 Opinor est nunc necessarium. 
 IV. 
 Clareturn, oh ! quamvis haud forte (deest nam vis) 
 
 Divino sapore notatur ; 
 Hinc dulcia dicuntur faceta nascuntur 
 
 Leniterque philosophizatur. 
 Socialis potatio ! te haud fregit ratio 
 
 Purpureo decorum colore ! 
 Tui maximum mare liceret potare 
 
 Sine mentis frontisve dolore. 
 V. 
 Etsi vero in praesenti Clareturn bibenti 
 
 Videatur imprimis jucundum, 
 Cito tamen frigescat quod ut statim decres-at 
 
 Vetus vinum Maderum adeundum. 
 Indus si navigarit, vento corpus levarit 
 
 Colicamque fugarit hoc merum ; 
 Podagra cruciato " Vinum optimum dato;" 
 
 Clamant medici docti, " Maderum." 
 
 VI. 
 
 Campanum ! Campanum ! quo gaudio lagenara 
 
 Ocelli Perdricis sorberem ! 
 Ad dominas oculum exhauriam poculum 
 
 Tali philtro si unquam egerem 
 Propinarem divinam sed peream si sinam 
 
 Nomen carum ut sic profanetur, 
 Et si, cum Bacchus urget, ad labia surgit 
 
 Campano ad cor revolvetur ! 
 
492 
 
 APIEND1X. 
 
 Parodies by Dr. Maginn. 
 SONNET. 
 
 I stood upon St. Peter's battlement, 
 
 And my eye wander'd o'er Imperial Rome, 
 
 And I thought sadly on the fatal doom 
 'Neath which her ancient palaces had bent ; 
 Of temple and tower outrageously uprent, 
 
 Or moulder'd into dust by slow decay ; 
 
 Of halls where godlike Caesar once bore sway, 
 Or glorious Tully fulmined eloquent ! 
 
 So shall all earthly fade ! What wonder, then, 
 
 If Time can make such all-unsparing wreck, 
 If neither genius, art, nor skill of men, 
 
 Can e'er pretend his felon hand to check, 
 That this old coat, I've worn these three years past, 
 Should on each elbow want a patch at last ? 
 
 TO A BOTTLE OF OLD PORT. 
 "(Parody "When he who adores thee." Moore.) 
 
 When he who adores thee has left but the dregs 
 
 Of such famous old stingo behind ; 
 Oh ! say, will he bluster or weep, no 'ifegs ! 
 
 He'll seek for some more of the kind. 
 He'll laugh, and though doctors perhaps may condemn, 
 
 Thy tide shall efface the decree, 
 For many can witness, though subject to phlegm, 
 
 He has always been faithful to thee ! 
 
 With thee were the dreams of his earliest love. 
 
 Every rap in his pocket was thine, 
 And his very last prayer, ev'ry morning, by Tove, 
 
 Was to finish the evening in wine. 
 How blest are the tipplers whose heads can outlive 
 
 The effects of four bottles of thee ; 
 But the next dearest blessing that heaven can give. 
 
 Is to stagger home muzzy from three \ 
 
 THE ROUND TOWER. 
 
 In London, queen of cities, you may see 
 Facing the lovely house of Somerset, 
 A goodly, tall round tower : its base is wet 
 
 With Thames' fair waters rolling quietly ; 
 
 Who was it built this tower? What may it be? 
 Say, was it piled by Druid hands of old ! 
 Or rear'd by eastern magi, there to hold 
 
 The sacred flame, type of their deity ? 
 
 Was it a hermit's calm retreat ? or pile 
 Where hung sonorous the resounding bell ? 
 
 Or is it such as in green Erin's isle 
 
 We see, whose uses nobody could tell ? 
 
 'Twas answer'd : Who 'twas built it, know I not. 
 
 But 'tis, I know, the tower for Patent Shot. 
 
APPENDIX. 493 
 
 NEW WORDS OF AN OLD TUNE. 
 (Parody " I saw from the beach," etc. MooitE.) 
 
 To the Finish I went, when the moon it was shining, 
 
 The jug round the table moved jovially on ; 
 I staid till the moon the next morn was declining ; 
 
 The jug still was there, but the punch was all gone.. 
 And such are the joys that your brandy will promise 
 
 (And often these joys at the Finish I've known), 
 Every copper it makes in the evening ebb from us, 
 
 And leaves us next day with a headache alone ! 
 
 Ne'er tell me of puns, or of laughter adorning 
 
 Our revels that last till the close of the night ; 
 Give me back the hard cash that I left in the morning, 
 
 For clouds dim my eye and my pocket is light. 
 Oh ! who's there that welcomes that moment's returning, 
 
 When daylight must throw a new light on his frame 
 When his stomach is sick, and his liver is burning 
 
 His eye shot with blood and his brow in a flame ? 
 
 D. 
 
 (Page 58.) 
 
 The following, transcribed from the original autograph letter before me, affords 
 an agreeable picture of the early married life of the writer : 
 
 " King's Gate, 17th July, 1831. 
 
 "Dear Mrs. Moore, 
 
 " I was very glad to get news of my darling, and I assure you I am thank- 
 ful he is out of the poisonous smell of paint, which made me so ill I was forced to 
 sleep at George Seymour's one night. There never was such a mess ! But we 
 are having the nurseiy done very nicely. We have changed the buff to stone 
 colour, which makes it less like a garret, and larger and lighter looking, and I have 
 ordered the white press to have new panes put in it, where they are broken, and 
 to be grained and varnished as nearly as possible like your drawers which it stands 
 on ; with cloth or baize underneath, to prevent the drawers being scratched. The 
 green windows make the house look so dark that we are going to have the house 
 painted to look like stone ; the balcony carried out to the end of Mr. Furnivall's, 
 and two little mock windows to match the store-room which will make the house 
 at least 4 feet longer in appearance. There are improvements for you ! I trust 
 \n heaven my little one will not have caught cold from the rain the night of your 
 arrival, and that you have got comfortable lodgings. Tell me in your next letter 
 more about them whether they face the sea, and whether you have money enough, 
 how Spencer liked the steam-packet, and whether he has had any return of the 
 relaxation and sickness, poor lamb. I miss him dreadfully, and am continually 
 forgetting that he is not in the house, and listening for his little voice on the stairs. 
 
 " Mr. Norton still intends coming on Monday, but as he returns on Wednesday, 
 I think an hotel would be as cheap as lodgings, unless the person you are with, 
 could let us have a bedroom, and sitting-room for those two nights, which is hardly 
 worth while. Perhaps Mr. Norton will let me stay one week at Ramsgate ; in 
 that case, if we had a little sitting-room, I could sleep with you if your bed is a 
 good size, or if they had a room with a single bed for me, we might eat our meals 
 there, and have no sitting-room. Pray, dear old woman, ask about, and get 
 
494 
 
 APT END IX. 
 
 something low ; I am sure if it is cheap, Mr. Norton will let me stay the week, ami 
 I am so poisoned here, that if I do not get a mouthful of fresh air, my little 
 November baboon will be born with a green face. Try, and manage this for me. 
 
 " Mr. Charles is gone to Portsmouth for a day or two, so I have sent to Vernon 
 for a frank. You can enclose your letters all the same. Mr. Norton's new servant 
 is come ; he seems quick and quiet, but speaks like a country-clod, that will soon 
 go off in town. He had the best of characters, and can take care of the horse. 
 
 "The King is to sign the patent for Mr. Norton to be made honourable 01 
 Monday, and then it is to be hoped the John Bull paper will be satisfied. Mr 
 Norton is very glad, and Lord Melbourne has been very kind about it. L* 
 M. is better, and offered me two tickets for the House of Lords on Tuesday to 
 hear the King's speech, but I must come to my too-too, who I hope will give me 
 a ticket when he is Lord Grantley. Mem. Kiss your old mother, and send me a 
 message in the next letter. Here is a little picture for you. God bless you. 
 
 " Caroline Norton. 
 
 " Can I get clean linen for the bed in the pantry ? " 
 
 Mrs. Norton's hope was not destined to be fulfilled. Her " too-too," remark 
 this earlier use of a cant phrase of modern sestheticism, born July ioth, 1829, was 
 carried off by death ; and the title ultimately devolved on Thomas Brinsley, the 
 "little November baboon," who was born November 14th, 1831. The husband 
 from whom she suffered so much and so long, died February 24th, 1875, a short 
 time only before his brother, the third Lord Grantley, and so missed, by a few 
 months, the long expected barony. His death took place at Wonersh Park, near 
 Guildford, of which town he had long been Recorder. His will was proved by 
 William Frederick Johnstone, James Vaughan and William Mark Fladgate, the 
 acting executors ; power being reserved to prove later to Lord Grantley, brother of 
 the deceased, the remaining executor. The personal estate was sworn under 
 
 ;l2,OO0. 
 
 The word "picture," in the letter, refers to a sketch of herself, in pen and ink, 
 at the foot of the sheet. The letter is addressed to " Mrs. Moore, No. 8, Prince's 
 Street, Ramsgate;" and is franked by R. Vernon Smith. 
 
 (Page 295.) 
 
 I avail myself of a permission given to me many years ago by the late Mr. Edward 
 Moxon, the poet-publisher and the poets' publisher, to reproduce, ab ovo usque ad 
 mala, the following most characteristic specimen of the genius of Charles Lamb, 
 whose adopted daughter (Miss Isola) became his wife. It was published anony- 
 mously ; and I feel justified in as loud a cackle of exultation over its detection, 
 in sterquilinio margarita, as that which greeted the " discovery " of the Poetry 
 for Children in South Australia. It is included by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, in his 
 edition of the Life, Letters and Writings of Charles Lamb (Moxon, 1876, 6 vols. 
 8vo) ; but among the hundreds of thousands of readers which I anticipate for this 
 volume, there will be many who content themselves with earlier issues of their 
 favourite's author, and will, therefore, not be sorry to have brought before them in 
 these pages the diabolical lampoon, or Lamb-pun on the Devil, as its author 
 might have termed it. 
 
 It may be well, by way of anticipating objections, to admit, in limine, that the 
 humorous piece, with all its dry wit and quaintness of expression, is open to a 
 certain amount of reprehension on the score of flippancy and levity in the treatment 
 of a matter held by many of awful import. But this is a case where an act may 
 be fairly judged by its intention, and no one will accuse Charles Lamb with delibe- 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 495 
 
 rate and purposed irreverence in the consideration and handling of a subject 
 abstractedly serious. The question of the personality of the Devil, the anthro- 
 pomorphic embodiment of the principle of evil, has, unquestionably and 
 necessarily, its conventional, familiar and, therefore, ludicrous aspect. In this 
 light, Lamb has chosen to regard it ; whether he should have done so, whether, 
 in short, the standpoint is a legitimate one, is another question, which I am not 
 now prepared to discuss. 
 
 SATAN IN SEARCH OF A WIFE; 
 
 with the whole process of his courtship and marriage, and 
 who danced at the wedding. 
 
 By an Eye- Witness. 
 
 LONDON : EDWARD MOXON, 64, NEW^BOND STREET. 
 
 MDCCCXXXI. 
 Price One Shilling. 
 
 Dedication. 
 
 To delicate bosoms that have sighed over the " Loves of the Angels," this poem is 
 with tenderest regard consecrated. It can be no offence to you, dear Ladies, that the 
 author has endeavoured to extend the dominion of your darling passion ; to show Love 
 triumphant in places to which his advent has never yet been suspected. If one Cecilia 
 drew an angel down, another may have leave to attract a Spirit upwards ; which, I am 
 sure, was the most desperate adventure of the two. Wonder not at the inferior con- 
 dition of the agent ; for if King Cophetua wooed a beggar-maid, a greater king need 
 not scorn to confess the attractions of a fair tailor's daughter. The more dispro- 
 portionate the rank, the more signal is the glory of your sex. Like that of Hecate, a 
 triple empire is now confessed your own. Nor Heaven, nor Earth, nor deepest tracts 
 of Erebus, as Milton hath it, have power to resist your sway. I congratulate your last 
 victory. You have fairly made an Honest Man of the Old One ; and if your conquest 
 is late, the success must be salutary. The new Benedict has employment enough on 
 his hands to desist from dabbling with the affairs of poor mortals ; he may fairly leave 
 human nature to herself; and we may sleep for one while at least secure from the 
 attacks of the hitherto restless Old Bachelor. It remains to be seen whether the 
 world will be much benefited by the change in his condition. 
 
 Part the First. 
 
 The Devil was sick and queasy of late, 
 
 And his sleep and his appetite fail'd him ; 
 His ears they hung down, and his tail it was clapp'd 
 Between his poor hoofs, like a dog that's been rapp'd, 
 None knew what the devil ail'd him. 
 
 11. 
 
 He tumbled and toss'd on his mattress o' nights, 
 
 That was fit for a fiend's disportal ; 
 For 'twas made of the finest of thistles and thorn, 
 Which Alecto herself had gather'd in scorn 
 Of the best down beds that are mortal. 
 
49 6 APPENDIX. 
 
 in. 
 
 His giantly chest in earthquakes heaved, 
 
 With groanings corresponding ; 
 And mincing and few were the words he spoke, 
 While a sigh, like some delicate whirlwind broke 
 
 From a heart that seem'd desponding. 
 
 IV. 
 Now the Devil an old wife had for his dam, 
 
 I think none e'er was older ; 
 Her years, old Parr's were nothing to them ; 
 And a chicken to her was Methusalem, 
 
 You'd say, could you behold her. 
 
 V. 
 
 She remember'd Chaos a little child, 
 
 Strumming upon hand-organs ; 
 At the birth of Old Night a gossip she sat, 
 The ancientest there, and was godmother at 
 
 The christening of the Gorgons. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Her bones peep'd through a rhinoceros' skirt 
 
 Like a mummy's through its cerement ; 
 But she had a mother's heart and guessed 
 What pinch'd her son, whom she thus address'd 
 In terms that bespoke endearment : 
 
 VII. 
 
 " What ails my Nicky, my darling Imp, 
 
 My Lucifer bright, my Beelzie ? 
 My Pig, my Pug-with-a-curly-tail, 
 You are not well. Can a mother fail 
 
 To see that which all Hell see ? " 
 
 VIII. 
 " O mother, dear, I am dying, I fear ; 
 
 Prepare the yew and the willow, 
 And the cypress black, for I get no ease 
 By day or by night for the cursed fleas, 
 
 That skip about my pillow." 
 
 " Your pillow is clean, and your pillow-beer, 
 
 For I wash'd 'em in Styx last night, son, 
 And your blankets both, and dried them upon 
 The brimstony banks of Acheron ; 
 It is not th& fleas that bite, son." 
 
 x. 
 
 " Oh, I perish of cold these bitter sharp nights,. 
 
 The damp like an ague ferrets ; 
 The ice and the frost hath shot into the bone ? 
 And I care not greatly to sleep alone 
 
 O' nights for the fear of Spirits." 
 
 XI. 
 
 *' The weather is warm, my own sweet boy,. 
 
 And the nights are close and stifling ; 
 And for fearing of Spirits, you cowardly elf 
 Have you quite forgot you're a Spirit yourself? 
 
 Come, come, I see you are trifling. 
 
APPENDIX. 497 
 
 XII. 
 
 *' I wish my Nicky is not in love " 
 
 " O mother, you have nick'd it " ; 
 And he turned his head aside with a blush, 
 Not red-hot pokers, or crimson plush, 
 
 Could half so deep have prick'd it. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " These twenty thousand good years or more," 
 
 Quoth he, " on this burning shingle 
 I have led a lonesome bachelor's life, 
 Nor known the comfort of babe or wife ; 
 
 'Tis a long time to live single." 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Cjuoth she, " If a wife is all you want, 
 
 I shall quickly dance at your wedding. 
 I'm dry nurse, you know, to the female ghosts 
 And she call'd up her charge, and they came in hosts 
 
 To do the old beldam's bidding. 
 
 XV. 
 
 All who in their lives had been servants of sin, 
 
 Adulteress, wench, virago, 
 And murd'resses old that had pointed the knife 
 Against a husband's or father's life, 
 
 Each one a She Iago. 
 
 XVI. 
 First Jezebel came, no need of paint, 
 
 Or dressing, to make her charming ; 
 For the blood of the old prophetical race 
 Had heighten'd the natural flush of her face 
 
 To a pitch 'bove rouge or carmine. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Semiramis there low tender'd herself, 
 
 With all Babel for a dowry ; 
 With Helen, the flower and the bane of Greece, 
 And bloody Medea next offer'd her fleece, 
 
 That was of Hell the houri. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Clytemnestra, with Joan of Naples, put in ; 
 
 Cleopatra, by Anthony quicken'd ; 
 Jocasta, that married where she should not, 
 Came, hand in hand with the daughters of Lot, 
 
 Till the Devil was fairly sicken'd. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 For the Devil himself, a dev'l as he is, 
 
 Disapproves unequal matches. 
 41 O mother," he cried, " despatch them hence i 
 No Spirit, I speak it without offence, 
 
 Shall have me in their hatches." 
 
 XX. 
 
 With a wave of her wand they all were gone ; 
 
 And now came out the slaughter : 
 " 'Tis none of these that can serve my turn ; 
 For a wife of flesh and blood I burn 
 
 I'm in love with a tailor's daughter. 
 
 2 K 
 
498 APPENDIX. 
 
 xxi. 
 M 'Tis she must heal the wounds that she made, 
 
 'Tis she must be my physician. 
 O parent mild, stand not my foe," 
 For his mother had whisper'd something low 
 
 About " matching beneath his condition." 
 
 . XXII. 
 " And then we must get paternal consent, 
 
 Or an unblest match may vex ye " 
 " Her father is dead ; I fetched him away, 
 In the midst of his goose, last Michaelmas day 
 
 He died of an apoplexy. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " His daughter is fair, and an only heir 
 
 With her I long to tether 
 He has left her his hell, and all that he had ; 
 The estates are contiguous, and I shall be mad, 
 
 Till we lay our two Hells together." 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " But how do you know the fair maid's mind ? " 
 
 Quoth he, " Her loss was but recent ; 
 And I could not speak my mind, you know, 
 Just when I was fetching her father below 
 It would hardly have been decent. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " But a leer from her eye, where Cupids lie, 
 
 Of love gave proof apparent ; 
 And from something she dropp'd I shrewdly ween'd. 
 In her heart she judged that a living Fiend 
 
 Was better than a dead parent, 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " But the time is short, and suitors may come 
 
 While I stand here reporting ; 
 Then make your son a bit of a beau, 
 And give me your blessing before I go 
 
 To the other world a-courting." 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " But what will you do with your horns, my son? 
 
 And that tail, fair maids will mock it." 
 " My tail I will dock, and as for the horn, 
 Like husbands above, I think no scorn 
 
 To carry it in my pocket." 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " But what will you do with your feet, my son? 
 
 " Here are stockings fairly woven : 
 My hoofs will I hide in silken hose ; 
 And cinnamon-sweet are my pettitoes 
 
 Because, you know, they are cloven." 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 " Then take a blessing, my darling son," 
 
 Quoth she, and kiss'd him civil ; 
 Then his neckcloth she tied ; and when he was dress'd 
 From top to toe in his Sunday's best, 
 
 He appear' d a comely devil. 
 
ArrENDix. 499 
 
 XXX. 
 
 So he took his leave : but how he fared 
 In his courtship, barring failures, 
 In a Second Part you shall read it soon, 
 In a bran-new song, to be sung to the tune 
 Of the ,: Devil among the Tailors." 
 
 PART THE SECOND. 
 
 CONTAINING THE COURTSHIP AND THE WEDDING. 
 I. 
 
 Who is she that by night from her balcony looks 
 On a garden where cabbage is springing? 
 
 'Tis the tailor's fair lass, that we told of above ; 
 
 She muses by moonlight on her true love ; 
 So sharp is Cupid's stinging. 
 
 II. 
 She has caught a glimpse of the Prince of the Air 
 
 In his Luciferian splendour, 
 And away with coyness and maiden reserve I 
 For none but the Devil her turn will serve, 
 
 Her sorrows else will end her. 
 
 in. 
 She saw when he fetch'd her father away, 
 
 And the sight no whit did shake her. 
 For the Devil may sure with his own make free ; 
 And "it saves besides," quoth merrily she, 
 
 M The expense of an undertaker. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Then come, my Satan, my darling Sin, 
 
 Return to my arms, my hell-beau ; 
 My Prince of Darkness, my crow-black dove " 
 And she scarce had spoke, when her own true love 
 
 Was kneeling at her elbow. 
 
 v. 
 
 But she wist not at first that this was he, 
 That had raised such a boiling passion ; 
 
 For his old costume he had laid aside, 
 
 And was come to court a mortal bride 
 In a coat-and-waistcoat fashion. 
 
 VI. 
 
 She miss'd his large horns, and she miss'd his fair taD, 
 
 That had hung so retrospective ; 
 And his raven plumes, and some other marks 
 Regarding his feet, that had left their sparks 
 
 In a mind but too susceptive. 
 
 VII. 
 
 And she held it scorn that a mortal born 
 
 Should the Prince of Spirits rival, 
 To clamber at midnight her garden fence 
 For she knew not else by what pretence 
 
 To account for his arrival. 
 
5 oo 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 What thief art thou," quoth she, " in the dark 
 
 That stumblest here presumptuous ? 
 Some Irish adventurer I take you to be 
 A foreigner, from your garb, I see, 
 
 Which besides is not over sumptuous." 
 
 IX. 
 
 Then Satan, awhile dissembling his rank, 
 
 A piece of amorous fun tries ; 
 Quoth he, ' ' I'm a Netherlander born ; 
 Fair virgin, receive not my suit with scorn ; 
 
 I'm a Prince in the Low Countries 
 
 x. 
 
 " Though I travel incog. From the Land of Fog 
 
 And Mist I'm come to proffer 
 My crown and my sceptre to lay at your feet ; 
 It is not every day in the week you may meet, 
 
 Fair maid, with a Prince's offer." 
 
 XI. 
 
 ' ' Your crown and your sceptre I like full well, 
 
 They tempt a poor maiden's pride, sir ; 
 But your lands and possessions excuse if I'm rude- 
 Are too far in a northerly latitude 
 
 For me to become your bride, sir. 
 
 XII. 
 
 " In that aguish clime I should catch my death, 
 
 Being but a raw new-comer." 
 Quoth he, " We have plenty of fuel stout ; 
 And the fires, which I kindle, never go out 
 
 By winter, nor yet by summer. 
 
 XIII. 
 " I am Prince of Hell, and Lord Paramount 
 
 Over monarchs there abiding. 
 My Groom of the Stables is Nimrod old ; 
 And Nebuchadnezzar my stirrups must hold, 
 
 When I go out a riding. 
 
 XIV. 
 " To spare your blushes, and maiden fears, 
 
 I resorted to these inventions 
 But, imposture, begone ; and avaunt, disguise ! " - 
 And the Devil began to swell and rise 
 
 To his own diabolic dimensions. 
 
 XV. 
 Twin horns from his forehead shot up to the moon, 
 
 Like a branching stag in Arden ; 
 Dusk wings through his shoulders with eagle's strength 
 Push'd out ; and his train lay floundering in length 
 
 An acre beyond the garden. 
 
 XVI. 
 To tender hearts I have framed my lay 
 
 Judge ye, all love-sick maidens, * 
 When the virgin saw in the soft moonlight, 
 In his proper proportions, her own true knight, 
 
 If she needed long persuadings. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 xvir. 
 Yet a maidenly modesty kept her back, 
 
 As her sex's art had taught her : 
 For "the biggest fortunes," quoth she, " in the land 
 Are not worthy " then blush'd " of your highness's hand- 
 Much less a poor tailor's daughter. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " There's the two Miss Crockfords are single still, 
 
 For whom great suitors hunger ; 
 And their father's hell is much larger than mine " 
 Quoth the Devil, " I've no such ambitious design, 
 
 For their dad is an old fishmonger ; 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " And I cannot endure the smell of fish 
 
 I have taken an anti-bias 
 To their livers, especially since the day 
 That the Angel smoked my cousin away 
 
 From the chaste spouse of Tobias. 
 
 xx. 
 
 " Had my amorous kinsman much longer staid, 
 
 The perfume would have seal'd his obit ; 
 For he had a nicer nose than the wench, 
 Who cared not a pin for the smother and stench, 
 
 In the arms of the Son of Tobit." 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " I have read it," quoth she, "in Apocryphal Writ " 
 And the Devil stoop'd down and kiss'd her ; 
 
 Not Jove himself, when he courted in flame, 
 
 On Semele's lips, the love-scorch'd dame, 
 Impress'd such a Durning blister. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The fire through her bones and vitals shot 
 
 " Oh, I yield, my winsome marrow 
 I am thine for life " and black thunders roll'd 
 And she sank in his arms through the garden mould, 
 
 With the speed of a red-hot arrow. 
 
 Merrily, merrily, ring the bells 
 
 From each Pandemonian steeple ; 
 For the Devil hath gotten his beautiful bride, 
 And a wedding dinner he will provide, 
 
 To feast all kinds of people. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Fat Bulls of Bashan are roasted whole, 
 
 Of the breed that ran at David ; 
 With the flesh of goats, on the sinister side, 
 That shall stand apart, when the world is tried ; 
 Fit meat for souls unsaved 1 
 
 XXV, 
 
 The fowl from the spit were the Harpies' brood, 
 
 Which the bard sang near Cremona, 
 With a garnish of bats in their leathern wings impt 
 And the fish was two delicate slices crimpt, 
 Of the whale that swallowed Jonah. 
 
 Soi 
 
502 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Then the goblets were crown'd, and a health wont round 
 
 To the bride, in a wine like scarlet ; 
 No earthly vintage so deeply paints, 
 For 'twas dash'd with a tinge from the blood of the Saints 
 
 By the Babylonian Harlot. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 No Hebe fair stood cupbearer there, 
 
 The guests were their own skinkers ; 
 But Bishop Judas first bless'd the can, 
 Who is of all Hell Metropolitan, 
 
 And kiss'd it to all the drinkers. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 The feast being ended, to dancing they went, 
 
 To a music that did produce a 
 Most dissonant sound, while a hellish glee 
 Was sung in parts by the Furies Three ; 
 
 And the Devil took out Medusa. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 But the best of the sport was to hear his old dam 
 
 Set up her shrill forlorn pipe 
 How the wither'd beldam hobbled about, 
 And put the rest of the company out 
 
 For she needs must try a hornpipe. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 But the heat, and the press, and the noise, and the din, 
 
 Were so great, that, howe'er unwilling, 
 Our reporter no longer was able to stay, 
 But came in his own defence away, 
 
 And left the bride quadrilling. 
 
 The End. 
 
 (Page 366.) 
 
 The following is a pretty complete list of the pamphlets to which I have 
 referred. As it will not be found elsewhere, it may not be without its use to 
 collectors and students. 
 
 " The Invariable Principles of Poetry : in a Letter addressed to Thomas Campbell, 
 Esq., occasioned by some Critical Observations in his Specimens of British Poets, 
 particularly relating to the Character of Pope." By the Rev. W. L. Bowles. London, 
 1819. 8vo, pp. 46. 
 
 "A Letter to the Rev. William Lisle Bowles, in answer to a Pamphlet, recently 
 published under the title of ' A Reply to an Unsentimental Sort of Critic, the Reviewer 
 of Spence's Anecdote in the Quarterly Review for October, 1820."' By Octavius 
 Gilchrist, Esq., F.S.A. London, 1820. 8vo, pp. 42. 
 
 "A Reply to the Charges brought by the Reviewer of ' Spence's Anecdotes' in the 
 Quarterly Review for October, 1820, against the late Editor of Pope's Works, and 
 Author of ' A Letter to Mr. Campbell ' on ' The Invariable Principles of Poetry.' " By 
 the Rev. W. L. Bowles. London, 1820. 8vo. (Inserted in the Pamphleteer, No. 
 xxxiii.) 
 
 "A Second Letter to the Rev. William Lisle Bowles, in answer to his Second 
 Reply (printed in the Pamphleteer, No. xxxiii.), etc." By Octavius Gilchrist, Esq., 
 F.S.A. London, 1820. 8vo, pp. 36. 
 
APPENDIX. 503 
 
 "Letter to on the Rev. W. L. Bowles's Strictures on the Life 
 
 and Writings of Pope." By the Right Hon. Lord Byron. London (Murray), 1821. 
 8vo, pp. 61. 
 
 ' ' A Third Letter to the Rev. W. L. Bowles, concerning Pope's Moral Character : 
 including some 'Observations on that Person's Demeanour towards his Opponents 
 during the recent Controversy on that Subject." By Octavius Gilchrist, F.S.A. 
 London, 1821. 8vo. 
 
 " Two Letters to the Right Honourable Lord Byron, in Answer to his Lordship's 
 
 Letter to on the Rev. W. L. Bowles's Strictures on the Life and 
 
 Writings of Pope : more particularly on the Question, Whether Poetry be more 
 immediately indebted to what is Sublime and Beautiful in the Works of Nature or the 
 Works of Art?" By the Rev. W. L. Bowles. London, 1821. 8vo, pp. 104. 
 
 " Observations on the Poetical Character of Pope, further elucidating the Invariable 
 Principles of Poetry, etc. With a Sequel, in reply to Octavius Gilchrist." By the 
 Rev. W. L. Bowles. 1820-1. (Inserted in the Pamphleteer, Nos. xxxiv. and xxxv.) 
 
 "Letter to Lord Byron, protesting against the Immolation of Gray, Cowper, and 
 Campbell, at the Shrine of Pope." 1821. 8vo. 
 
 " A Letter to the Rev. W. L. Bowles, in reply to his Letter to Thomas Campbell, 
 Esq. , and to his Two Letters to the Right Hon. Lord Byron ; containing a Vindication 
 of their Defence of the Poetical Character of Pope, and an Inquiry into the Nature 
 of Poetical Images, and of the Characteristic Qualities that distinguish Poetry from 
 all other Species of Writing." By M. M'Dermot. 1822. 8vo. (Inserted in the 
 Pamphleteer, Noc. nadx. and xl. ) 
 
 "Letters to Lora Hyvon on a Question of Poetical Criticism. 3rd Edition, with 
 Corrections. To which are now first added the Letter to Mr. Campbell, as far as 
 regards Poetical Criticism ; and the Answer to the Writer in the Quarterly Review, 
 as far as it relates to the same Subject. 2nd Edition. Together with an Answer to 
 some Objections and further Illustrations." By the Rev. W. L. Bowles. London, 
 1822. 8vo. 
 
 "Letters to Mr. T. Campbell, as far as regards Poetical Criticism, etc., and the 
 Answer to the Writer in the Quarterly Review, etc. 2nd Edition. Together with an 
 Answer to some Objections ; and further Illustrations." 1822. (Inserted in the 
 Pamphleteer, No. xl.) 
 
 "A Final Appeal to the Literary Public relative to Pope, in Reply to certain 
 Observations of Mr. Roscoe, in his Edition of the Poet's Work. To which are added 
 some Remarks on Lord Byron's Conversations, as far as they relate to the same subject 
 and the Author. In Letters to a Literary Friend." By the Rev. W. L. Bowles, 
 M.A., etc. London, 1825. 8vo, pp. 190. 
 
 "Lessons in Criticism to William Roscoe, Esq., F.R.S., in Answer to his Letter 
 to the Rev. W. L. Bowles, on the Character and Poetry of Pope." 1826. 8vo. 
 
 (Page 448.) 
 
 The following, transcribed from a letter in the autograph of the humourist, 
 seems worthy of preservation here : 
 
 " Kensington, W., August 7th, 1850. 
 "My Dear Ned, 
 
 " This is the very best I can do for you. Look to it, I pray thee. 
 
 " When that old joke was new, 
 
 It was not hard to joke, 
 And puns we now pooh-pooh, 
 
 Great laughter would provoke. 
 True wit was seldom heard, 
 
 And humour shown by few, 
 When reign'd King George the Third, 
 
 And that old joke was new. 
 
504 APPENDIX. 
 
 "Do you see that, my lad ; but, perhaps you do not. You really ought to 
 see the pith ; you ought, indeed. But I am of opinion that you are too greatly 
 taken up with love-making. 
 
 "Well, I will pardon you ; and so here goes again. 
 
 " It passed indeed for wit, 
 
 Did this achievement rare, 
 When down your friend would sit, 
 
 To steal away his chair ; 
 You brought him to the floor, 
 
 You bruised him black and blue, 
 And this w d cause a roar, 
 
 When your old joke was new ! 
 
 "Don't you perceive the humour of this? eh? You should do so, you Sly 
 Fox, you. Perchance you don't, tho' ; and I will pardon you. But how about 
 that tripe ? eh ? 
 
 "Did you get home safely? Well, on second thoughts, you shall answer that 
 question when I see you again. 
 
 " Ever thine 
 
 "W. M. Thackeray." 
 
 H. 
 
 (Page 4770 
 
 When Thackeray, in January, i860, realized his project of setting on foot a 
 good magazine at a shilling to rival the old bad ones at half a crown, a "Song of 
 Welcome " was not wanting from one who had stood by his side in the old fire- 
 eating and whiskey-drinking Fraserian days. Mahony had left the "monthlies" 
 for the "dailies," that is to say, his duties as a journalist absorbed his time, and 
 he did little, or nothing, for the magazines which were so largely indebted to his 
 abilities for their currency. But the daring enterprise of his old friend and ally 
 awoke his slumbering muse, and he transmitted to London, for the initial number 
 of the Cornhill 
 
 FATHER PROUT'S INAUGURATIVE ODE. 
 
 1. 
 
 " Fudge," cries Squire Thornhill, 
 
 When Lady Blarney of the West End glozes 
 
 Mid the Primroses ; 
 
 Such word of honest scorn ill 
 
 Suits thy new Magazine, my friend on Cornhill. 1 
 
 Folks hail with joy ethereal 
 
 Thy welcome cereal ; 
 
 Of wit there's sad inopia 
 
 Empty thy Cornucopia ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Nor wit alone dispense, 
 
 But sense, 
 
 And with thy cordial Xeres, 
 
 Let us have Ceres, 
 
 Of loaf thou hast no lack ; 
 
 Nor settest, like idle zany forth. 
 With lots of sack, 
 
 Of bread a pennyworth. 
 
APPENDIX. 505 
 
 nr. 
 Still sprightly, yet sagacious, 
 Funny, yet farinaceous ; 
 So mayest thou on this auspicious morn 
 Exalt thy horn 
 Throned on the Hill of Corn ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 Of aught that smacks of surplice, sect, or synod. 
 
 Be thy grain winnow'd ; 
 
 Nor deign to raise a laugh 
 
 With empty chaff. 
 
 Shun aught o'er which dullard or bigot gloats, 
 
 Nor seek our siller 
 With meal from Titus Oates, 
 
 Or flour of Joseph Miller. 
 
 v. 
 Give all who come their fill, 
 There's corn in Egypt still, 
 (From Cairo to Cornhill) 
 AH applicants among 
 Treat best the young ; 
 And hide with fond and brotherly prevision 
 The cup of gold in Benjamin's provision I 
 
 VI. 
 
 Then, as to those 
 
 Who bring thee ponderous prose 
 
 Or heavier verse instead, 
 
 O thou Calcutta-born ! 
 
 Babe on the Ganges bred ! 
 Bid them convey their lumbering lay 
 
 Next street to the Hall of Lead 1 
 
 VII. 
 
 Dashing, and yet methodical, 
 So shall thy fascinating periodical 
 
 Through the dense underwood 
 
 Of Dunce and Dunderhood 
 Carve, hew, and hack her way, 
 Up ! gallant Thackeray ! 
 
 But this ode, fresh and vigorous as it is, failed somehow to please the fas- 
 tidious Thackeray. He thought Stanza I. "hard to construe," and that M Squire 
 Thornhill " was " lugged in head and ears." He said that " gallant Thackeray," 
 in the last line, "would never do"; and was of opinion that Stanzas VI. and 
 VII. were "personal." Accordingly, on sending Mahony "proof" of his Ode, 
 he forwarded one of an amplified and altered version by himself, which he 
 requested leave to publish. This Mahony seems to have received with an 
 acquiescent graciousness which was hardly to have been expected from one 
 usually so intolerant of opposition. An introductory stanza added by Thackeray 
 (see p. 477) he declined to adopt ; but allowed to remain, with modification, a 
 concluding one, as "answering for the frontispiece," that is, the emblematical 
 wrapper, which, by the way, is said to have been his own suggestion. Some of 
 Thackeray's " humble amendments " found favour, notably the beautiful last line 
 of Stanza VI. 
 
 " But slip the Cup of Love in Benjamin's ; " 
 
 others were made by Mahony ; and finally the piece appeared as I now give it 
 for comparison, with nine Stanzas instead of seven, and the title changed to 
 
506 APrENDlX. 
 
 LMAUGURAL ODE TO THE AUTHOR OF VANITY FAIR. 
 
 i. 
 
 Ours is a faster, quicker age : 
 Yet erst in Goldsmith's homely Wakefield Vicarage, 
 While Lady Blarney, from the West End, glozcs 
 
 'Mid the Primroses, 
 
 Fudge ! cries Squire Thornhill, 
 Much to the wonder of young greenhorn Moses. 
 
 Such word of scorn ill 
 Matches the " Wisdom fair" thy whim propose.? 
 
 To hold on Cornhill. 
 II. 
 With Fudge, or Blarney, or the " Thames on Fire 1 * 
 
 Treat not the buyer : 
 
 But proffer good material 
 
 A genuine Cereal, 
 Value for twelvepence and not dear at twenty, 
 Such wit replenishes thy Horn of Plenty ! 
 
 in. 
 Nor wit alone dispense, 
 
 But sense ; 
 And with thy sparkling Xerez 
 
 Let us have Ceres. 
 Of loaf thou hast no lack, 
 Nor set, like Shakespeare's zanv, forth 
 
 With lots of sack, 
 Of bread one pennyworth. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Sprightly, and yet sagacious, 
 
 Funny, yet farinaceous, 
 
 Dashing, and yet methodical 
 
 So may thy periodical, 
 
 On this auspicious morn, 
 
 Exalt its horn, 
 
 Throned on the Hill of Corn ! 
 
 v. 
 Of aught that smacks of sect, surplice, or synod, 
 
 Be thy grain winnowed ! 
 Nor deign to win one laugh 
 
 With empty chaff, 
 Shun aught o'er which dullard or bigot gloats ; 
 
 Nor seek our siller 
 With meal from Titus Oates, 
 
 Or flour of Joseph Miller. 
 VI. 
 There's corn in Egypt still, 
 (Pilgrim from Cairo to Cornhill !) 
 Give each his fill. 
 
 But all comers among 
 
 Treat best the young ; 
 Fill the big brother's knapsacks from thy bins, 
 But slip the Cup of Love in Benjamin's. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Next as to those 
 
 Who bring their lumbering verse or ponderous prose 
 
 To where good Smith and Elder 
 
 Have so long held their 
 Well garnished Cornhill storehouse 
 But them not bore us, 
 
 Tell them instead 
 
 To take their load next street, the Hall of Lead ! 
 
APPENDIX. 57 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Only one word besides. 
 
 As he who tanneth hides 
 Stocketh with proper implements his tannery : 
 
 So thou, Friend ! do not fail 
 
 To store a stout corn-flail, 
 Ready for use, within thy Cornhill granary. 
 
 Of old there walk'd abroad, 
 Prompt to right wrongs, Caliph Haroun al BasLid : 
 
 Deal thus with Fraud, 
 Or Job, or Humbug thrash it ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 Courage, old Friend ! long found 
 
 Firm at thy task, nor in fixt purpose fickle : 
 
 Up ! choose thy ground, 
 Put forth thy shining sickle ; 
 
 Shun the dense underwood 
 
 Of Dunce or Dunderhood ; 
 But reap North, South, East, Far West, 
 
 The world-wide Harvest ! 
 
 How the new editor obeyed these injunctions the world knows. For three 
 years he winnowed his chaff, performed his function of thresher or thrasher, 
 as the case might be, and reaped such harvest as was allotted to his labours. But 
 at the conclusion of this period, on Christmas Eve, 1863, the stout farmer was 
 himself gathered into the garner ; and Mahony, whose love for his old literary 
 associates was a pleasing trait amid the ' ' anfractuosities " (as Doctor Johnson 
 would have said) of his character, was left to bear the blow as he best might. 
 The following letter, which I take from a most interesting communication of Mr. 
 George Noble Plunkett, to Hibemia, February 1st, 1882 (my indebtedness to 
 which I gratefully acknowledge), attests in "its tremulous writing and un- 
 certain wording," how greatly moved was the writer by the sad and unexpected 
 intelligence. Tear-blurred as it is, it was issued va. facsimile in April, 1866, just 
 one month before Mahony himself closed his eyes upon this world : 
 
 "Dear B. It was truly kind of you to think of the absent in this hour 
 of our common sorrow. I have no heart to write articles I can only dwell in 
 silence on the long and varied memories of over thirty years. 
 
 "With respect to what you mention, I have looked at the list of Directors, 
 among whom our dear lost friend was to have figured. I see there the Chaplain- 
 General Gleig, and his name made me look over the group of contemporaries 
 once gathered round a board of 27 under the guidance of Maginn : there are but 6 
 left. I have marked them. 
 
 "Need I say I sympathize with you in the solicitude . . . inspires . . . 
 assure your worthy good brother of my best feelings towards him. May you tide 
 on through the coming year with less cause for affliction, and rest_ assured of my 
 cordial sentiments towards one of the few remaining friends of old times. 
 
 "Yours, "Francis Mahony. 
 
 " 19, Rue des Moulins, 1st January, 1864." 
 
 The following humorous macaronics are worth preservation among the delicice 
 of their period. They appeared originally in the National Omnibus, January 13th, 
 1832, p. 14. They have been variously ascribed to Maginn and Mahony ; but 
 were actually the production of the Rev. Richard Harris Barham, Pauline, 
 
5S APPENDIX. 
 
 Oxonian, and Bentleian, and who will be known to all time as the " Thomas 
 Ingoldsby " of the Magazines, and author of the " Ballads " that bear the name of 
 the pseudonym he has immortalized. He was born at Canterbury, December 6th, 
 1788, and died in London, June 17th, 1845, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. 
 
 EPITAPH ON A FAIR PATIENT OF ST. JOHN LONG'S. 
 
 Hie jacet in terris Medicus ? Nequaquam, 
 
 Pulchra puella ; Sed pictor signorum, 
 
 Voluit esse melior In Tipperaria\ 
 Dum fuit wella. Inops bonorum. 
 
 Quae causa mortis Nunc dives auri 
 
 Infelix virgo ? Sedet sublimis, 
 
 Aqua fortis In curru, celebratus 
 
 Urens a tergo ! Prosa atque rhymis ! 
 
 Quantum quantitate ? Quas tantas famae 
 
 Nescio sane. Fuit origo ? 
 
 Attamen vixero, Venter solutus 
 
 Si non any 1 Marchionis de Sligo ! 
 
 Quis administravit ? Nunc particeps alter 
 
 Sanctus Johannes ! Dementias vestrae ? 
 
 Quibus recommendatus ? Imo, sane, fuit 
 
 Plurimis Zanies I Dominus Ingestrie. 
 
 Quis fuit ille Ah ! virgo infelix ! 
 
 Johannes praefatus ; Tui quam miseresco ! 
 
 O'Driscoll Billy Sine sheetis aut blankets, 
 
 Olim nuncupatus 1 Dormientis al fresco 1 
 
 Ah 1 virgo infelix, 
 
 Hie intus jace 
 In longum a Longo, 
 
 Requiescas in pace ! 
 
 Spunge. 
 
 At the lapse of half a century, a short notice of the extraordinary medical 
 charlatan whose doings form the subject of the foregoing verses, may be neither 
 needless nor uninteresting. St. John Long was the son of an Irish basket- 
 maker, and practised, in his early days, with some success, as a portrait-painter 
 in Limerick. Coming to London, he obtained employment in the studio of Sir 
 Thomas Lawrence, and was elected a member of the Royal Society of Litera- 
 ture and the Royal Asiatic Society. By-and-by, devoting his attention to the 
 preparation of anatomical drawings for the medical profession, he picked up 
 some knowledge of the human frame, and was induced to think that the practice 
 of medicine offered a fairer employment for his abilities, than the prosecution of 
 the fine arts. Acting upon this conviction, he invented an embrocation and a 
 vapour, which, by means of friction in the one case, and inhalation in the other, 
 were to cure all human diseases. He took a large house in Harley Street ; and 
 both this and the street itself, were speedily blocked up with wealthy patients and 
 their carriages ; his income amounting in one year, as was said, to the enormous 
 sum of ,13,400.* At length, in 1830, a young lady, who had been frightened by 
 the quack's prediction that she would fall into a decline, allowed him to apply 
 the embrocation to her back. A frightful wound was the result, from the ex- 
 hausting effects of which, although Sir Benjamin Brodie was summoned to the 
 
 * This statement is made, apparently on good authority, in the Gentleman's 
 Rlagazine, vol. xix. (1843), p. 159. 
 
APPENDIX. 509 
 
 rescue, the unfortunate victim sank, in her twenty-fifth year.* An inquest was 
 held ; when, in spite of the enormous interest to divert justice from its course, a 
 verdict of manslaughter was given against the charlatan. A similar result followed 
 his appearance in the dock of the Old Bailey, when, instead of being imprisoned, 
 he was fined .250 ; a sum which he paid immediately, and left the court in the 
 carriage of Lord Sligo. Resuming his practice, which was in no degree im- 
 paired by this catastrophe, another fatal case soon occurred, in the person of a 
 Mrs. Lloyd. A coroner's jury once more found him guilty of manslaughter; but 
 he was, this time, acquitted at the Old Bailey. So important and favourable was 
 the evidence adduced on these trials, that his popularity seemed rather increased 
 than otherwise. The profession, itself, came forward to defend him ; and an 
 anonymous pamphleteer (1831) compared his cures to those of|Jesus Christ. He 
 retained his practice till his death, an event which was not long in arriving. It 
 was not exactly, perhaps, one of those cases so delightful to witness, of the 
 "engineer hoist on his own petard," when consumption, the very disease which 
 he professed the most successfully to combat, cut short his career, in the thirty- 
 eighth year of his age, in the enjoyment of an income of fully ^5000 per annum. 
 An imposing monument in Kensal Green Cemetery records, in a fulsome in- 
 scription, his "remedial discovery," and provokes comparison with the pompous 
 sepulchres of Ducrow, the Hippodamist, and Morison, the Hygeist. 
 
 The following quatrain on this once notorious personage comes to my memory 
 as I write : 
 
 "EPIGRAM ON ST. JOHN LONG. 
 
 " Behold, ye quacks 1 the vengeance strong 
 On deeds like yours impinging ; 
 For here below lies St. John Long, 
 Who now must be long singeing /" 
 
 K. 
 
 To Eraser's Magazine for April, 1831, was contributed, by Mr. F. W. N. 
 Bayley, a poem of a dozen stanzas, entitled "A Long Song of Ecstasy." This is 
 a sort of eulogistic advertisement of the Magazine, and metrical summary of its 
 contents, and as such was not admitted to companionship with the other articles, 
 but found* a place, as it was probably intended it should do, on the back of the title 
 for the month. This leaf, not being included in the pagination, is generally con- 
 signed by the sapient binders to the waste, although it contains upon one side the 
 "contents," and on the other, "notices to correspondents," and such pieces as 
 
 * Satirical folks might cite this as an illustration of the capital epigram by 
 Jekyll : 
 
 'One Doctor single like the sculler plies, 
 The patient struggles, and by inches dies : 
 But two physicians, like a pair of oars, 
 Waft him right smoothly to the Stygian shores ; M 
 
 ~which well deserves a Latin dress : 
 
 ' Unicus aegrotum dum tractat, remigis instar, 
 Paulatim Medicus disperiisse videt ; 
 Navigio celeri Stygias defertur ad undas, 
 Cui duo dant Medici, dira biremis, opem." 
 
 A peculiarly felicitous application of this epigram was once made by Mr. Goulburn, 
 the Commissioner in Bankruptcy, in re Kirkman Lane, solicitor {The Times, 
 November 25th, 1856, p. 2, col. 3), to illustrate the absurdity of the employment of two 
 attorneys instead of one, as was alleged to save expenses. See Willis's Current Notes, 
 December, 1856. 
 
510 APPENDIX. 
 
 that I now allude to, and consequently merits preservation. As two of these 
 stanzas have reference to our " Gallery, " I give them, though they have no special 
 merit of their own to recommend them : 
 
 " With portraits of our learned men 
 
 It makes the world acquainted ; 
 To see their phizzes pencill'd there 
 
 Is next to being sainted 1 
 Jerdan was drawn, as Jerdan is 
 
 When evening dews are falling ; 
 Sir Walter walk'd about his grounds 
 
 To his northern watch-dog calling ; 
 Galt warm'd his inexpressibles 
 
 Before a roaring fire ! 
 And Rogers look'd as much amused 
 
 As one could well desire. 
 
 " Lockhart, the Comet of the North, 
 
 His brown cigar was smoking ; 
 Moore gazed upon the clement skies 
 
 And look'd like Momus joking ! 
 Campbell, with lengthy pipe in hand, 
 
 Seem'd like a god in clo%-er ! 
 Maginn, array 'd in new brown scratch, 
 
 A gentleman all over ; 
 Croker, the Irish fairy king, 
 
 And Oberon of the Moderns ; 
 With several others yet to come. 
 
 Who doubtless will be odd 'uns ! " 
 
 As one of the Fraserian brotherhood, and an intimate ally of Maginn, this 
 gentleman, variously known in his short day as " Alphabet " or " Initial " Bayley, 
 from the number of letters which appeared before his surname, and as " Omnibus " 
 Bayley, from a penny weekly publication which he started and edited, seems to 
 demand some brief notice here. He was born in Ireland, and in very early life 
 accompanied his step-father, a Peninsular and Waterloo officer, to Barbadoes. 
 While resident there he collected materials for his Four Years' Residence in the 
 IVest Indus (London, 1830, 8vo), a book, which, from the vivid and graphic 
 style in which it discoursed of the Leeward Islands and their inhabitants, gained 
 him the friendship of Maginn, of whom he became an imitator, and introduced 
 him into the literary coterie of which the latter was the ruling spirit. The stand- 
 ing which he had thus early acquired in literature led to his appointment as 
 literary, dramatic and musical critic on the Morning Post ; during his connection 
 with which journal he produced a three-volume novel, Scenes and Stories by a 
 Clergyman in Difficulties ; in which some very curious details will be found of the 
 Queen's Bench and Fleet Prison, and the numerous celebrities who were, about 
 that period, the casual tenants of those lugubrious abodes. We also have from 
 bis pen Tales of the late Revolutions, -with a Few Others (London, 8vo, 1831) ; a 
 Life of William Cobbelt ; and a series of "Historical Poems," contributed to the 
 Times newspaper. 
 
 In 1832, he issued a series of songs set to music, under the title of The Nosegay ; 
 and wrote subsequently many well-known and once popular songs, among which 
 may be mentioned *' Jolly Holly Christmas," " He that careth in Summer," 
 " The Sabbath Eve," " She gathers a Shamrock," a series of songs published by 
 Williams, of Cheapside, under the title of Home Gift Songs, and ITie Newfound- 
 land Dog, published by Purday, of St. Paul's Churchyard, and sung by Henry 
 Russell, which had a sale of 5000 copies, a mighty thing in those days. 
 
 In 1841, he published (Colnaghi, royal 4to, ios.6a.) the j'eu <T esprit by which, 
 at this moment, he is perhaps the best remembered. This was his New Tale of a 
 Tub, a story in verse of two Bengalese gentlemen, who picnicking on a sultry 
 
 
APPEXD1X. -511 
 
 plain within the shade of a huge tub, are disturbed by a prowling Tiger. They 
 manage to dodge him round about the tub for a time ; till at last in attempting to 
 climb over it, their unwelcome visitor succeeds in overturning it upon himself, 
 and thus becomes imprisoned within its capacious circumference. The friends 
 jump upon it, and prevent the obstreperous captive from disturbing it in his 
 struggles. At last, in course of his unsuccessful gyrations, his tail makes its 
 appearance through the bang-hole. They take firm grip of this, and are wonder- 
 ing which will die first of starvation, themselves or the tiger, when a happy device 
 occurs to one of them by means of which they may prevent its retraction : 
 
 " The Tiger is free, yet they do not quail, 
 Tho* temper has all gone wrong with him ; 
 N they've tied a knot in the Tiger's Tail, 
 And he carries the Tub along with him ; 
 He's a freehold for fife, with a tail out of joint, 
 And has made his last Climax 
 
 A True Knotty Point ! " 
 
 The laughable, but certainly not over-clever, book contained illustrations 
 designed by Lieut. Cotton, and drawn by Aubry, which are reduced for the smaller 
 editions at a shilling, issued by Routledge. 
 
 t came Comic Nursery Rhymes (1842, i2mo), including "Blue Beard," 
 and "Little Red Riding Hood," both illustrated by "Alfred Crowquill " (Alfred 
 Henry Forrester) ; and The Model of the Earth, in "The Little Folks Laughing 
 Library " (Darton, 1S51), with woodcuts by W. G. Mason after H. G. Hine. 
 
 It was Mr. Bayley to whom the public was indebted for the recasting of the 
 translation of the opera of Adelia, produced at her Majesty's Theatre, into 
 verse ; a feat which he is said to have accomplished at a sitting, on the night 
 previous to that of its representation. 
 
 He edited The Illustrated Musical Almanack ; he wrote The Souvenir of the 
 Season, The Wake of Ecstacy, in Memory of Jenny Lind, "with ideal illustrations 
 by Kenny Meadows, lithographed by R. J. Hamerton " (London, 4to, 1848) ; 
 and was author of The Opera Glass, and two Christmas books for 1851, The 
 Humming- Bird Keepsake, and Gems for the Drawing-Room, the illustrations for 
 both beautifully drawn and lithographed by Paul Jerrard of Fleet Street. 
 
 A good deal about " Omnibus " Bayley, and that not much to his credit, 
 will be found in Recollections of the Last Half-Century, by the Rev. J. Richardson, 
 LL.B. (London, 1856, 2 vols, 8vo). He is there described as "a tall awkwardly 
 built man, with a huge head, from which descended and fell on his shoulders, in 
 snake-like ringlets, a profusion of long, black, greasy hair. His face was broad 
 and inexpressive, and only redeemed from perfect vacuity by a certain sinister 
 expression of the eyes. He was, I believe, a West Indian Creole, originally from 
 an Irish stock, with a slight streak of the Negro" (vol. ii. p. 179). I did not, 
 myself, know Mr. Bayley well ; though sufficiently so to enable me to speak to the 
 general truth of the foregoing physical portraiture. He was a genial companion, 
 possessed brilliant conversational powers, was gifted with a ready wit, and 
 exhibited a talent for metrical improvisation second, indeed, to that of Theodore 
 Hook, but rivalling the happiest efforts of poor Charlie Sloman. 
 
 He died, in December, 1852, in Birmingham, of bronchitis ; and was buried in 
 one of the public cemeteries of that town. He must have received large sums for 
 his literary and other labours, but, as a matter of course, left his family entirely 
 unprovided for. He was only forty years of age. 
 
 To the very last he was a frequent contributor to a serial long since extinct, 
 The Cheerful Visitor ; and, by a curious coincidence, the last lines that he penned 
 for it, the conclusion of the introductory poem to No. 12, are 
 
 " This the fine moral Glory's Grave hath found you, 
 
 The Tomb is the last shelter from the storm." 
 
g I2 APPENDIX. 
 
 From similarity of name, no less than from the fact that he was a writer of 
 popular songs, this Mr. Bayley is often mistaken for another poet, "his very oppo- 
 site in all ways," and to whose graceful productions his own bore the same sort 
 of resemblance, to use the words of S. C. Hall, "as does the pinchbeck of 
 Birmingham to the pure gold of twenty carats." 
 
 To obviate any such confounding of persons, a word or two may be said 
 about Thomas Haynes Bayly, a poet of altogether another stamp, of 
 infinitely greater sparkle, elegance, refinement and tenderness. Possibly Horace 
 might not unfairly describe such poems as those which he produced, as 
 
 " Versus inopes rerum, nugasque canoras, 
 
 but still, as a lyric poet, Bayly possessed no mean ability, and his songs are all 
 that is easy and graceful. He was author of two or three novels which I happen 
 never to have read ; and some thirty or forty pieces for the stage, which I never 
 saw. Older theatre-goers may, however, remember his Tom Noddy's Secret, 
 Perfection, etc. ; and every one knows his beautiful songs, " Oh no, we never 
 mention her," and "I'd be a Butterfly," which were the charm of every London 
 drawing-room, while the writer was pining in sickness and distress. There is a 
 charming little volume, Psyche; or Songs of Butterflies. By T. H. Bayly, 
 attempted in Latin Rhyme by the Rev. Francis JVrangham, M.A., F.R.S. {Arch- 
 deacon of the East Riding of York)* of which a few copies only were printed at 
 Malton (1828, 8vo), for private distribution. In it occurs the following exquisite 
 version of the song I have spoken of : 
 
 "Ah sim Papilio, natus in flosculo, 
 
 Rosas ubi liliaque et violas patent ; 
 Floribus advolans, avolans, osculo 
 
 Gemmulas tangens, quae suave olent ! 
 Regna et opes ego neutiquam postulo, 
 
 Nolo ego ad pedes qui se volutent 
 Ah sim Papilio, natus in flosculo, 
 
 Osculans gemmas quae suave olent 1 
 
 ' Magicam si possem virgam furari, 
 
 Alas has pulchras aptem mi, ehen I 
 ^Estivis actis diebus in aere, 
 
 Rosa cubant Philomelas cantu. 
 Opes quid afferunt ? Curas, somnum rare ; 
 
 Regna nil praster aerumnas, eheu ! 
 Ah sim Papilio, die volans aere, 
 
 Rosa Cubans Philomelas cantu ! 
 
 "Quemque horum vagulum dicis horrore 
 Frigora Autumni ferire suo ; 
 ^Estas quando abiit, mallem ego mori, 
 Omni quod dulce est cadente pulchro. 
 
 * This gentleman, one of the most amiable men and elegant scholars of his day, 
 died December 27th, 1842, aged 73 years. S. C. Hall says : " I knew him well ; he 
 was a tall slight man, of exceedingly attractive and gentle manners, with the ease and 
 grace of a Christian gentleman. He had a proneness to translate favourite poems into 
 Latin verse, and usually had a copy or two in his pocket to present as a memorial where 
 he had reason to think the gift would be acceptable. " {Book of Memories, p. 178.) 
 His graceful skill as a translator into English is evinced by his Lyrics of Horace ; 
 being the First Four Books of his Odes (Chester, 1832, 4to). "Only a few Copies, 
 including Ten in Octavo, printed for Private Distribution," His portrait was admirably 
 painted by John Jackson, R.A., an engraving from which is before me, inserted in 
 the version of Horace of which I have spoken. 
 
 
APPENDIX. 513 
 
 Brumse qui cupiunt captent labore 
 
 Gaudia, et moras breves trahunto 
 Ah sim Papilio ; vivam in errore, 
 Concidamque omni cadente pulchro. F. W. 
 
 "January, 1828." 
 
 One, and probably the best known, of Bayly's dramatic pieces, Perfection, 
 had to contend with many difficulties before it found its way to the public. It was 
 originally offered to a minor theatre, where Mrs. Waylett was performing ; but 
 was rejected, though subsequently that graceful actress made the principal part, 
 "Kate O'Brien," one of her most successful characters. After this rejection, it 
 was submitted to the manager of Covent Garden Theatre, during the engagement 
 of Miss Foote, afterwards Countess of Harrington ; but was once more rejected, 
 though the Irish heroine afterwards became one of this charming lady's favourite 
 parts, when acting in the Provinces. Finally it was fortunately offered to Drury 
 Lane ; and, instantly accepted by the management, achieved a great success in the 
 original cast of Madame Vestris, and Mrs. Orger, supported by Messrs. Webster, 
 Jones and Browne. 
 
 This play has been rather a favourite with amateur performers ; and its persona 
 have had aristocratic representatives. Thus, on the occasion of the "Christmas 
 Festivities at Brakelow," January 1st, 1831, after the performance of Lady Dacre's 
 comedy, A Match or No Match, it was successfully enacted by Viscount 
 Castlereagh, the Marchioness of Londonderry, Lady Sophia Gresley, Sir Roger 
 Gresley, and Mr. Lister. " Perfection" is printed in a very scarce volume entitled 
 Musings and Prosings, by Thomas Haynes Bayly (Boulogne, 1833, 8vo), where 
 also will be found the capital "Fashionable Eclogues," "Lunatic Lays," sundry 
 poems and songs, and "The Proof of the Pudding," aburletta in one act, founded 
 on and partly translated from the Vatel of Scribe, and performed at the Olympic, 
 under the management of Madame Vestris. 
 
 Another volume in my hands, rare also, as printed for private distribution 
 only, is Fifty Original Ballads, by Thomas Haynes Bayly (Bath, Printed by 
 Mary Meyler, 1829, 4to, pp. 80). This is dedicated, " on the plea of relation- 
 ship," to the Earl of Stamford and Warrington ; the fact being that the great- 
 grandfather of the preceding Earl, and of the father of the poet, were brothers. 
 
 Mr. Bayly was thus of good family; and was born in. 1797, in Bath, where 
 his father was a solicitor in good position. The latter made ample provision for 
 his son ; but this was lost through the rascality of a trustee. The young man, who 
 was in every sense a gentleman, of handsome person and distinguished manners, 
 was thus thrown on literature as a resource. He was on the staff of the John Bull, 
 during the editorship of Theodore Hook ; and was a frequent contributor to the 
 New Monthly Magazine, when under the management of S. C. Hall. But his 
 health broke down, and he died at Cheltenham, in the forty-second year of his age, 
 April 22nd, 1839, leaving a widow and two children in adverse circumstances. A 
 benefit at Drury Lane produced the sum of ^"200 for them ; and his widow, Helena 
 Becher Bayly, edited his Songs, Ballads and other Poems, and prefaced them by f 
 memoir (1844, 2 vols. 8vo). 
 
 In Eraser's Magazine (vol. iv. p. 52), will be found the "Lay OF TH 
 Twaddle School, a Pastoral Duet between Robert Montgomery and 
 Thomas Haynes Bayly ; " of which I will only transcribe the lines which relate 
 to the latter : 
 
 " Satins and Silks I sang gravely and gaily, 
 And the bard of the boudoir was Thomas Haynes Bayly ; 
 With my butterflies, buttercups, butter-flowers daily, 
 I butter'd my bread, heigh, for Thomas Haynes Bayly? 
 With my songs, and my sonnets, the girls I wooed frailly, 
 Tom Moore, the chaste model of Thomas Haynes Bayly ; 
 
 2L 
 
514 APPENDIX. 
 
 Apollo, though radiant his rays, shines but palely, 
 When the eyes of the fair shine on Thomas Haynes Bayly ; 
 With ' Miniature Lyrics ' the Muse did I waylay, 
 And a miniature picture of Thomas Haynes Bayly ; 
 I sang about Bath, till I bother'd them really, 
 And eclipsed was Kit Anstey by Thomas Haynes Bayly ; 
 Herrick, Waller, Burns, Byron, Moore, Morris and Shelley, 
 Were poor sing-song strummers to Thomas Haynes Bayly." 
 
 There is yet another Bayley, Peter, to wit. This was a clever man about 
 own, in the Georgian epoch, concerning whom very little is now known. He 
 published a volume of Poems (1803, 8vo) ; and later on, became editor of The 
 Museum. We have from his pen, though published anonymously, a very clever 
 social satire, entitled Sketches from St. George's Fields, by Giorgione di Castel 
 Chiuso (London, Robert Stodart, 1820, 8vo) ; followed, in 1831, by a second 
 series, of equal bulk. I feel sure that Lowndes is wrong, in attributing these 
 volumes, in his Bibliographer 's Manual, to J. C. Hobhouse ; and that " Olphar 
 Hamst " (Ralph Thomas) is right in ascribing them, in his Hand-Book of Fic- 
 titious Names assumed by Authors of the XLXth Century (1868, 8vo), to the writer 
 of whom I am speaking. They are illustrated throughout by woodcut head and 
 tail pieces of rare excellence, from designs signed " B," which I should attribute 
 to W. H. Brooke. In my copy these are carefully coloured ; but I have seen no 
 other in which they have been so treated. The book is well worth looking up, 
 but it is no easy matter to get both"series. Mr. Peter Bayley died March 25th, 1823, 
 as he was proceeding in a carriage to the Opera House. 
 
 I have allowed myself inadvertently to get involved in a Bailiwick, from which 
 I shall have some trouble to extricate myself. With a thankful feeling for the 
 information I have derived from a pleasantly learned antiquarian book, I mention 
 John Bayley, author of the History of the Tower of London, 1821, 2 vols. 4to. 
 
 A word to Philip James Bailey, and I have done. It was this gentleman 
 (born 1816), who, by the publication of Festus, a Poem (London, Pickering, 1839, 
 8vo), may be said to have given the primal start to the nuisance of poetic " spasm." 
 Others, of greater or less power, Alexander Smith, in his Life Drama, and 
 Sydney Dobell, in his Balder followed in his wake, and we had a new "school" 
 of poetry. Next sprang upa" school " of criticism to match, and no balderdash 
 was too rhapsodic in thought, or extravagant in language, to escape laudation. 
 Among those whose taste, formed on the classic productions of ancient and modern 
 times, was outraged by these monstrosities, was Professor Aytoun, of Edinburgh, 
 who, by his admirable mock-heroical poem, Firmilian ; or, the Student of Badajos, 
 a Spasmodic Tragedy, by T. Percy Jones (1854, 8vo),* at once pai-odied the poetry, 
 satirized the poetasters, and discredited the critics. Of such "poets" we may 
 well say what Dr. Parr said of Mrs. Barbauld, when he was told that she had 
 successfully imitated Dr. Johnson : " Sir, she has the nodosity of the oak without 
 its strength, the noise of the thunder without its bolt, the contortions of the 
 Sybil without her inspiration!" The "school," regarded as a collective body, 
 may be said to have now ceased to exist. Some of its members have achieved 
 distinction, but, as in the case of the Pre-Raphaelite brethren in art, this has been 
 by renouncing the absurdities of their youth ; and some have shown, where they 
 
 * This masterpiece of burlesque is the least known, and perhaps the best, of 
 Aytoun's writings. A specimen, so to speak, was contributed by him to Blackwood 's 
 Magazine for May, 1854 ; and purported to be extracted from an unpublished tragedy, 
 which was gravely criticized in the ordinary fashion. So well was the thing carried out, 
 that the newspapers took the part of the poet against the reviewer ; and never 
 dreaming that they were identical, pronounced the poetry excellent, and the critic 
 altogether in the wrong! They begged "Mr. Percy Jones" to publish his volume, 
 and Aytoun obliged them with " a real roaring tragedy" ! Even when this appeared, 
 a few months afterwards, the public was not convinced, and the humorous poem was 
 noticed by several critics as a genuine production of the spasmodic school. 
 
APPENDIX. 515 
 
 have condescended to write like ordinary folks, that they had nothing but theif 
 absurdity to recommend them. The immediate begetter of the Festus of Bailey, 
 was the Faustus of Goethe ; of which the good Germans may cease to boast, foi 
 if our Festus be not greater, it is three or four times as long ! It has gone through 
 many editions ; and with it is now incorporated The Angel World of the same 
 author, originally published in 1850. I have expressed no opinion of my own on 
 Festus ; which has always appeared to me a poem containing some fine passages, 
 and of considerable, if unequal, power. Much is expected where God, the Holy 
 Ghost, the Son of God, Lucifer, and the Angels are interlocutors ; though one can 
 hardly but be shocked by the constant iteration, on the first page, of a name 
 which has been thought by some too holy even to pronounce. It is my misfortune, 
 I suppose, that I cannot quite say with Ebenezer Elliott, " that it contains poetry 
 enough to set up fifty poets; " with Douglas Jerrold, that it is " truly wonderful " ; 
 or, with Alfred Tennyson, that " I can hardly trust myself to say how much I 
 admire it, for fear of falling into extravagance." * 
 
 There are also by Mr. Bailey, The Mystic, and other Poems (1855, 8vo) ; The 
 Age: a Colloquial Satire (Chapman and Hall, 1858, 8vo) ; and The Universal 
 Hymn (1868, 4to). 
 
 When the portrait of William Maginn, "The Doctor," originally appeared 
 in Fraser's Magazine (ox January, 1831, it was accompanied by an admirable page 
 of illustrative text from the pen of his friend, John Gibson Lockhart. In this 
 occur, as descriptive of the subject, two lines of verse, highly indicative of his 
 nationality, and which are cited as "his own immortal words" : 
 
 "A randy, bandy, brandy, no Dandy, 
 Rollicking jig of an Irishman !" 
 
 These lines will be found to form part of the song given below, a performance 
 which may be pronounced unique in its humorous and suggestive excellence. 
 It was sung by " O'Doherty," at " Awmrose's," and will be found in chap. i. 
 of the Nodes Ambrosiance. It also occurs in a little volume entitled Whistle- 
 binkie ; or the Piper of the Party. A Collection of Songs chiefly for the Social 
 Circle (Glasgow, 1839, small .8vo), to which it was possibly contributed by 
 Maginn, or, more probably, annexed directly by the editor, from the convenient 
 pages of Blackwood : 
 
 " THE LADY'S POCKET ADONIS. 
 "There was a lady lived at Leith, 
 A lady very stylish, man ; 
 And yet, in spite of all her teeth, 
 She fell in love with an Irishman. 
 A nasty, ugly Irishman, 
 A wild, tremendous Irishman, 
 A tearing, swearing, thumping, bumping, 
 Ranting, roaring Irishman ! 
 
 "His face was no ways beautiful, 
 
 For with smallpox 'twas scarr'd across ; 
 And the shoulders of the ugly dog 
 Were almost double a yard across. 
 Oh ! the lump of an Irishman ! 
 The whiskey-devouring Irishman 1 
 The great he-rogue, with his wonderful brogue, 
 The fighting, rioting Irishman ! 
 
 * See the six pages of " Notices and Literary Opinions," at the end of the " third 
 edition, with additions," Pickering, 1848, demy 8vo. 
 
5 i 6 AFPEND1X. 
 
 " One of his eyes was bottle-green, 
 
 And the other eye was out, my dear ; 
 And the calves of his wicked-looking legs 
 Were more than two feet about, my dear. 
 Oh ! the great big Irishman ! 
 The rattling, battling Irishman ! 
 The stamping, ramping, swaggering, staggering^ 
 Leathering swash of an Irishman ! 
 
 " He took so much of Lundyfoot, 
 
 That he used to snort and snuffle, oh ! 
 And, in shape and size, the fellow's neck 
 Was as bad as the neck of a buffalo. 
 Oh ! the horrible Irishman ! 
 The thundering, blundering Irishman ! 
 The slashing, dashing, smashing, lashing, 
 Thrashing, hashing Irishman ! 
 
 11 His name was a terrible name, indeed, 
 Being Timothy Thady Mulligan ; 
 And when he'd emptied his tumbler of punch,.. 
 He'd not rest till he'd fill'd it full again. 
 The boozing, bruising Irishman, 
 The 'toxicated Irishman 
 The whisky, frisky, rummy, gummy. 
 Brandy, no dandy Irishman I 
 
 '* This was the lad the lady loved, 
 Like all the girls of quality ; 
 And he broke the skulls of the men of Leith, 
 Just by the way of jollity ; 
 
 Oh ! the leathering Irishman ! 
 The barbarous, savage Irishman ! 
 The hearts of the maids, and the gentlemen's heads, 
 Were bother'd, I am sure, by this Irishman ! " 
 
 M. 
 
 (Page 241.) 
 
 The following extracts from The Age newspaper may serve at once to illustrat 
 the theatrical criticism of the period, and the quarrel between Kemble and West 
 macott. Possibly the actor was angrier than he need have been, and attached i 
 significance to a certainly obnoxious word which it was not intended to bear : 
 
 "AN ODE TO COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 " Out, alas ! the times are hard in 
 Thy great play-house, Covent Garden ! 
 If they mend not, I assure ye, 
 You'll be dish'd clean by Old Drury : 
 See, to carry on the war, 
 They've recruited, near and far ; 
 And have levied such a power, 
 As never London saw before, 
 Young and old, and short and tall, 
 Soldiers, ' pioneers and all,' 
 Tragic, comic, operatic, 
 In short, a perfect corps dra,7natique. 
 While these cohorts fill their trenches,. 
 Your defence lies on two wenches, 
 
APPENDIX. 517 
 
 Black-ey'd Susan, black-ey'd Fanny 
 What can they against so many ? 
 If of two the Town must choose one, 
 Who d'ye think will care for Susan ? 
 And, tho' I love her, never can I 
 Dote alone on Tragic Fanny. 
 Pr'ythee change, then, Charlie Kemble : 
 If you don't, you well may tremble, 
 Soon you'll find your two pet doxies 
 Will leave you nought but ' empty boxes/ 
 And your prizes turn to blanks 
 The public owe you but small thanks. 
 
 Be advis'd then ; haste and get a 
 Change for that long burletta, 
 A place for Susan straight engage, 
 Book her by the Deptford stage, 
 And tho' Fanny some admire, 
 Of Fanny always folks will tire. 
 Mutton's good, no doubt, for dinner ; 
 But who was yec so great a sinner, 
 As to be condemned to munch 
 For supper, dinner, breakfast, lunch, 
 Nought but mutton? Oh, the Dickens 1 
 At the thought, one's stomach sickens, 
 ' Toujours perdrix ' who can pardon, 
 Or thy play-bills, Covent Garden ? 
 Which, when reading, each one cries 
 
 * Nought but black eyes ! D n their eyes I ' 
 
 Happy should we be to lose one, 
 Black-ey'd Fanny, or black-ey'd Susan, 
 Nay, without deep sorrow, can I 
 Spare Miss Susan and Miss Fanny. 
 Out, las ! the times are hard in 
 Thy great play-house, Covent Garden ! " 
 
 Well, we know all about "black-ey'd Fanny;" but who, in the name of 
 Thespis, was "black-ey'd Susan"? If, among my readers, there be some grey- 
 bearded play-goer whose memory reaches back to this palaeozoic epoch, he may, 
 remembering, not the dark orbs, for I think they were light, but the graceful 
 form that enchanted Lord William Lennox, reply, "Why, Susannah Paton, to 
 be sure ! " But my octogenarian friend would be wrong. "Black-ey'd Susan" 
 was no other than, " Black-fiy'd Susan ! " Scilicet ', the well-known, and once 
 famous, nautical drama thus entitled, which, written by Douglas Jerrold, when 
 a youngster of twenty, and with Gay's capital ballad, "All in the downs, etc.," 
 written a hundred years before, had set the Thames fairly on fire at the " Surrey," 
 under Elliston, had retrieved the broken fortunes of old " Drury," and had had 
 a run at the " Garden " of which the critic seems to have been getting as tired as 
 must have been T. P. Cook, the original "William," who is said to have enacted 
 the character nearly a thousand times ! 
 
 There are prose criticisms on Fanny Kemble also to be found in The Age, 
 commenting unfavourably upon her figure, bust, complexion, arms, eyes, and 
 pronunciations ; but nothing which by the most sensitive fastidiousness, could be 
 tortured into an imputation on the moral character of the young lady. But, still, 
 the flogging was not thrown away. 
 
,* 4 8 AFIENDIX. 
 
 N. 
 
 The following exquisite lines were written by the younger Disraeli in the 
 album of the Countess of Blessington, and refer to a young deaf and dumb 
 grand-niece of the latter, "the favourite and petted and pitied plaything of nei 
 distinguished circle of guests " : 
 
 "TO A BEAUTIFUL MUTE. 
 i. 
 " Tell me the star from which she fell, 
 Oh ! name the flower 
 From out whose mild and perfumed bell, 
 
 At witching hour, 
 Sprang forth this fair and fairy maiden, 
 Like a bee with honey laden. 
 
 2. 
 " They say that these sweet lips of thine 
 Breathe not to speak ; 
 Thy very ears, ihn.t seem so fine, 
 
 No sound can seek ; 
 And yet thy face beams with emotion 
 Restless as the waves of ocean. 
 
 3- 
 " 'Tis well ; thy face and form agree, 
 And both are fair. 
 I would not that the child should be 
 
 As others are ; 
 I love to mark her, in deiision, 
 Smiling with seraphic vision, 
 
 k * 
 
 " At our arts of vulgar sense 
 
 That cannot stain, 
 Nor mar her mystic innocence, 
 
 Nor cloud her brain 
 "With all the dreams of worldly felly, 
 And its creative melancholy. 
 
 5- 
 " To thee I dedicate these lines, 
 Yet read them not. 
 Cursed be the art that e'er refines 
 
 Thy natural lot ; 
 Read the bright stars and read the flowers, 
 And hold converse with the bowers." 
 
 I question whether the following graceful verses, penes me in schedis manu- 
 scriptis, have ever appeared in print ; any way, they will be new to many, and 
 are worthy of preservation here. They were written by Disraeli in 1835 : 
 
 "TO A MAIDEN SLEEPING AFTER HER FIRST BALL. 
 
 " Dreams come from Jove, the poet says ; 
 But as I watch the smile 
 That on that lip now softly plays, 
 
 I can but deem the while, 
 Venus may also send a shade, 
 To whisper to a slumb'ring maid. 
 
 
APPENDIX, 519 
 
 " What dark ey'd-youth now culls the flower 
 
 That radiant brow to grace ? 
 Or whispers in the starry hour 
 
 Words fairer than thy face? 
 Or singles thee from out the throng, 
 To thee to breathe his minstrel song? 
 
 " The ardent brow that ne'er can fail, 
 
 The sigh that is not sad, 
 
 The glance that tells a secret tale, 
 
 The spirit hush'd, yet glad, 
 These weave the dreams that maidens prove 
 The flattering dreams of virgin love." 
 
 o. 
 
 It appears to me that I can hardly round off this "Appendix" more appro- 
 priately than by placing on record, as briefly as may be, some few details of the 
 oiigin, career, and final extinction of the Magazine to which I have had occasion 
 so frequently to refer, and which, in its " Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters," 
 has afforded materials for this volume. 
 
 I have already stated that William Maginn was born in the year 1794, in 
 Cork ; a city, which by its love for literature, antiquarian research, and scientific 
 investigation, has earned the title of the "Athens of Ireland." Maginn in earlier 
 life, when assisting in his father's school, became one of a number of young 
 ambitious men who had formed themselves into a literary society, and soon 
 acquired distinction among his compeers for his deep and varied reading. Suitable 
 prints for the display of his peculiar talents and learning were not very numerous 
 in those days ; but the establishment of Blackwood's Magazine in Edinburgh, in 
 181 7, seemed to offer the precise opportunity which he required. He commenced 
 his correspondence with the editor in November, 1819, in the issue for which month 
 appeared his extraordinary translation into Latin of the ballad of "Chevy Chase." 
 Similar compositions followed, inter alia, " Fytte Second" of the ballad in 
 question. Mahony, Areas alter, in his first essay on "Modern Latin Poets" 
 (Eraser's Magazine, August, 1835), alludes to these happy nugce in his own special 
 way: " O'Doherty," writes he, "in his younger days, deeply pondering on the 
 fleeting nature of the beauties of modern compositions, and the frail and transitory 
 essence of all living forms of speech, had a notion of rescuing these charming 
 things from inevitable decay, and announced himself to the public as a poetical 
 Embalm er. He printed a proposal for wrapping up in the imperishable folds of 
 Greek and -Latin, with sundry spices of his own, the songs and ballads of these 
 islands; which, in a few centuries, will be unintelligible to posterity. He had 
 already commenced operating on 'Black-eyed Susan,' and had cleverly dis- 
 embowelled ' Alley Croaker ' ; both of which made excellent classical mummies. 
 ' Wapping Old Stairs,' in his Latin translation, seemed to be the veritable 
 * Gradus ad Parnassum ' ; and his Greek version of ' 'Twas in Trafalgar Bay ' 
 beat all yEschylus ever sung about Salamis. What became of the project, and 
 why Sir Morgan gave it up, we cannot tell ; he is an unaccountable character. 
 But while we regret this embalming plan should have been abandoned, we are 
 free to confess that in our opinion, 'Old King Cole,' in Hebrew, was his best 
 effort. It was equal to ' Solomon in all his Glory.' " 
 
 With a word of caution to the literary enthusiast not to waste time in the search 
 for these macaronic deliciee, which may possibly prove hard to find, I offer for his 
 delectation a happy specimen not mentioned by the Padre : 
 
520 
 
 APPENDIX, 
 
 "Byron Reads. 
 
 " Cantat Dohertiades. 
 
 1 Backe and syde go bare, go bare, 
 
 Both foot and hande go colde : 
 But bellye, God sende thee good ale ynoughe, 
 
 Whether it be newe or olde. 
 I cannot eat but lytle meate, 
 
 My stomacke is not good ; 
 But sure I thinke that I can drynke 
 
 With him that weares a hood. 
 Though I go bare, take ye no care, 
 
 I am nothing a colde ; 
 I stuff my skyn so full within, 
 
 Of joly good ale and olde. 
 Backe and syde go bare, go bare, 
 
 Both foote and hande go colde : 
 But, belly, God send thee good ale enoughe, 
 
 Whether it be newe or olde. 
 
 " Sint nuda dorsum, latera 
 
 Pes, manus, algens sit ; 
 Dum Ventri veteris copia 
 
 Zythi novive fit. 
 Non possum multum edere, 
 
 Quia stomachus est nullus ; 
 Scd volo vel monacho bibere 
 
 Quanquam sit huic cucullus. 
 Et quamvis nudus ambulo, 
 
 De frigore non est metus ; 
 Quia semper Zytho vetulo 
 
 Ventriculus est impletus. 
 Sint nuda dorsum, latera 
 
 Pes, manus, algens sit ; 
 Dum Ventri veteris copia 
 
 Zythi novive fit. 
 
 " I love no rost, but a nut-browne toste, 
 And a crab laid in the fyre ; 
 A little breade shall do me stead, 
 
 Much breade I not desyre. 
 No frost nor snow, nor winde, I trowe, 
 
 Can hurt me if I wolde : 
 I am so wrapt, and throwly lapt, 
 Of jolly good ale and olde. 
 Backe and syde go bare, etc. 
 
 " Assatum nolo tostum volo-. 
 Vel pomum igni situm ; 
 Nil pane careo parvum hab'-* 
 
 Pro pane appetitum. 
 Me gelu, nix, vel ventus vi* 
 
 Afficerent injuria ; 
 Haec sperno, ni adesset m? 
 Zythi veteris penuria. 
 Sint nuda, etc. 
 
 And Tyb, my wyfe, that, as her lyfe, 
 
 Loveth well good ale to seeke ; 
 Full oft drynkes shee, tyll ye may see 
 
 The teares run down her cheeke : 
 Then doth she trowle to mee the boule, 
 
 Even as a mault-worme shuld ; 
 And sayth, ' Sweete hart, I took my parte 
 
 Of this jolly good ale and olde.' 
 Backe and syde go bare, etc. 
 
 "Et uxor Tybie, qui sempei J> 
 Vult quserere Zythum bene, 
 Ebibit-hasc perssepe, nee 
 
 Sistit, dum madeant genas. 
 Et mihi turn dat cantharum, 
 
 Sic mores sunt bibosi ; 
 Et dicit ' Cor, en ! implecr 
 Zythi dulcis et annosi.' 
 Sint nuda, etc. 
 
 Now let them drynke, tyll they nod and winke, 
 Even as good felowes should doe : 
 
 They shall not mysse to have the blysse 
 Good ale doth bringe men to. 
 
 And all poore soules that have scowr'd boules, 
 
 . Or have them lustely trolde, 
 
 God save the lyves of them and their wyves, 
 Whether they be yonge or old. 
 Backe and syde go bare, etc." 
 
 1 Nunc ebibant, donee nictant 
 
 Ut decet virum bonum ; 
 Felicitatis habebunt satis, 
 
 Nam Zythi hoc est donum 
 Et omnes hi, qui canthari 
 
 Sunt haustibus ketati, 
 Atque uxores vel juniores 
 Vel senes, Diis sint grati. 
 Sint nuda, etc." 
 
 But to return. Maginn, in his earlier communications with Blackwood, did not 
 make his personality known, and corresponded with him under the signature of 
 11 R. T. S.," or, later on, as " Ralph Tucker Scott." For his earlier papers he 
 did not seek payment ; and it was only after considerable pressure from the liberal 
 publisher that he consented to receive an honorarium. " Your contributions have 
 now been so numerous and valuable," wrote the latter to his unknown assistant, 
 " in the truest sense of the word, that I trust you will allow me to return you some 
 acknowledgment, for I cannot repay you for the kind and valuable aid you have 
 given me. If you will not accept money, I trust you will allow me to send you 
 
APPENDIX. 521 
 
 books, and you would do me a singular favour, if you would send me a list of those 
 that would be acceptable to you." As a result of this, a cheque was sent ; which 
 the Doctor acknowledged in a humorous letter, chaffing Blackwood for his 
 simplicity, and exaggerating the difficulty he had had in cashing the draft with 
 the endorsement of an imaginary person ! 
 
 Blacfavood was in its 9th vol. when Maginn made his appearance at Edinburgh 
 in propj-ia persond, and took up his abode temporarily with the publisher. He 
 soon gravitated to London ; but kept up his connection with " Maga" till 1828, 
 or 1830; in which latter year some disagreement with the publisher, difficult to 
 get at now, having occurred, he determined to set on foot a London rival. 
 
 At this epoch there flourished in town a briefless barrister named Hugh 
 Fraser. He had been among Maginn's earliest acquaintances in England, and 
 congeniality of tastes and habits had produced a strict intimacy between the pair. 
 I have reasons of my own for not enlarging upon the career of this worthy ; so 
 will content myself with saying that he was described by Kenealy, who ought to 
 have known him, as ' ' one of those clever, well-bred men of wit and honour about 
 town, whom London produces in greater perfection and greater numbers than any 
 other metropolis in the world," * and by S. C. Hall, as a man, " whose fate he 
 understood was mournful, as his career had been discreditable." f Leaving the 
 judicious reader to form what opinion of Hugh Fraser he chooses, from these 
 discrepant statements, I may remind, him that Maclise has left us an admirable 
 presentment of his external man in the admirable Fraserian cartoon, where he will 
 be discerned seated opposite to Maginn, on the right hand of Dunlop, drawing 
 a copy of Regina from the pocket of his swallow-tails, in eager converse we 
 may guess, about an article, with Lockhart who sits at his right elbow. 
 
 The Doctor was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet ; neither was his 
 coadjutor. The preliminary details as to the form and character of the projected 
 serial were soon arranged ; and the articles for the first three or four numbers, 
 nearly all written by the Doctor or his friend, completed. The allies then sallied 
 forth, with the manuscript in their pockets, in search of a publisher. Strolling 
 down Regent Street, and coming to No. 215, the Doctor exclaimed with hasty 
 inspiration, " Fraser ! here's a namesake of yours ; let us try him." The visit 
 was auspicious. The publisher was inclined to give ear to the proposition, and 
 the terms were soon arranged. The name of the Magazine was taken from Hugh 
 Fraser, the editor, not James Fraser, the publisher ; nor would the latter ever 
 allow any one in his employment to style it otherwise than " The Town and 
 Country," under which appellation it is always referred to in his books and 
 correspondence. The first number appeared in February, 1830. 
 
 It is probably not too much to say that in brilliancy of wit, gracefulness of 
 learning and versatility of character, the early volumes of the new Magazine have 
 rarely, if ever, been excelled. Accordingly it soon attained a high position among 
 contemporary periodicals, and a circulation at once extensive and respectable. 
 All went well for a time, and the publisher had cause to bless the lucky star that 
 brought his namesake and the Doctor to his sheltering door. But the ruling 
 spirit of his staff was a literary Ishmael, a " wild man," like his biblical proto- 
 type, and careless where his hands fell. In August, 1836, appeared Maginn's 
 scurrilous review of Grantley Berkeley's novel, Berkeley Castle. In the last 
 sentence of this, Fraser (the Magazine) suggested to Lord Euston, to whose wife 
 {the cousin of Berkeley) the novel was dedicated, to "borrow a horsewhip," and 
 assured him that he might "use it with perfect safety." The hint was taken ; but 
 mutatis mutandis, it was Berkeley that procured the weapon, and Fraser (the 
 publisher) who received the recommended flagellation ! After all, this was 
 justice, if of a rough kind. Some one deserved the flogging, it is certain j and 
 although Berkeley ought to have made some attempt, through Fraser, to get at 
 
 * Dublin University Magazine, January, 1844, p. 87. 
 f Book 0/ Memories, 1871, p. 158. 
 
522 
 
 ArPENDIX. 
 
 the actual writer of the article, before he commenced operations, it is well to 
 remember that Fraser was quite aware of its libellous character. The fact is, it 
 was scribbled off in about an hour by Maginn, to meet the demands of the press, 
 in the publisher's memorable back-parlour, literally airrente calamo, and when the 
 whole party were half drunk. "Jemmy," said Father Mahony, as he glanced 
 over the article, "you had better take care what you do, this seems libellous." 
 " Pooh," replied the publisher, " we have printed worse; we are at the end of 
 the month, and it must go in." Go in it did ; what followed is well known, the 
 vapulation, the duel, and the action-at-law, all of which I have recorded (page 
 53), at sufficient length. Hugh Fraser acted as Maginn's second in the duel ; and 
 after the third ineffective shot he asked his principal if there should be another. 
 The latter replied, more Hibernico, "Blaze away, by G d! a barrel of gun- 
 powder ! " * 
 
 " Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein." Perillus was baked himself in the 
 brazen bull which he had invented for Phalaris ; and Regent Morton decapitated 
 by the "Maiden" which is said to have been his own device. It is a delicious 
 sight, that of " the Engineer hoist on his own Petard," or the critic flayed by 
 the knout which he had provided for another. Here we have Fraser, man, or 
 magazine, it does not matter which, recommending that Grantley Berkeley should 
 receive the horsewhip ; and, lo ! the weapon is applied by the latter to his own 
 shoulders. Just in the same way, and the coincidence is somewhat curious, 
 Maclise puts a dog-whip in Westmacott's hat, as indicative of the use he was ready 
 to make of such an instrument ; and, alas ! it is his own impudent person to 
 which it is applied by Charley Kemble ! 
 
 The unlucky publisher, by no means a strong man, is said never to have over- 
 got the castigation, unnecessarily brutal in character, which had been inflicted on 
 him by the angry author. He died, and his business fell into the hands of Mr. G. 
 W. Nickisson, whose name first appeared in 1842, in vol. xxi. of the Magazine. 
 
 The literary history of Eraser's Magazine, with any minuteness of detail, would 
 require a volume. I must skip over its intermediate annals and come to more 
 modern times. In 1847 (vol. xxxvi.), it had been transferred to Mr. John H. 
 Parker, of the West Strand, by whom, or by his successors, it continued to be 
 published during the remainder of its existence, under its original form and title. 
 The editorial functions were assumed by Mr. James Anthony Froude, some of 
 whose essays were first published in its pages. His coadjutor in the conduct of 
 the magazine was Mr. William Allingham, who contributed to it, under the pen- 
 name of "Patricius Walker," some refined and charming sketches of rambles 
 in English woods and lanes. When Mr. Froude resigned the editorship, he was 
 succeeded by this competent gentleman, with the close of whose editorial career, 
 the historic continuity of the magazine came to an end, and its identity was gone. 
 It appeared with a different cover, and under a different editor ; and although it 
 maintained a certain literary character, it was no longer the magazine of old times. 
 But its doom was sealed, together with that of the old, dull, respectable, high- 
 class magazines. Douglas Jerrold struck the first blow by his Shilling Magazine. 
 William and Robert Chambers f had long before this shown, by their three-half- 
 
 * Grantley Berkeley, in his Reminiscences, gives an account of this duel, and his 
 transactions with Maginn generally. But it is entirely ex parte, and no dependence 
 whatever is to be placed on it. 
 
 j* While this sheet is passing through the press, the death of Dr. William Chambers 
 is announced, May 20th, 1883, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. Twice elected 
 Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and holding the degree of Doctor of Laws, conferred upon, 
 him by the university of that city, in 1872, his literary merits and public munificence, 
 great as they were admitted to be, were not found worthy of a baronetcy till so late in 
 his protracted career, that his death actually took place before the bestowal of the 
 distinction could be gazetted ! 
 
 With the name of this eminent man will ever be associated that of his younger 
 brother, Robert, who, born July 10th, 1802, died March 17th, 1871. These brothers 
 
APPENDIX. 523. 
 
 penny Journal, how possible it was to combine first-rate quality with cheapness ; 
 and, finally, the success of the Comhill, under Thackeray, brought a host of 
 shilling magazines into existence, and demonstrated practically that the day of the 
 half-crowners had come to an end. One of the first to become extinct was that of 
 which I have been speaking ; and the announcement appeared in November, 
 1882, that "with the present number the publication of Eraser's Magazine will 
 cease." 
 
 Thus Regina, at the time of her death, had just outlived her half-century 
 of existence. She had enjoyed a career, on the whole, successful and brilliant ; 
 and should not be allowed to "drop through the tissue of our literary history," 
 without some words of record and farewell. It is the inevitable misfortune of a 
 magazine, that, if its writers are good for much, they have a tendency to fall 
 away from it into independent and more important work ; if bad, they stand by the 
 ship, and eventually sink it. The former, in great measure, was the lot of Fraser ; 
 but still, certain names seem to permeate its almost entire continuity. Thus 
 Carlyle, who, fifty years ago, found, in Fraser, an exponent for his Sartor Resartus, 
 when no one else would have to do with it, published, in the same sheltering 
 pages, his last work on "The Early Kings of Norway," and his " Portraits of 
 John Knox." Thackeray's earliest and best writings were contributed to Regina.* 
 Of Mahony, "Father Prout," I need not say more ; but it is worth while to 
 record that a nephew of the Padre, Mr. Martin Francis Mahony, contributed a 
 few years ago to Fraser, a masterly piece of political satire, in the form of an 
 anonymous serial story, entitled "The Adventures of Mr. Catlyne, Q.C." This 
 excited great attention, and much was expected from the future of so brilliant a 
 writer ; but he unfortunately broke down prematurely, and a career which pro- 
 mised such bright things, was closed by a too early death. To the pages of 
 Fraser also, a writer of the last generation, who retained, as a Septuagenarian, 
 all the sprightliness of humour, ingenuity of fancy, and reach of learning, which 
 had characterized him in earlier days, contributed the last, if not the best, of his 
 works. This was Thomas Love Peacock, whose Gryll Grange, written in i860, 
 exhibits the same favourite types of character which were originally made familiar 
 to our grandfathers, and is characterized by a sagacity of criticism, a vigour of wit,. 
 
 brought to their co-partnership a happy combination of gifts. William was the better 
 business-man ; Robert possessed the higher literary faculty. The great landmark in 
 their career was the starting, on February 4th, 1832, of the well-known Edinburgh 
 Journal, in its original cumbrous folio shape. This was a new type of magazine, met 
 a popular need, and at once achieved a marvellous success. It soon attained an 
 immense circulation ; and this it has retained to the present day, although it has no 
 illustrations, is unsupported by names great or fashionable in literature, and has to 
 contend with new and powerful rivals. It depends upon its inherent merits, its happy 
 mixture of the instructive and the entertaining, and its elevation and purity of tone. It- 
 may, too, be considered an element in its general popularity, that, in politics and 
 religion, it appeals to no sectarian interests ; and that, in its moral teaching, it has 
 kept strictly within the line of natural ethics. For the last half-century, the publishing 
 house of the brothers has been a centre of vast literary activity. Every one is familiar, 
 more or less, with its productions ; its admirable school-books ; its " Miscellany of 
 Tracts," which was crushed by the paper-duty; its Book of Days, to which Robert 
 owed his death, modelled upon the Every Day Book, etc., of William Hone, to which 
 in the matter alone of wood-cut illustrations it is vastly inferior ; and a whole library 
 of valuable and useful books. I will only further indicate a Memoir of Robert 
 Chambers, with Autcgraphic Reminiscences of William Chambers (Edin. and Lond., 
 1872, 8vo). 
 
 * It is curious to remember, and the instance may be added to those recorded on 
 page 78, in illustration of the inability of publishers to discern the elements of succe"-'" 
 in the works submitted to them, that the Vanity Fair of Thackeray, that master 
 piece of modern fiction, by which its author was at once raised to the foremost rank ol 
 British novelists, was, in the first instance, pertinaciously refused, both by the editors 
 of magazines, and by the publishers, as a substantive work ! 
 
524 APPENDIX, 
 
 a refinement of satire, and a classic polish, in no way inferior to its predecessors 
 of the Headlong Hall series, which were published half a century before.* 
 
 It seems almost invidious to mention, if only by name, a few out of the 
 numerous writers of distinguished ability who contributed, m these later days, to 
 maintain the reputation of Regina. Among those which occur at once to 
 memory will be Professor Cairnes, "A. K. H. B.," James Spedding, Isa Craig, 
 "Shirley," Professor Leone Levi, William Hopkins, F.R.S., Major G. J. Whyte 
 Melville, and a host of others. 
 
 Thus, old Ebony, which was flourishing in youthful lustihood when its London 
 compeer started up m rivalry, is still extant, like the fabled Charon, in green 
 senescence 
 
 "Jam senior ; sed cruda Deo, viridisque senectus," 
 
 while Regina has come to a final close of career. In which condition of things 
 
 may possibly be found some explanation of that quaint old prophecy, as to the 
 purport of which Dr. Johnson, who took it from the lips of an aged crone, on his 
 visit to the Hebrides in 1773 (see Boswell), was so terribly bothered : 
 
 ' Proud Maga had been a bra' Magazine, 
 When Regina she was nane ; 
 And Maga, I ween, will be still a Magazine, 
 When Regina sail be gane ! " 
 
 (Page 143.) 
 Edward Quillinan, the poet, was born of Irish parents, at Oporto, August 
 1 2th, 1 79 1. He was educated in England, and entered the army, as a cornet by 
 purchase, in the Queen's Bays. When quartered at Canterbury, he formed an 
 attachment to Jemima A. D. Brydges, the second daughter of Sir Egerton Brydges, 
 not the fourth, as I have (page 223) inadvertently stated, whom he married in 
 1817. This lady, by whom he had two daughters, met her death in 1822, by 
 her dressing-gown catching fire, and lies buried in Grasmere churchyard, where is 
 a monument to her memory from a design by Chantrey. Nearly twenty years after, 
 in 1841, Mr. Quillinan married Dora Wordsworth, daughter of the poet, who too was 
 taken from him, in 1847. His own death took place July 8th, 1851, at Grasmere, 
 where, in the cemetery of St. Oswald's, his remains were interred, in acquiescence 
 with the " Request expressed in a sonnet of exquisite tenderness and beauty : 
 
 " Two graves, in Grasmere Vale, yew-shaded both, 
 My all of life, if life be love, comprise. 
 In one the mother of my children lies, 
 Fate's blameless victim in her bloom of youth : 
 The other holds the constancy and truth 
 That never fail'd me under darker skies, 
 When subtle wrongs perplex'd me. Her whose eyes 
 Saw light through every wildering maze uncouth. 
 Between those graves a space remains for me : 
 O lay me there, wherever I may be 
 When met by Death's pale angel ; so in peace 
 My dust near theirs may slumber, till the day 
 Of final retribution or release 
 For mortal life's reanimated clay." 
 
 An interesting memoir of this most refined, and unjustly neglected poet, by his 
 friend William Johnston, is prefixed to the elegant edition of his Poems, published 
 by Moxon, 1853, 8vo, pp. 268. 
 
 * Published afterwards in book-form (London, Parker, Son and Bourn, West 
 Strand, 1861, 8vo). Mr. Peacock died at Shepperton, near his favourite Thames, early 
 in 1866, in the eighty-first year of his age. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 [The Names in Small Capitals indicate those of whom Portraits and separate- 
 Biographical Notices are given. ] 
 
 Ains worth, W. H., 256 
 
 Antiquaries, the, 106 
 
 Abbotsford, 36 
 
 Aberdeen, Earl of, 112 
 
 " Adonis of Fifty," the, 243 
 
 "^Eneas Eunuchus," by W. Maginn, 42 
 
 Age Reviewed, the, by R. Montgomery, 
 
 87 
 Age, The, newspaper, theatrical criticism 
 
 from, 516 
 Agrippa Cornelius, 98 
 Ainsworth, his quarrel with " Father 
 
 Prout," 472 
 Akenside, description of a "Virtuoso," 
 
 384 
 Alasco, by Sir M. A. Shee, R.A., 64 
 Albert Lunel, by Eord Brougham, 84 
 Alfieri, 378 
 Alison, Sir Archibald, his History of 
 
 Europe, 420 
 
 Treatise on Taste, 420 
 
 Aiken, Henry, the artist, 454 
 
 Allen, Mr., "Lady Holland's Atheist," 
 
 433 
 All-Hallow Eve, poem on picture of, 452 
 Allingham, William, editor of Fraser's 
 
 Magazine, 522 
 Alroy, Wondrous Tale of, by Disraeli, 
 
 167 
 Amatory poetry, 23 
 American universities, 176 
 Americans, former opinion of, jj 
 Amulet, the, an annual, 369 
 Anacreon, translated by T. Moore, 22 
 
 elegant edition of, 23 
 
 ' ' Annual " literature, 321 
 
 Anstey, author of New Bath Guide, 280 
 
 Antiquaries, characters of, 107 
 
 Aphasia, Goethe on, 101 
 
 " Apollo Belvidere," a prize poem by 
 
 Milman, 127 
 Apperley, C. J. (" Nimrod "), 454 
 Arcadian, the, by T. Hook, 374 
 Archery, Book of, by Hansard, 112 
 
 Architecture, a Sixth Order of, 390 
 
 the Boeotian Order, 391 
 
 Aristology, science of, 115 
 
 Art in England, 404, 458 
 
 works of, speculation in, 283, 458 
 
 Art Journal, the, 369 
 
 Atheism, not to be professed, 208 
 
 Athenaum magazine, the, 3 
 
 Atmospheric railway, imagined by Cole- 
 ridge, 180 
 
 Austin, Mrs., edited letters of Sydney 
 Smith, 429 
 
 Aytoun, Professor, his Firmilian, 63, 514. 
 
 William Edmonstone, 63, 514 
 
 Beranger, P. J. De, 300 
 
 Blessington, Countess of, 159 
 
 Bowles, Rev. William Lisle, 362 
 
 Brewster, Sir David, 143 
 
 Brougham and Vaux, the Lord, 8l 
 
 Brydges, Sir Egerton, 217 
 
 Buckstone, John Baldwin, 411 
 
 Bulwer, Edward Lytton, 125 
 
 Bacchus in Tuscany, by Redi, 247 
 
 " Bacon, Lord," an erroneous term, 361 
 
 Badcock, John, 262 
 
 Bailey, Philip James, 514 
 
 author oiFestus, etc., 5T4 
 
 Baker Pasha, 56 
 
 Baldwin, Edw., a pen-name of W. God- 
 win, 275 
 
 Ball, Hughes, alias " The Golden Ball," 
 238, 289 
 
 Ballad minstrelsy, 32, 180 
 
 Ballantyne, James, his controversy with. 
 Lockhart, 34 
 
 Balmanno, Mrs. , her Pen and Pencil, 52 
 
 Balzac, Honore de, 443 
 
 Banks, Miss Rhoda, niece of Maclise, 
 461 
 
 Perceval Weldon, 461 
 
 Barante, M. de, 60 
 
 Barbauld, Mrs., Dr. Parr's saying on, 514, 
 
526 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Barry, J. Milner, M.D., 41, 450 
 
 James, R.A., 448, 450 
 
 Bartholinus, Th., quoted, Preface, viii, xvi 
 Bartolozzi and Heath, 396 
 
 frontispiece to Hunt's Juvenilia, 
 
 242 
 
 his infidelity as a copier, 408 
 
 Baviad and Mceviad, the, 72 
 Bayley, F. W. N., 509 
 
 John, 514 
 
 his History of the Tower of London, 
 
 5 T 4 . . , 
 Peter, a satirical poet, 377, 514 
 
 Bayly, Thomas Haynes, 512 
 
 Beaconsfield and Edmund Burke, 169 
 
 Beattie, Dr. , his Life of T. Campbell, 7 
 
 Bee, Ion (Badcock, John), 262 
 
 Belle of a Season, The, by Lady Blessing- 
 ton, 161 
 
 Bellingham, W., the assassin, seizure 
 of, 1 
 
 Benevolence, practical, Sydney Smith on, 
 429 
 
 Benger, Miss, the novelist, story of, 274 
 
 Bennoch, Mr., 65 
 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 345 
 
 epigram on Brougham, 83 
 
 leaves his body to a public institution, 
 
 210 
 
 lines by Dr. Bowring to, 75 
 
 on Libel, 321 
 
 Bentley, on Bishop Pearson, 129 
 
 Bentley's Miscellany, 472 
 
 Beranger, his song on Dr. Lardner, 124 
 
 Berkeley Castle, review of, by Maginn, 
 42, 521 
 
 Berkeley, Colonel, 238 
 
 family and earldom, 237 
 
 Grantley, his account of L. E. L., 
 
 202 
 
 his account of Maginn, 202 
 
 his Be?-keley Castle, 237 
 
 his death, 43 
 
 his opinion of Sydney Smith, 426 
 
 his quarrel with Maginn, 42, 521 
 
 on Count D'Orsay, 286 
 
 Berlin, anagram on, 97 
 
 Berners-street Hoax, the, 231 
 
 Beza, Theodore, epigram on his three 
 
 wives, 487 
 Bibliomania, the, by T. F. Dibdin, 409 
 Big-low Papers, burlesque on Carlyle, 174 
 Bijou Almanacks, the, 202 
 Birch, Charles, of Birmingham, a picture 
 
 speculator, 457, 458 
 
 Dr. , the biographer, 407 
 
 Birmingham, the pleasant walks about, 
 
 399 
 Black, Dr. 
 
 and Dr. Hutton, anecdote of, 
 
 Black- Ey'd Susan, a nautical drama, by 
 Douglas Jerrold, 517 
 
 Black-mail, literary, 236 
 
 Blackwood, harsh opinion of Bulwer in v 
 
 129 
 Blackwood 's Magazine, 524 
 originated by Hogg, etc. , 60, 92, 
 
 520. 523 
 Blake, William, a man of genius, 179 
 
 a precursor of Wordsworth, 140 
 
 plates by, 275 
 
 Blanchard, Laman, 191, 201 
 
 on Mutilation of Sir J dm Soane's 
 
 Portrait, 388 
 Blessington, Countess of, 356 
 
 impromptu on, by Lord Byron, 160 
 
 on James Smith, 277 
 
 portrait of, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 
 
 162 
 Blindness of authors, 105, 149 
 Blunders of a Big Wig, 83 
 Body, selling or bequeathing reversion of 
 
 one's, an illegal transaction, 210 
 " Bohemian," absurdity of the term, 481 
 Boileau on song-writing, 302 
 Bon Gaultier Ballads, 63 
 Bonomi, Joseph, the architect, epigram 
 
 by, 391 
 Book of Memories, by S. C. Hall, 370, 
 
 and passim 
 Books, successful, rejected by publishers, 
 
 73, 523 
 
 the loss of, 149, 150 
 
 Booksellers, ignorance and stupidity of, 
 
 78, 523 
 BoswelVs Johnson, Croker's edition of, 74 
 Bottle, The, by George Cruikshank, 194 
 Bowles, Rev. W. L., his controversy with 
 
 Byron, etc., 502 
 Bowring, Dr., 75 
 Bracciolini, Poggio, Life of, by Shepherd, 
 
 151 
 
 Braddon, Miss M. E., the novelist, 412, 
 
 443 
 Braham, the singer, Charles Lamb on, 
 
 291, 292 
 Brain, the human, weight of, 442 
 Brallaghan, or the Deipnosophists, by 
 
 Edward Kenealy, 47, 469 
 Brandard, John, the lithographer, 385 
 
 Robert, the engraver, 385 
 
 Bray, Mrs. E. A. (Miss A. E. Kempe), no 
 
 Bremer, Frederika, visits Irving, 81 
 
 Bremhill, in Wiltshire, 364 
 
 Brentano, Bettina, 101 
 
 Brigham, Dr., on influence of mental 
 
 cultivation on health, 354 
 British Peerage, the " Englishman's 
 
 Bible," 322 
 Bronte, Charlotte, her remarks on 
 
 Thackeray, 437, 443 
 Brooke, W. H., the artist, 112 
 Brougham, Lord, Miss Martineau's opinion 
 
 of, 209 
 
INDEX. 
 
 527 
 
 Brougham, Lord, his venality, 341 
 Broughton, Lord (see Hobhouse), 372 
 Brown, Dr. Thomas, 61, 273 
 Browne, Hablot K. ("Phiz"), 191, 446 
 "Brummagem," meaning of the term, 90 
 Bryant, his " Thanatopsis " quoted from, 
 
 6 
 Buchanan, George, the Latin poet, 20, 
 
 46, 153 
 Buckingham, Duke of, quoted from, 71 
 Buckstone, Frederick, the artist, 414 
 Budget of Paradoxes, by A. de Morgan, 
 
 344 
 Budget of the Bubble Family, by Lady 
 
 Bulwer, 132 
 Bulvver, Sir E. L., attack on, by C. M. 
 
 Westmacott, 241 
 dedicates his St. Stephen's to Lord 
 
 Lyndhurst, 397 
 epigram on, by Egerton Warburton, 
 
 118 
 
 his attack on Tennyson, 129 
 
 his dedication of the Lady of Lyons 
 
 to Talfourd, 381 
 1 his defence of Miss Landon, 202, 
 
 203 
 
 his domestic infelicity, 131 
 
 his fine lines to Mrs. Norton, 57 
 
 his lines on O'Connell, 225, 226 
 
 his lines on Leigh Hunt, .249 
 
 his Siamese Twins, 54 
 
 his Student, 129 
 
 poetry of, 131 
 
 Bulvver, Lady, her Cheveley, etc., 132 
 Bunyan, John, at Reading, 184 
 Buonaparte, Lucien, 301 
 
 Napoleon, 154 
 
 Burke, Edmund, and James Barry, 450 
 Burns, Robert, the poet, 27 
 
 and Moore compared, 27 
 
 Life of, by Lockhart, 9 
 
 Busby, Dr., his Address for Drury Lane, 
 
 278 
 " Bushey Heath," Jerdan's pen-name, 3 
 Byron, Lord, at Shelley's cremation, 245 
 
 challenged W. Jerdan, 1 
 
 dedicates Werner, etc., to Goethe, 
 
 102 
 
 his friendship with Hobhouse, 373 
 
 his lines on Moore's duel with 
 
 Jeffrey, 27 
 
 his lines on Rogers, 17, 18 
 
 his marriage, 204 
 
 his opinion of Gait, 38 
 
 his verses on Sydney Smith, 421 
 
 impromptu on Countess of Blessing- 
 ton, 160 
 
 Life of, 45 
 
 on Count D'Orsay, 286 
 
 on Sir E. Brydges, 217 
 
 parody on Dr. Busby, 278 
 
 sums received by, for his poems, 6 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, 4 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 172 
 Cobbett, William, 333 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 178 
 Croker, Crofton, 49 
 
 John Wilson, 72 
 
 Cruikshank, George, 185 
 
 Cunningham, Allan, 133 
 
 Caesar, Sir Julius, 403 
 
 Calabrella, the Baroness, 289 
 
 Calamities of authors, 104 
 
 Caleb Stukeley, a novel, by Z Phillips, 
 
 441 
 Caley, John, the antiquary, 108 
 Caligraphy, works on, 428 
 Canada Company, the, 39 
 Canonbury House, Islington, 79 
 CarSme, his favourite dish, 117 
 Carlisle, Lady, coarse epigram on, 39 
 
 Nicholas, the antiquary, no 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, and Leigh Hunt, 172 
 
 his literary style, 174 
 
 his opinion of O'Connell, 228 
 
 late contributor to Frauds Magazine, 
 
 174. 523 
 
 notice of Goethe, 96 
 
 on Leigh Hunt, 248, 249 
 
 on tailors, 349 
 
 Mrs., her opinion of Jeffrey and 
 
 D'Orsay, 423 
 Carr, Sir John, his Tours and trial, 265 
 Castle Rackre?it, by Miss Edgeworth, 199 
 " Catlyne, Mr., Adventures of," a political 
 
 satire, 523 
 " Caveau, Le," a Parisian society, 302 
 Cesarotti, an Italian poet, 377 
 " Chaldee Manuscript," the, by Hogg, 92 
 Chalon, A. E., R.A., his portrait of Lady 
 
 Blessington, 16 r 
 Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. Joseph, M.P., 4-9 
 Chamberlaine, his imitations of Holbein, 
 
 403 
 Chambers, William and Robert, 522 
 Chambers's Journal, 367, 522 
 Chandos Peerage Case, the, 219 
 Chantrey, Sir Francis, the sculptor, 137 
 Charleville, Countess of, 160 
 Chatterton, Lady, her opinion of Fon- 
 
 blanque, n 
 Chatterton's death, Mr. Wallis's picture 
 
 of, 329 
 Chenedolle, the French poet, 467 
 Cheveley, by Lady Bulwer, 132 
 Childe Harold, illustrated by Hobhouse, 
 
 377 
 Christianism, by Leigh Hunt, 245 
 Christmas books by Thackeray and 
 
 Dickens, 440 
 " Christmas Revels," a poem by Maclise, 
 
 455 
 
5*S 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Clark, Eliza, MSS. by, 311 
 Clarke, J. F., M.R.C.S., Yas Recollections, 
 24 1~ 
 
 Mary Anne, and Duke of York, 36 
 
 Clevedon, associations of, 434 
 Clongowes Wood, College of, 464 
 Clovio, Julio, the illuminator, 385 
 Cobbett, Morgan, M.P., 343 
 W.,. his felicity in giving nicknames, 
 
 338, 375 
 " Cockney School " of poetry, 60, 244 
 Cold, seriousness of a, 354 
 Coleridge, S. T., his version of Wallen- 
 
 stein, 325 
 
 his classical attainments, 183 
 
 on Homeric and Ovidian metres, 182 
 
 "philosophy" of, 181 
 
 plagiarisms of, 182 
 
 poetry of, 179 
 
 Collins, Mortimer, the late, 43, 108, 184 
 
 his lines on Coleridge, 184 
 
 his visit to Wordsworth, 142 
 
 Colman, George, his Iron Chest, taken 
 
 from " Caleb Williams," 272 
 
 licenser for the stage, 64 
 
 Col ton, Rev. C. C, his satire on Hallam, 
 
 43i 
 Comic actor, the, utility of, 416 
 
 artists, 196 
 
 Comte, his " Positive Philosophy," 209 
 Constant, Benjamin, his opinion of Be- 
 
 ranger, 305 
 Cook, Eliza, her verses to W. Jerdan, 
 
 489 
 Cookery, one of the fine arts, 115 
 
 English, 119 
 
 German, 122 
 
 Copley, John Singleton, the painter, 393 
 Copyright of authors, 380 
 Cork, Academy at, 449 
 
 eminent men natives of, 41 
 
 Corney, Bolton, his attack on D'Israeli, 
 
 105 
 Cornhill Magazine, 477, 504, 523 
 
 its establishment, 442 
 
 Cortes, Hernan, life of, by Trueba, 67 
 Cowper, his lines on his mother's portrait, 
 
 405 
 
 on " Town," 297 
 
 Craik, G. L., his History of Literature in 
 
 England, 436 
 Cranford, by Mrs. Gaskell, 199 
 Crauford, M, his collection of portraits, 
 
 406 
 Crichton, the "Admirable," 257 
 Criminal class, heroes taken from, 258 
 Criticism, English, unfairness of, 283 
 Critics, men who have been bad poets, 
 
 etc., 72 
 Croker, Crofton, a friend of Maclise, 450 
 J. W., satirized by Lady Morgan, 
 
 73. 3 r 5 
 
 Croly, Dr., his Modern Orlando quoted 
 
 from, 70, 426 
 Cromek, his Nithsdale and Galloway 
 
 Reliques, 135 
 " Croquis, Alfred," pseudonym of Maclise,. 
 
 452 
 Crossley, James, F.S.A., 262 
 " Crowquill, Alfred," pseudonym of A. H. 
 
 Forrester, 106 
 Cruikshank, George, at burial of Thack- 
 eray, 443 
 essay on genius of, by Thackeray, 
 
 440 
 
 etchings for Jack Sheppard, 258 
 
 finds fault with his portrait in the 
 
 *' Gallery," 185 
 his designs for Rejected Addresses, 
 
 280 
 his etchings for W. H. Ainsworth's 
 
 novels, 259 
 
 his Points of Humour, 120 
 
 illustrates John Manesty, 46 
 
 subscription testimonial for, 195 
 
 Cruikshank, Isaac Robert, designs by,. 
 
 189, 240, 348 
 
 Life of, 193 
 
 portrait of, 240 
 
 Cunningham, Peter, F.S.A., 137 
 Curricle, the, introduction of, 285 
 Cuvier, weight of his brain, 442 
 
 D'Israelt, Benjamin, 164 
 
 Isaac, 102 
 
 D'Orsay, Count, 284 
 
 Dunlop, William, 163 
 
 Dagley, Richard, etchings to Flim-Flams-, 
 
 104 
 Dance, George, R.A., the architect, 393 
 Dancing, 357 
 
 Dandies of D'Orsay type, 256 
 Daniel, George, his opinion of Sydney 
 
 Smith, 426 
 Dante, his lore for Florence, 33 
 Daulby, his catalogue of Rembrandt's- 
 
 etchings, 152 
 Davy, Humphry, 109, 357, 362 
 Dawson, George, M.A., on W. Cobbett, 
 
 342 
 Deacon, W. F., his Warreniana, i$j, 189. 
 Death, Sir Walter Raleigh on, 114 
 
 sudden, desirability of, 282 
 
 Debure's collection of portraits, 406 
 Delia Crusca school of poetry, 32, 72 
 De Morgan, Professor Augustus, 396, 432. 
 Dering, E. H., his Memoirs of Lady 
 
 Chatterton, 11 
 Destiny, Greek notion of, in Drama, 38a 
 Detraction, British, 259 
 D'Horsay, a satire, 290 
 
INDEX. 
 
 5 2 9 
 
 Dickens, Charles, acts for Leigh Hunt's 
 benefit, 249 
 
 at Hone's funeral, 188 
 
 dedicates Pickwick to Talfourd, 380 
 
 editor of Daily News, 482 
 
 eulogy on Maclise, 462 
 
 his intimacy with Maclise, 455 
 
 his sudden fame, 439 
 
 on Count D'Orsay, 286 
 
 Prout's poetical epistle to, 477 
 Dick of Aberdaron, 152 
 
 Dining, the importance of, 117 
 
 Disraeli, verses by him, 518 
 
 satirizes J. W. Croker, in Coningsby, 
 
 74 
 
 Dissection, and "body-snatching," 210 
 Dobell, Sydney, the poet, 514 
 
 his Balder, a poem, 514 
 Doheney, Michael, an Irish "patriot," 227 
 Donaldson, Dr., his attack on Bulwer, 
 
 127 
 
 D'Orsay, Count, 258 
 
 Lady Harriet, 287, 475 
 
 Douglas, Bishop, his defence of Milton, 
 468 
 
 Dowton, the comedian, 348 
 
 Drinking, water or wine ? 94 
 
 Drunkenness, Dr. Trotter and Macnish 
 on, 352 
 
 Drury, H. J. T., his trick upon Scott, 35 
 
 Drury Lane Theatre, Addresses for open- 
 ing of, 278 
 
 Dublin University Magazine, ' ' Our Por- 
 trait Gallery," Preface, vii 
 
 Dubois, Edward, 265 
 
 Dudley, Lord, his article on Rogers, 16 
 
 Dufferin, Lady, 57 
 
 Duffy, Irish "patriot," Carlyle's opinion 
 of, 228 
 
 Dulwich College, architecture of, 392 
 
 Dumas, Alexandre, his novels, 256, 257 
 
 Dunmow Flitch of Bacon, the, 260 
 
 Dyce, the Rev. Alexander, his Recollections 
 of Rogers, 21 
 
 Egerton, Lord Francis, 323 
 
 Eastlake, Sir Charles L., R.A., 209 
 
 " Ecclesiastical Titles " Bill, 230 
 
 " Echo and Silence," sonnet on, 222 
 
 Edinburgh, 420 
 
 Edinburgh Review, the, 420 
 
 Editions de luxe, a silly, catch-pound 
 
 phrase, 444 
 Edwin, the comedian, 72 
 Egan, Pierce, author of Life in London, 
 
 189, 401 
 junr., 189 
 Elgin, Lord, epigram on, by Byron, 85 
 Elizabeth, Queen, coin with her effigies, 
 
 387 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, her regiment of tailors, 
 
 346 
 Ellis, F. S. , the bookseller, Preface, viii 
 
 his copy of the ' ' Gallery, " Preface, viii 
 
 Ellis, Sir Henry, the antiquary, 114 
 Elphinstone, Miss, the actress, 401 
 
 Mountstuart, the historian, 435 
 
 Elvaston Castle, Queen's visit to, 239 
 Emblemata, Sir William Stirling Max- 
 well's Collection of, 56, 
 Emperor of the French, the late, 289 
 English Grammar, by W. Cobbett, 340 
 
 Spy, a satirical work, 240 
 
 "Englishism," a word coined by C. R. 
 
 Pemberton, 339 
 Epicier, L', despised in France, 346 
 Erasmus, 464, 471 
 Espriella's Letters, by Southey, 8 
 Essays and Sketches of Life and Chai'acter, 
 
 7* 
 Etching, its so-called "revival," 197, 370 
 Euclid, Elements of, best edition, 122 
 Examiner, The, by Leigh Hunt, 250 
 Exquisites, The, a novel, 67 
 
 F 
 
 Faraday, Michael, 357 
 
 "Fairy Concert, The," by Leigh Hunt, 
 
 254 
 Farmer, Dr., on Learning of Shakespeare, 
 
 42 
 Fashion in matters of art, 458 
 "Father Prout," his "Inaugural Ode" 
 
 to Thackeray, 504 
 
 his notice of H. O'Brien, 325 
 
 his quarrel with Ainsworth, 472 
 
 on Miss Landon, 200 
 
 to Leigh Hunt, 247 
 
 Faust, by Goethe, 96, 324 
 
 translations of, 99, 324 
 
 Faustus, Doctor, by Marlowe, 97, 378 
 Feast of the Poets, by Leigh Hunt, 244, 
 
 2 53 
 Ferrier, Miss, the novelist, 62 
 Figures and dates, erroneous deductions 
 
 from, 314 
 Firmilian ; or, the Student of Badajos, a 
 
 Spasmodic Tragedy, 63, 514 
 " First and Last Dinner, The," a story in 
 
 Blackwood, 267 
 Filz-Alleyne of Berkeley, a satire, 239 
 Fitzgerald, W. T., the "Small Beer 
 
 Poet," 278 
 Fitzhardinge, Lord, 239 
 Flaxman, John, R.A., 179, 393, 459 
 Flim-Flams, a Rabelaisian romance, 104 
 Foote, Maria (Countess of Harrington), 
 
 the actress, 238, 513 
 Ford, Richard, F.S.A., 419 
 Forde, the artist, 41 
 
 2 M 
 
53Q 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Forgeries, literary, 2 
 
 Forrester, Alfred Henry, the comic artist, 
 
 106, 417 
 Forster Bequest, the, 454 
 Forster, John, 203, 454, 455 
 Foscolo, Ugo, 378 
 
 Fournier Edouard, his knowledge, 126 
 Frankenstein, by Mrs. Shelley, 273 
 Fraser, Hugh, founder of Fraser's Maga- 
 zine, 521 
 "Fraserians," the, cartoon of, 268, 520 
 
 the, London haunts of, 480 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, 42, 452, 519 
 
 notice of, 519 
 
 Frenchman, curious blunder of a, 26 
 Frend, William, M.A. , banished the 
 University of Cambridge for sedi- 
 tion, 396 
 
 his daughter marries Augustus de 
 
 Morgan, the mathematician, 396 
 Frost, John, the antiquary, 109 
 Froude, J. A. , editor of Fraser s Maga- 
 zine, 522 
 Fugger family, the, of Augsburg, 407 
 Fuller, Margaret (Ossoli), on Carlyle, 177 
 
 G 
 
 Galt, John, 37 
 
 Gleig, the Rev. George Robert, 267 
 Godwin, William, 270 
 Goethe, the Baron von, 96 
 Gallery of Comicalities , the, 348 
 Gait, John, and the Canada Company, 39 
 Gastronomy, a fine art, 115 
 Gaudet, the Chevalier, a celebrated salad- 
 dresser, 115 
 Gay, Thomas, his ballad "All in the 
 Downs," etc., 517 
 
 his epitaph, 173 
 
 Geneva, 221 
 
 Genius and insanity, 295 
 
 and talent, 82 
 
 infirmities of, 300 
 
 Gentleman's Magazine, the, 113 
 George IV. caricatured by G. Cruikshank, 
 187 
 
 " vilest wretch in Europe," 184 
 
 German language, 100 
 Gibson, John, the sculptor, 153 
 Gifford, William, a malignant critic, 72 
 
 his lines on Peter Pindar, 19 
 
 his sneer at Mary Robinson, 244 
 
 Gilbert, Davis, the antiquary, 109 
 Gilfillan, George; his description of John 
 
 Wilson, 62 
 Gillman, Joseph, the surgeon, 183 
 Gleig, Rev. George Robert, Preface, ix, 
 
 267, 487 
 Goethe on the portrait of Rogers, Preface, 
 
 vii 
 Gore House,- Kensington, 160 
 
 " Gourmand " and " Gourmet, 118 
 
 Grandville, J. J. , the French artist, 307 
 
 Grant, his venality, 341 
 
 Grantley family, the, 55 
 
 Gray's "Ode to Eton College," Parody 
 
 on, 392 
 Greek criticism, Hallam's alleged blunder 
 
 in, ii2, 431 
 translation of Gray's Elegy and 
 
 Bard, 431 
 Green Book, The, by Sir E. Brydges, 22 r 
 Gregory, Barnard, 236 
 Cresset, J. B. L., his " Vert- Vert," 470 
 Grief, remedies for, 434 
 Griffin, Gerald, describes A. A. Watii, 
 
 322 
 Grimm, the Brothers, translate Croker's 
 
 Fairy Legends, 50 
 Grotius, Hugo, his epigram on Hampton 
 
 Court, 360 
 " Groves of Blarney, The," 466 
 Gryll Grange, by T. L. Peacock, 523 
 Guillotine, the, History of, by Croker, 74 
 
 II 
 
 Hall, Mrs. S. C, 366 
 
 Hallam, Henry, 430 
 
 Hill, Thomas, 263 
 
 Hobhouse, Sir John C, 372 
 
 Hogg, James, 91 
 
 Hook, Theodore E., 231 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, 242 
 
 Hafod, private press at, 221 
 
 Haggis, Scotch, its excellence, sung by 
 Burns, 117 
 
 Hall, Mr. S. C, 369 
 
 his Book of Memories, quotation 
 
 from, Preface, xi, and passim 
 
 his opinion of Maclise, 462 
 
 his prophecy regarding Maclise, 450 
 
 Hall, Mrs. S. C, one of Regina's 
 " Maids of Honour," 355 
 
 Hallam, Henry, his histories, in 
 
 and R. Payne Knight, 111, 431 
 
 blunder in Greek criticism, hi, 431 
 
 Hallam, Arthur Henry, his precocity and 
 early death, 434 
 
 Hamilton, Sir William, the metaphysi- 
 cian, 61 
 
 W. R., the antiquary, 112 
 
 Hampton Court, the Versailles of Lon- 
 don, 360 
 
 Handwriting, importance of good, 428 
 
 Hanging for forgery, 187 
 
 Hannay, James, his opinion of Thackera) 
 446, 447 
 
 on "Father Prout," 466, 480, 48^ 
 
 485. 487 
 
 Harding, S., his Biographical Mirrout 
 408 
 
INDEX, 
 
 53t 
 
 Harrington, Earl of, 239 
 
 Haslam's Letters to the Clergy, prosecuted, 
 
 382 
 Hawtrey, Rev. Edward Craven, his // 
 
 Trifoglio, 479 
 Haydon, B. R., a good talker, 64 
 his picture of ' ' Christ's Entry into 
 
 Jerusalem," lines on, by C. Lamb, 
 
 298 
 
 his portraiture of Wordsworth, 143 
 
 on critics, 72 
 
 Hayley, sonnet on death of his son, 39 
 Haymarket Theatre, tailor-riot at, 347 
 Hayne, " Pea-Green," 238 
 Hayward, A., his prose translation of 
 
 Faust, 99 
 Hazlitt, W., his description of Cobbett, 
 
 337. 339 
 
 his portrait of J. S. Knowles, 397 
 
 Headlong-Hall series of novels, 524 
 '* Heaviside v. Lardner," 123 
 Heber, Reginald, his prize poem, Pales- 
 tine, 127 
 Heinsius, Seldan's opinion of, 46 
 Hemans, Felicia, on Wordsworth, 141 
 - her pension, 64 
 Heraldry, utility of, 410 
 Hermippus Redivivus, by Cohausen, 272 
 Hertford, Lord, his bequest to J. W. 
 
 Croker, 74 
 Hetherington, Henry, prosecution of, for 
 
 blasphemy, 382 
 Hewlett, Rev. I. T., author of Peter 
 
 Priggins, 185, 536 
 Hilton, W., R.A., a picture by him, 136 
 Hobbes, edition of the works of, 418 
 Hobhouse, Benjamin, author of Travels 
 
 in France, etc. , 373 
 Hogan, the sculptor, 41 
 Hogarth, William, Anecdotes of, by 
 
 Nichols, 113 
 Hogarth's " Rake's Progress," etc., 384 
 Hogg, James, 62, 134, 135 
 
 Macnish's hoax on, 353 
 
 " Hohenlinden," by Campbell and 
 
 " Prout." 6, 467 
 Holland House, satirized, 233 
 Holland, Lady (daughter of Sydney 
 
 Smith), 429 
 
 (wife of Lord Holland), 160 
 
 Sir Henry, M.D., 429 
 
 Hollins, Peter, sculptor, of Birmingham, 
 
 57 
 Holmes, William, picture dealer of Bir- 
 mingham, 457 
 Homeric Ballads, by Maginn, 44 
 Hone, William, death of, 188 
 
 his Every ' Day Book, etc. , 523 
 
 his Facetice, etc., 187 
 
 political caricatures by, 187 
 
 religious parodies by, 186 
 
 Hood, Thomas, his " Last Man," 5 
 
 Hook, Dean, 231 
 
 Theodore, pun by, 283 
 
 Horace in London, by the Brothers Smith , 
 
 275, 278 
 Home, Richard Hengist, author of Orion, 
 
 78, 172, 400 
 Hotten, John Camden, the late, 429, 445 
 Houbraken's " Heads," 407 
 Howitt, William, on Miss Landon, 204 
 Hudson, his " Barney Brallaghan," 471 
 Huet, Bishop, eulogises tea, 94 
 Hughenden, its historic associations, 169 
 Hugo, Victor, 256, 303 
 Hunt, Leigh, and T. Carlyle, 172 
 
 Cockneyisms of, 255 
 
 " Fairy Concert," a poem by, 254 
 
 his description of Tom Hill, 265 
 
 his lines on Lady Morgan, 313 
 
 his lines on Sheridan Knowles, 397 
 
 his lines to Talfourd, 381 
 
 his opinion of Cobbett, 342 
 
 his opinion of Gilbert Wakefield, 342 
 
 his opinion of James Montgomery, 
 
 342 
 
 his verses to Mrs. Carlyle, xjj 
 
 lines on Charles Lamb, 290 
 
 on Miss Martineau, 206 
 
 on Regina's "Maids of Honour," 
 
 357 
 
 portrayed in t( Harold Skimpole," 251 
 
 Hurd, Bishop, quatrain by, 149 
 
 Irving, Washington, 76 
 Impositions, literary, 2 
 Improvisation of F. W. N. Bayley, 511 
 Improvisations of Theodore Hook, 234 
 Intemperance, our national vice, 194 
 Ion of Euripides, 380 
 
 of Serjeant Talfourd, 380 
 
 Ireland, Alexander, on Leigh Hunt, 250 
 
 W. H. , the Shaksperian forger, 107 
 
 Ireland, Fairy Legends of, 50 
 
 Irish Bulls, bucolic essay by Miss Edge 
 
 worth, 293 
 Melodies, Latin version of Moore's, 
 
 30 
 Stage, Familiar Epistles on, by J. 
 
 W. Croker, 72 
 Irish novelists, 367 
 
 songs, peculiarity of, 469 
 
 Irving, Washington, his lines on Moore, 24 
 
 visits Scott, 36 
 
 Italian literature, modern, 377 
 
 Jerdan, William, i 
 
 -* and Miss Landon, 201 
 
 his mutilation of portrait of Sir John 
 
 Soane, 387 
 
532 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Jack Sheppard, 258 
 
 Jameson, Mrs. , her Beauties of Court of 
 
 Charles II. , 409 
 her "Sunday evenings" in Rome, 
 
 4 8 3 
 Janin, M. Jules, his saying on Edouard 
 
 Fournier, 126 
 Jedburgh, its historic interest, 147 
 Jeffrey compared with D'Orsay, 423 
 
 his duel with T. Moore, 27 
 
 his visit to Sydney Smith, 423 
 
 Miss Martineau's opinion of, 209 
 
 on Wordsworth's Excursion, 140 
 
 Jekyll, his epigram on "Two Doctors," 
 
 509 
 Jenny Lind, a work on, 511 
 Jerdan, W. , on Lord Brougham, 85 
 Jerrold, Douglas, his Black- Ey'd Susan, 
 
 517 
 
 his Shilling Magazine, 522 
 
 on tailors, 347 
 
 Jesuits, " Father Prout" on the, 470 
 
 Jew, the Wandering, 54 
 
 Jewish literature, 104 
 
 Jewish race, 165, 170, 171 
 
 intellectual tendency of, 170 
 
 Jews, the, longevity of, 170 
 
 Jodelle, Stephen, his epigram on Nostra- 
 damus, 473 
 
 Johannot, Tony, the French etcher, 197 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, a pensioner, 210 
 
 his favourite dishes, 117 
 
 his love of London, 297 
 
 Jokeby, a parody on Scott, 35 
 
 "Jolly Nose," song by W. H. Ains- 
 worth, a translation from the French, 
 260 
 
 Jones, Richard Roberts, an extraordinary 
 linguist, 151 
 
 T. Percy, pseudonym of Professor 
 
 Aytoun, 514 
 
 Jouy, M., his opinion of Beranger, 305 
 
 Judaism, Genius of, by D'Israeli, 105 
 
 K 
 
 Knowles, Sheridan, 397 
 Kaleidoscope, invention of, 144 
 
 sonnet on, by M. F. Tupper, 145 
 
 Kaulbach, his illustrations of Reineke 
 
 Fuchs, 100, 307 
 Kean, Charles, the actor, 451 
 Keats, John, a martyr to criticism, 245 
 Keightley, Mr. , assisted in Croker's Fairy 
 
 Legends, 51 
 Kelly, Miss, the actress, 296 
 Kemble, Charles, his castigation of C. M. 
 
 Westmacott, 241 
 Fanny, insulted by C. M. West- 
 macott, 241, 516 
 
 Kemble, J. P., farewell dinner to, 5 
 Kempe, A. J., the antiquary, no 
 Kenealy, Dr., his scurrilous remarks on 
 Disraeli, 170 
 
 his Brallaghan, 47, 469 
 
 Kent, Mr. Charles, Editor of "Prout," 
 
 46S. 487 
 
 Kingsley, Charles, the Rev., 65 
 
 Kircher, Father, his polygonal speculum, 
 144 
 
 Kirk, Thomas, the artist, 364 
 
 Kit-Kat Club, 408 
 
 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 408, 409 
 
 Knight, Charles, his History of England, 
 208 
 
 Knight, R. P. , his book on Priapic Wor- 
 ship, 328 
 
 his Inquiry into Principles of Taste, 
 
 43i 
 Knighthood, "honour" of, 461 
 Knowles, J., the lexicographer, 397 
 
 Richard Brinsley, 402 
 
 Kohl, the German traveller, 437 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 290 
 
 Landon, Miss, 200 
 
 Lardner, Reverend Doctor, 122 
 
 Lockhart, John Gibson, 7 
 
 Lodge, Edmund, 402 
 
 Lywdhurst, Lord, 394 
 
 Lacroix, M. Paul, loss of his library, 
 
 1 5 , . 
 
 Ladies, punishment for prying into their 
 
 mysteries, 356 
 Lady of Lyons, by Bulwer, 125, 381 
 " Lady's Pocket Adonis," the, a song by 
 
 Maginn, 515 
 Lamb, Charles, his "Dissertation on 
 
 Roast Pig," 117 
 
 his lines to Sheridan Knowles, 398 
 
 his Satan in Search of a Wife, 295, 
 
 495 
 "On the Melancholy of Tailors," 
 
 346 
 
 W. S. Landor on, 298 
 
 Lambe, Rev. Robert, a literary forger, 
 
 i35 
 Landon, Miss, her death, 203 
 
 her poem, Vow of the Peacock, 456 
 
 one of Regina's "Maids o< 
 
 Honour," 355 
 
 portrays Bulwer, 132 
 
 Landor, W. S., his epitaph on Lady 
 
 Blessington, 163 
 
 his influence on Southey, 363 
 
 his lines on Lamb, 298, 299 
 
 Languages, the European, 100 
 " Last," the, a touching word, 268 
 Latin language, how formerly learnt, 464 
 
 
INDEX. 
 
 533 
 
 Lauder, W., his attack on Milton, 468 
 Lavater on the Nose, 85 
 Law and Poetry, old alliance between, 379 
 Lawrence, Sir William, his materialism, 
 
 3 J 5 
 
 Lawrie Todd, by Gait, 213 
 
 "Lay of the Twaddle School," T. H. 
 
 Bayly, 513 
 Leanness, jokes on excessive, 13 
 Lee Priory private printing-press, 220 
 Leech, John, the comic artist, 437, 446 
 Lely, Sir Peter, 409 
 Lemon, Robert, the antiquary, X09 
 Lennox, Lord William, 517 
 Leslie, C. R., R.A., 77 
 Libel, Jeremy Bentham's definition of, 
 
 321 
 Liberal, The, by Leigh Hunt, 245 
 Life Academy, drawing of the, by Thomas 
 
 Rowlandson, 240 
 
 Human, a tragedy or a comedy, 173 
 
 Life in London, by Pierce Egan, 189 
 Lilly, Joseph, the bookseller, 241, 267 
 Linguists, eminent, 76 
 Literary Fund, dispute of Sir John Soane 
 
 with, 387 
 Literary Gazette, 1 
 
 Souvenir, The, 320 
 
 Literature as a profession, 12, 137 
 
 English, epochs of, 138 
 
 Little Men, 49 
 
 Little Pedlington, a satire, 265, 266 
 
 Lockhart, J. G., his article on Theodore 
 
 Hook, 232 
 
 his epitaph on Maginn, 48 
 
 his kindness to Maginn's wife, 49, 439 
 
 London, love of, 297 
 Long Life, Secret of by M. Collins, 119 
 Long, St. John, the quack, 508 
 Longevity, humorous passage on, by 
 
 Poole, 270 
 
 in mountainous districts, 142 
 
 Mr. Thorns on, 270 
 
 Looking- Glass, The, a child's book, 275 
 Loss of books, a calamity to the scholar, 
 
 150 
 Lovegrove, the comedian, 348 
 Lucretia, by Bulwer, 297 
 Luttrell, his epigram on Sam. Rogers, 16 
 
 M 
 
 Maclise, Daniel, R.A., 448 
 
 Macnish, Robert, 350 
 
 Maginn, William, 40 
 
 Mahony, Rev. Francis (" Father 
 
 Prout "), 463 
 Martineau, Miss H., 2o5 
 Mitford, Mary Russell, 63 
 Moir, Doctor, 198 
 Molesworth, Sir William, 416 
 
 Montgomery, Robert, 87 
 
 Moore, Thomas, 22 
 
 Morgan, Lady, 313 
 
 Morier, James, 157 
 
 Mulgrave, Earl of, 331 
 
 Munster, Earl of, 68 
 
 Macaulay, T. Babington, his venality, 
 
 34i 
 
 Miss Martineau's opinion of, 209 
 
 on R. Montgomery, 89 
 
 Mackay, Dr. Charles, his Bottle, etc., 194 
 
 lines praised by Rogers, 21 
 
 Maclise, Daniel, R.A., destruction of his 
 
 portrait of Sir John Soane, 387 
 
 his etching of O'Brien, 329 
 
 his ' ' Gallery of Portraits, " Preface, vii 
 
 his illustrations to Croker's Fairy 
 
 Legends, 51 
 
 his illustrations to Prout 's Reliques, 
 
 486 
 Maclise, Joseph, the surgeon, 461 
 
 memoir of, by O'Driscoll, 463 
 
 Macready, his opinion of Miss Mitford's 
 
 Rienzi, 64 
 Magee, Dr., "Abbot of Westminster," 
 
 466 
 Magic, Natural, 146 
 Maginn, Dr., a capital hater, 400 
 a literary " Embalmer," 519 
 
 a prison companion of Theodore 
 
 Hook, 234 
 
 assisted by Thackeray, 439 
 
 assumes name of ' ' Ralph Tucker 
 
 Scott," 520 
 
 biographical notice of, by E. V. 
 
 Kenealy, 47 
 
 death of his widow, 49, 439 
 
 described by "Theodore Taylor," 
 
 439 
 
 ' ' Father Prout " on, 519 
 
 funeral of, by Kenealy, 47 
 
 Grantley Berkeley on, 202 
 
 his attachment to Miss Landon, 203 
 
 his connection with Blackwood, 520 
 
 his duel with Grantley Berkeley, 43, 
 
 522 
 
 his early life in Cork, 519 
 
 his epigram on Count D'Orsay, 285 
 
 his imitation of Tom Hill, 264 
 
 his "Lady's Pocket Adonis," 515 
 
 his Latin version of ' ' Backe and 
 
 Syde go bare," 520 
 
 his parody of Disraeli, 167 
 
 his review of Berkeley Castle, 
 
 521 
 
 Lockhart's epitaph on, 48 
 
 Maclise's opinion of, 455 
 
 on Lady Morgan's France, etc., 
 
 on Paris's Life of Davy, 358 
 
 parodies on Moore, etc. , by, 492 
 
 partial opinion of Theodore Hook, 
 
 233 
 
 2 M 3 
 
 42, 
 
 3i5 
 
534 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Maginn, Dr., portrait of, by Skillin, of 
 
 Cork, 47 
 reminiscence of, by Maclise, 41 
 
 satiric verses on, by A. A. Watts, 
 
 319 
 
 sonnets by, 492 
 
 . starts Fraser's Magazine, 521 
 
 "The Wine- Bibber's Glory," 43, 
 
 490 
 
 Magliabechi, 152 
 
 Mahon, Lord, his article on French 
 
 Revolution, 9 
 Mahony, Martin Francis, 523 
 Malthusian theory of superfecundity, 330 
 Manesty, John, a novel by Maginn, 46 
 Mansie Wauch, by Moir, 349 
 Marlow's Doctor Faustus, 97, 378 
 Martin, Francis, the antiquary, 111 
 
 Sir Theodore, 63 
 
 Thomas, philologist, of Birmingham, 
 
 34i 
 Martineau, Miss, her "Key" to Zanoni, 
 
 128 
 Ode to, 211 
 
 one of Regina's "Maids of 
 
 Honour," 356 
 
 on Thackeray, 444 
 
 Martinus Scriblerus, Memoirs of, quoted, 
 
 477 
 
 Massinger ridicules a tailor, 346 
 Mathews, Charles, jun., 160 
 Mathews, Charles, sen., 280, 282 
 
 on Count D'Orsay, 286 
 
 Maxims of O'Doherty, 46 
 Maxwell, Sir William Stirling, 56 
 Mayfield Cottage, literary associations 
 
 of, 28 
 Mazza, an Italian poet, 377 
 McQuin, the Abbe 1 Angel Denis, 120 
 Medical profession, the, 350 
 Medico-Botanical Society of London, 
 
 109 
 Medmenham Abbey, orgies at, 373 
 Melbourne, Lord, action for Crim. Con. 
 
 against, 55 
 
 and Faraday's pension, 359 
 
 Mercandotti, the dancer, married to 
 
 Hughes Ball, 289, 323 
 "Meredith, Owen," pen-name of Lord 
 
 Lytton, 133 
 Mesmerism tried by Miss Martineau, 
 
 208 
 Meursius, the critic, obscene book at- 
 tributed to him, 20 
 Mezzofanti, Cardinal, 76, 152 
 Michelet, the historian, 149, 433 
 Midsummer Eve, superstition connected 
 
 with, 368 
 Mignet, M., on Lord Brougham, 87 
 Millais, original of his " Cinderella," 
 
 4IS 
 Millikin, Dick, of Cork, 466 
 
 Milman, his "Apollo Belvidere," 127 
 
 Rev. Henry Hart, 8 
 
 Milton attacked by Lauder, 468 
 
 blindness of, 105 
 
 lost work by, 109 
 
 Mirage of Life, The, 235 
 
 Mitchel, John, on D. O'Connell, 227 
 
 Mitford, Mary Russell, on Talfourd, 379 
 
 one of Regina's " Maids of 
 
 Honour," 356 
 
 Modern Pythagorean, The, by Macnish, 
 
 Mohawks, The, a satire, 316 
 
 Moir, "Delta," his lines on Sir W. Scott, 
 
 33 
 Moira, Lord, his patronage of T. Moore, 
 
 24 
 Montagu, Basil, 184 
 Montague, Lady Mary Wortley, 25, 
 
 160 
 Montaigne, his theory of proper names, 
 
 33i 
 
 Montgomery, James, imprisoned for 
 
 opinion, 342 
 Montgomery, Robert, and A. A. Watts, 
 
 321 
 
 on Theodore Hook, 231 
 
 Moore, Tom, plagiarisms of, 468 
 
 and Burns, comparison between, 27 
 
 engaged to write by Lardner, 123 
 
 helped by Rogers, 15 
 
 his controversy with O'Brien, 328 
 
 his lines on Leigh Hunt's imprison- 
 ment, 243 
 
 his satiric lines on Gait, 40 
 
 his visit to Sydney Smith, 423 
 
 More, Hannah, her Sacred Dramas, 381 
 Morgan, Augustus de, on Francis Place, 
 
 etc., 344, 396,432 
 Morgan, Lady, her satire on J. W. 
 Croker, 73, 315, 355 
 
 one of Regina's "Maids of 
 
 Honour," 355 
 
 Morgan, Sir T. C, 314 
 
 Morhof on the effect of" change of name, 
 
 331 
 "Morris, Peter, M.D.,"9 
 Moxon, Edward, 494 
 
 helped by Rogers, 15 
 
 prosecuted for publishing Shelley's 
 
 poems, 382 
 Miiller, William, the artist, 458 
 Mulready, William, R.A., 275 
 Munster famous for poetry, 69 
 Murphy, Jeremiah Daniel, a native of 
 
 Cork, 41, 489 
 
 Serjeant, a Fraserian, 464, 466, 467 
 
 Murray, John, the publisher, 44, 279 
 Museum, Sir John Soane's, 384 
 Musical ear, a, 181 
 
 Musselburgh and Edinburgh, lines on, 198 
 " Mutual admiration Cliques," 184, 356 
 
INDEX. 
 
 535 
 
 My Pocket-Book, a satire, 265 
 Mytton, John, Life of, by " Nimrod, 
 454 
 
 N 
 
 Norton, Mrs., 53 
 
 Names, importance of good proper, 91, 
 
 ,r 331 
 
 Nasology, a treatise on Noses, by " Eden 
 
 Warwick," * 85 
 Negro race, its capacity, 207 
 New Tale of a Tub, The, by F. W. N. 
 
 Bayley, 510 
 
 Whig Guide, The, 84 
 
 Newenham, Mr. and Miss, of Cork, 449 
 Newmania, a curious book, 428 
 Newstead Abbey, revels at, 373 
 
 Prout's visit to, 483 
 
 Newton, Gilbert Stuart, the painter, J7 
 Nichols, John Bowyer, the antiquary, 113 
 Nicholson, Francis, the artist, 52 
 
 Renton, the " Baron," 236 
 
 Nickisson, G. W., the publisher, 522 
 Nicknames for peculiarity of nose, 85 
 
 given by Cobbett, 338, 375 
 
 Nicolas, Sir Nicholas H., the antiquary, 
 
 in 
 Nightingale Fund, the, 368 
 Nihil, the London tailor, motto for, 348 
 "Nimrod" (Charles James Apperley), 
 
 " Noctes Ambrosianae, " the, 61 
 
 motto of, 61 
 
 Normanby, Dowager Marchioness of, 332 
 
 the Marquis of, 331 
 
 Northcote, the painter, on Godwin, 270 
 Norths, Lives of the, quoted from, 13 
 Norton, Hon. George Chappie, his action 
 
 against Lord Melbourne, 55 
 Norton, Hon. Mrs. , and Maclise, 457 
 
 autograph letter from, 493 
 
 her opinion of Sydney Smith, 419 
 
 Norton, Mrs., one of Regina's "Maids 
 
 of Honour," 355 
 Norton Hall, private press at, 221 
 " Norton v. Norton and Grantley," 56 
 Nose, Lord Brougham's, peculiarity of, 
 
 86 
 
 the, its importance as a feature, 85 
 
 Noseless men, 85 
 
 Nostradamus, his prophecies, 473 
 
 " Not a Drum was heard," original of, 
 
 477 
 Notes on Noses, by G. Jabet, 85 
 
 * " Eden Warwick " was the pen-name of 
 George Jabet, solicitor, of Birmingham, who 
 died at Handsworth, July 13th, 1873, He was 
 author also of the elegant volume, The Poet's 
 Pleasaunce : a Garden of Pleasant Flowers 
 (1849, square 8vo). 
 
 Novel, the modern, created by Scott, 33 
 Novels, character of French historic, 257 
 Noviomagus, Society of, 4, 53 
 Nun of Arrouca, The, its rarity, 71 
 
 O'Brien, Henry, 325 
 
 O'Connell, Daniel, 223 
 
 Obscurity of Coleridge and Goethe, 182 
 
 O'Doherty, Sir Morgan, on dining, 119 
 
 Old Nick's Pocket-Book, a satire, 265 
 
 "Olphar Hamst" (Mr. Ralph Thomas), 1 
 
 O'Neill, Miss, the actress, 229 
 
 Ortis, jacopo, Ultime Lettei-e di, 378 
 
 Our Village, by Miss Mitford, 64 
 
 Ouverture, Toussaint L', 207 
 
 " Owls," the, a London Society, 401 
 
 Oxberry, the comedian, 348 
 
 Oxford, undergraduate life at, 9 
 
 Place, Francis, 344 
 
 Porter, Miss Jane, 310 
 
 Paine, Tom, his bones brought to England 
 
 by W. Cobbett, 335 
 Painters, portraits of, at Florence, 406 
 
 the society of, 283 
 
 Paisley, Scottish poets born at, 59 
 Palgrave, F. T., his remarks on George 
 
 Cruikshank, 193 
 Palmerston, Lord, a venal statesman, 341 
 Parini, Joseph, an Italian poet, 378 
 Parr, Dr. Samuel, consulted byT. Moore, 
 
 25 
 
 his favourite dishes, 117 
 
 his quarrel with W. Godwin, 274 
 
 his saying of Mrs. Barbauld, 514 
 
 linguistic combat with R. R. Jones, 
 
 152 
 Parson-Magistrates, 365 
 Pascal, Blaise, his apology for writing a 
 
 long letter, 32 
 Passe, Simon, the engraver, 407 
 Pathos and Humour, union of, 277 
 Paton, Susannah, the actress, 517 
 " Patricius Walker," pen-name of W. 
 
 Allingham, 522 
 Paul Pry, character, 265 
 Paulding, James Kirke, 36 
 Peacock, Thomas Love, 306, 523 
 
 his songs, 306 
 
 Pearson, Bishop, Bentley's opinion of, 129 
 
 Pedlington, Little, by Poole, 265 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, his generosity to Dr. 
 
 Maginn, 47 
 Pelham, by Bulwer, 127 
 Pennant's London, illustrated copy, 385 
 Pensions, Miss Martineau's opinion of, 
 
53 6 INDEX. 
 
 Pensions to literary and scientific men, 
 
 359 
 Perceval, assassinated by Bellingham, i 
 Perfection, a drama, by T. H. Bayly, 513 
 Peru, Conquest of, by Trueba, 68 
 Peter Bell, suppressed verse from, 108 
 " Peter Porcupine," pen-name of Cobbett, 
 
 333 
 Peter Priggins, a novel,* 185 
 Peters Letters to his Kinsfolk, 8 
 Peter's, Saint, chair at Rome, controversy 
 
 respecting, 317 
 Petersham, Viscount, inventor of a coat, 
 
 239 
 Peyresc, his gallery of portraits, 406 
 Phallic theory of the Round Towers, 328 
 
 tower in Syria, 328 
 
 Phillips, Samuel, the late, "441 
 Phallos, worship of, 328 
 " Phiz" (Hablot K. Browne), 191, 446 
 Phrenology, Macnish on, 350, 354 
 Physiognomical Portraits, the, 409 
 "Picking out" in carriages, 161 
 Pic-Nic newspaper, 277 
 Picture-dealers, frauds of, 369 
 Pictures, modern, difficulty of selling, 369 
 
 objects of speculation, 283, 458 
 
 Pindemonte, Hippolito, 377 
 
 Pinkerton, John, his Scottish Gallery, 408 
 
 Pliny, his books, 297 
 
 Plurality of worlds, discussion on, 146 
 
 Plymley's, Peter, Letters, by Sydney Smith, 
 
 422 
 Poetic prose, 167, 355 
 Poetry, definition of, 199, 365, 502 
 
 English, epochs of, 15, 139, 363, 379 
 
 modern " Spasmodic," 33, 99, 514 
 
 principles of, discussion on, 365, 502 
 
 Political economy taught by fiction, 207 
 Poole, John, author of Paul Pry, 265 
 Pope, the poet, controversy on his merits, 
 
 10S. 3 6 5. 5 2 
 his epigram on Lady Mary Wortley 
 
 Montague, 160 
 Pork, Southey's fondness for, 118 
 Porson, Professor, ridiculed, 104 
 
 * By a slip of the pen, for which I fancy 
 I have to thank M apt alliteration's artful aid," 
 I have spoken of this clever novel as being by 
 Poole. It was really the production of the 
 Rev. Joseph T. Hewlett, M.A., of Worce- 
 ster College, Oxford, Rector of Little Stam- 
 ford, Essex, and previously Head Master of 
 Abingdon Grammar School. He was a frequent 
 contributor to Colburn's New Monthly Maga- 
 zine, where first appeared his history of Peter 
 Priggins, College Scout and Bed-maker, after- 
 wards republished in 3 vol. form ; his SEsop 
 Illustrated, etc. He was also author of the 
 Parish Clerk (1841) ; College Life (1842) ; and 
 Parsons and Widows (1844), where, under the 
 character of the " Curate of Mosbury," he has 
 given a depiction of himself. He died January 
 24th, 1847, at the early age of 46. 
 
 Porta, Baptista, his parabolic speculum, 
 
 144 
 Porter, Anna Maria, the novelist, 311 
 Porter, Jane, one of Regina's " Maids 
 
 of Honour," 356 j 
 
 Sir Robert Ker, 312 
 
 Portraits, continental collections of, 406 
 of literary men, the value of, Preface, 
 
 viii 
 in Dublin University Magazine, 
 
 Preface, vii 
 Portraiture, 404 
 
 fondness of the English for, 404 
 
 Post Office, why Governmental, 175 
 Power, Mr. , suicide of, 230 
 " Practical jokes," their vulgarity, 232 
 Praed, Athens, a prize poem by, 127 
 Pre-Raphaelite school of art, 514 
 Prescott, the historian, blindness of, 105 
 Priapic Worship, R. P. Knight's book on, 
 
 328 
 Priestley, Dr., burnt out of Birmingham, 
 
 34 2 
 Prior, the poet, indecency of, 23 
 Prism of Imagination, The, 289 
 Private printing presses, 220 
 Prize poems, 127 
 
 " Promethea," a story in Fraser, 273 
 " Prout, Father" (F. Mahony), on Lard- 
 
 ner, 124 
 on Maginn as a literary ' ' Embalmer, " 
 
 Si9 
 
 on Miss Landon, 200 
 
 the real, 466 
 
 " Prout Papers," the, 466 
 
 Prowse, Mr., the late, his burlesque on 
 
 Coleridge, 180 
 Publishers, popular books rejected by, 78, 
 
 279. S23 
 
 stupidity of, 78, 523 
 
 Puffiad, The, a satire, by R. Montgomery, 
 
 89 
 Pugilism, 284 
 Punch, when started, 440 
 Punster's Pocket-Book, the, 240 
 
 Quaker sect, the, not liked by Lamb, 297 
 
 Quarterly Review, the, 9, 73 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, her jokes upon tailors, 
 
 34 6 
 Quillinan, Edward, the poet, 143, 223, 514 
 Quin, epigram by, 119 
 Quintus Curtius, judgment of Lipsius on, 
 
 436 
 
 Regina's Maids of Honour, 355 
 Rogers, Samuel, 13 
 
INDEX. 
 
 537 
 
 Roscoe, William, 147 
 
 Ross, Captain, 215 
 
 Russell, Lord John, 69 
 
 Rabelais, his last words, 173 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, quotation from, 114. 
 
 Ramazzini, De Morbis Aj-tifcu?n, 345 
 
 Ramsay, Allan, Burns's lines on, 134 
 
 Raphael on portraiture, 405 
 
 Raumer, Professor Von, his opinion of 
 
 Lord John Russell, 69 
 Reade, Charles, the novelist, 471 
 Redding, Cyrus, 4 
 Reformation, Protestant, the, History of, 
 
 by W. Cobbett, 339 
 Regent, the, Leigh Hunt's satire on, 243 
 Rejected Addresses, the, 279 
 Remusat, M. Charles de, 66 
 Representative, the, 44, 167 
 Retributive justice, 208, 522 
 Retrospective Review, the, 111 
 " Reynard the Fox," 100 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, neglect of his own 
 
 rules, 140 
 " Roast Pig, Dissertation on," by Charles 
 
 Lamb, 117 
 Robinson, Crabb, his Diary, 433 
 Rogers, Samuel, accused of plagiarism, 20 
 his reply to Lamartine on Beranger, 
 
 306 
 
 satire on, by Maginn, 45 
 
 Rogerson, the Abbe\ 484 
 
 Rosser, W. H., the antiquary, in 
 
 Rossetti, D. G., his article on the Gallery, 
 
 453 
 
 his hoax on the public, 99 
 
 on portrait of Miss Landon, 200 
 
 on portrait of Mrs. Norton, 53 
 
 on portrait of Scott, 31 
 
 on portrait of Talleyrand, 157 
 
 on portrait of Wilson, 60 
 
 Rossetti, W. M., fine lines by, 74 
 Round towers of Ireland, Hon. Reginald 
 
 Herbert's theory of the, 328 
 
 O'Brien on, 325 
 
 various theories respecting, 327 
 
 Rousseau, J. J. , Moore's lines on, 84 
 
 " Rowdy" editors, 240 
 
 Rowlandson, Thomas, the artist, 196, 237, 
 
 240 
 Royal Society of Literature, 3 
 Ruminator, The, by Sir E. Brydges, 217 
 Ruskin, J., on G. Cruikshank, 193 
 
 on illustrated editions of Rogers, 16 
 
 on statue of Carlyle, 177 
 
 Russell, Earl, 72 
 
 S 
 
 Sadler, Michael Thomas, 329 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 31 
 Shiel, Richard Lalor, 229 
 
 Smith, James, 277 
 
 Rev. Sydney, 419 
 
 Soane, Sir John, 384 
 
 Sadler, M. T., 341 
 
 Sainthill, Mr., of Cork, 449 
 
 Sala, G. A., his description of " Father 
 
 Prout," 463 
 Sallust on the images of great men, 404 
 Sandwich, Lord, 184 
 Sannazarius, his epigram on Venice, 281, 
 
 360 
 Sarcophagus, Egyptian, discovered by 
 
 Belzoni, 385 
 Sartor Resartus, by Carlyle, 174, 349 
 Satan in Search of a Wife, by Charles 
 
 Lamb, 295, 494 
 Satire, 25 
 
 Savage, Richard, 231 
 Savoy, Royal Chapel in, Account of, 12 
 Sayers, Frank, M.D., of Norwich, 363 
 Scaliger, the younger, a dependant upon 
 
 charity, 185 
 Schlegel, F., translated by Lockhart, 8 
 Scotland, poets of, 91 
 
 Sydney Smith on, 420 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, his visit to Cork, 449, 
 450 
 
 hoaxes on, 35 
 
 imitations of, 35 
 
 shape of his head, 450 
 
 Scott, John, the editor, 298 
 
 Scottish poetry, 91, 133 
 
 Seaward, Sir E. , Narrative of, by Miss 
 
 Porter, 310 
 " Self-help," or " Help-Self," 214 
 Seymour, the caricaturist, 439 
 Shakespeare, lines beneath his portrait, 
 406 
 
 on Tailors, 346 
 
 Shakespeare's Mulberry Tree, 267 
 "Shandon Bells," the, by Mahony, 469 
 Sharp, William, his account of Rogers, 22 
 
 the picture collector, 458 
 
 Shee, Sir Martin Archer, P.R.A., his 
 
 Alasco, 64 
 Sheehan, John, the " Irish Whiskey 
 
 Drinker," 464 
 Shelley dedicates his Cenci to Leigh Hunt, 
 251 
 
 his admiration of Lady Morgan's 
 
 Missionary, 315 
 
 his death and cremation, 245' 
 
 prosecution for publishing his works, 
 
 382 
 Shelley, Mrs., daughter of Mary Woll- 
 
 stonecraft, 273 
 Shelley, Sir Percy, pensions Leigh Hunt, 
 
 250 
 Shenstone, sentiment in epitaph by, Pre- 
 face, xii 
 Shepherd, Rev. W., author of Life oj 
 Poggio Bracciolini, 151 
 
538 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Sheridan assisted by Rogers, 15 
 
 defended by Mrs. Norton , 54 
 
 Siamese Twins, allusion to M. T. Sadler 
 
 in, 33 
 Siddons, Mrs., her opinion of Mary Woll- 
 
 stonecraft, 273 
 
 life of, by T. Campbell, 6 
 
 Sidney, Mr. S., his Book of the Horse, 285 
 Sieyes, the Abbe, his mot, Preface, ix 
 Signs, the science of, 128 
 " Silver Po," the, a ballad by Hook, 233 
 Sir John Chiverton , a novel, 256 
 Sketches from St. George's Fields, 377, 514 
 Sketches, the original, by Maclise, for the 
 
 "Gallery," 454 
 Skillin, Mr., of Cork, his portrait of Dr. 
 
 Maginn, 47 
 Sloperton Cottage, the residence of Moore, 
 
 29. 364 
 Slop's Shave at a Brokeit Hone, 187, 376 
 Smith, Alexander, the poet, 514 
 
 his Life Drama, 514 
 
 Smith, "Bobus," notice of, 429 
 
 Latin verses by, 430 
 
 Smith, Egerton, his Elysium of Ani?nals, 
 
 190 . 
 
 Smith, Horace, 247, 283 
 
 satire on, by Maginn, 45, 283 
 
 Smith, James, his epigram on Lady 
 Blessing ton, 160 
 
 Smith, Rev. Sydney, Miss Martineau's 
 description of, 209 
 
 on literary lions, 68 
 
 on Lord Brougham , 82 
 
 on Rogers's dinners, 119 
 
 witty reply by, 119 
 
 Smith, the Brothers, Horace in London, 275 
 
 " Smith," surname of, 430 
 
 Smokers, celebrated, 80 
 
 Smoking, 6, 7, 79, 192 
 
 Somerset, Lady, "Queen of Beauty" at 
 the Eglintoun Tournament, 57 
 
 Somerville, Mary, her pension, 64 
 
 Song-writing, 27 
 
 Songs of the Edinburgh Yeomanry Squad- 
 ron, 12 
 
 Sorrow and Laughter, 173 
 
 Southey, his love for pork, 118 
 
 his saying about critics, 72 
 
 lines on the death of his wife, 435 
 
 visit of James Hogg to, 94 
 
 Souvenir, The Literary, 320 
 
 Soyer, M. , history of Cookery by, 115 
 
 * Spasmodic School of Poetry, " 33 , 99, 514 
 
 Specialism in knowledge, 126 
 
 Spurzheim, his saying of Maclise, 449 
 
 on self-love, 284 
 
 Standard, the, 44 
 
 Stereochrome method of painting, 460 
 
 Sterline, Earl of, a fine old poet, 149 
 
 Sterling, John, his opinion of Thackeray, 
 443 
 
 Sterne on effect of surnames, 331 
 " Story of Elizabeth," in Cornhill Maga- 
 zine, 447 
 Stothard, Charles Alfred, no 
 
 Thomas, R. A. , Life of, by Mrs. Bray, 
 
 no 
 Strahan, Mr., James Smith's epigram on. 
 
 280 
 Surtees, R., his imposition on Scott, 35 
 Swain, Charles, his " First Man," 5 
 
 his lines on Miss Landon, 205 
 
 Swedenborg, the Times on, 181 
 Swift, an Irishman only by accident of 
 birth, 438 
 
 his "Tale of a Tub," 338 
 
 on old age, 15 
 
 Swinburne, A. C., his opinion of Charles 
 
 Lamb, 293 
 Sym, Mr., " Timothy Tickler," of Black- 
 wood, 94 
 
 Talfourd, Mr. Serjeant, 378 
 
 Talleyrand, Prince de, 154 
 
 Thackeray, W. M., 437 
 
 Thorburn, Grant, 212 
 
 Tiger, The, 163 
 
 Trueba y Cosio, Don Telesforo de, 
 
 66 
 Tydus-Pooh-Pooh, 74 
 Tabella Cibaria, a curious book, 120 
 Table-turning, 360 
 Tailor, a generous, 349 
 Tailor-jokes, 348 
 Tailors, diseases of, 345 
 
 learned, 349 
 
 Tailors, The, a tragedy, 347 
 
 Taine, M., his History of English Litera* 
 
 ture, 436 
 Talfourd, T. N., defends Moxon, 382 
 
 on W. Godwin, 271, 276 
 
 Talking and Doing, 178 
 Talleyrand, his bons-mots, 156 
 
 on letters, 377 
 
 Tammas Bodkin ; or, Humours of a Scot* 
 
 tish Tailor, 349 
 Tansillo, Luigi, his Nurse, etc. , 152 
 Tasso, original MS. of Gerusalemme Libe* 
 
 rata, 385 
 Taylor, Bayard, on Lewes's Life of Goethe, 
 
 102 
 "Taylor, Theodore," a pseudonym, 429, 
 
 439 
 Tea praised by Bishop Huet, 94 
 Temperance, advocates of, 194, 368 
 Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall advocates 
 
 of, 368 
 Tennyson, Alfred, attacks Bulwer 
 
 Punch, 130 
 his " In Memoriam," 434 
 
INDEX. 
 
 539 
 
 lenlamen, a political satire, by Theodore 
 
 Hook, 233 
 Thackeray, W. M., a contributor to 
 Fraser, 523 
 
 a " snob," 209, 444 
 
 and Lady Blessington, 162 
 
 autograph letter from, 503 
 
 his Vanity Fair rejected by pub- 
 lishers and editors, 523 
 inaugural ode to, by Prout, 477, 
 
 on George Cruikshank, 195, 440 
 
 on Washington Irving, 81 
 
 parody by, 503 
 
 Thackerayana, suppression of, 445 
 Thaddeus of Warsaw, by Miss Jane 
 
 Porter, 310, 312 
 " Thanatopsis" of Bryant, beauty of, 7 
 Thierry, the historian, blindness of, 105 
 Thomas, Ralph ("Olphar Hamst"), 514 
 Thompson, Colonel Perronet, 75 
 Thomson, James, the poet, on early 
 
 rising, 204 
 Thorius, Raphael, on Tobacco, quoted, 6 
 Thornbury, Walter, on George Cruik- 
 shank, 192 
 Thornhill, Sir James, his portrait of Jack 
 
 Sheppard, 259 
 Thurlow, Lord, the poet, 114 
 Tickler, Timothy (Sym), 94 
 Tobacco, excellence of, 6, 7, 80 
 Toussaint L'Ouverture, 207 
 Townsend, Rev. W. , epigram by, 59 
 Tractarians, the, 427 
 Transfusion, a novel, 274 
 Translations, literal, 467 
 Trollope, Anthony, the novelist, 348, 447 
 Trotter, Dr., essay on drunkenness, 352 
 Tupper, Martin Farquhar, sonnet by, 145 
 
 unjustly criticised, 89 
 
 Turner, J. M, W., his illustrations for S. 
 Rogers's Italy and Poems, 16 
 
 pencil sketch of, 454 
 
 "Twaddle School," the, of poetry, 513 
 Tweddell, Johos his death, 310 
 
 U 
 
 Ude, Louis Eustache, 114 
 United Service Gazette, 322 
 Universalism in knowledge, 126 
 
 Valerianus, J, Pierius, 104 
 Valpy, Rev. Dr., 378 
 Van Wart, Henry, a Birmingham mer- 
 chant, tj 
 Varieties of Foreign Literature, 103 
 Vatel, the French cook, suicide of, 115 
 Vertue, the engraver, 407 
 
 Vie de Village en Angleterre, 66 
 Virginius, by Sheridan Knowles and 
 
 others, 398 
 Vivian Grey, key to, 167 
 Volney, author of Les Ruines, 396 
 Voltaire, epigram on, by Young, 14 
 
 his interviews with Talleyrand, T54 
 
 on literal translations, 467 
 
 Vow of the Peacock^ a poem, by Miss 
 
 Landon, 456 
 
 W 
 
 Watts, Alaric Attila, 319 
 Westmacott, Charles Molloy, 236 
 Wilson, John, 58 
 Wordsworth, William, 138 
 Wainwright, Thomas Griffiths, the mur- 
 derer, 297 
 Wakefield, Gilbert, imprisoned for libel, 
 
 342 
 "Walker, Patricius," pen-name of W. 
 
 Allingham, 522 
 Walladmor, an imitation of Scott, 36 
 Waller, the poet, his long career, 14 
 Wallis, his picture of "The Death of 
 
 Chatterton," 329 
 Walmsley, Edward, 409 
 Walpole, Horace, his remark about poets, 
 
 6 
 
 on the world, 173 
 
 " Wandering Jew," the, 54 
 Warburton, his advice to Anstey, 280 
 Ward, Edward, his History of the Grand 
 
 Rebellion, 407 
 Warreniana, by W. F. Deacon, 147, 189 
 Warton, Thomas, the poet, 364 
 Water-drinking, 94 
 Watson and Thistlewood, their Trial for 
 
 High Treason, 396 
 
 Rev. J. Selby, 104, 343 
 
 Watts, A. A., and R. Montgomery, 87, 
 
 320 
 
 editor of Kit-Kat Club, 409 
 
 his criticism on Maclise's portraits, 
 
 453 
 
 his lines on Crofton Croker, 51 
 
 his satire on Magihn, 320 
 
 v. Fraser, 321 
 
 Watts, Rev. Dr. Isaac, a little man, 50 
 
 Weimar, society at, 438 
 
 Wensleydale Peerage, 397 
 
 Werther and Charlotte, 334 
 
 Werthers Leiden, 101, 378 
 
 Westmacott, C. M., his quarrel with C. 
 Kemble, 241, 516, 522 
 
 Westminster Palace, frescoes at, 457 
 
 Westminster Review, 7;, 418 
 
 essay in, on George Cruikshank, by- 
 Thackeray, 195, 440 
 
 Whistlebinkie, by Maginn and other.-, 
 5*5 
 
5 4 o 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 White, Lydia, a feeder of literary lions, ' 
 
 279 
 Whitehall; or, Days of George IV., by 
 
 Maginn, 45, 283 
 Whitman, Walt, a capital hoax, 99 
 Wife, on loss of, by Jeffrey, Southey, and 
 
 others, 435 
 Wiffen, J. H., translator of Tasso, etc., 
 
 323 
 Zillah Madonna (Mrs. A. A. Watts), 
 
 323 
 Wilberforce, William, 160 
 Wilkes, John, 373 
 Williams, Sir Charles Hanbury, his Odes, 
 
 403 
 Willis, N. P., Miss Martineau's opinion 
 
 of, 209 
 
 (*' Namby Pamby "), 356 
 
 on B. D' Israeli, 164 
 
 Wine-drinking, 490 
 
 Wit and Wisdom, correlation of, 447 
 
 of Theodore Hook and Sydney Smith 
 
 compared, 426 
 Witticisms of Sydney Smith, 426 
 Wolfe, Rev. Charles, 478 
 Wollstonecraft, Mary, her character, 273 
 
 marries William Godwin, 273 
 
 mother of Mrs. Shelley, 273 
 
 Woman, her position in the drama and 
 
 on the stage, 399 
 Wordsworth compares Hell with London, 
 
 298 
 
 his theory of poetry, 140 
 
 lines from " Peter Bell," 108 
 
 "Worship of Bacchus, The," by George 
 
 Cruikshank, 194 
 Wrangham, Archdeacon, 512 
 his Latin version of " I'd be a butter- 
 fly," 512 
 his Latin version of Sir E. Brydges's 
 
 sonnet on " Echo and Silence," 222 
 Wyon, William, A.R.A., and Pistrucci, 
 
 in 
 
 Yates, Edmund, his opinion of J. 
 Croker, 73 
 
 his opinion of Thackeray, 443 
 
 Yosi, Mdlle. Harriette, 109 
 Young, his epigram on Voltaire, 14 
 
 Zanoni, by Bulwer, 127 
 
 key to, by Miss Martineau, 128 
 
 W. 
 
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 Two Girls on a Barge. 
 
 By C. EGBERT CRADDOCK. 
 
 His Vanished Star. 
 
 By H. N. CRELLIN. 
 
 Romances of the Cld Seraglio. 
 
 By MATT CRIM. 
 The Adventures of a Fair Rebel. 
 
 By S. R. CROCKETT and others. 
 
 Tales of Our Coast. 
 
 By B. M. CROKER. 
 
 The Real Lady Hl'da. 
 
 Married or Single 7 
 
 Two Masters. 
 
 In theKingdom of Kerry 
 
 Interference. 
 
 A Third Person, 
 
 Diana Barrington 
 Proper Pride. 
 A Family Likeness. 
 Pretty Miss Neville. 
 A Bird of Passage. 
 'To Let.' I Mr. Jervis 
 Village Tales. 
 
 By WILLIAM CYPLES. 
 
 Hearts of Gold. 
 
 By ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 The Evangelist ; or, Port Salvation. 
 
 By H. COLEMAN DAVIDSON. 
 Mr. Sadler s Daughters. 
 
 By ERASMUS DAWSON. 
 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 By JAMES DE MILLE. 
 A Castle in Spain. 
 
 By. J. LEITH DERWENT. 
 Cur Lady of Tears. | Circe's Lovers. 
 
 By DICK DONOVAN. 
 Tracked to Doom. I The Mystery of Jamaica 
 
 Man from Manchester. | Terrace. 
 The Chronicles of Michael Danevitch. 
 
 By RICHARD DOWLING. 
 Old Corcoran s Money. 
 
 By A. CONAN DOYLE. 
 The Firm of Girdlestone. 
 
 By S. JEANNETTE DUNCAN. 
 A Daughter of To-day. | Vernon's Aunt. 
 By G. MANVILLE FENN. 
 The New Mistress. I The Tiger Lily. 
 
 Witness to the Deed. I The White Virgin. 
 
 By PERCY FITZGERALD 
 Fatal Zero. 
 
 By R. E. FRANCILLON. 
 One by One. j Ropes of Sand. 
 
 A Dog and his Shadow. Jack Doyle's Daughter 
 A Real Queen. 
 
 By HAROLD FREDERIC. 
 Seth's Brother's Wife. | The Lawton Girl. 
 
 By PAUL GAULOT. 
 The Red Shirts. 
 
 By CHARLES GIBBON. 
 Robin Gray. I Of High Degree. 
 
 Loving a Dream. | The Golden Shaft. 
 
 By E. GLANVILLE. 
 The Lost Heiress. I The Golden Rock. 
 
 A Fair Colonist. Tales from the Veld. 
 
 The Fossicker. | 
 
 By E. J. GOODMAN. 
 The Fate of Herbert Wayne. 
 
 By Rev. S. BARING GOULD. 
 Red Spider. | Eve. 
 
 By CECIL GRIFFITH. 
 Corlntbia Marazion. 
 
28 CHATTO & WINDUS, PuJjlishers, in St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 
 
 The Piccadilly (3/6) Novels continued. 
 
 By SYDNEY GRUNDY. 
 The Days of his Vanity. 
 
 By OWEN HALL. 
 The Track of a Storm. | Jetsam. 
 
 By THOMAS HARDY. 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. 
 
 By BRET HARTE. 
 
 A Waif of the Plains, 
 A Ward of the Golden 
 Gate. [Springs. 
 
 A Sappho of Green 
 Co'. Starbottle s Client. 
 Susy. I Sally Dows. 
 Bell-Ringer of Angel's. 
 
 A Protegee of Jack 
 
 Hamlin s. 
 Clarence. 
 Barker s Luck 
 Devil's Ford, [celsior.' 
 The Crusade of the ' Ex- 
 Three Partners. 
 
 Tale 3 of Trail and Town. 
 By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 
 
 Beatrix Randolph. 
 David Poindexter s Dis- 
 appearance. 
 The Spectre of the 
 I Camera. 
 A. HELPS. 
 
 Garth 
 
 Ellice Quentin. 
 
 Sebastian Strome. 
 
 Dust. 
 
 Fortune's Fool. 
 
 By Sir 
 Ivan de Biron. 
 
 By I. HENDERSON. 
 
 Agatha Page. 
 
 By G. A. HENTY. 
 
 Rujub the Juggler. I The Queen's Cup. 
 Dorothy's Double. 
 
 By JOHN HILL. 
 The Common Ancestor. 
 
 By TIGHE HOPKINS. 
 'Twixt Love and Dutv. 
 
 By Mrs. HUNGERFORD. 
 lady Verner's Flight. I Nora Creina. 
 The'Red-House Mystery An Anxious Moment. 
 The Three Graces. | Aprils Lady. 
 
 Professor's Experiment, j Peter's Wife. 
 A Point of Conscience. I Lovice, 
 
 By Mrs. ALFRED HUNT. 
 The Leaden Casket. I Self-Condemned. 
 That Other Person. | Mrs. Juliet. 
 
 By C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE. 
 Honour of Thieves. 
 
 By EDMOND LEPELLETIER. 
 Madame Sans Gene. 
 
 By HARRY LINDSAY. 
 Rhoda Roberts. 
 
 By HENRY W. LUCY. 
 Gideon Flevce. 
 
 By E. LYNN LINTON. 
 
 Patricia Kemball. 
 Under which Lord? 
 ' My Love I ' | lone. 
 Paston Carew. 
 Sowing the Wind. 
 
 The Atonement of Learn 
 
 Dundas. 
 The World Well Lost. 
 The One Too Many. 
 Dulcie Everton. 
 
 By justin McCarthy. 
 
 A Fair Saxon. 
 
 Linley Rochford. 
 
 Dear Lady Disdain. 
 
 Camiola 
 
 Waterdale Neighbours. 
 
 My Enemy's Daughter. 
 
 Miss Misanthrope. 
 
 Donna Quixote. 
 
 Maid of Athens. 
 
 The Comet of a Season. 
 
 The Dictator. 
 
 Red Diamonds. 
 
 The Riddle Bing. 
 
 The Three Disgraces. 
 
 By JUSTIN H. MCCARTHY. 
 
 A London Legend. | The Royal Christopher. 
 
 By GEORGE MACDONALD. 
 Heather and Snow. | Phantastes. 
 
 By PAUL & VICTOR MARGUER1TTE 
 The Disaster 
 
 By L. T. MEADE. 
 A Soldier of Fortune. I The Voice of the 
 In an Iron Grip. | Charmer. 
 
 By L. T. MEADE and CLIFFORD 
 HALIFAX, M.D. 
 Dr. Rumsey's Patient. 
 
 By LEONARD MERRICK. 
 This Stage of Fools. | Cynthia. 
 
 By BERTRAM M1TFORD 
 The Gun Runner. I The KiDg's Assegai. 
 
 The Luck of Gerard Renshaw Fanning s 
 Ridgeley. [ Quest. 
 
 By J. E. MUDDOCK. 
 
 Maid Marian and Robin Hood. 
 Basile the Jester. | Young Lochinvar. 
 
 By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 
 
 Cynic Fortune. 
 The Way of the World. 
 BobMartins Little Girl. 
 Time's Revenges. 
 A Wasted Crinie. 
 In Direst Peril. 
 Mount Despair. 
 A Capful o' Nai's. 
 Tales and Poems. 
 
 A Life's Atonement, 
 Joseph's Coat. 
 Coals of Fire. 
 Old Blazer s Hero. 
 Val Strange. | Hearts, 
 A Model Father. 
 By the Gate of the Sea 
 A Bit of Human Nature 
 First Person Singular. 
 
 By MURRAY and HERMAN. 
 The Bishops' Bible. I Paul Jones s Alias. 
 
 One Traveller Returns. | 
 
 By HUME NISBET. 
 ' Bail Up I ' 
 
 By W. E. NORRIS. 
 Saint Ann's. I Billy Bellew. 
 
 By G. OH NET. 
 A Weird Gift. 
 
 By Mrs. OLIPHANT. 
 The Sorceress. 
 
 By OUIDA. 
 
 Held in Bondage 
 
 Strathmore. 
 
 Chandos. 
 
 Under Two Flags. 
 
 Idalia. (Gage. 
 
 Cecil Castleroaine a 
 
 Tricotrin. | Puck. 
 
 Folle Farine. 
 
 A Dog of Flanders. 
 
 Pascarel. I Signa. 
 
 Princess Napraxine. 
 
 Ariadne. 
 
 By MARGARET A. PAUL. 
 Gentle and Simple. 
 
 By JAMES PAYN. 
 
 Two Litt'e Wooden 
 
 In a Winter City. Shoes 
 
 Friendship. 
 
 Moths. I Ruffino. 
 
 Pipistrello. 
 
 A Village Commune. 
 
 Bimbi. | Wanda. 
 
 Frescoes. | Othmar. 
 
 In Maremma. 
 
 Syrlin. | Guilderoy. 
 
 Santa Barbara. 
 
 Two Offenders. 
 
 Lost Sir Massingbf rd. 
 Less Black than We're 
 
 Painted. 
 A Confidential Agent. 
 A Grape from a Thorn. 
 In Peril and Privation. 
 The Mystery of Mir- 
 By Proxy. [bridge. 
 The Canon's Ward. 
 Walter s Word. 
 High Spirits. 
 
 By WILL PAYNE. 
 Jerry the Dreamer. 
 
 By Mrs. CAMPBELL PRAED. 
 Outlaw and Lawmaker. I Mrs. Tregaskiss. 
 Christina Chard. | Nu'ma. 
 
 By E. C. PRICE. 
 Valentina. | Foreigners. | Mrs. Lancaster s Rival, 
 
 By RICHARD PRYCE. 
 Miss Maxwell's Affections. 
 
 By CHARLES READE. 
 
 Under One Roof. 
 Glow worm Ta'es 
 The Talk of the Town. 
 Holiday Tasks. 
 For Cash Ouly. 
 The Burnt Million. 
 The Word and the Wi'l. 
 Sunny Stories. 
 A Trying Patient. 
 A Modern Dick Whit- 
 tington. 
 
 Peg Woffington ; and 
 
 Christie Johnstone. 
 Hard Cash. 
 Cloister & the Hearth. 
 Never Too Late to Mend 
 The Course of True 
 
 Love Never Did Run 
 
 Smooth ; and Single- 
 heart andDoubleface. 
 Autobiography of a 
 
 Thief; Jack of all 
 
 Trades; A Hero and 
 
 a Martyr ; and The 
 
 Wandering Heir. 
 Griffith Gaunt. 
 
 By Mrs. J. H 
 Weird Stories. 
 
 By AMELIE RIVES. 
 Barbara Dering. | Meriel. 
 
 By F. W. ROBINSON. 
 The Hands of Justice. I Woman in the Dark. 
 
 By HERBERT RUSSELL. 
 True Blue. 
 
 Love Me Little, Love 
 
 Me Long. 
 The Double Marriage. 
 Foul Play. 
 Put Yourself in His 
 
 Place. 
 A Terrible Temptation. 
 A Simpleton. 
 A Woman Hater. 
 The Jilt, & otiicrSl cries : 
 &Good Stories of Man 
 and other Animals. 
 A Perilous Secret. 
 Readiana ; and Bible 
 
 Characters. 
 
 . RIDDELL. 
 
 
CHATTO & WINDUS, Publishers, III St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 20 
 
 The Piccadilly (3/6) Novels continued. 
 By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 
 
 My Shipmate Iouise. 
 Alone onWideWide Sea. 
 The Fhantom Death, 
 la He the Mai ? 
 Good Ship 'Mohock.' 
 The Convict Ship. 
 Heart of Oak. 
 The Tale of the Ten. 
 The Last Entry. 
 
 Kcund the Galley Fire. 
 In the Middle Watch. 
 On the Fo'k'sle Head. 
 A Voyage to the Cape. 
 Book for the Hammock. 
 Mysteryof 'Ocean Star' 
 The Romance of Jenny 
 
 Harlowe. 
 An Ocean Tragedy. 
 
 By DORA RUSSELL. 
 A Country Sweetheart. I The Drift of Fate. 
 
 By BAYLE ST. JOHN. 
 A Levantine Family. 
 
 By ADELINE SERGEANT. 
 Dr. Endfcotts Experiment. 
 
 By HAWLEY SMART. 
 Without Love or Licence. I The Outsider. 
 The Master of Rathkelly. Beatrice & Benedick. 
 Long Odds. I A Racing Rubber. 
 
 By G. H. SNAZELLE. 
 Bnazelleparllla. 
 
 By T. W. SPEIGHT. 
 A Secret of the Sea. I A Minion of the Moon. 
 The Grey Monk. The Secret of Wyvein 
 
 The Master of Trenance I Towers. 
 
 By ALAN ST. AUBYN. 
 
 In Face of the World. 
 
 Orchard Darner el. 
 
 The Tremlett Diamonds. 
 
 A Fellow of Trinity 
 The Junior Dean. 
 Master of St Benedict's 
 To his Own Master. 
 
 By JOHN STAFFORD. 
 Doris and I. 
 
 By RICCARDO STEPHENS. 
 The Cruciform Mark. 
 
 By R. A. STERNDALE. 
 The Afghan Knife. 
 
 By R. LOUIS STEVENSON. 
 The Suicide Club. 
 
 By BERTHA THOMAS. 
 Proud Maisie. | The Violin-Flayer. 
 By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 The Way we Live Now. I Scarborough 3 Family. 
 Frau Frohmann. | The Land-Leaguers 
 By FRANCES E. TROLLOPE. 
 Like Ships upon the I Anne Furness. 
 Sea. I Mabel's Progress. 
 
 Tom Sawyer. Detective. 
 Pudd'nhead WiJson. 
 The Gilded Age. 
 Prince and the Paurer. 
 Life on the Mississippi. 
 The Adventures of 
 
 Huckleberry Finn. 
 A Yankee at the Court 
 
 of King Arthur. 
 Stolen White Elephant. 
 1,000,0:0 Bankno'te. 
 
 By IVAN TURGENIEFF, &c. 
 
 Stories from Foreign Novelists. 
 
 By MARK TWAIN. 
 
 Mark Twains Choice 
 
 Works. 
 Mark Twain's Library 
 
 of Humour. 
 The Innocents Abroad. 
 Roughing It ; and The 
 
 Innocents at Home. 
 A Tramp Abroad. 
 The American Claimant. 
 AdventuresTomSaw yer 
 Tom Sawyer Abroad. 
 
 By C. C. FRASER-TYTLER. 
 
 Mistress Judith. 
 
 By SARAH TYTLER. 
 
 Lady Bell. I The Macdonald Lass. 
 
 Buried Diamonds. The Witch- Wife. 
 
 The Blackhall Ghosts. | 
 
 By ALLEN UPWARD. 
 The Queen against Owen I The Prince of Pakistan 
 
 By E. A. VIZETELLY. 
 
 The Scorpion : A Romance of Spain. 
 
 By CY WARMAN. 
 
 The Express Messenger, 
 
 By WILLIAM WESTALL. 
 
 Sons of Belial. 
 
 By ATHA WESTBURY. 
 
 The Shadow of Hilton Fernbrook. 
 
 By C. J. WILLS. 
 An Easygoing Fellow. 
 
 By JOHN STRANGE WINTER. 
 
 Cavalry Life and Regimental Legends. 
 A Soldier's Children. 
 
 By MARGARET WYNMAN. 
 My Flirtations. 
 
 By E. ZOLA. 
 The Fortune of the Rougona. 
 The Abbe Mouret's Transgression. 
 
 The Downfall. 
 
 The Dream. 
 
 Dr. Pascal. 
 
 Money. | Lourdes. 
 
 By 
 
 A Nineteenth Century Miracle. 
 
 The Fat and the Thin. 
 His Excellency. 
 The Dram-Shop. 
 Kome. I Paris. 
 
 z z. r 
 
 CHEAP EDITIONS OF POPULAR NOVELS. 
 
 Post 8vo, illustrated boards, ?s. each. 
 
 By ARTEMUS WARD. 
 
 Artemus Ward Complete. 
 
 By EDMOND ABOUT. 
 
 The Fellah. 
 
 By HAMILTON AIDE. 
 
 Cart, of Carrlyon. | Confidences. 
 
 By Mrs. ALEXANDER. 
 
 Maid, Wife, or Widow 7 I A Life Interest. 
 Blind Fate. Mona's Choice. 
 
 Valerie's Fate. | By Woman's Wit. 
 
 By GRANT ALLEN. 
 
 Philistia. I Babylon 
 8trange Stories. 
 For Maimie's Sake. 
 In all Shades. 
 The Beckoning Hand 
 The Devil's Die. 
 The Tents of Shem. 
 The Great Taboo. 
 
 By E. LESTER ARNOLD, 
 Fhra the Phoenician. 
 
 BY FRANK BARRETT. 
 
 Dumaresq's Daughter. 
 Duchess of Powysland. 
 Blood Royal. [piece 
 Ivan Greet'3 Master 
 The Scallywag. 
 This Mortal Coil. 
 At Market Value. 
 Under Sealed Orders. 
 
 Fettered for Life. 
 Little Lady Linton. 
 Between Life <fc Death. 
 Sin of Olga Zassoulich. 
 Folly Morrison. 
 Lieut. Barnabas. 
 Honest Davie. 
 
 A Prodigal's Progress. 
 Found Guilty. 
 A Recoiling Vengeance. 
 For Love and Honour. 
 John Ford, &c. 
 Woman of Iron Brace ts 
 The Harding Scandal. 
 
 SHELSLEY BEAUCHAMP. 
 
 Grantley Grange. 
 By Sir W. BESANT and J. RICE. 
 
 By 
 
 intlei 
 
 Ready- Money Mortiboy 
 My Little Girl. 
 With Harp and Crown. 
 This Son of Vulcan. 
 The Golden Butterfly. 
 The Monks of Thelema. 
 
 By Celia's Arbour. 
 Chaplain of the Fleet. 
 The Seamy Side. 
 The Case of Mr.Lucraft. 
 In Trafalgar's Bay. 
 The Ten Years' Tenant. 
 
 By Sir WALTER BESANT. 
 
 All Sorts and Condi- 
 tions of Men. 
 
 The Captains' Room. 
 
 All in a Garden Fair. 
 
 Dorothy Forster. 
 
 Uncle Jack. 
 
 The World Went Very 
 Well Then. 
 
 Children of Gibeon. 
 
 Herr Paulus. 
 
 For Faith and Freedom. 
 
 To Call Her Mine. 
 
 By AMBROSE BIERCE. 
 
 Dxthe Midst of Life. 
 
 By FREDERICK BOYLE. 
 
 Camp Notes. I Chronicles of No mans 
 
 Savage Life. | Land. 
 
 BY BRET HARTE. 
 
 The Bell of St. Paul's. 
 The Holy Rose. 
 Armorel of Lyones3e. 
 S.Katherine s by Tower 
 Verbena Camellia Ste- 
 
 phanotis. 
 The Ivory Gate. 
 The Rebel Queen. 
 Beyond the Dreams of 
 
 Avarice. 
 The Revolt of Man. 
 In Deacon s Orders. 
 
 Californian Stories. 
 Gabriel Conroy. 
 Luck of Roaring Camp. 
 An Heiress of Red Dog. 
 
 Flip. I Maruja. 
 
 A Phyllis of the Sierras 
 A Waif of the Plains. * 
 Ward of Golden Gate. 
 
40 CHATTO & WINDUS, Publishers, m St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 
 
 The Martyrdom of Ma- 
 deline. 
 The New Abelard. 
 The Heir of Linne. 
 Woman and the Man. 
 Rachel Dene. | Matt. 
 LadyKilpatrick. 
 
 Two-Shilling Novels continued. 
 By HAROLD BRYDGES. 
 Uncle Bam at Home. 
 
 By ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 Shadow of the Sword. 
 A Child of Nature. 
 God and the Man. 
 love Me for Ever. 
 Foxglove Manor. 
 The Master of the Mine. 
 Annan Water. 
 
 By BUCHANAN and MURRAY. 
 The Charlatan. 
 
 By HALL CAINE. 
 The Shadow of a Crime. I The Deemster. 
 A Son of Eagar. 
 
 By Commander CAMERON. 
 The Crime of the 'Black Prince." 
 
 By HAYDEN CARRUTH. 
 The Adventures of Jones. 
 
 By AUSTIN CLARE. 
 Tor the Love of a Lass. 
 
 By Mrs. ARCHER CLIVE. 
 
 Paul Terroil. 
 
 Why Faul Ferroll Killed his Wife. 
 
 By MACLAREN COBBAN. 
 
 The Cure of Souls. | The Red Sultan. 
 
 By C. ALLSTON COLLINS. 
 The Bar Sinister. 
 By MORT. & FRANCES COLLINS. 
 
 Sweet Anne Page, 
 
 Transmigration. 
 
 Fi om Midnight to Mid 
 
 night. 
 A Fight with Fortune. 
 
 Bv VV1LKIE COLLINS. 
 
 Sweet and Twenty. 
 The Village Comedy. 
 You Play me False. 
 Blacksmith and Scholar 
 Frances. 
 
 Armadale. | AfterDark. 
 
 No Name. 
 
 Antonina. 
 
 Basil. 
 
 Hide and Seek. 
 
 The Dead Secret. 
 
 Queen of Hearts, 
 
 Miss or Mrs. 1 
 
 The New Magdalen. 
 
 The Frozen Deep. 
 
 The Law and the Lady 
 
 The Two Destinies. 
 
 The Haunted Hotel. 
 
 A Rogue's Life. 
 
 By M. J. COLQUHOUN. 
 Every Inch a Soldier. 
 
 By DUTTON COOK. 
 Leo | Paul Foster's Daughter. 
 
 By C. EGBERT CRADDOCK. 
 The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains. 
 
 By MATT CRIM. 
 The Adventures of a Fair Rebel. 
 
 By B. M. CROKER. 
 Prettv Miss Neville. 
 
 My Miscellanies. 
 The Woman in White. 
 The Moonstone. 
 Man and Wife. 
 Poor Mies Finch. 
 The Fallen Leaves. 
 Jezebel's Daughter. 
 The Black Robe. 
 Heart and Science. 
 'I Say No!' 
 The Evil Genius. 
 Little Novels. 
 Legacy of Cain. 
 Blind Love. 
 
 Village Tales and Jungle 
 
 Tragedies. 
 Two Masters. 
 Mr. Jervis. 
 The Real Lady Hilda. 
 Married or Single ? 
 
 Diana Barrington 
 
 'To Let.' 
 
 A Bird of Passage 
 
 Proper Pride. 
 
 A Family Likeness, 
 
 By W. CYPLES. 
 Hearts of Gold. 
 
 By ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 The Evangelist; or, Port Salvation. 
 
 By ERASMUS DAWSON. 
 
 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 By JAMES DE MILLE. 
 /. Castle in Spain. 
 
 By J. LEITH DERWENT. 
 
 Our Lady of Tears. | Circes Lovers. 
 
 By DICK DONOVAN. 
 
 The Man-Hunter. 
 Tracked and Taken. 
 Caught at Last I 
 Wanted ! 
 Who Poisoned Hetty 
 
 Duncan ? 
 Man from Manchester. 
 A Detective's Triumphs 
 The Mystery of Jamaica Terrace 
 The Chronicles of Michael Danevitch. 
 
 By Airs. ANNIE EDWARDE5. 
 
 A Point of Honour. | Archie Lovell. 
 
 By M. BETHAM-EDWARDS. 
 
 Felicia. | Kitty. 
 
 In the Grip of the Law 
 From Information Re- 
 ceived. 
 Tracked to Doom. 
 Link by Link 
 Suspicion Aroused. 
 Dark Deeds. 
 Riddles Read. 
 
 Rosy 
 
 By EDWARD EGGLESTON. 
 
 By G. MANVILLE FENN. 
 w Mistress. | The Tiger Lilv. 
 
 The White Virgin. 
 
 By PERCY FITZGERALD. 
 
 The New Mistress 
 Witness to the Deed. 
 
 Bella Donna. 
 Never Forgotten. 
 Polly. 
 Fatal Zero. 
 
 Second Mrs. Tillotson. 
 Seventy - five Brooke 
 
 Street. 
 The Lady of Brantome 
 
 By P. FITZGERALD and others. 
 
 Strange Secrets. 
 
 By ALBANY DE FONBLANQUE. 
 
 Filthy Lucre. 
 
 By R. E. FRANCILLON. 
 
 King or Knave? 
 Romances of the Law. 
 Ropes of Sand. 
 A Dog and his Shadow. 
 
 Olympia 
 One by One. 
 A Real Queen. 
 Queen Cophetua 
 
 By HAROLD FREDERIC 
 Seth's Brothei's Wife. | The Lawton Girl. 
 Prefaced by Sir BARTLE FRERE. 
 Pandurang Hari. 
 
 By EDWARD GARRETT. 
 The Capel Girls. 
 
 By GILBERT GAUL. 
 
 A Strange Manuscript. 
 
 By CHARLES GIBBON. 
 
 Robin Gray. 
 
 Fancy Free. 
 
 For Lack of Gold. 
 
 What will World Say 7 
 
 In Love and War. 
 
 For the King. 
 
 In Pastures Green. 
 
 Queen of the Meadow. 
 
 A Heart's Problem. 
 
 The Dead Heart. 
 
 In Honour Bound. 
 Flower of the Forest. 
 The Braes of Yarrow. 
 The Golden Shaft. 
 Of High Degree. 
 By Mead and Stream. 
 Loving a Dream. 
 A Hard Knot. 
 Heart's Delight. 
 Blood Money. 
 
 By WILLIAM GILBERT. 
 
 Dr. Austin's Guests. I The Wizard of. 
 James Duke. | Mountain. 
 
 By ERNEST GLANVILLE. 
 
 The Lost Heiress. I The Fossicker. 
 
 A Fair Colonist. 
 
 By Rev. S. BARING GOULD. 
 
 Red Spider. | Eve. 
 
 By HENRY GREVILLE. 
 
 A Noble Woman. | Nikanor. 
 
 By CECIL GRIFFITH. 
 
 Corinthia Marazion. 
 
 By SYDNEY GRUNDY. 
 
 The Days of his Vanity. 
 
 By JOHN HABBERTON. 
 Brueton s Bayou. | Country Luck. 
 
 By ANDREW HALL1DAY. 
 Every day Papers. 
 
 By THOMAS HARDY. 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. 
 
 the 
 
CHATTO & WINDUS, Publishers, in St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 31 
 
 Beatrix Randolph. 
 
 Love or a Name. 
 
 David Poindexter's Dis- 
 appearance. 
 
 The Spectre of the 
 Camera. 
 
 Two-Shilling Novels continued. 
 
 By JULIAN HAWTHORNE 
 Garth. 
 Ellice Quentin. 
 
 I or tune s Fool, 
 [iss Cadogna. 
 Sebastian Strome. 
 Dust. 
 
 By Sir ARTHUR HELPS. 
 Ivan de Biron. 
 
 By G. A. KENTY. 
 Eujub the Juggler. 
 
 By HENRY HERMAN. 
 A Leading Lady. 
 
 By HEADON HILL. 
 Zambra the Detective. 
 
 By JOHN HILL. 
 Treason Felony. 
 
 By Mrs. CASH EL HOEY. 
 The Lover's Creed. 
 
 By Mrs. GEORGE HOOPER. 
 
 The House of Raby. 
 
 By Mrs. HUNGERFORD. 
 
 The Three Graces 
 Unsatisfactory Lover. 
 Lady Fatty. 
 Nora Creina. 
 The Professor's Expsri 
 ment. 
 
 A Maiden all Forhjrn 
 
 In Durance Vile. 
 
 Marvel. 
 
 A Mental Struggle. 
 
 A Modern Circe. 
 
 Lady Verner's Flight 
 
 The Red House Mystei y 
 
 By Mrs. ALFRED HUNT. 
 Thornicrofts Model. I Self Condemned. 
 That Other Person. | The Leaden Casket. 
 
 By WM. JAMESON. 
 My Dead Self. 
 
 By HARRIETT JAY. 
 The Dark Colleen. | Queen of Connaught. 
 
 By MARK KERSHAW. 
 Colonial Facts and Fictions. 
 
 By R. ASHE KING 
 A Drawn Game. 
 ' The Weaiing of the 
 Green.' 
 
 By EDMOND LEPELLETIER. 
 
 Madame Sans Gene. 
 
 By JOHN LEYS. 
 
 The Lindsays. 
 
 By E. LYNN LINTON. 
 Patricia Kemball. The Atonement of Le: 
 
 The World Well Lost. Dundas. 
 
 Under which Lord 1 Rebel of the Family. 
 
 Paston Carew. Sowing the Wind. 
 
 ' My Love I ' The One Too Many. 
 
 lone. Dulcie Everton. 
 
 With a Silken Thread. 
 
 By HENRY W. LUCY. 
 
 GideoFleyce. 
 
 By justin McCarthy. 
 
 I Passion s Slave. 
 I Bell Barry. 
 
 Donna Quixote 
 
 Maid of Athei?3. 
 
 The Comet of a Season. 
 
 The Dictator. 
 
 Red Diamonds. 
 
 The Riddle Ring. 
 
 Dear Lady Disdain 
 Waterdale Neighbours 
 Mv Enemy's Daughter 
 A Fair Saxon. 
 Linley Rochford. 
 Kiss 'Misanthrope. 
 Caniiola. 
 
 By HUGH MACCOLL. 
 Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet. 
 
 By GEORGE MACDONALD. 
 
 Heather and Snow. 
 
 By AGNES MACDONELL. 
 
 Quaker Cousins. 
 By KATHARINE S. MACQUOID 
 
 The Evil Eye. | Lost Rose. 
 
 By W. H. MALLOCK. 
 
 4 Romance of the Nine- I The New Republic, 
 teenth Century. J 
 
 By J. MASTERMAN. 
 
 Half a-dozen Daughters. 
 
 By BRANDER MATTHEWS. 
 
 A Secret of the Sea. 
 
 By L. T. MEADE. 
 
 A Soldier of Fortune. 
 
 By LEONARD MERRICK. 
 
 The Man who was Good. 
 
 By JEAN MIDDLEMASS. 
 
 Touch and Go. | Mr. Dorillion. 
 
 By Mrs. MOLESWORTH. 
 
 Hathercourt Rectory. 
 
 By J. E. MUDDOCK. 
 
 Stories Weird and Won ! From the Bosom of the 
 
 derful. Deep. 
 
 The Dead Man's Secret. I 
 
 By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 
 
 A. Model Father. 
 Joseph's Coat. 
 Coals of Fire. 
 Val Strange. | Hearts. 
 Old Blazer s Hero. 
 
 A Bit of Human Nature. 
 First Person fcin^ul -r. 
 Bob Martin's Little Girl 
 Time's Revenges. 
 A Wasted Crime. 
 In Direst Peril. 
 Mount Despair 
 A Capful o' Nails. 
 
 The Way of the World. 
 Cynic Fortune. 
 A Life's Atonement. 
 By the Gate of the Sea. 
 
 By MURRAY and HERMAN. 
 
 One Traveller Returns. I The Bishovs Bible. 
 Paul Jones s Alias. 
 
 By HENRY MURRAY. 
 
 A Game of Bluff. | A Song of Sixpence. 
 
 By HUME NISBET. 
 ' Bail Up ! * | Dr.Bernard St. Vincent. 
 
 By W. E. NORRLS. 
 
 Saint Anns. 
 
 By ALICE O'HANLON. 
 
 The Unforeseen. | Chance ? or Fate ? 
 
 By GEORGES OHNEY. 
 
 Dr. Rameau. I A Weird Gift 
 
 A Last Love. 
 
 By Mrs. OLIPHANT. 
 
 Whiteladies. I The Greatest Heiress in 
 
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 Phoebe s Fortunes. 
 
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 Held in Bondage. 
 
 Strathmore. 
 
 Chandos. 
 
 Idalia. 
 
 Under Two Flags. 
 
 Cecil Castleinaine sGage 
 
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 Puck. 
 
 Folle Farine. 
 
 A Dog of Flanders. 
 
 Pa3carel. 
 
 Signa. 
 
 Princess Napraxine. 
 
 In a Winter City. 
 
 Ariadne. 
 
 Friendship. 
 
 Two Lit. Wooden Shoes. 
 Moths. 
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 Pipistrello. 
 A Village Commune. 
 Wanda. 
 Othmar 
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 In Maremtaa. 
 Guilderoy. 
 Ruffino. 
 Syrlin. 
 
 Santa Barbara. 
 Two Offenders. 
 Ouida's Wisdom. Wit. 
 and Pathos. 
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 Gentle and Simple. 
 
 By EDGAR A. POE. 
 
 The Mystery of Marie Koget. 
 
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 The Romance of a Station. 
 
 The Soul of Countess Adrian. 
 
 Outlaw and Lawmaker. 
 
 Christina Chard. | Mrs. Tregaski3S. 
 
 By E; C. PRiCE. 
 Valentina. I Mrs. Lancaster s Rival 
 
 The Foreigner*. | Gerald. 
 
 By RICHARD PRYCE. 
 
 Miss Maxwell's Affections. 
 
32 CHATTO & WlNDUS, Publishers, Hi St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 
 
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 Bentinck's Tutor. 
 
 Murphy'8 Master. 
 
 A County Family. 
 
 At Her Mercy. 
 
 Cecil's Tryst. 
 
 The Clyffards of Clyffe. 
 
 The Foster Brothers. 
 
 Found Dead. 
 
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 Walter's Word 
 
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 Mirk Abbey 
 
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 Under One Roof. 
 
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 Kit. 
 
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 It is Never Too Late to 
 
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 Christie Johnstone. 
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 Put Yourself in His 
 
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 Round the Galley Fire 
 
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 Gaslight and Daylight. 
 
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 My Shipmate Louise. 
 Alone onWideWide Sea. 
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 Is He the Man. 
 Heart of Oak. 
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 Zeph. 
 
 Memoirs of a Landlady. 
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 The 10 Commandments. 
 Dagonet Abroad. 
 Rogues and Vagabonds. 
 
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 Mary Jane Married. 
 Tale3 of To day. 
 Dramas of Life. 
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 My Two wives. 
 
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 A Match in the Dark. 
 
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 Without Love or Licence. I The Plunger. 
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 SPEIGHT. 
 
 Back to Life. 
 
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 Burgos Romance. 
 
 Quittance in Full. 
 
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 The Mysteries of Heron 
 
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 Hoodwinked. 
 By Devious Ways. 
 
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 A Fellow of Trinity. I Orchard Damerel. 
 The Junior Dean. In the Face of the World. 
 
 Master of St. Benedict's The Tremlett Diamonds. 
 To His Own Master. 
 
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 The Afghan Knife. 
 
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 New Arabian Nights. 
 
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 Cressida. I The Violin- Player. 
 
 Proud Maisie. 
 
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 Diamond Cut Diamond. 
 
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 Like Ships upon the I Anne Furness. 
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 Frau Frohmann. 
 Marion Fay. 
 Kept in the Dark. 
 John Caldigate. 
 The Way We Live Now. 
 
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 Mr. Scarborough 8 
 
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 GoldenLion of Granpere 
 
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 FarneU's Folly. 
 
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 Stories from Foreign Novelists. 
 
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 A Pleasure Trip on the 
 
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 The 1,000,000 Bank- 
 
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 What SheCameThrougb 
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 The Marquis of Carabas. 
 
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 Cavalry Life. | Regimental Legends. 
 
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 The Forlorn Hope. 1 Castaway. 
 
 Land at Last. 
 
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 Ghetto Tragedies. 
 
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